Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax 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, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Okay, guys, check it out on the line.
I got Dan McAdams.
He runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
That's at RonPaulInstitute.org.
And he's also the co-host four days a week of the Liberty Report with Ron Paul.
They're a great TV show that runs on YouTube every day and at RonPaulLibertyReport.com.
Welcome back to the show.
How's it going, Dan?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me back.
Hey, I'm happy to have you here.
You had a great episode.
I don't know if this was this morning's episode or yesterday's episode about the deal with the Turks.
The American jets and the Russian missiles.
Can you tell the people what we're talking about here?
Yeah, that show ran today, which is actually Wednesday.
And it's a fascinating story because the president's in a pickle.
The Turks wanted to buy Patriot missiles under Obama, but they wanted to deal where they get the technology transfer.
And Obama said no.
Patriot missiles.
These are, I guess, for anti-mid-range ballistic missiles, right?
Not for anti-nukes.
Yeah, this is our version of the S-300, S-400s that the Russians sell.
Okay, so they're for anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missiles.
Yeah, exactly.
And so basically, Erdogan is a pretty independent thinker.
I mean, it's not easily pushed around.
Certainly, there's a lot of bad things that can be said about him.
But it's interesting that he doesn't really seem afraid to stand up to the empire.
And so he just went shopping elsewhere, and he ended up making a deal with Russia to buy their S-400s.
And basically, you can't do that.
I mean, Turkey is a major NATO ally.
It has the second largest army in NATO after the U.S.
And they're also making F-35s over there.
And they're supposed to buy 100 F-35s.
Well, the S-400 that the Turks bought instead of the Patriot is designed to shoot down F-35s.
So you'd have Turkey owning the airplane and the missile to shoot down the airplane together.
Well, and I guess they'd have Russian engineers helping them to run the missiles.
So they could just train on that F-35 all day if they wanted to.
Exactly.
And that's the whole thing.
So it really is – this is the product of Washington's foreign policy.
And on so many levels, Scott, on the one hand, it really lays bare the military-industrial complex and the fact that it has nothing to do with protecting this country.
It's all about bribes and jobs and big finance.
Turkey is over there building the landing gear for the F-35s.
So they spread it out not only across all 50 states but to foreign countries as well.
And maybe that's why the thing is a piece of junk.
Everyone's got something on it.
But the other part of that is, OK, you can't have both of those.
The geniuses in Washington were just convinced that Erdogan was bluffing.
He's going to back down.
He's going to back down.
No, he didn't back down.
So now they don't know what to do.
They're scrambling.
It's a real mess.
On top of that, you have the CAATSA sanctions bill that passed in 2017 in the height of the Russia hysteria.
Oh, the Russians, they stole our elections.
We've got to pass this bill.
Any country who does any business with the Russian defense sector automatically has these sanctions.
There's no waivers for Turkey.
President Trump, you have no choice.
You've got – here's the menu of 18 sanctions.
You've got to pick five of them.
And so this is a real impasse.
And it really is testing not only the NATO alliance.
It's testing the sort of shifting alliances in the Middle East.
A lot of it goes back to Obama's boneheaded Middle East policy.
But this – it's not as high on the radar screen as I would expect actually.
It doesn't sound like anybody is saying, well, we can't sell them the F-35s then.
Well, the incoming secretary of defense said that today or yesterday.
Oh, OK.
In his confirmation hearing.
And the president, President Trump, said I think earlier today, gosh, this really sucks because now we can't send them our planes.
That means jobs.
Right.
Yeah.
That was the quote I saw was, well, that's not fair.
No way.
We're not giving in to that essentially.
We're going to keep selling them the jets anyway.
But it's impossible.
It can't happen.
And the secretary of defense has said it.
Certainly the military, the intelligence community.
I mean it doesn't matter what you and I think, Scott, because you and I are – I mean our views are completely different.
But within that construct, within that – it's an impossibility.
They can't have both.
So the – as I said on the show, they've already started taking delivery of the parts for the F-400s, right?
And this is not like Amazon.
You can't just package it up and send it back.
Just kidding, Putin.
I hope you don't mind a refund.
Well, so we've got to assume then that Erdogan knows that that's the deal too, that he can't get the F-35 now.
Yeah.
I mean talk about a mixed blessing.
I mean if you look at the record of the F-35, he's probably thinking, wow, dodged a bullet there.
But they're also ticked off because they've already – according to Erdogan himself, they've put in $1.5 billion into the development of these F-35s.
And basically he's threatening, if I don't get my planes, I'm going to sue you guys because I've already invested.
I've already been part of it.
And he wants the planes.
And the other crazy part of it is that they will technically own some of these planes but they can't be delivered onto Turkish soil.
So there's going to be some F-35s in the hangar somewhere here in the US that are owned by Turkey.
I just don't know how well that's going to go over in Ankara.
I'm not sure why anybody wants the F-35.
That's probably – Erdogan is probably saying, wow, I dodged that one.
Yeah, seriously.
But the people in Congress are like, yeah, go get them.
Those jerks, don't they realize they should be begging us?
But what they don't understand, they believe the rhetoric.
As you know, Washington is a bubble.
There's no original thinking going on there.
They don't realize that this thing can ratchet up a lot more than it is right now.
You talk about Incirlik.
What if it escalates?
And the Turks say, OK, well, if that's how it's going to be, you guys got to get out.
Here's your 30-day notice.
Get out of Incirlik.
What's the US going to do then?
They need – Turkey is an important strategic ally if you view the world the way they do.
It's not the way we view the world.
It's a different story.
But I'm saying looking through their eyes, if they lose Turkey, what are they going to do?
I mean some neocons have said, yeah, forget it.
We'll just move our base to Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan.
As if Baghdad is going to say, oh, that sounds great.
It's just not an easy fix.
So you like supporting anti-war radio hosts.
That makes sense.
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And thanks.
Well, and as you were explaining or saying on the show with Ron there, the fact that we're even talking about this at all just goes to show that we don't need NATO at all, much less need Turkey in NATO.
Every NATO ally says that they can get along with Russia just fine, and that's the whole purpose of NATO is supposedly a defensive measure against Russian encroachment, which is just funny to even say.
But anyway, if that's the pretense, then the pretense is up pretty much it seems like at this point.
The jig is up, exactly.
And ironically, it was interventionism that laid this bare.
It was Obama's interventionism into Syria which exposed this whole thing, which drove Turkey with a few blips in the road, but drove Turkey into making deals with Russia, into understanding that it's important to get along with Russia.
And that's what shift the whole paradigm.
Plus the Kurdish issue because all of our al-Qaeda and ISIS guys are being blown up.
So all we have left are the Kurds as our proxies, and Erdogan is chomping at the bit to get rid of them.
So it is interventionism that has killed interventionism.
Yeah, and the Americans, they don't really need the YPG for anything anymore at this point, do they?
No, I mean- I mean the future of Eastern Syrian oil, for example, is more dependent on our relationship with Assad than with the Kurds.
Ultimately, but you know how it is with the inertia over this policy.
I mean it's incredible.
The president's hand seems so tied that I saw a great— interesting, I know you may have seen this, Scott, but on Twitter over the weekend, apparently Senator Paul, Senator Graham, and the president were golfing together, which would have been really something.
But Graham tweeted this thing like, well, I told the president how important it is to keep our troops in the Middle East and everything.
And then Senator Paul trolled him like a master.
He retweeted with a comment saying, yes, Senator Graham, but actually the president and I were sitting here, basically sitting here making fun of you for saying we need to stay there, and we both agreed that we need to get out.
So it's an interesting thing if the president does want to get out.
It seems like his hands are tied, you know, really by his own doing.
Well, this story just came out today, too, in Politico, at that same golf game, apparently, to be Trump's special envoy to Iran, which— Yeah, I just read the piece, yeah.
You know, I'm trying to confirm if that's true, but if so, I mean that could be huge.
Yeah, it's a pretty—don't you think that was kind of a snarky piece?
It struck me as a hit piece.
Yeah, maybe, but that didn't necessarily mean that the core of it was wrong, that Rand had actually said, hey, let me talk to Zarif for you.
Yeah, yeah, no, no, absolutely not.
But I don't know.
Like I say, I am trying to actually get confirmation of whether it's even true.
Yeah, I mean it's just the snotty tone of it.
It's almost like they're trying to blow it up before it happens.
I wouldn't be surprised if Lindsey, you know, ran off to leak to his guys.
Oh, yeah, could be.
But, you know, for them to complain, like, oh, this jeopardizes our policy of maximum pressure.
Yeah, well, good.
I mean, seriously, if you have a policy, as you keep saying, hey, from their point of view, from their own interests' point of view here, you have a policy of maximum pressure, there has to be an exit, or else what's the point?
Unless you're just trying to manufacture a pretext for war, you have to give the Ayatollah a way to agree and say face, or else you're guaranteeing a conflict here.
So, it would seem like even if you accept the premise of the maximum pressure campaign, sending Rand to say, hey, the boss told me to come and bring you an offer here, would seem to fit with that, and with the good cop part of it, right?
So, good.
Except it exposes what they really want, which is war.
Yeah, that's the whole thing of it.
If this will let off the pressure cooker, then that destroys their plans.
In fact, that was what Jason Ditz, who I'm about to talk to in a few minutes actually, had pointed this out about a Mike Pompeo statement the other day when the president of Iran, Rouhani, said, listen, for a little bit of sanctions relief, we'll agree to sit and talk with you.
And Pompeo rejected that, but his reasoning was, we saw what happened the last time we got the JCPOA deal out of it, and so we don't want that.
This might work.
Yeah, we see talks could lead to deals, and we don't want any deals.
He couldn't be more clear.
Yeah.
Who was it that said that God sent Pompeo?
Pompeo said that God sent Trump to do something in the Middle East.
I mean, you're dealing with some strange ideologies, let's be honest about it.
Pompeo doesn't strike me as the most adept person to handle our foreign policy at this point.
I think he's driven by some personal ideologies that are not really dealing with America's interests.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I was actually talking to Mark Perry earlier, and he's like, well, this is the top of his class at West Point, so even though he's kind of beating the drum or thumping the Bible on some of these more Kansas born-again ideas, he's also a serious thinker in a way, so got to bet on that.
The more he talks about how this is all part of the plan to make Jesus come back sooner and stuff, to have somebody like that actually, not just in the House of Representatives like Tom DeLay or something, but as the actual Secretary of State, that's pretty bad.
It is bad, and there are a lot of sincere people who hold religious views, and I'm not out to criticize them, but I remember when Dr. Paul had a meeting in the office with one of these groups that felt that way, when they were saying, we've got to help this stuff happen, and Ron said, I believe in a God and a Jesus that is all-powerful.
He doesn't really need our help if he wants to do some of this stuff.
Yeah, seriously.
Yeah, I was going to end the world, but I'm just kind of lazy.
I can't get it together.
Yeah, seriously, you could take a just-as-pious view that, hey, God's plan is God's plan.
Who am I to intervene with that and just turn the whole thing around, of course?
Who am I to say I'm acting it out?
I don't know.
In the meantime, deal with the commandments, especially the ones, don't lie, cheat, or steal.
Yeah, seriously.
That would put the whole thing out of business, right?
That was the Pompeo quote, right?
Yeah, we go lie, cheating, and stealing over at the CIA.
We take classes in it.
Teach classes.
By the way, so you brought up Syria and Turkey and Russia and all of these things here, and so I wanted to ask you about what your understanding is about the latest from the Idlib province, which is the last little readout, I guess, not of ISIS, but of al-Qaeda's stand there.
They have, I guess, what, a couple of counties' worth of territory there in northwest Syria.
I don't know how much territory exactly in the provinces.
Yeah.
But there was sort of a pseudo ceasefire from the end of last year, and there's also, though, been recent assaults by the Syrian government with Russian backing, but then also I had heard that one of the militias, they say the less al-Qaeda, more Turkish-backed one, backed by Turkey, had fought the Syrian government to a standstill, and so everything remains the same, which also raises all the questions about Erdogan's relationship with Putin and what Putin is willing to do or not do for Assad and or to tell Erdogan to stay the hell out of the way of Assad if he really means to finish the war there or what.
It is confusing.
There's no question about it.
The deal broke down because the Turks were supposed to be putting in a buffer zone around Idlib, and it wasn't working.
The terrorists were shelling villages outside of Idlib and killing a lot of people, and it was also inevitable.
Obviously, it was not a sustainable thing to have a big group of terrorists in the middle of your country, so the whole thing was a mess, and it did start.
The thing that I've noticed, and maybe I'm off.
One thing I noticed, it looks like a horribly hard slog, and that's understandable because it's their last stand.
But we heard some whispers at the beginning from the usual suspects about, oh my gosh, how terrible it is, how dare Assad kill these wonderful people.
But it hasn't really ramped up to the level that I thought it would, like we saw in places like Aleppo and Ghouta and elsewhere when they were liberating from terrorist control.
So I just wonder, maybe the neocons are so busy with all their other projects.
I don't know.
Hang on just one second.
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I'm trying to remember the last time I talked to Patrick Coburn, what was the estimate of how many tens of thousands of these fighters are still there.
It seems like the Syrian government needs a plan to repatriate these guys somehow and do something short of launch some massive attack, but I don't know.
If they're not being pressured that hard from the north to figure out a way to reintegrate to the south, I guess that's not going to happen.
Yeah.
Well, as you know, Scott, better than anyone, a lot of these guys are not Syrian.
Most of them aren't.
The countries where they came from are not too keen on having them back, I would guess.
This is where you've got to pay the bill.
The U.S. and all of its allies turned a blind eye when all these loons, all these crazed jihadists came in, and now they're going to have to find some way to deal with this.
Well, and you told them so, and I remember because you told them so on this show back years ago.
We talked about this at the time, 2011, 2012, 2013.
Well, let's see.
If the guys that knocked the towers down are the consequences of our intervention on behalf of these kooks in the 1980s, and the wars in Libya and Syria themselves are the result of the guys that really rose up to resist us in Iraq War II in the 2000s, then what's going to happen when we go back to supporting these guys in Syria for five and six and seven years in a row here, and including, as you're saying, people coming from all over the world, including from Europe in a way that they just didn't during Iraq War II.
But during the war in Syria, they came from Europe, and including the United States too, but especially from Europe by the thousands and thousands, a whole new generation of fighters.
Well, what the hell is going to happen to them now?
In fact, I saw a thing, Voice of America or one of these things, I guess, government news, claiming that, oh, you know what they're doing?
They're fleeing the Idlib province.
They're headed to Libya, which, as we know, because of the Libyan War of 2011, is a wide-open civil war, ungoverned space for guys just like this.
Yeah, it's perfect.
Perfect to ply their trade.
So it's, you know, it's just another example of a foreign policy gone mad.
And you have this past week, you had House Republican leadership saying to the Democrats, how dare you repeal the 2002 authorization to attack Iraq?
There's still ISIS in Iraq.
We've got to stay there.
Well, how'd they get there?
It's like the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone.
You do something that causes this massive problem, then you have to do something more because you've created a massive problem.
And even then, they're already invoking the AUMF from 2001.
The one from 2002 against Saddam Hussein's regime is completely superfluous and irrelevant right now.
I mean, I think the Obama government invoked it to launch Iraq War III, but at the same time, they didn't really need to because they already just pretend, as Senator Paul has pointed out, this language is actually not in the resolution anywhere, but they just pretend that it applies to, quote, associated forces.
And so, therefore, that means any Sunni with a rifle anywhere, and it might mean Iran and all their friends for that matter, if you ask Mike Pompeo.
Exactly.
So, yeah, for anybody to start squealing about repealing the authorization to attack the Ba'athist regime that no longer exists just goes to show actually how uninterested they are and what the hell's going on there overall anyway, that they don't even realize it is completely besides the point right now.
Yeah, exactly.
And I actually went back and reread the resolution.
I hadn't done it in a long time.
It was like PTSD taking over because you look at this.
It was such a shoddy piece of work.
I mean, I encourage everyone, talk about an exercise in the falsification of history.
It's just an incredible piece of work to go back and look at all the things that were claimed, and they knew when they wrote it that these things were lies.
It's just unbelievable.
But the idea that they're desperately clinging to this and to the 01, which you point out, the only time when they don't worry so much about associated forces is when we're actually arming and training them in Syria.
Right.
Yeah, and those are ones who are actual blood oaths sworn to Ayman al-Zawahiri, not just a Sunni with a rifle somewhere, but this guy al-Jilani is literally more than Zawahiri's employee.
He's a sworn servant in their order, for God's sake.
Anyway, here's some things.
Well, first of all, I want to ask you about Trump again renouncing regime change in Iran.
We know he doesn't want a war with Iran.
And of course, Dunford and the rest of the generals are saying, hey, look, a real war in terms of invasion, regime change, or a full scale air war that we think could even lead to the fall of the regime or something like that would be such a huge undertaking.
No way.
And we know he doesn't want that.
And yet, though, he's let Pompeo and Bolton and everybody put him in.
And he himself has gone along with this whole thing.
Don't let me leave out Netanyahu and Adelson.
They've set this thing up where his demands are completely ridiculous.
He could have just said, you know what?
Let's negotiate further on this very bad deal and see if we can add missiles to it or something like that.
But instead, he pulled out of the deal, went to this full maximum pressure campaign, and then had Pompeo give that speech at Heritage with the 15 things that they have to do in their unconditional surrender to us before we'll even negotiate anything with them and all of this.
And so, but, you know, and I can tell, though, so I'm going somewhere with this.
I saw him when Trump was talking with Chuck Todd a couple of weeks ago, and he started listing all the things that are wrong with the deal.
He has no idea what he's talking about.
He's probably doing a pretty good job of repeating what Bolton told him, but he's just completely wrong about what it says and what it doesn't say and what it amounts to or not.
It just seems like a pretty, even with Rand Paul as the special advisor or whatever, it seems like such a tall mountain for him to climb down from.
And at the end of the day, he's not going to get anything more than was already in the JCPOA in the first place.
And this is the folly of him listening to the neocons in the first place because there is no way out for him.
If he comes back with some kind of a deal, say Rand is able to put something together that is, quote, saving face, he's going to get ripped to pieces by the Dems, all the candidates for sure, because he looks foolish.
And it's like the myth of expertise among Washington's foreign policy elite, the myth that they're actually experts when they're total top-grade bunglers.
They're horrible.
They're stupid.
And he listened to them.
He believed that they were experts.
All these think tank denizens, and it's got to be a mess for him.
So I don't see any way out for him, even if he comes back with something.
Anything that looks like a climb down is going to be brutally, brutally attacked by anyone, hopefully with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard.
Other than that, forget it.
You know, the Republicans are going to be all gung-ho about him backing down?
No.
I mean, so he's in a box.
There's no way out of it.
Yeah.
Well, it just goes to show, though, his lack of vision because the whole thing is that, well, and especially with the likes of Rand Paul and people like that around him, that he could just dismiss the hawks.
And, you know, as they say, at some point here, after being pushed around for so long by his different cabinet people, that there have been times where he realized, quote-unquote, that actually he's the president, not them, and he can do what he wants.
And really running as a Republican who ended a few wars in the run-up to the campaign of 2020, and forcing the Democrats, I mean, you can't even call it judo, it's checkers, to force the Democrats to attack him from the national security right as being, you know, selling us out for making peace with Korea and Iran and whoever.
That ought to be, you know, his perfect scheme against them.
That ought to be, you know, he ought to be cackling and, you know, steepling his fingers like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons, going, this is perfect.
You know, I'm going to end a few wars enough that I'll beat Trump the great by 2020, and then let Elizabeth Warren, you know, put on her general's uniform and march up and down and tell us about how we're selling out by making a deal with the Ayatollah.
You know, and rallying, what, with disloyal Republicans in the Senate who are backstabbing the president in an election year?
They're not going to, you know, I think they would be very restrained.
He's the leader of their party and of the state itself and all of that.
If Nixon can do it with Mao Zedong, it seems like Trump could do it with anybody.
And the numbers are on his side if you look at polling on Iran.
No, I think you make a great point, Scott, because I think that is a way out.
Basically, go big, you know, or to quote the neocons, a clean break.
I mean, if he were to do something dramatic like this, you know, I realize that, you know, I'm going to have to change course.
Something really big and bold.
You're right.
I mean, that is a hell of a point that you're making.
I think that's the way he could do it.
I'm afraid that he doesn't have it in him.
And he may not feel that he has the backbench to draw from.
He may feel if I get rid of these guys, who am I going to get?
What kind of experts am I going to get?
And sadly enough, a lot of neocons, you know, they like to parade around as pro-Trump, but they do have a different agenda.
Well, the thing is, it's certainly the case that we don't have a very deep bench of guys who really have the credentials to take those spots.
But we have one good national security cabinet worth, right?
Webb for defense, Paul for secretary of state, McGregor at national security advisor.
Doug Bondo is how you pronounce it properly.
Doug Bondo for deputy national security advisor and, you know, Ted Carpenter and a couple of those other guys to fill out those spots.
Paul Pillar at director of national intelligence or director of CIA.
You know, just a couple of guys from the skeptics blog over there at thenationalinterest.com.
And Zalmay Khalilzad, the permanent ambassador to Afghanistan.
He seems to be doing a pretty good job.
Yeah, I mean, there's a sign to the neocons.
Yeah, there are good people and they could be tapped, you know, I think.
And, you know, from our perspective as non-interventionists, they're not perfect, but they'd be a heck of a lot better than what we have right now.
No question about it.
But, you know, it wouldn't be easy.
But, yeah, I think you're right.
There are people.
You and I could probably sit down in 10 minutes and think of 20 more.
You know, the mid-level cadres are the most important.
If you know 20 more, then we need to talk some more off the air about that.
Because I could not come up with 20 more.
I mean, these top guys, they get a lot of attention.
But you want to have Deputy Assistant Secretaries of State.
Yeah, absolutely.
Who are on board with you.
Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy.
Doug Fyth's chair.
That's an important one.
I learned that one the hard way.
Somebody that nobody knows anything about.
Look at Victoria Nuland.
Look what power she actually had.
Nobody really knew who she was outside of Washington.
And I won't say the name because it's someone that I know.
And it's actually a guy that helped me once.
But there is a holdover in the State Department.
And he's at the Deputy Assistant Secretary level.
And this guy is a holdout.
He's bad news.
And it's just shocking to see people like that still dominating our policy.
So you've got to look at the second and third tier cadres.
You've got to put people like that in.
And the neocons know this.
They're great at this.
They are so good.
They have such a deep bench of these people because they just languish in think tanks for years on end.
And it's like one of those bugs that go underground for 17 cicadas.
They're like cicadas.
And then they come out.
They certainly never quit.
That's for sure.
All right.
Well, listen, I'll let you go.
But thanks so much for your time again, Dan.
It's great to talk to you, man.
Thanks so much, Scott.
All right, you guys.
That's the great Dan McAdams.
He runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
That's at RonPaulInstitute.org.
And four days a week, he hosts the Liberty Report with Ron Paul.
And Ron does a show on Friday, too, five days a week.
That's Chris Rossini on money.
You'll have to enjoy that.
It's all at RonPaulLibertyReport.com.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Thanks, Dan.
