08/05/14 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest today is Phil Giraldi.
He's a former CIA officer, and now he writes for the American Conservative Magazine and unz.com, the unz review, unz.com, sometimes also at america.aljazeera.com.
The latest here for unz.com is Americans Should Be Ashamed.
A modern Guernica enabled by Washington.
And Phil, I forgot to say you're the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
Welcome back to the show.
It's good to be back.
Good, good.
Happy to have you here.
So actually, first of all, before we get to the Palestine thing, I wanted to ask you about torture and the torture report real quick.
I know we've discussed this before, but I think it's important for people to hear what you have to say about it.
You know, Obama has said, listen, we did torture some folks.
And then he said, looking back, right?
We're not supposed to look back.
But now Obama says we can look back.
I guess looking back.
Hey, geez, those guys were under a lot of pressure to torture people.
And so they did.
And so what are you going to do kind of thing?
I guess was what he meant to say.
In other words, he's definitely still not going to prosecute anyone for it.
And I just wonder what you think about that.
Well, I mean, that's the ultimate irony of the whole thing.
I mean, this report can be as damning as as as it might be, but they're not willing to take any action on it.
I don't know why it would.
So Obama has claims that he's forbidden torture.
He claimed that he did that sooner after he took office.
So where's the accountability here?
I mean, that's what bothers me.
I had an interesting exchange with Ray McGovern, whom I know you've talked to.
And I was speculating that maybe there's something really deeper that led to the CIA spying on the Senate committee.
Maybe they thought they were going to find something that they really, really, really did not want them to find.
I don't know have any idea and that's your speculation, but it's an interesting thought.
Yeah.
Well, I mean the way that they say it the official story of that is that there was this Panetta report, which proved that all the things that the Senate had concluded that the CIA was saying was not true actually was true.
But then yeah, like you're saying, who knows what that really entails?
Yeah.
I mean, the point is, you know, the Panetta report.
So what?
It's not like anybody's going to jail.
Brennan, at the worst, would have to resign.
If if the bigger report had really come up with something, you know, some damning stuff about the use of torture, which you apparently will have if it's ever released.
But the fact is there seems to be something more there.
Why would you why would you spy on a Senate committee knowing precisely what the consequences of that might be?
If if there's there's really nobody going to be punished.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean that really is a severe thing.
I don't think you could overstate how big that is that they're spying on the Intelligence Committee that way.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, you know, this is not like you do it and oh, well, the boys will be boys and you get away with it.
It's they would have known right from the get-go that this is this is a major, major assault on the balance of powers in the United States and that the consequences could be very grave.
So why did they do it?
And this is I think the question that's still kind of hanging out there.
Well, there's already such severe anecdotes here where they've tortured people to death and frozen to death and sick dogs on them and hung them upside down and kept them awake for weeks and beat the living hell out of them and all of these things and in dungeons beneath, you know, Bangkok, Thailand.
I mean like some kind of nightmare, right?
So I wonder, you know, if it's the murder charge or if it's the if I don't even know if the Senate committee report or the summary that they're even debating releasing even goes into this, but it seems like the most important thing here would be confirmation of what we really already know about the chain of command here and that really was the president the vice president and the National Security Cabinet are all absolutely indictable guilty of felonies here.
Yeah, I mean that could be that certainly would be the political aspect of it.
That would be dynamite and but you know, I kind of suspect since is the Senate report already was prepared by a Democratic majority, but the Republicans would have had some say into what was going on too.
I yeah, I can't see the government punishing anybody for anything anymore.
I think there's always going to be some way of soft-soaping these issues to make it look like oh, well, you know next time don't do it.
So I don't know that's why I suspect there might be some real bombshell out there still waiting.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean well and that was Cheney's point all along was to prove that there was no law that could bind the power of the president especially during wartime.
He can do anything and you know, as John you said that there's no law that would say that the president can't torture the child of a suspect in order to get that suspect.
Yeah, that's right.
That's really just drawing a line in order to prove it can be crossed and what are you going to do about it kind of thing?
And like you said, there's not a prosecutor in America is going to take this up because it goes too high up.
Right.
So it's a hell of a thing.
Anyway, I wonder if someday maybe soon actually the real report never mind.
The summary will end up on WikiLeaks or something like that and then we'll really see just how bad it was.
But I mean what we already know I remember that torture question on PBS that documentary where they interviewed that guy Tony Lugar anus and he said listen man forget Abu Ghraib.
We tortured Iraqis here there and everywhere and with a box and with a fox and in their house and in front of their kids and on the side of the road and in their backyard and and for you know years on and by the tens of thousands we tortured the Iraqis.
So, you know, don't tell me about you know, one guy was made to stand on a box like he might be electrocuted or something.
It went a hell of a lot further and deeper than that.
They had suspended.
Sure.
I mean it's inevitable in the system like that where they're condoning this kind of activity at one level.
It's going to creep into every level and that's what happens.
Yeah.
Well, that's probably a big part of the reason that on my list of things to ask you about today is the Islamic State and what used to be known as Iraq and how you think they're doing right now.
I mean, of course as a Matthew Alexander the interrogator put it most of the foreign fighters who he ever interrogated in Iraq said they were there because of the pictures of the torture.
Here we are in 2014.
They've they've now set up a state there.
Yeah.
Well, it's you know, that the problem is the United States government has a real difficulty in recognizing that when you do something there are consequences and it feels itself immune and of course, you're absolutely right.
And so the other big issue, of course, is the Israeli occupation of Palestine that comes up again and again and again when when you when militants are interviewed after the fact to explain why they did what they did.
Yep.
Well, and I want to give the whole second segment really to your Israel story here, but just a couple quick footnotes on the torture there that actually Zawahiri and Zarqawi and apparently now maybe Baghdadi too.
These guys all were tortured before they became the terrorists that they ended up becoming.
Zarqawi was some two-bit rapist nobody before he was tortured by the Jordanians and then, you know, found religion and purpose in life getting back at them.
And the other interesting story is that I don't know if you saw the piece I did on Turkey over at...
I haven't read it yet.
I have a tab here.
Yeah, but there's a presidential campaign going on there.
The vote is on the 10th and there have been serious allegations that Turkey and obviously the United States really were heavily into supplying the...initially the Al-Qaeda linked groups and then ISIS just by virtue of the fact that, you know, they were kind of shipping in weapons and stuff like that and really didn't know who the hell was going to wind up with this stuff.
Well, yeah, I mean you broke that story originally that Obama had signed that finding back in December of 2011 and authorizing that kind of thing and, yeah, I mean it's always seemed that at the very least it's, you know, attempted plausible deniability that, oh, it's the Saudis that are sending all the money and we're trying to finance the moderates but everybody knew that the moderates are basically ineffectual and all the money and the guns are ending up in the hands of the ISIS fighters.
So, it always seemed very deliberate to me, you know, all along but...
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, wow.
So, there you go.
Phil Giraldi, everybody, former CIA officer, now writing for the American Conservative Magazine and UNZ.com, that's U-N-Z.com.
Americans should be ashamed about the war on Gaza.
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Alright, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Phil Giraldi, former CIA officer, writer for the American Conservative Magazine and UNZ.com and Al Jazeera.
And his piece here, I'm reading it right now.
I just finished actually here at the American Conservative Magazine.
Erdogan tightens his grip on Turkey.
That's at the American Conservative Magazine.
And then here at UNZ.com, Americans should be ashamed about the war in Gaza, the war against Gaza.
And I'm sorry because I need to give you a time to talk about that because you have a lot of important things in there, but it's all, you know, obviously tied together, but I want to give you a chance there, Phil, to elaborate on American-slash-Turkish-slash-Saudi-etc.support for the Mujahideen in Syria over the last couple of years, as you just mentioned there, if you want to.
Yeah, well, I mean, this whole thing started out, basically, I guess it was a fantasy by Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, who believed that intervening in Syria would get rid of the Assad regime and put in place a weaker, friendly sort of government that wouldn't be as closely tied to Iran.
So he had this fantasy that this would actually happen.
The Saudis, meanwhile, have been on his case for a long time, speaking of Assad's case, because Assad has a secular regime, and the Saudis, for reasons of their own, want something perhaps more fundamentalist.
And they've been actively working against him.
And the U.S., of course, came in on a two.
Since 2003, we've been actively undermining the government in Damascus.
So everybody came together on this.
They expected this to be a quick one-off.
And, of course, now we have something that's been running for well over two years and has brought about 100,000 deaths.
But, of course, as usual, nobody's to blame.
Right.
All right, now, but I'll try to be charitable about it.
Let's say it was halfway through 2012, which I think is actually being very charitable.
But let's say it was halfway through 2012 when it became absolutely apparent to everyone that this insurgency is in the hands of the al-Nusra Front, which has sworn its allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda.
And these guys cut their prisoners' heads off, and they suicide-bomb schools full of women and children, and they crucify their enemies in the town square.
And they're the nice ones compared to the Islamic State that broke off from them, who are, I guess, more Iraqi-centered than Syrian-centered.
But anyway, so then what?
It sounds like the policy never changed as far as the Americans, the Turks, the Saudis continuing to back these guys anyway.
Yeah, I mean, the sensible thing would have been to basically make a concession, which was that Assad had a certain legitimacy, and that you would have to negotiate with him in a serious way, recognizing that fact.
But, of course, Washington couldn't bring itself to do that, and nor did the others in the equation.
So what we've gotten is basically a continuous policy of supporting people that, under normal circumstances, we would not support ever.
And this is a symptom of the dysfunction of Washington, of the Obama administration, and of the State Department.
And it's something I said we should be ashamed about Gaza, but we should also be ashamed about what's going on in Syria.
Yeah, because when you say, if things were normal, you mean without the Israel lobby in Washington, D.C.
Did you see the clip of Michael Oren, who already had said this last October, but here he is on video with Jeffrey Goldberg on the stage at some Aspen hoity-toity thing, saying, hey, I know that the Sunnis, the Islamic State, they're the al-Qaeda guys and everything, but I prefer them.
He tries to say, I, but then he keeps saying the Israeli point of view, the government he's speaking for, our point of view is we prefer them to Hezbollah and Assad, because they're backed by Iran.
Yeah, I saw that tape, and it's astonishing.
Even Jeffrey Goldberg is like, hey, hey, you're talking for yourself, pal.
Yeah, and it made absolutely no ripples in the mainstream media.
It's like, all right, this guy is actually telling us why it is the way it is, and nobody cares.
Yeah, even Obama had said to Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic that, yeah, the reason we're doing this is to take Iran down a peg.
That's why to support the rebellion against Assad in Syria is because that is what Israel wants.
Yeah.
Amazing.
All right.
So now talk to me about this war, because there's so much to say, and you wrote a whole great article here.
I hope everyone will read again.
AmericansShouldBeAshamedAtUNZ.com.
What do you think?
Yeah, the tendency is to look at Israel-Palestine as Israel-Palestine, but the fact is this is a clear situation where we can't call it necessarily a genocide, but it's certainly a massacre taking place, and that this was all engineered by the Israeli government.
They knew that the three boys who were kidnapped were not kidnapped by Hamas, and they knew that the boys were dead, but they still created a pretext for war.
They went after Hamas, and when Hamas retaliated with these homemade rockets that didn't kill anyone, Israel went in with massive force and has killed something like 2,000 civilians at the current count, I think.
But the United States enabled all this.
I mean, the United States has made a couple of squeaking noises about, we wish they hadn't attacked a U.N. school where civilians were hiding, but then immediately turns around and resupplies the Israelis.
And, of course, the other secret story, which I didn't discuss in my article, is that the U.S. has been giving them all kinds of intelligence to kill more Palestinians.
We are absolutely complicit in a massive war crime, and every American should be ashamed of what our government is doing.
And while this is going on, Congress is voting unanimously to support Israel.
Like the Palestinian lives don't mean anything, like the fact that Israel initiated this war means nothing.
I mean, it's just—and we give them $225 million more in money.
Just incredible.
You know, everybody I know is so mind-boggled, mind-blown by what's going on, that they can't even comprehend how you can rationally even accept that this is the way the world works.
I mean, it only works in the mind of Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama and his handlers.
It is.
It's crazy.
Now, so let me clarify what you say about the intel there.
You're not just referring to Glenn Greenwald's piece, which is sort of historical.
You're saying right now you know from your intelligence sources that America is helping Israel target Palestinians in Gaza?
I won't specify my sources, but let's just say that I know that the Israelis are receiving intelligence from the United States.
Right.
Well, but you're telling me you're not just reading that at the intercept.
No.
All right.
Well, I'll take that as confirmation of a damn horrible fact there, Phil.
And so now, talk to me very briefly, while you have almost no time at all, about the Council for the National Interest, which is the antidote to the lobby in Washington, D.C.
Well, we believe that none of this would be happening if there weren't an extremely powerful domestic lobby, the Israel lobby, that was pushing these agendas.
And we work against them.
We basically focus our efforts to demonstrate that America's interests and Israel's interests are not the same.
And this is really the crux of the matter.
I mean, every American citizen should realize, with even a tiny bit of common sense, that Israel and America don't have the same interests.
And that doesn't mean we go to war with them or anything like that or we punish them or anything like that.
But the fact is that every decision a U.S. president makes should be based on American interests, not on those of Israel.
So that's essentially what we try to get out, the message we try to get out.
And I think people in America are starting to listen.
Yeah, I think so, too.
And I don't know what all is making the difference.
I guess I have to give a lot of credit to Twitter.
I think that it really helps strike the balance between the news consumer and the news producer in a way that's brand new in American society.
And they feel that pressure from their bias push right back again in such an instantaneous kind of way and in a consensus kind of a way.
Anyway, you know what I mean, where you've got one bad tweet with 100 responses getting it right.
It becomes very hard for the mainstream media to keep up a lot of the old pretenses.
At least concede some of what's really going on.
And, of course, people who have access to the Internet in general have access to just kind of the basic information about what's going on here that's usually excluded from the news.
And I mean just the fact of the occupation at all.
Younger people, by and large, don't even pay attention to the mainstream media.
There was a poll that came out yesterday that said that people under the age of 40 basically sympathize with the Palestinians.
So there is a change that's coming.
And I hardly ever read the mainstream media anymore except to kind of laugh at it.
I imagine you do too.
But, you know, it's just that information is no longer being controlled as the way it was even 10 years ago.
And as a result, a lot of people are going to make up their own minds about what they're seeing and hearing.
Yep.
All right.
Well, councilforthenationalinterest.org is the website, y'all.
It's an absolutely shameless plug because there ain't no shame in it at all.
CNI helped sponsor this show, and I'm sure glad to support them.
I'd say all the same stuff even if you weren't, Phil, obviously.
It's great work that you do, and I sure appreciate your time on the show as well.
Well, thank you, Scott.
All right, Shelf.
That's Phil Giraldi, formerly with the CIA.
Now he writes for the American Conservative Magazine.
That's the anti-war right for you there.
And also unz.com, unz.com for the Unz Review.
Again, the latest there is Americans Should Be Ashamed About Israel's War on Gaza.
And we'll be right back.
Hey, y'all.
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U.S. military and financial support for Israel's permanent occupations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is immoral, and it threatens national security by helping generate terrorist attacks against our country.
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Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here for offnow.org.
Now, here's the deal.
Due to the Snowden revelations, we have a great opportunity for a short period of time to get some real rollback of the national surveillance state.
Now, they're already trying to tire us by introducing fake reforms in the Congress.
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How?
We nullify it at the state level.
It's still not easy.
The offnow project of the Tenth Amendment Center has gotten off to a great start.
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Here's something.
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Get started cutting off the NSA support in your state.
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