05/25/15 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, I'm Scott Horton here, and I'm so excited about Commodity Discs from CommodityDiscs.com.
They're one-ounce silver pieces with a QR code engraved on the backside.
Scan the code with your phone and get the instant spot price.
Commodity Discs are paving the way forward for the alternative currency community in America and around the world.
The QR code, Commodity Disc.
Technology has now finally made a real free market silver currency viable.
And anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton Show at ScottHorton.org slash donate gets one free.
That's CommodityDiscs.com.
All right, you guys, welcome to the show.
Back to it, I mean to say.
All right, next up, it's our friend Gareth Porter.
Writing for Middle East Eye nowadays, mostly.
Also Truthout.org.
MiddleEastEye.net.
Oh, he wrote the book, Manufactured Crisis.
Everything in the world relevant you need to know about Iran's nuclear program.
And how it ain't scary.
Manufactured Crisis by Gareth Porter.
Okay, and now this article is Obama's failure on Saudi-Qatari aid to Al-Qaeda affiliate.
That would be the Al-Nusra Front there in Syria.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Gareth?
Hi, Scott.
Glad to be back.
Thanks.
Good, good.
Happy to have you here.
So now here's the thing.
I think mostly because you were writing that book, you have not done a whole lot of coverage on the Syria beat since the 2011 Arab Spring.
I mean, hey, there's been an Afghan surge and all kinds of problems going on all over the place that you've been working on as well, I know.
But so it's very interesting to me.
I'd be very interested to hear what all you think about all of this.
Now, I mean, you're obviously in this article covering very current day stuff.
But there's a hell of an American policy going on here in Syria.
We've had a lot of fun trying to unravel over the last few years here on the show and got some new evidence out about just what Nixon knew and when he knew it, too.
So first of all, tell us about Obama's meeting here with the GCC that you wrote this article about.
Right.
So this story is really about how Obama has privileged his sort of political protection of the Iran agreement from being attacked by the Saudis and their allies in the Gulf, the GCC organization of Gulf shakedowns and privileged that over the interests of the United States regarding the Saudi policy, the Saudi Qatari policy jointly in Syria of supporting of the al-Qaeda affiliates there, basically.
I mean, this is an astonishing turn of events, not astonishing, but certainly shocking turn of events that obviously should get much more attention than it has.
In fact, I'm not at all sure that any mainstream media has touched on this.
Maybe you've seen something, but I haven't up to now.
Well, what's so shocking about it?
I mean, if it's shocking, it's that even a year after the creation of the Islamic State, the declaration of the caliphate, they still haven't changed their policy from the high trees and they've been engaged in since 2011 here.
Well, I mean, I guess what I'm suggesting here is that the, you know, when this has come to such a an open sort of public matter of, you know, a meeting with the Saudis under circumstances where, you know, it's public knowledge that the that the Saudis and the Qataris have helped create this new front, this new command in Syria, which essentially involves 90 percent of the troops, according to this royal family source who I was able to make contact with for this story.
The troops under this command, 90 percent are Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham troops.
And then, you know, there's a tiny smattering of of so-called moderates or free free Syrian army type troops.
And so this is all public information.
And furthermore, everybody knows that certainly the administration knows that that this new army command, the army of of conquest, was instrumental in bringing about the largest victory for jihadist forces in the Syrian war since 2013, since the capture of al-Raqqa.
This is the capture of Idlib provincial capital in late March.
So, you know, I mean, this is part of an obvious crisis situation in Syria.
And here we have a meeting of Obama, a summit meeting of Obama and the GCC countries in Camp David.
And and we see Obama basically, instead of making this a major issue and putting heavy pressure on the Saudis using the obvious means at his disposal to do so, including leaking this to the news media ahead of time, you know, he he basically downplays this and agrees to relegate the subject, the whole subject of the Saudi support for the jihadists, for the al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria to an annex to the joint statement, not to the joint statement itself.
And so basically, the Saudis appear to be getting off scot free.
I see no reason to believe no evidence that the Saudis have changed their policy.
They're continuing the policy.
This was the this was what I got from the the royal sort of the royal family source in Saudi Arabia.
And and so what we see is Obama basically saying, we'll make a deal.
I'll remain quiet about what you're doing in Syria in return for your sort of turning down the volume.
We're not basically attacking my policy of negotiating an agreement with Iran right now.
I understand what you're saying, but that's shocking.
What's the evidence?
What's the evidence that Obama and the Saudis don't see completely eye to eye on this, just like they have the whole time?
I mean, America and Israel and Turkey and Saudi and Qatar have been working all along.
I got even David Sanger in The New York Times in 2012 saying, well, the guns are going to Al Nusra.
They dominate the field and they cut people's heads off.
In fact, hey, look, the FSA cuts people's heads off, too.
They're all a bunch of suicide bomber bin Laden night lunatics.
Their leaders are all veterans of Al Qaeda in Iraq, where they fought against our guys in Iraq War Two.
And what in the hell is this?
And I haven't seen any evidence that Obama ever told them to knock it off.
It sounds to me like it's his policy.
And if anything, they're just providing the not very plausible deniability for it.
What about that?
Well, I think there's a distinction here, as I as I documented in the same article that we're just we're just discussing now.
My my recent article that that last November, the the Obama administration did, in fact, make it clear they were leaking to to David Ignatius, that they were that they've been extremely unhappy about what the Saudis were doing.
And, you know, this was just another another stage in in the the saga of the the Obama administration dealing with this issue.
I agree that they they did not do enough.
But, you know, I think the distinction here is that before they were not able to say that the Saudis were directly supporting Al Nusra Front.
I mean, you know, they were saying that the arms have ended up in the hands of Al Nusra Front, but the Saudis were saying, you know, that was not our intention.
We were supporting other people and those people quit and joined the Al Nusra Front.
So, I mean, that was that was, you know, I don't know what actually happened, but that was the the narrative that that was being discussed.
So now it's a different narrative.
It's a much more direct, much more dramatic narrative where the Saudis are making no bones about the fact that they're they're supporting Al Nusra Front.
And and the Obama administration, of course, does not formally accept that.
But it's clear that they're not doing anything about it.
And the Turks, too.
The Turks are openly bragging about how they coordinated the second Idlib.
Right, right.
Absolutely.
And so, I mean, and I think this takes us back to, you know, trying to analyze what the nature of the Obama administration policy is in Syria and elsewhere.
But looking at Syria, you know, you have to analyze this, it seems to me, as I've said all along, in terms of a White House political interest has nothing to do with national interest or national security.
I thought you were going to say from an Israeli point of view, but that's the same thing.
All right.
Hang on just one second.
Hey, Al Scott here.
If you're like me, you need coffee.
Lots of it.
You probably prefer taste good, too.
Well, let me tell you about Darren's Coffee Company at Darren's Coffee dot com.
Darren Marion is a natural entrepreneur who decided to leave his corporate job and strike out on his own, making great coffee.
And Darren's Coffee is now delivering right to your door.
Darren gets his beans direct from farmers around the world, all specialty, premium grade with no filler.
Hey, the man just wants everyone to have a chance to taste this great coffee.
Darren's Coffee dot com.
Use promo code Scott and get free shipping.
Darren's Coffee dot com.
All right, guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, Scott Horton Show.
I got Gareth Porter on the line.
We're talking about America's policy towards Syria here and toward the Gulf Cooperation Council, which means Saudi and the Gulf state allies.
And then, of course, the Israelis and the Turks, they have their role in it as well.
And how Obama is basically telling the Saudis and the Qataris, go ahead and back on those Don't even pretend you're back in, you know, Arar al-Sham.
And then somehow the weapons are ending up in the hands of al-Nusra, which is al-Qaeda in Syria, loyal to Zawahiri.
But they go ahead openly admit it.
And he basically goes ahead and gives them open permission.
Just don't screw up my Iran nuclear deal, he says.
And you can go ahead and continue to do this.
And so I want to apologize a little bit for using the term high treason earlier and saying like that, because it sounds like hyperbole and it sounds kind of discrediting to the whole conversation as though, you know, this is just some ideological agenda or something like that.
And yet the only reason I say that is because I'm pretty sure that technically Barack Obama is guilty of high treason.
And if what George Bush accidentally did for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri was horrible, Obama did the same thing for Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri deliberately.
In Libya and in Syria, both backing their movements, not just giving them a lawless territory to rule and war in for a few years, like Bush Jr., but actually has taken their side.
And to this day, the legions of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the butcher of New York.
So why should he not be in the supermax next to Ted Kaczynski?
Or what are we talking about here?
This is just foreign policy, Gareth, or what?
Well, I mean, you know, I think I'd nuance this a bit more than you've done there in that statement by just pointing out to the necessity to make distinctions, first of all, between what we know happened on Syria before with regard to the Saudi policy and what we know now.
I mean, I think that the present, the situation that has emerged in the last several weeks since late March or before that, but with the army of conquest and the more or less open Saudi support for it, I wouldn't say more or less, I would say open Saudi support for it.
This is a new stage.
This is a much more clear cut case that Obama is not acting to defend the national security interests of the United States, but acting against it.
I think that one would have to say that in the past there was a terrible policy, but to say that it was an overt act of treason or, you know, that he was deliberately, you know, sabotaging U.S. national security in regard to the Saudi, the Saudi policy there that's not that way.
I mean, I would say he thinks he's smart, not that he's actually exchanged his loyalty because he's a Kenyan secret Muslim kind of thing, but he's just, you know, he thinks he's clever.
But so, so listen, I want to play this clip real quick.
It's a short one, but it's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
I know you're familiar with the clip defending herself from the question of why are we not doing more to support the rebellion in Syria?
And this is now this is from very early March, maybe late February of 2012.
So more than three years ago now.
And she answers defending the administration's position.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
Hamas is now supporting the opposition.
Are we supporting Hamas in Syria?
All right.
And so now we know what she means.
She's not saying, are we directly giving guns to guys that we know love Zawahiri more than us?
That's not what she's saying.
She's saying, are we, you know, helping these guys in essence?
Are we de facto their allies and taking their side in the war?
We have to be very careful about who it is we're backing.
And then the entire administration, including her, continued to do that.
And she apparently had the most hawkish position of all of them saying that we ought to keep doing exactly that.
And I know they claimed under the theory that they were supporting this so-called moderate army to marginalize the extremists.
But we all know that moderate army never existed and was impossible for them to create in a way that it was going to be able to take on Nusra, ISIS and Assad, Hezbollah and everybody else in there.
The whole thing, as the president himself said, was a fantasy.
But they kept doing it anyway this whole time.
Well, yeah, I mean, and of course, I agree with you that that the idea of a moderate army was, you know, nothing short of a scandalous fiction.
You know, it never really amounted to anything.
And in fact, I mean, you can find statements.
I remember distinctly a statement by Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, indicating the same thing, that there is nobody to support for there's nobody for us to support in Syria was his point.
And and so, I mean, there was a widespread understanding of that.
And again, I mean, you know, I want to bring the conversation back to, you know, trying to understand what is it that leads the White House to to make certain statements, to take certain positions on the on Syria that that don't make any sense.
And I mean, I think that, you know, you have to see it fundamentally as a kind of political triangulation exercise that constantly goes on.
You know, we have a president who clearly does understand that that he was being pushed by people in his administration to take positions that he knew were crazy and wrong.
And, you know, there's some indication that that he has, in fact, resisted that that pressure to to a great extent.
And so, you know, it's in that context that I'm suggesting that what he's doing is is just constantly it's it's domestic politics is defining almost entirely the the White House position, which is U.S. foreign policy.
I mean, that is pretty much at this point what U.S. foreign policy is.
It's what the White House is is declaring or failing to declare.
Well, you know, it's and so this brings us back to this whole problem that that U.S. foreign policy is never is never based on the reality on the ground.
It's not a response to the reality on the ground.
It is a response to either domestic electoral, personal White House politics or bureaucratic interests.
And and here I'm suggesting that, you know, the primary explanation here is this personal White House political interest, just, you know, just like his maneuvering over the whole bin Laden issue is all, you know, just merely about positioning himself politically.
You know, I just think that that's really that's really the answer to the to the question.
Why?
Why is he doing or not doing what he's doing and not doing on on Syria?
All right.
So now what did you learn from this new D.I.A. report?
Well, I mean, I think that the D.I.A. was, in fact, calling it right that they saw that what was happening was that there was a gathering jihadist movement made up of Jabhat al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda fronts there.
This is before ISIS split off.
This was back in 2012.
Right.
This is 2012.
And, you know, he was the the D.I.A. analyst or analysts were making it clear that that this was, in fact, going to be leading to a likelihood that they were going to dominate the the war, that they were going to become the most powerful factor in the war.
And that it would destroy Iraq.
Yeah.
And that was going to affect exactly that.
It was going to affect the the ability to to respond to threats to security in Iraq.
Exactly.
They understood the strategic linkage between the two.
I mean, and they even say, you know, they're going to roll right back into Mosul and Ramadi and declare an Islamic state.
I mean, it sounds like, you know, interview of Patrick Coburn on this show circa the same day that this thing was written.
So, I mean, to me, it underlines the the ability of intelligence analysts to get it right, to be very precise in their analysis when they do so without the intervening filter of higher level intelligence officials who are motivated, of course, by politics, by their desire to, you know, curry favor with policymakers and people in the White House.
And and, you know, this is a very good example of just just how good they can be in that regard and how, you know, what we actually, I think, see for the most part happening is that when there is a national intelligence estimate, this process is extremely political and it results in the very good analysis that we see in this specific report watered down, changed, corrupted into something that's that's much closer to supporting the policy.
Yeah.
Well, remember, Vladimir Putin called John Kerry a liar when John Kerry said, oh, no, the rebels, they're all a bunch of moderate secularists and stuff.
They won a bunch of elections and and Putin was like, what are you talking about?
I can't believe the nerve.
And, you know, not to take his side, but boy, against John Kerry, it's easy.
I'll tell you.
And again, you know, this all this is happening, Scott, in a country that is, OK, let's say the second most right wing country in the world.
And we all know what the first the most right wing country in the world is.
Yeah.
I mean, everything everything that happens in national security policy and foreign policy is tilted, corrupted, is is shifted very far towards the most outrageous outcomes by that political fact, because the right wing is so powerful in this country that they they essentially not just exercise a veto power, but but pressure, you know, automatically the White House in various ways, both, you know, sort of directly through their own declarations and so forth and through the the the calculus that the White House is always going through politically.
That's my that's my take on it.
Well, I feel, yeah.
And, you know, just a reminder, basically has the exact same thing.
He calls it libertarian realism that all foreign policy is just domestic politics expressed or whatever.
But the thing to me that's very interesting about this, and I'm keeping you over time now, I hope you don't mind.
But so I had Mark Perry on the show and I guess this could just be CYA, you know, that kind of thing.
But the generals are saying, why in the world are we flying as al Qaeda's air force in Yemen right now?
You know, John McCain complains that we're flying as Iran's air force in Iraq, but he does say he wants us to fight the Islamic State.
So whatever.
But now we're fighting, you know, again, I guess he could have said here we are flying as al Qaeda's air force against the Houthis in Yemen.
This policy is crazy.
And so, you know, what about that?
That, you know, 10 foot tall power of the Pentagon to say, listen, Israel's great and the Turks and the Saudis have their interests, we understand, but we don't want to fight for Al Qaeda anymore.
Backing dictatorships is horrible enough or maybe a lot of fun.
I don't know.
But backing Al Qaeda revolutions, we don't want to do that anymore, sir.
The Libya-Syria policy.
We're done.
Very, very important issue.
I think it needs to be analyzed.
And I think it's, you know, you have then to look at different interests within the Pentagon.
I think, you know, Mark is in touch with sources who do tend to be anti-interventionist in Syria.
They're obviously, you know, against any war with Iran and so on and so forth.
There are other interests in the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSA who are very, very pro-Saudi, who are very close to the Saudis.
And so I always emphasize this point just to bear that in mind when you see, you know, somebody in the Pentagon making a statement such as the one that you're citing.
I'm sure that's true, that there are people in the Pentagon who are very upset with the policy in Yemen.
It doesn't make any sense.
They know that the Houthis are the most effective counterterrorism, that is, anti-Al Qaeda force in Yemen.
And the present policy is making it, you know, much more difficult for the Houthis to undertake any effective actions because they're trying to fend off the Saudis and their allies, you know, which may or may not include Al Qaeda at this point.
But I have to assume that, you know, there's at least some carryover to supporting Al Qaeda in Yemen at this point by the Saudis.
All right.
One more question.
What do you think is going to happen with the destruction and the de-Baathification of the Syrian government and the abolition of its army?
In other words, what happens after the Saudis and the Turks and the Israelis and the Qataris and the Americans get their way in Syria?
Then what?
At the very least, what we're seeing is the realization of this breakup of Iraq into three de facto states.
I mean, I think that's clearly the situation as it stands now.
And there's no reason to believe that's going to change anytime soon.
What do you think the Baathist government in Damascus stands a chance against these guys at this point, or they're going to have direct access to the Mediterranean Sea and they'll just be a real state from now on, the Islamic State?
What I have heard, what I heard when I was in Beirut this last time was that there is some talk about the possibility that that Iran and Hezbollah would carve out some territory in Syria that would allow them to continue to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon, and that that would be their way of dealing with the potential demise of the Assad regime.
I don't know of how realistic that is, but there's some speculation about that.
All right.
Well, thanks for coming back on the show, Garrett.
It's always good to talk to you.
Thanks, Scott.
Always glad to be back.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for The Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org slash subscribe.
Since 1989, FFF has been pushing an uncompromising moral and economic case for peace, individual liberty, and free markets.
Sign up now for The Future of Freedom, featuring founder and president Jacob Horenberger, as well as Sheldon Richman, James Bovard, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy, and many more.
It's just $25 a year for the print edition, $15 per year to read it online.
That's fff.org slash subscribe.
And tell them Scott sent you.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for Liberty.me, the social network and community-based publishing platform for the liberty-minded.
Liberty.me combines the best of social media technology all in one place.
It features classes, discussions, guides, events, publishing, podcasts, and so much more.
And Jeffrey Tucker and I are starting a new monthly show at Liberty.me, Eye on the Empire.
It's just $4 a month if you use promo code Scott when you sign up.
And hey, once you do, add me as a friend on there at scotthorton.liberty.me.
Be free.
Liberty.me.
You hate government?
One of them libertarian types?
Maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers, or warmongers.
Me too.
That's why I invented libertystickers.com.
Well, Rick owns it now, and I didn't make up all of them.
But still, if you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are, there's only one place to go.
Libertystickers.com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian, empire, police, state, founders quote, central banking.
Yes, bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And, well, everything that matters.
Libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.