10/18/10 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
Anthony Gregory is chilling.
I'm going to be interviewing him here in a few.
But right now, it's Gareth Porter, IPSnews.netoriginal.antiwar.com/Porter.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you, man?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me again, Scott.
Well, I'm very happy to have you on the show.
I'm looking at your latest one at antiwar.com.
It is Pakistan's convoy halt forces U.S. to reduce tensions.
And then I see that you have a brand new one here at IPSnews.net, which will be at antiwar.com by the time anybody hears this later on in the archive format anyway.
And that is report shows drone strikes based on scant evidence.
Come on.
They wouldn't just go around executing people for no reason, Gareth, would they?
I think actually they would.
But let's take a look at the specifics of this drone strike campaign.
This is a story that I rewrote a couple of times because I couldn't quite decide, you know, is the headline here that the CIA operations people are actually carrying out these drone strikes, we now know on the basis of specific evidence, with the least evidence that one can imagine to show some link with Al-Qaeda or associated groups.
Or is the story that despite the propaganda that this is an effective tool to disrupt Al-Qaeda's terrorism against the homeland of the United States, this is actually a program that is now targeted almost entirely on those groups that are involved in the supporting the war against the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan.
In other words, it's no longer an anti-terrorist tool at all.
It has to do, it's an adjunct basically of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
And so, you know, both of those are keys to this story and I worked them both in.
I finally decided that it's the killing with scant evidence that was the primary aspect of the story.
So that's what I led with.
And really, this is the story that is keyed to a new report that was issued by something called CIVIC.
Civilians in civilian casualties, I've forgotten the full extension of the organization, but it's an organization I had not heard of before.
But they have done field research interviewing the victims of war in Pakistan, both the drone strikes campaign as well as the Pakistani military's campaign against the Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban in the Fatah region.
So what they have done is now to uncover the fact that in a specific case, in an interview that was given by one of the victims, his house was visited by some Taliban troops who asked for lunch.
And being a rather sort of pragmatic fellow, he gave them the lunch.
He didn't turn them away.
And the next day, guess what?
His house was destroyed by a missile from a drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle, and his house was destroyed and his only son was killed.
So it dramatically illustrates the point that I think people need to understand, which is that the drone strikes are based not on targeting that is founded on real intelligence, but on the merest suggestion and inference that because this house was visited by some people who they thought were part of the enemy, that it was somehow connected with the Taliban or al-Qaeda or some other proscribed group.
And of course, that sort of principle, when applied across the board, is going to result inevitably in hundreds and hundreds of civilian dead.
Let me stop you for a second and ask you, is there such a thing as any Arab-Afghan friends of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan at all?
I mean, General McChrystal said, nah, maybe there's a dozen or something like that.
What's that great reporter from the Wall Street Journal?
I want to say Dillinger, but that's not the guy I'm thinking of.
I interviewed a great reporter on this show.
His name escapes me right at the moment.
Anand Gopal, you mean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Anand Gopal.
And he said, look, there's maybe a hundred, I think he said a hundred, maybe he said two, but I think he said there's a hundred actual al-Qaeda on both sides of the border, and most of them are in Pakistan.
And this whole thing about this being about somehow al-Qaeda and 9-11 is a bunch of crap.
They're after Haqqani and Mullah Omar's friends.
This is no longer about al-Qaeda at all.
I mean, the targeting of the drone strike specifically began to shift in 2009, and mainly because al-Qaeda figures were basically getting out of north Waziristan, excuse me, south Waziristan, where they had been based, and were fleeing to Karachi mainly and some other cities where the United States is clearly not going to launch drone strikes in a very crowded neighborhood, or at least one assumes that they won't, who knows.
In any case, the al-Qaeda targets were obviously few and far between, and they were drying up.
And so what does the CIA do?
They don't say, well, you know, we might as well wrap this up because there aren't any targets anymore.
No.
They simply shift the targets to the Haqqani network, and the network, the organization run by Hafiz Gul Badahur, who is the head of a Taliban faction, a Pakistani Taliban faction, which is not interested in fighting the Pakistani government, but rather supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan.
And so all of the targets in north Waziristan are essentially geared to fighting the U.S. and NATO troops.
That is the target, the people who are being targeted are geared to fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
This has become essentially a war, a drone war that is geared to, it's part of the war in Afghanistan, it has nothing to do with al-Qaeda terrorism.
Well, you know, it's so funny the way these guys kind of split it up.
We talked before, I guess if you dial it back a few months, we talked about the different plans, maybe even a year we talked about the different plans.
Let's try to split the Pakistani Taliban from the Afghan Taliban, or we'll switch the real dead-enders from those who it's just their day job, or we'll split them up this way and that.
It reminded me, I was thinking about that while you were talking, and it reminded me of Justin Raimondo's column from last night, it's about this American, David Coleman Headley, who apparently has been working for the U.S. government this whole time and is down with the L.E.T., Kashmiri Separatists Fighting India.
And Raimondo references a part of Obama's wars by Bob Woodward, court jester, whatever you call him, courtier.
And he writes that some Pakistani intelligence guys, they're trying to spin this all where Pakistani ISI was behind the Mumbai attack.
But when you look closer, apparently Hamid Karzai, and I forget the guy's name, but he's a Pakistani general, they both believe that the CIA is actually supporting the Taliban in Pakistan because they're trying to destabilize and destroy that government so they have an excuse to invade and seize those nukes.
Or maybe I'm kind of interpreting the end of that part myself.
They're basically trying to make things worse by supporting the people in Pakistan that they're fighting in Afghanistan.
Does that sound right at all?
This is a very strange story.
I agree that this needs to be further elucidated and covered by the media.
What we do know for absolute certainty is that the Obama administration is hyping this idea that there's a new level of threat of terrorism.
They talked about the terrorist threat in Europe based in Pakistan, whereas in fact what's really going on is that they are trying their damnedest to put pressure on the Pakistani government to hit the Haqqani network.
The real target is the Haqqani network, that's all they care about.
So even when they say the Pakistani Taliban, that's overly broad.
It could be that they are actually backing the Pakistani Taliban, but that ain't necessarily Haqqani and his family and his posse.
Right.
I don't think they're backing the Pakistani Taliban broadly, but the idea that they have agents within it, sure, that's very believable.
Again, that was the biggest, gnarliest terrorist attack on Earth since 9-11, that thing in Mumbai last year.
Everybody hold tight, it's Gareth Porter on the line.
We'll be right back.
All right y'all, it's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with my pal Gareth Porter.
He knows lots of things.
Lots and lots of things.
Now look, I'm talking crazy over here, Gareth, and I'm sorry for putting you on the spot about it, but talk me out of this.
Why shouldn't I believe that the evil, all-knowing CIA is running their enemies in Pakistan?
Well, I think that the idea that we would intentionally try to destabilize Pakistan so we could seize their nuclear weapons is a bridge too far.
Yeah, but you know, Joe Biden says in Bob Woodward's book, this is his argument for the forget counterinsurgency, we'll just do counterterrorism and a narrow focus, because our first priority is killing Al-Qaeda and securing Pakistan's nuclear weapons, said the Vice President.
Yeah, and I would have to just point out the fundamental radical distinction between what is said to justify a policy on one hand, and an objective that is pursued for its own sake on the other.
I mean, it's one thing to cite nuclear weapons in Pakistan as a reason for a rationale for a policy, in this case in Afghanistan.
It's another thing to say, yeah, we really would be better off if we could destabilize the Pakistani government so that the nukes would be up for grabs, and that would give us an opportunity to then go in with our troops.
Believe me, there is hardly anybody, hardly anybody, in the U.S. government who would even begin to say anything favorable about that kind of a policy.
I mean, even people who are extremely warlike are not that warlike right now.
That is the species of insanity that I think went out with Price and that crowd.
Well, you know, that guy O'Hanlon, it was back in, I guess, 07, three years ago.
O'Hanlon wrote that thing with Robert Kagan in the New York Times.
Again, remember that O'Hanlon was simply justifying an increase in U.S. ground troops.
This was not a serious proposal based on his being told by Army folks, yeah, we really want to go in there with troops.
That's our design in the future.
Okay, let me ask you this.
How goes the counterinsurgency strategy?
I was reading that book, The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel a few months back, I guess now, and it was about Iraq, and part of the story was that the lieutenant colonel had the copy of the counterinsurgency doctrine on his desk, and he cared about it a lot, and he read it every day and instructed all the guys out of it and all that.
But by the end of the thing, it was just sitting there collecting dust, just out there going on their missions, and the coin had amounted to nothing.
And so I wonder, now that McChrystal is gone and Petraeus is in charge, or more directly in charge, he already was responsible, but drone strikes and rules of engagement and these kinds of things, are they actually still trying to change entire societies over there and build a nation state?
No, no, this is all out the window.
We're talking now about a Potemkin War.
I think it's time to really start using the term Potemkin War.
I've been thinking about that for quite a while with regard to Afghanistan, because there are so many features of that war that add up to a hollow shell of a war, which is really being done for the political and bureaucratic interests of those people who are insisting on continuing it, not because they believe in it, not because they believe it can be done.
I mean, I've now spoken with somebody who's back from Afghanistan who has been in touch with people surrounding Petraeus, people high on his staff, who says that these people do not believe that this can be successful.
They know perfectly well that this is a doomed enterprise.
And I have to believe that those people have made that known to Petraeus.
I think Petraeus is perfectly well aware of this.
I don't think there's now anyone of any significance involved in this war who does not realize that this is a failed project, that everything that's being done now is for superficial political purposes to try to put the best face on it before they have to withdraw.
Yeah, and it only costs the lives of little bitty children and their mothers all day, so it's not like it's a big deal or anything.
That's right, and of course these people do not allow themselves to consider that factor into their work.
This is not part of their calculus, of course.
All right, now what about Jim Jones?
Because I just made a Jim Jones joke about how the guy leading us on this giant path to murder-suicide is named Jim Jones.
But then I got an email from Jason Ditz that said, no, man, don't forget, you've been out of the loop here.
Jim Jones is retiring.
Obama's forced him out.
So I went and looked up, and he sent me the link, I went and looked up antiwar.com's story about it by Jason, and it says that basically they're replacing him with a relative dove, that this guy wanted to be harder and harder on Pakistan, speaking of murder-suicide, and that he's been forced out in a way that leans peace?
I would say the likelihood is that with Jones gone, it's going to be easier rather than more difficult for Obama to put the brakes on the war and begin to reverse it.
And you think he wants to do that?
Let me explain why, first of all.
I think the answer is yes, I do believe he wants to do that.
And the reason it's going to be easier is that Jones, despite the fact that I think he was very skeptical about the war in some ways, was extremely conventional in his way of dealing with the military leadership.
He believed in the idea, and this is repeated more than once in the Woodward book, the idea that they should maintain the chain of, what do they call it, the military hierarchy, maintain unity within the military hierarchy.
This was something that Jones shared with Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Both of them wanting to not do anything that would cause a breakup in the unity of the military chain of command, which of course meant that he was extremely cautious in regard to his relations with the military.
Whereas I think Donilon is going to be much rougher, is going to be willing to ruffle feathers much more than Jones was.
So on balance, definitely I think it's going to be easier politically and bureaucratically within the administration for Obama to pull a reversal of the war next year.
And what about High Commander Petraeus?
Well, he's going to go through the motions of resisting.
I think his constituency is still the military and the right wing, the Republican Party, and he's going to play to that constituency.
And so we are going to have continued friction, and particularly it's going to make its way into the media.
But in the end, again, I think that Petraeus knows the game is over.
It's only a matter of time.
So exactly how that plays out, who knows.
But he's going to be playing this for his own personal reputation and for the constituency that he's still trying to maintain.
Which means that if this guy Barack, whoever the hell he is up there, if he does try to stick with this whole, yeah, you promised July 2011 we're wrapping this thing up, then Petraeus is going to insist that all we've got to do is stay longer, and that will be his election campaign for 2012.
Something like that is the best way that I could figure out how he's going to play it.
Obviously, this is more complicated than either of us can imagine, but I have to believe that he's already set out in that path and that he's going to play it out somehow using that ploy to try to maintain support from the places where he now has it.
Yeah, well, I don't know.
Judging from Obama's past stands and retreats on virtually every issue, speaking of Dilip Hiro, he had a great couple of pieces about this, Obama just backing down on everything in the whole world, and if the past is a guide, he's not going to sit up there and say, look, this war is a disaster, only 37% of the people support it because they're right, because this is wrong, it's not worth it, and it's stupid, and we're killing people, and it's time to call quits to it.
No, he's going to sit up there and try to posture like John Kerry in 1904 and pretend he's tougher than Petraeus, even.
He'll kill even more children than Petraeus.
Well, I think, again, I have to revert to the distinction that I made in a previous program, which is that the President of the United States, as long as he has a domestic agenda, as Obama does, cannot afford to indulge just purely in the kind of politics that you're talking about, at least he's going to have to account for the fact that, A, this war is going to be looking increasingly like a failure, B, most Americans are opposed to it, and C, the cost of this war is dragging down his administration in a very, very serious way.
So he has very serious reasons for wanting to...
Well, at least Rahm Emanuel is gone.
Yes, yes.
All right, everybody, that's the heroic Gareth Porter.
Antiwar.com/Porter.
You can also find him at IPSnews.net.
Thanks again, man, appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, Scott.