All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
All right, y'all, I got Eric Margulies on the line.
It's ericmargulies.com.
Spell it like Margolis.
Ericmargulies.com.
He wrote the great books.
Man, they're so good.
They're so much better even than you think they might be.
They're just incredible.
War at the Top of the World and American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
He spent a lifetime covering all of America's wars and all of our satellites wars, like 14 or 20 of them or some crazy thing.
And I'm so happy to welcome you back to the show.
How are you doing, Eric?
It's been so long since we've spoken.
I'm glad to be back with you, Scott.
It's been, I'm sorry for the discontinuity of our talks, partially due to COVID.
Now I'm glad to be back with you and ready to go.
Great.
Well, yeah, I was looking at your website and I said, hey, new Margulies articles, red alert, send them all to Eric.
I think we're running one thing or another here on the website.
Before we talk about your new stuff, I got to pick your brain.
And it's OK if you can't remember because it was a bunch of years ago and I'm putting you on the spot.
But just in case you do happen to remember, I was wondering if you could help clarify a thing for me.
So you were one of the very first Western reporters to verify in the year 2011 that Western intelligence and military and whatever forces were intervening in Syria on the side of the uprising against Assad.
That's correct.
So now I found your article from, well, there's a couple of different articles from the fall, the summer and the fall of 2011 where you talk about this.
And I also found my interview of you from July 13th, 2011, where you're in France at the hotel and you're saying that, you know, France is intervening there along with America, Israel, Saudi and certain factions in Lebanon coming across the border, which I'm almost certain you said had been going on since the very beginning of the uprising and would have been February or March, I guess, of 2011.
But then.
So here's the part that I'm looking for is in my memory, you told me or you wrote in the article one or the other or both or something, but I can't find it that where you were specific that your sources told you that there were French, I forget if it was special operations forces or intelligence or both, on the ground in Syria helping to coordinate the uprising.
Something very, very close to those words.
And I can't find that.
And it may have been what you told me right before we went on the air or something.
I don't know.
But that's that particular part of it is not in there.
So I was just wondering if you do remember that, if I remember that correctly.
If you do remember that, if you remember when that was and or if you remember which article it was or anything along those lines.
I don't remember the specific article, but your memory is excellent.
I don't remember what I wrote last week.
Sometimes your memory is excellent.
And in fact, the French were involved.
French special forces were involved as they were in Libya, too.
And as they may even be again now.
Yeah.
What is funny, too, is I went through, you know, you do control F. I got this page where it's all 5400 interviews at scotthorton.org slash archives there.
So I paged down to the 2011 section and I'm doing control F for Margulies.
And I'm interviewing you like every two or three days for months about all this stuff.
So trying to open all these in a new tab and go through to listen to is going to take me a full weekend to get through them all, if I can find because it was a specific thing about the special force.
Do you remember when it was?
You don't have to tell me your source, but you could if you want to.
But do you remember when specifically you learned that they actually were inside French government agents were inside your special operations force?
No, I don't.
I can't tell you.
All right.
Well, go back and check some of those articles for me and see if maybe you could pick up something.
If anybody wants to volunteer to listen to all my 2011 interviews of Eric Margulies, feel free to do so.
You'll love it.
I mean, it's great.
And you know what was funny is that whole year long from the very, very beginning, you know, because I listened to a handful of them at least.
And and of course, you're so wise and just predicting every bit of the consequences to come in Libya and in Syria and how it's going to be in the role of the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, if you're lucky, will be the power to replace the Baathists.
So that was why even even in early 2011, you were saying, I'm not so sure they're going to go all the way against Assad here.
I think that they know that it's too risky for who would replace him.
Libya is one thing.
Syria is another.
But they may go for the keep bleeding them forever strategy.
I mean, you're saying this at the beginning of a seven year bleed them forever strategy.
You know what I mean?
Sorry, I was right.
Yeah, I know.
Me too.
If only they had listened to you as, you know, the cautionary tale.
But I mean, you talked about the way that all the ethnic and religious minorities, hell or high water, they're stuck with the dictatorship.
They got to prefer that prefer that to a bunch of CIA and Saudi backed mercenaries, you know, suicide bomber types with knives at their throats.
But anyway, just yeah, you're great.
And I bet you if we could go back and listen to all of them back to when I first started interviewing you in 04 and 05.
I'm almost certain I remember talking about this with you way back then just reading the Clean Break and coping with crumbling states that geez, Eric, who in Syria is organized force that would even be capable of replacing the central government there if we destroyed it?
The Muslim Brotherhood, if you're lucky, right, it could be a lot worse.
And that was years and years before they even began the horrible project in the first place there.
So.
But yeah, one day, the Google search will be able to search audio for written words.
There's an algorithm I'll support, man.
I'll surrender my sovereignty to agency already has it.
Yeah.
If only they would share it with me, because I got 5400 interviews that if I could transcribe them and prove how good all of my guests are on all of this stuff, not just in real time, but beforehand, you know, I don't know if anyone would care, but I would like it.
All right.
Anyway.
Thank you, Scott.
Remembering predictions.
Yes.
Well, I mean, and that's just one we've been, you know, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, all of these things.
Libya, of course, as you say, absolutely excellent on all of the intervention there and that whole time.
You know, one of these days that could be a project, you know, if if we get around to it, that could be a thing as would be making a book out of our interviews if we could get them all transcribed.
Right.
That's a hell of a lot of them.
More than the Ron Paul interviews.
A lot more.
Well, just get the ones where we were right.
Well, yeah.
No, that would still be all of them, too.
So that's that would be the problem.
I put out a 700 page book of anyway.
Hey, listen.
Time's a wasting and I'm wasting it with all of my Gavin.
I want to talk with you about this great new piece that you wrote about the Mideast peace deals with Israel and the between Israel and the UAE and Israel and what I forgot was a Bahrain little Bahrain there, Trump's Mideast Mirage.
And they're talking about they want to do Sudan next and then maybe Saudi after that.
Who are you, Eric Margulies, to oppose a peace deal?
Well, I believe in real peace deals.
I've been advocating one for decades, but I'm against phony peace deals that are political theater designs so that Trump can boast that he's brought the peace and great foreign policy triumph when in fact he's achieved nothing but the status quo.
Yeah.
So, I mean, they made such a big deal about it.
So what if anything has changed?
Relations between the Gulf states and Israel are now overt rather than covert.
Everybody knew that they were playing footsie together.
I mean, these are all American protectorates.
So it's not unimaginable that they would cooperate in different ways.
The cooperation extended to the point of military cooperation and some PLO people were assassinated in the Gulf states with the connivance of Mossad and their local intelligence agencies.
What we really are is seeing a bunch of reactionary states, small reactionary states that rely on the U.S., the protectorates, actually coming out of the closet.
Yeah.
I don't know if you saw this on antiwar.com where it was kind of a little socket going back and forth for a few weeks there where the Israelis were saying that they were shocked and surprised to find out that America was selling F-35s to the UAE as part of the peace deal.
And they're opposed to that.
But then it came out that, nah, the Israelis knew and secretly agreed to it and are just pretending to oppose it publicly.
That's all.
And then the next thing was, I might be skipping a step or two, but I think it was the next step or a couple steps later.
The Israelis came out and said, well, we need more F-35s because now there's an arms race in the Middle East between us and our new allies, the UAE, who got their batch of F-35s as a direct result of the peace deal with us that we just signed.
And I thought, you know what?
We have a new, better example for Chutzpah than the kid throwing himself on the court for murdering his parents, saying that now he's an orphan.
I think this one's better.
That's right, Scott.
It is.
Makes your hair stand on end.
The Israelis are also demanding more money from Washington.
Big surprise of surprises.
So this whole thing is contrived and cooked up, and it's really the Israelis who stage, managed, planned this so-called reconciliation or peace deal with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which is a pipsqueak place.
So the Americans are simply taking the lead of Israel, as they have been recently with Trump's agreement to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem for the talk of further annexation of Arab lands by Israel.
Mm-hmm.
And this is really all about screwing the Palestinians, right?
Dividing them from the last of their Arab so-called allies who never do anything for them anyway.
Yes, the Arabs have been stabbing, brotherly Arabs have been stabbing these Palestinians in the back since 1948.
And the Saudis in the Gulf states, who were autocratic monarchies that cut off people's heads and are really part of the U.S. military structure in the Middle East, are cooperating in this.
And the Palestinians know perfectly well that their brotherly Arabs are a bunch of backstabbers.
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Hey, guys, Scott Horton here from Mike Swanson's great book, The War State.
It's about the rise of the military-industrial complex and the power elite after World War II, during the administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Jack Kennedy.
It's a very enlightening take on this definitive era on America's road to world empire.
The War State, by Mike Swanson.
Find it in the right-hand margin at scotthorton.org.
Hey, y'all, Scott here.
If you want a real education in history and economics, you should check out Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom.
Tom and a really great group of professors and experts have put together an entire education of everything they didn't teach you in school, but should have.
Follow through from the link in the margin at scotthorton.org for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom.
Well, and so, I mean, really, do you think this signifies a real change in Israel's policy toward the Palestinians, that now that they have the pretension of local Arab opposition further out of the way, that now they can do more to seize what's left of the West Bank?
Yeah, I think so.
The Israelis are waiting to see, obviously, who wins the presidential election.
And if it's Trump, they'll go to pull out all the stops, just do what they want.
But the Israelis know how much they influence the American election.
For example, Trump's main financier, Mr. Adelson from Las Vegas, just giving more money now to the Republicans.
He was calling the shots.
Right.
Another $75 million.
And I'm not sure what that brings the total to this year.
I think he already gave them $50 million.
So usually it's $100 million.
Now we're at $125 million already for this cycle.
It was originally $100 million.
Oh, geez.
I could be wrong.
My memory's not good.
And we keep hearing different figures.
That's the way we absorb.
Yeah, sure.
And who knows?
I mean, there's so many dark money loopholes and all that that, you know, Trump may know the real number, but we may never.
But just in overt terms, it is, you know, tens and tens of millions of dollars.
In 2016 and 2018, it was $100 million per election.
Trumpets to other key members of the Republican Party.
Yeah.
And, you know, I got to say, man, of all of the things about Trump, his, well, there's a lot of them.
His Russia policy and his China policy and his Iran policy, but that's his Israel policy, too, of course, Iran.
But those are the things where he's probably the most dangerous, right, is Iran.
And then the thing that's not necessarily the most dangerous, but the most appalling, really, is his treatment of the Palestinians.
And, you know, Bush and Clinton and Bush and Obama, they always said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll move the embassy to Jerusalem.
But they never did.
I don't know if they promised to recognize the seizure of the Golan Heights or not, but they never did.
And they never really just made it clear that, I mean, I think Trump really did essentially officially take the two state solution off the table as the proposed preferred solution.
And instead, it's just going to be the Israelis are going to annex the West Bank, but the Gulf Arabs are going to give the Palestinians a bunch of money to make it OK.
Although we all know that that part will probably never even happen anyway.
But that's really, you know, of all the things about Donald Trump, his Palestine policy is just sickening, man.
I hate it.
Well, it's being run entirely by Israel's extreme right wing, the hardliners, the liquid and further right.
They're calling the shots in Washington.
They've very cleverly taken command of U.S.
Mideast policy.
Mr. Adelson in Las Vegas is paying the piper.
And the Israelis know what they're doing.
So one of the reasons America's Mideast policy is so screwed up is that, in fact, it is not being run for America's benefit, but more for Israel's.
Yeah, I thought you were going to say what's the problem is God sent Sheldon Adelson to be his prophet and vessel to make sure to hold down America's foreign policy and keep it nice and biblical.
But well, that can't be right, because God wouldn't do that.
Would he?
He might be God himself.
Well, we know we're told by Mike Pompeo, that great biblical expert that Trump is probably the reincarnation of biblical Queen Esther who smote the Persians hip and thigh.
And so you never know.
We're living in a biblical age.
People are just crazy.
You'd notice that, though, I'm pretty sure.
But yeah, you know, I saw this thing.
A guy had a Twitter thread that was going around that I'm not on Twitter, but somebody posted on Reddit.
Anyway, what it was, was the guy was talking about the first big foreign policy scandal in American history was all about Iran.
And it was in the 1720s.
There were two big newspapers got in a big publicity war kind of back and forth with who could come up with the most salacious stories about the wars going on in Persia.
And what it was, was it was the fall of the Safavid Empire, which I guess was Turkic, but it broken away from the Ottomans.
And so the Ottomans were using their Arabs to invade and conquer Persia.
I'm sure you know every last detail of this thing.
But anyway, so the Americans were on the side of the Shiites.
And we're saying it's the Muslims against the Shiites.
And we got to rally around the Shiite Persians.
Go ahead.
As the French saying is, the Safavids were bitter enemies of the Ottomans and fought like crazy for a long time.
There's still bad blood between Turkey and Iran.
So nothing has changed there.
Yeah.
And I guess in the Americans were siding with the Shia, he was saying because the Ottomans, of course, were occupying Jerusalem.
And so it still needed to be liberated.
And so in that sense, it was like the doctrine of the periphery, right?
Or you get the Iranians to help divide the Arabs.
Amazing.
Well, you make a very good point, Scott.
You know, things that do never change.
It's just the way they're expressed.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
So I don't know.
I guess I should ask you about what you think about what's going on in Syria right now.
I mean, we still have a small little al-Qaeda stand in the Idlib province, which is, I mean, in a sense, it's a new, you know, they moved Turkey's border south into Syria there, at least temporarily, maybe permanently.
Because it seems like Erdogan has really taken possession of the forces there.
Turks are being cautious, and rightfully so.
The Turks believe, as I do, that the extremists in Syria, the al-Qaeda, the Islamic...
Now, you're fading on me there a little bit, Eric.
Go back.
The Islamic extremists in Syria are in bed with Israel and are being financed and armed by the United States.
So they are moving cautiously against them, even though they want to house them.
Syria used to be part of Turkey, a part of the Ottoman Empire not so long ago.
So Turkey has legitimate interests there.
Now, wait a minute.
Just to clarify here, you're saying the CIA is still backing these guys there?
Yes.
That is my understanding.
And the Islamic state people, and also the French are involved, to come back to what we were saying.
The tricky French are involved in getting their feelers back into Syria and Lebanon and witnessed two recent visits by President Macron to the region, pouring red wine on the muddy waters.
Can you describe your sources at all for the continuing CIA support?
In fact, could you be specific of whether Donald Trump ever really called a halt to it or whether the CIA has continued to support the al-Nusra and allied forces in Idlib this whole time?
Or what the hell?
My understanding comes from Syrian sources and from reading regular open news reports.
You know, where do these guys get their ammo from?
Former soldier, it's something I think about.
They're blazing away millions and millions of dollars of ammo.
Well, certainly from our NATO allies, the Turks.
I guess the question is whether the Americans ever really called it off at all.
I mean, they made a big deal about Trump calling off this support.
It was one of the best things about his presidency so far, we thought.
But I certainly wouldn't doubt, I mean, like I was saying in my premise to the question, you know, Turkey is clearly protecting them now.
But anyway, can you tell us when you learned this?
Like this information that you have is contemporary as of, you know, how recent?
Oh, I would say around 2013, 14.
Oh, OK.
No, but I'm talking about, you know, post-Trump days.
I mean, because they say that he called it all off in 2017.
So I'm wondering about, you know, the current support.
I don't believe that.
I see.
The Islamic, we're talking about the Islamic State.
Yes, CIA support for, if not directly for the Islamic State, but, you know, certainly their gunrunners and, you know, financiers by a degree of separation or two.
I think most of this was always through Turkey anyway, right?
The Turks were supporting the Islamic extremists initially.
In Syria, which was a terrible mistake and something that Erdogan, Turkish leader, has come to greatly regret.
It is destabilizing effects on Turkey as well.
The Turks have wised up now, but they're being very cautious because they, Erdogan went through an attempt by the US to overthrow him.
It was a major coup d'etat.
And he is being very cautious now.
Okay.
Well, listen, I'm sorry we're out of time, man.
I got to get to Aaron Maté here because he's debunking, helping to debunk the third fake chemical weapons attack in Syria there from 2018.
But let's stay in touch because I really want to see if I can narrow down when it was that I learned from you in 2011 about special forces on the ground.
Let me know when you figure it out, Scott.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you very much.
It's always great to talk with you, Eric.
You're great.
All the best.
Take care.
All right, you guys, that's again, Eric Margulies, ericmargulies.com, War at the Top of the World and American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
Read those.
ScottHorton.org and LibertarianInstitute.org.
