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For KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
Alright y'all, welcome to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
We're here every Friday from 6.30 to 7.
I'm Scott Horton.
And you can find my archives of pretty much all my interviews, certainly all my foreign policy interviews, going back to the beginning of 2007 at antiwar.com/radio.
And our managing news editor at antiwar.com is Jason Ditz.
And you can find all of his news pieces at news.antiwar.com.
Welcome to the show, Jason.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Well, thank you very much for joining us this evening.
I really appreciate it.
Lots of news to cover.
Lots of news you've been covering all this week at antiwar.com.
I wanted to start with WikiLeaks and the revolution in Tunisia.
What can you tell us about that?
Well, of course, as people have been following, there's been a revolution that's still sort of in the offing in Tunisia.
The president of Tunisia, President Ben Ali, has fled the country and is in Saudi Arabia right now.
But many of his cohorts are still in power, and the protests in Tunis particularly are still going pretty strong.
So it seems like exactly where that's going to end isn't clear yet.
Now, I guess it's sort of been disputed, depending on who you're reading, but some people are saying that this really was spurred by revelations in some WikiLeaks State Department cables about the corruption in Tunisia.
And then, I guess, the actual riots were sparked by a guy who set himself on fire, a South Vietnamese Buddhist.
Right.
The protester that set himself on fire was an unemployed college graduate who hadn't been able to find a job, had set up his own little fruit stand to try to make ends meet, sort of U.S. Great Depression style.
And the police shut him down for not having all the proper paperwork, because there's just an enormous bureaucracy in Tunisia and a lot of corruption.
And, of course, these WikiLeaks cables detailed a lot of the corruption and had made people all the more aware of just how widespread it was.
Yeah, that didn't get too much coverage initially here in America, but apparently it was all over the African press.
Right.
Well, there's been so much coming out of the WikiLeaks cables that it's really been difficult to give each story its due.
Yeah, no doubt about that.
Now, as you said, the dictator, Ben Ali, has fled to Saudi Arabia.
But then, there was a question as to whether just the rest of his government was going to survive intact or whether the riots were over.
Are we still mid-revolution?
It seems like we are.
On Monday, they announced a new government that included three opposition ministers.
They gave pretty trivial ministerships to three members of the opposition, what little opposition hadn't already been banned in Tunisia.
And when that didn't seem to quiet the protests, now there's talk of amnesty for some of the banned opposition parties and things like that.
But the three ministers that they appointed all resigned a day after being appointed.
So, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of faith that they're just going to form a new government and that's going to be it.
Well, I noticed surfing around the major papers in the West, I guess mostly the English papers and American papers.
Their focus was, oh no, what if the people in Egypt see this?
Alright, that's been a big focus in a lot of the media is that this may be the tip of the iceberg.
And of course, as corrupt as President Ben Ali in Tunisia was, he's not far off of par for the course for a lot of the dictators in the Middle East and particularly in Northern Africa.
And of course, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak comes immediately to mind as another very similar sort of dictator.
And sooner or later, he's going to die of old age here.
He's already, what, 82, 83 years old.
And it's funny because I saw Hillary Clinton hectoring the Egyptians that they need to be more open, as though America has always been behind supporting democracy in Egypt rather than the Mubarak dictatorship.
And I just wondered who she was actually looking forward to being elected in that country if they ever did have some fair elections.
Because it seems like the most likely source to take power in that case would be the Muslim Brotherhood.
And then what are we going to do?
Well, it seems like the best case scenario as far as it not being the Muslim Brotherhood or something like that would be the former IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei.
Wouldn't that be great?
I'd vote for ElBaradei here.
I don't care.
He's got some popularity among opposition figures there, sort of the more progressive opposition.
All right.
Well, that's a pretty good segue.
We're talking about WikiLeaks in Tunisia.
And of course, the WikiLeaks have a lot of stuff about Iran coming out.
And of course, from the very beginning, when the Cablegate group of WikiLeaks began leaking, one of the very first stories was some scaremongering about North Korean missiles being transferred to Iran, of course, by David Sanger in the New York Times.
And ever since then, it's been a pretty steady stream of, oh, no, WikiLeaks reveal Iran making nuclear weapons.
And yet Mohamed ElBaradei, who you just mentioned back when he was the head of the IAEA, and even now the IAEA continues to verify that they're not making nuclear weapons, if I understand it right.
So what is all the hubbub about, Jason?
What's in these WikiLeaks that would seem to indicate that the Iranians are up to nefarious nuclear things?
Well, it's sort of fascinating when you read all of these cables that reference Iran.
Taken individually, very few of them say much of anything.
They all just sort of mention Iran and mention a nuclear weapons program as a matter of course.
And the really interesting thing is, nowhere in any of these cables do you see any evidence presented.
And even on those rare occasions when some allied government like Turkey has questioned the validity of the allegation, officials get angry, they demand retractions, but they never provide any evidence for why their position is true.
It's just their official position, and they demand that everybody stand with it.
Yeah, it seems like in one of these WikiLeaks cables, or a set of them that you linked to in a piece earlier in the week, the State Department flunkies talking to each other, just saying, oh yeah, well nuclear weapons progress this and nuclear weapons progress that, but they even basically are speaking in these glittering generalities even to each other.
They're not really saying that this is the proof.
Now we know that it's not just a civilian program, it's a weapons program.
They don't ever discuss that, it's just a matter of course, like we're watching CNN or something.
Right, it's like saying your favorite sports team is your favorite team.
It's just something that you take as a matter of course, and around here everybody roots for this team.
And if you're not, then everyone's going to look at you like there's something wrong with you.
In this case, it just happens to be a made up allegation about Iran having a nuclear weapons program.
You know, Ali Gharib over at the Lowe blog pointed out that after Mayor Dagan, the former head of Israeli Mossad, said that the Iranians couldn't even make nuclear weapons until something like 2015, he was denounced over at the Commentary blog, as he must not know what he's talking about, and he must be getting cranky in his old age and these kinds of things.
So even when the head of Israeli intelligence says that no, they're not really making nukes, and they won't be able to for a while, that's never good enough for the American neoconservative movement.
Never.
Well, and one of the really interesting cables on Iran came in 2009, very early 2009, just a couple of months after President Obama took office.
And it's one of the few that tries to lay out a case for a threat.
And what it says, and it seems to be quite true, is that the Natanz centrifuges are theoretically capable of producing the weapons-grade uranium that would make it possible for Iran to make a nuclear weapon if they so chose.
And it specifically says, if they so chose, in the cable.
And what I think is fascinating about that is, well, it's quite true, those centrifuges almost certainly could be used to produce that.
But it's two years later, and those centrifuges have been under IAEA guard the whole time.
They've been watching them in operation the whole time, and they've never made anything close to that sort of uranium.
All the uranium that they've enriched has been for civilian purposes.
So it seems to me that, okay, here's the one shred of a threat, and even this, it seems like it falls apart on its face, that clearly Iran just isn't interested, because they could have been doing this all along.
And this one ambassador or whoever in the State Department cable is basically conceding that a choice would have to be made by them to attempt to begin making weapons, and they haven't made that choice.
Right.
Echoes of the National Intelligence Estimate back from 2007.
Right, and that's a, I mean, I guess you could still say that they might make that choice at some point in the future, but over the past two years, there's been no indication that they're any closer to making that decision.
And it seems like the centrifuges are just operating for exactly what Iran said they were all along, civilian purposes.
Well, now, the talks began today in Turkey, and the new set of Iran nuclear talks began.
And yet, it seems like, or not yet, but going into this, part of the background is that some of these WikiLeaks have detailed some conversations between American State Department employees and some leadership, I guess military leadership, or I don't know, foreign ministry in Turkey, where they kind of passed on the news that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was actually trying to accept Barack Obama's original offer on the uranium swap, and that it was actually, Mohammed Sahimi actually wrote an article this week as well, explaining that Ahmadinejad really needs a domestic victory of some kind.
And so, in this case, he was actually willing to give up what they call, Jason, that breakout capability, where they have enough low-enriched uranium produced, at least to that level, 3.64% U-235, that then, if they continued to process that and made it up to weapons grade, it would be enough for one bomb.
That's what they call the breakout, and it looks like Ahmadinejad was even willing to give that away.
So, I wonder if you have any insight on the attitude of the American diplomats going into this current round of talks in Turkey.
It seems like they really have a strong basis that they can work with here.
Well, they certainly could if they want to, but I think the real question is, do they want to?
Do they want to?
Because you mentioned President Obama's original offer for the third-party enrichment deal.
It was a few months later, by and large, accepted by the Iranians.
After Turkey and Brazil got involved, they did agree to something that was extremely similar to the third-party enrichment deal, and then the U.S. rebuffed them and said it was too late.
And now the talk is that they're going to offer a new deal that's even worse term than the previous deal.
Right, because of course they've been enriching at least some uranium up to 3% and 20% levels this whole time, so now they would have to give up even more of it to get rid of, to break that breakout capability, which is what the Americans are really after here.
Right, and the early deal had Iran accepting a large amount of these fuel rods for their medical research reactor in Tehran, far more than they would probably ever use.
But the new offer, at least to the extent that it's been reported in the media, is demanding just ridiculous amounts that they're going to keep this aging, 60-year-old American-built reactor open for another half-century or something, and would need fuel for it, it's just ridiculous.
I mean, clearly that reactor is very important right now, but it's not going to be a long-term solution for Iran and medical isotopes.
Right, well, I've always believed that the nuclear issue is really nothing but a pretext for putting sanctions on Iran and beating them over the head and eventually laying the groundwork for war.
In fact, Hilary Mann Leverett said on this show that that's basically what all of these so-called negotiations are, is creating the ability to say later on that, look, we tried to deal with them, but it's just like they say over at the Weekly Standard, the Iranians are crazy, they can't be dealt with, so now we have no opportunity but to attempt some kind of real program of regime change.
Well, and that was basically what Tony Blair said today, while testifying and trying his best to express regret for helping to start the war in Iraq and getting just enormous numbers of people killed in that war on false pretexts.
He immediately launches into a tirade about the importance of starting a war with Iran.
Amazing.
It must be nice to not have shame, just keep going on, do whatever you want.
All right, well, okay, so here's what I think, Jason.
Oh, by the way, everyone, I'm Scott Horton, it's Antiwar Radio.
I'm talking with Jason Ditz, he's the news editor at Antiwar.com.
That's news.antiwar.com.
And the most important WikiLeaks story this week, I thought, was on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, there was a giant rally at Quantico, at Quantico, Virginia, for a bunch of activists led by Colleen Rowley and other great peace and civil liberties activists demanding just and proper treatment for Bradley Manning, who apparently is being abused in military custody while awaiting his court-martial.
Well, right, and his lawyer actually just today complained about his mistreatment in custody.
Oh, really?
I'd missed that.
Yeah, that was early this morning, when that report came out.
Well, and for people who are interested in this, they can read about it at Glenn Greenwald's blog at salon.com.
And also, Coombs is the name, C-O-O-M-B-S, is the name of the lawyer.
He's written about it, and there's a guy named David House, who has been allowed to go and visit Bradley Manning in his cell, who's written at Firedog Lake in depth.
I think the lawyer Coombs also gave a pretty in-depth interview to the Daily Beast website.
And basically, the long and the short of it is, they have him locked up for 23 hours a day.
The only exercise he's allowed to get is to go and walk around in another little room.
Apparently, they ask him every five minutes or so, if he's okay, just to keep him completely disturbed.
They let him sleep on his metal bed with no sheet, no pillow, and basically complete isolation.
They have him in virtually the exact same conditions that they hold Ted Kaczynski and Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mass murderers, in the Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.
But in this case, this guy is, at worst, a whistleblower.
And is, at worst, allegedly a whistleblower.
He's a suspect.
He hasn't been convicted of anything, as though that would justify this kind of treatment.
I thought it was really good to see, Jason, that there were some people who took the symbol of Martin Luther King Day to go and march and protest for his rights, no matter what they say he's guilty of.
He deserves better than to be treated like that.
Oh, absolutely.
And they made a big deal of, just yesterday, the very high-profile arrests on the East Coast of a number of mafia suspects.
It was incredible to me to see the FBI crediting all these informants on the inside, and how great they were and how brave they were, at the same time that Bradley Manning is being locked up and mistreated for doing what is basically the exact same thing, reporting on criminal behavior.
Yeah, well, it's going to be a long wait if it's for them to come around and start feeling irony at the governmental level, especially cops.
They have no sense of irony whatsoever, man.
And they will.
Hey, at the State Department, they announced it's World Internet Freedom Week, or whatever, at the same time that they're talking about just hunting down and murdering Julian Assange if they can't get him extradited and try to make up a law that they can prosecute him under.
In the same breath, they talk this way.
And at the State Department briefing, you know, we condemn China for censoring the Internet.
And by the way, you better not look at WikiLeaks, or we're watching you.
All right, it's jasonditznews.antiwar.com.
And I know that there was a lot of news, a lot of really bad news in Iraq this week.
Can you fill us in on that?
Yeah, well, there have been several major bombings in Iraq this week.
The first few bombings targeted mostly security forces.
There was a bombing in Tikrit that hit a police recruitment center and killed 65 people that were waiting out front to try to join the police force.
And the next day, they attacked a police training center just about 50 miles down the road.
And then the following day, there was a major bombing in Karbala, apparently coordinated car bombs, went off targeting Shiite pilgrims trying to get into the city for one of their pilgrimages.
How outside the norm is that these days in Iraq?
Well, unfortunately, the attacks happen all the time.
There were thousands of Iraqis killed last year, and officials conceded that that's probably going to be the normal level going forward for several years.
But we're talking about several major bombings, somewhere in the realm of 200 people killed this week.
It's quite a bit up from what would be normal, especially at this time of year.
So is this what's left of the old, predominantly Sunni-based insurgency that resisted the American occupation for so many years?
Well, it seems to be, but it seems like there's quite a bit more left of it than anyone imagined.
I mean, the attacks that targeted the pilgrims, they of course targeted Shiite pilgrims, and that's probably pretty much par for the course for those insurgent groups.
And the attacks on the police forces mostly happened in Sunni cities and targeted Sunnis that were trying to collaborate with the Iraqi government, and that too is pretty normal for them.
But just the sheer size of these attacks is really something this many years into the war.
Well, if there's any silver lining to any of it, it's that the Americans are leaving one way or the other.
That's what Patrick Coburn says, that now that Muqtada al-Sadr is back, Nouri al-Maliki knows that he must continue to insist on the deadline at the end of this year.
And despite what it said in the Post the other day about the contours of a permanent American military presence being built there, Patrick Coburn says that's just a fantasy.
By the end of this year, the Americans will be gone, you just watch, he said.
Otherwise, they're going to have to be willing to start the war all over again against Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces in the Shia South, and that doesn't seem too likely to me.
Well, I certainly hope that's the case, although I'm always suspicious when they come up with a deadline that the government promises they're going to stick to, because it seems like those deadlines have a way of just being forgotten after a few years.
Right, well, I guess it depends on forgotten by who in this case, and it remains to be seen.
There's no doubt, and people can check out that Washington Post article I just referred to, the contours of a lasting military presence taking shape, and there's certainly no doubt that the Pentagon feels like they stole Iraq fair and square and they want to keep it.
I guess it's possible they could keep some air bases up in Kurdistan after a year from now, but doubtful anywhere else, but I guess we'll see.
They certainly have designs on it, but whether they can make it happen, I guess it's anyone's guess at this point.
All right, now, I know that this is way too complicated to cover in a minute, but cover it in a minute.
Tell us about what's going on in Lebanon.
Okay, well, the Lebanese government collapsed last Friday when the March 8th bloc withdrew from the government.
There are two blocs, the March 14th, which is predominantly Sunni with a Christian minority, and the March 8th bloc, which is Hezbollah's bloc, which is predominantly Shiite with a Christian minority.
And Hezbollah's bloc withdrew mostly over dispute about the UN's tribunal investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Hariri, and today it was announced that the PSP, the Progressive Socialist Party, is going to support Hezbollah.
And this would give them enough seats to form their own narrow majority, but majority government if they want to going forward.
Really?
Any preliminary leaks from the State Department about what they're going to do about that, if anything?
No, the State Department condemned Hezbollah for withdrawing from the government in the first place, but they've been pretty quiet about it since then.
And it seems like now, if a government is going to be formed, it seems like Hezbollah is in a position to do it.
But one interesting thing, though, is in Lebanon there's sort of an agreement, although it's not a formal legal requirement, that the Prime Minister has to be Sunni.
The President has to be a Maronite Christian, and the Speaker of the Parliament has to be a Shiite.
And Hezbollah's faction's got very few Sunni MPs, so barring a sudden influx from some disaffected MPs from the March 14th coalition, there's a real possibility that we could see a Ba'athist Prime Minister in Lebanon.
Very interesting.
I'm sorry we're all out of time.
We're going to have to leave it right there, but thank you very much for your time, Jason.
Sure, thanks for having me.
