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 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 been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Alright, so you guys are introducing the great Karen Katowski, the recipient of the 2018 Sam Adams Award.
Welcome to the show.
How you doing, Karen?
I'm doing great.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, very good to talk to you again.
Well, I can't believe you didn't already win this thing, but now you did.
And I guess, oh, I guess people don't know this is the Whistleblower Award from, what is the name of the group?
Ray McGovern's group here?
Well, it's the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity and Intelligence.
And it's mainly the veteran intelligence professionals for sanity.
That's probably who you see more emails from.
And Ray McGovern, a bunch of people that you know that you have on the show all the time.
They are kind of behind this.
And then, you know, there's a lot of people who have won this award.
And I'm sure many others that will in the future and should have won it.
But it's real, you know, I'm hugely honored to be picked this year.
And I think, you know, it's really because of that Rob Reiner film, Shock and Awe.
Shock and Awe.
OK, so let's talk a little bit about that.
It's so funny because I've known you since, what, 2004, if not three.
Since we've been talking.
And then certainly known Jonathan Landay, formerly from Knight Ritter and then McClatchy Newspapers.
And I forget where he's at now.
For many years, too.
And I knew that he was the first reporter to write the Office of Special Projects in the Pentagon.
And that was in the fall of 2000.
No, no, no.
I forget.
Sometime in 2002.
Anyway, it turns out you're the source for that.
And that's the scene in the movie is you give them that story.
And I should have known that.
How did I not put two and two together about that and figure out that you were Landay's source for that?
Yeah, well, actually, Warren Strobel is the guy.
I was Warren Strobel's source.
They were partners at the time.
They were partners.
You know, when I was in the Pentagon, you know, my name's Katowski.
That's K plus ten other letters that nobody wants to pronounce.
And so my nickname in the Pentagon there in both a couple of offices that I worked in was K-10.
And they do refer in the movie to K-10.
That was Warren's source.
And it was the lady that they had, you know, used to display me or whatever was, you know, nothing like me, of course, in physical sense.
And she also wasn't wearing a uniform in the movie.
And they didn't really know who it was.
They didn't know if it was me.
They didn't know if it was an active duty military person, an officer.
They didn't know that.
And then the movie came out, of course.
And then, I mean, 15 years later, I mean, what have I got to lose?
Big fat nothing.
In fact, anybody who'd followed it kind of knew.
You knew.
I mean, so many people had read stuff that I'd written.
And they read the American Conservative three-part series, which really outlined the whole thing.
Of course, that was done after I retired.
But, yeah, when I was talking to Warren, it was the summer and fall, late summer and fall and winter of 2002, 2003.
And I showed up in uniform when I had meetings with him.
But I only, I think, had, I think, one meeting.
And everything else was done electronically.
I see.
Very interesting.
And then, so, for the people who were too young or they were a bad guy then or they just didn't know this part of the story, this was a huge part of the story.
Well, as you put it, in Rumsfeld's shop, that was the first of the series for the American Conservative magazine.
Rumsfeld's shop, Conscientious Objector and Open Door Policy.
Oh, I kind of forgot about that one for a minute, Karen.
But in Rumsfeld's shop, there was a whole, not the DIA like you would have, but a whole separate neoconservative intelligence-gathering operation.
Is that what you would call it?
Yeah.
And they were gathering intelligence using the tax-funded intelligence system and backbone.
And they were going through, you know, our government computers and any data that had been scooped up from any of the intelligence agencies.
So, they're looking at it, but they're not preparing intelligence.
They're picking bits and pieces, mostly out of context, and some of it that had never been verified.
In fact, some of it had been verified to be false.
But it was, you know, if you take that paragraph or that phrase, this is verified to be false or this didn't happen, and you just put the front part, it looks like it happened.
So, they were creating a storyline, creating the background papers and everything that would support what the politicians were doing.
Now, of course, Cheney himself is really kind of orchestrating a lot of this.
And, you know, you're familiar, you've talked about this a bunch of times.
I mean, it's well known that Cheney personally traveled to the CIA multiple times.
I mean, he pressured actual analysts, which is uncalled for.
When would you have the vice president talking to analysts?
But this huge amount of pressure put on them.
And he's orchestrating this.
His former people that had worked in his office were in charge of Southeast Near Asia.
They were in charge of, you know, OSP.
He's picking and placing people.
He's running this show.
Okay, that's Cheney.
And he knew they were making up a story.
Cheney lied, there's no doubt.
I mean, it's pretty clear that President Bush, you know, W, did, you know, I mean, did he lie or did he get taken for a ride?
I mean, we know, in fact, Wilkerson, Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff for Colin Powell.
You had Larry on, I'm sure, right?
You've talked to Larry.
So, Larry gave the, if you look at the video, it's not been broken down yet.
So, Larry gave an introductory speech, which was really about current events and the neocons and that kind of thing.
And he talked a little bit about what happened with Colin Powell.
And, of course, you saw that in the movie, too, the Colin Powell testimony verbatim.
I mean, the actual video is incorporated into the movie.
Now, Colin Powell asked a lot of the right questions.
But he still ended up getting kind of taken for this ride and being made to participate in what he, I think, suspected in parts were lies.
But he wasn't 100 percent sure.
I think Colin Powell kind of, yeah, he probably got, you know, lied to a little bit.
Well, the thing is, if you zoom in that closely, like, did they know that this specific lie was tortured out of Alibi or Abu Zubaydah?
Or did they know that this cartoon of a mobile biological weapons lab drawn up by Clapper's department, that those specific things were based on specific lies?
Well, probably not because they weren't asking those questions.
But I think they knew.
They knew.
They knew.
And they also, I think, and I think we're coming to, as a society, in the 15 years that's gone by, you know, post 9-11, whatever it is, we're coming to the realization that, you know, this is a lie.
This is a lie.
This is a lie.
And I think we're coming to, as a society, in the 15 years that's gone by, you know, post 9-11, whatever, you know, we had Obama and we had, well, we had W, of course, and all the wars that W promised not to get into when he campaigned and did all that.
And then Obama who continued them.
And I think the Obama era was really important in getting people to realize it doesn't matter who it is.
They're all lying to you.
Because, you know, Obama was hope and change.
And he was nothing but W3, W2.
So, you know, a continuation of these policies.
And then you have Trump who half the population in this country, half the voters in this country absolutely do not respect in any way, shape, or form and don't like.
And this is good in many ways.
Because, you know, it causes us to question, you know, their qualifications.
We should be questioning all of their qualifications.
Not just Trump.
All of them.
And also their motivations.
And we do that now with Trump.
We did that, a great many people in this country did that with Obama after it became clear he wasn't really giving us hope or change.
And this is a really good thing.
Because these people that are running our country, you can call it deep state, the president's part of it, his staff, all these people, they're extremely arrogant.
They're extremely, you know, we are running things.
And so their view of the intelligence community is just what you said.
And they don't see anything wrong with it.
They see the intelligence community as a tool for them to do what they want to do.
It's not just specific to one particular president or W or even Cheney.
And if you look at our history, of course, and you know this, we've done this forever.
Presidency, you know, what do I got to justify what I want to do?
And of course what he wants to do, he or she, is of course what the deep state wants to do.
And then we can talk about why we have these wars.
Yeah.
You mentioned in the documentary, someone was asking me recently, what's a good war documentary I should watch?
I said, why we fight?
It's got a lot of Karen Katowski in there talking about the neocons and a lot of people talking about all the money to be made in and outside the Pentagon.
All the contractors and all the arms manufacturers and all the lobbyists and all the bankers too.
Servicing all those transactions and all the government debt and all the everything.
Who's not in on it?
That's right.
It's a shame too, because these Democrats are so wrapped around the axle.
The ones that got elected in Pelosi's crowd.
This party is such a warmongering Democratic party.
At least the 50 and over side of the House is.
These Democrats are older even than Republicans in the House.
They're very aged people, I'm sorry to say.
And that generation of Democrats is a bunch of warmongers.
They love war.
They love the money that they think war makes.
They love watching the terrible destruction of everything that war does.
In their mind, hey, this is profitable.
I'm being sponsored by these people.
I can get reelected because these people want war and I can vote for it.
And yet that party has a beautiful opportunity now.
Especially since they have a pretty good, well, not so big, but they do have the House.
They have the House.
And they are in a position to shut down, or I should say shut down Trump's warlike tendencies, if that's the case.
Or to support Trump's peace-oriented tendencies.
Whichever the day it is.
These Democrats have this huge opportunity to do that.
And if they're shutting down Trump, this is a great thing.
If they're not shutting him down, if he actually takes a peaceful turn in any given decision, they could support that in there.
That would give them more integrity as a party.
And yet they're not doing it.
They're not doing anything.
It'd be a great way for him to really stick to them.
For him to be Trump the Great by ending all the wars and then letting all the Democrats attack him from the right all they want.
And see what good it does them.
If that's the way you want to look at it.
But anyway, let's talk more about what a hero you are.
So, first of all, tell us about David Hackworth and Soldiers for the Truth.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, back in the day there was a...
Well, of course, David Hackworth, he doesn't really need a huge introduction.
He was a most highly decorated soldier living for a while there.
And had a lot of experience in...
Well, actually, Korea.
I don't even know if he...
Might have had some World War II time.
I don't know.
But he served throughout a number of American conflicts.
And made his way all the way to full colonel.
Very well-known guy.
And then he wrote a bunch of books.
And he had a flamboyant type of presentation.
And, you know, he was very forceful.
Very much a newsmaker kind of guy.
Very much a newsmaker kind of...
You know, attracted news.
Anyway, he had a Soldiers for the Truth website.
And when I first...
In the fall...
Early fall, late summer of 2002...
Wait, wait.
Let me add a couple things about him real quick.
First of all, he was kind of a right-winger in the sense of like...
In the 1990s, he was very much an AM talk radio guest.
Not so much Rush Limbaugh.
But a lot of the other guys.
And including kind of Fox News.
So he had that kind of...
He didn't like a lot of sort of the reputation of veterans who came home from Vietnam and kind of turned into hippies.
He was...
He had turned against the war.
But he had not turned left at all in any sense.
And also, he had sort of...
From everything I knew from his shtick from the 1990s and that kind of thing was...
His whole thing essentially was class war.
That the enlisted men...
They are American human men.
The officers are this alien enemy force trying to destroy these wonderful people.
Enlisted boys that need protecting by the likes of Hackworth.
And so...
And then, of course, the think tank eggheads and the crooked politicians and the perfumed princes, as he called them, like Wesley Clark and certainly he was...
Included David Petraeus.
Those guys were the bad guys.
And the enlisted men were the heroes.
And so that was the frame of, you know, everything.
It was...
It was...
It was...
You know, everything was...
You know, is this going to be good for the enlisted men?
And if it's not, is the sacrifice necessary?
Because if it's not, then there's going to be hell to pay for you by me.
That was kind of his whole thing.
And because he was a colonel, he absolutely could essentially begin everything he said with, I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.
This is the deal.
And he absolutely was against Iraq War II.
And I don't know if he did everything he could, but certainly everything I heard from him in 2002 and 2003 was him explaining to talk radio audiences, here's why not to do this.
Number one.
Number two.
And really knew what he was talking about.
Was really forceful about it, as you say.
Yeah, yeah, really.
He's a hero right there.
I mean, this man made it his life's work after he got out of the...
After he retired, you know, to inform people and to...
And you know, you're right.
I didn't remember that, but yeah, he did not go off to the left side or seek political parties, you know, we're going to advocate for this party over another.
He understood about war and spoke really the truth.
And anyway, I knew a little about him and I knew a little about his website, but what I had done in the Pentagon, frustrated...
I started writing these little short, I mean, very short little vignettes and they were kind of entertaining, I thought.
They were entertaining to me and they helped me blow off some steam about what I was seeing.
And I initially had...
When I got to the point...
I had a lot of friends and buddies and they laughed and stuff.
So, you know, nodded their head kind of thing.
And so then I contacted Lou Rockwell who I had been reading since about...
Since he started in 1998-99.
And I sent it to Lou and I said, but I can't...
If you publish these, if you'd like to publish them, you can, but it has to be done anonymously because I can't obviously...
This kind of...
Even though it wasn't very significant disagreement...
But I mean, it wasn't very harmful to this system, but I would have been probably routed out and done some jail time I'm sure based on where I had been working.
So I told him it has to be anonymous and he says, we don't do that.
Lou Rockwell said we don't do that.
So my second choice was I sent him to Hackworth's website.
Well, Hackworth kind of managed that and he had another guy there helping him.
But in any case, I did.
And I heard back immediately from Colonel Hackworth he asked a few questions but he seemed to he seemed to know what I was saying was true or the perspective that I was taking was accurate.
And I didn't...
I was surprised actually because another thing about Hackworth is he didn't believe women should be in the combat troops of the military.
He was very outspoken about that because he had seen war and that was a big part of...
Again, he thought he believed and I think rightfully in some ways that this would be dangerous to the troops.
So he opposed that.
So I didn't know what his view towards me specifically because obviously I identified who I was and why I needed it to not have my name associated.
Anyway, he jumped on it and it was only months later maybe even after I got out that I realized that I was not of course his only source of information.
He had literally probably hundreds of not just fans but people that he knew personally people in various parts of the Pentagon and in the intelligence community probably the State Department too that were all communicating with him and he knew what I was saying was just one piece and a very well-fitting piece of the puzzle.
So anyway, he agreed to publish them and at that point I think I actually logged in and I just posted them directly and most of them were posted right out of the Pentagon right off my government computer.
I mean again, it was after 9-11 but obviously 10-15 years especially after Ed Snowden and some of this stuff they've cracked down on computer security quite a bit.
So what I did was not unsafe in the time frame that I did it.
If a person did that now they would be quickly shut down So what?
You just go home and do it off your own computer.
That's right.
Hey, a call for more whistleblowers.
Yeah, it's not over yet.
And yeah, they can go to the sandwich shop and log in.
Absolutely.
And you know, we didn't have ProtonMail or we didn't have HushMail.
Of course, HushMail, they've moved their server back to Delaware so that's no good.
But there's ProtonMail, there's any number of encrypted automatic encrypted chat and email services.
I think it's fair to say that honestly when you're talking about sending 19-year-olds who don't know the first thing about it to go possibly get their legs and their manhood blown off and maybe their entire life ended in Afghanistan or hunting down missiles for the Saudis in Yemen or on some errand out there like that then people who are more like in the position that you were in in the Pentagon and that kind of thing if they're asking the physical courage from the 19-year-olds they ought to have the moral courage to you know, hey, maybe even go to prison in order to tell the truth to protect them, right?
It's the same thing as risking your life to provide cover fire for your other guys isn't it?
Yeah, it is and it's actually much less than that because we're not going to get disfigured we're not going to be in a wheelchair the rest of our lives if we told the truth about what we were seeing it's not even remotely that dangerous you know, I hate to say some of the recipients have done, well, several of the recipients Kirikou Chelsea Manning these guys have done guys and gals have done jail time for doing the acts of conscience but you know they weren't this is truly I'm sorry it doesn't compare to some of the stuff that's happened to these very innocent patriots who believed what their government was telling them and volunteered to go over there and you know, it just burns me for all the folks that are hurt well, it's an all-volunteer force well, you know what, that works if you're telling the truth if your government is lying to you it's not really the same as an all-volunteer force and when the American people the so-called sovereign, civilian supreme, you know, creators of this republic here abdicate all responsibility to discuss and debate these subjects for fear of hurting the soldiers' feelings and then, you know, when the soldiers think that premise number one is that the democracy as in, you know, the adult population of the society are bothering to notice whether it's worth it to send them to war or not it's crazy I mean, you hear soldiers say when they're talking about Vietnam or even in the terror wars they say, my country sent me over there then my country doesn't care about me and this and that and it's like, well, you know it depends on how you use those terms but yeah, I mean, it's pretty much right it's true you know, we have an opportunity as every generation we get more and more younger people and the older folks pass away or become less active you know, things change a little bit in our culture the parties have some role to play and both of those political parties are the main ones that are, you know, the ones that field all these congressmen that vote for these wars both of them have a pro-war side but also both those parties are fragmenting into, you know, on the republican side you have kind of a liberty 1930s republican America first type thing where they're very cautious about interventions in war don't want to pay for it you know, they're more of the traditional conservative and also the valuing of freedom and liberty and then in the democrat party a lot of the young democrats, they care about justice yeah, maybe they like a little socialism, they don't know what it is you know, they're interested in it I hope they learn more, and I'm sure that they will as time goes on but these people aren't warmongers the warmongers are the over 50 crowd in both parties for the most part both have been elected over and over again and I'm just, frankly, okay, I got an email today, said call the congress no, call Pelosi Pelosi's office and tell the majority leaders whatever she is, next time select, she's going to be tell her to make sure that the hearing on getting out of the Yemen war and stopping the war on Yemen happens, and so they don't keep blocking it which is what they've been doing, keep blocking it and I thought to myself Pelosi, she's 82 years old what is going on here?yeah, I mean by the way, are you ever going to run for congress again?
I don't think so I don't think so, no you know, that's a bad thing about running for any big office I mean, I would start a war for the chance to see you in Ron Paul's spot in the House of Representatives just to have one person up there getting it right, Karen it would be so great it would be fun, but yeah, so far I've not, and we've actually of course you have Goodlatte, who I was upset about, and that was who I primaried in 2012, he has decided after I guess 13 terms to step down, and we did elect another person, and I will say this the machine, Goodlatte's machine elected this guy there's absolutely no doubt, we saw because I'm a participant in Republican Party politics I'm still the same advocate for, I'm an anti-war advocate and whatnot I say what I think, but in order not to have somebody else take this space, I take this space and I can see what they're doing and I participate and try to move in the right direction, that is a futile thing to do, by the way, but I'm there doing that, so it was Goodlatte's machine that elected this guy and he did have, face competition by Democrats, we have a little blue wave going on here it didn't wipe him out, but there was a lot of Democratic voters anyway, the guy says Klein is his name he says he's going to be part of the Freedom Caucus he's going to associate with Amash and Massey and all these guys, and Jordan you know, that's what he says so we'll see what happens I think that I take that, in fact he and the other Republican who was almost would have been the other choice both of them were running on the same exact ticket, the same exact platform I ran on in 2012, so I do consider that a victory I don't think that to be there, if we can change the conversation we did change the conversation, however, I don't trust them.
You know, Scott if it was me Yeah, it really does come down to the individual at the end of the day for sure it's hard to say if we could have trusted either one of them and Klein was the less trustworthy of the two they were both running on very much the same platform everybody likes it Scott, great reviews read the paperback, the Kindle, or the audiobook and the EPUB is available at Barnes & Noble and everywhere else online as well, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan and also I take donations, if you go to scotthorton.org slash donate you'll see the kickbacks you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks or a silver commodity disc for any donation of $100 and you get a signed copy of Fool's Errand for $50 so that ain't too bad and anyone who donates by way of PayPal or patreon.com slash scotthorton show, $5 or more per month and you'll get access to the private subreddit the new reddit group there at r slash scotthorton show and all new signers to Patreon also get two free audiobooks as well and yes I take every kind of cryptocurrency most especially Horizon but also Bitcoin and the rest of them too so check all that out at scotthorton.org slash donate and patreon.com slash scotthorton show, thanks oh yeah and don't forget to shop amazon.com by way of my link at the bottom of my page at scotthorton.org, you'll see it there your archive going all the way back to including all the Soldiers for the Truth stuff for David Hackworth if I remember right is all posted at LRC yeah pretty at some point the full archive was transferred from Hackworth's site to lourockwell.com so people can read the stuff that you were writing anonymously from the Pentagon watching in real time as your boss Bill Lutie was also part of the Office of Special Plans with Abram Sholsky and Douglas Feith and all the guys lying us into war there and there's real important journalism about it too just we mentioned the American Conservative series about it in Rumsfeld's shop, Conscientious Objector, an open door policy featuring Israelis very interestingly in that one and then there was the new Pentagon papers at salon.com that was a good one and then Jason Vest and Bob Dreyfuss wrote The Lie Factory and Vest also wrote The Men from Ginza and then let's see there's the what got you the award here was you're linking to Strobel and Landay working together at Knight Ritter and all of those archives can be found at McClatchyDC.com you have to kind of search around it's not that easy to find but they do have them all, 2001 they were already publishing you know anti weapons of mass destruction stuff in there those guys are great and they are the models of what you know any large media or small media should be doing and so it's really great I think almost all those articles I mentioned there I mean there are a lot about the neocons but almost all those are centered around you and of course the first four I mentioned they were written by you and then of course as I mentioned the archive at LRC because this was such a big deal the way that they did this and it's so instructive who did it and how they did it and how it all worked there and your point of view on how that all unfolded, the separate government as Colin Powell later called it that Cheney and the neocons set up inside the first Bush Jr. term there that's right and I'll tell you this information is good for people, anybody slightly interested in this should go look at it because a lot of it is kind of happening again and if you, I am not the JINSA, the men from JINSA that Jason Vest put together and of course anything that I've written because I certainly named the names and provided links in any articles that I published there but if you look at the people and you mentioned Ludi and Feith and all these guys if you look at these names and then you actually closely study and look at what's happening today and where some of these people are John Bolton of course, we're very familiar with John Bolton, he of course National Security Advisor and he has brought up many of these same people into the White House, so it's not just John Bolton up there, there's a whole bunch of people, his people he's hired to help him with national security stuff appointees that he has influenced and these are some of the same names, they're just 15 years older it's the exact same people their agenda I don't think has changed they are interested in using the United States their reputation and resources to sow chaos for one of our friends in the Middle East and their allies obviously I'm talking about Israel and Saudi Arabia the sowing of chaos in support of Israel and Saudi Arabia is all that Yemen is about we have no fight in Yemen we have no strategic interest unless we're planning on owning the port of Aden, I don't know what they have planned but this is wrong, what's people that are advocating it and that are articulating this to the current president are many of the same people and this is a little bit scary, now Trump is a little bit different than Obama or W, he's different, he comes from a different place I think he's an excellent reader of people I think maybe he's not, he likes to be in charge so he doesn't like people telling him what he has to do and what he doesn't have to do, I think W was quite comfortable in being told what to do I mean to me Donald Trump is just a perfect image of Obama in every way, including the attacks over the legitimacy of his presidency which under Obama were spearheaded by Trump, haha even though I think all this Russia stuff is nonsense there's kind of no one who deserves it more than him in terms of calling someone or being called an unrightful usurper and all this kind of thing, but then when it comes to rolling over for the generals on Afghanistan and Yemen and Somalia and Syria and everything, he whimpers and then he rolls over, just like Barack he does, he does, but you know he fires more people I think than Obama did, and I like that because people don't know when the hammer is going to come down and they don't know why it will come down, it could be he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and somebody gets fired so I think that unpredictability and the fact that he is willing to let people go and move people around last night, me and the wife were talking about, wow, I wonder who's going to be the new chief of staff, because that could mean everything, right?
What if he named Doug Bandow?
Oh wow, wouldn't that be something, yeah or Doug Fyfe yeah, right or Doug McGregor yeah, I mean it is interesting to watch it all it doesn't have to be someone named Doug no, it doesn't there's some acceptable Dougs out there that we could have not fight though, yeah no, not at all Trump is I don't know, some of the things he says I do like he talks about, on the same day that Pompeo, this was last week I guess on the 4th, Pompeo says we're ending the INF Treaty, 60 days both the U.S., we act like we're the only ones that follow, no, the U.S. has not followed the INF Treaty, we are in violation of that thing just like the Russians are we act like we're all holier than everybody but the fact that he said we're going to get out of that and that of course has implications some very dangerous ones and perhaps, depending on what comes next, maybe good things I don't know, if it's replaced by another treaty that covers things it needs to cover with more signatories, it could be a good thing but at the same day that Pompeo made that speech Trump tweeted about how expensive the arms race is, well it is expensive, and I'm glad that he tweeted that it was, you know, I mean, that shows something but wait, no, he already took that back and he says that now he wants the next one to be another 33 billion higher 733 for next year oh, 750, sorry keep up, Karen he's already flip-flopped that waffle that's not good, but I do think he's a progressive, I think he'll work very well with the Democrats, unfortunately the Democrats are warmongers, and so the next and getting worse but, you know, the more they do warmonger, we are going to see generational breaks in the Congress where the younger people in all of the, both parties are opposing the older people of both parties and of course the young Ron Paul is with the younger people and I'll tell you what, you know, that Thomas Massey I don't know everything about him and his entire voting record or whatever I think, I really like that guy I think he could be the Ron Paul of the house you know, if he's willing in fact, if he has a problem, it's the same one as Ron is that he's too nice and kind of needs to be a little bit meaner to be a better fighter but he apparently seems to be good on everything, as far as I know he's extremely good and he lives a life that we would be familiar with, you know, when he goes home he chops wood and takes care of his bees he's a really interesting guy and experiments with stuff because he's an engineer, he's an engineer minded guy but I'll tell you too the power, I mean it's growing, the liberty type language the anti-war language, it's growing war is expensive and it's stupid and it kills people and it causes all this pain and anxiety it's not really a win-win for anybody but the banks and a few politicians and maybe some oil people and whatnot so, you know when there's people that are like Massey and others the fact that they may be a little soft spoken and they're friendly and nice, that's not bad because they're spending, they're communicating people will listen to people like that and a lot of times our arguments, our debates you know that really just shows how corrupt I am that's my objection to him but I think, you know a lot of people, because my brother who, we share many of the same ideals but he's gone off the he's way on the democratic socialist bandwagon and he was, it's very different than how I was raised and different from how he was but our goals are very similar, both hardcore anti-war, so if we're talking about anti-war we're good and I think the more we talk the language of war and the cost of war and the stupidity of it and the fact that the people getting us into these wars are idiots, you know, we need to talk about that, it's fair to call them, I think it's fair to call them an idiot, I mean, I don't want to insult legitimate idiots, I mean, but these guys are really unqualified to make these decisions about getting us into wars getting us into interventions that are going to lead to wars you know, some of the things we're doing is just, it's nuts and the other bad thing, this is a negative and I think I mentioned it in my talk a little bit but, you know, our base building has continued unabated, we may have fewer bases in Germany, but we've got bases everywhere, in Syria we have these monster bases, do you know that?
Right, yeah, in fact there's a new piece out, I think it was in Politico or something about the army base out there in Syrian Kurdistan, a huge one Yeah, yeah, so we're doing and then if you look at the big map, you know, you can see we're surrounding Russia, we're surrounding Iran, you know, we have this huge plan that if you decide to sell your oil on anything but the US dollar, you know, we're going to go to war with you, I mean, I still honestly think a lot of it has to do with resources, oh, but Scott, there's a guy there's a guy who he wrote a dissertation and he dedicated it to me, I was pretty honored and I did help him a little bit, not much help him but whatever, anyway, he's a he wrote it on the intel breakdown of the time frame that we're talking about back in 2-3 and anyways, part of his research, he actually interviewed Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and all these guys, I mean, all the way yeah, a guy that dedicated his thing to you interviewed them for it that's, yeah, and he did it in such a way that they all thought because he said, can I get a copy of that?
Yeah, I'll send you the published the unpublished one, he did it in the University of Calgary and he kept it on non-American servers the whole time, he's got a lot of background information that's not in I mean, it's well documented in the actual dissertation, but even the Calgary University of Calgary people told him, there's stuff in here you really, we're not going to allow you to say that because Canada will get hurt by the U.S. when you say these things and even though they're completely honest well documented and true he had to water it down a little bit, kind of like you say Massey, you know, sometimes you gotta water stuff down, we watered it down a little bit but it's still very powerful, but all the time when he was doing the research with the actual players of this time, and this was of course he finished it up I think a year and a half ago maybe a year ago I know it came out last spring, published anyway he to get the interviews and part of his process was to say to them I am researching the intelligence community failure and you guys are going to help me understand how our intelligence community failed you as decision makers so they're offering him jobs and all this stuff and he's still on their friendly list that is awesome, I can't wait to read that thing let me tell you Scott I'm going to hook you up with this guy on ProtonMail and I think we'll hear more from him he's got two PhD's and he's an SES he was an SES 3 in the Trump administration, that's how high up he is, and of course former military and the interesting thing about his work and it's like we all come to where we are through a pathway and he started out in the army as a criminal investigator so he writes, he knows how to do crime investigation that's how he approached this because it was a crime, it was certainly a crime anyway he's out of the country now working at the EU on a five year contract I'm sorry Karen, I'm so over time here, I'm supposed to be interviewing David Swanson about Pearl Harbor and I'm being so rude to him right now because I love talking to you so much I miss you, it's because I miss you Scott I know, it's great to talk to you again I'm so sorry that it got scheduled this way, but I definitely hope we can do this again soon, please write for me at the institute or at antiwar.com anytime you want to I sure will, I sure will, thanks a lot and everything you can read at antiwar.com on the blog right now is Karen's acceptance speech and Ray McGovern's dedication here from her Sam Adams award for her great whistle blowing there and then the show notes will include links to all the articles that were mentioned today as well thank you again so much Karen oh thank you, thank you alright y'all thanks, find me at libertarianinstitute.org at scotthorton.org antiwar.com and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow oh yeah and read my book Fools Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us
