All right, folks, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horne, this is Anti-War Radio on Radio Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
And introducing Philip Giraldi.
He's a former CIA covert operative.
He's a partner in Canastrara Associates, a contributing editor to the American Conservative magazine and a columnist for antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
Hello.
Good to have you on here.
I want to talk all about Iran in a few minutes.
But I want to start with the so-called war on terrorism.
I'm sure you're aware of the controversy surrounding Congressman Ron Paul's statement in the Republican debate that al-Qaeda did 9-11 because we are over there.
And Rudy Giuliani's response that they hate us because of how free we are.
You're a former CIA counterterrorism officer.
What's your opinion on this?
Well, I think anybody who knows anything about what's been going on for the last 10 years would realize that there is cause and effect operating here, that essentially al-Qaeda has an agenda which very specifically says what its grievances are.
And its grievances are basically that we're over there.
So all Ron Paul was basically saying was that even as the 9-11 Commission report indicated, there were consequences of our presence in the Middle East, and if we seriously want to address the terrorism problem, we have to be serious about that issue.
And Giuliani indicated that he was not only not serious about that issue, but seemed to be ignorant of both the 9-11 report and of political realities in the Middle East.
It seems a problem if the terrorists are actually motivated by our policies and we refuse to even acknowledge that that's the case.
Never mind have a debate about what to do about those policies, then this problem is going to continue indefinitely.
Yeah, absolutely.
I don't seriously have a problem with having policies that will piss people off in various parts of the world.
And I think the United States very clearly has a national interest in the Persian Gulf region because of oil and other things.
And it's not wrong to say that we have those interests.
But one has to recognize that the way you exercise those interests and what things you do in connection with those interests could create adversaries, it could create terrorism.
And that's, I think, the realistic way to look at it.
And I think the American public would buy into that.
Well, I agree with you that the American public probably would understand if it was explained to them.
But for the most part, all they get to hear is that they hate us, they hate us, they have this terrible satanic religion, they hate us, they hate us, they hate us.
And that's why they attack us is because of how hateful they are.
And that's basically the end of the argument.
Yeah, unfortunately, that is the end of the argument.
And it's convenient for a lot of these politicians to play sound bites.
And I was as bad as Giuliani was, I was probably equally discouraged by by Mitt Romney, who basically was embracing the concept of more Guantanamo type prisons, where people can just be kind of salted away.
And, of course, both he and Giuliani, embrace the concept of torturing people to get information, I just find these things awful, for lack of a better word.
And I can't believe that leading politicians who are running for the presidency, United States would actually take these positions and that people would not be up in arms about it.
Mm hmm.
And how does that look over in the Middle East when they see the candidates running for president talking about doubling Guantanamo?
Is it not the case that the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Guantanamo scandals have done as much as the invasion of Iraq itself to help recruits for help recruiting for the Al Qaeda network?
Yeah, I think there's a lot of evidence of that.
I mean, the thing is that, you know, people, people in the United States, we kind of live in a bubble and but people in the United States should realize that the same kind of media revolution that we've experienced over here has happened in the rest of the world, too.
And when these comments and when incidents take place, suddenly these things are portrayed in graphic living color all throughout the world, not just only in the Middle East.
And the reaction to many American actions over the past five years has been universally negative.
Okay.
Now, you're a contributing editor to the American Conservative magazine.
Can I take from that the implication that you consider yourself a conservative politically?
Yeah, I'm absolutely a conservative politically.
That's not to say and I even to a large extent consider myself still a Republican.
That's not to say that I embrace much of what the Bush administration does.
I don't consider George Bush to be a true conservative.
And I don't consider the policies of his administration, with the exception of two excellent Supreme Court nominations.
Apart from that, I don't consider him to be to represent a conservative administration.
Well, I guess if I can go ahead and pick a fight with you about the Supreme Court nominations, isn't Roberts and Alito both partisans of this unitary executive theory that says that the commander in chief can do whatever he wants whenever he wants?
Well, they are.
Yeah, that's unfortunate.
I'm more so thinking in terms of Supreme Court for its social aspects in terms of policies that I oppose like abortion as a conservative.
But you're absolutely right.
I mean, you know, the selection of the Supreme Court justices was, in a way, a mixed process.
There were some good things and some bad things, but at least in my judgment, the good outweighs the bad.
And it's important, I think, for the audience to understand that you come from the right, because I think there's just sort of kind of an unspoken premise that liberals are just wimps, and they'll come up with any excuse in the world to not admit how evil our enemies are and how violent we have to be against them and that sort of thing.
And so when I put the question to you, the next question, well, what about Osama bin Laden's religion and that it's hell-bent on conquest and that, you know, if we weren't fighting them over there, we'd be fighting them here because, you know, these people will never stop until they rule the world and that sort of thing.
Okay, well, there are a couple questions there.
I think, first of all, the premise that if we're not fighting them over there, we'll be fighting them over here is totally ridiculous.
We're fighting them over there because we're over there.
And because we're over there, we have a problem here.
And if you eliminate that nexus, if you take us out of our being in their faces, then the reality is such that they're not going to be in our faces over here because they basically don't have that agenda.
So that's the one thing.
But as far as Islam goes, I am not an expert on Islam, I'd be the first to say that.
But certainly in terms of Islam on a practical level, working as a CIA officer and being somewhat of a historian, I would say that there are a lot of negative things about Islam.
And many of the things that are being reported about the Islamic religion, at least as it is practiced in many areas, are absolutely true.
There are abominable things that are done in the name of Islam.
But the fact is that this should not be the driving force that shapes United States foreign policy or that should be shaping how the media looks at the world.
Because there are over a billion Muslims, there's an incredible complexity in the religion, and it runs from people who are extremely liberal to people who are extremely conservative.
So to take out the old tar brush and go after an entire religion is to me inappropriate.
What about the idea that, well, Osama bin Laden himself is a pure evil criminal mastermind and that sort of thing, but just narrowing the question down to why people follow him, never mind what he thinks and what excuses he comes up with for his vile behavior.
Why is it that al-Qaeda is not less than 50 people?
Well, he taps into some reservoirs of resentment in the Muslim world, there's no question about it.
And he's a charismatic figure and he has been successful.
He was a key figure in driving the Russians out of Afghanistan.
He has certainly bloodied the nose of the United States more than once.
So he has a certain appeal.
This is not to say that he's a good man or that he's a man that we would want to copy in any way, but the fact is that the slights and resentments that many Muslims see in their relationship with the West is a resource for Osama bin Laden.
And we have reinforced that by doing things that he can exploit, like invading Iraq.
What happened to our relationship with Osama bin Laden?
He fought against the Russians on the same side that the United States was backing in the holy war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
What was it, what American policies made the difference?
Well, in the wake of the Afghan war, of course, the United States actually, during the first Gulf War, established a major military presence in Saudi Arabia itself.
And that was, I believe, the trigger for Osama to become a frontline opponent of the United States.
He has repeatedly said in his writings and in his speaking that the United States presence in the holy lands of Saudi Arabia were a major element in his political philosophy.
So we could trace that back all the way to 1990, then, in the beginning of Operation Desert Shield.
Sure.
Exactly.
And that's when probably one could say the shift in his orientation took place.
I think people often forget that all the actions against Iraq that took place from 1990 all the way through 2003, really, came out of Saudi Arabia.
When we talk about the no-fly zones and the blockades and all that, all of that was enforced from American bases in the Saudi desert.
That's correct.
That was basically a huge super base that was built in Saudi Arabia in the immediate lead up to the first Gulf War.
And that was the major operational field.
Yeah.
Well, I'm going to pick on the Spanish, just because we haven't had a war with them in a hundred years, so they're completely neutral as far as this goes.
But just for hypothetical purposes, basically following Ron Paul's question from the debate, how would we like it if George Bush allowed, made a deal, and allowed the Spanish to come and set up military bases all over, I don't know, Texas, for example, I think me and my neighbors would shoot at them until they all left, whether George Bush had invited them or not.
Yeah, I think probably maybe a better example, when I lived in Texas, I noted there was a great deal of resentment of the UN.If you say the UN would set up military bases, that probably would even make a more interesting case.
Yeah.
But yeah, but sure.
I mean, there's a certain kind of blindness in many Americans.
We don't see how other people see us.
And I think that basically the best way to kind of think of these situations in your own mind is to reverse it and say, if it were another country doing this to the United States, how would we react?
And your example is a perfect example of how the Americans would not be comfortable with this.
Now, you mentioned Iraq actually being a benefit to Osama bin Laden.
Can you outline that?
Well, sure.
I mean, basically, as has been made very clear, Osama bin Laden had no connection with Saddam Hussein, and quite the contrary, they were kind of sworn enemies.
And when the United States went into Iraq, Osama bin Laden saw this as an opportunity, and he immediately created an al-Qaeda organization inside Iraq.
There had been no al-Qaeda organization inside Iraq prior to that, and this was a huge opportunity for him.
And as the war has gotten worse, and we've had incidents like Abu Ghraib, and we've had repeated civilian casualties, that Lancet report from the British that says maybe up to 650,000 Iraqis have been killed as a result of the war, things like that, they just add fuel to the fire.
And basically, the big beneficiary on all this stuff is not the United States.
It may not even be Israel.
It's probably al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Now, wasn't Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, as Colin Powell said in his UN speech?
Well, of course, that information was wrong.
Sorry, a little comic relief for the show.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, he had been in the country for medical treatment.
I think that's as close as it came to there being a link.
Well, I remember Jim Nicholasheski from NBC News reported, and I believe there were other reporters following this up, that the military actually asked for permission to go into Kurdistan and get Zarqawi before the war started, where America had carte blanche, basically, in Kurdistan, and that the Bush administration refused to allow the military to go get him because they needed that so-called link between Osama and Saddam.
Yeah, well, that's probably quite true at that time.
And I don't really remember that story, but it's certainly plausible that they were at that time looking for any kind of pretext that would indicate that Saddam was supporting terrorism.
You know, Loretta Napoleone, in her book about Zarqawi, she says that not only was he not a link to Saddam, he wasn't really a link to Osama bin Laden, that he had met with Osama bin Laden, and Osama bin Laden said, listen, we're focusing on the far enemy, the United States, and that Zarqawi said, nah, I want to go fight the King of Jordan, and that he wasn't even really tied to al-Qaeda until the end of, was it the very end of 2004, when he finally made that deal with Osama and Zawahiri that he would be representing them in Iraq.
Yeah, I think there is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that he had fallen out with the leadership of al-Qaeda and was viewed as sort of a loose cannon or a rogue element by the leadership.
So basing a tactical or strategic connection on him is dubious, first of all, and secondly, as you correctly pointed out, he was in the Kurdish area, which Saddam really didn't control anyway.
And now I learned some very important things watching Sean Hannity last night on Fox News, not for the first time.
And what I learned was that George Bush has declassified some documents that indicate that al-Qaeda is using Iraq as a training facility somehow, we didn't cover how it got that way, but also that they want to use the Anbar province as a staging area to attack the United States from here on out, and that's why America must not leave Iraq until al-Qaeda is defeated there.
What do you say about that, former CIA man, Giraldi?
Well, you gave a wonderful summary, because I read that same report and I couldn't figure out what it meant.
And I was having real problems with it, but clearly that's what Bush intended the message to be, that Iraq itself was going to be the launching pad.
But I think that the alternative explanation of this is that al-Qaeda has a multinational international strategy to attack the United States, and documents dealing with the objective to attack the United States would be addressed to every al-Qaeda element in the world.
So I don't find this as particularly revealing.
I wouldn't think that it means that al-Qaeda has the resources in Iraq to carry out any attacks against the United States.
They clearly don't.
Well, so what if America leaves?
Won't al-Qaeda just take over the Anbar province and use it as their new Afghanistan safe haven?
No, I think the reality is that if the United States leaves, it would be a very bad thing for al-Qaeda, because the Sunnis don't particularly want them around, and they would get rid of them.
They're only there now to help the Sunni insurgency fight the Americans, is that it?
Exactly, and there have been reports that the Sunnis are already kind of tired of them, because when they stage a major provocation or attack, it's the local Sunni population that has to take the grief when the U.S. Army descends.
So there are a lot of reasons why the Sunnis, it's a marriage of convenience with al-Qaeda, insofar as it's a marriage at all.
And I think it would be fallacious to assume that, in fact, let me be stronger than that, I think it would be ridiculous to assume that al-Qaeda could establish some kind of serious presence in Iraq, similar to what it did in Afghanistan, because the dynamic is completely different.
The more I read about al-Qaeda, I guess the more confused I get.
Most places I look, it seems like there's not really much of a threat out there at all.
All the new recruits from Iraq notwithstanding, as John Mueller said, this threat is overblown.
Seems like every terrorist bus that's announced in this country is bogus.
On one hand, the movie The Power of Nightmares basically portrays al-Qaeda as a group of pirates you couldn't fill a ship with, and it seems like there's a lot of information to kind of back that up.
But then I talked to Michael Scheuer, and this man is worried.
The former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit, he believes that there are uncountable numbers of al-Qaeda out there, that there's a very serious war on America's hands here.
Which is it?
Where on the line does the truth lie here, Phil?
Well, I think we're talking about two different stories here.
And Michael Scheuer is certainly an expert on al-Qaeda, and if he tells us, or if he says to you, says to me, that al-Qaeda represents a serious threat against the United States now, I believe him.
And I think that probably is true.
The other story is, of course, why we haven't been attacked since 9-11.
And there are probably a couple of stories within that story.
But I believe one of the key elements to this is the fact that American Muslims basically are just not wired that way.
And I don't think that many American Muslims would support the kind of radical action that you see in Britain, for example, among its own Muslim community, or in France.
And I think it's just a question of, this is a different kind of country, with a different kind of Muslim immigrant that came here, and the expectations and the way these people do things are somewhat different.
I agree with you absolutely that nearly every, let's not say nearly every arrest, every arrest of so-called radical Islamists in the United States has been kind of jokes, in that these people are, in many cases, not capable of carrying out any acts.
In a number of cases, like the most recent one in New Jersey, there was an FBI informant in the middle of the group.
And it seems to me, from what I've read about it, that the FBI informant might have well been the motivator for these people planning what they were planning.
So there are a lot of strange things about these stories about terrorism in the United States.
But I suspect a large reason why we have been relatively immune is the fact that we don't have that fifth column in the United States of people who are really actively out to betray their country.
Well, outside of America, if I could somehow make you guess, how many members of Osama bin Laden's network are there?
Hundreds?
Thousands?
Tens of thousands?
Well, I don't have any good information on that.
I don't know if anybody does.
And if I had to throw out a figure, and I have thrown out a figure on occasion in one of my columns, I would say we're looking at thousands, but we're looking at very low thousands.
We're looking at maybe a couple of thousands, or maybe three or four thousand at the most.
And that would be including people who are more wannabe in nature, supporters, or people who are not putting their lives and well-being on the line, but are basically activists who are maybe raising money or something like that, or supporting the logistics.
That's the numbers that I would think.
This is kind of seemingly contradictory, I guess, but in a way, I kind of suspect that if America was to pull out of the Middle East, say, Ron Paul was elected and stopped the interventionist foreign policy, that that would actually give bin Laden more reason at this point to try to attack us again and bring us back over there.
I don't see that.
I think he has a constituency, and he has an agenda, and he's very focused on both.
And his agenda is not to pursue the United States to the United States after we leave the Middle East.
I think that's kind of clearly there, clearly written on the wall.
And if we were to basically get out of Iraq and get out of the region in the intrusive way that we're there right now, that would take a lot of the fuel out of Osama bin Laden's fire.
I don't see that there's any agenda to follow us to the United States to destroy our way of life or whatever the explanation would be.
Well, see, yeah, I didn't really mean it like that.
I meant it more like it would really take a lot of the fuel out of his fire and come in and slapping us in the face again and bringing us back would be a way to, you know, he wants us out of the Middle East, but he doesn't want us out of the Middle East before his movement is powerful enough to replace our puppets.
Yeah, but that's the point.
Think about that.
I mean, his real agenda is to get rid of Mubarak, is to get rid of the Saudi royal family, is to get rid of Abdullah in Jordan.
That's his real agenda.
And the American presence in the Middle East was an enabler for these regimes to stay in power or is an enabler for these regimes to stay in power.
And you subtract the United States from this equation, his real focus is on his own people.
Now, what's the best way to fight Al Qaeda?
Charles Pena points out in his article today that all of the very best arrests, captures of Al Qaeda members, the very top guys, the computer expert that Bush burned during the Democratic convention in 04, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, etc., that these guys were all arrested by cops, not soldiers.
Yeah, I saw that.
I saw Charles' very excellent column on any war.
And I think he's absolutely correct.
In fact, he went so far as to say that all of the arrests of senior Al Qaeda people have been done through law enforcement type channels.
And I don't know any exceptions to that rule either.
So yeah, I think that I've often said that counterterrorism is a police, law enforcement, and intelligence issue.
And that essentially, to defeat terrorism, these are the tools you have to use.
Under very rare and extreme circumstances like Afghanistan, you do have to use military resources.
But this is not the norm.
The mistake of the Bush administration is to use an elephant to squash a fly.
And we're throwing huge resources, and at huge expense to the American taxpayer, I might add, at what is essentially a containable problem.
And hopefully, a Ron Paul or somebody will come along in 2008 and explain this in a credible way.
And we'll have a shift in the paradigm in terms of how we deal with terrorism.
And now, you know, the War Party always says, well, we tried dealing with the terrorists as a law enforcement problem, in fact, George Bush himself.
We tried dealing with this as a law enforcement problem, and we realize now that that was the mistake that ended up getting us attacked on September 11th, that this should have been treated as a war all along.
And I would just like to argue, for argument's sake, it's one that I never get to hear, that anybody who claims that there was a real or aggressive attempt to prosecute or thwart al-Qaeda with law enforcement assets in the 1990s is just ignorant or lying.
The fact of the matter is, the FBI agent types who wanted to go after these guys never got the opportunity.
They were never allowed to.
Yeah, and nor were the CIA people who wanted to do the same thing.
And I also would point out that I'm sure you're aware of the fact that at one point, the government of Sudan was prepared to turn Osama bin Laden over to the United States, and we turned it down.
And in fact, you know, that's one I asked Shoyer about, and he said that that wasn't right, or that he didn't know about it, or I'll have to go back.
Yeah, I can't give you the details on it either, but it's certainly been widely reported that that was the case.
Yeah, I even, the reports I remember reading said that they offered not only to turn over bin Laden, but to turn over all of their intelligence about every single one of his guys.
They're going to turn over their whole file.
Yeah, I think you're correct.
That's what I've, that's what I've read, too.
Okay, let's go ahead and move on to Iran here.
You know, you're probably one of the most important sources in the world on this story.
For people not familiar, and I guess for people just tuning in, I ought to go ahead and reintroduce you.
I'm talking with Phil Giraldi.
He's a former CIA officer, a contributing editor to the American Conservative magazine and a columnist for AntiWar.com.
And in July of 2005, you broke the story from apparently your sources inside the Air Force that they were drawing up plans for a strategic bombing of Iran that even included the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Is that right?
That's correct.
And there's been all kinds of reports back and forth.
Let's go ahead and stick with the nuclear issue.
There have been all kinds of reports back and forth about whether the nuclear option is on or off the table for this planned bombing of Iran.
What's your latest information about that?
Well, I would say it's on the table in two ways from what I've been hearing here in Washington.
I would say that in one way, it's on the table in terms of the use of tactical nuclear weapons, smaller nuclear weapons, because the Pentagon believes, or at least some people in the Pentagon believe, that Iran has some extremely hardened sites as part of its nuclear program that would be extremely difficult to take out with conventional weapons.
So I think that's still on the table in that sense.
The other sense it's on that I keep hearing is that there is some concern, concerns have been expressed about Iran's ability to retaliate and how you kind of shut that off.
And one of the lines I've been hearing repeatedly is that Iran, if we were to attack Iran to take out its nuclear facilities, and Iran were to unleash a wave of terrorism or to close the Straits of Hormuz, or to do any one of a number of things that it would be capable of doing, we would threaten to hit them with nuclear weapons as a way of shutting them down.
Stand there and let us beat you up or we'll put a bullet in your head.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
That's exactly the thinking here, that we have the ultimate deterrent.
We will really stick it to you if you don't like what we've done to you already.
That was just the taste of what's coming.
So that's the kind of mentality that I think we're seeing.
So nuclear weapons, I think, are still very much in the picture, in the debate.
I'm looking at the headlines on antiwar.com right now, nine U.S. warships assemble off Iranian coast.
And now I just spoke with Gareth Porter last week, the interview is actually still at the top of the page at antiwar.com, and he told me it looked to him like the war was off for now that Admiral Fallon, who it seemed to everybody on the outside was brought in because of his expertise as an air warrior, has basically put the kibosh on overlapping three carrier groups and is doing everything he can to oppose this war and basically, I guess, has promised to resign rather than prosecute it.
Do you know anything about that?
Yeah.
I've heard the same story that Admiral Fallon has basically put his foot down and has said that he would resign if they attempted to attack Iran under the present circumstances.
Well, tell me that's a deal breaker.
Well, I think it is.
I mean, it's the kind of thing if we'd had Colin Powell or George Tenet with the guts to resign back, you know, back about three years ago, four years ago, that might have been a deal breaker, too.
So I'd like to hear that.
The other thing I'm hearing is very specifically, and it'll be in the next issue of The American Conservative, is that the White House has made its own assessment based on two issues.
One is that they recognize that war with Iran would spike oil prices and probably would drive gasoline prices up to two to three times current levels, which would certainly cause a revolt in the United States against Bush policies.
And the second issue is that the U.S. Army has told the White House that if we were to attack Iran, they could not guarantee being able to sustain U.S. troops inside neighboring Iraq, that the supply lines would be vulnerable, that there would be danger of a major insurrection against the occupation.
So in other words, Bush is hesitating, and he's putting off, my sources are telling me that he's putting off a military action, at least for this year.
He's still under the gun from people like Cheney, Abrams, and the Israeli lobby to go after Iran, but if it's going to happen, it will probably be next year.
So this whole thing about, we're an empire now, we make our own reality, and you people can just study it afterwards, is no longer Bush's thought process, huh?
The Army has actually been able to talk some sense to this guy?
Well, maybe not talk sense to him, but at least he has a survival instinct, and he realizes that both he and the Republican Arab Party are in trouble, and maybe that's what's kicking in.
I don't, sense is maybe too strong a word for our President and Vice President.
Yeah, very well may be.
Now let's narrow that down and explain exactly what we're talking about there.
The American-backed government in Iraq is made up of basically the majority Shia led by parties that were created by the Iranian government, basically the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution and the Dawa Party, and Muqtada al-Sadr himself has also said that if America bombs Iran, that they will go to war against the United States and Iraq.
These are the Shia who have basically been going along all this time.
Yeah, that's right.
As you correctly note, these parties were basically parties that were in exile when Saddam Hussein was in power, and they were in exile in Iran, and they were supported there.
These people, many of the leaders of the party, I think actually some of the leaders of some of the groups were actually born in Iran kind of as exiles.
So there's a strong and pervasive links with Iran.
Muqtada al-Sadr has indeed declared that he would come to the defense of Iran, and indeed the Skiri and the Badr Brigades, which are even more dependent on Iran, probably would join along.
So essentially we have a puppet regime in Iraq, which is closely identified and tied to the country that we have demonized and call our major enemy in the region.
So it's a rather strange situation.
And you mentioned the supply lines.
Everybody just picture a map of Iraq in your head.
There's one line that goes from Kuwait to Baghdad, and that's about it, right?
Yeah, that's right.
In fact, I got an interesting email just before you called me this morning from a friend of mine who received an email sent from an army officer in Iraq saying that all the commands there have recently been advised that there have been problems with the provision of food to the local units, and that certain items from now on will be unavailable.
So obviously they're having some problems in the supply line, even without an insurrection to make it more difficult.
So you got an email like that, too?
I got an email from a friend of mine whose nephew is over there in Iraq right now, and that's exactly what he said.
I got this Thursday or Friday.
That's exactly what he said.
These are the guys basically running the supply lines halfway between, somewhere halfway between Basra and Baghdad, and saying that they're running out of ammo, they're running out of food, they're running out of all their supplies, and they're feeling kind of surrounded.
As you said, this is without bombing Iran.
That's right.
Again, this goes back to the advice Bush is getting from the Pentagon, which is essentially saying, look, if you attack Iran, we can't guarantee anything about the situation in Iraq.
And I think that's a reasonable assessment, don't you?
Well, I'm no expert in military affairs, never been so much as a private in the army, but it sure sounds like if we're going to bomb Iran, we'd better switch sides back to the Baathists and back to the Sunni insurgency that we supported for 20 years there and keep our soldiers safe behind Sunni lines, because as William S. Linde wrote in the American Conservative magazine, this is the kind of situation where we could lose our army in Iraq.
We're setting our guys up for a total disaster.
Yeah, I read that article and I must admit it, it was cogent.
It's unimaginable in this day and age and given America's military preponderance that we could even be thinking about something like that, but I think it is something that has to be considered as part of the equation if we feel adventurous or frisky enough to invade Iran.
And you know, all this high-tech equipment and all these new polymers and things that are so space-age, we forget that what we're really talking about is flesh and blood 19-year-olds on the ground there and you put some super-heated metal through their bodies, they're dead.
All this fancy-schmancy technology kind of disguises the fact.
What we're talking about is a 19-year-old with an M16 and if he's surrounded and getting shot at, he's probably not going to win.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, this is not the kind of war that lends itself to technology, unfortunately.
And no insurgency, no guerrilla war is.
The United States Army was created, was geared basically to fight Russian tank armies and to fight in a conventional way, everybody in uniform, everybody lined up.
And that's not what we're confronting here.
I read your latest deep background in the May 21 issue of the American Conservative magazine and it sounds just like me on this show saying there's this steady drumbeat of lies about Iran and it's not very loud anymore.
It was pretty loud there in January and February and the drumbeat has quieted down, but it's just as steady, steady, steady, steady accusations against Iran.
And it's at the point where, golly, this guy, as though he's not rich enough, here's his second plug in one day on my show, Sean Hannity on Fox News can sit here and say, well, we know they're working on a nuclear bomb.
We know they're supplying the bombs that are killing our troops in Iraq.
We know this, we know that, referring to the steady drumbeat of lies in the background.
Well, that's unfortunately the currency in this kind of issue where you sort of create a story and you throw it out there and the story gets picked up and it becomes like it's truth.
And of course, if you go back to the original story, you often discover that it's poorly sourced or that there are inconsistencies in what it says.
And there are a number of media outlets, Fox is only one, I would point to the Times in London as being another and certainly some of the Israeli media, that are not at all shy about putting out stories that basically disappear after they come out because essentially there was no substance to them.
But nevertheless, that story gets out there and it suddenly becomes part of the common wisdom on what's going on.
And you know, it seems like the people on TV get all their news from TV.
They don't even read the papers themselves.
So you don't have that, well, wait a minute, let me ask a follow up question.
It doesn't come.
I'm reading it even in the New York Times, even David Sanger in the New York Times admitted that for Iran to build a nuclear weapon, they'd have to kick the IAEA out of the country and basically tell the whole world, we're building a nuclear weapon now.
There's no way to do it.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And we've gotten away from the fundamental point here.
You know, this all started out, Iran was a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, still is.
And Iran had a perfect right to develop nuclear energy.
And it's kind of like we got into the middle of this, acting really on behalf of the Israelis, I'm sure, and have made this problem, which was a manageable problem, into a monster.
And if I were Iran, I'd certainly be developing a nuclear weapon now.
It's a dangerous neighborhood, and the United States and Israel are both running it.
So it kind of, you know, we kind of, again, let's put ourselves in their shoes for a change and see why they think the way they do and why they react the way they do.
And I think you'll discover that most of these people are reacting in ways that whether they're, you know, ways that we don't like, but ways that are quite rational by any objective standard.
Do you think that if America negotiated in good faith with these people and said, hey, look, just as long as you stay a member of the non-proliferation treaty, as long as you let the IAEA inspectors have their carte blanche like you've been letting them have for four years, and as long as you never enrich above 3.5%, go right ahead, do you think that that would dissuade them from building a nuclear bomb or they would just use that technological progress on the way to go ahead and make a bomb anyway?
Well, to put it in the current context, I don't think it would make much sense to say that now, it's too late.
But I think if we had said it a few years back, it might have made a difference.
And I think it might have made even a difference in terms of what kind of politicians the Iranians have been electing.
Ahmadinejad basically represents a conservative constituency that does very well when the United States is playing the nasty.
And if you stop playing that role of the heavy, Ahmadinejad and a lot of his supporters really don't have much support.
So there are a hundred ways to look at all these issues.
And my general perspective as an intelligence officer, when I was working overseas, where I had to meet with all kinds of people with all kinds of agendas and try to get them to help the United States, even if they hated the United States, I am firmly convinced you can deal with anybody and you should deal with everybody.
And the world would be a much better place if the United States, instead of throwing its muscle around, would be observing that truism, I think.
We're almost out of time here.
But if I can keep you on just a couple more minutes, I want to get specific about America's covert actions inside Iran, I'm sure you saw the headline today from Brian Ross at ABC News who I guess is following up on a report that he did a month or so ago.
I look at the news stories about the airstrikes, I talked with Wayne White about the plans he's seen for 1,500 sorties and that kind of thing.
And then I see these different reports by Brian Ross and Seymour Hersh and others about America financing and arming terrorist groups inside Iran.
And I get the feeling that what we're talking about here is kind of a Bay of Pigs thing where they're supposed to do some sort of internal coup d'etat while Bush provides the air cuff or something like that.
I'm not sure what the intention is.
I think we're actually confusing a couple of different issues here in his story.
The CIA finding, I believe, is not exactly some of the operations that have already been taking place inside Iran.
I think a lot of those are being run by the military.
The advantage of running things by the military for the Bush administration is that you don't need a finding.
See, a finding has to be reviewed with the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.
It becomes kind of a public thing in a way.
And therefore, the Bush administration is reluctant to do findings.
The CIA has already, of course, been operating covert action programs against Iran, no question about it.
And I think what you're seeing here is an indication that there are going to be more ways of pressuring Iran through support of dissident groups that are not necessarily armed groups, but I'm talking about some of the Iranian groups that are more political.
That's what the CIA is better at.
And I think you're going to see more pressure on Iran, both from State Department and from CIA, to get countries to cut economic relations with Iran and to not fund development programs there and that sort of thing.
So I think you're going to see a lot of that kind of thing.
Most of the other stuff that is more intrusive and is more inflammatory, I think, is being run by the military without findings.
So that they don't have to tell the Senate Intelligence Committee about it.
They don't have to tell anybody.
And now, one more thing.
I'm reading about this battle going on in Lebanon.
And I thought, wait a minute, Fatah al-Islam.
The Lebanese army is fighting this group, Fatah al-Islam.
Where have I heard that name before?
So I typed in Fatah al-Islam and Hirsch.
And of course, it was the Redirection.
America, according to Seymour Hirsch, from his article, I believe, in March, March 5th, America's backing Fatah al-Islam, an Al Qaeda-tied group, against Hezbollah.
And now, this is the group that the Lebanese government that we're also backing is fighting.
What's going on there?
That's a good question, and actually, I'm trying to figure that one out even as we speak.
You're absolutely correct, Fatah al-Islam is a group that was backed by Saudi Arabia in terms of funding and training at the behest of Dick Cheney.
And the idea was to set up a Sunni kind of militia to counter Hezbollah.
You probably noted in the media yesterday that Hezbollah is supporting the Lebanese government's efforts to root this group out.
And that should tell you everything you need to know.
And yeah, the fact is, it's a funny kind of turnaround.
You get people pouring in money and supporting these groups, and you don't really control them.
And I don't know what the exact trigger was for the Lebanese army to turn on the group.
Perhaps the fact that they are indeed linked with Al Qaeda meant that the American and Saudi paymasters in this got a little cold feet or something.
I don't know.
But clearly, this is a group that was supported against Hezbollah by the U.S. and the Saudis, and now is suddenly on the outs and is being exterminated as we speak.
And it's an interesting story.
Wow.
So isn't it far past time for the American people to stop letting Dick Cheney make policy?
I mean, what the hell is going on here?
He's got us back in Al Qaeda, guys, in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which is some other country's enemy, not ours.
Well, I would have to ask you why the American public re-elected George Bush and Dick Cheney coming along with him.
I mean, I don't understand it.
These people were making bad enough policy even before they were re-elected.
So I don't know, sure.
But Cheney is not acting in a vacuum.
Cheney is expressing the wishes of the White House.
And TV says, they hate us, they hate us.
And so that's basically the level of discourse that is going on in public, you know, other than anti-war radio and a couple other places.
You know, there is no, hey, let's parse this for a minute, why is America backing Al Qaeda against Hezbollah?
I mean, what?
Yeah.
Well, I would say they do hate us, but we made them hate us, unfortunately.
A lot of them do hate us now.
But that doesn't mean that they're going to come over here and eliminate our ability to go to the internet and look at pornography.
Yeah.
And now, I just, I want to end this interview on the most important note that you made, and reinforce it.
That the plans, your information, your best information is that the plans for an air assault on Iran include the possible use of nuclear weapons, A, to hit their underground facilities such as Natanz, and B, to make sure that they don't send human waves into Iraq against American soldiers, basically.
Right.
Essentially to use as a deterrent to tell them that there is a line beyond which they cannot go.
Yeah.
And also using tactical nuclear weapons to make sure that if they hit these nuclear facilities, that they really do destroy them.
This is some kind of major revolution in terms of military doctrine, isn't it?
Using nuclear weapons, that's the ultimate taboo since World War II, isn't it?
Yeah, it is the ultimate taboo, and it's a door that no one really wants to open.
And I think particularly the generals don't want to open it, but it may be the White House that perceives this as being an option that has to...
You know, I hate this expression, we have to keep all options on the table.
This is an expression that was coined by AIPAC, the Israeli obby, and it's meant to be the ultimate answer to any question, that when we're dealing with Iran, we have to have all options on the table.
And this is a phrase that's been basically picked up by the White House and their press spokesman and others to justify not having to come up with an answer.
Well, you keep the heat on them, and we'll keep doing the same here.
Okay.
Yeah, we sure will.
I mean, this is a situation that we all have to do whatever we can, and I think that it's imperative for us as American citizens to make our voices heard at this time, otherwise we're going to have another war.
Yep.
All right, everybody, Philip Girall, the former CIA officer, partner in Canada's Strouro Associates, contributing editor to the American Conservative magazine, and a regular columnist at antiwar.com.
Thanks again for coming on the show, Phil.
Thank you, Scott.
