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• “ICJ lands stunning blow on Israel over Gaza genocide charge” (Responsible Statecraft)
• The ICJ Order

Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. Parsi is the recipient of the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Follow him on Twitter @tparsi.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott.

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Jeffrey Carr, an international cybersecurity consultant, discusses the low evidentiary standard the US government and media has used to make very serious accusations about Russian hacking of Ukrainian military software and, by extension, the DNC emails. Carr says that CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity report – the basis for all these accusations – is the worst he has ever read.

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Muhammad Sahimi, a Professor of Chemical Engineering at USC, discusses Iran’s upcoming presidential elections and why the Iranian “deep state” wants a reactionary hardliner to replace the current moderate President Hassan Rouhani. Sahimi says that sanctions and tough talk from American presidents help boost the economic and political fortunes of Iran’s military and theocratic hardliners – exactly the same people US political leaders claim to be fighting against.

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Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, says that “military and intelligence personnel,” “intimately familiar” with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a “sham,” instead endorsing the Russian narrative that Assad’s forces had bombed a storage facility. Giraldi’s intelligence sources are “astonished” about the government and media narrative and are considering going public out of concern over the danger of worse war there. Giraldi also observes that the Assad regime had no motive to do such a thing at this time.

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Andrew Bacevich, author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, discusses US Central Command leader General Joseph Votel’s charge-ahead mentality on the current counterterrorism plan, despite evidence that it is counterproductive and harmful to American security. Bacevich also laments the fact that there are no great antiwar leaders today of the caliber that opposed WWI.

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Patrick Osgood, Kurdistan Bureau Chief for IraqOilReport.com, discusses the referendum on Kurdish independence, battling ISIS in Mosul and beyond, the impact of low oil prices on Iraq’s economy, and whether Iraq can become a cohesive functioning state without a perpetual US military presence.

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Peter Van Buren, a writer and retired US Foreign Service Officer, discusses his fictional account of an alternate WWII where the US invades Japan, in an exploration of how war creates moral injuries that never heal. He also discusses President Trump’s increasing use of drone strikes, why taking out ISIS won’t end Iraq’s problems, and the partisan stupidity that dominates American politics.

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Arnaldo Claudio, a retired senior US Military Police officer, discusses his 2005 investigation of human rights abuses of detainees in Tal Afar, in a camp commanded by then-Colonel H.R. McMaster, whom Claudio threatened to arrest. According to Claudio, detainees were kept in overcrowded conditions, handcuffed, deprived of food and water, and soiled by their own urine and feces. A so-called “good behavior program” was implemented by McMaster, that held detainees indefinitely (beyond a rule requiring release after 2 weeks) unless they provided “actionable intelligence.”

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Tom Woods, an author, senior fellow of the Mises Institute and host of The Tom Woods Show, discusses the 2nd annual libertarian “Contra Cruise” in October 2017; why Trump is working with former nemesis Paul Ryan on reforming Obamacare instead of the conservative Freedom Caucus; Steve Bannon’s preference for big government programs instead of Austrian free market economics; the wisdom of letting individual states and private capital provide for infrastructure improvements; and the collapse of the Russiagate story – much to the chagrin of Democrats.

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