08/18/16 – Kelley B. Vlahos – The Scott Horton Show

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All right.
Introducing Kelly B. Vallejos, writing for the American Conservative magazine.
Again, this one is called Clinton's Syria War Plans.
Welcome back to the show, Kelly.
How are you?
I'm doing great, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Good.
Very happy to have you back on the show here.
And scared to death about what you're writing, and I already know it, but still.
Let's talk a little bit about Hillary's incoming war cabinet.
We already know a little bit about who we can expect to take the high-level positions in Hillary's national security bureaucracy, assuming she's elected president, correct?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, you and I have been talking about this for years.
When she was running for president in 2008, unsuccessfully, there was a phalanx of national security experts, people, holdovers from the first Clinton administration, Coindenistas, you name it, who had been lining up already to serve with Hillary Rodham Clinton once she became president.
It was, as you recall, it was almost a given that she would get the Democratic nomination and win, and Barack Obama foiled her plans by winning the nomination.
Ahead of that, though, a new think tank, the Center for New American Security, CNAS, had been formed by many of these foreign policy national security acolytes, namely Michelle Flournoy, who had been sort of in the military-industrial-academic complex for years, had been working in the Pentagon, and it was very hot to see Hillary Clinton successfully get the Democratic nod.
She started this think tank in hopes to create this national security team-in-waiting, and that was in 2007.
What made them different from, I guess, the neocon community here in Washington is that they were for the more humanitarian intervention, but they were all hot for the prevailing counterinsurgency that David Petraeus had been promoting, and they were among those here in Washington who believed that the surge worked and that it could be applied to Afghanistan.
So that was their big thing, was showing that the Democrats could have this muscular foreign policy, muscular national security posture, was ready to go and win Afghanistan just like Iraq had been won.
And so they all lined up.
When Hillary didn't get the nod, they continued and instead shifted their resources and influence behind Obama, and when he won the presidency, a lot of them were plucked out of the think tank, including Michelle Flournoy for government service and great positions in the State Department and the Pentagon, and including Michelle Flournoy, who rose to the third-ranking civilian in the Pentagon and is now considered to be on a short, short list for Hillary Clinton's defense secretary.
All that, you know, as a lead-up to what my story was about was, well, what are these people saying now about what Hillary Clinton's policy should be once she's in office?
And across the board...
Wait, hold it right there, though, because yeah, we got to talk about that, but let me dwell on the past here for a minute.
Sure.
Michelle Flournoy, am I right that her reputation has not suffered one iota from the complete and total failed counterinsurgency surge into Afghanistan that she was the champion of?
And as you said, she was the deputy secretary of defense for policy in charge of implementing the thing.
Does that not count?
Or Afghanistan is the war that never happened, never heard of it, don't worry about it, It's unbelievable that there are certain people in the national security establishment in Washington who have been able to avoid any direct accountability for the policies in the Obama administration, just as those in the Bush administration who were responsible for the failed war policies.
So the funny thing is that not even the Republicans and neocons in this town who like to blame Obama for everything that's happened in Iraq and everything that's happened in Afghanistan, they never point figures at certain people within this establishment community who should be just as complicit or just as responsible for the failures.
They blame Hillary, they blame Obama, maybe to a certain extent they might, I don't know, I think Samantha Powers, they're the usual targets.
But people like Michelle Flournoy, they always manage to escape unscathed, probably because they're so burrowed into this national security orbit, this world here, that she could easily go onto the Republican side and work for Republicans.
And so I just think that that's one of the reasons why you don't see her taking as many hits as far as the blame game goes.
Right, yeah, that's a good point.
And also, I mean, it really just is a matter of, in terms of national politics, no one's ever heard of the Deputy Secretary of anything.
So, you know, it's a very tight-knit community.
And if she was wrong, then they all were.
Right, exactly.
And if you look at it, I mean, what did she promote?
She promoted counterinsurgency.
She promoted COIN.
Well, that was David Petraeus' baby and the Republicans and neoconservatives.
So their policies are no different than the Bush policies.
So like you said, if they blame her for the failed policies, they're turning the mirror on themselves.
And nobody wants to admit that counterinsurgency was a failure in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
I mean, to this day, you have people in this town who say that David Petraeus helped win the war in Iraq, and Obama blew it by withdrawing.
That's an oversimplified narrative of events.
It still exists today.
And you have people on both sides, Republicans and Democrats, who are invested in that narrative, including people like Michelle Flournoy.
You know, she won't come right out and say Obama failed.
But, you know, if you read between the lines and things that she says, and what CNAS says, and things that Leon Panetta say, and Hillary Clinton say, you know, they tend to sort of throw Obama and his inner circle under the bus when it comes to Iraq, and to some extent, Afghanistan, because they believe that they should have been more aggressive.
They believe they should have been more interventionist.
And that somehow, that supporting COIN at all costs was the order of the day, even though we all know that it was a big failure.
Well, yeah, you know, they're always going to be able to say just like any, you know, big government liberal on any government program, that failure is always only proof that we didn't put enough resources into it.
So if option five was, and this was this was what they really did, right?
Just like on The Simpsons, where they put the different options on the president's desk, but you have to choose option four, whatever it was.
But one of these was, well, we need 80,000 extra troops and an open ended commitment to stay absolutely forever, Mr. President.
That was part of Stanley McChrystal's proposal.
And then so that was too hot.
So they went with just right.
But Petraeus swore he promised.
Absolutely.
Yes, sir.
Mr. President, by July of 2011, in 18 months, we will have worked on the on the Afghan Taliban so hard that they're going to come crawling on their knees to our table to agree to our terms.
And Obama said, and you're not going to cry about how I didn't give you enough material support and whatever to get the job done.
And he said, agreed, Mr. President.
Absolutely.
You've got it.
So they can cry about that.
But they're the ones who promised in the first place that the surge was going to work.
The fact that it didn't means it didn't.
Not that it wasn't big enough.
Right.
And of course, in Iraq, if the surge worked at all, then Obama would have had to start the war all over again to break it, not pull out.
If if keeping the troops in there was what was necessary to hold the victory together, then it was no victory at all, because when they defined the benchmarks of what the surge was supposed to achieve, it was supposed to achieve reconciliation between the Shia supermajority we put in power and the Sunnis that they had dispossessed.
And Petraeus promised they're all going to get patronage and they're all going to get jobs in the police and the military.
And it never happened.
So the surge did not work.
And so no wonder the whole thing fell apart.
And what were a couple of thousand troops supposed to do about it anyway?
If one hundred and sixty six thousand couldn't win the war with even David Petraeus running the whole damn thing back in 2007 and eight.
Exactly.
What a joke these people, but they get away with it because who's calling them out except you and me.
Oh, it's awful because nobody remembers that we we couldn't have stayed if we wanted to.
And that seems to be lost in all of this debate where we say, well, Obama pulled out too soon.
And you're thinking, well, we were told to leave based on an agreement that was made under the Bush administration.
So the side that we helped win and put in power who said, OK, thanks a lot.
Now get out.
Yeah, right.
So anyway, but yeah, never mind a benchmark.
I never heard a slogan about a benchmark, but I heard the surge worked a lot of times.
So it must have been the Republicans victory that the Democrats blew, you know, as they so often say.
And of course, we all know the real story is that Obama, on the advice of these same people, helped knock off the well, did really knock off the government in Libya and then did a half a regime change, at least in Syria and still to this day supports Mujahideen forces against the Assad government there, which is, as Donald Trump has correctly said, what led to the rise of the Islamic State in the first place.
But now Michelle Flournoy, never mind, you know, any recent past or anything, she knows what to do from here on forward, huh?
Oh, yeah.
And I think that for what you can say about Obama in comparison to Hillary Clinton is that he he is less interventionist than Hillary Clinton.
When you point out Libya and other, you know, events over the past eight years, you know, those that invasion that, you know, this this coalition invasion, airstrikes rather of Libya was all pushed by Hillary Clinton and her friends, Leon Panetta, you know, David Petraeus, Robert Gates and all.
So if you're looking at a future Clinton presidency, you're going to be looking at a greater interventionist policy.
And that has been borne out in reports by CNS with Flournoy's name at the top of the page, which talk about leaning in further into Syria, including airstrikes, greater numbers of U.S. personnel.
We can parse out whether that means troops on the ground.
You know, she says, oh, I didn't mean troops on the ground.
But when you read her reports carefully, it means a much more marshalling of United States resources, including airstrikes, air support, special operations on the ground.
They call them counter networking advisors, you know, and whether or not this, you know, instigates with Russia, already, you know, dropping bombs into Syria.
So what that needs to be done, because the ultimate goal, two ultimate goals are getting rid of ISIS and getting rid of Assad.
And she says that clearly.
And her people say that clearly.
And Clinton surrogates in the media say it clearly, the two pronged approach.
And the only way that they say that's going to happen is with more United States involvement in Syria.
So it goes way beyond what Obama is doing right now.
And they don't hesitate to say at the outset that Obama's policies have been weak.
Yeah.
Well, you know, you quote our good friend Gareth in here, Gareth Porter saying, well, I can't think of a time where you actually had someone running for president who was promising to start a new war as soon as they get in power.
I mean, clearly Cheney was, but only in private at Halliburton corporate board meetings, right?
But not on TV.
Oh, you let us in there.
We're guaranteed to invade Iraq and occupy it.
But I mean, that really is kind of unprecedented American history.
That's the platform they're running on.
No one even seems to care.
So they're getting much attention.
Right.
So you go.
So Hillary Clinton has the luxury of going out on the campaign trail and designing her websites to be very, you know, very coy about the issue now and then.
But, you know, which is fine.
She can go out and she can say, we're going to be smart about this.
We're not going to put troops on the ground.
We're going to have a forward thinking policy.
Meanwhile, her surrogates who are clearly her surrogates, people like Leon Panetta, who cannot be described as anybody else but a Clinton inner circle person who is likely a top, you know, either Pentagon official or CIA official and waiting saying to the media, this is going to include a call for more airstrikes and perhaps more troops on the ground.
He says it is recorded.
You can you can Google it up.
So, you know, she's having it both ways.
She knows this country is not interested in more war.
So she's not going to go out on the campaign trail and talk to audiences, many of whom were Bernie Sanders supporters who are against war or even people independents who might like what Donald Trump has said about pulling back, you know, our our troops overseas.
So she's not going to risk going out and saying, well, you know, people, we're going to have to, you know, buckle down and face it.
We've got to get rid of this Assad and we're going to do whatever it takes.
No, she has her surrogates.
We have this, you know, Mark Morell, you know, the former CIA guy who's been working with Leon Panetta at Beacon Strategies, who's out there as the, you know, the former CIA guy who's who's gone out and he says, I just can't stand to see Trump treat, you know, to be possible, possibly lead this country.
I have to be for Hillary.
You know, he's been all over the all over the television.
He sits down with Charlie Rose and he tells them that, you know, sure, let's start bombing.
If the Russians get in our way in Syria, let's start, you know, let's let's attack them.
Let's go after Assad's assets.
Let's scare them a little bit.
Show them who's boss.
You know, this is one of her endorsers.
Surrogates has been working with a firm quite closely tied to Clinton for years after he left the CIA.
So I don't I think we need to keep our eyes wide open when it comes to what Mrs. Clinton's national security policy is going to be moving forward.
Well, and, you know, again, always that with any of these foreign policies, we see the danger of the power of consensus and social psychology among the people making the policy in Washington, D.C., as we talked about before with the, you know, the coin in Washington, D.C. and all the cool kids supporting that and etc. like this.
Here's a situation where, you know, I asked Eric Porter this the other day, trying to keep an open mind here and play devil's advocate and say, OK, but so if the Baath government in Damascus falls, is there anyone prepared to replace it in power other than Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State?
And the answer, of course, is no.
The answer is there's no one else other than Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State to replace the Baathist regime.
And yet to hear Michelle Flournoy and them talk about it and whatever, you know, we'll deal with that.
We'll cross that bridge when we get to it or whatever.
But what's important now is dealing with Assad.
But the president, the current president, I guess they would disagree with this, but he absolutely nailed this to The New York Times when he explained to Thomas Friedman that, listen, the idea you're going to build up a force of moderates that can take on Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Assad's Syrian state army, Hezbollah, Iran and Russian airstrikes.
I mean, I'm adding newer combatants to the list now, but the idea that you were ever going to be able to build up a moderate force to take on all comers like this was always, I believe the quote was, a total fantasy.
And yet that seems to be the first premise of the Hillary Clinton, the incoming Hillary Clinton policy.
And the question I asked Gareth about, yeah, but then what is apparently not part of this discussion?
As far as I can tell, because they just keep going, yeah, we're going to hit Assad without seeming to really be concerned at all about what might happen after that.
Well, I mean, if you look at the report, the full CNS report on destroying ISIS from the ground up, I think is the name of the report.
You know, yeah, they give a lot of lip service to political reconciliation, just like they did in Iraq, just like they did in Afghanistan.
And I think for me reading this report, which anybody can go and Google up on under the CNS report, specifically addressing ISIS, is how similar they sounded to previous reports on Afghanistan and Iraq.
They have the same template.
It's all about fostering moderate rebel forces, aiding them, advising them, resourcing them.
They're very specific on the different regions and what rebel forces are controlling or not controlling, but exist in these different regions and how we can help them.
And then parallel to that is always this wishful thinking that all this political advancement is going to be made in terms of the diplomacy end of things, which never happens because you can't do both at the same time.
You know, you basically lay down a marker saying that you're going to get rid of this guy, Bashar Assad, and at the same time, you're going to be destroying ISIS, supporting moderate groups, whose end goal is also to get rid of Bashar.
So you're taking sides, but at the same time, there's supposed to be all of this diplomacy going on.
And we know from the past that this just doesn't happen that way.
But frankly, I'm a little surprised that these blueprints still exist and they deliver them up and people are supposed to gobble them down and say, wow, this looks like a great plan.
But really, it's more of the same.
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Yeah, boy, I'll tell you, this is a little off subject, but it goes to the mindset of Hillary here, I think.
And this is the most important thing.
And I don't know, maybe this is just my bias because I've just been so anti everything Clinton's for so many years in a row now or something.
But when I read that report about Richard Breedlove, the head of NATO, trying so hard to do this end run around Obama and pressure Obama into escalating military support for the rebels in Ukraine, I just imagine that same situation with Hillary Clinton in the chair.
And I just think, man, we'd have a nuclear war.
She's basically might as well be John McCain.
And the worst part of it, and I mean that in the way of not just how hawkish she is, but in how personal it all is, you know, like for her, I think impressing Jack Keane matters a lot more than doing the right thing.
You know, being considered one of the guys and getting a pat on the head from the right people were Obama.
I hate to give the man credit for anything with all the damage that he's done, but at least at the end of the day, he seems to feel good about himself enough that he can say no to people sometimes.
You know what I mean?
But I just don't Hillary just seems like she's so eager to please all the wrong people in a way that could really get in the way of clear thinking on any of these subjects, you know?
Yeah, and it's really hard to parse it out.
Because if you look at the Hillary Clinton of the 1990s, she was just as hawkish.
And her husband was president.
And her and Madeline Albright had been pressuring for for bombing campaigns in Bosnia, and then later in Yugoslavia.
So maybe she's just a hawkish person.
I mean, she really I mean, this idea that she is a lefty, liberal, bleeding heart.
I've never really bought that about her.
I mean, I think history bears out that she's pretty tough cookie.
And she gets along with the military very well, much more than Obama, and much more than her husband, I believe.
And when she came in as senator, I mean, she was she she was on was she was on the armed services, please correct me if she was Yeah, that was the first thing she did was sign up for armed services because she was running for president as simple as that.
And well, exactly.
And that's what I mean about parsing out.
Does she do it because of her ambitions?
Or does she do it because it's the way she's wired?
She's politically wired, because she made friends with these generals.
And these national security, you know, hot rods pretty quickly.
And they loved it.
And they lapped it up.
And it was right, right around the time of the surge, you know, her and Tres, you know, I mean, it's just the crystal.
I mean, she she just really has a good rapport with military types.
And, you know, so I'm not sure she was, I don't I'm not sure it's her seeking out some sort of, you know, what do you call it reinforcement from these types?
I just think that that's how she's wired.
But I think it's it's our job in the media to make sure that people are informed about this.
I mean, I hate to say it, but you know, people start to, you know, you know, they see her as this, you know, the Democrat, and, you know, Democrats have never been known to be tough on, you know, national security and war.
And they're, you know, they're constantly overcompensating for that.
But with Hillary, I think it really means something.
I mean, she was for the war in Iraq, her husband basically started the war in Iraq by, you know, the sanctions, and, you know, being sort of like, won over by, you know, the, the neocons and the bombing campaigns.
And, I mean, this all started in her husband's administration, it's just the neocons were able to finish it after 911.
So good.
You know, who knows what's gonna happen?
You know, it seems like, you know, if only Nixon can go to China, that's because if a Democrat had done it, Nixon would have called him a commie and a traitor.
And so, you know, and it seems like, I mean, that's just the, the dynamic that we're stuck with, where no matter what the Democrats have to try so hard to prove what Jimmy Carter's they're not.
And that, you know, this is something we talked about when it came to Obama and Afghan surge was it was all domestic politics.
He couldn't end two wars, only one.
So he gave in and doubled one of them while withdrawn from the other, and that kind of thing.
But, you know, her being a woman just means that much more of the same incentive, where if only Trump can go to Tehran, then Hillary's gotta bomb it.
You know, that kind of thing where that's just how the dynamics work, where Trump not that Trump would go to Tehran, he's horrible on Iran and everything.
But I'm just saying, he's Republican enough and tall enough.
And, you know, macho enough that he can do something controversial like that and making friends with an enemy, or even getting along with Putin without necessarily being called, you know, his patriotism being called into question.
Although, I guess, that's a stupid thing to say, considering the press release that Hillary just put out about what a Kremlin stooge he is.
So I guess there's no protecting him from her when it comes to red baiting.
But basically, in office, he would be able to, if he wanted to, he would be able to make peace in ways where she would feel much more incentive to do the wrong thing.
And like you say, that's kind of her, you know, instinct anyway.
She'll never run out of people to tell her she's right about making things worse up there.
Yeah.
And I think the one thing to watch very intently is, you know, with Russia there in Syria, and her people saying, you know, that shouldn't disincentivize our involvement there.
And many of her people, including, and I mentioned this in my story, Robert Kagan, notorious neocon, but also establishment player, who just loves Hillary to the point where he's helping raise money for her.
You know, they, they want to poke the bear.
They want a confrontation with Russia.
Whereas Obama doesn't, and he never did.
And I think you're going to see some dynamics really changing.
If Hillary becomes president, and some of these foreign policy instincts start into motion, because it's not just a matter of going in there and getting in a quagmire with, with these Islamic, you know, extremists and moderates and rebels, Russia's there too, and Iran is involved.
So this is, this is, this is big time.
And I think, I'm sure Gareth talked to you about this, but there are plenty of Hillary supporters and surrogates who already have been stirring the pot, when you mentioned Ukraine, you know, so it could get, it could get ugly, and it could go way beyond these, these quagmires that we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, because we'll be dealing with other world powers at that point, who also have something to prove themselves.
So...
Well, and you know, of course, it was, as you say, about Clinton being a hawk since way back, it was her husband, of course, that expanded NATO.
And, you know, Bush, you know, made it much worse.
But Bill Clinton really got this started.
And so, even if she had a moment of clarity, where she realized, like, oh, man, we kind of are backing the Russians into a corner, and maybe we need to take that more into account.
Well, she could never admit that, or make a policy based on that kind of thing, when that implicates her previous government, basically, from 16 years ago.
Yeah.
So, you know, all they can do is just press on.
And she gave in her big San Diego foreign policy speech, which was mostly about attacking Trump.
I mean, she was so hawkish there and talked about, oh, how pleased they'll be in the Kremlin, if Trump wins.
Again, back to her website and her press release and all the Kremlin baiting, I guess not red baiting anymore, but Russia baiting of Trump.
They won't let up.
Manafort's out.
And they're saying, we don't care if he's out, we're still going to keep, you know, baiting you on this subject anyway, even though the centerpiece of all of our accusations is gone.
We'll find something else to keep playing it this way.
And she said in that speech that, you know, with real indignation that the Russians now have lately been making movements and are messing around right on NATO's doorstep, which she's talking about troop movements inside Russia, where NATO is all the way on Russia's doorstep.
But she's saying, oh, yeah, if they build a military base near the border with Ukraine, well, you know, or move some troops into Kaliningrad and that space between Estonia and Poland there or whatever it is that this is all provocative action.
And she'd never admit that it's America who clearly is being provocative here.
It's NATO is not a social club.
It's a military alliance.
And in fact, Obama, for all his, you know, relative restraint, has been perfectly happy to let NATO do these massive exercises, including bringing Germans all the way into the Baltics, for crying out loud.
I mean, this is absolutely crazy.
That could have started a war right there, right?
If Putin, Putin could have said, no, you know what?
We're not letting Germans come this far east.
We're just bombing your columns.
I don't care.
We don't believe you.
This is just an exercise.
We don't believe you.
They're going home again.
I mean, but back to, you know, hey, we all agree about this, right, guys?
And apparently we do.
Nobody, nobody surrounding Hillary when she was getting that speech written was saying, hey, maybe this is a little because think about crazy.
That sounds they're messing around on NATO's doorstep when she clearly doesn't mean they're expanding again into Eastern Europe and are, you know, near Germany's borders when it's so obvious it's the other way around.
But the consensus is just complete.
There's no one to object, I guess.
Anyway, sorry, I should have come up with a great question to end that with.
But that really is how bad it is, right?
Where Hillary and her entire staff, they all agree, and no one is really saying, yeah, but kind of we're lying, right?
No, no one's kind of, you know, keeping it real.
It's all they believe their own propaganda or their own.
Their narrative becomes the basis for their action, even though they must kind of know their narrative isn't true.
Exactly.
Well, you know, I just listening to you, I'm thinking how much Hillary, President Hillary's administration will look like her husband's administration, but maybe, you know, 2.0 in the regard of national security, because so much more is at stake now, than even was during Bill Clinton's era, in terms of the, you know, the global politics going on.
So it is scary.
And there'll be plenty of people from that era who are still around here in Washington, who are, as we speak, are jockeying, you know, for favor, because they see a new place for themselves in the administration.
There's plenty of people in the Obama administration that want to burrow in and make sure they're still around.
And then you have these people like, you know, General John Allen, and Michael Vickers, and these national security types, who are retired to remember him?
Yeah.
And they see another chapter in their own careers, right?
That's why they're coming out and writing op eds about how great Hillary is, and I'm with her, give me a break.
It's all about auditioning.
People are auditioning, just as much as they're endorsing.
And these aren't the, you know, these aren't the people that, you know, you and I, or Andy Bacevich, or these realists, and that, you know, and that American conservative people have been fighting for better, sounder, you know, national security policy would like to see in the next, you know, administration.
And it just looks like it's, like I said, more of the same.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, even according to their own version of events from the last couple of weeks, you know, we have, well, even if you take their version of events, the Russians started flexing their muscles on Crimea first, although I think it's more like the Ukrainian government started making moves toward the border there.
But then, you know, this morning and last night, it was all over Twitter that, oh, no, NATO fears that Russia is preparing to invade eastern Ukraine with thousands of troops.
Well, I mean, I don't see any reason to believe that.
They've claimed that Russia did invade eastern Ukraine 10 times, especially in 2014.
It was never true.
But even according to them, that's how easy it is to provoke Russia into maybe invading Ukraine.
And then once they do, maybe they won't just settle for sovereignty over the east, which right now they apparently don't even want to have.
But maybe they'll march all the way to Kiev.
Who's going to stop them?
And yet these are the same people who are crying, oh, my God, look what Russia is going to do.
They're going to invade Ukraine over, you know, this little bit of extra increased tension over Crimea.
And these are the same ones saying that we ought to be giving the Ukrainian military a whole new batch of tanks and guns and shells and defensive.
What we ought to be, as Strobe Talbot put it in his report from, I guess, one year ago, I think it was that or maybe it was from two years ago that we need to be arming up the Ukrainian military to increase the Russian body count in Ukraine.
And then his end game, as he explained on NPR News, I'll never forget driving on the road listening to this interview on NPR as he explained it.
Well, what it'll mean is more Russian body bags coming home full of dead kids will mean that the debate will go up in Russia.
The debate will go up.
And then I guess we can just skip a few and yada, yada, yada.
And the debate in Russia will surely decide to back down in the face of America's escalation rather than escalate in response.
Of course, the NPR interviewer never even followed up or whatever.
That was just supposed to be the end of it was let's provoke the Russians.
Let's get some Russians killed like Mike Morell, the acting director of the CIA up until the other day is saying, let's get some Russians killed.
And then, you know, we'll see what goes on.
That's their plan.
It's like, let's invade Iraq.
And then we'll worry about what happens after that after that.
Well, but we're talking about fighting with the Russians who have thousands of H-bombs.
I'm sorry if this all I'm sure my audience thinks that you and I are the crazy ones talking about this.
It sounds unreal.
Well, yeah.
And again, I find it so disingenuous when Clinton was chiding Trump the other day from Scranton, Pennsylvania, saying, you know, there will be no U.S. troops, you know, in or no added U.S. troops in Syria.
And I'm thinking, well, take a look at what your advisors and your inner circle and your surrogates are saying, because like you just mentioned those comments from Mike Morell.
Yeah, he prefaced his comments by saying, this is my opinion.
But come on.
I mean, these are people that are out on the campaign trail talking on her behalf.
And they're talking about airstrikes in Syria.
No bombing zones.
That's a big one of Michelle Flournoy.
No bombing zones instead of no fly zones.
So what happens when Russia violates that?
Oh, well, we fight back.
OK, so that's intervention.
That's conflict.
You know that you're advocating conflict, new conflict that doesn't exist now.
And so I don't know how you would do that without more U.S. presence in Syria.
You want to call it troops.
You can call it advisors.
You could call it, you know, special ops or whatever.
But that's what that's what her people are advocating.
So when she goes on the campaign trail and she says, read my lips, no new troops, you know, it's a lie.
I mean, I would say it's a lie because she could very well say no troops if she's in office.
But I'm I'm thinking that it's very disingenuous in terms of what, you know, her policies and what her people's policies and people that she's she's she's giving people permission to speak on her behalf, like Leon Panetta.
And if he's saying, you know, more he's saying more troops.
What where's what's the disconnect here?
Right.
All right.
Well, listen, I've kept you way over and I don't want to go on too long because I want people to listen to the whole thing.
So I will stop asking you questions, even though I have a lot more questions.
It's a very important article that you have here.
I hope everyone will read it and help pass it around.
Clinton's Syria War Plans is at the American Conservative magazine by Kelly B. Vallejos.
Her national security team in waiting wants a return to big U.S. interventions.
Thanks again.
Thanks, Scott.
All right, John.
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