All right, my friends, welcome back to Anti-War Radio on Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas.
And you want to hear something ridiculous?
Listen to this, y'all.
We continue to be concerned about Iranian taking the Al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.
If we pull out of Iraq, then obviously the Iranian influence is dramatically increased.
Al-Qaeda has greater influence and endangers the region dramatically.
It's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran.
That's well known.
If we leave Iraq, it will enhance Iranian influence in the region to the detriment, I think, of every nation in the region.
You said the Iranians were training Al-Qaeda, you meant they were training extremists.
I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not Al-Qaeda.
All right, everybody, first guest today is Glenn Greenwald.
He writes at Salon.com, Salon.com slash opinion slash Greenwald.
And he's the author of How Would a Patriot Act and a Tragic Legacy.
Welcome back to the show, Glenn.
How are you doing?
Good.
Good to be back, Scott.
It's good to have you here.
And, you know, I can always count on you whenever something like this happens that I'm just going to click on Glenn Greenwald's name on my list of blogs at Stress and land right on exactly what I'm looking for.
And you just you don't even go after McCain so much, which actually you do.
But what you really do is you focus on the Washington press corps' sycophancy and their just absolute inability to to be critical of John McCain, no matter how bad he screws up.
It's really bizarre.
I mean, you know, what they have done is you play three instances and there was a fourth one discovered today and there's I'm sure many more where McCain claimed that Iran, the Shiites in Iran were training and arming the Sunni Al-Qaeda elements in Iraq, which is absolutely ludicrous.
And yet the press corps treated it as though it was basically nothing but a misstatement, where basically, of course, he knows that that's not true, but he just said it because he's a little tired and there was a disconnect between his brain and his mouth.
Hey, that happens sometimes, Glenn, because, you know, I actually heard a recording of me talking about Harry Truman and using nuclear bombs back in 1846 or something.
And I heard the recording of it back and I realized not only did I screw up and say 1846, but I didn't even realize that I had said 1846 and I just went right on.
It does happen.
You're right.
But the thing is, you know, and if somebody makes that kind of a mistake on one occasion, and maybe you sort of generously say, well, maybe there was that kind of disconnect, we all have it.
But if you are on the radio constantly talking about Harry Truman being the president in 1846, you know, not once, but continuously over the course of many weeks or many months, at some point, you know, a reasonable person would conclude that either you're just stupid and you actually do think that Harry Truman was the president in 1846, or for some reason you're trying to lie about it in order to make your case more persuasive.
And so McCain has repeatedly said that Iran, which, you know, is the threat of which is a centerpiece of his campaign, is training Al-Qaeda.
And this has been a lie, you know, in neoconservative circles and other right-wing circles for years.
I mean, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, Blue Dobs, tons and tons of commentators have been making this claim.
And the administration has long made this claim.
It's obvious that McCain is saying this purely for propagandistic reasons to heighten the threat of Iran and to tie them to Al-Qaeda, or because he's just confused.
It's one or the other.
Because he doesn't actually know the facts about this region in which he's supposed to be an expert.
And yet the media has depicted this as a one-time write-off where he just misspoke, because as you say, they are just unwilling to criticize this person that they're invested in believing is some sort of grand foreign policy and national security genius.
And you know, in all your quotes here on your blog, this is what they say, that, gee, you know, if anybody else said this, we would think they were an idiot.
But we just know that John McCain's not an idiot.
Yeah, I mean, there was this morning a chat with the Washington Post columnist, Ruth Marcus, and she was asked several times by readers, why isn't this being covered?
And she said, well, I mean, if someone else had made these comments, they would get a lot of attention.
But since John McCain is known to have great foreign policy expertise, it really just gets written off as sort of an irrelevancy.
And even liberals, supposedly liberal pundits like Jonathan Alter, who was on Keith Olbermann last night, was making the same kind of excuse for McCain, always a little bit, you know, tired from the traveling, and it's actually kind of charming that he does these things.
And admit that the reality is, the only reason why McCain even ever once withdrew the comment was because Joe Lieberman, as everyone could hear, whispered in his ear and said, no, you don't mean that they're training al-Qaeda, you mean they're training Shiite extremists and insurgents in Iraq.
And only then did he correct himself.
But what the media is concealing is that he has said it many times before, and as always, they're trying to defend their hero, John McCain, because they just have such grave affection for him, and because they always equate a desire to start wars and continue wars with some sort of virtue of toughness.
And that's why the United States foreign policy has been what it's been for decades.
Well, you know, this is just speculation, but I think I'm going with the theory that he really doesn't understand that his understanding of who's who in Iraq and who's on whose side and what for basically comes down to the talking points that he's been instructed to repeat.
He doesn't read antiwar.com, he doesn't read Patrick Coburn in The Independent explaining who's who and what for, and so he doesn't really know.
Yeah, you know, I agree, it's funny.
I'm not actually someone who, you know, has ever really believed that George Bush is stupid, and I know I'm in the minority in thinking that, especially among, you know, critics of the administration, among whom it tends to be sort of an orthodox view that George Bush is dumb.
I just don't think he is dumb.
I mean, I don't think he's smart, but I think there's a shrewdness about him, and I think that shrewdness is often overlooked.
I actually am starting to really wonder whether or not John McCain is actually just dumb.
You know, this idea that all of those Arabs and Muslims and the sort of, you know, vaguely radical people in the Middle East are all part of this one big, huge, amorphous group is something that appeals to the stupid and the simple-minded, and I think it's an open question whether he's engaged in deliberate deceit, meaning fully aware that Iran's not treading on caterpillars, saying it anyway, or whether that's the grasp that he has on the Middle East, that extremely simplistic, you know, fairly shallow and stupid understanding of the Middle East.
I'm not sure which is worse, but I do think that's an open question.
I think you're right.
Well, and, you know, let's assume for a minute that he had gotten what he supposedly meant to say right all along, and it said, well, the Iranians are training extremists.
The Iranians are training extremists.
It's well known.
It's well reported that the extremists are going into Iran and going back to Iraq.
He doesn't have a shred of proof for that.
I've been over this with Gareth Porter for a year straight, poring over everything.
All he has is assertions from military spokesmen.
No one has ever provided any evidence that Iran is training anyone who's working against American interests in Iraq.
Surely they're close to the Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Council, but then they're the Iraqi government that America supports.
So he's still lying.
The Iraqi government and Iranian political leaders have a great relationship because their interests are far more aligned than they are adverse, and you're absolutely right.
Even the idea that the Iranians are training or are backing elements that are attacking or fighting against U.S. military forces in Iraq is itself an extremely dubious claim for which there is virtually no evidence.
You're absolutely right about that.
But even that claim, the more reasonable claim to which McCain retreated, is itself extremely dubious and without any evidence.
But the claim that they're arming Iraq, or al-Qaeda rather, is just pure fantasy.
Just to tie it one more time to the example that you used, I would say if you were on the radio once and it said that Harry Truman was president in 1846, people would happily write that off as an innocent mistake.
But if there was a whole group of ideologues whose views were fairly similar to yours, for whom the idea that Harry Truman really was president in 1846 was a matter of dogma, then I think this position would be pretty potent that you were deliberately adopting that view out of ignorance or deceit.
And that's the case here.
I mean, the idea that Iran is backing al-Qaeda is a fairly common view among people like McCain who are interested in military competition with Iran, which strongly suggests that he heard this and has either said it because he wants to exaggerate the Iranian threat or because he's just dumb and doesn't know better.
And speaking of knowing better, the al-Qaeda that are in Iran are all in prison.
And in fact, in the great peace offer of 2003 that was exposed by members of the National Security Council and so forth that Condoleezza Rice denied ever knowing about, they offered to turn over all the al-Qaeda guys that they had captured.
They wanted to trade them for some members of the Mujahedin al-Khalk and were told to go to hell.
Yeah, I mean, Iran and al-Qaeda elements, along with the Taliban, have been, you know, basically were with one another for the longest time, which is why Iran was so eager to cooperate with the U.S. and what we were doing in Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban.
And you're absolutely right.
I mean, Iranian leaders, al-Qaeda leaders in Iran are apprehended because the Iranian government dislikes them and fears them.
And so they're incarcerated in Iran, and yet you'll hear neoconservatives say, you know, the Iranian government is harboring al-Qaeda members and al-Qaeda leaders and giving shelter to them when they're actually in prison.
And you're absolutely right.
They did offer to turn them over to the U.S. in an offer that came across the fax machine in the State Department that, unfortunately, did never make it to Condoleezza Rice, she claims.
Okay, now, congratulations are in order.
You deserve a lion's share of the credit here, indisputably, for giving the intellectual ammunition to the Democratic grassroots who applied the pressure to the House of Representatives and denied the President of the United States the immunity for the telecoms that he was seeking in their most recent version of the Protect America Act or whatever they're calling it now.
So congratulations for that.
And could you please explain to us exactly what degree of victory this was in the House of Representatives last week, Len?
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Thanks.
Thanks so much.
I think that it was so significant in several ways.
First, the most specific way is just that it was critically important that telecom immunity not be granted because, for one thing, if it had been, it would signal even more strongly to government officials and corporate leaders the fact that they have license to break our laws and then can do so with pure impunity, be immunized from consequences by just hiring lobbyists and basically working the system in government in order to have special laws passed to say that even though you broke our laws, you won't be held accountable.
So it was critical that that message not be sent.
And more specifically still, these lawsuits are so vital for uncovering what the administration did for all those years when it was secretly spying on American citizens and against the law in ways that we still don't know about it, in ways that are still almost completely secret.
And these lawsuits are not only an opportunity to uncover that, they're also the only means left for having a court adjudicate whether or not what the government did actually was illegal, meaning it's the only way to subject the government spying programs to the rule of law, to have a court of law say whether or not our constitutional rights were violated and whether or not the law was broken.
And so had immunity been granted, those lawsuits would have come to an end, all of that conduct would have been concealed forever, and we never would have had an adjudication as to whether or not the Constitution was violated and the law was broken.
And assuming that the House stands firm, and I think they will, all of that will come to light and we will get a ruling.
I think more broadly what was so significant about it is it really was the first time in years, literally, when another branch of government stood up to the president and defied his orders in the areas of national security and terrorism.
I mean, the Washington Post, I think, described it best, which they said there's normally a script that's followed, which is the president says what he wants, Congress pretends to offer a little resistance at the beginning, and then they snap into line, they legalize his illegal behavior, they authorize his secret programs that they claim to be angry about not knowing about, and they do whatever he wants for a lot of reasons.
This is the first time that we were able to get the Congress to refuse to comply with the president's orders.
And I think it has emboldened Democrats in the Congress to realize that they can do that without any price being paid, and maybe even with the political benefit, and it created a template for how that can be done.
And I think it's emboldened a lot of people to feel like they ought to keep working to cause that to happen, because they've seen now that it really can work, and it's critical that people see that in order not to become, you know, resign to a defeatist mindset.
And now, on your blog, you point to a Washington Post analysis where they say, you know what this means, really, is that this is over for the rest of the Bush presidency.
The Senate will probably not pass a comparable bill, even if they did, the president won't sign it, they can't override a veto, and in terms of the different things on the agenda and the different times off that Congress has for the rest of the year, the election season and so forth, Bush probably won't get another crack at this.
Yeah, I mean, I'm hesitant to, you know, embrace that, because I feel like it's almost premature to celebrate that much, or somehow we'll jinx it, but I mean, it is ironic that by demanding so much and making it an all-or-nothing proposition, as the White House did, meaning give me everything I want, or I'm going to veto and block everything, basically what the president did is assure that he's going to get nothing.
And in reality, that is the best possible outcome, and it always has been the best possible outcome, just to let that rampant Protect America Act expire, as has happened, and not pass any new legislation, because what that means is that we revert back to FISA, which, although it's a very draconian law in terms of the vast surveillance power that it gives to the government, it's infinitely better than anything that Congress was considering doing in order to, quote-unquote, improve or amend it.
And so having this stalemate where nothing happens, no telecom immunity is granted, which means the lawsuits continue, and no new surveillance power is given to the government, that really is the best of all worlds, and it happened as a result of the greediness and, you know, sort of refusal to compromise on the part of the White House, and it's just a real unexpected benefit.
Okay.
Now, one slight correction to your reporting here, and I know it's got to be really difficult to write this exception into every article about the Congress, but you did report that the Republicans all voted no in lockstep with the president, and of course, Ron Paul voted no because FISA itself is unconstitutional and violates the Fourth Amendment.
And actually, there was a discussion about that in the comments section, and I actually linked to his speech, or other people linked to his speech, and I pointed that out.
You're right.
Oh, really?
I missed the update, then.
Yeah, no, I should have updated my post, I don't think I did, and I didn't mean to, and I just thought...
But you're right, there were five Democrats, there were ten Democrats in total who voted against the bill, five of them were blue dogs who said they wanted to give the president what he wanted, and five were more progressive members, like Dennis Kucinich, and Jim McDermott, and a couple others, who said that even the House bill goes too far in giving the president one of the keys of power that he shouldn't have, and that's why Ron Paul voted against it as well.
All right, yeah, and sorry to call you out on that, I just like Ron Paul, I like singing his praises every chance I get, and actually, I was surprised, because I read one of his speeches where he was going through talking about good ol' Governor Spitzer being hoisted on his own petard, and at the end, he says, no more this, no more that, and one of them, he doesn't just say, no more Protect America, he says, no more FISA, repeal the FISA Act of 1978.
Right, and I mean, just the whole, I think his whole take on Eliot Spitzer was really insightful, because, you know, this really was a case that, although Spitzer was in violation of a law that shouldn't exist, the extensive, you know, surveillance that the government engaged in is just so reflective of how abusive those powers become, and I think he was one of the very few people to point that out, but that aspect of the Spitzer story was probably the most important.
Yeah, I wonder if James Madison would have ever envisioned the national government going after prostitution rings and stuff like that.
Yeah, I mean, and to justify on the basis that, you know, he had arranged for, you know, an adult woman to cross state lines to meet him, that that somehow justifies massive federal government law enforcement resources being devoted to listening in and staking out hotels where he was meeting women, and all of that is revolting.
Ah, well, it's that old interstate commerce clause, come back to get us again, huh?
Indeed, indeed.
All right, hey, thanks very much for your insight today, Glenn.
Always good to talk to you, Scott.
All right, everybody, that's Glenn Greenwald.
It's salon.com slash opinion slash Greenwald.
His books are How Would a Patriot Act and A Tragic Legacy, and we'll be right back.
