All right y'all welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio We're on chaos radio Austin org Lrn.
Fm anti-war.com/radio Live here on LRN Monday through Friday Noon to 3 Eastern 9 to noon out here on the west coast and Now we're joined on the phone by anti-war comms managing news editor Jason Ditz.
Welcome the show Jason How's it going?
I'm doing good Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Everybody.
Please check out what Jason writes at news dot anti-war.com I Don't know what I'd do without it.
I don't know how y'all are doing without it if you are but it's it's the top on your list of Reading in the morning if it's up to me, so let's start with this thing from the Secretary of War Robert Gates here.
We have this very strange theme going on in the media right now, Jason It seems like it's the same thing.
They always do with wiki leak wiki leaks Dumps, especially the last three big ones now the State Department documents in the Iraq and Afghan war logs They say this is the worst treason in the history of mankind get a rope and at the same time This is no big deal at all There's nothing new here and what do you care and you know The last thing you ought to do is go to wiki leaks org and start clicking on things cuz who cares?there's nothing really in here except that you know, Iran is bad, but we already knew that and But here the Secretary of Defense is saying yeah, let's stop freaking out.
It's not that big of a deal Yeah, well, it's that's certainly That's certainly been their position, but it's really incredible that they're claiming some of this stuff isn't a big deal I mean a lot of it taken Individually is kind of silly.
I mean for instance, there's a cable out of the embassy in Ottawa expressing concern about the content of Canadian drama on the CBC Concern that it's Stereotyping Americans as bad people and There are too many American villains on Canadian television Well dispatch the CIA and get something done immediately about that.
I Don't know where anybody could ever get the idea that Americans mean anything, but well for them, you know all right, and of course some of the things actually are quite serious like the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signing a document saying Hillary Clinton signing a document saying That was sent around to dozens of US embassies ordering them to steal credit card information and DNA samples and things like that from top members of the United Nations.
I mean, that's that's a very serious crime and Incredibly enough Secretary or White House press secretary Robert Gibbs went on the Today Show yesterday and said, oh, that's not true But that never happened Even though there's actual physical document with the Secretary of State signature right on it Interviewing him Matt Lauer, I'm not sure who was interviewing him, but they sure didn't let him go with that, huh?
Are you gonna believe me or your own lying eyes?
Well, and you know, I don't think I don't know what they think they're accomplishing with that Maybe they can get away with fooling the American people But certainly, you know, nobody at the UN takes that seriously.
What a what a ridiculous denial What's even the point of denying that other than you know, I guess for the Today Show audience right and even then it's not like the Smoking gun evidence is Secretary Clinton's major major crime was getting a lot of play in the American press to begin with So it really seems like the denial It didn't serve to accomplish much Right, and you know, what's funny about that too is I think stealing people's credit card numbers is a felony, you know things like that well and and not only that but spying on UN officials is In a crime under international law as well because the UN officials are supposed to have immunity from that sort of thing, right?
Yeah, Phil Giraldi was on the show yesterday saying it was I think was Phil that was saying it's remarkable How to what degree that they're using the State Department to do these things when that's what the CIA is for spying on these people you know, right and we have the Press releases coming out about the size of the u.s Intelligence budget and how we're spending 80 billion dollars on Spying but we're actually spending quite a bit more than that because the State Department doing it, too, right?
Who even knows really right?
Nobody even knows the size of the black budgets or where that money goes There's a certain portion that Congress passes every year.
That's just for we don't want to know what you do with it right, they tried to give us some idea as a whole dollar figure what the overall budget is, but even that as Ridiculously large as it was Seems to be excluding quite a few things that I mean, it doesn't include the military's intelligence budget.
It doesn't include The State Department which now we find out is doing all sorts of spying.
It doesn't include God only knows what else Yeah, well mother Jones and Robert Higgs from the libertarian and the left side of the political spectrum there agree that it's approximately a trillion dollars a year if you count The nuclear weapons and everything else, you know the Energy Department and all the national security state It's approximately a trillion a year probably higher than that now because that was a couple years ago and Obama, of course has Done the biggest increases even percentage wise I think more than Ronald Reagan.
He's increased the military budgets, right?
Yeah, I think I think that's true.
I mean certainly it's the largest military budget we've ever had Well, you know it's to protect him so that the Republicans don't call him weak on terrorism Which they never do because he spent so much on the military, right?
It worked.
No, I didn't it didn't work Ironically enough, they still are constantly calling him weak on it.
And they're also calling him weak on the WikiLeaks leaks for not You know conducting Assassinations and and whatnot to silence them.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's our spotlight article today on anti-war comm is WikiLeaks reveals more than just government secrets by Glenn Greenwald and he Kind of goes through catalogs all the different calls for WikiLeaks to simply be murdered and and and various different just calls for Everybody to be murdered Glenn Reynolds talking about let's nuke North Korea and and and on and on and how it's always you know These chicken hawks none of them have ever done any fighting usually You know National Review writers and so forth and all they do is just call for death of whoever they don't like whoever they consider to be an enemy of the u.s.
State as Though the Bill of Rights never existed as though amendment 5 doesn't forbid the national government from depriving people of their rights without the process of law, you know and Just go and just kill anybody, you know, Mike Huckabee said that That Bradley Manning should be executed And Sarah Palin turns around and says they ought to be hunting Julian Assange like he's al-qaeda They ought to send, you know, I guess Pat Tillman's replacements and whoever over there special forces guys to hunt down and kill people who are Journalists and it's and as Greenwald points out.
It's not just the media.
It's the American people love it You know, it's all part of us versus them.
Like it's a Cowboys game, you know right and and They seem to be playing it up for political effect and it seems to be working but one of the more interesting ones To come out recently was yesterday in the Jerusalem Post John Bolton Mm-hmm came up with the idea that he's going to run for president or at least considering it in 2012 and his whole Rationale is that we're not starting enough wars And he wants to make sure that we go to war with Iran and make sure that we go to war with North Korea and everyone So he's gonna run for president just make that happen boy that next Republican primary season is gonna be a hell of a thing I'll tell you Bolton and Palin and cross your fingers and hope Ron Paul's in there arguing with those guys That's gonna be something else man, I don't know.
All right.
Hey, Ty, we got a lot more news to cover here It's Jason Ditz news editor at anti-war calm news Dot anti-war calm and now Jason if I got this right best I can tell the biggest story to come out of these wiki leaks is Well as the Washington Times put it North Korea sends nukes to Iran and then later on in the day They finally changed it to oh, I'm we meant missile parts And that's of course based on David Sangers reporting in the New York Times and this was really first of all Am I right that this was basically the biggest story in the mass media to be trumpeted out of these wiki leaks other than you know Bradley Manning is gay and Julian Assange You know apparently touch somebody Who let him or whatever the problem was there?
It was right up there Study King calls for attacks on Iran was all also right up near the top.
All right the yeah, the Saudi King And so and then secondly, so then what happened to this story about the well How you already know we had Garrett Porter on the show to talk about it yesterday David Sanger tell us about David Sanger's reporting on these Mysterious and and apparently terribly deadly North Korean missiles that the Iranians now have Well, it was the usual hysterical Oh-no, Iran's got missiles story, but it it seems pretty clear from the from the cables that the report was very much self-serving for the US diplomats because of course The US has been putting missile defense systems all around Russia's perimeter in Eastern Europe and Russia's been saying wait a minute Iran's best missiles can't reach this.
Anyway, why are you saying?this is about Iran and So the these new missiles which?
We're not even sure actually existed in the first place.
Let alone that Iran ever got them Were sort of the excuse that up these missiles could hit anywhere in Europe Yeah, and then so What was interesting about it really what I mean and a lot of people jumped on this of course Gareth Jumped on it for IPS and anti-war comm Walter Pincus had a piece in the post fairness and accuracy and reporting Had a big piece on it and basically what everybody did who wanted to go and actually take a look at this which?
Anytime David Sanger writes something.
It's only a clue as to where to begin researching to find out what a lie.
He's telling and They write right in the article, well, you know the White House asked us to not print and to not reprint this document Okay, so all people did was just say, okay We quote out of it They went and googled the quote found the document and there's the rest of the document that has the Russian saying to the Americans What the hell are you talking about?
What missiles they never even tested them.
What shipment what boat what happened?
And you know as I've we've talked about this with Garrett yesterday.
He said that the American Diplomat doesn't even say look trust us.
We know or anything like that.
There's like oh, well, whatever that's our talking point and we're sticking with it basically is is how they argue with the Russians and that's that's the thing with these missiles and and of course we saw a lot of pictures of the missiles emerging on a lot of the more pro-war sites and the pictures of the missiles were pictures of old Soviet missiles Upon which the Supposed North Korean missiles are supposedly based.
Well, whatever if I saw a picture that's good enough for me to know Right, but the thing is I don't read captions, man.
That's too difficult The thing is North Korea has been supposed to have developed this missile for a while now But they never tested it.
They never have You know used it in any Demonstration.
There's no real evidence Beyond a few allegations that they even have these missiles and then the the report that they sent Kits including some of the parts that might be used in these theoretical missiles to Iran was taken as proof that Iran has these same Maybe they exist.
Maybe they don't missile Yeah, I mean a Gareth was saying yesterday.
There's a dispute as to whether you know, supposedly these are intercontinental ballistic missiles But then again, he's saying that some of the research that he did would lead him to believe that they're single-stage rockets Not the kind of three-stage rockets that can you know?
Go up into space and drop a warhead on top of an American city or something Not that Iran has any nukes in the first place but right it seems to be a story that Been created very much for convenience sake but it's lacking in a lot of specifics and we really don't know What these missiles are capable of if they even exist and even then We don't know what Iran got No I wish I had a lot bigger more powerful radio show with millions and millions of listeners and we then we could just start a trend Where we just say a lie, we could just call that a sanger like oh, man, that guy's sanger to me I can't believe The dishonesty that's like, you know, like oh man, I can't believe we're months and totally out here in the middle of nowhere, you know David Sanger, it's the most dishonest thing that ever existed But you know, he wants a war really badly He's trying to get millions of Iranians killed and Lord knows at least tens of thousands of Americans in any war with that country That's what he wants And so he's willing to say anything that he can to try to make that happen Nobody knows who he really works for maybe just himself Now, all right, so we still got a couple minutes here.
Here's another important wiki leak This one's written up at raw story Abu Ghraib photos inspired hundreds of Saudis to jihad The Bush administration's torture program was a beacon for Islamic extremists seeking to recruit fellow fighters in the war against America and its allies The leak diplomatic cable has shown well, we all knew that all along but I think still it's important You know to try to contrast the prevailing You know wisdom about these things on one hand Everybody knows if you occupy a country and torture a bunch of people you're going to create enemies, right?
On the other hand the narrative is hey, we have to torture people in order to save Americans lives.
And yet the truth is Recruiting thousands of new radicals to be suicide bombers doesn't save American lives It's the most counterproductive policy.
Maybe even more counterproductive than invading the country of Iraq is Doing sweeps of fighting-age males off the streets and locking them in torture prison for years So worst thing that you could do to American policy.
How could this be?
I mean that people still Can't get this argument through their head man.
How come how come everybody knows it and yet we still haven't won the fight on it You know Right, and we there's another table detailing 2006 delegation that the Bush administration sent to the European Union pressing them to be more supportive of Renditions and detainee abuse and things like that to to make it very public that they support whatever the u.s.
Is doing it in those regards and They make all sorts of arguments about how The terror suspects don't really have any rights under the Geneva Conventions are kind of the old arguments but one of the interesting things that they include in there is that They claim there's no Prohibition against torturing them and they say that the only reason that America doesn't torture them which of course We know isn't true is That there's a customary presidential practice not to torture people Yeah, there's no war crimes act that was signed by well passed by a Republican Congress or the anti-torture convention signed by Ronald Reagan or Well other Scott Horton's coming up later on the show.
He did I think the last time I interviewed him he went through the history of the Republican Party and Anti-torture laws and it's the Republican Party that wrote them all that passed them all that did them all it's their legacy that they're betraying Here all the way back to Abraham Lincoln, you know, we can kill them all but we don't tie them up and then beat them up But anyway, yeah, and you know Barack Obama on his first day in power Jason remember Basically ratified that same belief that it's just been a traditional Presidential custom and decision to be made whether to torture people or not rather than you know His obligation and under the Constitution to faithfully execute the law When he said that I have banned torture and what he meant was not I now am officially Changing the policies of the executive branch to recognize the fact that torture is already a crime in America He was saying I have changed my policy preference and then we all know that that's not true We all know that people are still being tortured at least within the guidelines of the army field manual appendix M That's secret at the secret prison at Bagram and God knows where else So not only did he ratify the idea?
That yes, this is just up to presidents when he claimed that he had banned it He lied when he claimed that he'd banned it now you like that put that in your wiki leaks That's all I say all right, thanks for your time I'm sorry, I just ran it at you and say asking you questions all the time Jason, but some other time man.
We'll catch up Thanks man everybody that's Jason Ditz news dot anti-war comm there's so much that I didn't even get to ask him about McTodd all solder We'll be back
