09/10/10 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

I have my friend Gareth Porter on the phone right now.
Gareth, are you there?
Yeah.
Wonderful.
Appreciate you joining us.
So you guys all know Gareth Porter.
I've interviewed him more than anybody else on this show and for very good reason.
He, well, he's my favorite journalist.
He's interested in all the things that I'm interested in and he seems to have as a motive for all his journalism debunking whatever lie they tell on any given day, all day, every day and he always knows the answers to my questions.
He's a independent historian and journalist from Interpress Service and of course we run virtually every bit of it at original.antiwar.com slash porter.
And now here's the thing, I kind of want to interview you about your latest piece thrashing General David Petraeus, but we're going to have to put that off because I want to, I want to talk about Joe Biden and the false Iraq war narrative.
That's one of the best pieces you've written in so long and, uh, and you know, this is really, uh, how you won me over from beginning of 2007 when antiwar radio really first got going here.
I interviewed you and you proved that you knew what was going on with Iraq and, and for more than three years in a row now, almost four years now, uh, you've debunked every lie they told about that war this whole time, Garrett.
And now here they've got this narrative that we won, that it was a great success, that David Petraeus ought to be the dictator of the world from now on because of his great success in Iraq and everything's fine.
And even Joe Biden, who I guess is some peacenik, agrees that George Bush is a hero and was brave for deciding to stand up to the people and, and escalate the war in 2007 anyway, because it turned out that that was just a great idea and that's how we won the war.
And now we can all pat ourselves on the back for killing Iraq.
So now I'm going to be quiet and you just go ahead and tell them about how that ain't true.
Well, first of all, of course, Joe Biden is not really a peacenik, uh, if I, if I even hinted at that possibility, then I was, uh, sadly in error.
Oh, no, you didn't.
I was just making fun of him.
Yeah.
Um, but, but of course he was the chairman of the hearings, uh, where they excluded any anti-war voice in the Senate.
And of course, Joe Biden is best known in the case of the Iraq war for having, you know, tried to sell this idea that we should split Iraq into three pieces in order to better contain the problem of, uh, you know, the Sunni, uh, the Sunni violence and the Shia violence, uh, you know, an idea which could only have been cooked up in the mind of somebody who was a true believer in the use of military force to actually control another country.
Uh, and, and indeed, I think Joe Biden does fit that description and, and you know, my, my piece sort of took off from his interview with, um, public television, uh, the, the news hour.
And, uh, you know, he was asked, you know, what about this, uh, uh, this issue of, uh, surge?
I mean, isn't it true that, uh, it worked just fine?
Aren't you really obliged to admit this?
And Biden, you know, stumbled and, uh, you know, hummed and hawed, but ultimately did in fact, uh, go ahead and say, yeah, well, if you know, if you want to say that, then, you know, I can't really object in so many words.
And that got me thinking, okay, this is time to really come back to the, the reality, the real history of what happened in 2007 and 2008, uh, and, uh, what, what we really need to know about this, uh, you know, what, what you called the, the narrative and which I call the narrative of U.S. triumphalism in Iraq.
And so I, I did come back to this and I think it's a timely, uh, you know, a point at which to, uh, to reiterate what, what I think many people will already know very well, but which I think I've perhaps added some, uh, additional documentation and details to, and that is that the, the Petraeus myth, uh, was, was really a matter of taking credit for, trying to take credit for, but of course he's been very successful in doing it, a series of, of development in the, uh, violent struggle between the Sunnis and the Shia and within the Shia community in Iraq, uh, and claim that in fact, it was the U.S. military forces that accomplished something that really they had nothing to do with.
I mean, that's the short version of it, of course, and, and what I did was to break it down into the three major components of the, uh, the surge myth, if you will.
First, that it, uh, succeeded in bringing the Sunnis, the Sunni resistance folk over to our side against Al Qaeda, to cooperate against Al Qaeda, uh, to basically stop fighting the government and the Americans and to start fighting Al Qaeda.
Secondly, that it accomplished the great feat of, uh, of bringing down the level of Sunni Shia, uh, sectarian violence, particularly in Baghdad.
And thirdly, that it succeeded in defeating the Shia militia threat, uh, which, which of course, uh, Petraeus has always associated with a proxy war, uh, by Iran, waged by Iran through what he called special groups.
So, uh, what I did was to debunk all three of those, uh, three, three of those myths.
All right.
Well, let's go through them one at a time here.
We got the time.
Okay.
We can get one before the first break at least.
The first one with regard to the Sunnis, uh, is one that I was really following from, you know, virtually the beginning of the time that I was writing about Iraq.
I started writing about Iraq in late 2004, early 2005.
And within a matter of weeks, I could see that there was a pattern here of evidence that the Sunni resistance organizations, the, the armed, uh, organizations, uh, fighting the coalition, uh, forces, the, the, uh, the forces of the United States, particularly in Iraq, uh, were turning against Al Qaeda.
They did not share Al Qaeda's extremist, uh, views religiously or in terms of strategy and tactics in the war itself.
And, uh, so I saw this pattern continue to emerge throughout 2005, uh, in which the, the Sunnis were, uh, not only against Al Qaeda, uh, quite openly saying so that they were against Al Qaeda, but approaching the United States offering a deal whereby they would basically bring Zarqawi's head on a stick, uh, in return for the United States basically stopping its war against the Sunni resistance.
And I'm sorry, I have to interrupt right here, just a small parentheses.
Michael Sawyer told me on this show, he was involved in giving George Bush the numerous chances to kill Zarqawi before the invasion when he was safe up in Kurdistan over and over and over.
They begged the military and the CIA begged George Bush.
They were following him.
They knew where he was all day, every day.
They had him marked and George Bush would not let them kill him because one, they needed a fake tie between Bin Laden and Saddam, different story, but trust me.
And two, uh, they were trying to get the French and the Germans on board.
And they thought if they did a strike in Kurdistan, that would seem too cowboy-ish and make it more difficult.
And so, and then as Sawyer said, this guy killed more American soldiers in Iraq than anybody.
Well, that's a wonderful addition to the storyline, definitely.
So, but just to continue that train of thought, you know, what I saw was a genuine offer by the Sunni resistance to really take on Zarqawi, to defeat him decisively, deliver him, not to the United States, because that would have been a violation of their nationalism, but to the Iraqi government, the Shia-dominated government in return for a timetable for withdrawal.
All right, now, uh, hold it right there, Gareth, because we have a lot more to go over here.
We're talking about how everything they have ever said to you about the Iraq war is a damned lie on Anti-War Radio.
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Welcome back to this show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm on Chaos Radio Austin and lrn.fm, also antiwar.com slash radio.
I'm talking with the great Gareth Porter from ipsnews.net and original.antiwar.com slash Porter.
And now, Gareth, you read even more than I do.
I don't know how the heck you do it, man.
But I wonder whether it's really the case, as it seems to me, in your opinion, that unless people either read you, maybe Michael Hastings or Patrick Coburn, or they listen to this show regularly, people just don't know at all why the violence fell in 2007.
They don't know anything about it.
The Civil War.
I'm not claiming to be the only one to draw attention to the weakness of this surge myth.
There are others who have addressed it.
I think one of the things that you may have read elsewhere, for example, from Center for Progress, they've argued that the reason that the Sunnis were willing to cooperate with us was the Democratic win in the congressional election of 2006, and the fact that that sent the message the United States was getting out rather than staying indefinitely.
And that was apparently picked up by, at some point, by one of the key military officers working with the Sunnis in Anbar province.
But that same officer, Sean McFarland, in his own article about this, makes it clear that what was really going on, and this was my next point, so you've led into it very nicely, what was really going on in 2006 was that the Sunnis were scared to death that they were going to be abandoned to the tender mercies of a Shia government and a Shia death squad, because what was happening in that year, of course, was the Shia death squads were eliminating the Sunnis.
Anybody who was suspected of being an activist, either on the political or military side for the Sunnis, was being ruthlessly eliminated by the Shia in Baghdad.
And they basically carried out ethnic cleansing of the capital, turning it from a mixed city, a mixed population, into an overwhelmingly dominant Shia capital city.
In other words, the Sunni insurgency lost the civil war against the American and Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Council and Dawah Party government that we were installing in Baghdad, and they cried, uncle, they said, we have too many enemies.
We're fighting Al-Qaeda, we're fighting the Badr Corps, and the Americans all at the same time.
Something's got to give.
Precisely correct.
In Baghdad, it was primarily the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which was ruthlessly carrying out the elimination of the Sunni activists.
And point of information here, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I have to bring this up.
I just read the Finkel book, Good Soldiers, here.
I interviewed Josh Steber, who worked for Kozlarech in that story, and they're basically driving around in their Humvees, getting blown up in East Baghdad, in a Sadrist part of Baghdad.throughout 2007, and none of these characters in the entire book, including the author, have any idea who they're fighting for.
They're actually fighting in the middle of a civil war, fighting on the side of Muqtada al-Sadr, while they're fighting against him, and patrolling East Baghdad, protecting East Baghdad from itself, from the terrible terrorists, who are, of course, the Mahdi Army guys that they're on the side of, and they're dying over here for a year in a row.
So this is the perfect illustration of the basic reality of the Iraq War, which is the United States had no idea what it was really fighting for, and was essentially continuing to carry out a war that made absolutely no sense whatsoever from any point of view, either in terms of trying to foster reconciliation, foster peace, stability, or the Cold War against Iran.
I mean, you know, none of that was being accomplished.
What about a clean break for Israel, the destruction of what could be, if it wasn't under blockade, most powerful Arab state in the region?
Right, and so that takes me to the second point, which is that the Shia ruthless elimination of the Sunni opposition, and indeed most of the Sunni population in Baghdad, also had the effect, of course, of ending the sectarian violence in the capital, which was, in 2006, if people cast their memory back to particularly the second half of the year, this was why the war in Iraq had basically lost its legitimacy in the United States.
Not just the American public, which had already turned against Iraq earlier, but the political elite itself basically was beginning to think, well, this doesn't make any sense, we can't control the sectarian violence, and they were withdrawing their support, which is why the Bush administration was forced then to make a fundamental decision to double down with Petraeus and the surge.
But the point is that the war had already ended, essentially, by the time Petraeus took over in Baghdad in February 2007.
The victory had already been won by the Shia over the Sunnis, and so basically the violence continued for a few months, but essentially the point had already been made to the Sunnis, and the Shia didn't intend, obviously, to continue this indefinitely.
They had basically made their point.
Well, and Petraeus never followed through with his deal with the Sunnis that, don't worry, I'm going to make sure you're integrated into the Iraqi army and into the government and etc.
He's just left them high and dry, now they're all going back to the suicide bombers.
Well, of course, Petraeus never had the power to make that stick.
I mean, he may have told them that we're going to integrate you into the Iraqi military, but it was really always going to be up to the al-Maliki regime to carry out such a policy, and al-Maliki made it clear from the beginning, and this is very well documented, that he was very wary about this whole policy, and was making no commitment beyond very minimal integration of the sons of Iraq into the security structure of Iraq.
So Petraeus had no ability to promise that sort of integration to the Sunnis.
Yeah, well, you're just mad because we created a great democracy there, and you said it would never work.
Well, so that leaves the third major claim by Petraeus and the defenders of the surge myth, which is that he and his counterinsurgency strategy, with the able assistance, of course, of General McChrystal and his special operations forces units, carried out a ruthless war against the special groups funded, trained, and commanded, essentially, by Iran, organized and commanded by Iran, making it possible to essentially reduce the Shia violence, the militia violence, and thus bring us to this situation of relative calm in Iraq.
Now, the truth is, this is a very complex question, there's so many elements to it, but I always begin with the point that the whole idea of special groups, that term itself, was created by Petraeus' command, in order to carry out a side war, a side war objective, with regard to the Muqtada al-Sadr Mahdi army, which was to try to divide it, to try to bring as many commanders, in particular, of the Mahdi army over to the U.S. side to cooperate with the United States.
And by basically saying that we're going to go after those people who continue the resistance, by calling special groups, that was considered to be a way to do that.
By the way, it was an unqualified failure, because, as far as I know, no units actually volunteered to come over and cooperate with the U.S. side, but that was the purpose of it.
Well, it's important to note, too, that they always, when they differentiated between these fictions, or the one truth and the fiction, the special groups, they always said, yeah, the special groups, the reason they're still at war against us is because they're backed by Iran.
Right, exactly.
That was the myth that was foisted upon the news media, and they lapped it up.
I mean, it was really something that dominated news coverage for many months in the Petraeus era.
I might as well throw in here, we don't have time for you to do a whole comment on this, but I interviewed you over and over again, through 2007 and 2008 even, and Phil Giraldi and many other people have done work on this, eight ways from Sunday, about the propaganda that the only reason that the IEDs evolved into the more effective EFPs, with a molten copper core, was because those were all coming from Iran, and that was completely debunked over and over and over again.
Those bombs were being made in Iraq, by Iraqis, they never provided a shred of evidence that those bombs were coming from Iran.
Just Google EFP and Gareth Porter and you can read all about it.
But anyway, back to your article and your next point, sir.
Sure, sure.
Several other points can be made about this, but I don't know how much time we have.
Plenty.
The key point that I would make about the EFPs is that this is a technology that...
The Iranians did not specialize in it, it was Hezbollah.
Hezbollah was the one that really were the specialists in making and using EFPs.
They were the ones who taught the Mahdi army how to do it, they were the ones who trained them in making them as well as how to use them.
The Iranians provided financial support, no question about that, to the Mahdi army.
But let's face it, any weapon system that you want to buy can be purchased in Iraq, on the border between Iran and Iraq.
There are huge arms bazaars that have everything you want, and obviously complex networks to buy this stuff.
I mean, all the evidence points to that being the modus operandi of all the insurgent groups in Iraq.
Well now, on the Muqtada al-Sadr Iran thing, I think this is so important it can't be overstated.
This was the one Shiite leader with real grassroots support, and he was not a traitor.
Like the Supreme Islamic Council fled to Iran when Saddam invaded Iran, they took Iran's side.
And Sadr was a nationalist, he routinely denounced Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's plan, Biden's plan, to divide the country, and the only reason he's in Tehran now is because the Americans drove him to Tehran.
Right, and I think the point that needs to be understood alongside that, to really sort of unravel the entire mythical structure of the Iraq war, is the fact that the al-Maliki government...
First of all, two points about the al-Maliki government.
First of all, al-Maliki was chosen in a secret meeting of the Shia leadership, of all the Shia factions, that is, Dawah, Iskhi, or Sirri, and the Sadrists.
And it was presided over by none other than General Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, which deals with Iraq.
He was the day-to-day officer in charge of Iraq policy for Iran.
So he was snuck into the green zone, without the knowledge of the United States, by the Shia leadership, and presided over a meeting, which then, in April of 2006, chose al-Maliki to be the next prime minister of Iraq.
And he immediately, of course, began what had already been started under his predecessor, al-Jafari, to collaborate very closely with Iranians on a whole series of matters, including, not the least of which, was a plan to get the United States to agree to a timetable for withdrawal.
Now, the second point that I want to make about the al-Maliki government is that it was a coalition involving all three Shia groups.
It was the Sadrists, the Siri folks, and Dawah.
And the Mahdi army was extremely important to al-Maliki and the Shia during 2006, precisely because of the Battle of Baghdad that was going on.
They depended on the Mahdi army to carry out the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad, and to bring about the victory over the Sunnis.
That was terribly important.
Everybody agreed upon it.
Iran agreed upon it.
All three Shia factions agreed upon it.
And so they had no problem with Iran's support for the Sadrists during that period.
They were all for it.
It was all part of the deal.
And then, when the Sunnis were obviously defeated, all of the old vindictiveness among the Shia factions, particularly between the Sadrists and al-Hakim's Siri, came back to the fore, and that's when the other two Shia factions, the Dawah party and the Siri, turned violently against the Sadrists and basically cooperated with the United States in trying to suppress the Sadrists' forces.
And that's, of course, where you get Petraeus claiming this huge victory.
What he doesn't talk about is the fact that before that, of course, they were all on the same side, the Iranians, the Americans, all the Shia factions were on the same side fighting the Sunnis.
And again, they were on the same side except for the Sadrists in 2007.
Everybody, the Iranians and the other two factions, were against the Sadrists, along with the United States.
And the United States and al-Maliki government were both publicly welcoming the Iranian help in basically putting pressure on the Sadrists to declare a unilateral ceasefire to Sadr itself.
So, long story short, what you're saying is America lost the Iraq war, they installed a bunch of goons who don't need them, they'll just enslave the people of Iraq themselves without our help, and now they're kicking our asses out, and a million people, Garrett, died for nothing.
Is that what you're telling me?
For nothing at all?
We don't even get to steal the country and keep it?
That's exactly what I'm telling you.
And see, this is the thing that's really got the chip on my shoulder this week is, I'm sure you saw or heard the Fox poll where the American people, by 60-something percent, say congratulations to us for killing Iraq.
And you know, the thing is, I grew up here in Korea, referred to as the Forgotten War or whatever, and I see how desperately people just want to pretend the Iraq war never happened, or that it was just all George Bush's fault or something.
But you know, that book Collateral Damage by Chris Hedges about American soldiers going around Iraq and just waxing families off the face of the earth on a daily basis, committing atrocities that they can't stand.
They kill themselves over the memories of the atrocities that they committed there.
But our whole country gets to just pretend this never happened, gets to pretend that maybe as many as 100,000 people died, and the most horrible thing to happen to that piece of earth since Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde came and buried their irrigation and salted their fields.
I mean, no, that ain't fair, man.
It ain't right, goddammit.
This is a sign of a very sick society, obviously, and there's no way that the United States as a nation, as a society, is not going to pay very, very heavily, not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of its very social fabric and its goal.
I mean, there's no question about that.
Yeah, you look into the abyss, it looks into you.
I always think of the Thomas Jefferson quote.
He's talking about, I guess, the Missouri Compromise, I think, and he says, It was like a fire bell in the night, and I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and His justice cannot sleep forever.
One of the great quotes of all time, no question about it, about the United States.
All right, well, man, thank you again, Gareth.
I rely on you so much, and for obvious good reason.
Well, thank you for your support for all the work that I've done, and my only concern with you, Scott, is that I'm afraid that you're not really telling us how you really feel about this.
Well, I'm working on trying to become a little bit more honest, you know?
Well, I think you've probably conquered that problem if you ever had it.
Thank you very much, Scott.
All right, bye-bye.
That, everybody, was Gareth the Great.
You can find him at ipsnews.net and at original.antiwar.com.