12/09/11 – Jason Ditz – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is Jason Ditz he's our News editor managing news editor or something like that at anti-war.com.
That's news dot Anti-war dot com welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Jason?
I'm doing good Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing good, man Hey listen, so we have a lot of wars and revolutions to pick from and only really 20 minutes with the commercial and everything So we can never cover them all but I think I want to start today if we if it's okay with you With Egypt.
I wonder who all side is America on there are they betting just completely on the Egyptian military or are there any indications as far as you can tell that They're working on cozy and back up to the Muslim Brotherhood Well doesn't sound like they're cozying up to the Muslim Brotherhood, but but it does sound like they're They're still trying to do some funding to some of the various Political parties sort of hedging their bets in case the the junta doesn't keep power Of course, the real story is that the junta has been getting quite a bit of Weaponry from from the u.s Since they took over for Mubarak earlier this year and a lot of it has been Sort of crowd control weapons and things designed to be used on Protesters like we've been seeing recently Yeah, it's important to know that this isn't you know old stuff from back in the Bush days or anything like that, right?
This is Obama has been or Hillary Clinton has been signing the licenses for these transfers just recently, right?it just keeps coming and it's Of course, it's been a long-standing policy to send comparable weapons to the Mubarak regime and now that Mubarak's gone and This supposedly interim junta is in charge.
They're getting weapons as well Well now so when you say that they're financing some of the political parties is that just you know, the basic obvious Liberal parties the young people parties or are they betting on Islamists to at all?
Do you know?
There have been some reports that some of the Islamists have taken advantage of the funding pretty much the impression I've gotten is that they'll go hand out money to anybody who's willing to take it at this point and that they're just trying to buy influence here and if they could buy influence with the Muslim Brotherhood or One of the other Islamist parties or with a liberal party or a communist party, they don't really care.
They just want to They just want to have whoever they can get in their pocket That reminds me how to try to get Bob Dreyfuss back on the show to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood and the CIA Going way back.
Anyway, I don't know what the relationship is now really or what it's been even lately But in his book devil's game, he goes through the history of you know The British handing them off to us basically after World War two but now They've had the first round of elections But when's the second round is that going on now or soon or it's supposed to come up in a few weeks I believe I'm not sure the exact date.
It's sort of a weird Election system they've got set up.
They've got this parliamentary election They've got 27 provinces in Egypt and they're doing them nine at a time So it's going to be three rounds of parliamentary elections that are supposed to finish up sometime early next year Either late June or early February.
They're expected to have results on that this was theoretically supposed to be an interim Parliament to so the the elections aren't really for a Set Parliament.
It's just supposed to be an interim Parliament.
And the only real thing they were supposed to do was to Draft a new constitution But of course now the junta is unhappy with the way the elections turned out because people who aren't in favor of leaving the military as have as completely independent of civilian government are Winning an overwhelming number of seats.
So they're saying well, we're not going to let Parliament write the Constitution after all We're going to appoint a committee That will do it Yeah, well, I Don't know those people sure have a hell of an uphill battle Although you know what they're coming up on their one-year anniversary and all that and they've really shown in the past and I just mean civilians of all stripes really that You know, they're willing to keep this up.
It's been almost a year and they're I guess participating in their elections, but there's been a lot of protests into here square and You know, I really don't care who wins out I just would like to see the military dictatorship there overthrown or at least, you know, the military power marginalized just for the sake of You know some progress but then again, that's the kind of thing that can backlash real quick, too you know make matters just that much worse, especially if You know, it's all this foreign pressure that's making it happen You know, although I don't know it's really hard to tell whether Hillary Clinton has Coherent policy for what she's trying to do here or if it's all just a matter of scrambling on a day-to-day basis or what?
What do you think?
It doesn't feel like a very coherent policy.
I mean in the past the policy with these Sort of Arab Spring Revolutions has been to pretend that they're not going to work and with Mubarak.
It was Mubarak is so so strong.
He can't possibly be overthrown and Now that he's been overthrown.
It seems like the attitude just shifted to all the military so powerful.
They can't possibly be overthrown and At the same time they are throwing some money at the various other Groups sort of as an acknowledgment that well just in case they might be overthrown they want to at least have those guys on their payroll too, but It seems like they just Hoping that the status quo sticks around because that's I guess more convenient for them.
Yeah All right.
Now really the top story of the week.
I think is Phil Giraldi's piece yesterday and there was a One of the American conservative ran basically a shorter version the same thing ran a couple of days before And that's about two new Presidential findings that according to Phil's sources the president has signed authorizing the stepping up a whole new round I guess of covert activities against Iran and backing of the dissident groups terrorist groups Mujahideen Iqalq Jandala and PJAK and now According to what Phil said on the show yesterday trying to stir up trouble with the Aziri population as well Inside Iran at the same time.
We're just talking with Kate Gould from the Friends Committee about the new sanctions and the new prohibitions on diplomacy With Iran that are going through the Congress right now.
I Don't know.
What's your assessment of this situation?
You think they're I mean hell they've been blowing this smoke for a bunch of years in a row now Jason.
Is this different?
Well, that's the thing.
This has been going on so long.
It's really hard to tell What's different and what what is just Pretending that they're escalating what's really been a covert war that's been going on for decades.
I mean the u.s.
Has been threatening to attack Iran and Israel has been threatening to attack Iran since since the 1980s and Largely on the same pretext you can go back to The second Reagan administration and Go through newspapers and you'll find articles that say Israel says Iran's less than a year away from developing a nuclear weapon And will they be attacking soon?
So is it so much of this is just the same old same old but Then again, there's a lot of things going up over there.
That's the rain it doesn't seem like there are some increasing numbers of attack and Sabotage although to apparently was Well, what do you know about the drone and what business it had over Iran that day that it fell down there?
Oh, man, and now we got a commercial break.
I'm the worst When we get back we're gonna talk more more about this.
It's the most important story in the world.
I think Well other than America and Russia's nuclear arsenals, but anyway, all right, we'll be right back with Jason Ditts news Dot anti-war dot-com for all the most important everything in the whole world All right, y'all welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton talking with Jason Ditts news editor at anti-war dot-com.
That's news dot Anti-war dot-com and we're talking about the downing of this drone in Over Iran.
What do you know Jason Wilson?
Well, what we know for sure is that it's a Surveillance drone it doesn't appear to have had any weapons on it.
Although we were not a hundred percent sure on that When it was shot down NATO originally said well, we know we're missing a drone from about that area, but there's no indication Iran shot it down which was One of the most ridiculous statements possible because you're missing a drone and Iran says they shot it down seems like indication enough that they probably did but Anyhow, once they did this a couple of days later.
They came out and said well the CIA and NATO deliberately planted the No indication Iran shot it down thing to try to throw the Iranians off the trail of it There there was talk that they even considered sending Special forces into Iran to try to destroy the drone after it was shot down Too late for that now, huh?
Right now, of course, it's on Iranian television and Officials are saying yeah, that's that's our drone Yeah, well, and I guess it's just taken as a given that it's on its way to China now, huh?
China and or Russia It seems like for the time being Iran wants to keep it and see what they can get out of it But there's already been reports that both Russian and Chinese Engineers are just chomping at the bit to get a look at this thing Well, but now what indications do you have as to its mission?
One of their original cover stories was that oh, you know What we had a drone flying over Afghanistan that we lost control of must have accidentally flown over Iran, but that's falling apart and been replaced by what exactly Well, it's been replaced by several different stories.
Some of them are Well, it was guarding the border against infiltration It was trying to watch as if the Iran was arming the Taliban Which which of course is a very old Allegation which again makes zero sense.
Yeah, that just smacks of a talking point come back up right there Of course the rain always been hostile to the Taliban But it seems like the most realistic prospect is that it was just surveilling Iranian territory and They've been Indications over the past couple of weeks that Iran's been scrambling their defensive forces into position over these increasingly regular threats to to attack and The prospect that Israel in particular might be close to launching an attack.
So I think Realistically, it's probably just surveillance of where all these defensive forces are moving to Well, you know Phil said on the show yesterday that he thinks that Obama really doesn't want a war with Iran And that all of this, you know actions just barely short of war are basically meant to be a Stand-in for going ahead and having a war and yet it all sure seems like the path to war to me You can only have all these forces scramble so many times so many Really acts of war that I mean, you know, Phil said he didn't have specific information about this one but there were two or three sources anyway that seemed to be saying that the Explosion at the missile base there a couple of weeks ago was a Mossad or or American intelligence operation of one kind or another and You know the Iranians official position on that correct me if I'm wrong.
Is that oh, no, that was just an accident You know if I mean assuming that it's true that it was an attack then You know them they're basically being forced to say that because otherwise they have to admit that they've just been Attacked in an act of war in a pretty big explosion might equal we have to do something back So that's why they got a lie about it and say no It was just some guy dropped a bomb and the whole thing went off or whatever it is, you know Right, and maybe I'm extrapolating too much without real, you know positive information on that one But it sure seemed like an you know operation as some covert force or another and that's that's the problem we don't have decent reliable stories because Officials are constantly lying to us about what's happening in all these situations Pretty safe assumption though.
Anyway All right It does seem hard to believe that they were just moving some ammunition and somebody dropped a box and the whole thing exploded but I guess I Don't know.
Maybe their Ammunition is really volatile.
I guess it's possible.
Yeah, I mean we are talking about bureaucrats Right Iranians me.
All right now, so I'm sorry.
We have so little time to cover all these different things, but what's going on in Libya now?we're done right and Wipe our hands of the whole thing or wash them and we're all over this Well, we're still waiting for the next civil war to break out in Libya, which is certainly coming Of Course the Islamists aren't too happy with being cut entirely out of the civilian government when they were a good chunk of the NTC that took over the country in the first place but right now the real story is in Tripoli because We have these various militias that were part of the takeover That were from different cities around The western half of Libya Zintan Misrata and these militias just are hanging out in Tripoli You know Boston people around Trying to you know, one of their guys gets arrested for faster something hassling the police until they let him go And there've been some some growing protests in Tripoli about hey, when are these people just going to leave and So what of the National Transitional Council and they making themselves a monopoly government over there It seems like they're trying but it's going awfully slow and it doesn't seem like they're all that interested in Doing anything about this militia problem.
Well, you know, I think it was your piece that I read on the show yesterday about Wasn't it about the head of the African command offering to train up their whole new army and all of that I think that was John's piece Well, anyway, you saw it.
Yeah Our our involvement here I it was just like we talked about way back in the in the beginning of the spring here was that Once you over once you say got to protect the civilians That means you got to overthrow Qaddafi because your premise is you know Only you can protect them from him and then Next is we got to train up the army and make sure that we pick the quote-unquote Good guys to be the new guys and all this will take years and there will be suicide bombings and on it'll go It's only just getting started and look how right we were Jason, right?
It's the same old story as Afghanistan or Iraq or any other place Yeah, Andrew base of itches in the frontline section today on anti-war comm there's the USA Today piece about his lament that Iraq Already is like Korea the Forgotten War and we're not gonna we're just gonna choose to ignore I guess the political class anyway It's just going to choose to ignore every single lesson that we could learn from Iraq of which there are a plethora And we're just going to continue going on and of course he cites Africa as the example.
Look at what we're doing in Africa Yemen and in Somalia, especially Yeah I guess for them the lesson of Iraq really has been if he keeps throwing more and more troops and more and more money at the Situation you'll eventually get to a situation where you're able to leave and Even though the situation is still a disaster.
You can sort of claim victory Yeah, well and also and maybe it's better just fight Wars with robots that way you don't have to write any letters to anybody's family, you know, just condolence to Raytheon You know THX 1138 served an admirable, you know lifespan over there did 17 tours killing civilians in Somalia and and people will be less upset if they end up in landfills than if Hundreds of soldiers end up in landfills.
Oh man, tell them about that one real quick.
Would you this is just horrible Jason It is horrible Dover Air Force Base We're not really sure when it started it started at least in 2004 possibly earlier but through 2008 when families told the military to dispose of Returning troops as remains in a respectful and honorable way.
Their standard practice was to cremate them wrap up the Wrap up the ashes as medical waste and ship it off to a landfill in Virginia You know what that sounds like to me that sounds like KGB commie Propaganda uncle Sam would never do something like that.
It does it's so absurd and the most absurd part is Dover Air Force Base has Now that it's come out Admitted it and they're saying yeah, that's what we did.
And that was you know in keeping with What we believe the law was at the time and now we're doing things different but back then that was fine and Not only that they're saying oh these 247 people or however many We're not going to call their families.
That would just take too long to dig up their names News dot anti-war comm Jason did so everybody.
Thanks Jason.
Thanks for having me