Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Alright, you guys, so stuff is blowing up and falling out of the sky, so we better talk with Phil Giraldi about what it all means.
Former CIA officer, now president of the Council for the National Interest, and a regular writer at UNZ.com.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Phil?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Appreciate it.
And a great article, I think we had it today, at NAWar.com.
One of these days, you had the path to World War III, so of course this is about Israel screwing around, in this case in Syria here.
And lo and behold, I think as you put it in here, you might not have noticed if you're watching TV news, they tried to make not much of a big deal about this.
But the Syrians shot down their allies, the Russians, plane.
And somehow the Israelis were involved.
And so now you explain.
Well, basically I wrote an article about this recent shooting down of a Russian intelligence surveillance plane, which was over the Mediterranean monitoring a French frigate, and was heading back to base in Syria to land.
And what happened was, while this was occurring, the Israeli Air Force, four F-16 jets, were coming in to stage an attack on a target near another airfield in Syria.
And the Russian Ministry of Defense and most observers believe that the Israelis deliberately used the big, slow Russian plane as kind of a mask as they were coming in.
And what happens in a case like that is when the anti-aircraft missiles are fired off, they go to the biggest target, and they shot it down.
So the repercussions of this are still kind of playing out.
Yeah.
So I guess it makes sense from an extremely narrow tactical point of view that some fighter jets would use this plane as radar cover.
Or even I think, as you put it in here, that they might have thought that this would have prevented the Syrians from taking the shot.
That would probably be the point of it, except that the Syrians went ahead and took the shot, because they're only so good at their job, I guess.
Yeah, no, that's exactly what I would think.
I mean, obviously, unless you knew what the intentions of the Israeli pilots and whoever was controlling them was or were, you're not going to know the answer to that.
But it would seem to me they would figure, hey, with a Russian plane up there in the air, this is a perfect time to go in because the Syrians wouldn't dare shoot.
And, of course, that was a wrong judgment.
Yeah.
Well, so then I think you had, I'm sorry, I read your article yesterday or the day before or something.
Was it one of these Russian ministers had a real tough statement, but then Putin walked it back a little bit?
Yeah, that's what you say.
More conciliatory is the link here.
Yeah, yeah.
And in fact, since I wrote the article, there's been more of that.
The Russian Ministry of Defense immediately said, you know, this was extremely reckless on the part of the Israelis because they should have known or they would have known that the airplane, Russian airplane, was up there.
And they were doing something that was extremely risky, whatever their motive was.
And Putin, however, kind of walked back from it and said it was not a deliberate, clearly not a deliberate shooting down on the part of the Israelis.
The Israelis did not shoot down the Russian plane.
And they may not have even intended that the Russian plane would be in danger.
They might have thought it was something that would protect them.
But in the last two days, I think it is the Russian Ministry of Defense has been speaking to the Israelis and they've come back even stronger, saying that it was a deliberate, very risky enterprise on the part of the Israelis to do this at all.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, the thing of it, too, is sometimes it can be hard for a government to break the news to a population that like, yes, 14 of our greatest heroes were killed today in some very reckless action by this semi-friendly nation kind of a thing.
You know, people get mad about stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, there's a lot of politics in it, too, because, as you know, I'm sure, and probably many of your listeners.
Well, you know, something like one third of the Israeli population is Russian in origin.
And I'm talking about recent Russian in origin.
And so there's a personal and political connection between the two countries.
They get along quite well in general.
And so it's, you know, Putin, I think, is just basically kind of figuring out, what are my equities here?
The plane is down.
These guys are dead.
There's nothing I can do about that.
But I think he probably, in personal conversations with Netanyahu, told him that this was your get-out-of-jail-free card, and this cannot happen again.
Yeah, man, wow.
So, and there's a larger point here, too, which is there are a lot of different nation states with competing interests continuing to screw around in Syria, and that that's kind of dangerous.
Yeah, that's right.
And the thing is that there's a lot of talk going on right now, most of it coming out of the mouth of John Bolton, about how dangerous the Russian move.
The Russians are going to put an upgraded surface-to-air missile system, the 300.
The 200 was the one that was in place.
The 300 is much, much more capable and has much longer range.
And Bolton is basically saying, well, we have planes there, too.
Of course, they're there illegally.
And he said, and the Israelis have a right to defend themselves.
I mean, if you consider defense being bombing somebody else who is not bombing you, well, I guess that's so.
Yeah.
Well, of course, they can consider it whatever they want, the Israelis and John Bolton, too.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Bolton has never been real close to the truth in anything he says.
Yeah, except when he's striking at it, trying to destroy it.
All right.
So now the Avaaz attack.
Who's blowing up Iran, Phil?
Well, that's a good question.
I've had some phone calls from people who are kind of connected to what's going on.
They don't believe that it was ISIS.
ISIS claimed it.
They think it is more likely to be an American-Israeli operation using some people that were connected with Mujahedin Iqalq.
That's the group that's been over here in the States for some time and has a lot of political support in Congress and in the administration.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out because from what I saw most recently, they captured two of the guys who were the gunmen.
So I would imagine they'll be singing really soon, and we might get some more insight into actually who pulled it off.
I mean, you know, there's any number of possibilities in terms of who might have done it.
Yeah.
Well, now – so I read this great thing at the Loeb blog by Shireen Hunter, I think it is.
Yeah.
She's pretty good.
Yeah, yeah.
And so she was talking all about – you know, this is – you know, used to be called Arabistan back, you know, whenever it was.
And, you know, all going back into history and that there have been separatist groups here.
And I forget exactly what she says about their degree of bin Ladenism in terms of their revolutionary politics and that kind of thing.
But the implication was clear, and I guess the Iranians accused this whole movement of being behind the attack and also being backed by the Gulf states.
So not ISIS, but basically some kind of – like Jandala, a group that might – which is in the east of the country, in Baluchistan.
Yeah.
Which might as well be bin Ladenite guys, more or less.
Yeah.
I mean, people assume that Iran is basically homogeneous in its population, but it's not.
Obviously, the core Iranians or Persians are in the central part of the country, but the fringes on the edges where Iran meets Arab states, there are significant Arab populations.
And the United States CIA for a long time in Mossad have been stirring up those elements to carry out armed attacks against Iranian forces.
There have been a number of attacks against Iranian military police, and this is only the most recent one.
There hasn't been one, I don't think, in a couple years, but this is not actually that unusual.
But they get armed by outside sources like CIA, like Mossad, and certainly the Saudis and the Gulf states people have their own contacts, and they have their own ways of getting in there.
So it's – as I said, we'll probably find out who did it.
Yeah.
Well, now, the MEK, they've done a lot of assassinations, but I wonder if you think they got the courage to lose two immediately to gunfire and have another two executed later because that seems like a little bold for them, no?
Yeah, it actually is.
They basically do the planting a bomb and running type stuff.
Yeah, this is a suicide mission for sure.
Yeah, yeah, one would think so because if you're shooting up a parade of the Revolutionary Guards, those guys are armed too.
And if you've got to be close enough to shoot them, you're also close enough for them to shoot back.
So yeah, I agree with you.
I think the MEK is maybe an unlikely player on this, but you never know.
I mean it just depends.
The MEK rank and file allegedly, as I'm sure you know, are supposed to be pretty heavily brainwashed.
And so it's always possible.
It may have been a specific reason why the MEK would want to prove its credentials to whoever is paying it.
Libertarian audiobooks.
That's all at scotthorton.org slash donate.
And also anybody donating $5 or more per month there.
If you already are or if you sign up now, you'll get keys to that new Reddit group as well.
Already got about 50 people in there and it's turning out pretty good.
Again, that's reddit.com slash scotthorton show.
If you're already donating or you're a new donor, just email me scott at scotthorton.org and I'll get you the keys there.
And hey, do me a favor.
Give me a good review on iTunes or Stitcher or if you liked the book on amazon.com.
And the audiobook is also on iTunes and I sure would appreciate that.
And listen, if you want to submit articles to the Libertarian Institute, please do.
And they don't have to be about foreign policy.
My email address is scott at scotthorton.org.
Well, and you know, one way or the other, more likely coincidence, I guess, but same difference.
Anyway, might as well be a direct connection that Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, gave a speech to the MEK that same day.
Promising regime change in Tehran.
Yeah.
For these nuts.
Yeah, that's right.
It's one of those coincidences that maybe is not a coincidence.
It's an incidence anyway.
Yeah, yeah.
And I noticed this week, in fact, there was all the activity going on at the United Nations, anti-Iran activity by the U.S.
That was pretty coordinated, too.
We had Pompeo and Bolton were speaking outside the United Nations with this group united against nuclear Iran, which is funded by Sheldon Adelson.
And so they were speaking and attacking Iran.
And meanwhile, you have Nikki Haley piling in and you have the president.
And back in Washington, you have Mattis, who had a press conference at the Pentagon.
So it was the most coordinated effort to demonize the country, suggesting that something is about to happen that I think I've ever seen.
Yeah.
When and actually previously they had been discussing even having a side meeting between Donald Trump and President Rouhani.
And so, wow.
Talk about the opposite of that, huh?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, I think these people are in love with playing these conspiracy things out and acting like spies and covert agents and stuff like that.
It kind of gets into their head, and I think that's what a lot of this verbiage is about.
But as I pointed out in my article where I said World War III, the danger of all this is that it can create situations that you can't control, that escalate.
The Israeli attack could have actually produced something much worse.
And it could have resulted in down the road the United States getting involved in some kind of shooting exchange with the Russians.
So these things are dangerous to play with.
And the fact that our elected leaders and also their appointed idiots have essentially been throwing oil on the fire is not good for us.
It's not good for anybody.
Yeah.
Well, and for all the cynical agendas behind a lot of these policies, there are a hell of a lot of true believers in the greatness of American intervention.
Whether it's Iraq, Libya, Syria, all these things, all we're trying to do is free the people and give them democracy and help them out.
I think it really goes to show, doesn't it, the power of how stupid they are, the power of the social psychology of being inside that bubble where everyone agrees.
I mean imagine being Tom Ridge and then getting paid by the MEK to give a speech.
And like, hey, but every other rich former politician I know gives speeches to the MEK and they all say it's cool.
And Ed Rendell, a former governor, was confronted and was like, well, everybody's doing it.
I don't know.
Think about it.
Imagine having that mindset.
Yeah.
Well, Elaine Chao, who is, of course, the wife of the majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, got paid $30,000 for a five-minute introduction of somebody in Paris.
And, of course, it was an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris and a five-star hotel, I'm sure.
It's incredible.
We've created an entitled class of politicians that think, as they used to say, the world shines – the sun shines out of their asses.
I mean these people are one step away from being criminals, and it's just astonishing.
Well, and the level of ignorance, too.
It's very Hillary Clinton-esque, right, where this whole phenomenon of the A-plus student in the front of the class who gets good grades on all the tests but actually doesn't have any kind of real understanding or wisdom or kind of depth or context about anything at all.
She's as stupid as she is evil.
I mean we've seen that over and over again when it comes to what she thinks is obviously the great idea.
She's asking all the wrong questions to come to her conclusions.
She always has.
Most congressmen are like that, and the thing is you get someone occasionally like Rand Paul or Tulsi Gabbard who actually dares to ask questions and to challenge the consensus on these issues.
These people are marginalized so fast that you don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.
It's just that the system is so geared against them, and it goes into a protective mode, and that's what we see over and over again.
Yeah.
By the way, Gabbard is getting better and better, too.
I saw one thing I can't remember recently, a great video, and then also she did this written transcript interview with James Carden in The Nation.
That is just – man, that's the best.
She's as good as any of us on some of this stuff now.
Yeah, and Jim Carden does some good work, so that would be well worth seeing.
Was it a video?
No, that one's the transcript.
Okay, I'll look it up.
And also I read about this where she had said on September 11th that like, look, man, what are we doing protecting Al-Qaeda in the Idlib province and stuff?
Really getting to the point.
Right, yeah.
Hey, by the way, remember the redirection?
This is kind of at the center of my whole narrative about what's going on over there.
Bush gave Iraq to Iran's best friends, but then he realized it, right?
And then that's the Seymour Hersh article is the redirection.
Now we tilt back toward the Saudis and their friends against Iran to try to make up for what we've done here.
And so part of that was backing Jandala and backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, but also backing PJAK, which is the Iranian version of the YPG, which is the Syrian version of the Turkish PKK, revolutionary leftist Kurdish factions.
I don't know if she doesn't mention them specifically, but it sure seems like she's referring to them in that article by that Shireen Hunter at Lowblog was talking about.
And so they say they have this Iran working group and everything.
So do you think there's, just like back then, that there's a CIA effort to really arm and back these groups?
Like maybe this recent attack is just heralding escalating destabilization campaign inside Iran?
Yeah, I think it's probably so.
Because as soon as Pompeo took over at CIA, his first action just about was to recreate an Iran action group.
And because he said there hadn't been enough stuff going on on Iran.
And I suspect since the paramilitaries are kind of running the operations side of CIA now, it's got to have a paramilitary flavor to it.
So I suspect that they are doing this kind of stuff.
And of course, the Israelis will be right in on that and eager to do it.
And I would imagine even the Brits are.
So, you know, distinct possibility that they were behind this attack.
If they were, they would try to conceal their hands somehow.
Maybe working through second or third parties to recruit the guys and arm them or do whatever they did.
But yeah, absolutely.
I would put money on it.
All right.
Now, real quick, man.
Tell me everything that you think about the supposed at least revelation, maybe real revelation, about the identification of those two Russian nationals who allegedly committed the poison attack there in Great Britain.
You've written about this before, but I don't know if you've had one since these two guys were identified by the British government and media.
Yeah, I've read just about everything that's appeared on this case.
I haven't written anything because I'm not sure what it all means, to be honest.
I mean, I don't trust the British government to be telling us stuff in any way that is accurate.
But the Russians seem to have confirmed the basics of the itinerary of these two guys.
And I wouldn't trust the Russian interview of these two guys either.
So the whole thing is kind of mysterious.
I don't know why two guys of this socioeconomic standing would be making a trip to England to go over and see the Salisbury Cathedral.
You know, anything is possible.
And I suspect we will probably never know what happened, actually.
And it's probably better to view it that way because it's just it's like proving Russiagate in general.
There is so little evidence or facts, so few facts and so much obfuscation by the various parties that who knows what happened.
Yeah, well, I mean, sure, if it's true that these two guys are Russian hitmen that went and killed them, that really does not speak to who sent them necessarily at all.
I mean, this is purely an MSNBC point of view that anything with an R connected to it at all is ordered by Putin and the Kremlin and is all centrally controlled in a five year plan or some kind of thing.
On the other hand, you know, I don't want to be Putin's lawyer either.
You know, certainly the guy's a killer.
He's a Republican after all, you know.
Yeah, I mean, that's the point.
It could be true.
I mean, it could be true that this MSNBC narrative is actually correct.
But, you know, we don't know.
I mean, it's just it's the evidence that's been presented is so sketchy and nothing is really connected to anything else.
So really, it could be anything.
It could be that it's true or it could be it's a total fabrication or it could be that Theresa may personally poison them, which I suspect.
Yeah, I don't know.
It seems, yeah, it does seem suspicious that it's right in the middle of a thousand other fake stories about Russia that, you know, why would the Russian government do something like that at a time like that and that kind of thing?
But then again, you know, I don't know.
It's like sometimes we overthink these things, you know, we think that there's going to be an answer that's going to leap out.
And sometimes it happens, like with the case of the Syrian use of chemical weapons, which we all suspected was not true.
And eventually truth does come out that no, they didn't do it.
And, you know, so it may well be this will be that kind of case that maybe six months from now, suddenly something, some light bulb goes on.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, man, I better go because I'm actually late for my next one.
But thank you very much for coming back on the show and talking about this stuff.
OK, Scott, take care.
Hopefully we won't all die in a nuclear war before we get to talk again sometime.
I'm digging a bomb shelter in my backyard.
All right.
You do that.
All right.
Thanks, man.
See ya.
All right, you guys, that's Phil Jirali, former CIA and then counsel for the National Interest and UNS.com.
That's where he writes.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
