All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast fee.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
Okay guys, on the line is Dave DeCamp, he's our News Assistant, News Editor at antiwar.com, news.antiwar.com, and also writes original opinion columns too, of course.
But anyways, he's been doing a great job on this show and in writing at antiwar.com, keeping up with all the latest developments in the now almost year old story, which has continued to develop all along, about the whistleblowers from the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, and the whistleblowers on the story of the Douma attack in Syria in April of 2018.
And it's been huge, and there's been a lot of developments, and the latest is a story in the gray zone by our friend Aaron Maté, who was unfortunately unable to do the show today.
But since Dave has been doing such a good job of keeping up with it, I thought it'd be alright to bring him on to talk about Aaron's new scoop.
I'm sure he won't mind, since he couldn't do it.
But I did ask.
So welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Dave?
Good, Scott.
Thanks for having me back.
Alright, so this is huge.
Now, there's a lot of other huge things going on in the world, so sometimes compared to what can lead to questions about why it matters, but you know what, this is a really big deal.
And this new development in this story is itself a really big deal.
I think a brand new whistleblower has joined the chorus now of OPCW and former OPCW officials who are slamming the interim and the final report and the actions of the OPCW bosses on the subject of Douma.
So what is the latest, sir?
So the latest, this is the fourth whistleblower by the count here.
And the first two were inspectors that actually went to Douma to take part in the investigation, whose findings were ignored by the OPCW.
The third whistleblower was in another email obtained by Aaron Matztei, who was a former OPCW, apparently a high official of former OPCW management, who said a similar thing, that he wants to speak, that they want to speak out about the investigation and what is going on here, but they fear for their life.
And this fourth whistleblower, Aaron obtained the letter and confirmed their identity.
They're a current OPCW employee and kind of just sent a general letter just expressing their disgust with how the OPCW has treated the inspectors that have been speaking out about this investigation.
And same thing, fears for their life and if they speak out about this.
It seems dramatic, but there's a story that we've discussed before where Jose Bustani, the first OPCW director, he's a Brazilian diplomat.
He was threatened by John Bolton during the run up to the Iraq War.
Now it's not exactly 2002 or 2003 right now, but the United States attacked Syria over this attack.
They sent a bunch of bombs, the largest direct Western military intervention, because we've certainly been involved in the war, but this was a direct attack on Syrian government by the US, UK, and France.
So there's a lot riding on this OPCW investigation.
And yeah, just quickly go over it.
This fourth whistleblower, they say, as an employee of the OPCW, I was horrified and simultaneously unsurprised by recent events in the organization.
And they say the threat of personal harm is not an illusion or else many others would have spoken out by now.
And Ian Henderson, who is the only whistleblower whose name we know, he was on the first leak in May 2019, the author of the unreleased engineering report that concluded the two cylinders that were found in Douma were more likely manually placed than dropped from an aircraft.
He said over and over in leaked emails, statements that all the, everybody that went to Douma, just about, the inspectors are disturbed by this and want to speak out.
But apparently there's a real threat of personal harm.
So yeah, it's pretty, it is a huge story.
And if these guys feel this threatened, then it really shows what the propaganda can do, man.
Yeah.
Well, it makes you wonder how hard the bosses were pushed to get the story wrong in the first place.
That, listen, we need you to blame Assad for this and you're going to make sure that's how it comes out.
Somebody got to him, clearly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So now I guess none of these, have they been specific that somebody said, you know, yeah, there was a, a letter marked letter bomb in my mail or, you know, any kind of threat?
No, there's nothing specific, but yeah, I think it seems like this person, just this OPCW employee, they just wanted to get it out there.
And they, you know, Aaron has been writing about this issue a lot.
So he seems like the guy that they want to go to.
And you know, Peter, Peter Hitchens also published a detailed response from the two inspectors Ian Henderson and the other one known as Inspector B in his blog in the mail on Sunday.
I went over it in a piece that was published at Anywhere.com, just a few highlights.
And you know, you read their accounts and letters that they sent to the director general, the OPCW, and there's just really, there's no denying that a coverup happened.
I think the example that I used that I think is a good example was WikiLeaks in December of last year released leaked minutes from a meeting between OPCW inspectors and toxicologists took place in June, 2018.
And the, what they said was the key takeaway was that, so these toxicologists, they looked at pictures and videos of the alleged victims of the attack.
And there was about 40 people found dead where one of the cylinders was found.
And these toxicologists concluded that the signs and symptoms, they were not consistent with the chlorine gas.
And they offered two possibilities that it was either another chemical and they're not sure or it was what they called an exercise in propaganda.
So the key takeaway for the OPCW employees that went there was that according to these toxicologists, it wasn't chlorine.
Now the OPCW final report, the one that didn't include these guys' signs, it said in its annex that they had consulted with toxicologists in September and October of 2019, but there was no details given from those meetings.
And so it ignored that June, 2018 toxicologist meeting.
And in the final report, it said that the signs and symptoms of the victims, it didn't link it with chlorine.
It just said they're not able to identify what chemical it was.
But that final report concludes that there was likely a chemical attack and the chemical was likely chlorine.
So it leads the reader to believe that there were victims of a chlorine gas attack.
Yeah, it's just an example of one of the things that was ignored by that.
Okay, so I was watching the Jake Tapper special on CNN on this subject, but then I woke up because that was just a dream that never happened.
This has been completely blacked out of American news.
There's been nothing in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
I haven't seen a thing.
And I read, I have to read all three of those every day, right?
I haven't seen a thing about it.
I haven't seen a thing either.
Not a thing.
And that's a problem.
It's just amazing.
There's no pressure.
It's amazing.
It's like the disappearance of Tulsi Gabbard.
It's like when they talk about that Mandela effect thing, where everybody gets confused about the same thing at once.
Because you know what it was?
It was Superman 2 was the reason everybody thought the Soviets had gone to the moon, because that's how Superman 2 begins.
And so people kind of mix that up, I think.
But that's what it is.
It's this crazy alternative world where the things that happen, there's just a total unreality to it.
You know this?
Oh, whistleblowers from the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, who did the inspection at the scene of the alleged attack that became the basis for a war.
Whistleblower number four now.
Still not newsworthy, huh?
If only they were implicating Assad, they'd be on the front page of the New York Times right now.
Yeah.
You mentioned Tulsi Gabbard.
She's a good example of how effective this propaganda campaign has been.
She's like, I think, the only US politician who has—apparently she sent letters to the OPCW about this.
You see there?
Dave just solved the riddle of why we're not allowed to know she even exists.
Because rather than let her argue about why that was the right thing to do, they decided it would be better to just make sure you don't get to hear from her at all.
Exactly.
During one of the debates, she kind of went after Kamala Harris.
I remember afterwards, I think it was—I want to actually say it was Jake Tapper, one of those CNN people, asking Kamala Harris, oh, what did Tulsi Gabbard say to you, which she said about her record as a prosecutor putting people in jail for weed.
And Kamala Harris says, oh, it's hard to take anything seriously that an Assad apologist says, or something like that.
That's one of the biggest smears against Tulsi Gabbard is that she's an Assad apologist.
And yeah, it just goes to show what that term has been used against her, and it's effectively silenced her because people believe it.
And then I point out in my piece that, you know, they call this Russian disinformation, this whole scandal.
But which government in the region has a history of waging war based on lies about chemical weapons and specific—and WMDs, and, you know?
Well, and of course, at the time, yeah, why are you a Saddam Hussein apologist if you're telling the truth that we know he doesn't have these weapons?
You know, Ray McGovern said after the Dick Cheney VFW speech in August of 2002, the veterans for—veteran intelligence professionals for sanity put out a thing then saying, where'd they get these weapons?
Manna from heaven?
Some of us have been watching this story develop all through the 1990s.
We know exactly what he doesn't have.
And then what turned out to be the reality?
The reality was, first of all, that the Bush administration knew good and well that they had nothing.
They had Najib Sabri and Bush and these guys at the very highest levels of Hussein's government telling them, you know, completely turned coat and telling them the truth about it.
And we also know from the FBI interrogation and all of the investigation by the feds of Saddam Hussein's government after the overthrow that he wasn't even paying attention.
He was writing a romance novel.
So how come—but, you know, you're a Saddam Hussein apologist if you deny that he's gearing up to attack the United States of America, using al-Qaeda as the least deniable front group in world history.
You know, you're a bad, bad person if you don't believe this set of completely ridiculous lies.
And same thing with Assad, too.
He didn't do the gas attack.
That's why telling the truth about the gas attack is not necessarily a defense of him at all, only of the truth.
No, I don't even say his name in my latest article, I don't think.
Yeah, and right now the situation in Idlib, Turkey is fighting Syria on behalf of al-Qaeda linked groups.
Yeah, there you go again, Dave.
How come you're such an apologist for these guys who are—wait, reads notes, double checks.
Did you just say they're fighting against al-Qaeda there?
That's who I'm mad at, huh?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I believe any state engaged in a war, whether it's Syria retaking Idlib from al-Qaeda, they have to take every effort to limit civilian casualties.
But by us not even acknowledging that they're fighting al-Qaeda, it kind of gives them like that propaganda victory that we're fighting the terrorists, the people that attacked you on 9-11.
So, you know, if we actually were honest about the situation, you know, we should try to broker a ceasefire and not support Turkey and a NATO ally who might be in a direct confrontation with Russia over this.
It's really crazy, and especially now— No, listen, that's a really important point, that we don't have to sit here and cheer for Assad and Russia bombing these guys.
All we have to do is be realistic about it.
We could have been leaning on our buddies the Turks to not back them this whole time and solve the problem that way entirely, without even, you know, without precipitating this crisis that the Russians have been brought in to help solve in their way, which is less smart bombs, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just making everything worse, Turkey's intervention, just like our intervention in the war did.
And it's just a mess and nobody knows anything about it.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm sorry I interrupted you.
You had another point there.
Oh, yeah.
No, I was just going to say again, right now with what's going on, I mean, I feel like Trump could drop a nuke in Tehran and nobody would even notice with this coronavirus stuff.
It's really, you know, there's a lot of big developments right now, and you could follow it on antiwar.com in the news section.
That's true.
With the Yemen, that island that we just sent Marines to Yemen, the bombing in Iraq and Syria that just happened.
Yep.
The Iraq fights in Idlib.
It's all still going on and we have to pay attention to it.
Yeah.
In fact, I'm glad you mentioned that.
And let's go ahead and digress to that for a second.
So there was a rocket attack that killed two Americans and a Brit in Iraq.
They blame the Shia again and they attacked Shiite targets.
They claim Khatib Hezbollah targets.
And also they said some Shiite militia targets inside Syria as well.
But that's the last I know of.
We heard back from the Iranians after that or from those Shiite militias that they pretend the Americans just assert and pretend to believe that every action they take is at the behest of the Quds Force.
So that could be a slippery slope to war real quick here.
As we've seen in the past, that threat can become very real.
Yeah.
And look at how they reacted.
I mean, this is really similar to what just happened when that U.S. contractor was killed.
It's about the same amount of casualties, the deaths in the Khatib Hezbollah, I think around 26, I read last.
And then the people responded by storming the embassy.
And how did Trump respond to that?
He assassinated an Iranian general.
So we know he's not afraid to directly attack Iran over this stuff.
Right.
And right now, these neocons that he talks to that are in his circle, you know, Lindsey Grahams and stuff, you could slip a little thing, hey, we just need your signature here to bomb Iran while all this coronavirus stuff is going on.
It's really my point.
Yeah.
I mean, Pompeo is doing everything he can to make these choices for Trump, it seems like, and through announcements and things like this that really kind of bend the story.
Not that Trump is an innocent player in any of this, but so and by the way, when the last time around when the Russian, I mean, pardon me, when Iran launched the missile barrage at the American base, Trump was criticized for covering up the traumatic brain injury and, oh, a couple of guys had a concussion, don't worry about it, which is terrible and, you know, kind of lying about those guys' wounds.
But at the same time, it was for the purpose of playing down the conflict and saying, yeah, we'll go ahead and let them have the last word since it was such a soft word.
Let's just let the current conflict die here instead of insisting that, no, we have to hit them back one last time and that kind of deal.
So that's the way the incentives are all set up here, right, is, you know, Trump, he's not doing enough in the pandemic.
And also, you know, he's letting Iran walk all over for us.
I wish he'd bomb something.
You know, that's kind of the attitude of the anti-Trumpers, the never Trumpers, is he just ain't bad enough for them ever.
And so, you know, this could get, what the hell, like Iran could do another missile attack right now.
They have their own problems, but they also have missiles and they have, you know, their own perverse political incentives and right wing hawks in the Quds Force and whatever that are, you know, constantly pushing the Ayatollah toward worse conflict anyway.
And so, you know, the hawks need each other and benefit from each other and, you know, epidemic notwithstanding, you know.
Yeah.
Well, and who has a lot of responsibility for how bad that epidemic is hitting Iran?
It's also it's the U.S. and the sanctions campaign.
Our intention, our open stated intention was to bring the Iranian economy to its knees and we're doing that.
And now they're hit with this epidemic.
So it's just more fuel for the hawks in Iran to say, let's just, you know, let's really get them this time.
Yeah.
It's like I was talking with Steven Zunes and he was like, yeah, I interviewed some Iranians who had permanent lung damage from the sarin gas that Saddam used on him with American help.
And you know, what, like, oh, they're still complaining about that.
You know what I mean?
Oh, what, they remember that as a big deal?
They're back in Saddam Hussein against them and half a million killed and all that.
Next thing you're going to tell me that they resent us for withholding medicine from them in the middle of a pandemic, you know, and and what, like in 20 years, they're going to still be calling us the great Satan and and and just because, you know, how those barbarians are.
They just hate us innocent, decent North Americans for being such.
That'll be the narrative here.
You know, you can tell they're crazy.
Look at their hats.
You know, it couldn't have possibly been anything we did to them.
Yeah.
No, no way.
It's all them.
And again, you know what, just for people who are just tuning in here, we had a perfectly good deal and Obama wasn't even really doing his part in lifting the sanctions.
But instead of coming in and lifting those sanctions and going over there to shake hands with the Ayatollah and trying to, hey, do you want to improve the deal?
Let's see if we can improve the deal and lift some of those sunsets and add part of your missile program and and try to get along, try to bombard them with spare parts for their planes that they haven't been able to get for 25 or sorry, 40 years and all of this stuff.
He could have done that.
And instead, he withdrew from the deal for no reason.
When the IAEA was verifying that they were living up to every single dotted I and cross T of the deal, the possible military dimensions investigation closed.
The whole matter settled and Trump came in and, you know, at Sheldon Adelson and Benjamin Netanyahu's request, got America out of that deal and started this whole campaign, restarted this whole campaign of tension against Iran for no reason at all.
Under the dumbest framework, at least in Trump's mind, apparently that by playing it that way, he could get them to agree to more concessions that way.
I don't know how they sell buildings in New York City, but the idea that that's how they were going to get the Ayatollah to add missiles and lift sunsets is completely crazy and stupid.
It could never have worked and only served as sabotage to help set us up for the next conflict.
I'm sure that's what the hawks sold Trump that, oh, yeah, this will work when they knew good and well it wouldn't, you know?
Yeah.
And he was always bad on Iran.
Yeah, he's a complete idiot, so he'll believe whatever they tell him.
Yeah, it was just cheap.
He would just take cheap shots at Obama and send them pallets of cash or whatever.
So he was always bad on Iran.
He had good instincts when it came to North Korea, which he could have, you know, gone and shaken hands with Kim.
That was great.
Like, imagine if he could do that and go to Tehran and if that's what he did, I mean, you know.
He would have let the hawks sabotage him on Korea, too, where we're going to have to make peace first and nukes last, and then they went back to the Bush framework.
No, first give up your nukes, then we'll talk.
Yeah, right.
Well, what's the point of even going and shaking hands and meeting with the guy at all if that's how you're going to play it after that, you know?
It's terrible.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah.
I mean, we'll see how this all shakes out with Iran.
Yeah, then again, Hillary would have got us all nuked in a war with Russia by now.
So hell.
Oh, yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
She would enforce a no-fly zone on Syria, probably.
Wasn't somebody talking about, I think Lindsey Graham has recently been calling for that.
Well, current Lockheed spokesman and board member, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dunford had explained to Congress that a no-fly zone in Syria means war with Russia.
Yeah.
It means American fighter jets up against Russian fighter jets.
And that is not a movie.
That is the kind of thing we've been trying to avoid for lo these many decades.
Why would you do that?
And again, to protect Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is just Syrian for Zawahiri's men on the ground in the Idlib province.
It's just unreal.
I mean, well, it's what Putin's puppet, you know, it's all part of his master plan, you know, to have to start a war with Russia in the Middle East.
That's exactly what the strings that Putin would be pulling if he really had control of Trump.
Yeah.
You see, his game is, once he gets Moscow nuked off the face of the earth and every last soul living in Russia and America killed, then he'll have even more power and influence when he's dead, you know, like Obi-Wan Kenobi or something.
Yeah.
It's really crazy.
We had some good news today, though, or yesterday.
Chelsea Manning was released from jail, which is great.
I mean, fortunately, it took a suicide attempt for that to happen, but I don't know if you've seen it.
I put it up on the blog.
They knew that Manning had tried to commit suicide two times before, and they locked her up on this bogus contempt charge.
She came out with about $250,000 in fines because every day that she refused to testify against WikiLeaks, she was fined $1,000 a day.
That's sick.
Wow.
It's almost at $100,000.
There's a GoFundMe for her to pay her court funds.
It's at $93,000 right now.
I put it up on the blog at antiwar.com.
I'm sure you'll interview somebody about that situation.
Oh, yeah.
I see that.
Yeah.
Antiwar.com slash blog for that, guys.
It's right there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a great way to stick it to the man is to make sure she doesn't have to pay a dime of that.
Yeah, exactly.
And by the way, we've got an article by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers about Chelsea Manning on the page today, and yesterday had one.
Was it yesterday we had one by Kelly Vallejos or tomorrow we're running Kelly's?
I think we got that today, too.
Okay.
So, yeah, of course, we're always keeping up with all the latest Manning and Assange news for everybody at antiwar.com there.
And in great part due to the efforts of Dave DeCamp here.
So thanks again, man.
Appreciate it.
Yeah.
Thanks, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
All right, you guys.
That's Dave DeCamp, news.antiwar.com and also at original.antiwar.com as well.
Well, you know, and just plain old antiwar.com on the front page there, yeah.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com, ManningAntiwar.com, ScottHorton.org and LibertarianInstitute.org.
