08/06/07 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

All right, my friends, welcome back to Antiwar Radio.
I'm Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
I'm Scott Horton.
And introducing today's guest, welcoming him back to the show, really, I should say, Gareth Porter.
He's a historian and a journalist, writes for IPS News and for the American Prospect.
You can also find his writings at antiwar.com/porter.
Welcome back groups.
And if I understand you right from this antiwar.com article, you're saying that recent statements by State Department flunky Ryan Crocker seem to indicate that they're, well, it indicates their motivation behind the lies that you and I have so oftentimes on this show, deconstructed about Iran supplying the bombs that are killing our troops in Iraq.
Is that right?
Well, that's right.
I mean, what's the Crocker's statement right after the second US-Iran meeting in Baghdad conveyed, and not very much attention was paid to this, I'm afraid, in the media, was that what the United States is now demanding of Iran is not that they stop providing arms to the Shiite militants or Shiite militias in Iraq, but that they use their influence with these Shiite militias to stop attacking coalition troops or to oppose the al-Maliki government in some fashion.
Now, this is obviously an important distinction because it suggests that, at least for the State Department, and I think it's fair to say for the Secretary of Defense Gates as well, that what they would like to do is to get Iran to actually intervene politically in Iraq on our side, basically to use the influence that they acknowledge Iran has with Shiites generally, and particularly Shiites who are, you know, involved in militant anti-coalition, anti-occupation activities, that they get them to get on side, that is to say, to stop their activities.
Now, that's a very ambitious aim, of course, diplomatically for the United States.
And what I would typically point out that this is an aim that is specifically, you know, the aim of the State Department and Defense Department, but not of the Vice President, though, because in other words, what they want is to actually get Iran to help in Iraq.
That's their objective.
But for the Vice President, I would say that the anti-Iran propaganda about providing arms is really a way of building the case for war, as we have seen many times shown.
What we're talking about is a dysfunctional administration, where you have two lines of policy, one line of which is ostensibly at least aimed at some diplomatic aim of getting Iranian cooperation in Iraq, the other one of which is simply a propaganda aim to build the case for war.
So Rice and Gates, they're not trying to build a case for war, but they got on board this propaganda that we've suffered over the last eight months that says that, well, and really for a year before that is when Bush really first started mentioning it back in 2006.
But anyway, all this propaganda about Iran being behind the bombs that are killing our guys is basically, you're saying, meant to bolster the American diplomats and the State Department's case to make to Iran that, you know, listen, we really want your help in dealing with these militias or we're going to keep accusing you of being responsible for their behavior.
Is that basically it?
That's right.
It's really been a pressure tactic.
It's part of a broader strategy, which, you know, certainly involved the toughening of the military posture, at least earlier this year, of keeping implicit, keeping the threat of war on the table, as it were.
That's certainly part of the pressure on Iran to help us try to get out of Iraq on our terms rather than on, you know, terms which would involve a timetable for withdrawal, I think it's fair to say.
Now, which militias are we talking about?
Because all this vagary just drives me absolutely insane.
The militants, the insurgents, the bad guys, and nobody, especially when it's our government making accusations, they're never specific.
They never say, you know, the Al-Fadil militia or whatever, the break off from the Mahdi Army or the break off from the Badr Brigade, or they always just say militants.
Well, that's true.
In terms of the general propaganda theme, it's always generalized.
What is happening, interestingly, though, is that they are now beginning to say more explicitly that the majority of the Shiite militias that are giving American troops problems, American and British troops problems, are associated with the Mahdi Army.
And they're claiming that these are rogue elements who have broken off from the Mahdi Army.
But this is not at all clear.
I mean, you know, this is a very ambiguous situation.
It's not at all clear that there's no link up, there's no relationship among all these groups.
The fact is that the United States intelligence really does not have a very good fix on, you know, the relationships among these groups.
And it's reasonable to assume that they, in fact, are cooperating with one another and that they still have an allegiance to the Mahdi al-Fadir and that their aims are essentially nationalist in nature.
That is to say they are fighting American troops because they believe that that's the only way to get the full independence of Iraq.
And that, of course, is an announced aim of Muqaddad al-Fadir himself.
He's very explicit about that.
So what I'm saying is that it's not at all clear that the propaganda line that these are rogue elements is, in fact, accurate at all.
Or that, whether they're rogue elements or not, that Iran is in any way behind it.
Because, as you say, if there's a Shiite leader who's least likely to be doing the bidding of the Iranians, it would be Sadr rather than the guys from the Supreme Council, the Badr Brigades, or the Dawa Party, right?
Well, that's exactly right.
I mean, there's no question at all that Sadr has his own agenda.
It is not the Iranian agenda at all.
It is something that he has decided on for his own reasons for both nationalist and Shiite motivation.
And that Iran's links with these groups, as I point out in an earlier article, are basically because Iran, for its own national interest, needs to have allies in Iraq.
And that means that it has to have good relations with all the Shiite factions.
In other words, the Iranian assumption, like everyone else's assumption, is that the Shiites in Iraq will dominate politically.
That's a foregone conclusion.
Nobody believes the Sunnis are going to come back into power.
And therefore, to be the next-door neighbor of Iraq under those circumstances for Iran means that they must ensure that they have good relations with all of the Shiite factions.
Because let's face it, this is an extremely unstable situation.
The al-Maliki government is not popular.
Its hold on power is extremely tenuous.
The Sunnis have pulled out their representatives from the National Assembly.
The Shiite faction of Sadr have also pulled out.
And therefore, it's a very weak government.
And the Iranians would be crazy, would be irrational, not to have good relations with all of the Shiite factions.
So as I say in the earlier article a couple weeks ago, they must, in fact, have relations, good relations with the factions, which means if they're going to be in armed resistance, that they're not going to say, no, we're not going to support you on that.
Tell me what you say about these numbers.
I want to know if you think that this corresponds to reality at all.
I'm reading from the Jerusalem Post.
It's an Associated Press article, for whatever that's worth.
Rogue Shiite militia fighters said to be armed and trained by Iran were responsible for nearly three-quarters of attacks that killed or wounded Americans in Baghdad last month.
The number two U.S. commander in Iraq said Sunday.
Lieutenant General Raymond Odeniro said factions that have broken away from radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army were believed responsible for most of the attacks.
He said military successes against al-Qaeda left a void being filled by the rogue militiamen, which, as you say at least, they're not blaming it all on Sadr himself here.
But what about that?
This is the quote they end with.
We knew this was coming, but there's been a shift, he told the Associated Press in an interview.
Does that correspond to reality at all, that three-quarters of the attacks against Americans in the last month were by Shiites?
I certainly don't have access to alternative figures.
It does sound very, very high.
And it is certainly possible, it's possible that temporarily the Sunni and al-Qaeda attacks have been reduced.
But I think what you're looking at there is the result of the specific situation in a brief time period in which the Sunnis have probably reduced their attacks.
This, of course, is something that they're going to exploit for all it's worth because of the administration's desire in a very much broader strategic way to align themselves with the anti-Shiite position in the Middle East.
You know, the administration is in a very strange position in which it is supporting a Shiite government in Iraq, which is aligned with Iran, but at the same time wants to posture itself as being anti-Iran and anti-Shiite forces more generally in Iraq.
And it's doing this in alliance with some very unsavory regimes and forces, Sunni forces and regimes, in the broader Middle East region.
So it's going to produce some very odd alliances, some very odd positions on the part of this administration.
This is one reflection of that.
Yeah, you know, I don't mean to go too far down this road, but I have to complain about the mass media there.
I've only ever heard half of what you just said on TV.
Oh yeah, Bush, he's against Iran and Iraq.
Never, ever, ever, even on C-SPAN, on an hour-long interview on the Charlie Rose show, anything, have I ever heard anyone on TV, maybe on Frontline.
But even then, I don't think I've ever heard anyone on TV say, America is backing the Iran factions in Iraq.
You know, I turn on TV and I see everything anti-Iran, anti-Iran, anti-Iran, and then I go to antiwar.com and I read an article by a journalist on the scene who says, boy, the Iran factions backed by America are really taking a beating.
You know, they're the ones that everybody doesn't want around here.
Well, that's exactly right.
I mean, that is a theme that only rarely is covered in any way by news media in this country.
And, you know, there are obviously anomalies here that the strongest political faction now supporting the al-Maliki government is, of course, as you put it, the Supreme Council.
And its barter core military arm is, in effect, still a Shiite militia, which is known to be involved in death squad activities.
The United States government is very well aware of that.
And, incidentally, in the news briefing by the U.S. command spokesman, Brigadier General Kevin Burgner, which I cite in my article on the American Prospect, one of the things that happened in that press briefing, which I did not allude to in my story, but which is interesting to note, is that he was asked, well, what about, you know, in the context of Shiite militias, what about the Badr Brigade?
What is our position on the Badr Brigade?
Aren't they carrying out violent activities?
Aren't they a problem in the context of destabilization of Iraq?
And Burgner's response was, well, I don't really have any information on that.
He simply refused to comment on it.
But the fact is, we know from some of the best reporting that has gone on that there is continuing death squad activity by the Badr Brigade, that this is as destabilizing as anything else going on on the part of Shiite militias.
But at this point, the Badr Brigade is one that the United States is not going to touch because they are aligned with, you know, one of the few factions that is actually supporting the government, and the United States simply cannot afford to take on the Badr Brigade at this point.
It's actually moved into the security services, has completely penetrated the security services of the Maliki government, and therefore, you know, the United States has not going to touch it.
So right now, are we at, you know, like an in-between point where we haven't completely switched sides to the Sunnis yet, we're preparing to, we're sort of backing now the Sunni insurgency, supposedly against Al Qaeda, and, you know, it's already been reported quotes of these guys saying, oh yeah, we're going to turn our guns on the Shiite militias just as soon as we can.
Well, I mean, this is another interesting aspect of the very contradictory position of the administration in the Middle East and in Iraq.
As you say, we are not, in fact, arming and supporting with financial support the former Sunni insurgents.
They still are Sunni insurgents, as you suggest.
They have not given up their ambitions, not their ambitions, but their motivation to oppose U.S. occupation.
They've only put it temporarily on the shelf.
Their primary enemy now is Al Qaeda, as it has been for the past year and a half, for the most part.
And the problem with the news coverage of this issue is that it has been portrayed as a military victory by the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, when, in fact, what it means is that the, for the first time, the U.S. military command has actually given up its position of refusing to come to a formal agreement with the Sunni insurgents and has provided them with the kind of support that the Sunni insurgents have been asking for for nearly two years.
So this is sort of like...
One difference in the situation today, as compared with a year ago or two years ago, is that the Sunni insurgents have agreed not to demand the timetable for withdrawal from the United States as a condition for the agreement that has been reached with U.S. command, whereby we arm them and give them money and basically make them part of the security forces in Anbar province.
And they, in a formal sense, agree not to oppose the national government.
But, of course, that is a completely worthless piece of paper.
We know perfectly well that once the United States is withdrawn or al-Qaeda is defeated, that they will be opposed to the national government of Iraq, as long as it has refused to make the kind of political compromises that the Shiite leadership we know is not willing to make.
Right, yes.
So, in fact, this has been portrayed in exactly the opposite way that it would be accurate to portray it.
Yeah, Sistani's made it clear over and over and over again he will not tolerate Baathist being brought back in the government, etc.
It sounds to me, you know, if I can make a weak analogy here, it sounds to me like America has now made a deal with the NVA to help us fight the Viet Cong, and we're calling that a victory, basically.
Well, that would be a stretch, but, you know, in effect, that in a way is what's going on, that we have given up completely the original notion that we had in going into Iraq, or not going into Iraq, but in the early, the first three years, the first four years of the war, we've given up the idea that we're going to defeat the Sunni insurgency, which is still opposed to the occupation and will oppose the occupation when it becomes, you know, politically and militarily feasible to do so again.
And we have welcomed them as supposed allies, we're playing with their allies of the U.S. counter-resurgency struggle because it is necessary for us to do so because the United States simply could not do it itself.
Now, this is interesting.
I had a long conversation with the retired general this past week, partly about what is going on now in Iraq, but it's interesting, the military perspective on this is that, yes, it's recognized that the U.S. military really cannot carry out a very useful, constructive role in Iraq militarily.
They're now staying behind the scenes, not publicly, but what they're staying behind the scenes is that we can be diplomats, the U.S. military, not we, the U.S. military can be diplomats and play the role of bringing people together in Iraq, and without that, the situation would be worse.
And when you ask them, well, then how do you justify the actual military role of the U.S. command in Iraq, well, there's really no answer.
They try to change the subject.
So this is, I think, symptomatic of the problem that the U.S. military has today in Iraq.
The military role has really, in a sense, been exhausted.
There's no more justification for it, and they know that, but they are not willing to admit it.
Therefore, and that's really a large part of the reason why the military goes along with George Bush's policy.
They are not willing to admit that their real military role has no longer had any justification in Iraq.
Now, the number one talking point of those who are for continuing this war and promoting the success of the surge and all these things is that if America leaves, things will be worse.
The pottery barn rule, and they basically talk as though there's no doubt about that.
It seems to me, particularly from the reporting of Robert Dreyfuss, your colleague in the American Prospect, that there's actually a very good chance that McTawdall, Sotter, and the Sunnis can work out a coalition government that they've been trying to, that their biggest obstacle is America's insistence that the Dalla Party rule the place, and that if America leaves, that actually the Civil War would probably come to an end pretty quickly.
Well, that's been my argument now for quite a while as well, that it's really the U.S. occupation that stands in the way of the best chance for reconciliation in Iraq.
And you're right that the best chance is indeed that McTawdall, Sotter, could reach an agreement with the Sunni nationalist insurgents, that there is a basis for that kind of a deal, which would be both anti-occupation and anti-Al Qaeda.
The problem that we now face, I think, is that the Dalla Party and the Supreme Council still want to exploit the U.S. occupation for as long as possible, so that they can gain the strongest possible position against the Sunnis, so that they can repress the Sunnis militarily to the greatest extent possible, and therefore they're not willing to reach any compromise, as long as the U.S. is willing to stay there to provide the maximum support for the government's position of suppressing the Sunnis.
Now, again, the United States is in a contradictory position because it is, in a way, supporting both sides.
And Maliki is not happy with that.
That's very clear that Maliki opposes the U.S. policy toward the Sunnis in Anbar province.
But they're still getting more out of the deal of U.S. occupation than they would, that is to say the government parties are getting more out of the occupation than they would, if the U.S. withdrew, because if the United States withdrew, it would mean that the government parties would be weakened in relation to al-Sadr.
And that's where you get the real issue.
What it comes down to is that the United States is supporting the CIA faction, which is willing to support the occupation.
And that means that the only real issue that we're fighting for is U.S. power position in Iraq, not anything else.
That is the definition of victory, is a successful colonialization of the place.
It's not to create a multi-ethnic government, it's to stay there forever.
If we have to back the Iranian factions because they're the only ones who will let us stay, then fine.
Yeah, and I would simply characterize it.
I think the best way to understand it is to prove that the United States is the supreme power in Iraq, that we are still, so to speak, the daddy in that part of the world.
That's what the fight is all about.
So I have this article from the agents France press from today about the accusations that Iranian weaponry is being funneled to the Taliban, killing our guys in Afghanistan, and this agents France press article says, but asked about U.S. suggestions that Iranian weaponry was being funneled into Afghanistan, where Taliban fundamentalists were mounting a reinvigorated insurgency six years after their ouster.
Karzai, the cape-wearing American puppet of Afghanistan, was noncommittal.
Quote, we have had reports of the kind you just mentioned.
We are looking into these reports, he said in the interview conducted Saturday.
He added that Afghanistan and Iran had, quote, very, very good, very, very close relations, thanks in part also to an understanding of the U.S. in this regard.
We will continue to have good relations with Iran.
We will continue to resolve issues, if there are any, to arise.
So it sounds to me as though Hamid Karzai is pouring water all over the vice president's office's accusations that Iran is benefiting the Taliban insurgency against American occupation in Afghanistan.
Gareth?
Well, yeah, I would simply say that Karzai has just gone through a bunch of meetings with top officials in Washington, and I suspect that they asked him not to directly deny the U.S. accusations, but that's kind of part of the deal now, that he makes ambiguous statements.
He doesn't confirm it.
He doesn't have to confirm it.
They don't want him to directly deny the statements that the vice president's office has been pushing and that have been endorsed very weekly or simply allowed to go through without direct opposition by the secretary of defense and have been picked up by the State Department.
So I would say that that's the result of a compromise deal that was made in Washington after Karzai arrived because it's very clear in the past that the Afghan government did not credit those reports.
And of course, more importantly, the U.S. command in Afghanistan did not credit them.
They've directly denied that there's any evidence to support that notion, that Iran is behind the arms that have been reaching the Taliban.
In fact, it's much more likely, as time has gone by, I've seen indications that make it much more likely that these arms have come through Iran but have been brought into Afghanistan by pro-Taliban elements that might have ties with the anti-Iranian government movement, that is to say, Balochi nationalists who oppose the central government of Iran, who do, in fact, have ties with the Taliban, according to many reports, both published and unpublished.
Oh, that's very interesting to note there.
Okay, Gareth Porter, IPS News, The American Prospect, let me ask you one more question here.
Last week's chain of events, absolutely astounding in the debate, Hillary Clinton called Barack Obama a wimp for saying he would go around the world talking with so-called rogue states' leaders.
He denied that he was a wimp and the next day at the Woodrow Wilson Center threatened to bomb Pakistan.
He was asked by the Associated Press the next day whether he would use nukes in this bombing of Pakistan that he has planned.
And he said, no, no, I wouldn't use nukes, and then was denounced by Hillary Clinton for promising not to use nukes on Pakistan.
Gareth Porter, what the hell is going on over there in the Democratic Party?
This is an astonishing series of events from any point of view.
First of all, one does have to take pretty much everything that is said on the campaign trail with a pinch of salt because it is said with an eye to positioning yourself, and there's a long history of candidates for the presidency, either in the primary or in the general election campaign, making statements about foreign policy, which are very far from what their real views are, or at least do not represent their considered views, and which, once they become president, are not carried out at all.
So I think we can pretty much discount very deeply what Barack Obama has said and what Hillary Clinton has said in their maneuvering for position in the Democratic primary campaign.
You think so?
But more seriously, I think there's a problem here in the way the media have covered this.
The people who are covering these stories unfortunately don't know anything about foreign policy, and so they have failed to point out that when Obama talks about strikes against high-value targets, as the way he put it in Pakistan, this is simply the policy that the Bush administration has been carrying out for the last two years.
I mean, this is well documented that the Bush administration has had unmanned aerial vehicles firing Hellfire missiles more than once, and I've counted at least three strikes which have been carried in the media, very clearly reported, very well reported in the media over the last two years, and they've done so clearly with the tacit agreement of the Musharraf regime.
The agreement, obviously if it was reached more than two years ago, was that the United States could carry out the strikes, but would not announce them, and the Pakistani government would deny that they know anything about it, if not denying that they occurred.
But of course the Pakistani government knew that they were taking place and would not oppose them.
So Obama, I don't know if he knows this or not, but he's simply carrying out the policy that the Bush administration has been carrying out for two years, which has not done any good at all, it's made absolutely no difference.
The real problem is that Obama is kind of not really aware of or thinking through what a real policy would be in Pakistan.
Right, well and you've explained on the show before too that the only reason that Musharraf has been forced to make deals with the tribal warlords up there in Waziristan is because of all the pressure on him due to the American indefinite occupation of Afghanistan next door, that if we come in there, done our little regime change or whatever, let Osama escape at Tora Bora and then packed up our stuff and left, then Musharraf would be in a much stronger position and would not have to compromise with these tribal warlords.
Instead, because of American policy, he's between a rock and a hard place and has had to compromise, leading to this safe haven that now we have the Democrats promising to bomb.
Well, I mean, there are two sides to this.
One is the impact that the Bush administration policies had, but I would say that we have to go back further and just point out that the Pakistani government, going back even before Musharraf, but certainly even strengthened under Musharraf, has been to align itself with the Taliban and al Qaeda, going back to the early to mid 1990s, and that policy has really never changed.
You know, what did change was that after September 11th, the Musharraf government was under terrific pressure to agree to cooperate with the United States and, you know, formally speaking, agreed to do that, but in fact, its policy has changed only slightly.
And the Bush administration would have to be completely, without any intelligence operative whatsoever, not to know that.
And we know, in fact, that the U.S. intelligence was very well aware that the Musharraf regime was, in fact, playing footsie with the Taliban and with al Qaeda ever since 2001, and that it got really worse after 2004.
And really, that's the only reason for the great victory in the first place, right, was that proved Donald Rumsfeld's light and fast forces worked so great, was that the Pakistanis called up the Taliban and said, that's it, retreat, come to Pakistan right now, and they did as they were told.
Well, I'm not even sure that, I wouldn't even put it that way.
I think that's giving Pakistan more credit than they deserve to say that they told the Pakistan to pack up.
I mean, I think the Taliban had to pack up because they were surrounded by Afghan forces, and the U.S. actually did carry out bombing around the cave complex where the al Qaeda leadership and the Taliban leadership were holed up.
So it was not really Pakistan's desire to have the Taliban and al Qaeda have to leave Afghanistan, but they had no choice.
And then they moved into Pakistan, and ever since then, you know, the Musharraf government has been giving them safe haven and has actually been protecting them, and, you know, throwing a few scraps of al Qaeda leaders, when necessary, to the United States to fend off pressures.
But basically have been able to carry out the policy of providing safe haven to the Taliban, and they're doing that for their own strategic reasons, because the Taliban and al Qaeda are allies against India.
And so that's really the underlying motivation for Musharraf in Pakistan.
All right, well, I've already kept John longer than I promised, so let me let you go.
Everybody, Gareth Porter, he's a historian and a journalist who writes for IPS News.
You can find all his IPS News articles at antiwar.com/porter, and you can also read him in The American Prospect.
Thanks very much for your time today, Gareth.
We'll be on as always, Scott.
Thanks.