07/27/15 – Grant F. Smith – The Scott Horton Show

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Anyway, Grant, my good friend Grant Smith from the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, that's IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P, IRMEP.org, and like I was trying to explain to you before, he's a master at the Freedom of Information Act and dislodging government secrets, U.S. government secrets, mostly about the Israeli government and their Amen Corner, their fifth column in America and their dirty tricks, and a lot of what our government's police agencies have on them and that kind of great stuff.
So you've got a thing on the blog at antiwar.com right now.
It says, poll, most Americans oppose compensating Israel for Iran nuclear deal.
So go ahead.
What poll's that?
Yeah, sure.
Well, it seemed like with all of the attention and focus on the Iran nuclear deal that was passed, you know, this mid-month, that it would be great to ask a representative sample of Americans what they thought about some of these quote-unquote compensation packages that have been floating around with the idea that somehow the United States should compensate Israel because of its position opposing and being upset by the Accords.
So we put out a Google consumer survey to 1,500 people, making it a representative sample of Americans across the United States and found that not so many Americans agree that we need to be doing anything for Israel.
So 7.9% said that they would support boosting U.S. aid from $2.5 billion a year from $3.5 billion.
4.1% favored giving Israel bunker buster bombs, which is a proposal that Michael McCoskey of Ginza has been making.
4% supported providing Israel with B-52 long-range bombers.
And so those last two are essentially saying, well, why not give Israel the capability it needs to stage a non-nuclear attack on Iran's facilities, which is kind of strange.
But the advocates of that say, well, it would give Israel deterrent capability, but whatever.
3.4% were in favor of releasing Jonathan Pollard to Israel.
Jonathan Pollard, of course, is kind of an issue that pops up every once in a while as being compensation for getting Israel back to the negotiating table for the peace process, and now it's been floated as a way to assuage their problems and opposition to the nuclear deal.
But 12.8% said, yeah, hey, do all of those things.
And then the real finding was that 67.8% of Americans chose none of the above.
And I like this poll because it's on an issue that's at the forefront.
People, if they don't know about the Iran nuclear deal, they really are living under a rock.
So it was easy to get a very quick response and a very good sample response.
Yeah, well, and I think people may know, to give credit to the onion after I slammed them at the beginning of this thing, they had a joke article that came out a couple of weeks ago that says Obama gives Israel a bunch of ballistic missiles to make them feel better about the Iran deal.
And then it was a day or two days later that that was announced that America was in, I don't think it was ballistic missiles, but it was pretty close anyway.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, they have a hard time staying ahead.
I mean, you can't satirize this stuff.
Yeah.
Well, and again, I like, as you're saying, the part about how, well, maybe what we should do, this is a serious proposal in Washington, D.C.
What we should do is give them B-52s and bunker buster bombs so that they can go in there and undo the deal we just made with them.
Right, right.
Typical thinking there.
And it's kind of outrageous supplying these ancient bombers, in effect.
I know they've been upgrading all of that, but you know, and that's a deterrent to Iran.
But I guess I'm in the camp of a lot of the people you've had on your show recently was thinking that this whole thing is ridiculous, that the negotiations and whatnot have been a waste of time since a lot of these sanctions are really, and you can really see it now, predicated on the idea of targeting Iran really for its support of opposition groups, Israel's rivals in the region.
And that's what they'd like to put back in place.
The whole nuclear issue is just the best sales vehicle that they could put together to present it to Americans, kind of Iraq war redux.
And so if you don't accept the premise that Iran was ever a nuclear threat in any sense, then all of this starts looking very suspicious.
And I think we were talking briefly about how there has been confirmation of the fact that this has been a cash cow for AIPAC and the various lobbying groups in the constellation, a real way to center attention and whip up Israel and Dane-type concern for their own domestic lobbying agenda.
But it hasn't had too much to do with reality.
Yeah, well, and that's a real double-edged sword there for them, I think.
And maybe I'm too optimistic about this, but it seems to me real ugly that you have, hi, we're here to represent the interests of a foreign power and we want to prevent this negotiation that could lead to peace between your country and this other one.
And we're here just to tell you, and I saw, I read where Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel and the former defense minister said, hey, man, that's going too far here.
He contradicted Netanyahu and said outright interfering in the legislative process.
Making our opinion known, that's one thing, but, and trying to figure out how we can work with the Americans once the deal is done for how to implement it in a way that's most beneficial to Israel, that should be our priority.
But you want to outright just challenge the American president in this way within the Congress, whatever, I think it's kind of a bridge too far.
And I'm hoping that there, that he's right about that, that it will be, you know, overall, it'll be counterproductive for the Israelis.
Because a lot of people don't really hear much about the Israel lobby, except that they were the one group that was pushing for the war in Syria back in 2013 and 14, while every other part of American society opposed it.
There was the Israel lobbyists by the dozens and hundreds on Capitol Hill trying to push for the damn thing.
And the same thing going on here.
But then again, maybe it'll work.
So now the music's playing, we got to take a break.
Sorry, I talked to you damn much for an interview show.
I know, but it's all right.
I'll be back in a minute here with Grant F. Smith from the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P.
And he wrote also about a thousand books or so about this issue too.
Check him out on Amazon.com.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, the Scott Horton Show here on Liberty Radio Network.
Live noon to two on the East Coast, 11 to one Texas time.
I got Grant F. Smith on the air from the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, Middle East Policy.
Yeah, IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P, IRMEP.org.
And well, we're talking about AIPAC right now.
Talking about this poll where the American people say, nuts to Israel.
Why should they be compensated for us making a peace deal with Iran?
Give them weapons?
Give them more money?
How about give them nothing?
And we'll get to Jonathan Pollard in a minute, but I want to pick up with what you mentioned there about this new piece at the Loeb blog.
It's based on this thing, the Nelson Report, which I take it as a subscription-only newsletter in Washington, D.C., which I've heard of numerous times, probably mostly through Jim Loeb over the years.
And it's described here by Jim Loeb as the cutting edge insider kind of daily subscription intel report for D.C. types.
And anyway, he quotes a former AIPAC official, which I guess we're going to have to assume is not MJ Rosenberg.
It's got to be somebody other than just good old MJ, right?
But former AIPAC official told, because the Nelson Report, I don't think would be passing on a quote from MJ as insider information, right?
That's not a knock at him, but that's not, this is somebody else here.
And what he says here- I doubt he has confidential treatment either.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, you can quote me and say the worst thing you can think of to say, of course.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
But so anyway, so here's the five reasons, and I'm not going to sit here and read them, but basically it's in their interest to not have to get jobs.
They would rather get paid to work at think tanks to pretend that Iran is a threat to Israel.
And that's a hell of a great way to make money.
Well, there are 400 employees at AIPAC.
And of course, you know, even MJ would say that they have a great time over there and they're well paid and, you know, they have some late nights.
But, you know, the inside scoop that he distilled out of that report is clear.
This has been one of those perfect stalking horses for the lobby because they can position it as, you know, this is in the American interest, blah, blah, blah.
And they can't do that with a lot of things.
The positioning that you were describing, which is that they're going to have to admit, oh, we're just doing this, you know, for the Israelis.
That's not the way it's going down.
If you look at the citizens for nuclear free Iran and their ads in Hawaii and other places, you know, they're saying Iran is in violation of this many U.N. resolutions.
It's about 20 percent of the one's number of Israels.
But forget about that.
And Iran is pursuing this and that.
So they do have skill and the ability to position Iran as a threat to the United States.
And the polls that we've done on that indicate that most Americans, at least last fall, thought Iran already had nuclear weapons.
So they've been very successful and they don't want to lose this.
They have, you know, they've got something called the goodwill in this and in the sense that they've built up this impression that they don't want to lose.
They don't want to walk away from this branding campaign.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
Maybe we should be against the deal, too, so we can still have something to do complaining about them doing what they're doing.
I don't want to have to get a job.
So let's have a war so I can be anti-war.
No, I'm just kidding.
I'd rather I went.
I'd rather bankrupt myself.
Yeah.
Well, I think we're going to be hearing a lot more of this.
The the head of an organization called the Conference of Presidents, who's kind of like one of the biggest guys in the in the pro-Israel lobby, recently trumpeted the fact that the federations in various states are getting involved, various metropolitan areas, citing the fact that the Greater Miami Jewish Federation was working hard to position this as bad for America and working on the campaign.
And that's like another AIPAC, except it's just located in Miami.
They've got 100 staff members, 2,200 volunteers, according to their tax returns.
And so if the lobby can get all of these federations involved, then they'll have 7,230 employees, full-time employees, and another almost 50,000 volunteers that can work on this campaign to mainly scare legislature or legislators into supporting it.
I've heard a few people on your show and on other shows saying that they think that this is a slam dunk for the president.
I'm not so sure.
I'm really not sure.
Well, I think I've been the one saying that the most.
But yeah, maybe I'm wrong.
I mean, I shouldn't underestimate these guys.
Yeah, absolutely.
And they said they'll stop at nothing.
Well, and that that does raise the question of what scared old Senator Fulbright when he had the tenacity to investigate the lobby back in the day.
His opening chartering letter for that investigation was, there seems to be a lot of things going on internationally that affect domestic politics, like the Levant Affair, this false flag attack on U.S. facilities in Egypt designed to get the U.S. to stay in the canal zone.
So he clearly thought that there were coordinated campaigns that involved a domestic component and an international component that was really getting the U.S. to do some stupid things and fall for these constant machinations of the Israelis.
So I tend to think that you're going to see more happening.
And I know you've mentioned the Saudi ambassador assassination attempt as being kind of a weird, you know, untimely and the laptops and all of this stuff.
I also think that we're going to see more of that kind of mysterious behavior going on as the months go on.
Well, Ray McGovern has warned, you know, he always reminds us, October 2009, Israel had Jandala kill Iranian officers.
And that's what scotched the uranium swap deal then.
So, you know, when Netanyahu says he'll stop at nothing, he should be absolutely taken seriously.
Now, I'm sorry.
You know what?
Everybody read Justin Raimondo today on Antiwar.com slash Justin about Jonathan Pollard, the scumbag.
But I wanted to ask you, you said you had some new stuff coming out.
Can you tell me that real quick before we got to go?
Yeah.
Or actually, you know what?
If you could, I'll keep you another segment.
We could talk about Pollard, too.
I'm going to I'm going to have to run.
Well, go ahead about that.
Well, yeah, I've got I've got a new piece coming out.
But NCIS has basically finally released both their reports and the FBI reports on Jonathan Pollard.
And there's some real sort of interesting tidbits about, you know, his during working at a Washington thing before going into intelligence and then becoming an Israeli spy.
And I thought that was just really telling about sort of the fanatical attitude of a lot of people who are trying to support Israel, but not not knowing how far to go.
And so it was really it was interesting to read his sort of choice matrix in all of this process as he talked to his friends and how he really became committed to to meeting with Avicela and all of this while at what appears to be an Israel bonds gathering in Washington.
You know, another Israel lobby that's very active here.
So we're putting that out pretty soon.
All right.
Good deal.
Well, send it to me when it's done.
Thanks.
All right.
Great.
Talk to you.
That's a great Grant Smith, y'all.
He's at ear map.
I r m e p dot org ear map dot org.
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