All right, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest on the show is Phil Giraldi, former CIA and DIA counterterrorism officer.
He's a contributing editor to the American Conservative Magazine, a regular at antiwar.com, where he's got a new article up today, Will D.C. Thump, the Syrian domino right there at the top of the highlights section.
And of course, he's the executive director of the Council for the National Interest Foundation.
Welcome back, Phil.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How about you?
I'm doing pretty good.
Appreciate you joining us here today.
Will Washington thump the Syrian domino?
Are they already thumping it?
Yeah, I think all indications are that there is a semi-secret program going on to support the so-called rebels in Syria, and this is manifesting itself in various ways.
Obviously, Hillary has worked out some deals with the Turks and with some other Arab states, all of whom have some kinds of interests in terms of what they want to see come out of Syria, but it's the kind of situation like Libya where you don't know what's going to come out.
Well, now, you were stationed in Turkey for years back when you were in the CIA, right?
Yeah.
So you're very familiar with this region and obviously know a hell of a lot more about the neighbors over there than the most of us.
And Syria is one that I think because it's none of America's interest really whatsoever, even from the most imperialist viewpoint, it really has nothing to do with anything except maybe where the Israelis get their water from or something like that.
We don't really know that much about it.
So obviously, you have this minority dictatorship and plenty of people in Syria who would like to overthrow it.
But then I'm reading all these things about the Saudis, Prince Bandar organizing al-Qaeda-like dudes to go over there and intervene.
You have the so-called Free Syrian Army stationed in Turkey, which has somewhere between 30 and a couple of hundred people, and they're putting together, aren't they, one of these governments in exile or transitional government like Libya and all that kind of thing?
It looks like it's on, huh?
Well, there are a number of groups obviously that are playing this game.
I mean, if you look at where the so-called resistance or rebels come from, a lot of them are actually in Western Europe or Washington.
And these people, as usual, are pulling the strings from a distance and recognizing that they need support or they want support from the people in Washington and elsewhere that would like to see Assad go.
It's a very confusing situation.
I mean, Syria in a lot of ways is very similar to Lebanon.
It's very similar to Iraq in that it's not a real country.
It has a number of ethnic and other groups that were combined artificially into a country in 1921.
And as a result, if Syria starts to unravel, you're going to see a lot of competing interests that essentially will probably make Syria no longer a viable state.
And this indeed might be the real objective to all of this.
I mean, it seems that the neocons are supporting this anti-Assad policy, and if they're supporting that, they must see something in it for Israel.
And I would suggest that Syria kind of breaking up pretty much like happened in Iraq and pretty much like as has happened in Lebanon might be the objective.
Yeah, as David Wilmser wrote years ago, we'd like to expedite the chaotic collapse in Syria so that then we can mold how it goes forward from there.
But they're not going to be able to mold it other than ensure that there's a permanent crisis there, I guess.
Well, you know, but there are certain advantages to having a permanent crisis.
Syria is not a major military power by any means, but at the same time, it is a significant state in that region.
Is that David Wilmser in the background barking?
Yeah, it's actually my corgi.
His name is Oscar.
He's a grouchy guy, and I think it must mean that the mailman has arrived.
Oh, he's a good dog.
Well, hopefully he'll stop.
But anyway, Wilmser and others have said that it would be basically good for Israel if a lot of these states were to become disempowered, shall we say.
Well, and of course, Syria is Iran's last ally in the region, too.
Right.
Which is why countries like Saudi Arabia have been on Syria's case.
You know, there's always kind of, if you look at the complicated relationship and everything like that, there's always an explanation as to why these alignments are taking place the way they are.
And Syria has been playing this game for years, and of course, Saudi Arabia's been playing this game for years, and also playing games in Lebanon.
And, you know, there are all kinds of alignments that are at stake here.
But this really underlines the whole issue.
The issue is we really don't understand, we particularly as Americans, don't understand what's going on there.
And yet we have people like Hillary Clinton and John McCain jumping in with both feet.
Well, you look at it, I mean, right after the Iraq war, Ariel Sharon said, you better not stop there.
Syria and Iran and Libya must be next on your list.
And really, even without, you know, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith running the Pentagon, it seems like the Democrats are really getting this agenda done a hell of a lot better than George Bush, who likes to talk about world revolution all the time.
Yeah, it's, you know, I think if you look at, now in retrospect, you look at some of the decisions that George Bush made, George Bush was actually somewhat restrained on a number of occasions.
He was in fact a guy who was pushing back against Cheney against taking any kind of military action against Iran.
If only we had his patience and wisdom now.
That's right.
What a scary thought that is.
But it actually is true.
And it seems to me that you alluded to my article today, I start off my article saying I was at a conference and one of the speakers said, you know, this administration, the Barack Obama administration embraces every conflict with both hands.
It's quite unbelievable when you think in terms of what we expected, maybe three years ago when we elected this guy.
Well, I expect him to be as bad.
I wouldn't necessarily, I don't know if you could find quotes me saying he'll be even worse than Bush, but maybe.
I mean, he did go much further in his AIPAC speech in 2008 saying, Oh yeah, Jerusalem shall forever be the undivided capital of Israel, which no American president or Hillary Clinton or anybody had ever said before.
Yeah, that's true.
I have many, but let's point out that many people campaigning to become president have taken that position.
It's, it's something that's almost mandatory.
So if Assad fall, well, is Assad going to fall?
Cause it seems like he's holding on pretty tight and all the, you know, Saudi and Qatari backed special forces teams in the world can't seem to overthrow him.
And, you know, I don't, did you see the thing in the Guardian where they're saying Bandar is basically rounding up the new generation of Al Qaeda and sending them to Syria here and America told him, go ahead.
That's what it sounds like.
It's an interesting report.
You know, I don't know to what extent it's true or not, but I, I don't like, we're going to need you to find out for us, Phil.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that'll be my next job.
But I said, I suspect that, so that, uh, that Assad is a lot stronger than, uh, than we are hearing this, uh, this free Syrian army, for example, is claiming to have 10,000 soldiers.
I don't believe any of that.
I think their, their numbers are probably a 30 or 40 guys.
And you know, there, you could probably gather them all in one room and feed them pizza or something like that.
Yeah.
That's what Margulies said too, that there are a couple of dozen men.
Yeah.
That's what I suspect.
But the, uh, the, uh, Assad has considerable support in, in various communities within Syria, including the Christians.
And there've been huge pro-government rallies in Damascus.
Huge.
Right.
Which is, which virtually go unreported in the U S press.
You could see it in the Guardian and some of the European press, but, but, uh, the U S is not, uh, reporting much of this, but you know, that's typical.
We haven't, we seen this scenario play out before.
Uh, yes.
Well, and this is the thing where I always get stuck on stupidity or the plan.
Can they really be so foolish?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, they can.
I mean, it's, it's, uh, was, you know, what are you going to wind up with the end at the end of the day, you're going to wind up with a Syria that's broken up, broken up maybe into component parts, uh, or you're going to wind up with a Assad, uh, in, in kind of a siege mode where he's basically doing things that otherwise he might not do.
And so who knows?
Right.
Well, and of course, uh, the, the more America, uh, the Americans beat their chest about it, the more the Syrians who might lean Assad solidify their support for him.
Same thing happens in Iran every day, I think.
All right.
We'll be right back with Phil Giraldi after this guys.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and we're talking with Phil Giraldi, former CIA and DIA officer, writes for the American conservative antiwar.com.
And he's the executive director of the council for the national interest foundation.
We're talking about Syria, which means we're talking about Iran too.
And I wonder what the new IAEA report, uh, just out, uh, whether you're impressed Phil and whether your CIA friends are taken aback by all the new information in the IAEA report.
Well, I think, um, well, first of all, I think a lot of people have noticed that the report basically doesn't say a whole lot without qualifying everything it's saying that basically it's admitting that, uh, a lot of what it is concluding is, is surmise or it's suggestions that something might be so, but there's very little in the way of hard evidence.
And the other thing I w I would point out, and I've pointed out to a number of friends since the report came out is that, you know, the IAEA doesn't have any intelligence function.
They aren't able to go out and collect information.
So the information that is appearing in this report or has appeared in this report, I believe, uh, all came from either Israel or the United States.
And as a result, one would have to say that the information is somewhat suspect.
Yeah.
Well, the thing about it that got me was I actually was surprised that they used the so-called smoking laptop.
I mean, I know not everybody in the world reads Gareth Porter or anything, but there's been a lot of doubt cast on that thing.
And the accusations in it fell apart years ago, Phil, they're going to use lasers to enrich uranium up to, or not enrich, but, uh, transform uranium into uranium tetrafluoride, this green salt, which is useless.
It has to be uranium hexafluoride gas to feed it into a centrifuge to enrich it to anything.
And so, uh, and it was just a blueprint for a bench level experiment in green salt.
Like, oh, I'm supposed to be running scared about this.
I've been mocking this ridiculous accusation for years and, and Gareth Porter and Scott Ritter and, uh, every Iran expert from, uh, left to right and all over the place.
And even in the Washington post, even David Albright himself got an argument with David Sanger at the New York times about their misuse of the term warhead.
When they're talking about a delivery vehicle and a delivery vehicle that couldn't hold a nuke anyway.
I mean, this stuff is bogus.
Yeah.
And indeed, as, as I'm sure you're completely aware, uh, there's even been some doubt about the legitimacy of these laptops that they might have been plants by either the CIA or Mossad, uh, to discredit the Iranians.
I mean, you know, when I was first reading, I was thinking, are they talking about other laptops?
Because it seemed to me that the, that those laptops had been so thoroughly discredited that nobody could even be referring to them.
I know that's, I thought too.
Oh, a new laptop.
No, the same old laptop.
Really?
Oh, okay.
Great guys.
Yep.
So anyway, yeah.
The whole story is ridiculous.
And I, you know, the question becomes to what extent are we seeing basically a policy that's driven by the desire to, to keep Iran marginalized and as the constant enemy for whatever purposes.
And, and eventually, uh, because eventually this kind of policy is going to lead to war and there's no question about it.
Where, uh, how about this bill in the Senate now where us diplomats cannot speak, it will be illegal for us diplomats to even speak to Iranian diplomats.
I mean, what kind of a law or bill is that?
I mean, what is the point of diplomacy if you can't have your diplomats speak to the people that are giving you problems to try to resolve those problems?
We are, we are like a bunch of lunatics running around, uh, and, and just making our situation worse and worse and worse.
And I just really can't believe it anymore.
Yeah.
I mean, it does seem like they want war.
And I guess this is one of those stupidity or the plan questions like we were talking about with Syria before the break there, where it seems like everything America does just solidifies support for their regime over there.
And even though a lot of people hate the regime, we threaten their civilian nuclear program all day.
And that does nothing but make people want to rally around their government the same way.
If anyone was threatening us, even right-wing Republicans would rally around Barack Obama.
In fact, we saw in the debate the other night, they rally around Barack Obama when it comes to any matter of foreign policy, as long as he's violent, you know, if they criticize him, it's for not being violent enough, even though they're his biggest dissenters, supposedly these Republicans, it's the same thing over there.
And, uh, I've read, I don't know, a hundred different experts.
I can go ahead and assert it as a fact myself.
Now, even though I've never been there, they all, every man, woman, and child in Iran hates the Mujahideen-e-Khalq and consider them the worst traitors, this communist terrorist cult of bombers who apparently, and maybe you can comment on this, uh, bombed a missile depot in Iran just the other day.
They have no support inside that country at all.
And every time we support them and they blow up something there, all that does is make people love the Ayatollah like he's George Bush with a 90% approval rating.
Where am I wrong?
Well, no, you're absolutely right.
And one of the interesting aspects about this, uh, you know, I've discussed this with other former intelligence officers who, who know about Iran and Iranian operations, and we all agree that the U.S. and Mossad have virtually no capability inside Iran.
They don't have a lot of agents running around that are able to assassinate people or able to blow things up.
They're doing all this stuff through the Mujahideen-e-Khalq.
So the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, which our Congress is trying to remove from the terrorist list, is basically a major terrorist organization.
That's basically all they do.
That's all they're capable of.
That's operating inside Iran and it's operating on behalf of Mossad and CIA.
And so this stuff is really dangerous.
And you know, you get the, you get by projection, you get this kind of a situation like we had in lead up to Iraq, where you have this indigenous group, which you're relying on for information and relying on to do things for you.
And they're kind of calling the shots.
They can tell you what they want to tell you.
They can, they can spin it whatever way they want to spin it.
And meanwhile, they're killing Iranians and we're, we're kind of, you know, sitting on the sideline and wondering, will the Iranians ever react to this?
If the Iranians ever react to this, they're going to have to kill some of our people.
Is that what we want?
Well, and look, this Myram Rajavi lady, who's like Bo and Tia, the Heaven's Gate cult over there, they make Ahmed Chalabi look like Ron Paul or something.
That's an interesting metaphor, Scott.
But yeah, I was trying to think of someone who, you know, whose word can be trusted, who's a decent, reasonable person.
And he was the first one that sprang to mind.
But anyway, yeah, I mean, these people are nutcases.
And, and plus, you know, it will keep, we keep forgetting, they killed a bunch of Americans back in the 70s.
When I, when I was at CIA training squad, I think I may have told you the story already.
The, the exercise where they started out to show us how you could really get in trouble overseas.
They did a simulation of, of the attack that was carried out by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq on two Air Force, US Air Force officers that were being driven in from the airport to the city back in the 70s.
And they did a simulation of this whole thing to show how it took place, how these people were killed in a matter of seconds and, and the attackers took off.
But that was the Mujahideen-e-Khalq who did it.
Yeah.
And, and, you know, people just go and search MEK at state.gov.
You can find reports from just last year, the 2010 terrorism report has an entire write-up on this.
And there's a Rand Corporation study and all kinds of great stuff.
In fact, Justin's recent article about the MEK, two articles ago at antiwar.com is full of links to, you know, all kinds of scholarship and documentaries and everything about the MEK.
And they really are kooks.
I mean, they make David Koresh seem like the most reasonable of preachers.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
I mean, this is, this is a cult and it's, it's also a, it has, it has all kinds of other, you know, overlays in terms of how they see the world politically and so on and so forth.
And, and these are not people that, that are friends of ours.
And as, as Justin did point out.
They're friends of Mitt Romney.
Yeah.
And they're friends of a lot of people that they pay $50,000 a crack to go and speak for them.
And you know, is this what our country has come down to?
We have, we have a bunch of people who should know better, former senior officials of the U S government going around and speaking in favor of the, of these idiots.
I don't get it.
Yeah.
I mean, it really is crazy.
Look at the list.
It's all these former generals and the very highest level think tankers and Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor and all of this.
Right.
Yeah.
And they're all getting paid very heavy fees to do this.
This is, this is widely known.
And the fact is that, you know, they, what do these people think are they doing?
Do they think they're doing something good for the United States by, by getting these people off the terrorism list so we can use them to carry out terrorist acts inside Iran?
Is that the whole justification in their minds for this?
I, you know, I, yeah.
McInerney even said, so that's exactly what he said was, we've got to take them off the terrorist list so we can use them to kill people in Iran.
So the NIAC website there.
Well, I mean, you know, this, this underlines the fact that we, we have become the rogue nation and, and the stuff we do is just, would have been unthinkable even, even, uh, 10 years ago, I hope in the United States, but now all this stuff is routine where we just, we, we, we do these things and nobody seems to care.
Some people do.
Thanks Phil, for being one of them and for writing all about it all the time.
I sure do appreciate it.
And your time on the show as always.
Thanks, Scott.
Take care.
Phil Giraldi, everybody.
That's, uh, the council for the National Interest Foundation, antiwar.com, the American conservative magazine too.
