Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as a fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Dan Coe, and you remember him.
He and Max Blumenthal made that great documentary, Killing Gaza.
Have I mentioned, I want you to look at that.
Killing Gaza.
Costs a few bucks on Vimeo.
Three bucks or something to watch it.
It's incredible, okay?
Please do.
And then also, he works for RT.
He's a correspondent for RT, and he works with Max Blumenthal over there.
And the Gray Zone Project.
The Gray Zone.
That's a reference by the Al-Qaeda, ISIS-type enemies to freedom and tolerance and mutual respect by people who get along, rather than picking sides and determining to fight in a war of us against them forever.
So, what a great name for a thing, too, by the way.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Dan?
I'm good.
Good to be with you, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Very happy to have you here.
And so, wow, what a great job you did on this.
It's a video presentation, so you can share with all your Facebook friends and everything.
Guys, it's called Presenting the Syria Deception.
Al-Qaeda Goes to Hollywood.
And it's a great walk down memory lane to what's now, you know, ancient history, 2011.
And it really, we could go back before that, but I don't know.
Anyway, in this case, you talk about since the Arab Spring and the hijacking by America and Saudi, well, for that matter, Turkey and Israel and other of our allies, in what started as the protest movement against Bashar al-Assad there early on.
And the incredible public relations project, the award-winning, Academy Award-winning public relations project by America's allied, CIA-allied Al-Qaeda forces in the Syria war, which is not quite over yet.
Never mind Kurdistan and Iran and all that, but just in terms of the war against the jihadists, they still are in Idlib as we record this.
But what a great recap of the almost unbelievable, it is the unbelievable, the completely false reality that these people created in this Syrian war.
So first of all, congratulations on this great piece of work.
Hope everyone will go and look at it.
And secondly, I mean, and yeah, to the point, you did a real good job of showing what's really what here.
And are you ever surprised by that?
I guess that's my first question for you.
Do you ever find yourself going, man, I can't believe they got away with this to the degree that they did?
Oh, totally.
I'm still in shock.
I mean, you know, when we came up with the name, Al-Qaeda goes to Hollywood.
It's like, it sounds like too absurd to be real, but it's totally what it is.
I mean, it is, you know, if we think about what Al-Qaeda is in the American mind, and especially, you know, 15, 16, 17 years ago, after 9-11, I mean, to think that 15 years later, we are basically, you know, you could say indirectly supporting or protecting Al-Qaeda in Syria as the Syrian government and its allies try to quash the last remnants, the last stronghold and liberate its territory.
You know, if you told me that 15 years ago, I would have said you're crazy.
But it's unfortunately, it's the reality of what's happening over there.
And so what I kind of set out to do is show through this documentary, I set out to show how Al-Qaeda has been totally rehabilitated in the American mind through a very broad and deep propaganda campaign that kind of covers all of, kind of all of, you know, mass media that we're subjected to, whether it's kind of, you know, daily news reports on CNN or, you know, and it's from, like, liberal to conservative in our mainstream media.
It's like Fox, CNN, MSNBC, kind of whatever your slant is.
And then also through Hollywood.
And so basically my film picks apart this movie called Cries from Syria, which came out, I think, in 2016.
And basically, I show the individual psyops, the psychological operations, as the CIA would call them.
And I go through different characters.
And, you know, this guy is portrayed as a hero.
You know, for instance, Hadi Abdullah is one of the big heroes.
He's like the journalist hero who's braving Assad's bombs to show us the truth of what's really happening.
And then you look around a little bit online.
And it turns out, oh, this guy is just embedded with Al-Qaeda and Jund al-Aqsa and, you know, all these, like, kind of different fanatic groups that are, you know, basically Al-Qaeda or off-brand of Al-Qaeda or ISIS.
And, you know, basically that's the theme throughout the movie, throughout the documentary, is that all of these characters, it turns out, are jihadis or are being, you know, there's the seven-year-old girl, Banna al-Abid, she's not a jihadi herself, she's a little girl.
But she's exploited in this movie to basically say, not only in this movie, on Twitter, throughout mass media.
She was on CNN, she was interviewed and exploited by her parents and her handlers in order to basically stimulate, you know, tug at Western heartstrings for intervention in Syria, that, like, our bombs are going to actually help people.
And that's just the most cynical propaganda.
And it's, you know, to me it takes advantage of media consumers because, frankly, most people don't have time to sit there and, you know, pick apart this crazy propaganda and spend their time going through YouTube videos and reading this and that and the next thing.
I mean, people have jobs and they have kids and they have families.
And so it's like, you know, they come home from work, turn on the TV for 20 minutes, see something horrible in Syria and they're like, well, you know, at least we can do something good there, we can save that little girl.
Yeah, yeah, let's drop those bombs.
So, you know, I just wanted to kind of push back against that pro-regime change, imperialist, militaristic narrative.
Yeah.
Well, and so that's the thing, too, right?
Is, well, the gap, right, between the narrative and the reality here.
And the most outrageous thing about it is it's really been known all along by those who were critical.
I need to hunt down this footnote now that I think about it.
But I'm certain it was in The Observer, which is like the weekend edition of The Guardian over there, where a very well-connected and informed writer was talking about how Prince Bandar is sending young jihadist fighters off to Syria to go fight.
Well, I mean, just rewind even to earlier that year.
In fact, we still had troops in Iraq fighting on the Shia side against the last smallest remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In other words, the Islamic State of Iraq still fighting them in 2011.
They didn't leave until the end of 2011.
So at the same time that that was the policy and they still were using drones and still, you know, remained a bit after that.
Fighting against these exact same Sunni jihadists, the enemy from Iraq War II, never even mind 9-11, but for more reason than that, from Iraq War II.
And there they are from the very beginning.
The guys who would have been Zarqawi's guys if he were still alive.
And then it was the U.S. State Department.
And this is so important, too.
The State Department told McClatchy Newspapers, and I don't know if it was at a briefing or exactly how it came out, but it came out very early on in 2011, that there are a bunch of guys from al-Qaeda in Iraq, from Iraq, who are now coming into Syria to pick up this fight and take on this thing.
And then, of course, Phil Giraldi published a thing on Twitter.com and at the American Conservative in December of 2011, saying that Obama signed a new finding authorizing, two new findings, I guess, authorizing stepped-up covert action in Syria and Iran.
Oh, and I left out Eric Margulies in the summer, I think in August of 2011, came back from France and said, yeah, the French were over there on the ground, special operations forces helping plan the war with these, you know, rebels on the ground, etc., like that.
And the moderates were a bunch of freaks and kooks and, you know, the Northern Storm Brigade admitted to Time Magazine before John McCain went and made friends with them, that they were veterans of Iraq War II.
They were part of al-Qaeda in Iraq fighting against the Americans.
And those were the guys he went and met with on the porch and they ended up, they were the ones who captured Stephen Sotloff and sold him to al-Qaeda, who cut his head off.
And then you had the Farouk Brigade, who said, oh, yeah, we want to hold elections, give us some money for a dead soldier's heart.
So, yeah, other than that, they're really moderate, besides the cannibalism.
And then you have this al-Ziki Brigade, who, yeah, they're very moderate, here's some money, here's some guns and some tow missiles and whatever else.
And they're the ones who, like, boastfully, on camera, filming themselves, cut the head off of a 12-year-old boy, a Palestinian boy from a refugee camp.
And so, I just, the very worst.
There was even in 2011, I think it was early 2012, there was a young boy who made a joke at his little vegetable stand.
A guy wanted a discount and he said, hey, I wouldn't even give a discount to Mohammed.
And an al-Qaeda guy shot him right in the face and killed him.
And he was like a 14-year-old boy, just kind of making a crack.
And that was the heart of the rebellion from the very beginning.
Even David Sanger, of all people in the New York Times, said, jeez, well, since moderates don't do much fighting and extremists do, guess who's getting all the guns and the money and using them?
The extremists.
But who are the extremists?
Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in Syria.
From the very get-go.
We knew this all along.
Anybody could check my archives, it's all there.
I don't know exactly when you caught on to this stuff.
I know Blumenthal was late, but it's really good on it now.
But all this has been known from the very, very beginning.
Yeah, I mean, for those of us who did pay attention, exactly, the signs were all there.
If you know anything about the U.S.'s, the roots of Al-Qaeda, the roots of these kind of fanatics, then you know that it goes back to the U.S., basically, the intervention, arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan in order to fight the Soviet Union.
And basically, that is what gave birth to Al-Qaeda.
And so, there's been this kind of love-hate relationship for decades, you know, going back to the Soviet Union, the 70s and 80s, with Al-Qaeda and Islamist fanatics who are totally anti-democratic and have this awful version of Islam that they want to impose on the Middle East and what they view as their caliphate.
And I should say, I think it's important that we distinguish between the Wahhabist version that Saudi Arabia, the very close ally of the U.S. and the West that they export, which is this hard-line version where minorities are wiped out and there's no tolerance for anything and it's completely antithetical to our professed Western ideals and that's the basis of Saudi Arabia and it all exists because of our Western imperial relationship with these countries.
And so, the U.S. has long used and Britain have long used Al-Qaeda and these kind of fanatical groups as kind of a cudgel against before it was the Soviet Union then it was against Syria and Afghanistan and they had this off-and-on relationship and so I think, I mean, I was 17 when 9-11 happened and it was so shocking for me and I didn't believe in going to war in Afghanistan or Iraq then but I wasn't really politicized at the point enough to understand what it was really based on why did these fanatics run some airplanes into the Twin Towers and then, you know, anyone who really knows the real story though shouldn't be surprised by that stuff and I really worry about what the future holds especially in Europe.
I mean, you know, in the U.S. we're a little bit more insulated from it or a lot more insulated from it and a lot of the hard-line ones are from Western countries where, you know, they may have been kind of isolated and they go and do jihad in order to kind of have some meaning in their life or something and so, you know, there's the real potential for these guys to go back to their home countries and carry out terrorist attacks we've seen it time and time again and basically the Western authorities grab on these guys and then kind of watch it happen and to me it's just one of the biggest scandals ever and really kind of says everything about what our government is doing I mean, one of the only people politicians that I've seen talk about you know, the U.S. basically protecting Al-Qaeda in Syria is Tulsi Gabbard and she's taken a lot of heat for it but it's unbelievable to me that it is considered outlandish or outside the political consensus for a politician to say, hey, we shouldn't be supporting Al-Qaeda and, you know, just really says everything about kind of the big fishbowl that we're living in that U.S. media, the Western media has subjected us to where every five years or ten years or ten minutes we kind of run into the glass bowl and dink and then turn around to the next one and that's why it's so important for us to have independent media like yourself or for foreign media to be allowed in this country you know, like where I work at RT where I get to talk about this stuff because I've been marginalized from, you know other media outlets so, you know, I appreciate your work, Scott, a lot Well, yeah, I mean, look, I don't think there's any question that your work speaks for itself leaves nothing to criticize I've seen so, well, I wouldn't say nothing, but I can't think of anything anyway, so, yeah, it's definitely quality stuff otherwise I wouldn't be recommending it so badly and especially Killing Gaza, everybody watch Killing Gaza but anyway, so, yeah, now, you're making such an important point about the next wave of terrorists here you know, these guys, it's sort of like in skateboarding where a generation goes by in just like five or ten years instead of twenty, you know, it's the same kind of thing more and more generations and half generations of these guys ever since the war in Afghanistan as you say, and back then using them to fight the Russians and then this is the point I'm always trying to hammer home I don't know, maybe everybody disagrees with me that this is such the important point that I think is just central to everything, which is that Iraq War II inadvertently was not supposed to be this way it was supposed to empower the Shia it was not supposed to empower Iran with the support of the Iraqi Shia base or some kind of nonsense that Chalabi sold Paul Wolfowitz and then that didn't happen and so it was the Iranians who went out and it was America who fought a war for Iran to put the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawah Party in there and by 2006, somebody finally let Zalmay Khalilzad original neocon studied under Strauss and all that explain to George W. Bush that look, this is a real severe own goal here we didn't mean to empower Iran this way but we kind of have no choice but to finish the job we started here now but then we need to tilt back toward the Sunnis in every other place in the region tilt back toward Saudi Arabia and do what they want which is fine, except the Americans don't want to put American infantry on the ground all over the place anymore and Saudi doesn't really have a field army they just have a National Guard for oppressing their own population with so who does Saudi have as their forces to deploy?to our friend, after all, why did Al-Qaeda hate us in the first place?because we were too close to the King of Saudi we were too close of allies for the people of Saudi or these people of Saudi Arabia's wishes but so that means when we go back to their side after the big blunder in Iraq War II empowering the Iranians and the Shia then that means backing Al-Qaeda in Syria and we've known that really since 2007 when Seymour Hersh wrote the Redirection that their new policy is to back Al-Qaeda types in Lebanon, Fatah al-Islam Muslim Brotherhood groups in Syria and Jandala in Eastern Iran and so that was, going back to then that was the same policy that Obama picked up and continued trying to make it up to the Saudis by, as you say, deploying the only forces they have, a bunch of suicide bombers yeah, exactly, exactly I mean, we have to understand this stuff and not kind of isolate it you know, and oversimplify you know, it's Macron, you know, of France recently, he just outright said you know, the reason that we don't want Russia and Syria to attack Al-Qaeda in Idlib you know, Idlib province in Northern Syria is kind of the last stronghold of Al-Qaeda and it's, you know, the estimates of how many fighters are there range from like 15,000 to 50,000 and he said well, we don't want them, you know, we don't want that to happen because then some of these guys will come home and so, you know, he just said it openly I mean, it's almost like Trump and I'm sorry, because I went off on that tangent and didn't follow that thought through this is now the next generation of dealing with that they were our enemies and then that ended up becoming our reason for using them again I forgot what I was trying to say but then, yeah, so that's the point so then this whole time that America and France and Britain have taken the side of the jihadists along with Turkey and Israel and Saudi and Qatar this whole time, that this has been the looming threat that what happens after these guys lose because they won't follow through and bomb Assad out of power in Damascus so okay, so they let him win after all leave these guys high and dry and now, as you're saying now we have Macron saying, oh no, what's going to happen to these guys and so I don't know what his solution is leaving him alone is better than letting the Russians finish him off?right, I mean, that's the thing he hasn't offered any kind of solution, of course and so it's like, I mean, basically the only thing that's prevented this, you know, the liberation on Idlib which very well could be very bloody not to, you know, diminish the possibility of civilians being, you know, hurt or killed there but, you know, well, one point I want to make about that of all these, what I would say are crocodile tears for the people of Idlib, the civilians there you know, let's point out that nobody cared at all about the civilians of Idlib until Russia and Syria were about to liberate it you mean none of the hawks, right?yeah, yeah, exactly, none of the hawks were putting out these crocodile tears now nobody cared about the people living under Al-Qaeda none of them cared about the, you know, Druze or Christians who were slaughtered or forced to convert under Al-Qaeda nobody said anything about them it's only until, you know, Al-Qaeda is about to be defeated that suddenly, oh my god, we have to stop this genocide and it's just, it's absolutely absurd it's also a rerun of what we already saw previously in Damascus and in Aleppo before that this completely paper-thin narrative so what's going on here is that Assad just wants to murder every last civilian that he can inside his country and these rebels are trying to stop him and so then if that was true, right, you would expect that once the rebels are rousted out of there he would complete the killing of all the people in eastern Aleppo, in eastern Damascus, etc except what happens in every case is that the civilian population can come back and all the fighting stops, and all the fighting follows guess who?
The armed insurrection armed by the CIA and friends insurrection that's picked this fight this whole time, imagine that exactly, I mean, September of this year saw the least killings of, since the beginning of the civil of the war in Syria so, you know, that says everything that happens, and Russia are basically ending the war people are dying less refugees are able to come home much to the chagrin of the western leaders and as much as Donald Trump wants to say well, the Idlib offensive didn't happen because of my tweets it was actually because of diplomacy between Russia and Turkey and as much as Turkey has kind of straddled the line between staying with the Americans and wanting to collapse the Syrian government and has done everything it can possible it's also kind of forced to reckon with reality and knows that the Americans also are not trustworthy and has had to side with Russia to a degree and so that's the only reason we haven't seen it happen and frankly, I mean, I hope that these Al-Qaeda fighters will lay down their arms and they'll be the ones who are Syrian, will be dealt with by their government will be dealt with by their own governments but basically the most fanatical ones the most extreme ones are the foreign fighters who come from the UK or the West and say, well, we don't have anywhere to go and we'll be prosecuted if we go back to our country so we're just going to continue to fight and shed as much blood as possible of civilians well, I raise an important question, whether they really would be prosecuted I mean, who knows what's going to happen when they come home remember the Ariana Grande attack the attack on the Ariana Grande concert that was carried out by this is the Westminster attack?yeah, exactly, where basically a bunch of little girls at a concert got killed well, that was carried out by Mohamed Mwazi who was fighting with the LIAF which is basically an Al-Qaeda group in Libya the Libyan Islamic fighting group, right exactly and so that's the blowback that we see and unfortunately I think we'll continue to see because our governments just at the end of the day they're much more interested in keeping these guys around in order to use them for their next proxy war instead of protecting protecting civilians and letting little girls go to concerts in peace without fear of being attacked by some jihadi fanatic but I also think this is kind of, what have we seen?four regime change wars in the last 15 years or 17 years four and a half anyway, yeah, if you count Syria as half of one don't forget Saleh okay, yeah, yeah I think it's kind of one of the last hurrahs the Trump administration filled with these neocon uber hawks, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and again the context is this is all about Iran as Obama said, I always bring this up, but sorry but yeah, as Obama said to Jeffrey Goldberg yes, this is all about taking Iran down a peg by weakening or destroying their only last Arab allied state the Baathist state of Syria which is run by the Alawites who are very close to the Shiites and part of that ruling coalition there and have this alliance with Iran and with Hezbollah for that matter and so that's what it's all about yeah, and so I think we're kind of seeing the last hurrah here I mean, it's not pretty on the inside of the United States to see, you know, kind of I mean, I'm in D.C., I see so much poverty there's so much kind of awful stuff going on but the U.S. is losing on the international stage and all of its aggression towards Iran I mean, today, Pompeo announced that the U.S. is pulling out of a major international treaty is rejecting the International Court of Justice recently rejected the International Criminal Court and so, basically the Trump administration in its desperate attempt to isolate Iran and implement regime change in Iran is losing it can't get Europe on board Russia stepped in in Syria basically, no one wants to do this anymore they cannot be such humanitarians themselves and actually care for human lives they realize it's bad for their own interests and so, you know, I think it's kind of the real decline of the U.S. empire is what we're witnessing under Donald Trump yeah alright you guys, here's how to support this show first of all, subscribe to the RSS feeds iTunes, Stitcher, and all of that and sign up for Patreon if you do, anybody who signs up for a dollar per interview gets two free books from Listen and Think Audio and also you'll get keys to the new Reddit page and then if you go to 20 bucks will get you the audiobook of Fool's Errand 50 bucks will get you a signed copy and a hundred dollar donation will get you either a QR code, commodity disc or a lifetime subscription to Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks that's all at scotthorton.org and also anybody donating $5 or more per month if you already are or if you sign up now you'll get keys to that new Reddit group as well already got about 50 people in there if you're already donating or you're a new donor just email me scotthorton.org and I'll get you the keys there and hey, do me a favor, give me a good review on iTunes or Stitcher or if you liked the book on amazon.com and the audiobook is also on iTunes and I sure would appreciate that and listen, if you want to submit articles to the Libertarian Institute please do, and they don't have to be about foreign policy my email address is scotthorton.org I was talking about this a little bit earlier with Gareth about how yeah, there's really probably not going to be a war with Iran was it Gareth?
I can't remember I did so many interviews today I can't keep them straight but anyway, there's not going to be a war with Iran because they really need a new big excuse to do so but at the same time, they are pushing the idea that they can somehow make the Iranian regime fall with economic pressure and quite possibly redirection style support for these jihadi groups against them I don't know for sure but this Avaaz attack is a sure suspicious example of that with the whole Iran working group and any of that so they could with their policies really paint themselves into a corner where all of their brilliant plans where Giuliani said trust me, if you just push them a little bit they'll fall over, when that doesn't work when Bolton's plan of sanctions and support for groups fall over, when that doesn't pan out, then what?they have to escalate or admit defeat at that point when they've already committed that much more than where they already are now?
Trump seems to think that oh, I'm going to get a deal out of them probably pretty soon here but yeah, I don't know if that really is right Bolton's plan always is for whatever negotiation to fail so that he can say see, you can't negotiate with these people that's his thing on Korea, Iran, forever and always right, exactly, I mean Bolton is just the uber hawk I'd like to see him go head first I'd like to see him get parachuted into Idlib and see how he fares no parachute, just drop him on the place just drop him, he'll bounce around a few times and get up but yeah, I mean don't worry, they'll catch you John, go ahead I mean Trump is totally surrounded by these guys Trump is not an ideological neocon or anything he's just like a businessman, a nationalist and so it's interesting because his first instincts are sometimes correct where he's like the troll we saw before he was running for president where he'd tweet, why are we in Iraq?this is a waste of money and our soldiers are dying and Obama's supporting Al-Qaeda and all this stuff I mean that's his real instincts but he's just totally surrounded by all these fanatics and is kind of out of his element but he's got Pompeo in his ear he's got Jared Kushner basically giving him Israel's guidance throughout the political process and so he's just, I think he can be convinced it's like Benjamin Netanyahu said back in the early 2000s America is a thing that can be easily moved and I think that's truer than ever with Donald Trump it's absurd yeah exactly that's my favorite quote ever of anybody I think it's absurd what they let me get away with he's saying it really is just yesterday the $3.8 billion per year that Obama promised kicked in and what was really interesting to me about that the State Department released this statement saying this is a great example of bipartisanship from the Trump administration we always hear that Trump is so he hates Obama so much that he's always trying to undo his legacy destroy his legacy that was part of the motivation for the Iran deal but when it comes to giving Israel all the weapons it can get to kill Palestinians in Gaza or to bomb Syria then it's totally bipartisan and so that's the real interference in this country is Israel, is Saudi Arabia, is the United Arab Emirates the real interference, the collusion and so all this talk about Russia some of it has actually revealed Israeli and Saudi collusion but it's all kind of a very thin veil for the truth about what this country is the D.C. is a swamp and it's just infested with lobbyists legalized bribery and that's our political system and it's losing on the international stage and in my opinion it's better to see the rise of a multilateral a multipolar system where the U.S. doesn't have so much say in what goes on in international affairs in countries like China and Russia and the E.U. are not totally on board and can kind of stand up and say hey no we're not on board with this Kruthammer is dead and the unipolar moment is over and because of Kruthammer because of Kruthammer's war Krauthammer's war, whatever in Iraq war two that was what was the final waste meaningless waste of America's energy in trying to dominate the planet in the most ridiculous and meaningless mission that they could have embarked on they bombed Libya backed the jihadis over there and let the Libyan government collapse and then they said wait a minute we're not going to let this happen and they stayed out of Syria until 2015 until the government was about to collapse and then they finally stepped in and said you know what this is bad for us another government collapsing Russia has dealt with jihadis more than the U.S. has and that specifically is the real point where you have all these Chechens fighting in Syria well what's the opposite of that like we were talking about when these guys come home and in fact we already saw that one good there's been a lot of interference on behalf of Al-Qaeda over at the intercept there Murtaza Al-Qaeda I call him but there was some good reporting at the intercept about how some of these jihadis were over in Syria as long as they could try to get a chance to kill a Russian right already coming back and blowing back in that way to Russia so yeah you could see why they'd be worried about that yeah exactly the proxies for the west it's not only Wahhabists there's also the fanatics the neo-nazi fanatics in Ukraine and it's kind of the same story with the dirty wars of the 80s in Central America so hopefully those days are coming to an end in 2015 when Putin or I guess Assad pulled his Trump card in bringing Putin in to save the regime there as even Kerry admitted was the case and all of that they started talking about hey I know not that this could ever apply to us mind you but hey guys it's sort of like the 80s where we support a bunch of enemies to bog the Russians down and hurt them and bleed them to bankruptcy and we're warning you Gates and Obama said we're warning you and all that that was when Gates was on his way out I think that's what they were saying hey we could replicate Afghanistan in the 80s not that we know anything about replicating the war in Afghanistan in the 80s and let's try that and then this was just a recent quote from David Ignatius who's the CIA spokesman editorial writer in the Washington Post I mean barely unofficial but I guess I could add that and Ignatius just was quoting these guys the other day you know when it comes to the Idlib province what we want to do is bog Russia down in a quagmire rather than sit back and shrug and say okay game is up and we forfeit our Al-Qaeda jihadists because who needed them anyway which ought to be easy enough to do yeah exactly I mean they wrote that right in the Washington Post here's our secret plot to lure them into the quicksand right in front of everybody anyway let's make Rambo 3 about it or Rambo 7 whichever number they're on now 5, 6 yep exactly I mean that's what it's been it's funny you occasionally get a kernel of truth from these outlets you know they'll say on one hand Banna al-Abed the 7 year old girl being exploited by her jihadi handlers is the Anne Frank of Syria that's what they called her the Washington Post called her the Anne Frank of Syria and then they published some op-ed saying oh maybe we need to support ISIS and it's like wait a minute there's kind of a little conflict in these two narratives what's happening here and you know what this is my fault too because I've kind of been leading this conversation all over the place but this is the huge part of the story that we skipped was how in 2013 Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State the Iraqi dominated faction of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Al-Qaeda was falling out and that really is where ISIS came from that that wasn't really hyperbole or just barely when Donald Trump said that Obama created ISIS because that absolutely was you know three years into the war really before they marched on Mosul they had already broken off two years into the war they had broken off eastern Syria one year more than that they conquered all of western Iraq but not enough that Trump actually got this right and it must have been Roger Stone who told him to say this I think because it was earlier on before Bannon got there I think but where he was saying yeah Obama created ISIS and everybody got all outraged and said well what do you mean by that and he said well you know by supporting the jihadists and the war in Libya and then now in Syria as well and then once they rolled into Iraq the Americans weren't there to stop them from taking over Iraq which that was true as far as it goes and in the context that he said it that much was true so he didn't have to necessarily be criticizing that fact of the withdrawal from Iraq in the way he did but still every word of it was the fact right and then he ended up dropping the first part about Obama back to the bad guys and that's what happened in the scheme of things we're in 2018 looking back all the history gets kind of truncated and all this right but these things happened in a sequence and then as Mattis instructed him and blackmailed him over Afghanistan blamed the withdrawal of the forces in 2011 that was what caused the rise of ISIS and therefore of course that's why we have to stay in Afghanistan stay in everywhere forever or else even sometimes they say Iran but even now when they talk about staying in Syria forever sometimes they bring up the possibility that ISIS could come back conceivably right so that's it lesson learned you can't ever leave rather than don't back your enemies like this in the first place yeah I mean Trump was tweeting about it years ago you know it doesn't take a genius to figure it out pretty clearly that's true right I mean he really did say that we were on the side of jihadist bad guys and all that back then yeah and I mean I doubt he had a real nuanced understanding of it but it's certainly more accurate than what's being pumped out on CNN and kind of melting everyone's brains at least among coastal elites and those who actually watch that stuff there are decreasing amounts of people all the time actually watch it that's true yeah thank goodness and you know after all they had to back down on this partially because of public opinion partially just as the aftermath of Iraq war 2 and people not wanting to do that again but also I think you know like in 2013 there was a lot of pressure from the right that we don't want to go risk our hides to go help these people leave them leave them alone which is pretty cynical and bad but pretty good for right-wing anti-war positions I'll take it you know I don't know I guess and it's not could could have been much worse right could have been yeah let's go kick butt because somebody came up with a pretend gas attack or whatever kind of thing so they you know that is the context that they're working in is that they they really are dragging the American people along on this when the American people you know overall really want to come home and they're able to do thank goodness a half-assed regime change here where it could have really been much worse but so you know what I'm sorry too because we've been talking about everything really but the white helmets and with this propaganda arm really of al-Qaeda during this whole war and all the great incriminating evidence you have against them when we talked about the Albana thing but you know these are the great rescuers of little children stuck under concrete and all of these things and you've really done a great job of making this talk a documentary about this here again the Syria deception al-Qaeda goes to Hollywood and so tell us a little bit more about the deception here and the use of these heroic white helmets supposedly to launder this al-Qaeda jihadi war here well the white helmets are you know they are commonly referred to as a rescue group and that that operate exclusively in opposition held territory in Syria and you know when I say opposition that's largely al-Qaeda dominated there was a I believe the journalist named John Cantley I believe his name who was kidnapped by ISIS and forced to do a propaganda video for them called them the ISIS fire brigade and so essentially it's like ISIS civil defense or al-Qaeda civil defense and it's and they were created by a former British mercenary and funded with money from the UK Home Office I believe and the US State Department and so they you know it's they claim on their website to have rescued like a hundred thousand people and it's unclear how many people they may or may have not rescued I don't really know but what we do know is there's numerous videos that have come out of them participating in summary executions on the street you know that happen in these opposition controlled areas you know whether it's like someone accused of being a spy or collaborating with the government or wanting you know reconciliation or say a woman accused of adultery and so the white helmets have been featured in pretty much I mean just across the spectrum of Western media outlets as like the heroes of the Syrian war who like you know we don't even though there's bad guys and there's all this stuff these guys are the real heroes and it's and they have been really the the main vehicle to rehabilitate the image of al-Qaeda and say like you know these guys these guys are like angels in this horrible place and they're against Assad and we just have to support them but you know they're they're shady videos of them taking partaking in summary executions have been totally left out from the the mainstream media narrative and so I actually confronted the director of the film of Cries from Syria I went to the screening and you know in Capitol Hill just a few blocks where I am from where I am where there was a Republican congressman named Adam Kinzinger and a Democratic congressman named Brendan Boyle and I went and confronted this director after the after the film he's a Russian-Israeli who's basically like he's kind of like a mercenary filmmaker he did a film about Ukraine Euromaidan in Ukraine basically you know portraying it as this Democratic uprising and totally omitting the presence of you know neo-Nazis and fascists in that in that one and so then he moved on to do Syria and so I confront him about how he portrayed and you know a few different people but one of one of I asked him about how he portrayed the White Helmets and I showed him he's like no you know that's all that's all fake all these you know all that stuff about them doing executions is fake and then I showed him the video which the White Helmets confirmed is real because they released an apology for it and he just says well that's what Sputnik is saying so it's Russian propaganda and this was six months before it was six months before I even started working at RT or if I had even thought about like trying to get a job here I was you know just working independently and so I was like so the Russians are saying it which which is true so that doesn't make it true or false and so he had no he had you know he couldn't say anything and then I showed him a number of things and he just basically got angry and told me I'm a Russian propagandist and he just got angry and and you know stormed off and it just go it just goes to show how you know what a thin veil the propaganda is that it's like basic minor questioning very you know soft questioning about like you know who these people are actually are why this guy made you know these editorial decisions these creative decisions and decided to totally omit all the content you know to put mildly controversial aspects of all these characters in the film you know it's it's obvious that he is just doing propaganda and getting I'm sure paid very handsomely for it and you know so that's what my film kind of tried to poke holes in this narrative and it's not the only film it's not just cries from Syria I mean there's you know at least a dozen or maybe two dozen films on this whole same subject that are just all kind of have the same the same narrative that it's like Assad the evil dictator versus you know the people who are rising up and we just have to support them and it's just totally false it's and it's a total disservice to Syrians who are actually suffering and even you know Syrians who do want to see Assad go who do want to see like a real democratic future you know I think what happens basically is there's there's any spark of any kind of protest you know anyone any dissatisfaction with you know the economy or the political establishment and then you just have you know countries like the US and you know Western Europe Saudi Arabia you know these countries just come in and pour gas on the spark and just try to burn the entire country down so they can take it over and rebuild it and make a bunch of people out of it and shape it in their image and so it's you know they claim to be in solidarity with the quote unquote Syrian people but you know they're happy to see Syrian people be cannon fodder for their you know wars of so they can you know just make a whole bunch of money and destroy anything that challenges you know their regional hegemony and you know that's not to mention the cost to you know Americans who are you know going to kill over there and then come back and and kill and you know Europe and if in the US if they can get there.
Man it's true and you know another tragedy is right said Fred the guys that I remember from 10th grade for some reason I know what grade I was in when that came out saying I'm too sexy for my shirt that these guys are part of the PR campaign for the terrorists but they don't even know that they're part of the PR campaign for the terrorists but they used to retweet me all the time they were apparently fans of my show or one or the other of them was and including must have been because it was certainly during this time frame stuff about Syria and so must know better and here they are singing some ridiculous song about the monster Assad now we need to have a NATO bombing campaign or something are you kidding me?
Yeah yeah yeah exactly I mean it's just like I lost another one Dan.
Oh right said Fred down the drain I know it's sad.
It's killing me.
I know I hear you I mean I was never.
That means I didn't do a good enough job of teaching them what the hell obviously.
Right said Fred was a little bit before my time but you know I have Chris Cornell in the movie and he did you know I like Soundgarden.
I always hated them so I was really I didn't even know the guy died but.
Oh I mean I wasn't like a huge fan but you know when I was a kid I liked that song Black Hole Sun.
I thought that was pretty cool.
And then and then you know friends of mine who like really liked him who were like really into like rock and stuff but I'm like grunge.
But you know he kind of lost the plot and did the song with you know using their footage and then he committed suicide not long after which you know I'm not saying that there's like a you know a court.
There's not like causation or I'm not saying it's related but you know I guess maybe.
I guess maybe.
Man I wish I hadn't put up that video.
What kind of State Department sucker am I.
I mean I'm just saying maybe you know he's I guess he likes it.
You know he did what he had to do for the world at that point.
Like he had served his purpose.
He had done his good things.
It's like Michael Jackson like made his great music.
We're getting mean as hell now.
But yeah now I'm worse than you.
So yeah.
No that's horrible.
You know what.
I mean he called up the old Pink Floyd Roger Waters and said hey want some money to take our side.
He was like you guys go to hell.
What I can't read the hell away from me with this.
And so if he can do it then everybody else can too.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean he's a musician.
He shouldn't necessarily have to know enough.
But apparently it's easy enough for him to know it.
So where's everybody else on this.
Yeah.
I mean Roger Waters took a really bold stand.
He didn't have to do that.
He's you know obviously in this stage in his career he's got more money than probably he knows what to do with.
And is you know just doing his thing playing rock concerts.
And he can just you know like most most famous people just kind of steer clear or just do the easy thing and take the money or whatever.
But I mean he's he's kind of one of a dying breed of you know rock you know great musicians who really opposed war.
And it says you know the phenomenon of Roger Waters kind of says everything to me about Western culture how the you know anti-war culture in Western countries has been kind of totally gutted and rotted out and just doesn't really exist anymore.
And so you know Roger is just kind of one of the last of that kind.
And it's it's unfortunate.
And it's really kind of a sign of cultural decay in this kind of war movement.
You know there's no one.
It's like we can get like you know huge amounts of people to go out and protest about you know the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh you know which are which are real and this stuff should be protested.
Or you know people will go you know protest.
What if if like if Mueller gets fired they're ready to go like you know storm the storm the gates of the White House you know over this like kind of basically a fake scandal of Russiagate.
But I can't wait to see him try that.
Yeah right.
But anyway.
But but it's like when it when it comes to like war you know when it comes to like agitating for war with Iran or anything like that.
You know it's just total silence.
It's like it's just like in Mitchell and Jessup.
It's learned helplessness.
Yeah right.
That's the whole point of the torture program is to get you to say jeez I keep caring about this but nothing keeps happening.
And nothing is stopping it.
So geez I don't know.
Maybe move on to the next thing and you know go rescue a puppy or something that you could put your hands on and see the results of.
You know it's easier.
It's frustrating to keep losing when you live in a world empire and you can't convince it to stop being one.
You know.
Yeah definitely.
I mean the thing is in this country we have this like you know kind of facade of democracy.
And so if there's like very clear.
You know demonstration that the public doesn't consent to war then you know there's a chance of stopping it.
I mean you know when when we invaded Iraq a lot of people came out and you know D.C. and New York.
But the media just had a total blackout blackout on it.
So they found a way to kind of just override the whole thing anyway.
You know create you know manufacture the consent for the war.
Right.
But but I mean we don't even see that anymore.
It's just it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's It's just like total silence.
I mean we're bombing Syria and it's just like total silence or like you know it's a good thing.
Our like our like holy you know our beautiful missiles.
You know that's what we hear in our media.
And people are like oh yeah that's true they're beautiful.
Yeah exactly.
Taking sacrament in this civil religion firing a Tomahawk missile at somebody.
Yeah.
Named after a group of people that were completely genocided off the face of the earth.
You know one of their weapons anyway.
Somehow somebody got to him, not sure.
Might have been the Union Army.
Yeah exactly, exactly.
A couple of years ago I was talking to a friend in Gaza.
I was in Arizona where I'm from and and I was talking to a friend in Gaza and he's like yeah there's a there's a there's an Apache helicopter right over my building right now and it's like you know Israeli military Apache helicopter yeah I was like do you know what Apache is and he's like no and I was like well that's the don't exist anymore see yeah that's where that's the Native Americans that we genocided here in Arizona you know where I was that's that that you know used to kind of run the show here that that we took out and then well your forebears anyway yeah yeah well yeah but you know the u.s.
I should say but I mean I mean it was before my family no question though yeah yeah exactly right all right man well you know what we're almost an hour here and I want to make sure people can fit this in before dinner or what have you so let's wrap this up I want to recommend again the Syria deception Al Qaeda goes to Hollywood and this is as good as you can get when it comes to debunking the white helmets for any you have liberal or conservative friends who bought into this thing check out all about Albana and all the rest of this too it's at grayzoneproject.com the Syria deception and again you got to check out this is free by the way it's embedded right there on YouTube no problem but there's killing Gaza which costs you a couple of bucks to watch on Vimeo but it's so important that I really hope you guys will look at that too it's by Dan and Max Blumenthal as well and thanks again Dan for coming on the show appreciate it thanks so much for having me Scott always appreciated oh yeah bye all right y'all thanks find me at Libertarian Institute org at Scott Horton org anti-war.com and reddit.com slash Scott Horton show oh yeah and read my book fool's errand timed and the war in Afghanistan at fool's errand dot us
