10/13/14 – Dahr Jamail – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our guest today is Dar Jamal.
Former unembedded reporter in the last Iraq War, writes for truthout.org, wrote the books Beyond the Green Zone and The Courage to Resist.
Welcome back.
How are you doing, Dar?
Thanks, Scott.
Good to be with you.
Good to have you here.
And, oh, by the way, everybody's got a new one coming out for Truth Dig, pardon me, truthout, truthout.org, about depleted uranium and the suffering of the Iraqi people due to all the depleted uranium dust from, I guess, the last couple of wars, especially the last one.
So, I'll definitely be keeping my eyes out for that so we can run it on antiwar.com.
But I hope you guys will look for it, too.
And I hope we'll have a chance to talk a little bit about that on the show today.
But anyway, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I already said that, right?
Good to talk to you.
Hey, listen, so let me ask you first about all the hype is, well, all the reporting is that the Islamic State is consolidating all of the predominantly Sunni areas just to the west of Baghdad in the Anbar province, which they've controlled Fallujah since the beginning of this year, of course.
But now they're consolidating Abu Ghraib neighborhood and helicopters have been flying to try to keep them away from the Baghdad International Airport.
And TV says they're about to sack Baghdad or perhaps lay total siege to it.
And so I just wonder, you know, what you make of all that.
It's amazing in that, you know, we've talked about this before on this show, Scott, how the U.S. policy is basically a continuation of the same except with more firepower.
So they've still been backing the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, except instead of Maliki, now it's Abadi, and then, you know, shipping in more arms.
And then instead of just shipping in more arms for the Iraqis to use, but then sending our own airstrikes in and our own boots on the ground and ramping up efforts on that part.
And so what that's doing is it's forcing the Sunni communities to either run from their homes and try to leave the country altogether.
And now we have 1.5 million displaced in Al Anbar alone.
Or cozy up with ISIS for protection, like the new mob boss.
Like, hey, we're going to cozy up with these people so that we're not continuing to be persecuted by the Shia-dominated Iraqi government.
And so that's making ISIS that much stronger in all these Sunni-dominated areas like Anbar province, like Abu Ghraib in western Baghdad, and probably other areas in Baghdad.
You know, probably the next one after this would logically be Adhamia, which is predominantly Sunni, really the last predominantly Sunni area left in the capital city.
And so it's real.
I mean, we're seeing the dramatic failure of U.S. policy in real time now.
Now, what about the land between Baghdad and Kuwait down to the southeast?
I guess I'm under the impression there's really only one big highway there.
But is that all land safely in the hands of the Shia militias or not?
It is.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a few areas, you know, the so-called triangle of death.
You know, we remember that from the U.S. occupation just south of Baghdad, where there are Mukdadiya and places like this, where there are some places like that where ISIS does have a presence and is holding some area.
But by and large, that general area south of Baghdad is still under the control of various Shia militias.
And now, OK, so I know because you explained in real time to me all along as it was happening that in effect the Ayatollah Khamenei just hired George Bush to be his useful idiot and kick all the Sunnis out of Baghdad for him and make it a predominantly Shiite city.
So, you know, I wonder whether ISIS could lay siege.
Could they surround Baghdad?
Obviously, their army that George Bush built up was a piece of crap.
But the Shiite militias, they outnumber the ISIS fighters on their own territory by a million to one or something, right?
Well, dramatically, yeah, they certainly have the numbers.
They certainly have the popular support in their areas.
But that, I think, doesn't mean that ISIS is not capable of surrounding Baghdad, because, again, you know, we're seeing as we speak today, you know, the evidence, the more airstrikes they use, the worse it makes the situation, the more public, the more general support on the ground it gets for ISIS.
And the stronger that group becomes, more people join in their ranks, more even Iraqis then become willing to join them and fight against both the U.S. and the Iraqi government.
And then, you know, of course, the ongoing persecution by the Shia militias, who are not discriminating between people who are members of ISIS and then just your average Sunni person on the street.
So you've got this massive wholesale persecution and, you know, effectively huge death squads, now Shia death squads going out looking for Sunnis to kill.
And so that's all of that is making ISIS more powerful.
And it is a situation we already have.
I've seen some reports that there have been some mortars starting to be lobbed into western Baghdad.
And even as what's on anti-war, one of the lead stories today, you know, we have the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey basically saying that, you know, there are going to be U.S. ground troops sent to Iraq.
Well, I mean, they're already there.
But I think he means even more because he's acutely aware of the fact that, you know, whether we're talking about Shia militias or the Iraqi army itself, that either of those groups aren't capable of on their own of beating back ISIS, keeping them out of areas where ISIS wants to be.
Because ISIS is playing a zero-sum game.
They feel like they are going to win this no matter what.
And that's why they're willing to keep pouring more and more people into these areas to fight, even knowing that large numbers of them are being going to be killed.
And so how do you fight against that?
And that's why the U.S. sees this happening on the ground and knows, look, if we're going to go in there and actually stop them from taking Baghdad, which is now starting to look like at least the possibility that they could take parts of Baghdad, which, you know, just a couple of months ago seemed almost impossible, that he's seeing, hey, the only way we're going to stop this is to have a large number of U.S. troops in the ground doing the fighting.
Well, so now, whither the Bata Brigade and the Mahdi Army?
I thought those were, if Sauder snapped his fingers, he'd have 100,000 men drop and give him 20.
That's a really good question, and I don't know that I can answer it fully because we're talking about massive numbers of people.
Speaking of the Mahdi Army particularly, they're, you know, very poorly trained, very poorly armed for the most part, but huge, huge numbers of people.
And it is incredible.
I think we'd have to point to some of the schisms within the broader Shia so-called coalition, where, you know, we've seen Sauder going against the mainstream Shia from time to time throughout the occupation and even post-occupation.
And he said now, hey, Americans, don't you come back here because I'll kill you myself.
I don't want your help.
Right, so that's a wee bit of a problem for the Americans.
And then, of course, Sauder, you know, we have to consider the fact, too, there is a large portion of the Sunni population that basically sees this as the revolution.
They see this as the revolution that they were hoping to have against the Americans.
And bearing in mind what you and I have talked about even as far back as 04, when we had, you know, the Mahdi Army was fighting the Americans down in Najaf and parts of Baghdad, simultaneously while the Iraqi resistance was fighting in Fallujah and parts of Baghdad.
And while there wasn't evidence of them fighting together against the Americans per se, certainly they were exchanging arms and training and other kind of helps and supporting each other at the time.
So, you know, we, Sauder could well be biding his time and not calling in the troops yet, waiting to see how this is going to play out, because he certainly would be positioned to fill any kind of power vacuum that's going to result as this unfolds on the ground.
Yeah.
You know, it's too bad the role that his militia played in helping the Americans and the Bata Brigade kick all the Sunnis out of Baghdad.
It was so brutal.
And there may not be any coming back from that to the position where you're talking about back before in 04, where he was sending pickup trucks full of fighters and aid to go and help the guys in Fallujah and trying to forge that.
In fact, even as late as Bob Dreyfuss, I remember, wrote in his article, Bush's meeting with a murderer, meaning al-Hakim from from the Bata Brigade, the Supreme Islamic Council at the end, the very end of 2006, that Sauder was still trying to push to create this Arab nationalist Iraqi government of national salvation.
He called it that would kick out the Iranians and the Americans, too.
So at that chance, the Americans immediately again called them an Iranian stooge and chased him into Iran.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
The music's playing.
We got to take this break.
It's our friend Darja Mail, and he's writing for truthout.org.
He's got a brand new one about depleted uranium poisoning that you're going to want to look at coming out.
And I think tomorrow be right back.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here.
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All right.
All right.
So I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show.
We're back from the break.
We got Dar Jamal on the line here.
He's at truthout.org nowadays.
And he wrote Beyond the Green Zone back when you want to learn some things about the war as it was.
And now there's so much to talk with you about Dar and so little time, I guess.
We need to just switch to what's going on in Syria and the relationship with between America, Turkey, the Kurds and the Islamic State there as they continue fighting over the town of Kobane there on the border in Syrian Kurdistan.
What do you make of all that?
Well, it looks like for starters that ISIS is going to take the town.
Clearly, they've decided that this is extremely important for them as a victory, both both strategically and symbolically.
And so they're pouring gobs of men pouring into there to despite taking massive losses from airstrikes and and fight fighting on the ground that they're they're going to take it.
And it looks like even if they didn't take it, it would probably be just a matter of time before they would retake it as we've seen happen in other places.
The few rare instances where they have actually been pushed out of areas.
And, you know, Scott, what a mess.
I mean, that's the second main point of this, where you have Turkey on the one hand with, you know, their government repression of Kurds in southeastern Turkey and that's happening.
And at the same time, you know, basically being asked by the U.S. to join in a fight with the Kurds against ISIS.
And at the same time, allowing the U.S. now access to some of the bases in that country to to carry out the fight.
So, you know, what kind of a coalition is this?
How long is it going to hold together?
It's nefarious at best.
You know, we have, you know, one of the biggest members being, you know, Saudi Arabia, who enjoys beheading their own people.
We have Qatar, you know, basically a Saudi Arabia light.
We have UAE and then, you know, Turkey with their tenuous situation at best regarding their own Kurdish issues.
So I see this is, you know, how long is it going to hold together is the question.
And then clearly, is it ever going to be effective?
Because so far, I really haven't seen any any response from the West to this ISIS crisis that's been effective, whether it involves Turkey or not.
Yeah, well, I mean, the whole thing is completely ridiculous is the problem is how just unbelievable on its face, even where the major pundits say, you know, I have to admit this whole thing about, you know, the moderates or this whole thing about a line with Turkey or this whole thing about maybe will be the air cover for the Kurds force or what nobody could quite make sense out of any part of this policy.
It doesn't seem like and, you know, especially what we have here with, I mean, of all the different conflicts of interest.
This is, you know, takes the cake, really, where the Turks are doing as much as they can to sit back and watch ISIS kill Kurds all day.
They think it's hilarious, I guess, even though it's completely ruining their better relationship with their own Kurdish population that they've been working on for a while.
And for that matter, their relationship with the Iraqi Kurds that they've been working on since Erdogan came into power.
All that's completely thrown away now just to watch ISIS kill, you know, one break off group, you know, some members of one break off group of the PKK.
And at the same time, Erdogan isn't even shy about it at all.
He says, I want to know fly zone over Syria, which that's not for ISIS.
That's for Assad.
And I want a safe haven zone for anti-Assad fighters, for basically for al-Nusra and ISIS to continue their fight against Assad, his still primary enemy, which is, of course, the same position that the Gulf sheiks seem to have.
And I don't know if the Israelis are back on board for full scale regime change, or they still prefer the no win grind forever between ISIS and I mean, between Assad and and the jihadists.
But I mean, what a wreck where this is our NATO ally refusing to do any of the fighting, refusing to let us use their base for our attacks in Iraq, and then still insisting that Assad is the one that has to go and and is who the war should be directed against now.
Right.
And if all this sounds confusing, it's because it's a it's a result of a completely incoherence of U.S. policy.
I mean, what was it, Scott, two months ago, maybe three on the outside that Obama admitted publicly that we didn't even have a strategy.
And so, you know, and meanwhile, the situation is just ramped up dramatically, exponentially since then.
And so, yeah, it's it's complete utter chaos on the ground.
There's all these conflicting allegiances, alliances, tactics, et cetera.
And it literally because we have a leadership of this country that has no idea how to handle this situation.
And and we're seeing evidence of that on the ground.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Patrick Coburn was saying, well, you know, what's funny about this is America's coalition doesn't include anyone who's doing any fighting.
And it specifically excludes anyone who is doing any fighting.
Right.
So we can't lie with the PKK commies and we can't lie.
We can sort of kind of lie with the Kurds in Iraq, but the Peshmerga there.
But we can't lie with Iran.
We can't lie with Assad.
Can't certainly can't work with the Russians to coordinate all this stuff.
When assuming the assumption of just going in and destroying the Islamic State, first and foremost, overriding goal, that would be your coalition right there.
And of course, they can't do that.
So instead, they form a coalition with Saudi Arabia that can only help discredit us, help discredit Saudi Arabia and accomplish actually nothing but those things.
That's right.
That's right.
It's really absolutely amazing.
And, you know, another thing I want to bring back in, do a little bit of a self-promote self-promotion, I guess, for this.
Please do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I want to ask you about that on the Dukes.
I know we're starting to come up out of time, but I've got an article coming out tomorrow on truth out on the use of D.U. in Iraq.
Well, the results of the use, you know, the U.S. has used admitted to 250 tons during the 91 Gulf War and over 1,200 tons during the 2003 war and ensuing occupation.
And so I interviewed a couple of well, several Iraqi doctors and one Dr.
Jawad Al Ali.
She's a physician and oncologist.
She's an expert oncologist at the Basra Cancer Treatment Center.
She's a member of the Iraqi Cancer Board and a member of the Basra Cancer Research Group.
And she has come out and said that the effects of the D.U. are so bad in Iraq and so obvious and continuing to get worse as people get continue to get exposed living in all these areas where it was used.
She's called the U.S. use of the U.S. and U.K. use of D.U. genocide.
And so this is an important piece for that.
It's going to they're trying to get the U.N. involved and, you know, just to give people an idea of the exponential increase of cancer across the country.
Around 1991, the Iraq's cancer cases rate was 40 out of 100,000 people.
Four years later, by 1995, it was up to 800.
So from 40 to 800 out of 100,000 people.
And then fast forward 10 years later to two years into the U.S. occupation and two years after that invasion, it doubled from 800 to 1600 out of 100,000 people.
That on top of the fact that this is only a 50 percent rate because another doctor I interviewed, Dr. Salah had died with the Iraqi Society for Health Administration and Promotion.
He said, look, the other half of our health care is privately provided.
So we do not get statistics from those people.
So these numbers we're talking about as dramatic as those are are at best half the real numbers.
Man.
Yeah, it's something, you know, and I guess.
So did you talk to a bunch of doctors about, you know, the background of D.U. and how it's so poisonous and what it does to people and all this kind of thing?
Yeah, in short, it's a low grade radioactive weapon.
So that people and when people breathe in the effects of it after it's used by either hitting something or being dispersed into the sands and the water table, et cetera, that, you know, they're living with it and basically consistently ingesting low, very, very, very low doses of radioactive material.
But of course, ingesting radioactive material into your body is absolutely the worst way to be exposed to it worse than any other way.
And so that's what's been happening.
So over time, it's cumulative.
And that's why we keep seeing these statistics only continue to escalate.
It seems like it has some in your research.
Does it seem to you like it does have some heavy metal poisoning aspect to it, too?
Because I've read that it was even confusing as to where the damage is really coming from, that maybe some of it is not even alpha particles as much as it is just the heavy metal poisoning.
No, that's accurate.
It's both.
It's absolutely both.
The heavy, the extreme heavy metal poisoning that's going along with it in conjunction with the radioactive poisoning is why it's been so extremely damaging to the human health.
I don't know if you already know this, but I got a hot lead for you.
If you don't talk with Chris Busby, the doctor who did one of these studies from Fallujah a few years back, and he and his team discovered, they think anyway, I guess.
I don't know if it was ever double checked by other scientists or what, but they discovered that the little particles of depleted uranium actually serve as a little antenna and specifically amplify radioactivity from the outside environment.
Yeah, I quote him in the piece, and one of the things he said talking about the study he participated in in Fallujah is he said that the health crisis there because of the DU represented, quote, the highest rate of genetic damage in any population of the world ever studied.
Oh, man.
Yeah, there ain't no magnet for that stuff either.
There's no cleaning that up.
How do you clean that up?
You just send in bulldozers to scoop up the top two feet of Iraq?
Literally.
And then the question is, as we've seen in New Mexico in the wake of all the uranium mining there is there's essentially no way to really clean up the water table.
I mean, there's water remediation efforts there that are ongoing and seemingly endless and with little effect.
And that's with government funding from the EPA.
So and that's a rare occurrence where they're actually trying to actually clean it up in Iraq.
You know, at this point, environmental remediation efforts are obviously a bit low on the priority list when people are running from bombs.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, what's the title of this piece?
It's it's Iraqi doctors called the you use, quote, genocide, and it should be headlined on Truthout tomorrow.
OK, great.
Thanks so much for your time again.
It's good to talk to you, Dar.
Thank you, Scott.
All right.
So we'll be right back.
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