09/21/16 – Joe Lauria – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing our friend Joe Lauria.
He is a reporter, a long time for the Wall Street Journal, many other publications.
Now freelance, writing oftentimes for ConsortiumNews.com, which means he's in very good company over there, ConsortiumNews.com.
And now again, he is on the line from Erbil, which is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Welcome back to the show, Joe.
How the hell are you?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate it.
Very happy to have you here back on the show.
All right, Joe.
So the big question, obviously, is what of the October surprise and the upcoming attack on Mosul?
Obviously, all kinds of players involved.
Second to last major readout of the Islamic State in northwestern Iraq, a city of millions, correct?
Yeah.
Yeah, millions.
It's the second largest city in Iraq after Baghdad.
All right.
So what do we know?
It's been under occupation for two years.
It would be the end of, more or less, the end of Islamic State in Iraq if they could be driven out.
There's a lot of problems with this operation.
They've been talking about it for a year now.
One of the problems is the coordination between the Iraqi government in Baghdad, the Iraqi army, and the Peshmerga, or the armed forces of the Kurdish regional government here where I am in Erbil.
They don't particularly like each other.
And the two governments have not been speaking very much for the last couple of years.
The Kurds are selling their own oil rather than through Baghdad.
So the Iraqi government has not sent any tax revenue or any kind of aid up here in response.
But they both obviously have a common enemy, which is Daesh or Islamic State.
They both feel the need, the necessity, to take back Mosul and to crush ISIS and try to drive them out of Iraq.
Now the Peshmerga have made a lot of gains here.
They've taken back towns in the north and the Iraqi army in the south, taken Fallujah and other towns.
So they're making gains, but the big prize is Mosul.
And they can't do it alone.
And the United States doesn't have the men on the ground to do this.
And so it's going to have to be a combination of Iraqi forces and the Peshmerga.
And they had a meeting on Monday here in Erbil with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government and the United States, and they came to supposedly an agreement about how this is going to happen.
They released no details.
So whether this is true or not, we're going to find out.
I mean, maybe they have an agreement on paper of some sort.
Whether it can be implemented is the big question.
And the other problem is the actual operation to take back Mosul and the amounts of civilians that are going to be at risk.
When they attacked, and I say they, the Iraqi government attacked Fallujah and drove Islamic State out, the Islamic State at first was using civilians as human shields.
There were reports that people fleeing the city to get away from this impending combat were shot at.
And then, of course, fortunately, they allowed the Islamic State, for the civilians, to leave.
So they just left Fallujah for the most part, and there wasn't that much street-to-street fighting.
We don't know whether that's going to happen in Mosul.
If they did leave, they would be driven west towards the Syrian border and could reinforce Raqqa, which is a whole other thing we could talk about, of course.
That's the so-called capital of the Islamic State in Syria, which is going to be targeted as well, either by the Syrian government and the Russians or the United States and their coalition and various rebel groups that are on the U.S. side.
That's also down the road.
But if Mosul is attacked, and there is a lot of street fighting and aerial bombardments, there are numerous, numerous, hundreds, thousands of casualties can be expected.
So it will be extremely messy.
But the people want to be freed from Islamic State.
We've seen pictures of towns all throughout Syria and Iraq where people who have been liberated have been extremely happy, obviously, to get rid of these guys.
So I know people from Mosul here in Erbil, and they really have lost touch with relatives there.
The little they tell you about what's going on inside there is not pleasant whatsoever.
So they will welcome this attack, but there's going to be enormous casualties.
Unless the Islamic State is allowed to leave, I don't know if that's going to happen.
Nobody knows if that's going to happen.
So that's the first problem.
The second one is the civilians who will leave are expected to be up to 500,000, and they will come here, where I am.
That's according to O'Brien, the head of the U.N. humanitarian agency.
The top U.N. chief, the humanitarian chief, said in an interview last month in New York with the Kurdish news channel here that he expects half a million people to flood this city where I am, and I don't think the people here are prepared, the government is prepared at all for this, and that that's going to be a crisis here in this city where I am.
But those people will be safe here, or at least they will from the bombardments and the fighting that's going to go on.
So let's assume that Mosul is taken back.
We don't know when this is going to happen.
They've been talking about this for 10 months now or more, and it's supposed to happen before the end of the year.
That's the schedule.
If Islamic State is driven out, there's a great fear of a second conflict between the Peshmerga, the Iraqi army from Baghdad, and possibly Shia militia who could join the fight.
That's probably part of the agreement, although we don't know the details, to keep – for the Iraqi government to try to keep militia out of there.
They were a big factor inside Fallujah.
When they entered Fallujah, they apparently did revenge killings against Sunnis.
So this is something – would not be welcomed up here at all and would be important to keep Shia militia out of there.
If there's fighting that breaks out between the Iraqi government and the Peshmerga, there's some speculation that Turkey could be asked by Mahmoud Barzani, who is the long-time president of this region, of this region government.
Turkey's troops have been inside Iraq, very much against the will of the government in Baghdad.
They've been – they have a base not far from Mosul, so they could enter the fight on the side of the Kurds.
And we have to look back to the Treaty of Lugano – I think it was 1921, I don't remember the exact date – when, at the end of the Second World War, when the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, there was several meetings about what's going to happen to the former territories, of course, of the Ottoman Empire.
We all know that the British and the French carved the thing up amongst themselves and betrayed the Arabs in the famous Sykes-Picot Accord.
But there was also an agreement that Turkey signed with the French and the British that they would get Mosul province, would become part of Turkey.
And there was – that was – there was a double cross there.
Turkey, under this leadership of Erdogan, I'm sure remembers that very well.
And I particularly say that because when Turkey invaded Syria last month, it was on the exact day – I think it was August 24th – that five – to the day, 500 years to the day when the Ottomans first left the Turkish territory to start their empire outside of Turkey – No, you don't say – – and they invaded Syria.
They invaded Syria very near Aleppo, and they did it on that exact day.
And this is when Turkey invaded with U.S. air cover, I should add.
I don't think this is a coincidence with a guy like Erdogan.
He – Man, you are so good at confirming my bias, Joe.
It's just perfect.
Because I've been saying for years, doesn't this look like Erdogan is saying, yeah, let a bunch of stupid Arabs – no offense, I'm just paraphrasing him – let a bunch of stupid Arabs die creating my caliphate for me, and then I'll go in and be the ruler of the caliphate.
Get it back.
Bring back the old days.
Forget Ataturk and all this stuff.
I had a Turkish journalist tell me about, you know, two years ago when Islamic State first came onto the scene, that Turkey was supporting, of course, ISIS, which we've now confirmed in many, many ways, and that al-Baghdadi was just a stooge for Erdogan, and he would do the dirty work, and then Erdogan would ride in and become the caliph.
Well, and even if that's – I think that's probably an oversimplification.
But same difference, right?
It's just the same as Obama supporting al-Qaeda all along.
Oh, no, he only supports the FSA, which is al-Qaeda's arms procurement division.
But whatever.
You know.
Well, the guy is a neo-Ottoman, there's no doubt about that.
If you remember the Gezi Park riots of a couple of years ago, this was sparked because this park was going to be turned into a shopping mall by Erdogan, who was very much connected with the real estate, corrupt real estate deals in this country.
But what did he want to build?
He wanted to build a shopping mall, but it was going to be in the form of recreating a replica of an Ottoman army barracks that stood on that site.
So he was going to build the barracks, but make it a shopping mall and whatnot, not a barracks.
And he's rebuilt bridges.
He's trying to rebuild a bridge that the Ottomans had had, and he's built a whole new palace for himself.
So – and he invaded Syria on that day.
So the idea that he – and I have not seen this anywhere, this is my own speculation – the idea that he would want to get in on Mosul to try to essentially help the Iraqi Kurds, who have a very subordinate relationship to Turkey, to Erdogan, they would need his help, and then claim Mosul while he's now on the ground inside Syria is not far-fetched.
I'm developing a story that I want to write along these lines.
But that also has to do with what's going on in Syria, which I think is – I mean, we thought that that was complicated before.
I mean, covering here within Iraq is very, very simple.
It's a matter of what's going to happen in Mosul.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, and let's stick with Mosul for a minute, because we got time.
Now, look, we've seen the difference between, as you mentioned, the Islamic State retreating from Fallujah.
Why stay and fight and get creamed, man?
Let's run away.
We've seen the opposite of that during Iraq War II, where we had the worst kind of battles for Fallujah, Ramadi, and Mosul against the Sunni-based insurgency, including al-Qaeda in Iraq there.
And we know just how ugly it could be.
I mean, we've seen in just, you know, the last decade's worth of experience how difficult it might be for the Iraqi Shiite army, even with their militias, or maybe especially with their militias, backed by the Iranians in alliance with the Peshmerga.
They might be in for the fight of their lives invading Mosul if the Islamic State stays to fight.
And after all, in all the retreating that they've been doing from Tikrit and Fallujah and Samarra and wherever they've been in the past two years, that's where they're all running to is Mosul.
So, I mean, the Americans and I guess the Russians, too, have been bombing them there.
But, I mean, how many people have they really lost to airstrikes?
I mean, not civilians, but actual Islamic State fighters have they lost.
And so, and could they even run to Raqqa?
I asked Patrick Coburn that.
So what do you think?
They'll stay and fight, or they'll run to Raqqa?
And he's like, I don't know, man.
Raqqa's not really someplace to run to.
You know what I mean?
They're not really prepared to take on the influx of the IS refugees, or they're hardly prepared to defend Raqqa itself at this point, you know?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you mentioned the U.S. fight in Fallujah.
That's probably why there's no U.S. forces on the ground to take part in this operation.
They stood and fought there because that was an invading army.
Well, there's JSOC there, but not infantry, right?
No, I mean, the Iraqis, the Sunnis, whoever was fighting the United States in Fallujah was fighting because this was an invasion by a foreign power.
So they were defending their city.
This is different now.
These are Iraq taking back their own country from this band of complete brigands here who were backed by the Turks in the Gulf, and as we know, originally by the United States, and maybe still, who knows?
But this is, you know, they may not want to stay and fight as well.
But that's a good point.
Where are they going to go?
Raqqa cannot support them.
So they could disband.
A lot of these fighters are just mercenaries as well.
They're paid.
They may easily give up.
That's, you know, nobody knows is what the issue is.
Nobody knows when it's going to start.
Nobody knows how it's going to go.
But, you know, looking at everything else that's been happening here and in Syria, somehow I don't have a good feeling that it's going to go well.
The best case scenario would be that they did leave and that they surrendered.
But I don't know if that's going to happen.
I don't think they're counting on that.
You think the general view of Sunni Arabs is that the Iraqi army is the Iraqi army and not the Shia-Stan army and that it's coming to liberate them from the Islamic state, not coming to expand the borders of Iraqi Shia-Stan at their expense?
Well, this is why the Peshmerga may have a big fight on their hands with the Iraqi army, which is kind of really misnomer.
When you think of the Iraqi army, you think of Saddam Hussein's army.
And that was a serious army.
I just think of the bomb brigade.
Yeah, this is not only, you know, basically a Shia, you know, army, but it is nowhere near, you know, the capabilities that it had.
And it's completely corrupt.
I mean, the generals are totally corrupt and they don't fight.
They didn't.
They lost Mosul.
The reason we have this issue about Mosul is because they just laid down their arms and ran away, basically.
They did not try to defeat Islamic State.
They let them take this city, which was, you know, which they're trying to reverse now, which was an enormous, enormously horrible event.
And that's why we're here where we are today.
So how are they going to fight this time around?
I mean, the Peshmerga have proven themselves time and time again here and in the Syrian fight, the Syrian Kurdish fighters, that they could fight and they could defend.
I mean, I'm sitting here in a very safe city because of them, essentially, because Mosul is only one hour drive away from where I'm sitting right now, 55 minutes.
And this city is completely well defended.
Now, of course, Islamic State has no air force and doesn't have artillery, apparently, that can reach here.
So it would have to be on the ground and they're not getting anywhere near here.
But there will be an influx of these refugees that I'm sure I'm going to be able to witness while I'm here if this thing ever comes to pass.
And this agreement on Monday, you know, didn't get a lot of play in the Western press.
I didn't see any, but it was reported here in the local press.
And who knows how serious that is.
But the U.S. is now all, CNN was reporting yesterday that they, again, you know, expand.
They have a base here, the U.S., and they're expanding their presence.
But this is all logistics.
So the U.S. is going to provide logistics and air power for this operation.
But ultimately, it comes down to whether what's going to happen if Islamic State leaves and whether the Iraqi army and the Kurds can somehow come to an agreement to rule this city.
Who will rule this city?
Is it a belong to the Kurdish region, which the Kurds say that they belong to Baghdad's administration, which is what they say down there?
Or is Erdogan wading in the weeds here to try to take it himself?
I mean, that is something would be extraordinary.
I mean, what out of those three choices, none of those out of those three choices you just listed, none of those are the local Sunni Arab population.
Are they going to be Baathist?
Are they going to be tribal leaders or are they going to be jihadist?
That would be your three choices among the Sunnis.
Right.
But no, the question is, is it going to be the Turks, the Kurds or the Shia that rule them from here on out?
And that's the that's the mess that the Islamic State has got the people of of Mosul in.
I mean, it's it's not that that much is true.
But yeah, I mean, the problem here is I mean, and this is a huge part of the reason why it's taken two years to get to this point is that all of the different competing factions, even the ones who oppose the Islamic State, all oppose each other, too, and have so many different conflicts of interest.
I mean, I'm trying to imagine this meeting where the Americans got the Shia militias, the Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga to all get on the same page for a battle plan.
And I can't really picture it.
I can picture the photo op later where they pretended that it worked out.
I don't really see how that was supposed to happen, you know.
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Well, it's probably not worth a piece of paper it's written on, but they did come up with a piece of paper.
And that's look, they all want the Americans to help their cause.
So they're going to be going to make nice maybe when the Americans are in the room.
Yeah.
And and there might be some genuine.
It's going to be our special forces that lead the attack.
Right.
Well, who knows about that?
I don't know what role they're going to play there.
But but they certainly have a common enemy and they do need to work together.
So I think that there is a genuine level of cooperation at that point.
But it's afterward is the issue.
You know, the Kurdish Peshmerga, who were lauded in the Western press.
But they've been taken over towns that used to belong to Sunni to the Iraqi government are largely Sunni Arab and little towns here and there.
There have been reports I've seen for a picture.
I think Amnesty did a report last year about towns that have been raised and now occupied by Kurds.
I mean, it's reminiscent of the West Bank.
I mean, so, you know, nobody's an angel in this situation.
Well, and speaking of which, what about the towns that have been liberated by, you know, quote unquote, at least by the Iraqi army to Crete and Samara, Fallujah, Ramadi have to what degree you mentioned that there's, you know, been some torture and this kind of thing.
But is that, you know, really an effort to prevent the population from coming home?
In other words, are they really expanding the borders of Iraqi Shia stand now further to the west and to the north?
Well, I'm not I'm stuck here.
I can't go there.
I need a different kind of visa.
And it's very hard to get.
I can't even get it here.
I'd have to leave and go to another capital and go to the Iraqi embassy.
And I understand that they're not giving them out to journalists.
So I haven't been to that part of to Arab Iraq.
So I haven't gotten anywhere near there.
But so I don't know what's going on inside those places you mentioned.
And there's not a lot of reporting going on.
But you could probably expect that if there were huge clashes that we would hear about it.
So in a sense, no news, maybe good news.
Yeah.
But, you know, the Iraqi government and they just today in the parliament down in Baghdad, they kicked out the finance minister because they're trying to make a show of getting rid of corruption.
I mean, the corruption is just is legendary right now inside Iraq government in the military.
And, you know, what they what they actually are doing in terms of how can are they capable of ruling is what I'm saying.
How capable is this government of ruling these newly liberated areas and extending the central government's control?
So I just don't know the answer to that.
I'm sure you do.
They're completely incapable of it.
That's how they lost control of it in the first place.
Well, that's right.
You know, a year before, I'm sure you were one of the few paying attention who picked up on this, Joe.
But a year before the fall of Mosul, Patrick Coburn wrote about the Iraqi army up in Mosul.
And he came on this show to talk about it, too.
That's why I remember it so well.
And what he said was the Shia stan Iraqi army is a wall for Mosul because they feel like they are way out in foreign territory, man.
They're out on Fort Apache and they don't have the supply lines and the force protection that they feel like they need.
And they're saying, you know, forget what the papers say about how many of us there are.
There aren't enough of us here to protect ourselves.
And we're getting the hell out of here.
And they're retreating back behind Shia lines and leaving Mosul basically completely open to the Islamic State.
And I guarantee if you go back and find the interview from that day, we're saying, yeah, so how long before the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the group that's fighting in the war in Syria right now turns into a place when they come in and fill this vacuum and declare independence and rule over Mosul when there's no one there to stop them.
And then a year later, that's exactly what took place.
And so and there's nothing there's nothing, you know, Nostradamus about.
It's just good journalism, man.
That's all, you know.
Yeah, he is a good journalist.
I mean, no question about it.
I would go back to listen to that.
It would be very interesting.
Yeah, now that now that I'm talking smack, I better like find the link and prove it right.
I'm sure it's there.
Yeah, you know, we're in speculation territory here.
So we're just looking at timeline supposed to be by the end of this year.
And well, and the Democrats want to get it started before the election, of course, to try to give Hillary a bump.
The whole establishment does.
So I'm sure the pressure is really on the military and the CIA to help her out on that.
Although, well, you know, it's interesting you say that, because I I'm the piece I'm working on now is I think that what we're seeing in Syria is right along those lines as well.
It seems like to me that Obama has ceded his policy to Hillary Clinton already as if she's in the White House.
Why do I say that?
Because she when she was secretary of state with Petraeus and others, of course, were fighting inside the White House in the cabinet room for the establishment of a safe zone on the ground in Syria and a no fly zone is well known, right?
And somewhat modeled on what they did in Libya.
Almost exactly, actually, which we've seen how Libya has turned out.
But that, of course, doesn't stop these neoliberal interventionist neocon types.
They just pursue the same policy, even though there's been disastrous results everywhere where they've implemented it.
So she wanted these two things.
And Obama, to his credit, and it was rare, he stood up to them and refused, just like he refused to bomb Damascus when the chemical weapons incident took place.
And according to Seymour Hersh, of course, he found out through the British that this was not the Syrian government that did it, but that it was rebels who did it.
And which seemed like the obvious thing when it happened.
I can't believe anyone would believe that Assad would do it when the U.N. inspectors had just arrived.
The chemical weapons inspectors had just arrived in Iraq.
So she's very you meant to say.
And wait, I just want to I just want to add real quick, just to just to back you up on that, that we now know only in 2016, because Obama told it to Jeffrey Goldberg and Goldberg amazingly admitted it in his article that the director of national intelligence refused to say that this is a slam dunk case that Assad did.
He basically refused to vouch for the case for war.
And we know from Phil Giraldi's reporting that there was an entire mess of CIA analysts who who were prepared and were threatening to resign rather than put their names on an assessment claiming that was true.
So it ain't just Hirsch.
We know he was right.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Although I know that I was going to the Goldberg thing because that came up in the piece I wrote today about Obama's speech, that if we have time, we could talk about that, because that that interview was extraordinary and that he started to reveal this, that he he had completely he was completely fed up with the foreign policy elite inside Washington.
But he didn't do a hell of a good job standing out.
He was the damn president after all.
And he wasn't he didn't get many victories.
He had a slight one here.
He held off and he got Putin came in to save him.
And of course, did the chemical weapons deal with the with the Assad?
And that was forestalled.
And then the British Parliament voted against, of course, an American opinion apparently was against the U.S. intervention as well.
It wasn't just Obama.
So he had something on his side not to get involved there.
But he resisted this no fly zone and this safe zone.
But what have we seen since that invasion on the anniversary of the Ottoman invasion?
Of Syria, the 500th anniversary of that.
We see Turkey on the ground with more and more troops and tanks.
And now we have Erdogan saying and he said it at the U.N.
General Assembly yesterday.
I was watching it live that this he wants to create a safe zone there.
And we also had the Pentagon telling the Syrian Arab Air Force not to fly their planes in this area a couple of weeks ago.
Remember, it's like a de facto no fly zone.
And now we see this safe area being created by Turkey and Turkey didn't go in on their own.
They went in with the U.S. Air Force air cover.
So it was clearly coordinated.
And special forces on the ground, too.
We saw him on video getting chased away by their by the FSA moderates.
Ha ha.
That's right.
But, you know, there's tension between the U.S. and Turkey.
Now, we've just seen that the U.S. may want to arm the Syrian Kurds.
And this is obviously the biggest enemy of of Erdogan.
And the idea that the U.S. was surprised that he went after them rather than Islamic State when he first arrived is a joke.
I mean, there's no way that they didn't know that that was who he's going for.
And, you know, we look at what happened with the bombing of the Syrian troops two days ago by the United States.
And it was in the middle of a just before a battle.
And Islamic State moved right in and took that place.
So you still have to wonder what exactly the U.S. relationship is with Islamic State in Syria.
I mean, that's a really important thing, I think, to demarcate between the ISIS in Syria and ISIS here in Iraq, because here in Iraq, I don't think there's any collusion between the U.S. and Iraq.
This is, you know, what I could read what's going on, because they do want to take back Mosul and get ISIS out of here.
But and they have fought ISIS only here when they, in fact, threatened this city where I'm in right now, Erbil.
It was here that they came within 10 minutes of this town.
People tell me who were here at the time that Obama made the announcement that this group existed.
Nobody had ever heard of them and that he was going to start bombing them.
That's when it started.
The so-called U.S. war against ISIS is when they almost took Erbil, which is full of American investment, European investment, a lot of Turkish investment.
It's an international city.
There's oil here.
Obviously, oil companies, they were not going to allow this city to fall.
The U.S. consulate here, which I've been to, is essentially an entire neighborhood that the U.S. bought.
And got the people that, oh, I think there was only one family that's still allowed to leave there, is what I was told.
And they've just walled off this whole neighborhood.
So it's a huge compound for a city that, you know, is not really on anybody's, not on the radar here, Erbil, Iraq, but it's so close to Mosul.
And that's really what's important here.
And all this American investment.
So he, whatever ISIS did inside Syria, like take Palmyra, and this is something Vitaliy the UN ambassador, the Russian ambassador to the UN mentioned two days ago, but it's well known the United States did nothing to stop them.
They were the only ones flying then.
Russia wasn't there at the time when they took Palmyra.
And why didn't they try to stop this?
Or they didn't seem to be fighting ISIS in Syria where they do here.
So again, what is going on with ISIS's role in the United States and Turkey is really up to question.
But I'm going to go back to this point that I think it seems like Obama is ceding his Syria policy to Clinton.
And funny things happened, Scott, as you remember, between the end of an election, too, and the inauguration.
Right.
This is when George Bush invaded Somalia, you might remember, and put, and left Clinton with this headache of American troops inside Somalia.
So, but leading up to the election, it's funny, you'd think that that would help Clinton a lot if ISIS was hit hard.
He's saying in Mosul, you'd think the Mosul operation will happen before the election.
That's what you were saying, right?
Yeah, I mean, that would make sense on the face of it.
But, you know, obviously, as as you're describing, there are all these contradictory policies here.
I want to ask you if you saw this, and I'll send it to you if you haven't.
It seems to me a pretty important article.
It's at SoftRep, which is a subscription site, but it's a special forces website.
You know, SnowAntiWar.com, they're hawkish types, but they're also not establishment, you know, tweed jacket CFR guys, either.
They're special forces veterans.
And the article's been reprinted at a site called Fortuna's Corner.
Fortuna's Corner, like Bib Fortuna from Return of the Jedi.
Anyway, it's called U.S. Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy Gone Disastrously Wrong with Covert Ops in Syria.
And it's all about, you know, basically John Brennan's obsession with going along with Saudi plans to get rid of Assad, even if it means backing the Al-Nusra Front, even if it means, as you just mentioned, refraining from hitting the Islamic State when they're wide open in the desert on their way to sack Palmyra, this, you know, ancient treasure and plus a bunch of innocent lives and all that kind of thing.
And I might as well add, and I'll ask for your opinion, too, I believe that the strike against the Syrian army that benefited the Islamic State temporarily the other day probably was just an accident.
But the reason why so many people were willing to say, my God, man, look at you actually bombing on the side of the Islamic State is because it's actually kind of a plausible argument, right?
When, as you just said, there's just no doubt about the fact that they refrained from bombing them because they said if they stopped them from attacking Palmyra, that's stopping them from attacking Assad's troops in Palmyra.
And that's the same as helping Assad's troops.
And we wouldn't want to do that.
So, you know, the more cynical view of what happened the other day is at least somewhat plausible, if not the most likely explanation, Joe.
So, you know, what a mess, man.
And I'm sorry.
And also this article, if you haven't seen it, everyone should read this thing.
It's, you know, about it starts with nobody believes in this.
We don't want to be the guys that train the Al-Nusra terrorists.
What the hell?
And that's quotes from America's Green Berets.
There's another element in this accidental, on purpose or whatever it was, attack on the Syrian army was this ferocious fight between Ash Carter and John Kerry and their departments over whether there should be cooperation with Russia to fight against Al-Nusra front and Daesh in Syria, something that exactly a year ago at the last general UN General Assembly, Putin, who was there, made a speech about an hour after Obama's speech in which he laid forth the possibility of the US and Russia forming a grand coalition, like going back to the Second World War against that they did against the Nazis, even though they weren't friendly then to fight a common foe.
And then he said the US and Russia should join together to fight ISIS.
Of course, the US rejected that.
They've been rejecting that because Russia's repeatedly brought that up as a possibility.
And now we had an agreement between Kerry and Lavrov to basically do that.
They were going to set up some kind of headquarters.
They were going to coordinate and fly and fight together in the air against the Islamic state in Syria.
And Ash Carter and the other neocons within the Obama administration were furious against this.
And suddenly the Syrian Arab, and they had a ceasefire, was part of the deal, the ceasefire, and then they were going to work together to fight.
And all of a sudden, the US Air Force, under military command, which can get bombs, it's not Kerry, it's at the State Department that's in control of the US Air Force, Pentagon.
They bombed the Syrian troops.
They kill over 60.
And the ceasefire is over in the cooperation with Russia.
The US is over, and I was watching just a little while ago Kerry and Lavrov having a very intense meeting at Security Council on Syria.
So that's over.
And if Carter's aim was to end that agreement, he succeeded.
And if the way he did it was to bomb those soldiers, then that worked.
I'm not saying that that's what happened.
We don't really know.
But as far as an accident goes, they have pretty good satellites.
They could see troops there.
They could see who they are.
And apparently, I don't know this for a fact, but I've read that only the Syrian Army has been on that hill for a long time.
They've never been under control of anyone else.
So the US had to know this.
It could have been all kinds of things could happen in war.
But if it was, I think it was because Carter wanted to break up this Russian-US agreement to fight against Daesh together.
Because they want to overthrow Assad.
That is the bottom line.
That's what Hillary Clinton wants to do.
What Obama has said publicly, but has not really cooperated with the hardliners.
And now she seems to be getting her way before he leaves office.
Seems to have just checked out.
I don't know if that's the case, but it's starting to look that way.
When we saw Turkey doing what they're doing in a de facto safe zone and de facto no-fly zone.
Again, Kerry today, Kerry at the US Security Council again talked about preventing planes from flying in certain areas.
So we're seeing a creeping no-fly zone.
And if Hillary wins, we're definitely getting that.
And that's just more war and more possibility of extremist groups getting out of control of the United States and taking over in Damascus.
And by the way, if you said that it would help Hillary to attack Mosul, suppose that doesn't go well in Mosul.
That could hurt her too.
So there's a risk there.
There's a risk.
It would have to be a great victory just before the election.
And we're only two months, less than two months away from that.
We would have to have a great victory of US-led ground air operation and special forces to take back Mosul.
But maybe it doesn't, maybe it doesn't work.
Now, maybe it's a protracted struggle and Trump can make a lot out of that.
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, they could certainly occupy the city in a day if they just made a big move.
But that doesn't at all mean that would be the end of the fight.
Like we were saying before, are they going to stay and fight?
Are they going to turn and run?
That's a big gamble.
And yeah, especially in the first few weeks, it could look really ugly in the run up.
Yeah, a lot of places to hide in that city.
They could be attacking troops constantly and there could be a lot of street fighting and it could be really ugly.
But maybe they will go.
Oh, well, I was going to say, if you want, I want to give you some more time.
If you want to talk more about Obama's speech, and I think you know that I'm a completely, you know, 150 percent laissez faire guy.
I want to even abolish all the police and the courts and everything and have nothing but capitalism.
But and so I know that you're a progressive and you and I differ on those things.
And yet, well, this is why you are one of a million different progressives that I talk to all the time, is that as long as you're left of liberal and left of just slave to the Democrats, then that means you got some principle and you can tell the truth where others would spin and lie.
And so there's there's honesty and principle there, even though we disagree about economics, probably more than I would disagree with a Democrat type about economics.
But when it comes to militarism and when it comes to imperialism and when it comes to hypocrisy, well, Joe, you're as good as me.
And so I like your article and I like what you have to say.
And that's why I talk to you all the time.
So I want to give you a chance to say what you have to say about Obama's big U.N. speech yesterday.
Well, I was shocked by it because I was expecting the same thing that he'd been saying for seven years.
I've covered every one of those speeches.
And last year's was particularly egregious.
It was one of the most hypocritical things I'd ever heard.
And coming out of this guy and coming out of a politician and that's saying something.
And I wrote a piece last year that was on Consortium News and elsewhere in which, you know, I took him to task because he was complaining about China and Russia being, you know, breaking international law and invading countries.
And I mean, all the things the United States has been doing since the end of the Second World War and under his own administration.
And he was blaming the other side.
And this is typical.
And again, we heard the exceptional word, you know, America's exceptional and indispensable and then blah, blah, blah.
The same old stuff, the myth that's so widely believed, not only within the U.S., but unfortunately outside the U.S.
People I meet wherever I go outside the U.S. still love this thing about America.
They think that this is really still the greatest country and that it's freedom and democracy and all that stuff.
And they just it's such a successful propaganda operation from Hollywood to everything else that U.S. does.
It's probably the most successful in history.
And I think American leaders themselves believe their own propaganda to a certain extent about what they're doing in the world.
And here yesterday, Obama was like he was telling you and telling this audience of leaders from 170, 190 countries that he gets it.
He knows how the rest of the world sees the U.S., which is a distinct characteristic of American leaders and American people that they never seem to understand how others see America.
They only and I just said a lot of people outside the U.S. do buy the propaganda, but many don't.
They see what the U.S. has done much more than obviously within the U.S.
And here's Obama saying, you know, we've screwed up and we think we are unilateral and that this unilateral power from the end of the Cold War, you know, was basically a mistake.
And there are people in Washington who believe that every problem in the world has to be solved by Washington and that we control everything.
And he was repudiating this.
I mean, this was to me extraordinary.
So I this was the president that I think Obama imagined that he would be and that many people hoped for eight years ago.
And we've never seen a sign of not one sign of this really on foreign affairs.
We haven't seen anything of what he was saying yesterday.
He was talking and most of it was about inequality.
And he said incredible things, too, about building back unions, creating safety nets.
I mean, and how globalization has hurt workers and people who profited from globalization have gotten political power to further crush workers' rights.
I mean, he talked about the excesses of capitalism.
He talked about things that you'd never hear an American president say.
And I couldn't believe he was saying this, except I thought of Eisenhower, who knew about the military-industrial complex for his entire administration, who had actually hinted at it in an earlier speech, the Iron Cross speech, I think in 1953.
But he waited till he was leaving to give us this great warning about the thing that he presided over, because he was gone.
And this is what Obama essentially did at the U.N. yesterday.
He told us everything that's wrong or a lot that's wrong with U.S. foreign policy that he presided over.
So you go back to that Jeffrey Goldberg article in Atlantic, that incredibly revealing article in which he started hinting and saying that he had struggled against the deep state inside of the U.S. and the foreign policy establishment that controls what the American foreign policy is and has for decades now, basically.
Militarists, military industry, Pentagon, lobbyists for those interests.
And he had no chance against them is what he was basically telling the world yesterday.
He never even tried, really, very much, in my view.
And who knows why not, what kind of fears he may have had about that.
But he told the world yesterday that, you know, you're right, America.
He did not mention the word exceptionalism.
And he dispensed with indispensable.
We didn't hear that horrible, those horrible phrases at all.
It was just something that I couldn't believe.
It was a, it was an incredible speech.
And he barely attacked Russia and China, which is what all he did, basically, in his speech last year.
He put the fiction forward that the U.S. had nothing to do with the coup d'etat in Ukraine, which they don't, he doesn't call a coup d'etat, of course.
But other than that, he mentioned that China should just agree to a peaceful resolution by a court about the South China Sea issue.
That's all, that's all he said.
Now, the corporate media actually took that little bit that he said about Russia and China and built it out of proportion that he was attacking them again, like he had last year, because that's the way they're thinking.
That's the way they're trained to think.
That's what they're used to thinking, that Obama was going to give the same speech he gave for 117 years, which is pretty much what almost any American president, imperial American president gives.
And instead, we got this very different speech that I think completely was misunderstood by the corporate media.
They didn't know, they were not prepared for this, in my opinion, and I wasn't prepared for this.
So I wrote this piece that's out on the Duran, this Russian website, and I hope it's up on Consortium News in a couple hours, that is, it's just explaining that here is Obama being the guy, the president that he probably thought he should be, but never was, because the president that he was, was the guy who did not jail the bankers, he jailed the whistleblowers, the guy who has droned civilians, the guy who signed a bill allowing American military to make arrests on American soil.
And on and on and on, we've seen what Obama has done in his administration, which was to do the bidding of the deep state that he didn't stand up to.
So he made this parting shot at them, and he made a real quip that created laughter in the audience about Washington, thinking that they control the whole world.
And he was saying, you know, he doesn't agree with that, and that they shouldn't control the whole world, and that a country that wants to teach democracy better get their own democracy in order.
He said that.
He said that.
He talked about all the warts inside, inside the U.S., in front of a world audience, to allies and perceived enemies, to make these kind of comments.
I think it went over the head of everybody.
It was not understood by the media, although I have not read all the reviews.
Maybe some right-wing people have taken him to task for bringing this up.
But I think he's leaving, so who cares?
He's on his way out, and he felt free to say what was going on.
He got off his chest what he wanted to say about these matters.
I thought that was really, you know, unfortunately ineffectual.
And as I end the piece, I think he's going to be very successful, a very successful ex-president, pretty much like Jimmy Carter.
That's what I expect.
Better as an ex-president than as a president.
Well, yeah, anybody's better as an ex-president than as a president.
Even Bush Jr. is better.
Anybody.
I don't know about Clinton.
Yeah, well, go on.
Yeah, no, that's true.
Yeah, the harms he committed as the one in charge.
Yeah, Legion.
But yeah, no, so the only right-wing criticism is they take a quote out of context, of course, but it's horrible enough in context, I think, where Obama says, listen, you know, America, we got to realize that we need to give up some freedom of action when it comes to foreign affairs so that we can better get our way.
That's all he's saying.
And so they say, oh, Obama says we have to give up freedom to the United Nations or something like that.
All he's saying is that, you know, sometimes the U.N. and other institutions are better used as breaks on starting new conflicts rather than just as excuses for starting new conflicts all the time, which is not really a very controversial statement.
And I would actually I mean, I understand what you're saying about kind of the lofty rhetoric of it.
But to me, it was nothing but a pure Barack Obama campaign speech.
2008 kind of a thing where all he's really doing is he's selling the American empire as no, no, no, not George W.
Bush and Dick Cheney, why they were far too unilateral.
What's important is that and he did continue to push the myth.
We're spreading liberal order, the rules based international order, the global community of cooperation and liberalism.
And what he really means is the American empire.
That's all that means, the American empire.
He's selling the Clinton era, the Bill Clinton era as the ideal as opposed to the George W.
Bush era, which sounds pretty good to liberals and sounds pretty good to foreigners, at least in comparison from full scale marching into Iraq the way Junior did there.
But otherwise, all he's really doing is, you know, selling what Hillary Clinton has in store for us.
Same thing Bill Clinton did, expanding the global empire and calling it free markets and democracy.
You know, well, you know, I don't know if you read or heard the speech.
I think it's better to listen to watch it than to read it.
I feel I feel that he's not given the Clinton thing because Clinton wants much more aggressive foreign policy than even Obama in his administration did.
I mean, his he was he only stood up on a few things, but he did stand up against them on attacking Damascus, where Hillary is going to go full bore ahead.
And she's a really dangerous person to have in the White House.
And Trump as well, for other reasons.
Well, I guess what I'm really trying to say, Joe, is, is there really a difference between the doctrine of liberal multilateralism and collective security in the Harry Truman JFK mold and Dick Cheney's empire?
Are those really different?
As long as we have a doctrine of collective security, isn't that just the liberal version of USA, USA?
Yes, I agree.
But I think that in this speech is really not that important because he's leaving.
And it was very much Obama, the candidate coming back again.
It was like eight years never happened.
But it was it was instructive to me to see him tell the UN that, you know, the US, we get what you guys think about us and we our capitalism is excessive and people are hurting around the world and inequality has to end.
And that was really the major part of the speech and that the US doesn't run the whole world.
And he didn't talk about it being exceptional or being this is like it's required for American president in this setting to say the United States is exceptional and is indispensable.
And all of that bravado that we're so sick of, you know, it's it was gone.
And, you know, you're right.
The substance of it is he's not saying, look, I don't believe in America's being any kind of major role in the world that we should retreat.
He's not saying that he's not want to close down all the army bases like Jill Stein wants to, for example.
He certainly didn't do that.
And he didn't really reverse those principles that you just laid out that the Democrats Republicans are not much different about.
But he did not give that ugly face of America to the world and explained that he understood that America are excesses in American foreign policy and in its economics.
And and I thought it was just something noteworthy.
That's all.
I mean, it's really not an important speech because he's leaving.
He's leaving.
That's why he made it.
That's the point I was making that he could make this speech.
Now, I wish he'd, you know, try to say stuff like that and had stood up to the deep state figures and to the foreign policy establishment that he only started in the extraordinary Goldberg interview to start to talk about, which normally you would expect that interview after president leaves.
So he began saying it.
Then I suspect in the last few months, you know, he's been trying to, you know, talk back to these people and try to get his way.
But it's too late now.
This is the point that I'm making.
It's too late.
Yeah.
I don't know, man.
If I was the president, I would just give a speech that says like, hey, listen, if I get assassinated, blame the CIA and the military.
OK, because right now we're changing policy.
And then I would just do it.
And I wouldn't care if they murdered me, Joe, because you're going to die anyway.
Someday you get the chance to be the president.
And that's the only thing about Obama.
I think the man really is a snake, but mostly because of just like you're saying, it's so transparent.
We know he knows better.
And yet he does everything wrong anyway.
And it's just unforgivable, man.
I wouldn't mind dying.
I wouldn't even mind having my family killed if it meant if that was what was the sacrifice of actually being the president and ending the empire and saving America from it, saving the rest of the world from it.
I mean, what kind of tradeoff is that?
That's nothing.
That's like buying a million dollars for a dime.
You make an excellent point there.
He knows what the score is.
And some of these other people, you know, like Samantha Power, people, you don't know whether they really know what they seem to really be true believers.
And I don't think Obama is a true believer in all this.
And that's what he was telling us and the world in this speech.
And that, I think, is something that he does know.
But that makes him worse.
As you just said, that makes him even worse, that he knew exactly what was going on.
And he went along with it because, hey, it's a good job being president, isn't it?
So he looked out for number one and not the country and not the world.
And you're right.
Whether you want to die for that or not.
Well, let's be honest.
We all know those are the stakes.
If a president was to really say we are repealing the National Security Act of 1947.
Tough.
Then, yes, there would be a war in Washington, D.C.
And the president would be a likely casualty.
And anyone who denies that is just living in a fantasy world.
But so what?
I mean, if it was any of us, wouldn't we do it in a heartbeat?
Of course.
I don't know.
I'm just mad.
That's all.
Well, there were those who say that, you know, Kennedy said he wanted to break the CIA up into a thousand pieces.
He fired Alan Dulles, who then turns out to be the running the Warren Commission.
He wanted to get not get deeper.
And in fact, maybe he removed everybody from Vietnam.
And these were things that went against very powerful interests, oil interests.
He had a lot of enemies.
He did make enemies.
He was killed.
We don't know.
I don't buy the Oswald long gun story myself.
But so maybe, you know, Obama has obviously may have his views of what happened to Kennedy.
This was speculated on when he first came into office.
Will he really do these kinds of things?
Well, and even Kennedy or not.
I mean, even even if the whole JFK thing never happened, it's still pretty obvious that there's a very powerful fourth branch of government here in the executive and in the national security state.
And people don't like giving up power.
You know, they just don't.
I think Obama was like spitting at them and maybe into the wind with this party shot at the U.N. of all places, which they despised in front of, you know, so-called enemies.
You know, even North Korea had a representative in that room.
And here he's saying these things about America.
So I just thought it was a noteworthy speech from that point of view.
But absolutely meaningless.
And he's gone and nothing's going to change, unfortunately.
All right.
Well, listen, I sure appreciate you sharing, in fact, a whole hour with us today, Joe.
It's always great to talk with you.
And especially, you know, even safe and herbal.
You're you're still, you know, risking your safety to me safe here in Austin, Texas.
And, you know, comparative fashion, no doubt about that.
So I really appreciate your perspective on all of this.
I appreciate you having me.
And when the Mosul operation happens, if it does, we can talk again, perhaps.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
Well, thank you again, Joe.
Appreciate it.
You're welcome.
All the best, Scott.
You too.
All right, so that is the great Joe Lauria.
U.N.
Joe, they call him because he covered the United Nations in New York City for so many years there for The Wall Street Journal and many other papers.
Most often now you can find him writing at ConsortiumNews.com.
So many great writers there at Bob Perry's site, ConsortiumNews.com.
And in fact, I'm sorry, I have the link here.
Oh, and also check out his brand new article.
It's at The Duran, as in Duran Duran, The Duran.com.
It's called Obama's U.N. address and the President Obama imagined he would be at The Duran.com.
That's Scott Horton Show.
Check the archives at ScottHorton.org.
Help support at ScottHorton.org slash donate and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
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