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Next guest is Phil Giraldi.
He's the executive director of the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org, and he writes regularly for the American Conservative Magazine and, of course, antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Oh, I forgot to mention you're a former CIA and former DIA officer, and so you know how that is, everybody.
When a former CIA officer says something, that's as good as two sources in a newspaper story.
Except it's usually a lie.
Yeah, exactly.
So tell us what ain't true, Phil.
Well, I don't know if you just saw the report that Garrett Porter just put out.
No.
But he basically debunks all of the evidence that's being put up by the government to support the attack on Syria.
He points out, which I had noted too, a lot of the weasel words that were in the official statements we've seen so far in terms of how they describe the evidence.
And if you know how intelligence analysis is done, which Garrett does, obviously, and I do, you notice that a lot of the words were hedged in terms of how they describe things, and it basically suggests that they don't have a case against Saddam, against Assad at all.
I mean, basically this is all surmise, and it could well be that the rebels themselves carried out the attack.
Excellent.
I see it here now in my e-mail box.
How intelligence was twisted to support an attack on Syria by Garrett Porter.
It's at truthout.org.
And so can you take us through this a little bit and give us some examples or something?
Yeah, basically I recommend that everybody read the report itself because it is quite complicated the way they play with words.
But, you know, if they say that they have high confidence in something, that means they have basically some supporting evidence that directly relates to the issue.
But when they walk away a little bit from those kinds of words, that means that they don't have any evidence whatsoever and that they're essentially assuming that the case that they are trying to make is a correct one.
And he points out a number of instances where they do that, and he pointed out in particular that the photo evidence that they've submitted to support this really doesn't support an attack by sarin gas.
And he cites a number of experts who say this is what sarin gas would do both to the victims and also to the medical people who are treating them, and we don't see any evidence of any of that.
And, in fact, it doesn't look like these people have been subjected to any military type or a government type of chemical weapon.
So it's a very interesting reading, and I think everybody who listens to your show would find it quite compelling.
All right.
So now on the eve of pseudo Bill Clinton-type air war, at least, or something here, I know you must be talking to your buddies who still work for the U.S. state or something.
What are you hearing?
What do you know that we need to know, Phil?
Well, what I'm hearing from everyone is essentially that they're highly skeptical about what they're hearing and how it's being laid out.
Now, what we've all been looking for, we former intelligence people, is the type of evidence clearly stated so that you can at least understand the reliability of the source and to give you some kind of idea of what they actually know versus what they would like to know, and we're not seeing that.
So the suggestion would be for most of us that this is basically bullshit.
I mean, there's no other way to describe it, and they have bits and pieces that they put together to make a case, but the stuff actually could be used to make quite the contrary case.
I mean, listen, Gareth cites some of the conversations with apparently a lower-level Army officer in Syria, and the quotation could be taken one of two ways, either that the guy really wanted the U.N. inspectors to get there to see what had happened or he wanted them not to get there.
So, I mean, it's like that kind of thing.
It depends on how you want to read it.
You get the response that you want to get, and clearly in this case the government is trying to make a case to go to war.
I mean, because bombing a country which you're not at war with is an act of war.
And now when you say, when you're talking with your guys, is that current government, can we, did you just say, and I understand you're correct that you're saying that current CIA employees that you know don't believe this?
Let me hedge it a little bit this way.
Most of the people I know are retired, okay?
But at the same time, most of us spent a long time in government service, and we have a lot of friends and contacts, a number of whom are still working for the government.
Some of the people that I'm in direct contact with are still working for the government, either the Pentagon or CIA or State Department.
And I'm hearing from a broad range of all these people, some of whom are indeed still very much wired into the system, and they're all saying the same thing.
That it's BS.
Yeah, that basically it may not be BS, but if it isn't BS, the government has not succeeded in making its case.
And given how hard they've been trying to make the case, you have to suspect it's BS.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so now what about this report from the Mint Press?
It was AP Stringer reporters, not just an upstart who, you know, somehow that would be automatically discrediting, I guess.
But this is a legit reporter, but with a stringer there in eastern Damascus saying that, well, the Saudis gave us this stuff, and apparently it was mishandled.
Supposedly it was a father of one of the dead rebels who told the story to the AP Stringer.
What do you make of that story?
I think you kind of alluded to that, or well, maybe not.
But you alluded to the idea that maybe it was the rebels themselves who had done the attack, or at least victimized themselves one way or the other.
Yeah.
Well, that story has been around since the weekend.
In the circles that I discuss these issues with, and we've been talking about it.
And people who know the Saudis and know the situation with the Saudis find it very credible.
They think that the Saudis could indeed have given the rebels chemicals.
Now, to make a chemical weapon, this is why they talk about the intercepting phone calls where people were preparing the weapons.
They have to mix the chemicals.
The chemicals are basically not exactly harmless, but to weaponize them or to use them in a lethal way, you have to mix them.
And the story that's been going around is that the Saudis provided the rebels with these chemicals so they could set up a fake attack and incriminate the Assad administration.
But somebody screwed up, and there was an accident, and some of these chemicals got mixed by accident.
And that's basically what happened.
So the people I know that know Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Arabian intelligence service believe this is all too credible, that this could indeed explain a lot of things.
It could explain how it happened.
It can explain the fact that it doesn't seem that these were weaponized lethal doses of the chemicals that were used in this.
So it actually provides a lot of answers.
I think it's quite plausible.
And now, isn't it strange that Kerry keeps upping the casualty count even though it had been falling?
And now he's taking it back up again.
They had started out saying it was better than 1,000, worse than 1,000, and then the doctors out on board said it was 300-something, which is still horrible, whatever.
But then Kerry says, no, it's 1,409 or something very specific.
Yeah, he said 1,429, and 425 of them were children.
And, you know, I'm writing a piece for anti-war on Thursday, and I said that he has no way of knowing these numbers unless the rebels provided them to him, in which case they're suspect.
And yet he comes out with this number in a press conference and acts like he knows it.
I suggest in my article he probably had a Ouija board that he used to come up with the number.
It's astonishing what the government is doing.
This is a complete replay of Iraq, except we should have learned something from Iraq, and people should be a lot more skeptical, and I think indeed they are, about what is coming out of the government right now, because this is a war that has no positive end for the United States in it.
It can only make the situation in Syria worse, and it demonstrates absolutely nothing.
I mean, what is this talk about U.S. credibility?
The U.S. doesn't have any credibility.
Do you think that throwing a few cruise missiles into Damascus is going to establish credibility for the United States?
Yeah, that's the last excuse they've got left for backing down those for a front, Phil.
Yeah, yeah.
Credibility, yeah, because that's going to buy you a ton.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, all right.
Now, so let's say, for example, that evidence comes out that, you know what, it really was Sarin, and you know what, it really was Assad because he's a cruel SOB.
I mean, the guy is a politician, after all.
Why wouldn't he use poison gas?
I know I don't really necessarily—well, I don't take Robert Baer as seriously as I take you, Phil, but he says interesting things at times, and I've seen him say in the past, not in this context, but in the past, that if it really came down to it, that the Alawites would use chemical weapons, if it was that or be beheaded with their families and all that.
But this isn't coming down to it, it doesn't seem like.
But anyway, what if they did do it?
Would you then be in favor of war, this, that, the other argument?
Because I think that's really important.
We always get bogged down arguing on the war party's premise, that is, if this is true, then that must be the reaction.
Well, let me put it this way.
I mean, I live out here in rural Virginia, and if the Muslim Brotherhood were coming over my fence, I would be using chemical weapons on them.
Yeah, if the Alawites are ever in a position, or the Christians, or any number of minorities in Syria are in a position where they're going to be overwhelmed, sure, they're going to use chemical weapons.
Anybody would.
And that's just the reality.
Now, does that make a case for the United States to intervene in some way to prevent that happening somewhere down the road?
Well, my answer would be no, because there are basically too many imponderables in those types of scenarios.
You don't know how it's going to turn out.
You don't know who it's going to help.
You don't know who it's going to hurt.
The only thing you know for sure is if you launch a bunch of cruise missiles, you're going to kill a bunch of Syrians.
That's the only thing you know for sure.
Yeah, they always seem to act like, well, we can just bomb for a little while, and they'll sit back and take it, and then we'll stop the war when we're ready to stop the war.
It's the same way they talk about Iran all the time.
Don't worry, they won't react because they'll know better than to react.
Well, if they know better than to react, why don't they know better than to cross whatever red line gets them bombed in the first place?
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
This whole process whereby people sitting on their fat duffs in Washington think they can predict what somebody is going to do somewhere in the Middle East, a guy that they have no cultural affinity for whatsoever, to understand what his thought processes might be like, is so absurd.
I mean, it's the fundamental source of a lot of our problems in the Middle East.
I was just reading over the weekend the Mazzetti book about the CIA, and he describes in some detail how we screwed up Somalia.
We made a lot of assumptions about who we should support, who we should support, and so on.
All the assumptions were wrong, and we actually wound up empowering the Shabab.
Which book was that you're talking about?
The Mazzetti book, the one with the long knives.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I have that.
Yeah, I recommend it very strongly.
I know a lot of the people that are described in the book, and he's pretty much spot on in everything he says.
Yeah, you know, Scahill does a real good job on Somalia in Dirty Wars as well, as long as you're bringing that up.
And, of course, you're quoted multiple times in that book.
Yeah, that's right, Scahill does quote me, yeah.
All right, now, so listen, I don't want to get all slippery slope and alarmist, worst-case scenario, but, geez, it seems like if Obama starts bombing Damascus, maybe they will shoot some chemical weapons over the wall at the Israelis.
And then maybe Benjamin Netanyahu will say, let's go ahead and bring this war to Iran now while we have the chance, and then we might have a real regional war.
And then, I don't know, a lot of people immediately, I think, assume that Russia and China would jump in on the side of Iran or something.
I don't see World War III coming out of this necessarily.
What does Russia really care if they lose Iran for a little while?
America's on their way down and out anyway, and everybody knows that.
But maybe I'm assuming too much about what they assume.
Yeah, maybe.
But I think the fact is that Russia and China have actually been fairly careful players in terms of all these developments, and I don't see them entering into a war on behalf of either Syria or Iran.
So I don't see that as a scenario.
But the Israelis are the mad dog in the pack here, and I think you're quite right.
Netanyahu might see this as a huge opportunity.
Once the doors open up and things are going south in Syria, which they inevitably will if we attack, then Netanyahu might just say, hey, this is our opportunity.
Let's go after them.
And quite frankly, the more I see of Obama, I've been inclined to want to give this guy a certain credibility in terms of his reluctance to get involved in military adventures, but it doesn't seem that he's strong enough to resist the people in both his administration and in the government in general who seem to want to go after these people and start another war.
I find it hard to believe.
Yeah, I mean, he's too smart to do it so far.
I mean, obviously he's been arming them in Jordan and all this, the other financing with the Saudis and whatever the whole time, but he's been too smart to really escalate it this whole time.
But his only angle is backing down and being weak and afraid instead of being strong and manly and pro-peace because he knows it's the right thing.
You know what I mean?
You can't be the president and play weak for so long.
You've got to lead something, you know?
Yeah, well, unfortunately, I mean, the tool that's been given him here is this right to protect business, that we should be allowed to intervene anywhere in the world because people are suffering.
Well, I mean, that covers a lot of ground, and unfortunately he seems to have bought into that.
The reality here is that you should be doing a realistic assessment of what your risks and gains are in terms of taking any action.
There's no gain in this action.
If we bomb the Syrians, that doesn't necessarily mean they won't use chemical weapons in the future.
If, as we've been discussing, their backs are against the wall, they certainly will.
So what does it do beyond killing a few hundred Syrians or maybe a few thousand Syrians?
I don't know how many Syrians he's anticipating killing, or maybe he doesn't even know or doesn't even care, which makes it even more scary.
It's just astonishing.
It's like people, I don't know, did you ever used to play that game Risk by Parker Brothers where the ultimate objective was to conquer the world?
I know the one.
I have a lot of friends who played it anyway.
Yeah, yeah, I played it in college.
I was addicted to it.
I never could conquer the world, though.
But the fact is that maybe that's what they do at National Security Council meetings.
They sit there with an updated version of Risk, and they just kind of play it out, and everybody kind of giggles, and they let the president win.
Like Spies Like Us.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
That's funny.
The old Chevy Chase vehicle.
That's how they end the negotiations with the Soviets, playing Risk.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, man.
Well, so then here's the thing, too.
Everybody wants to just live in the moment, and that goes from the people on the war planning side, but also on the political side.
It's in the New York Times, this mixed metaphor, AIPAC, the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Point being, they're the power on Capitol Hill, the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
They're the ones who want the war.
Ninety-one percent of the American people are against it.
The other eight percent couldn't be reached for comment, and then there's AIPAC.
But they're just playing this like, yeah, we better push hard.
Now's our chance to get a war in Syria.
But what about the political blowback from them?
Just think of what good this is going to do for the Council for the National Interest.
They don't want that, you know.
Yeah.
They're just not thinking ahead, and same thing for when the fall of Damascus comes.
Patrick Coburn and Eric Margulies have been saying for a year and a half or something that this is like the Lebanese Civil War that lasted 15 years.
Can you imagine once Damascus falls, that's just going to be the start of the war?
Yeah, it's true.
And the thing is, you know, what's funny about a lot of this is that AIPAC is going crazy right now.
They have people all over Capitol Hill talking to every congressman on this issue.
And for that reason alone, I believe that the Congress is going to support this, and I think they will do it.
And yet, you know, you talked about the piece in The New York Times.
If you go to the current website of The New York Times, you'll see they cut that paragraph out.
Yeah, yeah, I saw it.
Yeah, which is kind of interesting.
And then you have the mealy-mouthed conservatives and libertarians who are discussing this issue.
They don't want to mention AIPAC.
And there's a feature piece at the American Conservative website today by Jim Antle, where he goes through the whole thing, why Congress should vote no, and so on.
He never even mentions AIPAC.
AIPAC is going to be the major player in how this is resolved, and people have to be aware of that.
So I'm just astonished.
It's like they're thinking this is a conventional Democrat versus Republican.
New Republicans who are against intervention versus old Republicans.
You know, this is bullshit.
Basically what's going to happen is these congressmen are going to be pressured like crazy by AIPAC and by others in the military-industrial complex who want to go ahead with this thing, and they're going to cave.
Yeah, I think they probably are.
But now, I thought you told me that you thought that Netanyahu had decided better than to go ahead and push regime change here.
The stalemate is good enough to not escalate this thing, and yet his representatives here in the U.S. don't seem to agree with that.
Or what's going on there?
Yeah, it's a tough call.
I mean, I hate to say it, it's a tough call for Netanyahu.
I mean, you know, because al-Assad is a devil he knows, and basically a guy who has kept the peace on their border, and he knows that.
But on the other hand, it would be nice to get rid of him and make Syria into a squabbling group of many states, pretty much like what's happening in Iraq.
And Israel would see a net gain in that.
But, of course, the ringer here is the fact that a lot of these people that would be involved in these many states do not like Israel at all and are a whole lot more radical than the government that's currently in Damascus.
So there is an up and down side, but it seems the Israelis have come down very strongly in support of the attack.
I think that's probably a bad judgment.
Yeah, well, and I think it's going to be really bad politics here in the United States.
I mean, same thing, especially if it escalates to Iran and all of that.
And this has been the case with the threat of an Iran war for a long time.
In the case of Iraq, the thing was really being led by Bush and Cheney and everybody else, and especially the Israelis were getting on board with that.
But to have them be the only center of power in America pushing for this, while, I mean, other than Raytheon and maybe whatever bank is going to be servicing the checks to Raytheon, whatever it is, there's hardly anybody in on this except them.
And it seems like for their own American domestic politics' sake that they could really blow it here.
If anything could cost them the power and influence they've gained in Washington, D.C., it could be this.
So for long-term interests, medium-term interests, this is a very risky move.
If Congress votes against this war, it will be a major defeat for AIPAC.
There's no question about it.
And they're seeing it that way.
As I say, I've already had word from some of my friends over on Capitol Hill that the House and Senate office buildings are flooded today with AIPAC supporters and they're lobbying their congressmen.
It's happening already, first day.
So, you know, the congressmen aren't even back yet, most of them, but what they're at is they're at their offices and they're talking to the staffers and everything like that.
So that's what's happening, and they're putting on a major push.
So if all this means anything to anybody, they should do what I've been recommending to everybody I know and all my family members.
You know, send e-mails in to your congressmen saying, tell them that this war is a bad idea.
Chances are they're going to ignore a lot of the advice they get, but if they get enough of these messages, they're at least going to pay attention.
Yeah, I'm trying to imagine a situation where the 91% of the American people who oppose a war, oppose starting a war, would just get what they want because, hey, come on, man, it's American democracy and all of that.
But no, we'd have to, the 91% have to really, really work because, as you're saying, the lobbyists, they get up first thing in the morning and they show up.
They get it done while the Americans are at their jobs.
Yep, yep, yep.
But this is a one-week window.
We've got a week to work, and everybody should do everything they can.
They should encourage everybody.
Write letters to the newspapers, send e-mails to congressmen, have everybody in the family do it, including the dog.
Have everybody do it.
In fact, my dog sent in an e-mail yesterday.
So, you know, we've got to make this effort because if we do this, we'll not only stop a war, we will have delivered a major defeat to AIPAC.
Yeah, that'll be a nice silver lining there.
And it seems like such a bad idea that the fact that it's a bad idea has got to win out here, you know?
It's just got to.
We've seen a lot of that, unfortunately.
Yeah, the Secretary of State's been calling him Hitler over there now.
So once the Hitler card's been played, I guess we've got to go stop Hitler, you know?
Well, he hasn't said Holocaust yet, but I'm waiting for that.
Yeah, but he already has said Munich, though.
Yeah, that's right.
He did say Munich.
Oh, man.
All right, well, so, yeah, if there's ever a call for people to really try to intervene and contact their congressman over a political issue, this is the one, you know?
I don't know, maybe even for people on the eastern seaboard, hey, that's where America's most densely populated anyway.
People ought to travel to D.C. and go and talk to their congresspeople and the congresspeople's staffers and whatever.
Show up, AIPAC.
Get in there and do as best you can, you know?
Yeah, well, my congressman, Frank Wolf, has proposed that we set up a blue-ribbon panel with senior government officials and former generals to discuss this issue.
Can you imagine that?
I mean, you talk about a rubber stamp.
I mean, that's exactly what you'll get.
It's the government response is always to do more government.
Yep, always.
Well, and you know what?
Here's the thing.
Like you said, we've got one week to go, and September 11th is coming up, and the perfect talking point is that these airstrikes against the government there is intervening on the side of al-Qaeda in Syria.
These are the bin Ladenites, the suicide bombers, the prisoner beheaders, the bad guys from the Iraq war, and you want us to intervene for them on the anniversary of 9-11?
Well, I will impeach you.
Yeah, well, I told my congressman in the e-mails I sent him, I said, let's not deny that there are bad guys on both sides of this argument, and the fact is that we don't know who we're going to empower by staging an attack.
So the point is, why are we doing it?
It's just common sense that you don't get involved in this kind of struggle.
There you go.
All right, everybody, that's Phil Giraldi from antiwar.com and the American Conservative and the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
Thanks very much, Phil.
Thanks, Rod.
All right, y'all, that's it for the show today.
We'll be back here tomorrow, 11 to 1 Eastern, now, the new time, and I'll be hanging around my Facebook and Twitter pages, too, slash scotthortonshow.
Thanks for listening.
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