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 had.
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, 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.
All right, you guys on the line, I've got the great Jim Bovard from the Future of Freedom Foundation and author of a great many books, including Public Policy Hooligan.
And this article is called America's Benevolent Bombing of Serbia.
It was the 20th anniversary not too long ago.
Welcome back to the show, Jim.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Bill Clinton, he got impeached, but not removed.
Then as soon as he got not removed, he launched this war in Serbia to save the people or something, right?
It was kind of bait and switch as far as the motives and the rationale.
But basically, almost as soon as his Senate trial was over, and he was not convicted, removed from office, he started bombing.
It's something Hillary Clinton was very enthusiastic on.
It was sort of like a makeup present for her, maybe, since she was rather perturbed at how the Monica Lewinsky scandal had gone down.
But it was something which most of the American media embraced.
The Washington Post loved the war.
New York Times was mostly gung-ho for it.
So it was sad to see how the media was mostly lockstep in favor of the war, and how the media mostly ignored the killings of Serb civilians, the bombing of Serb hospitals, the bombing of Serb marketplaces.
Instead, most of the American media let Bill Clinton define the war as a triumph of good over evil.
It's sort of like the same way the Popes talked about the Crusades in the Middle Ages, and you try not to pay too much attention to all the people that got plundered along the way to Jerusalem.
Yeah, and in Jerusalem.
Oh my God.
Yeah, just barbaric.
Let me stop you on the Hillary point a couple points back there before we get back into all the other great stuff you're talking about here.
But on the Hillary point, it sounds almost crazy, and yet you have an important footnote here.
This is well reported by an official biographer.
This is no unauthorized biography.
This was an official biography of Hillary Clinton by Gail Sheehy from, I'm almost positive was at New York Newsday, who had written this piece.
As you mentioned here, this was how she made up with Bill after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
He'd been out in the doghouse or whatever.
This was the first time she talked to him again, according to her.
It was when she called him to say, you better start this war, Bill, if you ever want me to come back.
Well, and it's kind of interesting.
Since Bill Clinton had a wandering eye, you know, serve women and children to die.
Alexander Coburn had some good comments on this in the LA Times back in 1999.
He said, it's scarcely surprising that Hillary would have urged Clinton to drop cluster bombs on the Serbs to defend our way of life.
The first lady is a social engineer.
She believes in therapy, policing, and the duty of the state to impose such policing.
War is more social engineering.
Hillary is a tough therapeutic cop.
She does not shy away from the most abrupt expression of the therapy, the death penalty.
That's Coburn.
Hey guys, Scott here.
I've got some books you should read.
The War State by Mike Swanson, a great history of the early Cold War.
No Dev, No Ops, No IT by Hussein Badakhshani, How to Run Your Computer Business Like a Good Libertarian.
Oh yeah.
And don't forget, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan by me.
And now, I'm not sure if this is in your piece, but it's worth bringing up here.
The Rambo-Yay Accord, how they launched this war was, first of all, you do talk about this, that the genocide that they trumpeted turned out to be no such thing.
But also in the name of stopping that genocide, they had delivered this Rambo-Yay Accord to Slobodan Milosevic, the leader of the Serbs, that demanded what, Jim?
It was basically calling for the Serbs to surrender and give up much of their territory and kowtow to NATO for a long time.
So not just let Kosovo go, but even allow Serbia itself to be occupied or the rest of Serbia itself to be occupied by NATO forces, right?
There were a bunch of other conditions.
I wrote about that in the Kosovo chapter in Feeling Your Pain.
Unfortunately, I don't have that on my screen right here in front of me.
But yeah, it sounds right as you summarize it.
And it was a total BS type of diplomatic agreement.
It was the kind of thing which the NATO and the US and the Allies knew that the Serb government would not sign.
But it basically gave them a fig leaf to start killing Serbs, for NATO to start killing Serbs, because the government was unreasonable.
There was some excellent coverage in the European papers that were a lot more realistic on the nature of the demands and the bias than were most of the American leading papers.
Now I remember when it started that they promised, this is just going to last a few days, the Serbs, compared to America's overwhelming strength, they will have to just capitulate.
It'll be easy and fine.
Well, and that was typical.
It was a pre-Iraq version of cakewalk.
And they didn't quite say that we'd be greeted with flowers and whatever.
But it's striking how often the experts in the American media have been totally wrong on these foreign interventions.
And we're seeing a little bit of that right now with some of the Sabre rally for the US to attack Iran, which would be like, it'd be unwise, very unwise.
Yeah, it'd be this thing times 500, probably.
Well, maybe 100.
I don't know.
But I mean, it would be a cluster screw up.
And we have no idea how it would work out.
And we'd just be killing a very large number of people.
And, you know, yeah, whatever.
So yeah.
And that idea.
It is important to write that just like the weapons of mass destruction, or the alleged impending genocide in Libya in 2011, that here, Bill Clinton and his government pretended that the Serbs had murdered 100,000 Kosovar civilians.
Yeah, there was an endless series of false, alarmist statements from Clinton administration officials, you know, week after week, I mean, it was like they were driving the headlines doing that.
And it was that which helped sanctify American bombs as the triumph of good over evil, because oh, my God, there was a genocide going on.
Various American politicians compared the Serb leader to Hitler.
I mean, that's pro form at this point in American foreign policy.
Yeah.
But, you know, after the war, you know, they really, you know, they didn't have the evidence of that.
But it didn't matter because Clinton could claim victory.
And it also didn't matter to Clinton or most of the American media, what happened in Kosovo after the end of the war.
I mean, there was ethnic cleansing of the Serbs, Jewish folks living there, gypsies and others.
They were driven out.
A quarter million people were driven out.
But, you know, the US media basically ignored it because Clinton has some great photo ops.
So you like supporting anti-war radio hosts.
That makes sense.
Here's how you can do that.
Go to scotthorton.org slash donate.
And there's all kinds of options to do so and all kinds of different kickbacks at different levels.
Of course, take PayPal, Patreon and all different kinds of digital currencies and all of those sorts of things.
And anybody who signs up by way of Patreon or PayPal to donate five dollars a month to the show will automatically get keys to the Reddit room, my own private Reddit group that I have quite a few members now and lots of fun in there every day.
So check out all about that at scotthorton.org slash donate.
And thanks.
Now, on the Serbian side, from what I read and you may remember from back then, you know, much better.
But I know I read where John Pilger said that the FBI was sent to find the mass graves and that they left after a couple of weeks just because there were none.
And the biggest mass grave was said to be down in this mine, but there was nobody down in the mine.
And the whole thing was just nonsense.
And so they packed up and left and that they had found a total of about what, 1500 bodies, something like that.
And that they were all, you know, males.
I don't know whether every one of them was a fighter, but they were at least fighting age males and had seemed to have been caught in conflict rather than innocent civilians who'd just been rounded up and murdered like in the claims.
So I don't know, was there any truth to that, that the Serbs were trying to kick all the Kosovar Albanians out of Kosovo at the time?
I think it would have turned the area pretty much into a desert parts of it because there were some parts of Kosovo that were mostly ethnic Albanian.
And there were lots of atrocities on boats.
It was a civil war.
It was a civil war that had gone on for more than a decade there.
The Serbs had been victims of atrocities.
The Serbs had committed atrocities.
But neither side had clean hands.
And shortly prior to the start of the war, the U.S. State Department had labeled the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA, as a terrorist organization.
But as soon as Bill Clinton decided to bomb Serbia, the KLA became freedom fighters.
And it was one of the most brazen bait and switch as far as labels in U.S. foreign policy.
But it worked for the Clinton PR line.
So it's sad.
When it was known then that the KLA was tied to Osama bin Laden, who had already attacked the United States at Kobar Towers, even though they blamed that on Iran, this is just one year after the Africa embassies attack.
Yeah, well, I don't know.
Don't know if the U.S. was trying to, you know, show its macho macho elements there or whatever.
And there was a lot of, you know, tension with Russia because Russia was basically pro-Serb.
And there was at one point at the airport, I don't know if it was at one of the major airports.
Pristina Airport, yeah.
Yeah, where there could have been a conflict between the Russian troops and the American troops.
And the U.S. commander, Wesley Clark, was full of bluster.
But, you know, it would have been the dumbest thing in the world to have a fight over that.
But it was a major, maybe not a turning point, but the U.S. bombing campaign against the Serbs did have a profound influence on the Russian perspective of the U.S. because the Serbs were fellow Slavs and the Russians had a lot of sympathy for them.
I mean, you know, it was surprising how easy it was for the Clinton administration to demonize the Serbs because the Serbs had been our allies in World War II.
The Serbs had fought the Nazis when they invaded Yugoslavia.
They were very tough.
They had a huge number of casualties fighting the Nazis, unlike some of the other groups in that country that were basically were happy to collaborate.
So, but that, you know, that all got washed away and all of a sudden the Serbs were the new Nazis.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I don't know that much about this, but Doug Bondo and others have talked about this.
Nibosha Malik from antiwar.com has talked about this, how there was, and I'll probably describe it wrong, but this is in the previous Bosnia war in 1994.
Before that really broke out, or maybe just after it had broken out, there was a peace deal where it was the Bosnians and the Croats were going to be the alliance in the majority and the Serbs were going to be the minority in power, but that they had agreed to it because essentially they'd been promised enough autonomy that there was not that much to fight about and that they had a pretty good deal.
And then the American ambassador Zimmerman told the Croats, nah, we'll give you a bunch of guns.
You should not go along with this.
We'll arm you and fund you and you should make things worse and start a war here.
And that that was what led to the end of the peace deal and the real breakup.
And as you said, atrocities on all sides during that worst part of the former Yugoslavian wars.
Is that the way you remember it, Jim?
I was still in high school, man.
I certainly recall the bombing of Serbia and the breakup of Serbia.
I mean, I had done a fair amount of traveling in East Europe when it was communist, but I think I used to get a visa for Yugoslavia and it didn't go so well, so I didn't pursue it that much.
But you were talking about Doug earlier.
I think Doug was in somewhere in maybe not Bosnia, but somewhere there when there was a, the Serb civilians were basically driven out in mass, hundreds of thousands driven from their homes.
There was a plumber I have now, I've used a few times.
He's kind of overpriced, but he's a good guy.
He was in that group of people that were driven out and his family managed to come to America afterwards.
But no, it was absolute terrorism on the Serb civilians.
But for some reason, the Clinton administration decided the Serbs were bad people and that they didn't have any rights and okay, their civilians too bad for them.
Yeah.
And it's so important too about the cost to America's relationship with Russia there, because I think in the earlier intervention in Bosnia, kind of that had been one thing, but when it came to Kosovo, that was over Yeltsin's dead body and he made it known that he couldn't really stop us, but he was really upset about it and that this was going to completely change his ability to deal with America on the things that they were dealing with America on at the time that all that stuff got suspended and that this really did help lead to the pressure for him to go ahead and resign on New Year's Eve a few months later and hand power over to Vladimir Putin, I guess, four months before the upcoming elections to make sure that he would win.
And so they want to complain, but that was a big part of the reaction inside Russia was that we were dancing on their grave and that they were going to have to push back at some point, you know?
Yeah.
And, you know, there was nothing good that came out of this.
It's interesting.
Some of the Israelis, I think Ariel Sharon was outspoken in opposition to the U.S. war because he said it would simply give radical Muslims a base on the mainland of Europe because the Albanians, who were later linked to body trafficking, murdering people and selling their body parts, but don't worry, there was a statue of Bill Clinton in Kosovo's capital, so that's all that matters.
Yeah, I mean, there was so much BS surrounding this war and, you know, almost all of it's forgotten.
But there was a sanctimony and there were people who were empowered in the American media and in American politics.
And those are some of the folks who helped pave the way to the Iraq war by, you know, by making all these absurd promises about how it's going to be a humanitarian tribe, how we'll help the people.
Hell, I mean, it would have been a lot easier simply to drop the sanctions in Iraq and then the people would have been a hell of a lot healthier.
And maybe it would have been possible for more opposition to Saddam to arise naturally instead of, you know, with the American fixer, with those, you know, wacko cases with MEK.
Right.
You know, too, it did help to solidify the idea that war is just so easy, too, that as Homer Simpson put it, that you just fight war with a clapper and, you know, war on, war off and no casualties on our side.
You know, that was the lesson of Iraq war one.
And for that matter, Iraq war one and a half, where Bill Clinton bombed Iraq for eight years straight and never got a plane shot down the whole time.
And so the idea was that, oh, we could just do whatever war we want and it's going to be easy peasy.
Don't worry about it.
Any warnings about urban combat coming up in Baghdad and stuff?
Yeah, we're not going to listen to that.
You know, our guys don't die in war anymore.
The other guys only.
Well, and it was interesting how easy it was for that complete BS to triumph among some American policymakers and some of the most esteemed pundits, because there were very few pundits who came out vehemently in opposition to the bombing of Serbia.
It was something which I tried to sell some articles on at the time.
And, you know, good luck, dude, struck out folks, folks in the mainstream did not want to hear hear someone saying, look, this is bullshit.
We're you know, we're killing people for no good reason.
And very bad things are going to happen from this.
Yeah.
Which is funny, because anyone in the alternative media, even back then, who just felt like saying what they wanted and didn't have all this institutional pressure and bureaucratic economics and whatever to think about, we could all see right through this.
It's horrible and crazy.
And even if you don't know that the KLA are friends with Osama bin Laden, you can still look at that war and know better than launching a war over essentially an internal matter.
Well, and, you know, there's a fundamental principle.
I mean, there was no no good reason for America to bomb Belgrade, to bomb the capital of a European country.
I mean, there are some folks who say that U.S. foreign policy is always biased against people with brown skin people.
You know, the Serbs were you know, the Serbs were not brown skin and they still got blown to pieces simply because it was convenient for U.S. policymakers.
It was convenient for the Clinton administration.
And, you know, it turned into a bragging point, something which should have been undying shame instead of something that people could boast about like they saved the world.
And, you know, it's just sad to see how much dominates foreign policy.
But I guess you've been doing radio shows on that for, what, 20 years?
Yeah, I was just starting in radio right this time, very end of 98 and into 99.
So, yeah, I was covering it on my show on Free Radio Austin at the time.
Yeah.
And just man, I wish I had those tapes.
Yeah.
And, you know, so you push back and you get a few words out.
And but, you know, um, there's such a, you know, such a steamroller of B.S. on these things.
So, yeah, some days it almost makes me cynical.
I know you sound a little bit cynical, to be perfectly honest.
And you're right.
I mean, it doesn't matter how many lies in a row, even now when they're lying about Iran.
And people say, remember Iraq?
Well, hey, remember Russiagate?
How's this year?
Remember them lying about Iran saying they were making nukes this whole time?
Remember Libya?
Remember every word out of these guys mouth is a lie.
You don't have to go all the way back to 2002.
I mean, that's a good one.
Don't get me wrong.
But man.
Well, and it's just and it's just it's it's frustrating to see that the people in the media who are some of the biggest, you know, biggest marketers of the official lies and the war propaganda, they are treated like saints and missionaries and always a deep thinker.
It's like, what's his batting average?
How many things has he gotten wrong?
Doesn't matter.
He's on the side of good.
So yeah, yeah, he might have been wrong, but he was wrong at the same time as the rest of us.
And so none of us are pointing any fingers.
Welcome back to the show, they say.
It was a group think.
Yeah.
I mean, the comment they the Senate Intelligence Committee used in 2004 said, well, it was group think in Washington as far as the Iraqis having WMDs.
But it was a group think because there were individuals like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich and others were saying, look, this is all bullshit, you know.
And, you know, Dick Armey went for it, but he knew it was all a lie, too.
Oh, it was sad.
He later said, well, Dick Cheney threatened me with atom bombs.
And I guess I gave in.
But before that, he was like, wait a minute.
And Dick Armey, for people who don't know, I don't know, look him up.
But here's a guy who essentially his problem was he knew the first thing about it.
And that was enough that he was inoculated.
I mean, how could and I'll tell the story a million times.
I was just driving a cab.
And all of my regular cars, I was driving a cab at night.
All of my regular customers are drunks and bartenders.
And they all knew better.
You know, that's a riot.
Yeah, everybody knew better.
You had to be in on it.
Seriously, you want me to believe that Iraq is a threat to the USA?
Give me a break, man.
How many 9-11 attacks would they have to sponsor?
Not that they sponsored the first one.
But how many of those would they have to commit against the U.S. to bring our GDP down even by a couple of billion dollars, much less, you know, really threatened the United States population in any real way?
Give me a break, dude.
The whole thing was completely preposterous.
And anybody who knew anything about it knew that the slogan had been regime change since back in the 1990s.
This was just their chance.
That's all.
That's a great cab driving story.
I mean, you know, it wasn't just me.
The story's not about me.
The story's about everybody I knew at the time.
I understand, but it's a great damn story.
Yeah.
Well, it is true.
I hope you tell more cab drivers stories.
You know what?
One of my cab driver customers at that time was a bartender who'd been in the Navy.
And he was not a deep thinker kind of a guy.
But again, he knew the first thing about it.
And he knew that, yeah, the Ba'ath party, that ain't the same as Al Qaeda, man.
Don't you try to confuse me because it isn't going to work.
Well, I have to know much, just anything, you know, much of the American media.
Yeah.
Well, they had a reason.
I still remember on MSNBC them having G.I. Joe, you know, toy planes that they're flying around with their hands.
Zoom, zoom.
This is what it's going to be like.
Yeah, they had them all little models on sticks.
You know, they had their interns slap together there.
Tell us about the F-111.
We still got those.
That is something which makes me think of the old term, one handed magazines.
That was basically the deal.
And great for the people who are selling dish soap and writing important articles inside those magazines.
Yeah.
Well, it's just and it's sad because there's the same level of bullshit in US foreign policy now.
And much of the media is kind of saying, you know, both of us know that if the Donald Trump decided to start bombing two or three more countries in the next week, most of the media would say he's finally become a great president.
And now we support his reelection campaign.
Maybe they wouldn't go quite that far, but there'd be a halo over him, over his head so fast and make even his head spin.
Yep.
No question about it.
They give him every incentive.
The only time they ever liked him was when he's bombing Syria on behalf of Al-Qaeda.
Right.
Which is this.
And, you know, it's funny that folks were beating up on Tulsi Gabbard for saying that bashing Trump for supporting Al-Qaeda is like, folks, I mean, what the hell do you think has been going on in Syria for the last seven or eight years?
They sure never refute it with any kind of specific details or anything.
They just say, can you believe that she would say that?
That doesn't sound right.
Well, yeah.
Well, it doesn't sound right because it's dumber than crap.
Because they've been on Al-Qaeda's side this whole time and calling them not Al-Qaeda, but that's who they always were.
Yeah.
A bunch of damn rascals.
Yep.
And by the way, you mentioned the media role there back in 1999 when they did this one.
And I wanted to bring up Christiane Amanpour and her marriage at the time to, I think it was Jamie Rubin, wasn't it?
Something like that.
That sounds right.
It was one of these State Department weenies was married right to the biggest warmonger lady on CNN.
And she may only be on CNN International now or whatever, but back then she was on regular CNN mongering this war day in and day out while her husband's over there giving the State Department briefing that she's covering.
So I'm pretty sure how they met, you know, let's start a war together.
And then they did, you know, launder all kinds of just completely fake stories, including one where there were kids on the inside of a fence and the guy like, or there was just a piece of chain link there.
One of the guy took a very narrow shot and made it look like there were a bunch of children stuck behind this fence when they could just walk right around or whatever it was, you know, or he had climbed to the inside of the fence to take a picture of them on the outside, but make it look the other way around.
This kind of thing.
Well, yeah.
I mean, that's foreign policy incest.
Yeah, seriously.
And, you know, another thing is I remember from the time that once the bombing started, that was when the real cleansing campaigns started on both sides.
And that was, I remember even the CNN, I don't know about Amanpour herself, but even CNN reporters who were there and that kind of thing were reporting that.
Not that they always put the, you know, made the narrative clear about the chronology and what it meant, but that, yeah, we do have a bunch of refugees now fleeing the bombing by NATO led by the United States rather than fleeing anything that was happening before the bombing had started.
But there's that human wave you were looking for, for your pictures, you know?
Yep.
Interesting.
There were a handful of journalists, handful of journalists who were there.
There was a guy or two with the L.A. Times and some, I think a New York Times dude as well, who did some excellent articles on the ground there and did call out some of the BS going on.
But it was just so completely overwhelmed by the Clinton administration dominating the talking points and most of the media kowtowing to the White House.
But there were folks who tried and the truth did pop up here and there, but it didn't stick.
Looking for a Liberty-focused publisher?
Liberty Under Attack publishes books and strategy guides for individuals looking to increase their personal freedom.
They assist authors through the entire publishing process, proofreading, editing, cover designs, paperback and Kindle formatting, and full audiobook narration and post-production.
Tell them Scott sent you and get 20% off a full service deal.
To get some one-of-a-kind books or for more information, visit LibertyUnderAttack.com.
All right.
So Kosovo now was what, late Bush years when they finally recognized the full-scale independence of Kosovo and I think led them into the U.N. and everything, right?
I think that's right.
Yeah.
And then, so what about the government there now?
Is it still just run by KLA murderers or what?
I think it's a bunch of rascals.
I don't know the exact composition of it.
I haven't followed it closely for a while, but it was a couple of years ago about the top people there being involved in trials in Europe for body snatching.
They were accused of organ trafficking, I guess, capturing Serbs and killing them and selling their body parts, which is usually not frowned upon when it's not done by folks who've got a license for that.
Yeah.
Well, I know that the Americans are still there because they built that giant base, Camp Bondsteel, which I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a pun and they're just making fun of us or what, but...
That's interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm not up to speed on the current situation there.
Oh yeah.
No, you know what?
Just put Bondsteel into your Google images right now.
I'm sure you'll be pleased.
Okay.
How's that spelled?
Just Bond, like, you know, US government debt and then steel.
I forget if it's steel like take without permission or if it's more like the metal.
Oh, that's a big one.
I think it's steel like the metal is how it's spelled.
Wow.
Yeah.
Isn't that something?
Well, it's a price of freedom.
Yeah.
You might think that was the real reason for the war was so they can put that base there.
But then what do they need that base for other than having a base there?
Well, I mean, just in case Macedonia decides to take over the rest of Europe from that side, you know, who knows?
We have to preempt those threats.
We have to lead the world.
I guess.
All right.
Well, listen, you know, back to your point for the last point, I guess, about the lack of accountability here where they never had an authorization for this war.
Even after the fact, Bill Clinton just did it.
And I'm no fan of the UN, but the law is that you have to have a UN Security Council resolution if you're going to start a war.
And they didn't do that.
They just went with NATO here.
Yeah.
And if memory serves, Congress, the House passed a resolution opposing the war.
I've forgotten if that went through the Senate, but it was something which was then taken to the courts and the courts would not basically uphold or enforce that.
So Congress did try to pull in the reins, but the Clinton folks just basically said, screw you.
Yeah.
And so that really helped set the precedent for later, too.
You know, Bush at least did get an authorization for his aggressive war in Iraq.
But when it came to Obama times for the war in Libya and the war in Yemen, I mean, Syria, they called that covert, I guess.
Yemen, Syria, whatever.
Somalia will throw that one in.
That was just a CIA finding.
But, you know, in Yemen and in Libya, you have outright American military intervention in a way that they just shrugged it off.
Again, they couldn't have gotten authorization just like in Serbia.
So they just didn't try.
They just did it anyway.
Yep.
And, you know, that's something that did not tarnish Obama's halo because he was still seen as the incarnation of goodness.
And he was an idealist.
But even Obama admitted that Libya may have been one of his biggest mistakes.
But going back to late 2015, in the Democratic debates, you had Hillary Clinton saying the bombing of Libya was smart power at its best.
Three, four years after the country turned to crap.
And it's like, I was shocked.
Yeah.
Well, and she knew there wasn't going to be a follow up question.
So it was all right for her to go ahead and just.
There's so many levels of bullshit on these things.
Well, and, you know, even on Obama saying Libya was a mistake, what he actually said was it was a mistake to not invade and occupy the country afterwards to build a nation there.
And then he should have known that, you know, not that I should have known not to do it if I wasn't going to follow through, but just I should have followed through.
Well, and it seemed like he that his instincts weren't so bad on this, but you had the three witches from Macbeth who stampeded him.
So that's true.
Power, Rice and Clinton were the ones we just had this conversation with Alan Cooperman a minute ago, which is great.
So, yep, that's how it happened.
All right.
Although just like with Bush Jr. and his neocons, it was Obama who was sitting in that chair.
It was him who had the decision to make and it did not have to be that way if he didn't want it to be that way.
And in fact, again, as Cooperman pointed out, Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, the Republican secretary of defense that he kept from George Bush told him, hey, man, you shouldn't do this.
That's all the cover he needed right there to say, I'm sorry, ladies.
My secretary of defense is telling me that this is just not, you know, the risks are too high, whatever.
I can't do it.
And instead of hiding behind Gates, like a real man, he went and bowed down to them.
And so.
Well, yeah.
And it's sad because he was doing so well before then.
Yeah.
But you know what?
You talk about how he still has his halo.
You got to admit W. Bush was a pretty easy act to follow.
So probably any of us would be still looking great after that.
But maybe I don't know.
I mean, Bush was all and it's sad to see Bush coming back and building his reputation back.
And the media is waiting to count out to him as long as he kind of hoses down or criticizes Trump.
And it's like, you know, look at this guy's record.
Uh, there's no virtue here.
Yeah.
Well, he didn't do anything that they didn't support.
So no harm, no foul.
It's all good from their point of view.
Just like with this.
Um, it's like with the rest of it.
And by the way, I want to mention this because, uh, you know, for the young people who were too young at the time, this will maybe help, uh, make this story stick in their head that, uh, when Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied commander of NATO forces during the Serbia war, during that incident at the Pristina airport that you talked about there that, um, his order was belayed, uh, not just by the British general, Michael Jackson, who just happened to share a name with the American pop star rapist guy.
Um, but also it was another singer.
And I'm sorry that I'm going to screw this up.
I think his last name was blunt.
And he was some kind of famous singer from this era.
And he was actually the Colonel on the ground who was sort of belaying that order before general Jackson even told him to belay it and was saying, you know, gee whiz, uh, general Clark, you sure you want me to attack these Russians here at this airport?
I don't know.
General Jackson, are you listening to this?
And kind of did his own foot dragging and refusal to carry out Clark's, uh, omnicidal orders there.
And then that was the funny part of the anecdote was that this guy came, grew up to be a famous, uh, well grew up.
He was already an adult, I guess, but became a famous singer in Britain.
Um, but it would be better when I'd tell the story, if I knew the guy's name or any of his music.
It wasn't Sammy Hagar or anybody I've ever heard of and hate.
It was somebody I've would hate probably if I heard his music, but I've not, I'm not familiar with it.
But anyway, people might know who I'm talking about.
If I have the last name, right.
They'll they're probably all saying we know who blunt is Horton.
So maybe that'll be good enough, Jim.
Close enough for government work.
So yeah, man.
Hey, at least I didn't almost get the whole world killed.
That's good.
Well, you know, you did better than Wesley Clark.
Yeah, man.
And what's funny is he ran for president and no one brought that up.
No one said to him, Hey, you almost killed all of us.
What's up with that?
You know, it would have been a good question.
Yeah, it's, it's sad.
I mean, I was happy his campaign didn't go anyplace.
Yeah.
Oh, by the way, speaking of, you know, indicting candidates for their roles and things, you quote Biden in here.
Oh, that's right.
Yes.
The Democratic, see you and I forget he is actually the front runner among the Democrats right now, Jim, go ahead.
Yes.
And, uh, back in, uh, 2010, um, Biden was, uh, praising the former leader of the KLO.
This guy, uh, the prime minister, and he said he was, uh, George Washington of Kosovo.
Yeah.
That was, that was shortly, shortly before a council of Europe investigation tagged the guy as a part of the body trafficking operation.
Yeah.
And which is serious.
Cause I've read about that.
I mean, you're talking about, you know, murdering people, stealing their organs.
They wake up in a, in an icy bathtub dying of the fact that all their organs just got cut out and sold on the black market.
Yeah.
And it's, um, it's utterly barbaric, but, uh, this is the kind of people who bill Clinton and the U S government backed.
All right.
Those are the Democrats.
Okay.
I just, you know, I like that.
Uh, when, when, uh, I saw the other day where Cory Booker, attacked Donald Trump for being so weak and on Israel.
And, uh, you know, he attacking him for trying to withdraw a couple of troops from Syria, which don't, you know, leaves Israel in an exposed negative position there.
And I just thought, Hey, these are the Democrats attacking trial from the right on Israel.
Why not?
You know, it's not going to be an uplifting campaign.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
It'll be a, an interesting car wreck to watch.
And I like car wrecks depending on who's in them.
I don't want to be in it, but yeah.
All right.
Hey man, you're a great writer and, uh, sorry.
I'm such a lousy interviewer, but I like talking to you.
You're doing fine.
Okay.
Well, thank you.
Uh, thanks for your kind words.
Thanks for having me back on and keep up with the hell raising and next year we'll win.
Maybe.
There you go.
Thanks, Jim.
All right.
All right, you guys, that's Jim Bovard.
He's at the Future Freedom Foundation and he wrote Public Policy Hooligan, which is really great.
It's his memoir of being an investigative columnist, which is the best kind of columnist, right?
Original reporting, but with plenty of bad words and stuff in it.
Um, he's at USA Today.
I mentioned here this one, America's Benevolent Bombing of Serbia is at the Future Freedom Foundation.
He also wrote Attention Deficit Democracy.
Masterpiece.
Absolute masterpiece.
Before that, uh, the Bush betrayal and before that terrorism and tyranny, and before that feeling your pain and freedom and chains and, uh, the fair trade fraud and the farm fiasco.
And these are all the ones I can name off the top of my head before I run out.
Uh, great stuff by the great Jim Bovard.
Oh, and he's got his own website too, jimbovard.com.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
