10/16/15 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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Onto our first guest today, it's the great Gareth Porter.
What he does is journalism debunking all the things that they would have you think about the countries that they bomb.
That's basically his beat.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
Good to talk to you.
Thanks, Scott.
Glad to be back again.
Very happy to have you here.
Okay, so a couple of very important stories here.
And yeah, I know I already had you on this week, but I like what you read.
Okay, so that's the deal.
Um, everyone, please read his book.
It's manufactured crisis.
The truth behind the Iran nuclear scare.
And it's a masterpiece.
And I do hope that you'll know all the things in it.
Obama won't admit the real targets of Russian airstrikes.
This is the column at Middle East I and we got into this a little bit in the last interview.
But anyway, it's sure worth it.
No one is discussing the reality that the Russian offensive is targeting the biggest militant threat to the Assad regime.
And you're referring here to kind of the tortured phraseology and summary and narrative on NPR and the New York Times and and the Lair News Hour and all the all the official places where they say what the news is.
We're supposed to be very upset that the Russians promised to only attack ISIS.
But now they're not attacking ISIS.
They're attacking the opposition to Assad.
And and this is very upsetting to us all.
Right.
And the the implication and in many cases, very explicit suggestion here is that it's the moderates that the United States has been supporting, who are the targets of the Russian airstrikes.
And so that is what gives this story such power, I would say to shock the liberal imagination and the centrist and and virtually everybody else in the public who's not following this story very, very closely.
Yeah.
So, well, break it down.
So, you know, what what I have discovered very quickly from looking carefully at the maps that you can find in The New York Times and other newspapers and especially the original source where those maps actually are coming from, the Institute for the Study of War, which is essentially a neocon offshoot, but that does some very useful research.
And in this case, I think it is very important to check out the actual maps because what they show and they've tracked this almost day to day from the beginning of the Russian air campaign in Syria is that the overwhelming majority and I'm estimating 95 percent or even more of the Russian airstrikes are are focused on Idlib province, Hama province right next to Idlib, the part of Hama province next to Idlib and a little bit of Latakia province, which also abuts Idlib province.
And these strikes are clearly aimed at the forces which are essentially Al-Nusra Front, meaning the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria and their military allies as part of what they call the Army of Conquest, which essentially took over Idlib province earlier this year, beginning in March and sort of concluding, finally, wrapping it up in April.
And so what the Russians are doing is trying to push back against the essentially Al-Nusra Front led forces.
Arar al-Sham is perhaps the second most important military force involved in Idlib, and they are hardline jihadist forces as well and essentially controlled by Al-Qaeda alongside Al-Nusra Front.
And so this is the key point about the misleading stories that have been carried by the news media and which, of course, are based on the rather indignant statements by the Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and the White House about the military offensive by the Russians in Syria.
All right.
Now, so to what degree does the FSA exist separate from the Army of Conquest, etc.?
That's a very good question, Scott.
And of course, technically, the FSA still does exist.
And they may even have a presence, indeed, in that area.
But they are an insignificant force alongside the forces that I've just discussed, Al-Nusra Front, Arar al-Sham, and the other jihadist groups that have grouped under the so-called Army of Conquest.
And so, you know, it seems to me the FSA now has, for many months, has served essentially as an excuse for certain parties to send weapons to the Army of Conquest.
And I don't know exactly the details of how this works, but I don't believe for a moment that the United States is still sending weapons to the FSA, per se.
They did send weapons, and this is, you know, what I talked about in my story.
They were sending weapons up until early this year to the organization called Harakat Hazm.
I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it correctly.
But that was essentially the last holdout, which could be called a moderate armed group in the Idlib area.
They were, in fact, still holding out against the forces of Al-Nusra and Arar al-Sham and their allies.
But they were taken over, essentially, by Al-Nusra Front and their allies in March, or late February, early March of 2015, and essentially disappeared.
I mean, they essentially broke up, and all of their weapons, as far as we know, were essentially taken over by the Al-Nusra Front and their allies.
Well, I've seen that process repeat itself over the years, too.
Well, that's, of course, right.
That is what has been happening for years now.
Well, now, what even makes these groups moderate at all in the first place?
Just they're willing to cooperate with the Americans and the Israelis?
Well, before I answer that, let me just make one final point, which is very important in this context.
And that is that what happened when Harakat Hazm was taken over, disappeared, and its assets were taken over by Al-Nusra Front and their allies, is that that's how they obtained hundreds of TOW anti-tank missiles, which have turned out to be the critical factor in the ability of this army of conquest to make such rapid and dramatic strides in that part of northwest Syria.
So, anyway, I just want to make sure that that point got in there.
Now, so your question is, what makes a group moderate, a so-called moderate group, in the Syrian context?
Yeah, like the Al-Farouk Brigade.
They used to call for elections.
This has been a couple of years, but they said, yeah, no, we shouldn't call elections.
We shouldn't force everyone to convert or die or anything like that.
We can coexist.
But then it was their commander who was on film eating the dead soldier's heart.
And then there was the Northern Storm Brigade who palled around with John McCain.
But then they were the ones who sold Sotloff to ISIS and admitted on camera to Time magazine that they were veterans of the Iraq war where they fought with Zarqawi.
So I was just wondering, I mean, here the FSA commanders are saying we're planning suicide attacks against the Russians.
So where's the moderation?
That's all I'm asking.
Now we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back with Gareth, y'all.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
So yes, I don't mean to just get caught up on semantics.
It's an important point.
Whether there really is a moderate third force for America and its allies to back against Al Qaeda and ISIS and Assad and his army and Hezbollah and Iran and Russia.
Is there, Gareth?
You know, never mind whether it's strong enough to really do what I just said its task is.
But are there any goddamn moderates at all here?
This stupid question of your original questions is what what constitutes moderates?
And I don't know if anybody really knows the answer to that.
My impression was that at the beginning of this whole saga, uh, that it it actually meant something approaching, you know, at least relative secular orientation of the of the military unit.
But that I don't know if that has held up at all.
I doubt it.
Cannibalism notwithstanding.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
So, you know, I mean, the bottom line is, I really don't know what how that would be defined at this point.
And even if there were an internal definition, I doubt very much that the American public would be told the truth about, you know, how it's being used.
And now this is the last story in the last interview.
We talked about this to how, you know, the Al Nusra Front and and their allies, people just like them in every way have dominated the field all along.
Unlike in Iraq, where to where Al Qaeda in Iraq was really the more marginal part of the Sunni based insurgency.
They really have dominated the field in the on the Sunni side of the war, if you can call it that.
Obviously, there are a lot of Sunnis that back the the Damascus government as well.
But anyway, they've always it's always been the Al Nusra Front from the very beginning that's dominated this thing.
And then so that's what gets us right back to the ridiculous contradiction now where our government is crying that the Russians are bombing Al Qaeda.
Yeah.
And you know, the bottom line for me, the last point that I make in my story about this, about this issue of the Obama administration and the news media essentially refusing to acknowledge the fundamental truth about what's going on there at this moment, is that, you know, the reason it seems to me is very clear that that they are afraid for the truth to be told about this.
That is that the Obama administration entered into a very complicated set of arrangements last year with the Qataris and the Saudis, which involved essentially cooperating in supporting the forces in the northwest Syria that were building up to take over Idlib province.
And they, you know, they were supporting what the Qataris and the Saudis were doing here on the ground that, at least according to Liz Sly's story in the Washington Post this past week, this would represent enough pressure on the Assad regime to force Assad to compromise, meaning presumably that he would agree to step down, but without causing without risking the collapse of the entire state structure.
And they didn't even question whether they were going to risk an invasion by the Russians.
That wasn't even part of it.
I was not part of it at all.
But the point is that that they were involved in such an incredibly risky, totally irresponsible notion of a policy that, you know, I think they would be embarrassed to have this whole issue aired at all.
And I think that's the real problem at this point.
Yeah.
Tom Englehart had an article came out yesterday about how the guys in military intelligence, where they can't get a damn thing right.
Everything that they estimate is is off by a lot.
Like, here's some quotes of some guys just a few weeks ago saying, oh, Kunduz will never fall.
I mean, yeah, the Taliban are doing some small attacks near it, but don't worry, it's fine.
Well, you know, that that kind of Mosul is not in danger, Gareth.
You don't need to worry about the Islamic State taking over Mosul.
No, nothing to see here.
Move on.
Yeah.
I mean, this is this is, of course, the system of U.S. military command in Afghanistan at work.
And I know from from the Petraeus era that when anybody in the military intelligence would suggest a an analysis or or even a report of what was happening on the ground, very concrete report that conflicted with the good news trend that Petraeus wanted to get out.
It was they were very strongly discouraged by the commanders there from moving forward with that.
So that's that's the way it works.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's what's his name, Daniel, the officer that you interviewed?
Yeah, Daniel.
I'm sorry.
It's on the tip of my tongue, too.
When it comes up without preparation, I say, oh, well, it's all right.
I know perfectly well.
Anyway, you know, here's something I can mention that talks about that, that shows that inaction actually is a vice documentary from two or three years ago called This Is What Victory Looks Like, where everything is a catastrophe and then the brass come to visit and they're like, everything's great.
And don't dare to tell the truth because they already know it's not allowed.
Anyway.
Hey, let's talk about your Yemen story here.
We still got five minutes.
The U.S. could end Saudi war crimes in Yemen.
It just doesn't want to.
What war crimes and how could America do anything about that, Gareth?
Right.
I mean, here's another story that's not covered by the news media.
Amnesty International issued a report on October 6th, I believe it was, which documented in great detail the war crimes that the Saudi-led coalition was carrying out and has been carrying out in Yemen since March 27th.
And they actually visited Yemen during the summer.
And what they found, well, first of all, of course, they actually were able to quote the Saudi spokesman, the spokesman for the Saudi command, who publicly declared that the Saudis and their allies were going to bomb the two major cities in the north, Sana'a and another city, which I was not familiar with, a smaller city.
And they were going to do so because not that they were specific military targets they were going to hit, but because these cities were supporting the Houthis and the population.
Therefore, I mean, they didn't use this phrase, but of course, it was the practice of the well-known principle of collective responsibility that the Israelis more or less follow explicitly in their wars.
So, I mean, this was the primary war crime, the one that covered many other specific war crimes in the case of Yemen.
And just reading from your article here, it's Saada and Maram.
Yeah, yeah, Maram, yeah.
So, this Amnesty International report is really quite damning.
And the point I make in the article is that, first of all, the Obama administration refuses to make any comment on the Amnesty International report.
And they're not asked to make any comment except by me, because the news media is simply refusing to report on that Amnesty International report, except for, I believe, one Time magazine piece, which misrepresents it, suggesting that there could be war crimes instead of saying that there were war crimes.
Okay.
Now, tell me everything you know about what America has to do with this Saudi war in Yemen.
Right.
I mean, what Amnesty points out very specifically is that the United States is liable under international law for the Saudi-led coalition of war crimes because, A, the United States is supplying the munitions.
I mean, that's very clear on the record.
We sold the munitions to the Saudis.
And secondly, that war could not go on without the U.S. providing the logistical support for it.
In other words, keeping those airplanes flying.
It's very well known that the Saudis can't do it themselves, nor can the other members of their coalition.
They have to have U.S. contractors basically carrying out that function in order to keep that war going.
So the U.S. is legally liable under international law because of their very serious involvement in supplying the weapons and the logistics.
Now, you know, let me ask you this.
Wait a minute.
Who's zooming who here?
Because America's the empire and Saudi is the satellite state.
And how about this is America's war, the Republicans and the Democrats and the Pentagon's war.
And they've just kind of hired the Saudis to do the bombing runs for him for PR purposes.
No, that's not what happened, Scott.
You know, that may be one of the easy things to take away.
But the fact is, as far as I know, the United States was not told about this until the last minute.
And I think that's perfectly credible because of the way the Saudis, the new Saudi government is operated.
I mean, this is a bunch of people who really have no experience whatsoever.
I mean, the minister of defense is this kid, 29 year old guy who is apparently a disaster in a number of different ways and who has no real experience and who just is operating by the seat of his pants.
But the point is that the Obama administration said, oh, OK, sure, go ahead.
We'll support you.
And I mean, that's the real crime.
I mean, you know that that's been half a year now and a blockade and all of this.
I mean, this is not nothing.
This is huge.
I mean, you know, absolutely.
The Obama administration is fully culpable.
They decided to let them go ahead and see what they could do.
And they are unwilling to do anything about it.
That's the burden of my story.
That's the main point that I make.
Even though they know it's a disaster, they know that the consequences of this are disastrous.
For one thing, it gives Al-Qaeda a complete open space to operate and that and they've been cleaning up.
They've been basically making huge strides because of this war.
Yeah, well, and, you know, it's not like they don't know this.
I interviewed Mark Perry about, I don't know, three, four months ago, and he had a story about how over at the Pentagon they were saying, yeah, you know what?
We don't like flying as Iran's air force in Iraq, but they got us flying as Al-Qaeda's air force in Yemen.
And this is crazy.
And then, you know, the Pentagon, they're happy to bomb anybody, but they don't really want to fight on Al-Qaeda's side.
They got hit that day after all, you know?
And the CIA is not happy with this at all.
I mean, they think that this is a disaster because of their interest in, you know, the counterterrorism aspect of Yemen.
And so they see Al-Qaeda, you know, making huge strides because of this war, and they're not happy about that.
I mean, certainly, the intelligence people are not happy.
And arguably, the people who are involved in counterterrorism in Yemen are also unhappy about what the U.S. is doing in supporting this stupid war in Yemen.
That's amazing.
And, you know, the partisan incentives baked into the Obama reign are going to be something for historians to puzzle over, assuming mankind survives for eons to come, the way the conservatives love war, but they hate Obama.
So they don't want to give him credit for the wars that he does.
They only accuse him of not ever doing enough, but they won't ever really highlight just how militaristic he is and all the horrible sins that he commits.
And all the liberals want to pretend that they elected Dennis Kucinich and that the war ended back in 2011 and everything's fine now.
And they just, you know, willfully ignore it.
You have the major media who can hardly understand it to even squawk about it.
You know, the news anchors still wondering what's taking so long to get rid of Assad.
And this is how history is written.
The news media are totally complicit in both Yemen and the Syrian stories, the crimes that are being committed in both places.
And, you know, do they know what they're doing?
You know, yes and no, I think is the answer.
It's more complicated than that.
So, I mean, that's for another discussion to get into greater depth on.
But, you know, I just would say that, you know, we're up against a system in which the Obama administration is really lost in a fog about what they're doing.
You know, I really think that there's a new phenomenon here of the national security state being moved in a direction that is completely new, where there's no real strategy.
They're operating by the seat of their pants and trying to cover up for the stupid things that they've done in the past.
And that's, I think, really the story at this point.
Yeah.
Hey, you know what?
As long as it's good for arms sales and as long as it's good for, you know, the ribbon manufacturers to get to supply all the fancy brass with their shiny little decorations for their uniforms, I guess they'll keep on going.
Well, I'm not sure how many ribbons are being handed out at this point over the crimes in Yemen.
That's for sure.
And as Syria as well.
I mean, that's not clear that that's generating many ribbons at this point.
Yeah, well, you know, just wait till Jeb comes and we have the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremonies for those who saved Yemen from the Houthis or whatever it is.
Anyway, we'll see about that.
I kept you away over time.
Thanks.
I appreciate it, man.
Thank you.
Bye bye now.
All right.
So that's the great Gareth Porter.
The U.S. could end Saudi war crimes in Yemen.
It just doesn't want to.
That's a truth out dot org.
And this one is at Middle East.
I dot net.
Obama won't admit the real targets of Russian airstrikes.
America's Al Qaeda forces.
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