09/21/16 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

You drink coffee, I drink coffee, just about everyone drinks coffee.
So why bother with anything but the best?
Darren's Coffee is roasted at his new shop in Claremont, Indiana.
And coming soon, you can order on Amazon and support the show by using Scott Horton's affiliate link.
Darren'sCoffee.com Because everyone deserves to drink great coffee.
Alright y'all, Scott Horton Show, I'm him.
Check out the website at ScottHorton.org.
I keep all my archives there and sign up for the podcast feed as well.
Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Although, warning, I might yell at you.
Introducing Phil Giraldi.
He is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a former DIA and CIA officer.
And he, of course, writes for UNZ.com.
That's U-N-Z, UNZ.com.
And for the American Conservative Magazine at TheAmericanConservative.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Hey, I gotta agree with the guy on Twitter.
Said Phil Giraldi at his best right here, man.
Deep state America.
One explanation why U.S. policies serve no national interests.
That's at the UNZ Review.
UNZ.com, U-N-Z, UNZ.com.
Deep state America.
We've talked about this before.
In fact, it's a news story itself that the New York Times.
Or was it the Post?
No, it couldn't have been the Post.
The New York Times published an essay by you about this very same subject about a year or so ago.
Am I right?
Yeah, that's right.
It was about a year ago.
And it's when we first started thinking in terms of, you know, kind of a government, a hidden government operating behind the scenes that basically was causing a lot of shots.
Because, you know, you just see so many things happen that don't make any sense.
Right.
And, yeah, I like the way you put it here about no national interests.
I think that's why people are always so confused about the policy, is because they can't think of a policy that really serves the national interests.
But, of course, that's because they're answering the wrong question.
National interests really don't have anything to do with it, huh?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I was just the example I cited at the beginning of the article is that I had read in the newspaper back a little over a week ago that the Pentagon was boasting about attacking six different countries over the Labor Day weekend.
And you read the article, and they didn't even name most of the countries, but you know who they are.
And the fact is we're not at war with any of them.
And the article didn't even make an attempt to explain that any of these countries were in any way threatening us.
So you suddenly start to think, well, why is this happening?
Well, it's happening because there are other forces that make these decisions.
All right.
Now, so before we get too crazy conspiracy on the audience here, let's talk about a foreign country first where it's a little bit easier to understand.
You've got countries, well, you could pick many of them.
If we were talking about Russia, I don't think anybody would have a problem understanding what you're talking about.
But as we all know, you have a lot of experience in Turkey as even a former CIA officer stationed there.
And that's really where the term deep state originates, right?
You even translate for us from the original Turkish there.
Yeah, that's right.
The deep state was a phenomenon that was first identified by political historians, people like that, starting back in the 50s.
And a lot of people think it grew out of the Gladio program, which was a stay behind NATO operation, which was set up over fears that the Soviet Union and its allies would overrun Western Europe.
And so these arm catches were placed in various places together with bags of money, and people were recruited secretly and that kind of thing.
So anyway, this grew out of it.
And then essentially, even after that threat disappeared, the mechanism was still used for essentially running things from behind the scenes.
Yeah.
And now so, you know, it's funny.
I mean, I think people are probably mostly familiar with sort of like a right wing John Birch sort of take on this same sort of phenomenon inside the United States.
And it's certainly the way I grew up understanding politics.
And this is a vast overstatement I've certainly grown to understand.
But at the same time, there's still a lot of truth, I think, in the idea that the way I used to put it in the 90s would have been that the Council on Foreign Relations is the true Congress of America.
That's where the consensus is formed for what the policy is going to be.
And then all these things that seem to be separate institutions, ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN, the think tanks, the universities, the different parties in the two houses of Congress, the judges, the politicians, the parties themselves, these things that seem to be somewhat competing interests working together, you come to see that actually all of their leadership seemed to be following a consensus that was forged not in debate in Congress or even on TV, but in some elitist club where we're never invited, Phil.
Yeah, that's essentially how it works.
Now, they always mix it up with the Illuminati and one world government and all of this kind of thing.
But as far as who's the insiders and who's the outsiders, doesn't seem like they're very far off.
Yeah, well, people claim that there's a Washington establishment.
That's, I think, another way to describe it is essentially people who are like-minded in terms of how they see the United States playing a role in the world.
And all these people – now, bear in mind, again, it's a follow-the-money issue.
All these people are rewarded by playing this game.
I mean if you're a good guy and you go along with the whole thing, you'll be rewarded after you retire with a nice position and a think tank and a corner window and a secretary and a big stipend.
You'll travel around the world first class.
It's all part of this kind of system where people have a common interest, a mutual interest in supporting a system that is essentially corrupt.
And it's corrupt because this serves an elite.
It doesn't serve the public interest.
All right.
Now, so I think one great evidence of this – because a lot of times – I don't know, like Eisenhower in the military-industrial complex.
That was a long time ago, even though obviously no one ever rooted it out or anything like that.
But it seems like mostly this kind of stays under the surface.
It's kind of hard for people to put together.
But then you have clarifying events like, for example, I think Iraq War II would be a great example where a lot of people who really should have known better ended up supporting that war.
In fact, I think Leslie Gelb, who was then the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said – oh, no, it was Richard Haass, who was later the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Or was it both of them?
Said, yeah, no, we do this for our own careers.
Nobody wants to stick their neck out.
Nobody wants to be the guy who breaks the consensus.
And so this is the consensus that it's been decided already basically that we're going to invade Iraq.
So do you want to really be the oddball who opposes it, even if you really know better and risk a future chance of influence down the line?
And so they all just kind of climb on board, even when that policy didn't really bubble up as the consensus in the first place of the entire establishment.
It was really Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neocons and Ariel Sharon and his boys leading the parade there and everybody else racing to catch up.
But they sure raced to catch up.
They didn't fight against it and try to stop it.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, you know, they do a weighing up in their own minds and they say, you know, on this issue, is it worth it for me to say the truth and fight it?
Or is it better and easier in terms of where I'll be a year from now to go along with it?
That's why you see the hordes of neocons rushing over to Hillary Clinton right now.
You know, these people are not really Hillary Clinton people, but the fact is they see their own interests as being at stake here and they're making a choice.
And so they're they're they're kind of playing a deep state type game.
They're understanding that the system basically doesn't work in the open.
The system works behind closed doors.
And if you make the right moves, you will be part of that system.
So that's what they do.
Yeah.
And, you know, I mean, that's really, you know, brings up the other very clarifying event of our time here.
And that's the Trump campaign.
And it's it's really, again, such a tragedy that he's so horrible on everything because just the fact of his outsider status of not only is he not a governor, a senator or a vice president, but unlike Wendell Willkie, he's not even just a front man for the JPMorgan group either.
I mean, he really is independent enough and has a real shot at this thing in a way that is unprecedented, certainly in the last hundred years.
If I don't know about every time in the 19th century.
But, boy, are we seeing this beast here, this the deep state, whatever you call it, reacting to even the possibility.
I mean, really, this whole time to even the possibility that Trump could could take that chair.
It's not just that the neocons see their interest in aligning with Hillary.
It's the entire kind of state is just absolutely terrified at what might happen, even though, you know, most of his loud sounds signify nothing.
I mean, he's even said now I don't want to abolish NATO.
I just want to, you know, extort a little bit more in tribute in this kind of thing.
But, boy, you know, it's like Jennifer Rubin put it.
She says Donald Trump for president.
What's next?
Ron Paul for secretary of state.
That's how terrified they are of Trump, that they think that he would make Ron Paul his secretary of state.
When you and I know that that's completely ridiculous and doesn't represent Trump's view at all.
But to them, that's the way they see it.
They're just terrified of this.
Yeah, they see they see him as breaking the mold and and and essentially coming up with something completely different, which they won't be able to manipulate or or even understand in any good way.
And that's what they're that's what they're terrified about.
I mean, yeah, the guy's a screwball.
There's no question about it.
He's come out with some incredibly goofy stuff.
But the fact he's coming out with this goofy stuff means that, hey, he's not going to go along with the common wisdom on a lot of these issues, whether he's going to be right or wrong.
Who knows?
But, I mean, the fact is that they see their ability to control the situation from from under the underground, from a hidden position, from a position that's basically a secret that will be diminished.
And that's exactly what they're worried about.
Yeah.
Well, so now what do you think about Barack Obama's relationship with this deep state, Phil?
Because, well, he came in singing all about hope and change.
And he's well, he gave a speech at the U.N. yesterday that was all about some hope and change, at least on the surface.
He seems to know better than all the things he does anyway.
And and sometimes he's a bit reluctant to go along.
But, you know, I don't know.
He's he's an interesting creature, isn't he?
Because it's not like he's George W. Bush where, you know, he knows nothing or Trump.
You know, he knows nothing.
Barack Obama actually is a reader.
And yet he's the president.
But he just he's just done nothing but preside, basically, this whole time, it seems like.
Well, he essentially encountered the deep state after he became president.
And he's a smart guy.
He figured out I either have to fight them and change things or I have to basically try to get some things done, but basically work with them.
And he took the latter road.
I mean, I listened to his speech yesterday.
I was thinking, you know, you you know, you son of a bitch, you were saying these things eight years ago.
And if you had pushed a little bit harder, if you'd not been so cowardly about this, you might have actually accomplished some things.
You might have you might have recognized the Palestinian statehood maybe about four years ago.
Or you might have you might have actually done something to resolve the situation in Syria.
But, of course, you know, he came up against all these forces that like the military industrial complex, the the Washington consensus on foreign policy, the banksters, you know, all these forces that he knew were if they work together, that he would be not only a failed president, but he would be a disastrous president.
So I guess he made a decision.
Yeah.
Well, what a coward.
I mean, especially when all that consensus is wrong.
Right.
So all he really had to do was just do the right thing and keep telling the truth about it and go straight to the American people about it and say, yeah, some CIA guys are mad that I don't want to overthrow Assad.
But let me explain to you why I'm right and they're wrong and see who wins that argument.
I bet the president would have whooped the CIA's ass on that.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think one thing to take away from the Trump experience right now and and Bernie Sanders is the fact that somebody who seems to be speaking honestly about issues that are comprehensible will basically carry the day, will basically win the argument.
And then the fact that Hillary Clinton can't speak straight about anything is is losing for her, even though she has vastly more experience and vastly more knowledge of how the government works and would seem to be a more powerful candidate.
But but the fact is that it's the straight talk and everything is lacking.
And I think if Obama had had at least picked some of his battles and been straight about them, he could have won them.
But, you know, he chose not to.
Yep.
Well, you know, I don't know.
Maybe I'm naive about this, but I really don't think so.
I mean, I think it's true for for Bernie Sanders, for Gary Johnson or any of these guys, as you're just saying that, you know, Trump, he barely even knows what he's talking about, but he sounds at least like he's honest and unlike Hillary.
And that'll win people over more.
I mean, I think Sanders absolutely could be walking into the presidency right now simply on, you know, basically floating, surfing on the corpse of Hillary Clinton, who he could have destroyed in the primaries with one hand if he'd even really tried.
But he just pulled every punch, you know?
Yeah, that's right.
Because, you know, he's again, he's a victim of the deep state.
He you know, he's worked in the system for a long time and he he's willing to step up to the plate, but he's not willing to do much more than that.
And that comment that you just made is everybody I know basically voted for Bernie because we were we were worried about Trump and we felt that Bernie would shake up the system.
And of course, he didn't.
He pulled back from doing that.
And and so everyone everyone I know was kind of shocked by this and was talking about it.
And essentially, I think that these guys, they at a certain point, at their smart, which most of them are, they figure out that, look, there's the there are these other forces here in the United States that have nothing to do with whether I was elected president or not.
And they can make my life miserable for the next four years.
So I'm going to have to accommodate with them.
I just I'm working on an article right now about the thirty eight billion dollars that's going to Israel.
I mean, there's this is not necessary for Israel security.
It's not necessary for United States security.
It's basically a gift.
And it is done because there's a big domestic lobby that kind of demands this this kind of relationship.
And yet it's not being discussed in the media.
It's not being discussed anywhere.
And, you know, the merits of this are zero.
And again, nobody will talk about it.
But this is pure deep state.
This is like there is a consensus that this is this is the type of relationship we need to have with Israel.
So that's what's going to happen.
Hey, did you see the clip of Rand Paul on Wolf Blitzer talking about cutting off arms to the Saudis as long as they're bombing Yemen?
Yeah, I did see that.
So for people who missed it, well, Wolf Blitzer, he's just great, man.
If anybody's ever seen that episode of him on Jeopardy, he's just the perfect empty vessel for the out of the mouths of babes, kind of a truth, sort of a guy where, you know, just the the TV anchor who doesn't really know.
And so his idea of a good question was, yeah, but what about the jobs of the Americans who make the weapons that we're selling to the Saudis that they're using to kill these children?
And, you know, I forget exactly how Rand handled it.
It wasn't perfect, but but just goes to show the the, you know, just the mindset that the arms industry is an end in itself, not an unfortunate diversion of our economy into this urgently necessary means to accomplish the ends of saving our lives, which is what we thought the National Defense was about.
You know, but no, really.
I mean, who cares how many Yemeni babies have to die if we're talking about a line job for a union worker at Lockheed?
What's more important, Phil?
Come on.
Hey, all Scott here.
The thing is, I need you guys to help me to get these download numbers up.
So do me a favor and sign up for the podcast feeds of this show.
You can choose the whole show or just the interviews at iTunes and Stitcher.
All the buttons you need are at the top of the right margin at Scott Horton dot org.
The more subscribers I have, the more iTunes and Stitcher will help promote the show to new listeners.
If you're a hardcore fan, brand new or from way back, please leave them customer ratings and reviews to trying to get these wars in.
Yeah, well, Susan Rice said the same thing in her speech about the the 38 billion for Israel.
She said that this meant jobs in the States.
Have you come on?
You're taking 30 billion, 38 billion dollars away from the taxpayers money out of people's pockets to create weapons that kill people that you wouldn't have to create, except that you that you generated this fiction about how how these things have to be there and have to be available.
It's just amazing.
It's like this is pure deep state.
Have you seen the new movie War Dogs?
No, I haven't.
Well, it's out on the Pirate Bay.
I mean, I wouldn't go and spend eight bucks on it or anything.
But one thing that's really good about it is it begins by just saying, hey, let's completely cut through all the B.S. and all the propaganda.
War is an economy.
And each soldier, they show a screen full of soldiers, a scene from the Iraq War, Iraq War two.
And it shows, you know, augmented computer graphics that if you count up the boots and the gloves and the helmet and the rifle and the backpack and the batteries and the communications gear and everything else, this is 17000 dollars per unit it takes to fill in a soldier.
And if you think that that's not the entire engine of what's even going on here, if that isn't, you know, reason one for the war, then you're just completely missing it.
And then in the whole and I don't think they were really trying to hit us over the head with the morality of this.
It was simply saying this is the American way.
This is how business is done.
If you can make money off a government contract selling bullets for the future Afghan army, then that's what you do.
And it doesn't even come up at all that, you know, people are going to get killed with these bullets, that this actually matters.
This isn't just something.
It's not just a business deal that this is life and death.
And they sort of say kind of against the war, but they don't really make the connection.
And it's just it just goes to show that only a malcontent like you or me even sees this as anything that should be considered to be abnormal or a distortion from what it would mean to have a constitutional republic in a normal time.
This is just how business is done, Phil.
Well, I think I saw the number back recently about what it costs to pay for or to support one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan per year.
And the number was astonishing.
It was like seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
And I was thinking, Jesus, that's money that could support 10 families back here in the States.
And, you know, it's just it's like there's been a total again, this goes down to like the deep state being making you unable to see things that are clear to everybody else or should be clear to everybody else, because you're not thinking that way.
You're you're you've been coerced or you've been propagandized into thinking things through in a certain way.
And once that's been accomplished, you can never see the truth anymore.
And this was something I think that that you and I probably both experienced when when Ron Paul was running.
Suddenly we had a congressman for all his flaws as a as a politician who was suddenly, you know, speaking the truth.
And you could see he was speaking the truth.
It was almost like, you know, suddenly taking a cold shower.
Yeah.
And and people were just shocked and they didn't know what to do about it.
And everybody, I mean, to look back, especially look on it now where the best that they could do was try to portray Ron Paul as Donald Trump, that he's, you know, more or less he's for rich white people and screw everybody else.
And this kind of attitude and they portrayed Ron as this kind of right wing nationalist demagogue, when, of course, he's the furthest thing from that.
He's a little old man writing libertarian essays about the rights of man.
You know, he's he's he's the exact opposite, really, of of how they portrayed him.
And it's so clear now when they people beg him to endorse Donald Trump.
And he's like, are you kidding me?
This guy is represents the exact opposite of everything I've been trying to teach you people.
It's his answer to that, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, again, you know, the public latches on to the issue that that they're both seen as rebels against the system.
So they must be the same.
Yeah.
Of course.
Of course they're not.
Yeah.
Well, and and I'm repeating myself here, but I just like this so much about how on the surface, it's absolutely true that Obama was the opposite of Bush Jr.in 2008.
And I think the reason he won was because people kind of wanted to say sorry to the world for the circumstances of Bush actually even being reelected and inflicting this war that everybody had kind of admitted with that.
Oops, we shouldn't have done and made everything so much worse.
And so, you know, sorry.
So we're going to go with the black Democrat from Illinois.
And that makes sense.
And yet the real opposite of Bush was a white Republican from Texas.
Ron Paul was the one who was who on the surface was a clone of George W. Bush.
If you were just, you know, Joe six pack watching TV, you couldn't tell.
They look the same in everything, both white Republicans from Texas.
But he was the one who was the real opposite of Bush on every single thing.
But, I mean, what would it have taken for people to be able to see the real substance versus the the surface reality?
You know, there's just no way.
So they were trying to do the right thing, but they picked the shiny object instead of reading the book.
You know?
Yeah.
Well, everybody, you know, there's no question about that.
When when Obama was elected the first time he was elected president on a peace vote.
I mean, people wanted no more war.
There was enough of the electorate that basically wanted that that voted for him.
That was a margin of difference.
And boy, were we deluded.
I mean, it was you know, we got a pretty speech in the beginning and then and then that was it.
He succumbed.
And and Ron Paul, for again, for whatever his faults as a politician, he would not have succumbed.
He would have continued to be honest and outspoken and it would have been a whole different world.
But unfortunately, we've now suffered through 16 years of horror and we're looks like we're going to have another four at least.
Yeah.
Well, and yeah, pretty much any president gets reelected.
So although I guess time will tell.
But yeah, I mean, there's really I don't think there's any question that if the American people had put Ron Paul in there, that he would have lived up to at least, you know, I know he would have had to deal with a whole cabinet and a whole government and whatever.
But on the most important things, like when they asked him, I think it was The Washington Post asked him.
All right.
Well, what would you really do your first day as president?
He said, I would call the admirals and I would tell them to back off of Iran.
He's like, yeah, you know that he means that, you know, he meant that, that that was his top priority was we're going to de-escalate the conflict with the Persians.
Loud and clear.
You read me, Admiral.
You don't like it.
You can sail home and retire.
And man, the different world that we could be living in right now without the Afghan surge, without the drone war in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, regime change in Libya and John Brennan's disaster in Syria and all this.
Can you imagine how much better?
You know, I don't know.
It's almost impossible.
It's too drastic.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
It's just incredible.
I mean, I've been watching this the last few days of the Syrian thing unfolding.
I mean, is it are they capable of telling the truth anymore in Washington?
I mean, I don't think so.
Yeah.
Well, so I don't know.
Give me your hot take on that, man.
What do you think is the the status of the ceasefire there?
Is it going to last?
Well, I think, you know, US and Russia are pretty motivated, but I don't think anybody else is.
So I suspect it will not persist.
I mean, and the thing is, you know, there's a lot of discussion now about what's going on between the Pentagon and State Department in terms of their perceptions of the war there.
And this creepy guy, Ash Carter, seems to be an uber hawk.
I guess he's he's positioning himself for the Hillary administration.
And he may have kind of let this this bombing of the Syrian soldiers happen.
I'm sure we will find out sooner or later what what it was.
But that's the way it's starting to look.
Yeah.
You know, I was just talking with Joe Lauria and he was saying, you know, it really might have been on purpose, even though that would be as drastic as such a drastic thing.
That could have been a deliberate measure to kill the ceasefire, anything to prevent rapprochement with Russia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's Ash Carter.
I mean, he's been very clear on that issue.
He's extremely hostile to Russia, as is Hillary.
And, you know, this is this is the most dangerous thing going anywhere in the world right now.
If there's one issue that the United States should be 100 percent focused on doing the right thing, it's the relationship with Russia.
Yeah.
You know, I really want to it's difficult, but I don't think it's impossible.
I really want to see if I can get Nancy Yousef back on the show to talk about this stuff.
Former formerly McClatchy now at the Daily Beast.
And you can tell it's kind of changed the way she reports some of these things.
But she's so plugged in.
And, you know, I an angle I'm interested in asking her about would be if there's a conflict between the Joint Special Operations Command and the secretary of defense in terms of what are we doing with the Kurds there?
And in terms of whether we should be continuing to back these jihadist, you know, job at all, whatever the hell's against Assad at this point or not, because it was just a couple of months back that it was funny because her article had the CIA spin, the insane CIA spin as compared to the relatively sane D.O.
D. spin in it.
But anyone who read the article with open mind, I think, would take the D.O.
D. side where the CIA was saying, well, the Pentagon is falling for Russian propaganda when they say that Arar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra are terrorists.
They're good guys.
They're our friends and all this kind of thing.
But so it seems like Ash Carter's on the CIA side against his own special forces guys.
I know I'm oversimplifying, but that's what I want to know about.
Yeah, I mean, it could be.
You know, the CIA has definitely gone paramilitary and its thinking is paramilitary.
Now, when I was an intelligence officer there, there were, you know, we at least tried to see things with a certain nuance.
But everything I hear now or I've seen now is just we're looking at force as the option and indeed clandestine force, use of force clandestinely as a preferred option.
And CIA has definitely gone down that road.
And Ash Carter is more adversarial than his boss.
He wants to see more conflict, more direct conflict, more military action directed against al-Assad and also against the Russians.
And that's pretty scary stuff.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, back to seems like this comes up in almost every interview with every guest.
I have to mention it all the time.
The interview from a few months ago with Mark Perry, the Pentagon reporter from Al Jazeera, who's a really great reporter, of course, as you as you're well aware, who I asked him, hey, man, these guys believe their own nonsense about Russia right now.
Or, you know, they quietly in in dark, smoky cigar room time, they admit that they know they overthrew the government in Ukraine and that that's what precipitated the Crimea crisis, et cetera, and the secession or rebellion in eastern Ukraine.
And they at least kind of admit that off the record to each other rather than simply going with this slogan of Russian aggression.
Right.
And Mark Perry's answer was, no, I'm pretty sure they believe all their own BS and that they just rationalize it away.
And maybe somewhere in their mind, they know that there was a coup on the night of the 21st, 22nd of February 2014 in Kiev.
But, oh, well, let's just not think about that.
Let's never talk about that.
We have our narrative and not only are we sticking to this is what we say to the people, but this is what we believe now, too.
It's that easy for these grown adult men with this much power to convince themselves basically lies.
You know, double think not not not lying, really double think like out of 1984.
I know there was a coup on the night of the 21st, 22nd, but never F in mind that.
You know, I mean, look at the emails of Philip Breedlove.
I mean, this was a guy who was pushing for an armed conflict, a conflict in Eastern Europe.
I mean, with no hesitation, this is the guy who is the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Commander.
Yep.
Yep.
And one of his email interlocutors there told him, hey, man, you know, basically, since the president gave you an order to not start a war, I think maybe you need to go ahead and let this go, pal.
You know, wow.
He really you know, that's that was something else right there to read it where it's it's his buddy giving him friendly advice that you're you're really going way off the reservation here, pal.
And even if you don't like it, Obama is the boss of you.
You know, wow.
We do.
That's, you know, Wesley Clark almost got us in a war with Russians back during Kosovo.
You know, that's right.
That's right.
Fight over the Pristina Airport there.
Geez.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Got to love that consensus.
Patrick Coburn.
Pardon me.
Andrew Coburn says the same thing about the the contractors ball gala, whatever, where they all get around to.
I mean, they have their I don't know.
I don't know if it's like the trade show in the daytime.
And then they all go dress nice and get drunk at night, that kind of thing, something like that.
But how?
Oh, yeah.
No, they all believe in Russian aggression.
They all believe in the new Cold War.
And there's not a single person incentivized in the room to say, on the other hand, gentlemen, at all.
So it's just even if it's a pretend consensus, it's a consensus.
All right.
And there's virtually no voice of dissent, really no voice of realism grounding people back in what's actually really going on here.
Because after all, it's easy, isn't it, Phil, to imagine them saying, hey, look, we know we're BS.
And but we're trying to make some money selling some airplanes.
OK, I can deal with that.
Right.
But geez, they're really convincing them themselves, the lies that this is about defending Europe from Russian aggression.
That sounds like it could be a path to a real war.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
For them to lie to themselves and believe their own lies that badly.
And what kind of corn are they going to paint us into?
Be like invading Iraq again.
This is going to be easy.
Everybody knows it, you know, except the adversary in this case actually does have offensive weapons.
All right.
Let me ask you one more thing here.
Did you see.
Yeah.
And yeah, offensive weapons that can erase our entire home towns.
Right.
Have you seen this one?
It's it started in soft rep the Special Forces online magazine.
And it's reprinted, Phil, at a place called Fortuna's Corner.
I'll send you the link.
I'm sorry I did.
I sent it to Gareth.
I don't know why I didn't think to send it to you immediately.
It's titled U.S. Special Forces sabotage White House policy gone disastrously wrong with covert ops in Syria.
Quite a mouthful.
But I think you got the good part.
And it begins with quotes of Green Berets, very upset that they are mandated to train on this front terrorists.
And and at least so-called quote unquote, in a ridiculous way, free Syrian army guys who are nothing but Al-Nusra.
And the article is very long and very complicated, but it has a lot of really great dirt in it, too.
And especially of, you know, tales of the the disgruntlement on the part of the the special forces, first and second tier special forces guys who are being assigned to carry all this stuff out.
So we'll send it to me.
We can discuss it next time.
Yeah, I think actually now I think about I'm pretty sure you're going to be inspired to want to write an article about this article.
It's got a lot of dirt in it.
You'll you'll get a kick out of it.
OK.
And for everybody else, too, it's reprinted at the software site.
There's a paywall.
But at Fortuna's corner, you can read it.
U.S. Special Forces sabotage.
That's your search terms.
It'll come right up for all y'all, including you.
All right.
Cool.
Well, sorry for talking so much when I'm supposed to be interviewing you.
But I think we pretty much covered it.
And I had a good time.
It's because I quit the live show.
So I got to got to have my say, too.
You know, who am I kidding?
I was always like this anyway.
OK.
All right.
Take care.
Thanks, Phil.
All right.
All right.
So that's Phil Giraldi.
He is a former CIA and DIA officer.
The Council for the National Interest is his group.
And that's the Web site to counsel the national interest.
Dot org.
Read him at UNS dot com and at the American conservative.
This one is called Deep State America.
It's the spotlight today on antiwar dot com.
As the man on Twitter said, Phil Giraldi at his best.
Hey, that's the Scott Horton Show.
Check out Scott Horton dot org.
Sign up for the podcast feed there and all the archives and all of that.
Help support at Scott Horton dot org slash donate and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks.
You hate government.
One of them libertarian types.
Maybe you just can't stand the president.
Gun grabbers are warmongers.
Me, too.
That's why I invented Liberty Stickers dot com.
Well, Rick owns it now and I didn't make up all of them.
But still, if you're driving around, I want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are.
There's only one place to go.
Liberty Stickers dot com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian empire, police, state founders, quote, central banking.
Yes.
Bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And well, everything that matters.
Liberty Stickers dot com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State.
In The War State, Swanson examines how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War II.
If this nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone, we are going to have to abolish the empire.
Know your enemy.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson.
It's available at your local bookstore or at Amazon dot com in Kindle or in paperback.
Just click the book in the right margin at ScottHorton.org or TheWarState.com.