08/14/15 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
First guest today is Phil Giraldi, former CIA and DIA officer, executive director of the Council for the National Interest, and writer for the American Conservative Magazine and Unz.com.
Welcome back, Phil.
How are you?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Listen, I got a bunch of stuff I want to ask you about, including some of the great articles you've written recently.
But first and foremost, I got to ask you, just what in the world is going on with America and Turkey and Syria?
America, I'm reading, is the Americans, our government, are abandoning the military trained mythical moderates.
They're just going to double down on the Kurds now, the Syrian Kurds.
Give them some laser pointers, and let's get to work, and let's kick some ISIS ass.
This is the new deal, and we're moving forward with that.
And thank you, Turkey, you're letting us fly out of your Incirlik air base now, so now we can do that.
And at the exact same time, Turkey, our ally, our NATO ally, is stepping up their war against our ally, the Kurds.
Right.
At the same damn time.
Yeah, yeah.
No, you're supposed to tell me I'm wrong and I don't understand it right, and that there's some other thing that's going to enlighten this.
Well, you know, it's funny.
I'm working on an article for next Tuesday for Unz, which discusses this whole issue in some detail.
But it basically is, as you just described it, and yeah, the title of the article is Snookered by the Turks.
Basically, they set us up and they used our war on terror as a way of legitimizing their launching a war against the Kurds to help Erdogan in the upcoming parliamentary elections, and so he can get the majority that he wants and continue to run the government.
It's that simple.
But we were taken.
We were completely taken.
Well, but of course, the Americans had a deal with him since 11, right?
That we're back in the Mujahideen in Syria together now.
So who's really betraying who?
We're the ones who are changing our policy from treason to less treasonous than before.
Is that it?
Yeah, yeah.
It kind of looks that way on the surface.
But the fact is, Turkey has never played the game straight with us.
And we've known this.
And that's why it's so insane that they jumped into this deal with the Turks to allegedly oppose ISIS.
You probably already know there was a crackdown immediately about three weeks ago when all this started, where the Turks began arresting ISIS supporters, but actually they wound up arresting 800 Kurds and leftists and only about 50 ISIS supporters.
So this whole thing was set up right from the beginning to go after the Kurds.
Because in the Turkish parliament right now, there's a Kurdish party which has enough seats to block Erdogan.
So you accomplish two things at the same time.
You get this war going and you also get rid of this party that is the opposition.
And this leads to Erdogan having elections again, probably in October, in which his party will again be on top.
Yeah.
And just by attempting to conflate the PKK that he's picking a fight with, with the group in the parliament when they're not even really the same group, are they?
No, they're not.
I mean, obviously, Kurds have connections.
You know, the PKK is like a lot of other alleged terrorist groups.
And then it has a kind of a civil side, which is legal.
And they also have an armed side, which is, you know, like the old IRA and that.
Well, there are a couple of different Kurdish parties, right?
I can't keep track of them.
Yeah, a whole bunch of them.
And some of them are armed and believe in a Kurdish state.
And others just want more autonomy within a Turkish state.
So it runs the gamut.
And in fact, this party that Erdogan is going after pretty much just wants more autonomy, more Kurdish identity within a Turkish state.
So he's going after basically the good guys, the good Turks, and he wants to get rid of them.
And he's portraying them all as terrorists.
He called a couple of days ago for all of their parliamentarians to have their immunity lifted so they could be prosecuted for being terrorists.
And now so incredible.
So what is America's policy regarding Bashar al-Assad to to to change to back him now or to keep bombing him?
I don't think we have a policy.
The policy was always that we wanted to see some kind of resolution and that Bashar was not part of it.
That was the kind of our policy.
But the fact is, you know, obviously, this regime change policy is not going to work.
So we're stuck in a situation now where the Turks are attacking our own allies and and ISIS is getting a free pass on this.
And apparently the Pentagon is furious about it.
There's been a couple of articles where generals have said that, you know, we were really screwed on this.
The Turks really stuck it to us.
And yet, of course, the White House is not saying anything.
Now, we go back to Seymour Hersh and his article about what happened two years ago.
He says Turkey and the Al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda in Syria, worked together to fake to commit this sarin attack in order to pin it on Bashar al-Assad and get, you know, Obama and McCain to work together to get us to bomb Assad out of power in Damascus.
Yeah, it's completely plausible.
And in fact, this current round of violence started with a suicide bombing in the south of Turkey in which 32 mostly university students were killed.
And for me reading this, it sounds like a false flag.
They had this guy who was of Kurdish origin, who they allege is linked with ISIS, but provided no no evidence to prove that.
And they claimed this guy was a suicide bomber from ISIS.
Well, now we have to go after ISIS, which actually was a lie anyway, because they wanted to go after the Kurds.
So the whole thing is kind of, you know, it's it's so crazy.
If if you were to write a novel with this theme, your editor would come back and say, Scott, get the hell out of here.
Yeah.
But in other words, you're saying that suicide bomber could have just as easily been an al-Nusra guy and dead men tell no tales.
Exactly.
Or he could have been a guy that the Turkish intelligence service kind of set up.
You know, that happens, too.
Yeah.
Man.
All right.
Now, here's some old war propaganda that's coming back up in terms of the Iran deal.
We got to talk a lot about the politics of the Iran deal in the next segment.
But back in 2000.
Well, right now at The New York Times, they have a piece about this and they're they they're showing this ad bipartisan group of ex senators to run ads against Iran deal is the headline.
And it's an Iraq war vet named Bartlett who's saying he was hit by an EFP.
Iran did it.
And this is something that you and I've been talking about since this war propaganda was coming out in real time back in 2007.
So can you tell us a bit about what's the accusation and what's the truth surrounding Iraqi EFP bombs, Phil?
Yeah, well, I mean, the thing is, they're they're they're pulling out all the emotional stops.
I mean, this is a wounded veteran, no question about it.
But he's been put up to this thing, alleging that the Iranians were behind the the the allegations, if you go back, were that the Iranians were behind the technology, that the technology was was advanced and so on and so forth.
It could only have been done with their assistance.
Of course, that was nonsense.
Essentially, we're talking about basically very simple technology.
That is what was widely known, widely used, has been used, for example, by the IRA, has been used by a number of groups that are considered terrorists.
And so that that's kind of nonsense.
And this this attempt to pin it on Iran is kind of crazy.
It's in fact, I think, as I recall, when you and I were looking, we're talking about looking into some years back, there was the bomb.
One of the bomb making factories was in, I think, in Baghdad.
And it was it was had nothing to do with Iran.
It was being run by local Iraqis and and some of whom were veterans who knew about explosives and knew about it.
So anyway, the whole allegation of Iran as a terrorist state, as a state that's been killing our soldiers, these are all kinds of emotional appeals.
And we should see them for what they are, which is basically they're they're essentially bogus.
All right.
Now, I have two recommendations here for the people.
They're both blog entries by me at antiwar dot com.
EFPs are made in Iraq by Iraqis, August 12th, 2007, and Washington Post liars caught.
And this is the Washington Post telling the truth and then editing it out and replacing it with might have come from Iran when they had the truth in the thing before they deleted it.
And it has links to a lot more sources.
But also, Phil did a, I don't know, 25 page study or better about this back then.
And we're going to find it and post it and post the link to that ultimate refutation of this propaganda.
By the time this archive is posted, a live audience.
Hang tight.
We'll be right back with more Phil Giraldi after this.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, Scott Horton Show.
Talking with Phil Giraldi.
Here he is right now.
Owns dot com talking Iran.
A successful agreement could restore sanity to American foreign policy.
Well, what you've been smoking, Phil?
Yeah, a couple of the comments made that point that I'm perhaps being a bit sensible about this whole thing.
First right, then drink.
Yeah, well, my feeling is that, you know, Obama has actually suffered a couple of reverses on foreign policy.
The if you look at Libya, Libya is regarded by almost everyone as having been a disaster, and that was an intervention by Obama.
When you look at Syria, I think everybody figures that Syria and, of course, Iraq has really gone in the wrong direction, that the war against ISIS is is is not a success, that what's going on in that part of the world is is basically a failure for the U.S. government, and that the attempt to to up the fighting by claiming the sarin attack was also clearly seen as a fabrication.
And that's another failure for Obama.
So I'm figuring that that Obama, having seen all these kind of neocon type disasters, if we can finally get a big success with Iran in particular, and also Cuba, I would put it in the same category, there might be a kind of shift in the way the foreign policy establishment in Washington looks at things.
And that's that's what I'm hoping will happen.
I see what you mean.
In other words, because on this show, at least, never mind on TV and the pretended consensus in Washington and all that, since Iran ain't making nukes, it's not a problem.
We're just trying to put this fake issue to bed.
If we can get this deal done and then we can very safely assume that the Iranians will abide by it and that then that should dissipate that level of propaganda at the same time being a real victory over, you know, the neocons and the Israelis who tried so hard to stop it and that then in effect, you know, we'll be living in a new world where, you know, see, the neocons got really faced down, not just by the people when Obama took their side, like back in 2013 in the Syria thing, as you mentioned, but faced down and beaten by the president.
And maybe that'll be a real shift in terms of just who's allowed to get away with what in D.C. now.
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.
And if you take Iran off the table, who are we going to attack next?
I mean, I guess you could say the Soviet former Soviet Union would be a target.
But I don't think even even the crazies in Washington are seriously anticipating that.
So, you know, we've kind of run out of enemies.
And I think the fact that AIPAC in this process would be defeated after spending very, very heavily on thwarting this, I think that's significant, too.
So I think if this kind of goes through, we might have somewhat of a shift in direction in terms of of how people in Washington inside the beltway are perceiving the options as one goes ahead.
Not to say we won't possibly get a crazy Republican in as president, which, of course, would reverse everything I'm saying.
Yeah, I wonder how bad that would be.
I mean, I guess I would expect Jeb to go along with the deal.
I don't know.
I guess his staff, you know, I could see him sort of in the same position as Junior the way Bolton and all them sabotage the agreed framework, which I guess Bush was probably, you know, happy for them to do it, although I don't know if it was really his plan.
But it wouldn't be that hard to ruin the deal once the neocons got back in.
And of course, if it's any Republican, you know, who are they going to have for assistant deputy secretary of defense for policy or whatever the crap?
It's got to be the neocons.
They don't have anybody else anymore.
Yeah, that's right.
That's the real danger with the Republicans.
You might get a guy like Jeb Bush who actually might act sensibly in a given situation.
But the fact is, he's got a lot of baggage and the baggage are the people that are whispering in his ear and telling him what to do.
Well, apparently he's dumb enough that he might as well be crazy at this point, too, saying, yeah, no, I'll bring back torture and I'll reinvade Iraq and vote Bush.
And he's shouting about Iran and, you know, he's making all the usual noises.
And to me, this is what's killed Rand Paul, the fact that he's getting bad advice.
I think that that, you know, ultimately these people double down on what they see as a hard line that that is attractive to the Republican Party base.
But I'm not so convinced that's true anymore.
I think that that quite a quite a lot of Americans are really tired of all this stuff.
I think Rand Paul demonstrated that, that there is a there is a constituency out there.
And yet they get this bad advice and they make these dumbass comments.
And basically, they're always doubling down on what are bad policies.
Yep.
Yeah.
Now, I'm all kind of nervous because I realized that on the Tom Woods show, I just posted my debate with Walter Block about whether libertarians should support Rand or not.
I'm not sure what kind of blowback I'm going to get from this.
But Rand doesn't believe in blowback anymore.
It's radical Islam is the cause of all our problems.
So I guess I shouldn't worry.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
You're not even on the screen.
If we have all those people with beards and funny hats that are to blame for everything.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and and and the deal says exactly what it doesn't say, because I need an excuse to oppose it.
So exactly.
Yeah.
Well, so, yeah, now, as far as the lobby, it ain't over yet.
And you do talk in here about, you know, little d democratic activism by the people who know better, which is, you know, us.
This really is the time if anybody's going to find the time to call a congressman about anything.
This might just be the one.
What do you say about that?
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, one of the other points I make in the article is that, you know, really, I mean, the United States went the wrong way in a dramatic way back after 9-11 when they resolved on attacking Iraq.
And Iraq, of course, turned out to be probably the greatest disaster in the history of the United States foreign policy.
And that's where we kind of went wrong.
And what I'm suggesting here is if we get this one right, it's not going to change things completely, but it's kind of a course correction.
It's a demonstration that actually we can get quite a lot by diplomacy rather than by bombing people.
And I think that would be an eye opener for a lot of the people in Washington and also outside Washington who kind of follow these issues.
And I think that's the significance of it.
Yeah.
Well, and yeah, especially like you say, when the Israel lobby is spending so much money and doing everything they can to create this fake narrative that we're basically handing them H-bombs or whatever kind of nonsense, that if that narrative loses, I don't know about the minds of the right, but it seems like in the great silent majority of just regular folk out there, that that'd be a pretty bad loss for that kind of war propaganda, too.
That, you know, it turned out that actually, no, the deal was to restrict their program, not to help them make bomb.
What the hell was I listening to on talk radio anyway?
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
And particularly as there's, I think, a broad consensus among the public that there were a lot of lies that were used to promote the Iraq war.
And if we see kind of the same thing and it turns out that, hey, this is a good deal.
Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon and tension in the region has gone down considerably.
And in fact, even now, I mean, they're talking about possibility of some kind of peace talks over Syria and Iran is behind that.
So there are a lot of good reasons to lessen tensions with Iran and to begin to treat Iran as if it's a normal country.
Yeah, sounds good to me.
Thanks very much for your time on the show, Phil.
I sure appreciate it.
Okay, Scott, take care.
All right, so that's the great Phil Giraldi.
He's at the Council for the National Interest, UNS.com and the American Conservative Magazine.
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