Alright folks, welcome back to Anti-War Radio.
Our guest today is Philip Giraldi.
He's a former CIA and DIA officer and writes for us at antiwar.com.
Smoke and Mirrors is the name of his column.
He also writes for the Huffington Post, contributing editor at the American Conservative magazine, and a partner in Canister or Associates.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing, Scott?
I'm doing great.
How are you?
Alright.
It's been a while since we talked on the show.
And help me out.
I know you were stationed in Turkey when you were a CIA man.
What years?
I was during the 1980s.
I spent three years in Istanbul.
And you speak Turkish, right?
I speak Turkish and I still have a lot of connections in the Turkish diplomatic community that are friends.
Alright, now, all hell's breaking loose as far as I know.
As far as I can tell, it seems like it's about to in the Kurdistan region, which includes part of Turkey.
And this is just another consequence, of course, of the American invasion and the toppling of the Ba'athists in Iraq.
And I guess it's been a powder keg quietly smoking most of this time.
But it seems like the fight for Kurdish independence is about to break out.
And the Turks aren't going to want to go along with that, nor the Iranians.
And I'm curious as to who you think is going to get the knife in the back this time.
Is it going to be the Turks or is it going to be the Kurds that get the knife in the back from the Republicans?
Well, you know, it's a complicated history of the region.
The Kurds have had nationalist aspirations ever since the 1920s, when the Ottoman Empire broke up.
And there are Kurdish majorities in parts of Syria, Iran, as you correctly note, and also in Turkey, and also in Syria.
And the breakup of Iraq, which is taking place, obviously has fueled again these sentiments towards creating a Kurdish nation, which will be made up of the Kurdish majorities in those four contiguous countries.
And so we've been supporting, the Americans have been supporting, the Kurds have been our best friends in the Iraq war this whole time, but the Turks have been our allies in NATO since the end of the Second World War.
Yeah, that's right.
And if it comes to a fight, I mean, there's no question who's going to win, it's going to be the Turks.
But the fact is that the United States basically has acquiesced with the terrorist group, the PKK, operating out of Iraq against the Turks.
And when I talk to American friends, I always say, you know, an analogy to this would be if we had terrorists operating out of Mexico or Canada who were coming across the border and killing 50 of our soldiers and numerous civilians, what would the United States do?
The analogies are never exact, but the fact is that the Turks have been on the receiving end of terrorism, a terrorist group that we recognize as a terrorist group, and we've promised on numerous occasions to do something about it and have done absolutely nothing.
Well, something tells me that the reason the American government's going along with the PKK is because they have something to do with terrorist attacks against the Iranians, and we like that.
There's a lot to say for that argument.
There's another terrorist group that is active in Iran, it's called PAYAK, or PAYJAK, there are a couple of different acronyms for it, and it's basically a sister organization of the PKK, and a lot of the PKK guerrillas go from one group to the other.
Dick Cheney, of course, it's funny how his name keeps coming up, and his buddies are basically supporting this group to stage attacks inside Iran, so they don't want to mess with the arrangement as it currently exists.
And so, well, let me get this straight then.
America's supporting the Kurdish factions, the Kurdish parts of the government in Iraq and so forth, they're also helping this terrorist group, PAYAK slash PKK, same difference, in Iran, and then the blowback is coming back against our friends, the Turks, to the north.
That's exactly what's happening.
The United States has a very, at least under this administration, has a very selective vision on who constitutes a terrorist.
It's basically if someone's attacking us, that makes them a terrorist, and we exercise the right of going after them and killing them no matter where they are, no matter what they're doing.
And it's, to a limited extent, also true in terms of terrorists that are attacking Israel.
But anyone else, it seems that, you know, today they're terrorists, tomorrow they're friends.
It's a curious kind of mindset.
And the Turks are not idiots, and they realize that the United States is playing an extremely hypocritical game here to the extent that Turkey is the one country in the Middle East where we are viewed least favorably right now, and back five years ago, we were viewed most favorably.
So figure it out.
Well, now, how dangerous is the PKK to the long-term future of Turkey?
If I remember right, and I really didn't study this in depth, but if I remember right, in the 1990s, Bill Clinton was giving the Turks, well, American taxpayers were dumping Lockheed product on Turkey to kill the Kurds with to put down an insurrection that lasted for years in the 1990s, right?
Well, actually, the insurrection has been going on since 1984, that there's been an active Kurdish terrorist threat against Turkey.
And in those 20 years or so, the threat at various times has gone up and gone down.
There was, in fact, a truce in effect up until about, oh, a little over a year ago, and then the PKK declared that they were going to become active again.
So there have been ebbs and flows in this, and sure, the United States government, with Turkey as a NATO ally, has supplied weapons to Turkey that have been used against the Kurdish terrorists.
So is it right that the PKK at this point is basically trying to get a reaction out of the Turks and try to get Turkey to invade Kurdistan?
Yeah, I think that's a safe bet.
Actually, to a certain extent, the Turks are boxed into a corner.
The public opinion in Turkey is very strongly in favor of going into northern Iraq to stop the terrorist problem.
The Turkish generals realize that that really is not a good solution, because they've tried it before and it doesn't really work.
The terrorists just go into Iran or they go into Syria or they go farther south in Iraq to get away from the Turkish army, and when the Turkish army leaves, they come back.
So they know it's not a good solution, and politically, it would be very bad for the government in Ankara, because the government in Ankara very much wants to get into the European Union, and this would be something that would be exploited by the people who are anti-Turkish to say that Turkey has invaded a neighbor.
So there are a lot of issues here, and the Turkish government is obviously in a difficult place.
The terrorists would very much like the Turkish army to invade.
I saw one headline where the Iranians were, for intents and purposes, begging the Turks, don't fall for it, it's a trap.
Take the hit, don't invade.
Yeah, the Iranian foreign minister was in Ankara a few days ago, and that's exactly what he kind of said.
He used very ambiguous language, saying, yeah, we support your fight against terrorists, but then he kind of tapered off into a whole bunch of sentences that could be read in a number of different ways.
Now, how dangerous is the PKK?
If they're the vanguard of the Kurdish revolution or resistance or whatever, are they actually anywhere near the capability of breaking off part of Turkey and creating an independent Kurdistan?
No, they're not really, but you know, history has a way of turning things around.
The big fear of the Turks is that the Kurdish region in Iraq will become an autonomous region, you know, one step down from an independent government, and will control a lot of the Iraqi oil supplies that are in the region of Kirkuk.
And this is actually happening.
The Kurds in that area have been forcing the Turks, there are ethnic Turks inside Iraq, many of whom are around Kirkuk, and also Arabs, ethnic Arabs, they're forcing them out of the Kirkuk region so that they'll have an absolute majority and will basically be able to take it over.
And with that engine of oil revenue, there is a legitimate fear that the Kurds will be able to reconstitute some kind of state at some point, and bear in mind that by some estimates, 25% of the Turkish population might be Kurdish, and they're all concentrated in the southwestern region.
So there's quite a heavy concentration, and I gather this is also paralleled in the situation in neighboring Iran and also in Syria.
Yeah, I was just going to say, the Syrians have quite a big population, and they're obviously very concerned.
What's their relationship like as far as Turkey goes?
Are they trying to get along with Turkey and fighting against these guys?
Well, there are a couple questions there.
The Syrians have had strained relations with the Turks for a long time, but that said, in the last five or six years, largely in response to American initiatives in the region, the Syrians and the Turks have become a lot closer, and I would say the relationship now is very friendly.
The same thing is true, obviously, with Iran, and all the countries in the region recognize that they have a common problem, or they have two common problems, one of which is the Kurds and the other one of which is the United States' presence in the region, which has been destabilizing.
You talk about America's shifting definitions of terrorism.
I just saw a guy in New York, and the Bronx was convicted of terrorism for a gang shooting, and yet B. Jack and the PKK, they're terrorists maybe when they attack the Turks, but not when they attack the Iranians.
And I know you've written before about the Mujahideen al-Khalq.
That's another terrorist group that America supports against Iran, right?
That's right, yeah.
Well, tell us about the Mujahideen al-Khalq.
Who are these guys?
Well, Mujahideen al-Khalq is basically a secular group, basically Marxist.
They were supported by Saddam Hussein, of all people, because he was kind of keeping them as a reserve to give problems to the Iranian government if he had to do that.
And the Pentagon, anyway, has more or less adopted this group and protects it.
The guerrillas are in a camp just north of Baghdad, and they're protected by U.S. armed forces, and there are lots of reports that they've been active on behalf of the Pentagon, staging information collection raids and other attacks inside Iran.
Other attacks, as in violence or just information collection?
Violence has been alleged.
Obviously, they're an armed group, and there have been a number of attacks inside Iranian territory carried out by various groups that appear to be supported by the United States and possibly Britain.
And they're just one of them.
There are Arab separatists who, down in the southern region, have apparently carried out attacks, and the United States has also supported attacks out of Afghanistan by Baluchi separatists.
Okay, now, one or the other of those is the group Jundala?
Yeah, Jundala is the group carrying out the attacks in Baluchistan.
And what are the Arab groups in Iran that you're talking about?
There are some Arab groups.
There's a part of Iran that I read across from where Basra is on the Persian Gulf that is majority Arab ethnic.
And there's been a number of small groups that have sought to either unite that part of Iran with Iraq or to have independence because they're Arab.
In fact, I don't know the names of any of the groups involved, but there are a number of small groups that have staged attacks against Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Now, is this a deliberate strategy to try to break Persia up into warring ethnic factions the way we've done in Iraq, or it's just an attempt to weaken the regime at whatever cost?
Yeah, I think it's the latter.
I think it's a question of, you know, if you're staging armed attacks against security forces and civilians in these areas, you're destabilizing the situation for the central government in Tehran and you're creating problems for them.
I think that's the mentality.
None of these groups have any capability of actually taking anything over or overthrowing anybody.
It's a mentality of my friends' friends and my enemies' enemies and playing that out in terms of trying to create as many problems as possible for Iran.
This is always so confusing to me because it seems like any group of egghead analyst types anywhere in the world, the neo-cons would be the ones who understand that when you create conflict like that within a state that the government gains from that.
That the people rally around the state, let the state get away with more rather than actually destabilizing things.
It's the reaction from the destabilization that's the real effect.
Yeah, you're right, and that's the funny thing, because they don't seem to understand that.
You and I understand it, and most people would understand it just the way you explained it.
In fact, as I'm sure you're aware, people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he gets stronger every time he's subjected to abuse by the U.S. media or attacked at Columbia University or things like that.
If the neo-cons were perhaps a bit smarter, they would try to deal with these people in a reasonable and measured way, and when these people are saying things that is utter nonsense, people would realize that.
But instead, they go for the jugular, and when they do that, they rally support around them.
You know, I had Gareth Porter on the show yesterday, and he's got a new article based on his conversations with Hillary Mann, the former National Security Council staffer.
And she reports to him that the war party, the neo-cons, the vice president's office, those guys, refused to accept the fact that their backing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution and the Dawa party had, in effect, strengthened the Iranian position, that they refused to accept this truth until at least halfway through 2005.
Phil?
You know, that's quite amazing, because everybody knew anybody was following the situation, knew that those people were basically, at that point, surrogates for Iran, and most of their leaders had been more or less raised in Iran and nurtured by it.
And yeah, it's astonishing how people who pretend to be as smart as the neo-cons pretend to be can be so stupid.
And well, I was reminded yesterday when I was talking with Gareth that it was about halfway through 2005 when you reported in the American Conservative magazine that Cheney had ordered the Strategic Air Command to start drawing up plans to bomb that country.
That's right, yeah.
This has been going on for a long time.
I'm doing for Andy Warr next week an article on Senator Lieberman, and he's basically been calling for regime change for about seven years now.
So there are people out there, I guess they have a longer vision on these things, and have been wanting to go after Iran.
I guess Iraq was a bit of a diversion, but Iran has been the principal target for a long time.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm talking with Philip Giraldi, your former CIA guy.
I know you've been watching this march to war with Iran very closely.
Is that, in fact, what it is, a march to war with Iran?
Are we headed towards starting another war here?
Yeah, I think we are, unfortunately.
I hate to say that, and I think if there's been a delay in this, it's been basically because there's been a lot of negative coverage coming from people like yourself and myself and others who see this agenda as a catastrophe for the U.S.
I had a chat with a CIA analyst who is closely connected to some people who are still working within the government, and the predictions there are 75%, 85%, 95% that there is going to be a war with Iran within the next nine months or so.
Okay, now here's the thing.
Persia's bigger than Texas.
It's mountains like Colorado.
I saw Colonel Wilkerson on the Stephen Colbert show last night saying the army will be broken one year from now, that there are short 25,000 captains, or maybe it was 15,000 captains or something.
So the military's broken.
There's no way they can do a land invasion of Persia.
Forget about it.
So explain to me, Phil, how even a neocon thinks that bombing Iran is going to lead to a regime change.
Don't you have to have tanks on the ground and Baghdad Bob standing there denying that his capital city has just fallen in order to have a regime change in Persia?
Yeah, I think that's true, but I don't think anyone is actually envisioning a land invasion anymore, and basically what they're thinking of is a severe enough air and sea assault would have a couple of effects.
It would first of all, of course, if not destroy the Iranian nuclear program, at least it would set it back a number of years.
And secondly, it would destroy Iran's conventional military capabilities to interfere in a place like Iraq.
So that's the two things they're looking at.
In terms of regime change, I think some of them are saying that, and I think if you, Norman Pot Horitz for one, I think Irving Kristol for another, I think are kind of saying that this will come about again.
But that's not the general neocon line.
I think they basically hope that a severe bombing will create some kind of revolution which will throw the mullahs out.
I think that's not a serious possibility.
So this whole time, the nuclear program, the EFPs being used against our soldiers in Iraq and so forth, have all really been red herrings, been the excuses to mount a regime change, and now they're going to settle for bombing the excuses and not getting a regime change?
Yeah, I think that's what we're looking at.
This has all always been about regime change.
I think that there is a consensus at any event that Iran is quite a ways away from a nuclear weapon, if it really intends to get one at all.
And Iran, basically, all of the stories about killing US troops, all of these things, if you trace the stories back, as I have done, you will see that they come from common sources, that there's very often little evidence to support what's being said, and the stories are just kind of dropped there in a propaganda way.
Now, the average American, the average European, probably, seeing these stories and everything, has come to believe that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and that Iran is basically a destabilizing force.
But actually, the evidence for any of that is very, very thin.
Well, I think you'd probably even make the opposite case, right?
Well, I think you can.
I think it's probably not safe to go too far in trusting these people, because they have their own agendas and they have secret programs, I'm sure, and they have things that they intend to do.
Now, the government, the mullahs in Iran, are not exactly in that strong a position.
The people basically don't support the government very strongly.
They, in particular, don't support their president, hardly at all.
So they're kind of on thin ice, too.
They have a lot of issues that they have to deal with.
They're not basically in a position to interfere in other places, and for them, it's better to have stability in the Persian Gulf region than it is to have chaos.
And they are allies with the Iraqi government, are they not?
Yeah, this is one of the funniest things.
I mean, we're accusing them of destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, and of supplying weapons to the terrorists and things like that.
And yet, the Afghan and the Iraqi governments have excellent diplomatic and other relations with Tehran.
So, you know, kind of go figure.
You know, it's funny, because it's so easy to conclude the most nefarious of motives when you see the American government deliberately backing the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawa Party, and marginalizing Mu'tadha Sadr, the nationalist, who he's no angel by any stretch, but at least he's, you know, for creating a multi-ethnic coalition government.
They marginalize him, they back the Iranians, and then they accuse the Iranians of being the destabilizing force.
It seems to me like it's just outright lies, and yet, something in my head now, it seems the more I learn about this, I think that maybe the people that run the government really know that much less about the situation in Iraq than I do.
Well, you keep hearing that when people, I've heard certainly that when intelligence analysts have gone in to brief the President and his staff, they usually find that there is a lot of ignorance in terms of the feedback they're getting.
And also, the other thing is that people like Cheney are agenda-driven.
They're not fact-driven.
They're not interested in that kind of information.
Just for you and your listeners, I have heard yesterday that, do you know what the NIE is, the National Intelligence Estimate?
Well, they've been doing one on Iran for the last year and a half, you've probably heard.
Yeah, we've been waiting for it.
Well, you're going to be waiting a while longer.
Apparently, they're having problems that appear to be almost insurmountable in terms of producing a document that the White House would be happy with, because the intelligence analysts, having been burned once over Iraq, are now very goosey about making judgments on things where they feel the evidence doesn't support it.
And the evidence of Iran having a nuclear weapons program apparently is not there, and also the evidence for Iran interfering actively in either Afghanistan or Iraq or both is not there either.
And yet the White House, of course, wants to see that.
So the document is kind of hung up in the process.
That's interesting.
I have to tell you, if I was Dick Cheney, agenda-driven, I would still want to know what the facts were so I could drive my agenda in a way that's going to work for me.
It sounds like these people have horse blinders on.
Well, yeah, but look at it the other way.
The other way is if the facts don't support your agenda, no matter how you twist them, you're not going to want to hear them.
We're in a funny situation now where reality doesn't seem to impact on policy at all.
And Condoleezza Rice is in Ankara.
I think she arrives tonight, or is probably there already, and will be talking to the Turkish government tomorrow prior to the prime minister going over to see Bush next week.
But Rice has nothing to offer the Turks anymore.
There's nothing she can do.
There's nothing she can say.
And America has no credibility anywhere in the Middle East in particular, and hardly anywhere in the world anymore.
The U.S. by any measure had incredible influence, incredible capabilities, lots of doors open back six years ago.
And all of that equity has just been blown out the window.
Yeah, and now you brought up Condoleezza Rice.
Her one triumph, I guess, was when Dick Cheney was out of town.
She convinced George Bush to let her go to North Korea, or let her send her munchkin to go to North Korea and work out a deal, and she did.
And every time I open the paper, I read John Bolton, the former unconfirmed ambassador to the United Nations, doing everything he can to accuse Rice of, you know, he uses every word but treason, basically, and making a deal with the North Koreans.
Are the neocons going to be successful in undermining this one diplomatic triumph?
No, I don't think they will be, because it's gone too far, and I think that the implementation phase is taking place right now, and it will continue.
It's interesting to note, however, that they are beating on this drum, and I think one of the substories to the Israeli attack on Syria back in September is that the attempted implication of North Korea in this story.
And that has neocon fingerprints all over it.
Well, now, what did happen there?
Because it seemed at first that whatever it was had nothing to do with nuclear anything, and now the New York Times is publishing these satellite photos saying, oh, see, it's right next to a river like they would need for coolant, and it must have been some sort of secret nuclear program.
What do you know about it, Phil?
Well, I don't know for a fact that this was not any kind of attempt to build a reactor, but there's no evidence for it.
The U.S. intelligence community believes that the whole nuclear story is some kind of fraud that's been concocted for various reasons.
If you read the New York Times story, there have been a number of stories from the New York Times, read it carefully, you will see that even the New York Times, which of course was Judith Miller's publication, caveats everything it says.
It says that a picture appears to be, or a picture might be, or experts have concluded that this could be, it's all very, very much a matter of opinion and a matter of conjecture.
And I have heard that the reason the White House is refusing to talk about it at all, and the Israelis have basically had a lid on it too, is the fact that it was a colossal screw-up basically by the Israelis and the Israeli intelligence service, but that the White House bought into the bill of goods and there was some U.S. assistance to this operation, and it just turned out to be a colossal screw-up that what they did and what they hit and everything turned out to be completely wrong.
And they're basically trying to make the story go away by letting people speculate about what it might have been.
But I think the consensus view certainly in the intelligence community is that the Syrians have no capability of developing any kind of nuclear program, and that very much was not what this was all about.
Well, I talked with the nuclear expert from, I forget which foundation now, Joseph Cirincione, and that's what he said as well, was that Syria's nuclear program is the kind of thing you'd find at UT or something, and it's completely safeguarded by the IAEA.
Right, and Syria, unlike Israel, is another signatory of the NPT, and I had an interesting email from a friend of mine who's in the intelligence business who yesterday said, well, you know, if Syria had been playing around with nuclear development program, all the United States had to do was go to the IAEA and lodge a complaint, and the IAEA would have inspectors in there at this site within 24 hours.
So he said, why did they do that?
Because of course the reason is that the whole story is a fiction.
And do you see this as sort of a prelude to a bombing of Iran and Syria?
Well, the one story that I find credible is that both Syria and Iran have missile defense, or have anti-aircraft systems, the defense systems that were installed by the Russians recently, and the Israelis and the United States might have had a serious interest in trying to tweak these systems to see how they react and what the telemetries are and how the system works.
That's been a very plausible account for me ever since the incident took place.
The other story that came out of Laura Rosen in the Los Angeles Times was that this was a missile dump with technologies that were being used, developmental technologies that were being provided by the North Koreans.
I don't know how true that is, and I'm not sure what her sources are, but certainly that's a more plausible account than the allegation that it was a nuclear site.
And now people talk about war with Iran all the time, but I think it sort of goes without saying and usually is left unsaid that any war with Iran includes a war with Syria at the same time.
Is that your understanding?
Well, I would even take it farther.
I would say a war with Iran is going to become a regional war very quickly, and it would include almost everyone, which is why I think the Saudis and Kuwaitis and people like that are terrified too.
There are a lot of Shiites in all those countries.
Another attack, a third attack by the U.S. on a Muslim country could, in my opinion, really ignite a conflagration that we would not be able to put out.
Well, can you give us some examples of what you think likely consequences would be?
There are obviously going to be consequences to energy supplies for the rest of the world.
A third of the world's energy goes through the Persian Gulf region.
That would be disrupted or indeed stopped, depending on how this thing played out.
The situation I know you have been following in Pakistan is on a knife's edge, and Pakistan, of course, is a nuclear power.
That could kind of break up in a way with war in Iran that would lead to consequences in Pakistan.
I'm not saying necessarily a fundamentalist government or anything like that, but maybe a hardcore military regime that would have other agendas.
Afghanistan, as I'm sure you're also following, is politically very unstable.
There are a lot of potential consequences and potential ways that these things will play out that are definitely not in the American interest.
And obviously the biggest issue would be if you attack Iran, what happens in Iraq and the vulnerability of U.S. troops there.
So there are a lot of things that could happen.
What are we to make of the fact that we see people like James Baker and Zbigniew Brzezinski talking like you and saying, this is to be avoided at all costs?
It's in the news today.
Senator Hagel sent a letter to George Bush begging him to please be reasonable.
And we see former presidential candidate Gary Hart an open letter to the government in Iran, please don't do anything stupid and give them an excuse.
What does it mean when we have all these people who would seemingly be the establishment's voice opposing this and the White House and the vice president's office marching right ahead?
Well, I don't have a good answer to that.
You know, I would say, and you could add Jimmy Carter, obviously, to that, too.
And a bunch of ex secretaries of state, apart from the more prominent ones.
The only one that seems to be on board a lot of this stuff is Kissinger.
And I'm skeptical of where he comes from anyway.
But the fact is that the White House is not listening.
What's evident to me and you and Zbigniew Brzezinski and Baker is clearly not evident to the White House.
The White House is being ideologically driven on this subject.
And there's that horrible thought that there is a kind of religious fervor, at least to George Bush's view of this, a messianic view of things, that is kind of scary.
Didn't Kucinich two days ago suggest that it might be time to consider if the president is mentally well balanced?
Oh, I missed that, but it is a good question.
Of course, my recommendation is that the president and vice president be removed from power immediately, even if the cabinet has to do it under the 24th Amendment or whichever it was.
But, you know, that's just me.
Apparently, me and Kucinich, I guess.
Tell me this.
You're a former CIA guy, Phil Giraldi.
Is waterboarding torture?
Absolutely.
I think that if you go to the Geneva Conventions, which most people rely on as the last word or the ultimate authority in terms of what is torture, there's no question about that.
Simulating the drowning of someone is torture.
So how does waterboarding work for people who've heard the word but don't know what it really means?
Well, basically, you take someone, you tie him to a board, you tip his head into water until he's just about dead, and then you pull him out just before he has reached the point where he would die.
And then you repeat the process as long as it takes for him to tell you what he wants to know, what you want to know.
Well, so what about the idea that this is merely an aggressive interrogation technique and that that's different than torture?
Well, there have been a number of legal judgments on this, and I think most of the legal judgments that have been made, in fact, I would refer you to the European Court of Human Rights and other bodies that have looked into these matters, was when the British were interrogating IRA prisoners.
And it was determined at that time that you could do things like stressing individuals, you could make them stand for a long time, or you could keep a light on in their cell, or you could do things that are physically exhausting, like standing on one foot, or interrogating someone for 24 hours at a time without any breaks.
That kind of thing they considered to be an acceptable interrogation technique, but anything that physically damages the individual or hurts the individual is torture.
Well, what are some of the consequences of America having a policy that says torture is this but it's not that, go ahead and waterboard them?
Well, I think the consequences are mostly, first of all, I don't think the administration can demonstrate that the torture has actually ever produced anything that has saved American lives or anybody's lives.
So I would say in that sense it's ineffective.
But the thing is, I think the ultimate bottom line on this is a moral issue.
It's a moral issue that the United States, which was founded on principle, is basically abandoning that principle or those principles in terms of inhuman treatment of prisoners and that sort of thing.
These are war crimes.
And I personally would very much like to see people like George Bush and Dick Cheney someday standing up in front of a tribunal like at Nuremberg and explaining what they did.
I don't expect that ever to happen.
But these are war crimes and torturing people is bad for the country that does it.
It's bad for the organization that carries it out like the CIA.
And it's bad for the individuals, the poor bastards that actually have to do it.
This is immoral and it's wrong.
All right.
Now, if I can keep you just a few more minutes, and we don't have to go too far into this, but I just want sort of a bookend answer for this one.
Do you think that America should withdraw from Iraq more or less immediately?
Do we need to stay?
We broke it.
We bought it.
We have to make sure things are better before we go.
Or should we just pack up and go, Phil Giraldi?
Well, I don't have a good answer to that one.
All my inclinations are to say that the situation in Iraq will not get better as a result of our presence.
So I believe that it probably is the best thing just to go.
That said, if one could plausibly make a case that the U.S. presence there would actually improve the situation, and do it with real evidence, not just kind of allegations leaked to The New York Times, I would say then that's a case that we have to consider.
So I would say that it really depends on making a good assessment of what the situation in Iraq really is, and whether any of it is salvageable by a continued American presence.
But as far as you know now, it is not?
It doesn't seem to me it is, and certainly many sources that I trust, people like Juan Cole, who follow the situation very closely and have the foreign languages that are relevant to the area, are saying that it does not seem that the security situation is improving.
Well, and security situation aside, what really counts is the politics, right?
Whether they really do form a coalition government or whether they don't.
Yeah, I said security situation, but obviously I was using that as kind of a rubric for other things.
The security situation is very much dependent on the politics, and politics are the big issue, and it seems to be the area that we can't affect at all.
All right, well, I really appreciate your time, everybody.
Philip Giraldi, he writes for the American Conservative magazine, for Antiwar.com, for the Huffington Post, and what's that other website that I always see your great articles on?
Oh yeah, that's yours.
No, no, I said Antiwar.com, the other one.
Well, I write on Huffington and also for the American Conservative.
No, no, I said that one, too.
There's the other one.
Some Foundation, the page is all red, white, and blue.
The Nixon, the national interest.
The national interest, that's the one I couldn't think of.
He also writes for the National Interest Survey.
And you can find all the rights at Antiwar.com/Giraldi.
Thanks a lot, Phil, appreciate it.
Okay, thanks, Scott.
