For Pacifica Radio, April 15th, 2018.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all.
Welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the editor of Antiwar.com and I'm the author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
I'm here every Sunday morning from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA.
And actually just a couple of days ago on April the 12th marked 15 years of the interview show.
You can find my full archives, 4,600 and something interviews going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org and also on YouTube at youtube.com slash scott horton show.
All right, introducing our regular guest, my very favorite reporter, the investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter.
And he is the author of the books Perils of Dominance about Vietnam and Manufactured Crisis, the truth behind the Iran nuclear scare about the Iran nuclear scare.
Welcome back to the show.
Gareth, how are you doing, sir?
I'm fine.
Thanks, Scott.
Glad to be back.
Oh, and I should mention that we've reprinted of, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds of your articles, maybe more than 1000 something at antiwar.com, original.antiwar.com slash Gareth dash Porter.
That's stuff for, for Middle East Eye and interpress service and truth out and all kinds of things.
We reprinted all there at antiwar.com, the great Gareth Porter collection.
All right.
So Donald Trump bombed Syria Friday night, Gareth.
So why'd he do it?
What's the deal?
Could have been worse, huh?
Well, I think it, I think it could have been much worse.
Yes.
And I think that's the, perhaps the most important story of this, of this strike.
And of course, look, I mean, this is, this is illegal.
It's, it's an emanation of the worst aspect of US foreign and military policy of carrying out military operations in a situation where there's no legal basis for it.
There's no intelligence basis for it.
There's no moral basis for it.
But it is an exercise in power that pleases a lot of people.
Particularly, it seems in the national center, center liberal, or centrist liberal media, who, well, I mean, they're, they're not satisfied with it.
It didn't go far enough to please them, let's face it.
They want big wars, because it's good for their bottom line.
And because it seems to be coincident with their personalities.
That's the only way I can explain it.
Well, I mean, there's so many different things to talk about here.
You know what, let's get back to the politics of the warmonger Democrats a little bit later.
Let's talk about the strikes and the the so called predicate for the strikes, the gas attack here in again, in the Guta province, Garrett, tell us everything.
Yeah, you know, this, I have been following all of the various alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria for a few years now, trying to drill down to really the most precise facts of each of these cases, the ones that are most familiar to people.
That is the, well, the series of, of alleged attacks that took place in 2013, that led up to then the big one in Guta, or Guta, as it's pronounced in Syria, in August 2013.
And then Khan Sheikhoun, last year in April, a year ago.
And now, of course, in Guta again.
And I must say that none of these instances in which supposedly the Syrian government used poison gas, if you if you look carefully at the documentation of the known documented facts surrounding each of these cases, the intelligence that was claimed to be clear cut in each of these cases, simply could not have been clear cut, it was very, very ambiguous, to say the least.
And we don't have time to go into all of the details of each of these cases, obviously, on your show.
But I did a long piece for a journal called Middle East Policy.
It's, it's, it's one of the most difficult, it's the most difficult thing that I've ever published in order to get people to be able to read it, because it's not online, you have to subscribe to the journal to read it.
But I did detail my analysis of all of the, all of the ones not including Khan Sheikhoun, or the current one, obviously.
But I think the pattern here that that one has to recognize is significant, is that in every case, US intelligence was asked to render a judgment under circumstances where it was clear what the administration, either the Obama administration or the Trump administration, now what they wanted.
And in each case, they did render a judgment that served the the precise political interests of the administration in question.
So I talk about that in great detail in this piece.
And and anyone who's interested enough, you know, could go to a library and find that to find that piece in Middle East Policy.
The date of it is fall of 2016.
It's fall 2016 Middle East Policy.
So you better send me the PDF.
Yeah, I should do that.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Anyway, this this current case, may may well be the most egregious example of this, because, you know, if you look at the videos that have been published, to document this, the videos that have obviously been posted by the media activists in that part of Syria, who were close to the armed opposition, in that case, particularly the Jaysh al-Islam people, and the White Helmets, of course, what you'll find is that there is no, there's no visual evidence of any, of any of the symptoms that are associated with certainly with sarin exposure.
And really, I have not thus far seen maybe maybe there's something that I've missed.
I have not thus far seen even the any any symptoms that would be associated with chlorine poisoning.
And what we see is this sort of mass hysteria scene in the hospital with people being doused with hoses, and dead babies, dead children in a basement.
And that that simply is not sufficient documentation to say that there was a chemical attack in that.
Did you see the the statement that was put out by the White House last night where they claimed, well, there were helicopters that were flying around, and there's multiple witnesses to that, etc?
Yeah, yeah, I saw that.
And, and no doubt, there, there, there were people who were with who were willing to witness to that.
Of course, on the other side of the ledger, you have two medical students, people who said they say they were medical students, I presume that could be documented or, you know, refuted, who have now made videos saying, in detail saying that, that they know that that whole scene was faked.
Or perhaps that's not the right way to put it, but that that that scene did not represent, in fact, any real evidence of a of a chemical attack.
It looks completely ridiculous to me, honestly, it's just people forced to stand there and be sprayed with water.
But how does that show that they've been poisoned with chlorine necessarily at all?
No, not at all.
And what they said was that somebody came into the hospital and started yelling, this is a chemical attack, this is a chemical attack, and that there was panic.
And a fight broke out, according to one of the one of these two young people who is who has now come forward to refute the the the political line that this was a chemical attack.
So, you know, I would just say that OPCW has its work cut out for it.
Today, they're supposed to be in Huta investigating.
And for the first time, I mean, this is significant, because this is the first time that the OPC has actually gone to the site and has been able to interview people, has been able to see for itself the physical evidence, and should be in a position to render a more objective, basically an objective judgment, if you will, an analysis of what happened than they did in the case of Khan Sheikhun.
That was a complete miscarriage of justice, a miscarriage of professional duty on the part of OPC, OPCW, because they never went there.
And they, they are not supposed to consider any evidence, quote, unquote, that has not been obtained directly by the OPCW staff itself.
They violated their own rules completely in the process of going ahead with a report on the Khan Sheikhun affair that simply did not have to do with evidence that they could vouch for.
And I've written about that at some length, as you know.
Well, and they ended up discrediting their own story anyway, when they frankly admit that the victims started showing up at the hospitals before the attack even happened there.
Well, that's true.
They did, to their credit, make that point.
And I mean, this is, this is perhaps the seal on the entire affair that should discredit completely the...
It's an important point, too, as you're saying that the OPCW, they couldn't send guys into Ghouta back in 2013 or Khan Sheikhun last year, because these are places where any, you know, European scientists would get their heads cut off by our moderate rebels if they were to, you know, walk around there unescorted.
Scott, I'm not even willing to accept that as an excuse.
In fact, they could have gone to Khan Sheikhun.
Both sides had agreed to provide security that they would assure the security of a team.
And the OPCW chose for political reasons, I think it's quite clear, not to do that.
And to render their judgment from a distance, which meant that they were more easily manipulated.
So last night, Gareth, when the generals, well, former General Mattis and the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both Marine Corps generals, Dunford is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they gave their statement there.
And at one point, Mattis is clearly lying.
The reporter asked him, so when did you change your mind?
Because yesterday, you said that the evidence wasn't clear.
And he goes, yesterday.
And the reporter goes, what, you mean, after you said that?
And he goes, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And then they didn't follow up and go, oh, yeah, well, so what was it that did it for you?
But he's clearly just bluffing.
I think that's right.
I mean, I think they know that this was not something that was documented on the basis of real hard evidence.
Actually, there were reports, particularly CNN had a very specific report on the question of samples that were supposedly smuggled out of Syria through Turkey, and which a US official told CNN were positive, were positive for a for chlorine and a sarin like nerve agent, nerve gas.
Now, that would have required that those samples had had not only traveled through Turkey, but made their way to Europe, and had gone to one of the qualified laboratories, and the laboratory had carried out its, its tests, and that then the tests had been conveyed back through the channels to the United States.
I think that's just too much for too little time.
I don't believe I'm suspicious about that.
Yeah, it's just a clip.
Right now.
So here's the thing.
Let's talk about the size of the strike here.
It's what john Kerry wanted to do back in 2013.
It'll be a pinprick, it'll be a little bitty thing, which is show, you know, we'll shoot a few missiles at him.
Last year, almost exactly a year ago.
They shot what 60 cruise missiles.
This time, it was 110 or something.
Clearly, the policy is not shifted back to regime change against Assad.
Thank goodness.
This was a punitive raid in a way, right?
But so what else does it mean?
What people are saying, you know, getting really carried away and thinking this could lead to a conflict with the Russians and that kind of thing that clearly, I guess the Secretary of Defense made sure that it did not go that far.
Well, first of all, I think you're right.
Yes.
But let's let's go back to the points you were making about john Kerry.
I mean, actually, john Kerry was was pushing for a much more ambitious strike that would begin to hit, you know, most of the Syrian Air Force.
I mean, he wanted to take out the Syrian Air Force.
He was quite explicit about that.
I mean, this is not he didn't talk about it publicly.
But there were reports about his position, which made it very clear they were coming from Kerry's office or Kerry himself that made that clear.
And so, in fact, this strike is even more clearly, you know, going in a different direction from that than what you suggested.
And, and I'm quite convinced here that there, there must have been a real Donnybrook in the White House, not not, you know, people shouting at one another necessarily.
But look, I mean, john Bolton had made it very clear that he was in favor of going big, he wanted a strike that would perhaps, you know, help to bring about regime change, but at very least would very much weaken the the the Assad government and its military capabilities.
He wanted particularly to hit Iranian sites very, I mean, you know, this is a guy who is on the phone all the time with Sheldon Adelson, and who has backed Adelson's idea of bombing Iran constantly over the years, since he's left the Bush administration.
Adelson being the zillionaire casino magnate who backs the Likud party in Israel, and Donald Trump, the one person who has the distinction of having been the funder for both a presidential candidate in the United States, a winning presidential candidate in the United States and in Israel.
The kingmaker in both in both countries.
Yeah, because, because of of Bolton's connection with with Adelson, and his overall position on this, there's no doubt that he was pushing Trump to go big, and to hit Iranian targets as well as Syrian military targets well, well beyond what was hit last night.
I was I was quite surprised, I must say, and I know other people were as well, that that this was as limited as it was.
And, you know, Mattis, more or less said in the briefing last night, and he said it in his testimony earlier in the day to the House Armed Services Committee very clearly, that his concern was, in fact, the escalation of a conflict if we hit targets that involved either, I mean, he didn't say this explicitly, but it was implied that it would be any targets that would involve Iran, or, of course, Russian interests specifically, would be extremely dangerous.
And so he was making it very clear that he would move very strongly to prevent that from happening.
And so it seems to me what we now have here in the Trump administration is a situation that is really more like the situation that that occurred during the second George W. Bush administration, where Dick Cheney, who we can liken to John Bolton, if you will, because they both embraced the same ideas of using US military force.
It was Dick Cheney pushing for war against Iran.
And the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense saying, No, this doesn't make any sense.
You have to explain how this would play out.
One step after another step, give us exactly what the series of steps would be.
And Cheney and his people couldn't do that.
And the whole idea died on the vine.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, Bolton has certainly made it clear, as he puts it that Assad is a sideshow that who cares if the Ba'athists rule Syria as long as we get a regime change in Tehran?
Well, yeah, obviously, the regime change in Tehran has always been the big prize.
No question about it.
And for everybody on the neocon side, you know, this was Syria was just a stepping stone in that direction.
That's been clear from the beginning.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so this is the whole thing about it, right?
We talk about this all the time, but it's the bottom line that nobody seems to really understand this, certainly on TV.
But Iraq War Two, incidentally, accidentally, not that they started the war accidentally, but the accidental result was the Americans ended up empowering their strategic rival Iran, and Iran ended up having a lot more influence over the Baghdad government than the Americans did.
And of course, at the same time, they empowered Al Qaeda, as the Sunni reaction against the rise of Shiite power there in Iraq War Two.
And ever since then, Seymour Hersh called it the redirection.
And ever since then, they're trying to make up for this huge own goal where they shot themselves in the foot here, George W. Bush and his men.
And so, since then, they've been backing the Sunni reaction.
But of course, the vanguard of those forces, it's not the Saudi infantry or something, it's Al Qaeda.
And so, that's who they've been backing in Syria.
And as Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg in 2012, the reason we're doing this is to weaken Iran, because Assad and the Alawite Baathist regime in Damascus is allied with Iran.
So, we can't start Iraq War Two all over again for the Sunnis.
But as a consolation prize, we can try to take out Assad.
But this is what ended up leading to the rise of the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State.
But to such a degree, of course, that Assad then asked for Iran and Hezbollah and Russia to come and help him.
So, now here we are, far into the future, in the spring of 2018, where the Americans are, because all of this is their fault, so they don't ever mention any of what I just mentioned, the antecedents here.
They're saying, now Iran and Russia and Hezbollah are ascendant in Syria.
And so, never mind how it got that way, and that it's all their fault, and it's all a reaction to their horrible policies over this century.
But so now, what are we going to do?
Just leave and cede now, after Iraq War Three, to get rid of ISIS?
Iran is this much more powerful in Iraq, and now they're going to be this much more powerful in Syria.
And it's the Americans who made it this way, and you want them to cut and run without tying up these loose ends, and somehow reversing this, figuring out a way to make it okay, that the Americans have screwed up everything according to their own standards and goals here?
So, yeah, what you're talking about, Scott, is, of course, the great problem of U.S. foreign and military policy in the Middle East, which is that the United States set out, after the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union had collapsed, to begin a whole new chapter of its quest for power, and violated the fundamental rule that had been followed by U.S. administrations right up to the end of the Cold War, which was that you don't station U.S. troops permanently in the Middle East, because it's going to create serious political problems, it's going to have a serious backlash.
That was long before Al-Qaeda, but of course that turned out to be precisely the problem, that the United States began a series of developments, a series of tit-for-tat developments, things that one thing led to another which led to another.
And what we've seen is basically a series of catastrophes that were accelerated by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and then Al-Qaeda joining the fight and becoming a battle-worthy opponent, getting the experience and the military effectives from all over the Middle East to become a military force, then moving into Syria, of course.
And now we have, as a result of the Obama administration's responding to precisely the kind of argument that you're talking about, well, you know, we have to do something about this or there's going to be a vacuum, a power vacuum.
And so the United States begins to send all these arms into Syria, supposedly for the democratic or the liberal armed opposition, but of course falling into the hands inevitably of Al-Qaeda and its allies.
And now what we have is as a result of all this that Al-Qaeda does in fact have a permanent bailiwick, a permanent base in Idlib province that has been essentially created by U.S. policy over a period of years.
And now, of course, we get the same argument that we can't quit now, we've got to do something about the problems that have been created by our own policies.
And the answer to that is no, we have to start reversing it.
That's the ultimate answer.
And we have to start discussing this problem much more in depth among people who are opposed to U.S. wars, because I don't think this has really sunk in yet.
I think the point you're making is fundamental.
We have to hammer away at this.
People have to understand that they have to talk about it over and over again.
Yeah.
Well, and think about how outrageous it is, the bait and switch, never even mind targeting Saddam Hussein, but targeting the Ayatollah and Hezbollah and the government of Syria, the Shiite axis, when the American people were sold on the war on terrorism was supposed to be to go get Osama bin Laden and his 400 friends hiding in Afghanistan, all of whom were the enemies of the Ayatollah, right?
And you watch TV and they just list off all these groups as though they're all on the same side when the American government has the American people backing our enemies against their enemies.
Yeah.
And of course, as you know, and I think many of your listeners know, I mean, it's been Hezbollah, which has been on the ground resisting the advances of Al-Qaeda and to some degree ISIS, but mostly Al-Qaeda in Syria for years now.
And this has been demonized as malign influence in Syria.
Now, of course, it is.
It represents an influence of Shiaism and Iran.
No question about it.
This is inevitably the consequence of the overall situation for which the United States must bear full responsibility.
But now it's time for the United States to begin to reverse the pattern and to get out of the game, because the game only makes matters worse.
Yeah.
Well, and this is back to your point about the liberal warmongering, not the real leftists who actually believe in peace and oppose imperialism, but the Democrats and the TV liberals.
And their whole point is because the centrist establishment is so upset by Trump that they are the resistance.
The CIA leads it.
And so their whole take is they get to wrap themselves in the American flag and pretend that Donald Trump is some pro-Russian traitor, alien to the American system.
And that, you know, the real American way is what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would do, which is bomb Syria.
You know?
Yeah.
I mean, the networks definitely, that is the centrist networks, if you will, have an affinity for the intelligence community and the military, which is very touching and which undoubtedly reflects their trope of always wanting to be close to the sources of power.
That's been the way the U.S. news media has always operated.
There's nothing new about this.
But we're now seeing a new and perhaps more poisonous form of this of this problem in the American media.
All right, you guys, that is the great Gareth Porter.
He wrote Perils of Dominance about Vietnam and Manufactured Crisis about Iran's nuclear program.
He writes regularly for Truthout.org and you can find all his archives at Antiwar.com.
Thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate it.
Thanks so much for having me, Scott.
All right, you guys, and that's it for Antiwar Radio for this morning.
Thanks very much for listening.
You can find my full archive, 15 years worth now, at ScottHorton.org.
4,600 interviews for you there, and they're all also on YouTube.com as well.
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See you guys next week.
