Alright y'all welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Jason Ditz.
He's our news editor at anti-war calm.
That's news dot Anti-war calm welcome back Jason.
How are you?
I'm doing good Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing all right.
Thanks very much for joining us today Let's talk about the Iraq war.
I know it's the summer of 2011 and as far as most people are concerned There ain't no such thing anymore, but I know better than that and I was wondering if you could give us the latest I saw that there were a string of bombings over the weekend, right right, we had one of the deadliest days in over a year in the war and we've had bombings pretty much on a daily basis and the Obama administration still talking about how They're open to the idea of staying if only they're asked which is a somewhat disingenuous Comment because they've been demanding to be asked for several months now Yes, as we've covered on the show here and now Help me understand exactly where we're at in that process because it seemed like Nouriel Maliki had said okay You can keep some trainers because I can I can give you that without getting without turning it over to the Parliament first Did that stick?it seems like that that much has stuck, but it looks like there's still a push for more and Whether they get more or not remains to be seen And now when they say some trainers, how many is that?
Do you know?
We don't know it's not been clear at all how many they're talking but it's a lot Well now and I wonder if Maliki making that decision himself is what Ryan Crocker the now ambassador to Afghanistan was talking about in these WikiLeaks cables when he was saying that Maliki is turning toward dictatorship This was written up by John Glazer at the anti-war comm blog he had some WikiLeaks here.
Did you see this?
Yeah, and that could be part of it, but I think Maliki Made a much broader grasp for power than that.
He's still the acting defense minister the acting interior minister He's controlling.
He's also the public security minister He's kept all the ministries that have any control over any Armed forces or law enforcement groups so he's very much been consolidating power for a while and The effort to cut Parliament out of the decision on the u.s.
Troops is just one more step along the way Well now and so what is what kind of noises the Parliament making about whether they're going to go along with Inviting more troops Or would they really have to I mean they do have to go to the Parliament on that don't they?
Theoretically they should have to go to the Parliament, but it's not clear if they would or not Of course in the u.s.
When the status of forces agreement was passed in 2008 There was a little bit of a question of whether or not President Bush should go to Congress about it, and he just decided no he wasn't going to and That was pretty much the end of that So it seems like they're hoping to go the same way with the Iraqi Parliament and just cut them out of the process altogether because getting a referendum right the 2008 vote was was narrowly passed with the promise of a referendum within six months of Bringing the question to the Iraqi people and that referendum years later never happened So it was a pretty ugly battle at the time and it's probably going to be much uglier this time around Yeah, well, you know it's really too bad that we can't read Nouriel Maliki's mind I wish I could but it seems to me like there's at least a good chance that he's More or less playing the same script that he played in 2008 which is okay, okay?
I'll try to convince them to let you keep all these bases I'll do my very best But then by the end of the year time was up you got a sign and they sign a deal no bases and everybody out by the end of 2011 and You know I'm kind of thinking that maybe that's what's going on here is he's playing smart politics and telling the Americans that You know I'm doing my very best to oblige you here I'm trying to get permission out of these guys, but I you know so far.
I'm having trouble Then again, I guess you know it's not hard to imagine that he could figure he needs our help still Certainly and the US troops are going to be there Largely to prop him up, so it's not hard to imagine that he would see that as a good thing and Now do you know you know roughly how many bases are?
Still occupied by American troops there Thousand left still huh, I'm not really sure on that it They've made a big deal about turning a couple of bases over to the Iraqi government, but Obviously they've kept some so exactly how many I really don't know Yeah, I'd like to look into Kurdistan, I remember Hillary Clinton in the Primary election against Obama talking about she would like to you know if nothing else keep air bases up in Kurdistan I mean, it's all about you know the Donald Rumsfeld's lily pad policy of having bases everywhere, so you can attack anything from You know pretty much anywhere at a moment's notice right as long as we can keep a couple of places to launch planes from then Iraq is our little aircraft carrier over there, right?
Right they don't need a massive number of bases there so long as they have some Yeah, well, and you know it looks like all the you know European Companies, and and I don't know maybe Chinese ones are getting the rights to all the oil over there And so really I mean if that's all we get out of it is a couple of air bases It'd be pretty sad for the at the cost of Trillions and trillions of dollars and at least a million lives four or five million refugees I mean I think people want to forget now already and just imagine that Bush administration was like the Eisenhower era back Decades and decades ago or something that this all these truths are long since Irrelevant, but it seems like those people over there paid a hell of a price already, and it ain't even over yet Right it's not over by a long shot to if the administration has their way I Mean before he before he left office secretary Gates was talking about Keeping troops in Iraq for years to come So there seems to be at least some Stomach was in the administration to just keep this war going pretty much indefinitely which probably didn't sound as bad a Year ago when violence was at least a relative low, but it's kept going up since then Yeah, well, so here's my silver lining on it It makes a great campaign slogan for Ron Paul in the Iraq war because it needs to be ended But it also calls Barack Obama out on his lie that he would have this thing over in 16 months I'm not sure with with a Ron Paul Slogan anyone's going to hear it because it's not like the media is going to cover it Right well although they might cover not covering it Apparently not covering something is newsworthy, but actually covering that thing that they're not covering is not These are the rules that our American media operate under now Except for Jason.
Thank goodness.
You can find his stuff at news dot anti-war calm We're gonna talk more about some of the bad stuff Contained therein when we get back after this All right y'all welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio Talking with Jason Ditz.
He's our news editor at anti-war calm.
That's news dot Anti-war Calm and I wonder if you can tell us now what you know is the latest coming out of Libya Everything going swimmingly over there well the Story out of Libya is largely as it has been off and on for the past five months Officials with the rebel side are predicting a quick victory now.
They're on the offensive and Say they're on the outskirts of taking Tripoli which NATO's already saying they have no reason to believe they actually would be able to do and as usual it's Largely expected that the offense is just going to stall once they get to Tripoli and then counter offensive will Take back what little territory was lost in in this offensive and put everything back the way it was at the start All right, well, so let me try to give the Empire's best-case scenario here these territorial gains must have inspired New people to join the ranks of the rebels and assist them right because it couldn't still be the case could it Jason?
Like it was a few weeks ago when Patrick Coburn was on the show talking about how there's more media than fighters at the frontlines What it looks like that's still the case This southern village that they've been touting having taken over The talk is that they have maybe a hundred to a hundred and fifty fighters on the ground there The number in Zambia hasn't been released But it seems to be at least a little larger than that, but the idea that these two forces are going to merge on Tripoli as just a few hundred ragtag poorly trained and poorly equipped rebels and take over the capital city That's been reinforced with virtually the entire What's left of the Libyan military?
It's just ridiculous Well now what about after the Killing of the head general there.
What were the repercussions inside the rebellion?
There were a few articles about you know splits hardening.
Did they work it out?
It's not really clear that it's been worked out.
Although they seem to have at least Calmed people down somewhat about it Their first move was to sack the entire cabinet except for the prime minister and The prime minister blamed everyone else in the cabinet for being behind the killing That Seems to have at least pacified the family members of the general somewhat because they were talking about having their tribe start attacking the rebels and they've at least backed off of that for the time being but Reserve the right to start back up anytime if they feel that They're not being genuine and trying to get to the bottom of this assassination Hmm well You know if you take all the dead bodies out of it and everything this is really kind of hilarious in a way, right?
We got this war here on behalf of a few hundred maybe a thousand something rebels Who don't have their act together in the slightest degree whatsoever?fighting the Civil War for months now and not only that but These rebels have sort of tried to claim the banner of pro-democracy protesters that got everything started but The idea that they represent them anymore seems a little far-fetched because all they've done in the past few months other than Launch unsuccessful offenses against Gaddafi is stifle dissent within their own territory and Run the run the eastern part of the country like like a horrible dictatorship Yeah, did you see Susan Rice the American ambassador the United Nations on the Colbert report the other day?
No, I didn't Oh, yeah, he asked her.
So what's going on there in Libya?
She's oh we saved the lives of tens of thousands of civilians he was gonna go into Benghazi and kill them and We saved them and everything's going great and poor Colbert didn't even challenge Okay, I'm gonna accept that answer and all he had was so why don't we bomb Syria then And she said well the Syrians have asked us not to bomb them right, that's that's been the the underlying lie of this whole war that Benghazi was about to be overrun by the Gaddafi forces and NATO swooped in and saved them at the last minute which is ridiculous because the Regime's offensive was already stalling on Thursday when The United Nations approved the bombing campaign and had completely stopped Long before the bombs actually started falling on Saturday It would have been and and indeed was Just one of many stalled offensive And the rebels took back the territory that they lost But the idea that it was because of the NATO bombing it just doesn't hold any water at all it seems like if anything the NATO bombing has has kept these two sides from either reaching an agreement or Figuring out that they're not going to reach an agreement and talking partition Yeah, although that's directly counter to the UN resolution that authorized the whole thing, right?
We said like first principle here.
Libya will stay Libya and when its borders intact no matter what Right.
The United Nations isn't very keen on New countries being formed.
I mean every once in a while they'll put up with one and everyone on the Security Council's okay with it, which isn't very often but Hey, the Republicans even tried to stop the Soviet Union from breaking up Bush senior sent James Baker over there.
No, no We like the USSR where it is, right?
I don't know why that is if it's just a case of it being expensive to print new maps or what?
Yeah, that very well could be it I guess well, and you know, I hate to be such a technicalitarian about this Jason but maybe it's worth reminding people that They said that they're gonna do a no-fly zone in order to protect the lives of civilians and that in doing so The whole mission would take days not weeks Nevermind months or a year or something like that or more And that you know, basically as long as they had air superiority these rebels were gonna win the war lickety-split Where here we are months later, and it's not even it's a back page story now.
Nobody even cares anymore Oh, yeah, we got this war in Libya too, but it's like a footnote Right now mostly doesn't get mentioned in the u.s.
Press, but when British officials or French officials talk about it now the Prevailing narrative is that they don't think the rebels really have what it takes to take over the country Anyway, even with air superiority and constant airstrikes Right.
Why the British just recognized him as the sole legitimate government of Libya, right?and and British officials are saying the only way they're going to take Tripoli is if Something happens that someone in Gaddafi's inner circle just assassinate them takes over and surrenders Which doesn't seem like it's likely to happen even though they Expressing hope that it's going to at some point Well, you know, they're liable to get frustrated and just start carpet bombing Tripoli, you know certainly possible, although it seems like Most of NATO's okay with a status quo.
That's just a bombing campaign that lasts for years It'll be our new West Bank, we'll just our new Gaza Strip, we'll just build a fence around it Bomb it every once in a while accuse them of firing Roman candles at us over the fence, you know Our new pre pre 2003 Iraq, right?
But yeah much worse, but the hope for the French government was to have Everything wrapped up by best deal day so they could have a big Victory celebration for President Sarkozy in France Because he was of course one of the big backers of this war but that's a month ago now so that obviously didn't happen and There's not any big holidays coming up For any of these countries anymore.
So it seems like They're probably going to be fine to just let this continue till next year Yeah, well really is amazing I can't get over it.
I mean of all the ridiculous wars I'm sort of in shock like, you know when they announced we have a policy of regime change in Iraq We're gonna tell you any lie that we need to for the next year and a half to make it okay And then we're gonna do it and it was kind of shocking and astounding that like wow I can't believe that they're announcing a pre meditated Pre-meditated war on Iraq.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know I can't believe that they're announcing a pre-meditated war like this a year in advance.
It's the same sort of you know Jaw dropping kind of thing like tripping and falling into the dumbest war like this and then just roll right on All right.
Thanks Jason very much appreciate news dot anti-war comm everybody.
Thanks for having me
