03/28/08 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

Well folks, the surge is working and you can tell by the giant pile of dead bodies, stacked not unlike cordwood, as is becoming the custom in Iraq, 225 Iraqis and 4 Americans killed yesterday, over 500 wounded as the, well at least, factions of the Mahdi army and the Badr brigade, Shiite factions mostly in the south of Iraq, fighting it out.
One of those sides is the government, the other not, and to help sort some of this out for us is the renowned historian Gareth Porter.
He's also a freelance journalist who writes for Interpress Service for the American Prospect and other places, Huffington Post, and you can find all his IPS archives at antiwar.com slash Porter.
And his most recent article we ran yesterday, it's Sodder Offensive Shows Failure of Petraeus Strategy.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
Hi Scott, how are you?
I'm doing good.
Good to have you on here and, well I have to tell you, all we've talked about the surge, and we have, in all your many appearances on this show, really bent over backwards to differentiate between the Sodderists and the Badr Corps Hakeem faction on the Shiite side, but I think what we've been really nervous about is the idea of the civil war between the concerned local citizens, the former Sunni insurgency, the sons of Iraq now working for the United States, and the Mahdi Army and or Badr Corps, and yet it looks like the tinderbox blew up in another direction.
It's an all-out fight, it seems like, in the south of Iraq between at least portions of the Mahdi Army, as it's being reported, and the Badr Brigades.
Can you explain to us what's going on, how this started, and where we're at right now?
Well, this is a very, very big development.
It's a huge story, which is very complex, as you've suggested, I think, in your introduction, in the sense that it really involves all of the pieces on the board, if you will, in Iraq.
It's really a strategic move by Muqtada al-Sadr, on one hand, countering a strategy which has been adopted by the U.S. command in Iraq for the past several months, since very early in 2007.
They adopted a strategy of, on one hand, trying to win over elements of the Sadrist movement of the Mahdi Army, and on the other hand, trying to pick off units of the Mahdi Army, which they saw evidence were carrying out some kind of resistance activities.
Now, so the narrative that was created by the U.S. command, by General Petraeus and General Odierno in 2007, very early on, was that we are not really targeting Sadr and the Mahdi Army, we're only targeting these rogue elements.
And it was a desperate effort, really, to try to split the Mahdi Army, which I think now has been proven to be completely a failure.
And I think that what I tried, that was the headline in the piece, basically, that I tried to develop.
Although there was not sufficient space to really do justice to it, I had written a piece last October, which described the U.S. strategy of trying to divide the Mahdi Army and suggested that they were really sort of whistling in the wind, in a sense, or whistling past the graveyard is perhaps a better way to put it, because there was really no evidence that the Mahdi Army was fundamentally breaking down into a bunch of renegade units, as the United States military was trying to suggest.
And I think the evidence now is becoming clearer by the day that the Mahdi Army is, in fact, able to carry out a unified strategy covering not just Basra, but a number of cities throughout the South.
There's a report that Juan Cole had in his column yesterday from an Arab language, Arabic language newspaper, reporting that Qutb is already in the hands of the Mahdi Army.
They have surrounded the governor's mansion there and basically taken over and basically captured all of the police forces in the city.
And that's just an example of one of the developments here, which indicates, among many others, that indeed, the Sadr forces have been able to carry out a very effective counter offensive in the face of what had been persistent and growing pressure from the Iraqi government and the U.S. military to pick off its commanders and fighters and to destroy its political organization in cities throughout the South, but particularly in Basra and Karbala.
So, you know, this is a huge turning point.
I would liken it to the 2004 offensive by the Sunni insurgents.
Of course, there was a Mahdi Army offensive in 2004 as well, but at that point, Mahdi Army was only perhaps 10,000 strong.
Today, it's estimated, according to sources that I've spoken with in the past few days, at least 60 or 70,000 full-time effective manpower and another 100 to 200,000 who are ready to pick up arms as needed.
So this is a very, very different, much more powerful movement, a much more powerful army today than it was in 2004.
And in 2004, you had the Sunnis going on a very big offensive in Anbar province and the Sunni provinces of Iraq, and essentially dismantling the U.S.
-sponsored militia or security forces that had been put together rather haphazardly, and essentially spelling the end for years of the U.S. effort to really rely on Sunnis to fight Sunnis.
So I think it's that kind of turning point, and we could in fact be, in the coming weeks, the unraveling of the entire U.S. effort with regard to the Shiites.
And the question then will be whether the Sunnis are going to take advantage of that to go on the offensive as well.
Boy, well, there's a lot there.
Yes, that was a big bite.
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think of which direction to take it.
I guess, first of all, my question is, one of my questions was going to be, but you've already answered it, it's impossible, the idea that the Iraqi government is going to be able to defeat the Mahdi army in the way that they've declared here.
I mean, they've basically said, anybody who has a gun and is not one of us is an outlaw and a gang member and we're coming for you.
They're not going to be able to do that.
I just saw the still picture of at least thousands and thousands of people in the streets of Baghdad supporting the Mahdi army.
Well, yes, tens of thousands are in the streets, have been in the streets demonstrating.
And as one British report pointed out in the last 24 hours, when you have Mahdi army supporters in the streets of Baghdad, by the tens of thousands, these are people who have access to arms.
This is not simply a bunch of anti-war demonstrators as you would find them or identify them in the United States.
Right.
So I guess the real question is, can the Iraqi government withstand these guys?
I think the answer is clearly no.
And this raises, of course, the very interesting question, whether this very loudly proclaimed offensive by al-Maliki in Basra was coordinated with or even instigated by the United States or whether it's a kind of independent move without consulting the United States, as was suggested in this morning's Washington Post.
And this is, it's not entirely clear, but my guess is that it was coordinated with the United States.
And the reason I say that is that the United States is now intervening in Sadr City with striker vehicles, at least four of them were seen by the Washington Post correspondent in Sadr City overnight.
And that suggests to me that there is now coordination between the Iraqi government forces involved in this fight on one hand and the US military to the point where the US was prepared immediately to step in to essentially to basically take the counteroffensive in Sadr City or try to do so as the battle is going on in Basra.
The United States apparently does not have ground forces involved in the Basra fight, although they clearly have helicopters and airplanes involved.
So this is just a clue I may be wrong.
But my guess is that it was discussed by Vice President Cheney, that that is one of the major items, what if not the major item on his agenda in discussions with al-Maliki last last week when he was in Baghdad?
Well, might this be the plan to finally do that redirection?
I mean, we've been talking about what they've been talking about since 2005.
Zalmay Khalilzad, this guy, Nicholas, or Francis Biddle, from the Council on Foreign Relations, who's now an advisor to General Petraeus, that what we need to do is rehire the Ba'athists.
And here we've gone halfway to that in buying off the sons of Iraq, the former insurgency, and aligning with them, arming and funding them, although to what degree, I'm not exactly sure.
I've read some reports that they're all about to quit because they're not getting paid.
Yeah, you know, the problem with that idea of a Ba'athist solution is simply that the Ba'athists by themselves cannot defeat, you know, the Mahdi army or, you know, the Shiite forces, right?
If you back one side entirely against the other, you're bound to be defeated.
It's a losing proposition.
So I really don't think that that has been a live alternative that's been seriously proposed, discussed, and pursued by the US in Iraq.
I think it's a much more complex strategy that's being followed, which recognizes the elementary, the power realities in the country, which are that, you know, the Shiites cannot defeat the Sunni insurgents, and the Sunni insurgents cannot defeat the Shiites.
You are going to have to have a situation where both sides are coexisting, you know, in very uneasy fashion, undoubtedly.
But the United States has to have allies on both sides.
That's its fundamental problem.
So that's why, you know, the United States had to choose, is it going to back the al-Hakim forces, as we've discussed in the past, you know, the major rival of the Sadrists, of Muqtada al-Sadr, and his movement?
Or are they going to abandon al-Maliki and the al-Hakim group, and back Sadr?
They, you know, I think the rule here is very clear, that the the rule for a, an outside power that wants to dominate in this kind of very difficult situation is that you back the weak one, which is dependent on, that's the only way that you can say, sure, if they back Sadr, he would easily defeat the pro-American type, and then kick the United States out.
So that doesn't work.
So it had to be that the United States would support the weak, the Shiite faction.
And that is exactly what they've, they've done.
But, you know, I can, I can say with with great confidence that the US command has been scared to death of Sadr ever since they, Petraeus and Odierno arrived in the country, they understood that they could not openly confront, the US forces could not openly confront Sadr, that the Sadr movement was too, too powerful, too big, and was actually growing.
And so that's why they had to resort to a much more devious, if you will, and, in the end, unsuccessful strategy of trying to win him over, as well as what they hoped would be moderate within his movement.
At least that's what they were saying publicly.
And I, you know, I would say that that was really a desperate sort of effort in the face of, of a dilemma, which, which we've just outlined.
I mean, either they had to support Amaleki and the al-Hakim forces against Sadr, or they had to support Sadr, and they couldn't, they couldn't support Sadr.
So in order to follow the line of least resistance, which was to oppose Sadr, they had to do it indirectly.
And now I think we've seen that that is simply not a viable strategy.
Well, and even in the past couple of days, the statements have been that, yes, we're fighting special groups, rogue elements, criminal gangs.
Well, that's right.
You're absolutely right.
And to me, that is a very, very interesting fact, that even in the face of what is so obviously a united Sadrist movement and Mahdi army, capable of carrying out well-coordinated counteroffensive, they're still sticking to that very dubious and now threadbare line, which, which means to me that they really don't know where to go from here.
They really don't have a backup plan.
They're trying to leave the door open for Sadr to call it off again, basically.
Well, I mean, that is obviously what they're hoping, hoping for.
But I mean, that is, that is so unrealistic that it's laughable.
Well, here we have, you know, at least one American civilian has died in the green zone, they're saying, and...
Two now, actually.
Oh, two now.
Morning, yes.
Yeah, rockets coming over the walls.
I mean, this is, this is the equivalent in, I mean, if I can invoke a Vietnam parallel, if it's allowed, in 2008.
I mean, this is, this is really reminiscent of the Tet Offenses in Saigon.
You know, Gareth, when this happened the first time in 2004, I was over at a friend's house and I hit refresh on the antiwar.com page and I saw Shiites uprise in the south and the battle begins.
And I thought, oh, no, here it goes, because, you know, we've been back on one side against the other here.
Now we're fighting both sides.
Now, what are we going to do?
This is, boy, everything in Iraq just went from bad to worse.
And, and it turned out that that was only really temporary, that the Mahdi Army has been without, Americans haven't been at full, in full scale battles against the Mahdi Army since 2004.
There were a couple of big battles then.
But basically what you're telling me is this looks like what I thought that was.
Yeah, and as I say that this, this was in 2004, it was a very, very different situation.
The Mahdi Army had not yet built up to the level of fighting power that they now have.
And by the way, I mean, we haven't talked about the Iranian factor in this whole equation.
Right.
I mean, that's the next question.
Who exactly, is it the special groups of the Mahdi Army who were backed by Iran, who are behind all this trouble?
Well, see, I just don't accept the idea of the special groups.
I mean, that's a, that's a U.S. invented term that really has no, no significance.
All right.
Well, then is it the Mahdi Army that's backed by Iran?
The, the Iranians have, have backed all Shiite in, in Iraq.
I mean, any Shiite force that has any significance, the Dawa party, the al-Hakim forces, you know, the, the Badr organization, obviously, the military arm of the, of the al-Hakim faction, and, and the Mahdi Army, and, and probably some other loose, loosely organized Shiite groups.
All have had contact, anybody who's been capable of having contact with Iran is going to get a friendly reception.
I mean, the Iranians are not going to say, no, we're not going to have anything to do with you.
And, you know, in a situation where you have such a narrowly defined, a, a, a government, a Shiite government in Baghdad with such a narrow base of support.
And I think the Iranians are realistic enough to understand that the al-Maliki government does not have very strong political support in the country.
It's a very weak government.
They would be crazy to say no to, particularly the Mahdi Army, which represents undoubtedly the most powerful military, political military Shiite force in the country, and therefore the most powerful political military force in the country.
So obviously they have been very, very supportive of, of the Mahdi Army.
And, and here's where things get, I think, very interesting and very complex.
I see a very interesting history here over the past year or so of a triangular or quadrilateral relationship, set of relationships, in which the United States was both supporting al-Maliki and al-Hakim, on one hand, and opposing Sadr.
And at the same time, and of course they were accusing Iran of supporting these, what they call, renegade or, or special groups, but, but really what was going on was that the Iranians, they knew, were giving support to the Mahdi Army.
They were training them in Iran.
Beginning sometime in 2006, the Mahdi Army had training, and it was increased after the surge began.
We know from a report in the Independent from April 2007, interviewing some commanders of the Mahdi Army, that some of the top commanders of the Mahdi Army had gone to Iran to be trained.
And they understood that they were facing, ultimately, the necessity to prepare for a showdown with the United States and, or the al-Maliki government, with, with U.S., obviously with U.S. combat support.
So they have been, at least for the past year or more, preparing for that.
They have been retraining in tactics that they would, they have to use against the U.S. and U.S.
-trained forces.
So that's really the background of the unilateral ceasefire that al-Sadr declared in August 2007, and which was really a way to try to hold off pressure against him, to minimize the pressure against him, while he was preparing for that showdown.
While he was getting his forces retrained, building them up, bringing them back, and reorganizing them.
Well, but it sounds like you're saying that the government, our government is telling the truth when they say that Iran is behind this thing.
Well, the Iranians have been supporting them, but the Iranians are obviously not behind the political dynamics in Iraq, which have caused the Mahdi army to carry out these preparations.
So, in other words, the answer is yes and no.
I mean, the Iranians have supported them.
But it's interesting, in the Washington Post this morning, an unnamed U.S. official in Baghdad refused to say that Iran was behind the current fighting.
He said that the Iranians were basically responsible for the Mahdi army's behavior, basically saying that this was an intra-Shiite fight, which had its own dynamic.
And I think that's exactly right.
But again, I mean, Iran, as we've said before, the closest relationship, historically and today, remains between Iran and the al-Hakim forces.
The IRGC, as I pointed out in my last article, the one time that they were captured red-handed, if you will, talking to Shiite militiamen, it wasn't the Mahdi army, it was the Ba'ath organization.
It was the head of the Ba'ath organization who was meeting with IRGC officials last December, when they were seized by U.S. military and detained.
Right.
In fact, all the Iranians detained at this time or the other time throughout the past, what, year, year and a half or so, it's always been...
One of the times it was al-Hakim's son was coming back and had a bunch of Iranian military guys with him, and they had to apologize and let him go.
Right.
It was obviously because the Iranians were visiting friends and allies of the United States, either the Kurds or al-Hakim's organization.
Yeah.
And by the way, anyone who wants to refresh themselves on this background, just go to www.antiwar.com and for that matter, google Gareth Porter at www.antiwar.com and find all the different interviews.
There's probably about 30 of them over the past year or so, directly on these topics.
So, let me ask you, where do you think we're headed from here, as we go into this weekend?
Apparently the battles are still raging.
They're still raging.
I think that all of the signs that I see are that the effort by the al-Maliki forces, which, you know, I think are undoubtedly primarily Baader organization people in government uniform, has stalled in Basra, is not getting anywhere.
The counteroffensive by the Mahdi army has been successful in stopping them.
And unless the United States sends in ground forces, it looks very much like the Mahdi army will have a stunning victory there.
And meanwhile, I think what we'll be seeing in the coming days is evidence that elsewhere in the south, the Mahdi army has also been not only taking the offensive, but has been winning some major victories, and as in the case of Qutb, essentially taking over completely, and basically defeating the government presence or the rival Shiite presence in those cities.
Now, this is, by the way, something that I thought was going to happen much earlier.
I thought that this might happen in 2006 or 2007, and, you know, clearly Baader was waiting until he was much more powerful in order to do that.
Not militarily more powerful, but this has obviously been his intention all along, that he knew that he would, at one point, have the capability to be able to take over the south completely.
Did you see the article that came out about a week ago or so, maybe a little more than that, where Sauter supposedly had written a letter to his masses saying, Man, I'm really burned out, and I've failed at all my goals, and I think I'm just going to focus on religion from now on, and forget all this politics stuff.
Yes, I did see that story.
And I'm not sure quite what to make of it, whether, you know, it's genuine, A, and B, if it's genuine, whether it was, you know, if you read the entire letter, in context, you would see that his message was, is one of, you know, telling people that he was working on, you know, becoming a spiritual leader as part of his leadership, or whether it was simply a feint, which was aimed at misleading the government of the United States.
These are all possibilities.
Well, now, let me ask you this.
I often probably oversimplify, although maybe not, when I say the Baader Corps, a.k.a. the Iraqi Army.
Does the Baader Brigade operate as an independent militia outside of the state, or has the Baader Corps all basically, they've all just put on American-bought uniforms and call themselves the Iraqi Army now?
Well, I think, certainly, for the most part, they have put on the uniform.
That does not mean that there aren't separate Baader units, but certainly, for the most part, they have joined the Army, the government forces.
And they basically run it.
The Iraqi Army is basically run by...
Well, I think they certainly run some units.
I don't know that they run all units, and I don't know what the situation is in regard to the command structure.
I think there certainly are individuals in the higher command structure who are not Baader organizations, because the United States has certainly promoted certain individuals outside the Baader Corps, or who they never trusted, and obviously recognized as the most pro-Iranian group from the beginning, but who they relied on also, particularly 2004-2005-2006.
Okay, well, how close do you know, how close is Prime Minister Maliki to Abdulaziz Hakim of the Supreme Islamic Council?
He is independent in the sense that he is a representative of the Da'wah party, but at the same time, they have historically been close in terms of both being exiled in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, and therefore relying on the IRGC for support.
They both came back together at the same time with Iranian support in 2003, and they both carried out activities during the Iran-Iraq war on the same side, and with Iranian support.
So they do have a great deal in common, even though they are separate organizations, and they have undoubtedly had conflicts as well over power.
No question that Maliki would like to be more independent of al-Hakim than he has been, but he hasn't been able to do that.
Now, I don't know, in fact, I guess you probably don't have any sources on this topic yet, but last time, the generals were accusing Iran of being behind rockets fired at the Green Zone.
You wrote an article explaining how, no, actually these rockets came from Syria, and they were, I think, made by the Russians and never had come from Iran, that the Iranians were, in fact, not tied to those rockets at all.
Is that right?
Well, I think that, if I remember correctly, if I can keep my stories, different stories, straight, what you're referring to was an earlier story.
Right, yeah, six months ago or something, right?
Yeah, even earlier than that, if I'm not mistaken, there was, of course, a rocket attack, famously, because the United States made a major issue of it, last September.
And my story following that was really more focused, it was not focused on the origin of the rockets, but rather what the United States was making of it, in terms of the Iranian intentions, the Iranian objectives.
Earlier, though, I did do a story on the range of Iranian and non-Iranian-made weapons that were being displayed in early 2007, and some of the weapons were, in fact, not manufactured in Iran, and so that was the point I was making.
I don't think I referred to the weapons that were used, no, I didn't refer to the weapons that were used to the rocket attacks on the Green Zone, because I think those were undoubtedly made in Iran, and how they came to be in Iraq at that moment, you know, as anybody's guess, I mean, I certainly don't know the story of how Iranian-made weapons make their way into Iraq.
But I do know that there are more than one, there's more than one route that could be taken into Iraq, and one of them, obviously, is from the Hezbollah.
And we know that there have been very close ties between the Mahdi Army and Hezbollah, they have trained the Mahdi Army in the past on EFPs, the Mahdi Army has trained in Lebanon with the Hezbollah, and there has undoubtedly been a route for Hezbollah weapons, some of them, obviously, originally manufactured in Iran, but shipped to Hezbollah in the past, so that's certainly one route.
Yeah, well, the War Party would say that Hezbollah just is Iran anyway, so...
Well, of course, they would say that, but in fact, we know that there is a big distinction between Hezbollah's policies, relationships, and Iran, I mean, they are allied in this case, in support of the Mahdi Army, no question about that, but it does not require an Iranian order to Hezbollah for Hezbollah to have had that relationship with the Mahdi Army.
So, I mean, yeah, I mean, on one hand, Hezbollah is closely allied with Iran, on the other hand, there's no question that they're independent.
Also, it's noteworthy that you quote Major Scott A. Pettigrew in your recent article, again, that's at antiwar.com slash porter, and he says he's never seen any activity or presence of the Iranian military.
That's right, and I think this is another part of the story that still is to be told in the U.S. media.
This was a report from a French weekly news magazine, Le Point, which quoted both Pettigrew and another U.S. military officer in the province abutting Iraq there, excuse me, abutting Iran, and who was also quoted as saying that he had found no evidence of any Iranian arms coming across the border since he had been there, and this had been like 10 months.
Right, and I remember there was an article, too, about the British who had bases every mile or something or other like that all along that border who said they'd never seen anything.
I could put together now a list of six or seven or eight quotes from American military officers and British officers who were engaged in patrolling the border between Iraq and Iran, who said that they could find absolutely no evidence of any Iranian arms crossing the border.
Now, that suggests to me that if there were arms at some point crossing the border, and doubly there were some arms crossing the border at some point, it had not happened for quite a while, and at the same time that some arms were still getting into Iraq.
There had been a continued buildup of arms into Iraq.
And even then, even then, as you point out in your articles, that still doesn't necessarily implicate the mullahs or Ahmadinejad or any of these guys anyway.
Well, absolutely not.
And it's not that Iran has no interest in supporting these people, but my point is that there are other ways that these forces can get supplied.
I mean, there is a market that they can use.
Of course.
And if Iran wants to support them, they can do so by training and perhaps some financing as well, although I suspect that given the oil revenues that are available in Basra and the south generally, that the Mahdi army is awash with cash of its own, that that's not really an issue.
So my point is that Iran does not need to provide arms directly to the Mahdi army and therefore has no reason to do so.
They're very clever.
They're smart enough not to do something they don't have to do and which would not be in their interest to do.
The other point is that there's all kinds of evidence from various sources, including the British, that there was a very complex mechanism, a set of organizations within Iraq for procuring arms on the market, on the arms market, the international arms market and the market within that part of the world, obviously.
So, you know, that's the part of the story that has simply not been covered by the mainstream media.
All right.
Now, on the other side of the other Arab divide in Iraq, on the Sunni side, they had formally allied themselves with an organization of wannabes who styled themselves al Qaeda in Iraq and declared loyalty to Osama bin Laden, notably not until the very end of 2004, late December of 2004.
They finally declared that this was part of bin Laden's wider movement.
But the accusations have come and gone in different directions and at different times that Iran is behind al Qaeda.
And most recently, these accusations were leveled by the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.
If you'll just hold on a second there, Porter, Gareth Porter.
I'm sorry.
I have a friend named Porter, too.
He goes by his last name.
We all call him Porter.
I'm sorry.
McCain, Iraq, al Qaeda.
I'm going to play this clip.
It's about a minute long and then we'll be right back.
We continue to be concerned about Iranian taking al Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.
If we pull out of Iraq, then obviously the Iranian influence is dramatically increased.
Al Qaeda has greater influence and dangers, endangers the region dramatically.
It's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran.
That's that's well known.
If we leave Iraq, it will enhance Iranian influence in the region to the detriment, I think, of every nation in the region.
I'm sorry.
The Iranians are training extremists, not al Qaeda.
OK, apparently, Gareth, he was talking about the special groups, not al Qaeda.
Was he mixing up a couple of different pieces of propaganda there?
He's an old man.
Yeah, I think he was mixing up really almost three separate things.
One being the training of Shiite in Iran, then going back to Iraq.
And then the other two are really the narrative that was promoted in 2007 by the administration that Iran was actually assisting al Qaeda in Iraq, sending them arms, which was a part of a broader propaganda offensive by the vice president's office and his neoconservative allies, which got a little bit of traction in the U.S. press, didn't really take off quite.
Then there's a third, broader propaganda theme, which really began in 2002, which has continued almost ever since in one form or another.
That is the basic alliance, some kind of alliance between Iran and al Qaeda, which allegedly, according to the Bush administration at various times, took the form of Iran tolerating the presence of high-level al Qaeda operatives in Iran, allowing them to plan their terrorist attacks on Iranian soil.
At one point, they were even promoting the idea, along with the Israelis in 2002, that there were these high-ranking al Qaeda officials who were actually being kept in villas on the border of Iran, so that they were sort of being hosted genially by the Iranians, giving them protection.
This, of course, turned out to be a complete lie.
The evidence, to the contrary, is voluminous.
I put a little bit of that evidence together in the article that I did on the McCain supposed gaffe.
Right, which is also available at antiwar.com slash porter, the second to most recent one.
Right.
The interesting thing is, of course, that the right-wing blogs and publications, Weekly Standard particularly, have been on the warpath saying, well, he shouldn't back down.
He was right.
You know, that's true, that they are supporting al Qaeda.
So they're still pushing this very hard.
Yeah, Eli Lake says so in the New York Sun, and so it's true.
Must be true, yeah.
Well, now, and you're the guy, Garrett Porter, who broke the story, aren't you, about Iran's great peace offer of 2003, which included, hey, by the way, we have a bunch of al Qaeda guys in prison.
We'd be happy to turn them over to you if you'll just give up the mujahideen al Qaeda.
Well, that's right.
Of course, that was the particular moment when they had just very recently captured some relatively senior al Qaeda people, and so that was one of the reasons, I think, why they felt it was a good time for them to bargain with the United States.
And they also broke out that issue of al Qaeda and the MEK, and they said, you know, we'll give you full information on the al Qaeda people that we hold in return for your giving us full information on the MEK people that you hold, and the Bush administration, of course, turned that down.
But later on, then, we know that they continued to arrest al Qaeda suspects and to return them to the country of origin whenever that country of origin was willing to take them, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Well, you also had debunked accusations surrounding the 9-11 commission report that, and this is the kind of thing you'll hear on the daily show, that, oh, we got the wrong country.
It was not Iraq, it was Iran who was tied to al Qaeda, and even the 9-11 commission admits it.
Yes, people might recall, if they really try hard, that in the week before the 9-11 commission report was published in July 2004, there was a spate of stories, it's really quite a remarkable phenomenon, that virtually every major publication and electronic media outlet had a story saying that the 9-11 commission is going to report that, in fact, there is much more evidence of a tie between Iran and al Qaeda than there was between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda.
And that was, it turns out, a very, very dubious basis for coming to that conclusion, which was that eight or nine of the hijackers went through Iran on their way to the United States, and that somehow showed that Iran was complicit somehow.
And in fact, the whole idea that that was evidence of complicity was completely denied by Deputy Director of the CIA John McLaughlin that week.
And he just said, well, that didn't mean that the Iranian government knew that these people were al Qaeda at all.
Just like the United States didn't know that they're al Qaeda when they came through this country.
All right.
Now, is there anything important that I left out?
I think you've covered it all.
I think you will.
You did the covering.
I just want to make sure I asked all the right questions.
No, I mean, I think that this is a very interesting time.
And, you know, this could, you know, one could always miscalculate.
And as Walter Lippmann said, the most difficult thing to predict is when something's going to happen.
But we could be seeing the beginning of the unraveling of the U.S. position in Iraq because of al-Sadr's taking the counteroffensive and really doing so with great success.
Well, we'll see what happens.
And I promise to the audience that we'll keep Gareth Porter on this show to explain.
Everybody, Dr. Gareth Porter.
You can find what he writes for IPSnews at antiwar.com slash Porter.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me, Scott.