06/21/07 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, folks, welcome back to Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And here in just a moment, we'll be joined on the phone by Gareth Porter from IPS News Service and the American Prospect to talk about his new article on antiwar.com.
And the new movie World War Four.
Michael O'Dean, of course, being, I guess, the number two leader of the modern neoconservative movement.
Well, we should have started with Iran, because Iran is mother.
Iran, ever since the State Department's been keeping a list of state sponsors of international terrorism, Iran has always won the blue ribbon.
So there you go, folks.
Iran is America's enemy, because it reminds Michael O'Dean of his mother.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm just picking on the poor guy.
But yeah, so it's all Iran's fault.
Everything is Iran's fault.
Anybody who pays attention to the news nowadays knows that everything in the whole world is Iran's fault from our trade deficit with China, to the genocide in Darfur, to America's disastrous failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It's all because of Iran, says the vice president's office.
But luckily, we have Gareth Porter from IPS News Service here to set us straight.
Welcome to the show, Gareth.
Thanks, Scott.
It's good to have you back here.
And it's always good to just see that there's a new Gareth Porter article up on the page at antiwar.com.
Today's is called New Iran Arms Claim Reveals Cheney Military Rift.
And so I guess if we can backtrack a little bit, we've seen report most famously on Steve Clemons' blog, The Washington Note, of this dramatic split in the administration.
In fact, the New York Times covered it last Saturday.
That the Cheney crew, the neocons and Dick Cheney, for whatever crazy reason he has, want to spread the war to Iran, where Condoleezza Rice and apparently the leaders of the Defense Department, all the intelligence agencies and everybody else in state and basically the rest of the government, other than the Cheney cabal, is trying to stop the war.
And so I guess, you know, according to Steve Clemons, in his report, the Secretary of Defense, Gates, was on the same side as Condoleezza Rice, as was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace.
So let's focus on the military side of the rift between the war party and the antiwar party within the administration.
Is it the case that the military is on the side of Condoleezza Rice in trying to stop this war, and that they are, you know, actively working to limit the influence of the Cheney guys?
And if so, what makes you say so?
Well, I think there is a lot of evidence that most of the high-level commanders and staff officers today, that is to say Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders in the field, have in fact adopted a stance of not wanting to go to war against Iran.
Now, you know, this is not universal by any means.
Petraeus, General Petraeus, you know, is in an ambiguous position at best.
He basically agreed to sign up to carry out the surge, whereas other officers shunned that policy as not in the American interest at all.
And it looks very much like Petraeus is doing so to advance his career, because he's a smart guy, and he undoubtedly realizes that it can't work.
But he saw an opportunity to have the limelight, and he took it.
But other officers, and I include here the commander of CENTCOM, Admiral William Fallon, are known to have grave doubts about not only the war in Iraq, the surge and so forth, but also the policy of threatening war against Iran, and certainly any policy that would actually go toward a war against Iran.
And I quoted some weeks ago, Admiral Fallon is telling someone with whom he spoke directly earlier this year, that there would be no war against Iran on his watch.
And when he was asked to explain how he could be so sure, he very strongly hinted that he was ready to quit rather than to go along with such a war, and implying, of course, that he would quit and oppose it in the process.
So we know that there have been, and Tsai Hirsch, of course, as you well know, has reported on this high-level opposition to a war against Iran.
So that much, I think, is very clear.
Again, not all of them, but most of the high-level military officials appear to be opposed to a war against Iran.
And some of them are even actively opposed to it in the sense of debunking some of the accusations that are coming out of the Cheney wing of the administration about Iran being responsible for the deadliest bombs being used against our soldiers in Iraq, and now also in Afghanistan.
I do want to focus in on that because that was the subject of my story, specifically the new charge that Iran is arming the Taliban.
This is clearly something that goes even beyond the charge that was made with regard to Iran's alleged arming of Shiite militia in Iraq.
In that case, at least you had the U.S. command in Iraq willing to go along with it and to participate in it actively.
In fact, there's some evidence that General Caldwell, who was the spokesman for the U.S. command in Iraq last January, February, was one of the zealots who was ready to go to bat for the argument that Iran was, in fact, behind the import of armor-piercing IEDs.
But in this case, in the case of the argument that Iran is arming the Taliban, it's very clear that the NATO commander, General Dan McNeil in Afghanistan, is very much opposed to that.
It does not believe in it and clearly regards this as a charge that is not in the interest of his fight against the Taliban.
And you bring up in your article the phrase, irrefutable evidence being used by one of Rice's deputies.
This is one of the angles that I found both amusing and a compelling piece of evidence that the real author of the charge that was made publicly last week by Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns was none other than Vice President Dick Cheney himself.
And that's because Cheney used that same phrase, irrefutable evidence, in September of 2002 during that period when the White House Iraq group under Karl Rove's tutelage had a day-by-day plan for coordinating the message that would come out in the media to advance the preparation of the population for war against Saddam Hussein.
And in that case, it was used in regard to the idea that Saddam Hussein, again, had begun to move toward the enrichment of uranium.
And he was saying that we had irrefutable evidence of that fact.
And of course, we know now there was no such thing.
It was simply a canard.
And that's what we have, again, in the case of the charge against Iran with regard to arming the Taliban.
I mean, there's absolutely no evidence for it.
And in fact, all of the evidence points in a different direction.
But Cheney clearly has been orchestrating the message on this for several weeks now.
And the interesting thing, and this is, I think, a slight departure from the picture that we have begun to get overall of a split within the administration between Cheney and his followers on one hand and the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense on the other.
I think this particular case departs slightly from that in the following sense, that for Nicholas Burns to have made that announcement, that pronouncement that we know that Iran is behind the arms going to the Taliban in Afghanistan, that meant that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to be a part of the deal that was made before he made the statement.
And I speculate in the piece that that's because Rice has an interest in getting stronger sanctions out of the U.N.
Security Council.
And in fact, Burns was in Paris at that point in order to get the French government to support stronger sanctions.
And clearly, this policy statement was aimed in part at putting more pressure on France to go along with the sanctions that we want and to build public opinion in France for that purpose.
That, of course, is not the primary reason that Dick Cheney wanted that statement to be made, but I think it's probably the reason that Condoleezza Rice agreed to it.
Either that or it was really forced on the State Department.
That's also a possibility, but you can see a conjuncture of interest here between Rice and Cheney on the specific point of increasing the pressure on Iran, or at least getting additional sanctions on Iran and by using this accusation to try to get more international support for that.
Well, what about the idea that Rice is telling the truth when she says that there's no daylight between her and Cheney on this?
I mean, it seems like if she was on board for, yeah, let's have a war that, I mean, isn't this the same model, basically, that they used against Iraq, which is we have to make it look like we tried diplomacy first and everything failed and so now we're forced into this and that kind of thing?
Well, I think that there is a very important point here that is worth bearing in mind, and that is that Condoleezza Rice was very much on board with the run-up to the war in Iraq.
She lent herself completely to that effort.
She was a vital part of the preparation of the American people for war.
I think we all remember her going on television in September in 2002 and talking about how we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
That was all, of course, part of Karl Rove's carefully calculated plan of manipulating the media, and she was very much a part of that as a member of the Whig, the White House Iraq group.
And therefore, she is a very weak read to rely on if we're looking to high-level officials to hold the line against Cheney.
I mean, I do believe that she's opposed to war against Iran, but at the same time, she is not the strongest read to rely on in this case.
And I would say the same thing about Robert Gates.
Gates also, I think, very clearly knows that an attack on Iran is crazy.
And he is trying to resist it.
But at the same time, like Condoleezza Rice, he is not the strongest of characters.
His background, like that of Condoleezza Rice, is somebody who has risen by going along with the boss.
And so therefore, we have to be very realistic about the personalities who are involved in the politics of the issue of the military option on Iran.
They need to be not just supported, but pushed by a very strong public pressure against war.
And I think that is an important point to bear in mind.
Yeah, exactly.
In fact, let's get back to that in a second, because the Democrats' role in this is worth highlighting, too.
But I want to share with you real quickly, I'm not sure if you saw the most recent issue of the American Conservative magazine, the one with Ron Paul on the front.
In the deep background column, Philip Giraldi writes, President George W. Bush has made the decision not to attack Iran this year, and will instead concentrate on both overt diplomacy and covert action to hinder its attempts to acquire nuclear weapons capability.
The decision was made based on Karl Rove's analysis that an attack on nuclear infrastructure in Iran would result in catastrophic U.S. gasoline prices, at least in the short run, which would damage Republican political prospects and would reduce Bush's approval rating to single digits.
Per Rove, it would become impossible to pass any new legislation for the remainder of Bush's term, and fading Republican hopes to hold the White House and regain Congress in 2008 would be severely damaged.
So, I guess, and it goes on there, but I'm not going to sit here and read the whole thing to you, but I guess the question is, if they are really weighing the domestic politics of this, and if Karl Rove has a pretty loud voice in this decision-making process, then I can't imagine that it would be more convenient for them to bomb them next year than this year.
Well, that's a very interesting point, and I must say that what Giraldi writes there makes sense to me.
Of course, I'm not aware of what its source might be and how good it is, but the logic of it seems very strong, very powerful.
And it does raise the question, if that is the case, if there's a political case for not attacking Iran that has been made to the president by Rove in 2007, then doesn't it apply to 2008 as well?
And the answer to that, I think, is the one that we've heard many times, and that is that, in the end, George W. Bush cares more about his legacy than he does about whether his popularity is in single digits or not.
And that's something, you know, it's obviously unknowable, but that has been a consideration that has been put forward.
I think Ayhersh has talked about that and other very well-informed journalists.
Right, only he has the courage to do what everybody knows must be done.
Yeah, and of course that becomes the only remaining rationale for not admitting that he's been terribly and tragically wrong in his policies and basically asking the forgiveness of the American people.
I mean, how else can he live with himself unless he does adopt that perspective on his own presidency?
And therefore that is a very credible way of understanding the position of George Bush on this issue.
And it doesn't mean that the decision is already a foregone conclusion, but it does mean that we cannot rest assured that the Rove logic will be, in the final analysis, deficient to prevent Bush from ultimately going to war.
I'm sure I've asked you this before, and I'm sorry if I'm just a broken record, but it just seems to me that if every excuse for bombing Iran is a red herring, basically, as Scott Ritter told me, the policy is regime change, disarmament is merely the excuse.
We've discussed over and over again how far they are from the ability to crank out atom bombs and so forth.
You have repeatedly debunked the accusations that Iran's government is behind the more sophisticated homemade land mines in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If all the excuses for bombing Iran are complete lies, then why bomb Iran?
What's the big deal?
Well, I think if memory serves, the last time we talked about this, there was a reference to Ahab and the whale, I'm not sure.
Oh, right, Dick Cheney and his insanity.
But in any case, I think we are in that sort of territory at this point, which is to say that Iran has become an obsessional concern on the part of the neoconservatives.
In part, this reflects the background going back to the end of the Cold War and the early 1990s, when Israel, under Prime Minister Rabin, adopted a secret strategy which has been documented in a book by a prominent Israeli journalist, a secret strategy to isolate Iran by making the case that Iran is the greatest threat to world peace.
And then, quickly following that, when the Clinton administration came into power in 1993 and wanted Israel to buy into the peace process, to negotiate with the Palestinians, part of the deal that was struck between Clinton and Rabin was that the Clinton administration would similarly take a very hard line against Iran.
And speak to isolate and weaken Iran in world politics.
And that was, in fact, the consistent policy of the Clinton administration until late in the administration, in the late 1990s.
The Clinton administration took a very, very hard line against Iran, which is not all that dissimilar from that of the Bush administration, with one exception, which was that Clinton, except for apparently one time around the Khobar Towers episode when Iran was blamed, apparently wrongly, for the bombing of U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia.
The Clinton administration did not plan or contemplate a war against Iran.
And that, of course, is the difference between Clinton and Bush policies.
But there has been, in the background of this, a very powerful anti-Iranian policy, a policy wave that began in the early 1990s and has certainly not expired.
And the neo-cons have piggybacked on that, the neo-cons in the Bush administration have piggybacked on that and carried it further.
And I would simply say that the neo-con position on Iran represents a kind of extreme version, an exaggerated version, of a dominant power policy of whittling down, reducing the power of any potential rival in a region which that dominant power wishes to maintain dominant military and political power over, in this case, the Middle East.
Benevolent global hegemony.
Yeah, except that it's not by any means benevolent.
It's based on pure power politics.
And, you know, the whole policy of the Bush administration, which talked about democracy and all that, I simply do not take it seriously, and I think that the evidence strongly supports the idea that that was simply another cover for the expansion of U.S. political military power in the Middle East.
Just the same as the United States had its cover for the war in Vietnam, talking about the threat of a wave of communist takeovers in Southeast Asia, that was never really believed by the Johnson administration or the Kennedy administration.
That was simply a cover for the position of the United States in Southeast Asia being reinforced and strengthened by defeating communist forces in South Vietnam.
So, you know, as a student of international politics, I simply don't believe that this is much more than the usual bad behavior of dominant powers.
Am I wrong when I remember Dick Cheney complaining about the sanctions and urging Clinton to open up trade and relations with Iran when he was the CEO of Halliburton in the 1990s?
You are correct.
That's a very interesting irony involved in the Bush administration policy that Dick Cheney, because of his business interests, was opposed to the use of sanctions by the Clinton administration against Iran.
And, in fact, there's some evidence that this business interest extended even to providing a technology that was useful for Iran's nuclear program.
Oh, no.
Say it ain't so.
In the 1990s?
That's right.
Yes.
I mean, I've seen at least one report indicating that the company was, in fact, involved in export of high technology that was useful for Iran's nuclear program.
And so, you know, you do have this new phenomenon, which is, you know, I think it's different from the Vietnam era that high-ranking bureaucrats in the national security realm have had their own business interests that, in some cases, you know, were reinforcing their part in regard to their position as officials later on or before, and in other cases were contradictory to it.
You know, we have the case of Richard Perle, of course, taking advantage of his past position in national security official positions to make lots of money as a consultant, as an arms salesman in other ways, as a consultant.
And that's kind of a model for how the new national security elite has made lots of money.
Right.
Well, and he was selling arms to the Saudis, right?
That's right.
Yeah, at the same time that he was bringing in that kook, Lawrence, or Laurent Mirawek, to say that Saudi Arabia is our next target.
Right.
So the national security elite makes no bones about the fact that they want to clean up in one way or another.
And if it means taking positions that may be opposed to the national security policy of the United States when they are out of power and in positions of business to reap rewards in business, then they will do that.
So that's a very important insight into the nature of the national security elite, no doubt about it.
And for me, and I'm sorry, because I know that you come from the political left, but for me, it's just the perfect argument for libertarianism.
I mean, the fact of the matter is, if Cheney had said to the shareholders of Halliburton, let's raise $500 billion and invade and occupy Iraq, he'd have been fired in a minute.
They would have laughed him right out of the CEO position, but you make him vice president and give him the ability to socialize his costs on everybody else and send the US Marine Corps and wave yellow ribbons and American flags around it.
Now Halliburton has their war.
Well, I don't know if you know me well enough to understand this, but in fact, this is where I do part ways with the traditional left position on analyzing US foreign policy and international politics.
I simply don't buy the idea that US national security policy has been a reflection of private economic interest or national economic interest.
I think that it is based on a combination of state bureaucratic interests and the conception of a dominant state interest that has obviously pushed US policy toward very unwise foreign military ventures.
So I definitely agree with you that the real problem is state bureaucratic interests and the bureaucrats behind them who, to his personal interests, override the interests of the nation, not of state bureaucracy, but of the nation.
Now, let's get back to what you said about the origin of this policy.
It was a deal that Bill Clinton made with Yitzhak Rabin, who, to my understanding, was the nicest of the Israeli prime ministers.
He was actually trying to do some deals, but the trade-off was we have to start persecuting Iran.
Just yesterday, the House of Representatives, and I'm sorry I don't know if the Senate passed it too, I guess it was just the House so far, has passed this resolution praising Israel for trying so hard to not kill civilians in last July's war and condemning Iran for threatening genocide against Israel and basically threatening genocide against Iran.
And this was, I guess it was Ron Paul, Representative Ron Paul and Denis Kucinich, I think were the only ones who voted against it, is that right?
I haven't seen that specific vote tally.
But of course, as we all know, this is a reflection of the fact that so many members of Congress have been bought by AIPAC for years and years.
This goes back many years now.
And it is a blight on the political system of this country that must be changed, must be removed.
AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
That's right, exactly, yes.
And this is the kind of thing where, ah geez, you know, Gareth Porter, you must be a Buchananite because it was Pat Buchanan who said that Congress is Israeli occupied territory.
You must be an anti-Semite or something, huh?
Well, that of course would have been the position of most political observers, you know, from center to right and to left in the past.
And I think that's changed now.
I think we now know enough about, when I say we, I mean most observers who are paying attention to, you know, what's happening, now understand enough about the undue influence of AIPAC on Congress and on the administration over the last two or three decades that this is no longer an extreme position.
It cannot be simply disregarded as a reflection of anti-Semitism or anti-Israeli feeling or anything like that.
This is a hard-boiled, objective view of the problem.
Right.
And you've, you and I have discussed on this show before the fact that the AIPAC, Israel lobby in America and the neoconservatives are almost 100% of the time to the right and to the more aggressive military stance than even the Likud party in Israel.
Well, that's right.
I agree with you entirely, and this is not well understood.
I think the general understanding of the relationship between the neoconservatives within the Bush administration and the Likud party in Israel is that somehow they were infudated to the Likud.
And that's not true at all.
I mean, I can tell you that I have spoken with somebody who worked for Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu, and who has very good insights into both the Likud party and the neocons, knows both very well, and who says that it's very clear that the neocons believe that they are the masters of the universe.
They're the ones who were telling Israel what to do.
They're the ones who believed that they knew what was best for both Israel and the United States.
So let's be very clear that the tale here was Israel's Likud party, and the U.S.
-based neoconservatives were the dog that was wagging that tail.
And yet, when we look at the run-up to the Iraq war, we can see even the oilmen eventually got on board for it, although Lawrence Eagleburger and James Baker and Brett Scowcroft and others wrote op-eds saying, hey, don't do this, this is not what we would have you do, etc.
They eventually got on board, basically, for the most part.
It seems like to me that, you know, pretty much everybody in the establishment had some kind of interest in going ahead and supporting the Iraq war.
But this time, it's much different.
It seems like it's just Chinese office and AIPAC and, you know, I don't know, maybe Lockheed, but is there any other interest in America that wants to spread this war?
No, I think you're right, Scott.
I mean, it's an extraordinary set of interests that are arrayed now against war with Iran.
And of course, the American public is very, very strongly opposed to it.
There's no ambiguity about that.
We have the smallest liver of a set of interests pushing for war and having a possibility of succeeding in the entire history of this country without any doubt.
And let me say that, you know, I would not try to argue that some wars in the past were pushed forward by popular acclaim.
That was not the case.
We've certainly had wars that were waged because of minority interest rather than the interest of the majority.
That's very clear.
But this is extraordinarily small as a group of individuals and what they represent in this country.
And yet it's not just nine out of 10 Republicans with the obvious and glaring exception of Dr. Ron Paul, but it's also, I forget how many, there are two exceptions on the Democratic side, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel are both against war with Iran.
But all the rest of them say that all options must be on the table in the Democratic Party, too.
Yes, this is an absolutely fascinating aspect of the situation, isn't it?
Because you have, as I've just said, an extraordinary range of interests who clearly oppose the war outside the political realm.
And yet within the two party structures, the candidates who are vying for the presidency almost unanimously say that the military option must be on the table.
And this, to me, represents a phenomenon that we should study much more carefully and talk about, which is that political institutions, particularly political parties, are really in a way like the dinosaurs.
They have huge bodies and tiny brains, and they're very, very slow to adjust to new realities.
If we accept the idea that the dinosaur disappeared from the earth because it was too slow in adapting, I think we get the picture as to what the problem is with our two major parties.
They have sort of had this idea that in order to succeed politically, you have to be tough on national security policies, and then they equate having the military option on the table with being tough, and that's all they need to know.
They're not interested in any more realities or any more facts.
And I think what we have here is a dysfunctional set of political parties which are showing just how badly adapted they are to the realities of the post-9-11 world.
And, you know, the people on TV, when they keep interviewing Ron Paul, they keep saying to him, yeah, but, you know, you have such low poll numbers inside the Republican Party, and he keeps answering them, hey, 70% of the American people are against this war.
And if the Republicans want to have a chance against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or whoever it is in 2008, they need me.
They need an anti-war Republican to do it.
And apparently his complaint is completely legitimate.
The Republican Party does not get it, and they're not going to get it in time.
You're right.
They're not going to get it, and they're going to go over the ledge.
They're going to go like the Lemmings.
They're going to jump into the sea in 2008.
I guess it would be dishonest to say I hate to be hyperbolic because I will do that, but this is basically, eh, see, I don't know.
I mean, there's an exact definition for this in the Constitution, and I guess the current situation is outside that definition.
But it seems to me like what we're talking about here basically is treason.
We're talking about not a war that, you know, America should fight anyway and also it happens to be in the interests of Israel.
We're talking about the Israel lobby, really, as, again, mostly Americans and to the right and more hell-bent on war than the actual government of Israel.
But they're trying to drag this country into another war in the interests of a foreign state, and it's a war that is going to be an absolute disaster for the United States of America in terms of the possibility of losing ships in the Persian Gulf to their supersonic missiles, losing mass numbers of American soldiers in Iraq.
If the Shia rise up upon American bombing Iran, their ability to disrupt the stability such as it is in Pakistan, the nuclear-armed Muslim nation, not to mention the oil prices through the roof and, you know, major financial turmoil, this is not in the interests of America at all.
It's clearly not in the interests of America at all that we certainly have a right to hope that this can be avoided.
I think that is certainly the way that we need to think about it.
And I would simply say that, you know, by any objective measure, you know, the real threat to American security today in the Middle East comes not from Iran, it comes from Pakistan.
And to me, this is the great unanswered question.
Why is it that the news media in the United States have failed to grasp the fact, the clear fact, that it is Pakistan that is the state that is the source of support and harboring of terrorists in the Middle East, not Iran?
You know, this is so clear.
I mean, you know, one does not expect the Bush administration now to be honest about it, but it certainly seems fair to me to demand that the news media be more forthright in their coverage of events to reflect this reality.
In your article today, you talk about how Musharraf has had to make all these deals and truces with Islamic separatists in Waziristan up there, I guess, in the northwest kind of wild, untamed regions of Pakistan there.
And I guess it was Ivan Eland who pointed out on this show just a few weeks back that it's because of the perpetual American occupation of Afghanistan next door that Musharraf, the dictator in Pakistan, has been put in such a tenuous position that he's been forced to make all these deals that actually protect all the terrorists that serve as the excuse for our government to continue their occupation of Afghanistan.
Well, I agree with that, and I want to make it clear that I'm not someone who is dead set on winning the war in Afghanistan.
I think that we're going to ultimately have to admit that there is no military solution in Afghanistan, that it was never possible to have a military solution in Afghanistan, and that we're going to have to come to grips with that reality.
But let me say, and this is a point that I've not made about the article that I wrote, I think that the U.S. command, the NATO command, which is led by U.S. General Daniel McNeil, is very, very cognizant of the fact that the Cheney line, the anti-Iranian line being taken by Dick Cheney, is very dangerous to the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
Because what it is doing is basically giving complete cover to Musharraf and to the Pakistani supporters of the Taliban who are not only making their deals, but tolerating the attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
And I did not write this in my article, but I do believe that there is a very grave danger that over the next two to four years, maybe even sooner, there will be a major crisis in Afghanistan, a threat of complete defeat of U.S. and NATO forces by the Taliban supported from Pakistan, and that there will be then calls for U.S. military intervention in Pakistan.
And I think that that is, in fact, a greater danger than war against Iran at this point.
I think it's more likely that we will intervene militarily in Pakistan than that we will attack Iran.
And that's because, and I think it's going to, the pressure there is going to come from the U.S. military.
I think there already are demands from some people in Afghanistan in the military that they should go into Pakistan to clean out the bases.
So this is the future crisis that we have before us because of the combination, of course, of the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and the policy that we have pursued of basically protecting the Pakistani interests who are allied against Iran, which is why we have done so.
I mean, that's why Dick Cheney continues to coddle the Pakistani government and to avoid any harsh rhetoric about the policy of Pakistan towards Afghanistan.
Because Pakistan isn't a lie against Iran.
And even if the American military isn't brought to total defeat, like you're saying, a massive crisis in Afghanistan, it could also just be a coup d'etat or a successful attack against Musharraf.
He's been, I guess I've heard at least from one or two sources that there have been as many as a dozen attempts against his life.
Of course, yes.
There are various ways that this could be brought about.
I agree.
There are a number of different scenarios that could make it possible or provide the rationale for such an intervention.
But I think that we must become more aware of the fact that the U.S. military in Afghanistan is under pressure.
It's being squeezed here between Cheney's anti-Iran policy and his pro-Pakistan policy and the fact that it's strengthening the Taliban and it's creating the circumstances, creating the conditions in which there could be a major crisis in Afghanistan, which would result in growing pressure for U.S. intervention militarily in Pakistan, which would be, of course, an even greater tragedy and a greater farce.
The journalist is Gareth Porter.
He writes for IPS News and for The American Prospect.
You can find all his articles at antiwar.com/porter.
And his newest articles is in the top headlines today at antiwar.com.
New Iran arms claim reveals Cheney military rift.
Thanks very much for your time today, Gareth.
Appreciate it.
Thanks for having me again, Scott.