I'm not a cool guy anymore, it's like it ever was before.
I took a look at all the signs, they're rolling over in my mind.
Alright everybody, welcome back to the show, Anti-War Radio.
Hey, check out who it is, it's Phil Weiss from the Mondo Weiss blog, MondoWeiss.net.
Welcome back to the show, Phil, how are you doing?
I'm good, and yourself?
I'm doing great, man, appreciate you joining us today.
Yeah, well, it's baking out here.
Yeah, well it's funny, it's a kind of cool rainy day in Los Angeles today.
I keep hearing the top of the hour news about this heat wave taking over the rest of the country.
Yeah, we can't handle it out here.
It's crazy.
Alright, well.
Boy, I got lots of things to ask you about.
First of all, well, let me go ahead and ask you this.
I saw on your blog that you noticed the Lawrence Wilkerson interview.
I started calling him Larry and then Lawrence and screwed that up.
Lawrence Wilkerson interview.
I thought it was great.
You know, I mean, the thing I love about Wilkerson is that the further we get out from the disastrous decision to invade Iraq, the more he's coming clean about, or the more he's coming out about.
And you know that this guy shares our take on the Israel agenda of this war.
That that was a very important component of what made us go to war.
And the cause that couldn't say its name.
And he's now being really outspoken about that.
And in this interview with you, you actually fingered Feith and Wormser as basically working for Israel.
And I can't wait for them to respond.
You know, I just can't.
I mean, it comes with his, you know, the clarification he made to you that these guys think that our interests are the same as Israel.
You know, the United States absolutely congruent interests with the state of Israel.
And you know, if you believe that, I mean, it's a delusion.
That's a delusion these neocons were allowed to have.
And you know, you and I were pointing this out years ago that you can't conflate two nations' interests.
You know, there's no such thing.
So I love it.
I love that interview.
I mean, I think that this is an important part of the conversation.
It doesn't mean you're red baiting.
It means you're asking people about their motivation, you know.
So I'm excited.
Well, and you know, that's one of the things I liked about AntiWar.com.
At first, when I started reading Justin Armando, I thought, boy, has this guy got a chip on his shoulder about Israel.
But then the more I read him, the more I realized why.
And it was because we were being lied into war by Ariel Sharon's office and his adjuncts in America.
And, of course, you know, I think we've talked about before.
A lot of times the American war party is further to the right than the Israeli one.
But in the case of the Iraq war, Bob Dreyfuss wrote about this, agents of influence.
James Bamford wrote about it in his book A Pretext for War.
Julian Borger in The Guardian that they set up their own little office of special plans in Sharon's office to manufacture bogus propaganda in English.
To stovepipe straight into the Pentagon.
And I noticed someone here on your blog in the comments section quotes Karen Katowski talking about, you know, her job was to escort some Israeli generals to go and talk with Doug Fyfe.
But they led the way.
She couldn't keep up with them.
And they just marched right into Doug Fyfe's office, you know, like they own the place.
And so there certainly was, you know, there are different indications, too, that, you know, it wasn't just the neocons here.
It was the Likudniks there who were pushing for this Iraq war.
Yeah.
Well, and there is that push by Sharon, you know, who decided that it was the most important thing.
You know, we got this, you know, but let's go get it.
You know, or this is on the agenda.
This is on the table in the United States.
So let's push it.
And I guess, you know, and Barack was involved, I believe, too, in some of their op-eds and, you know, private conversations, surely, too.
I mean, it's disturbing.
I mean, and that's what I'm, I guess one of the things I find fascinating is how long is it going to take before the mainstream media regard this as a legitimate area for investigation?
Because, you know, one thing that you and I can't really do or it's harder for us to do is, you know, call people up and get them on the phone and query them about this stuff.
And they're not going to respond to me.
But, you know, they'll respond if it's the New York Times or the Washington Post.
And this is a completely legitimate story.
Yeah.
And, of course, it's the kind of thing – it is the kind of deal right now where if you're really interested, you look at the Mondweiss blog, you look at Antiwar.com, you follow the hyperlinks, you find the footnotes, you march down to the bookstore and get James Bamford and you decide to specialize in it.
If not, you never heard of it.
Yeah.
And that's basically the way it is.
I just live in my little universe.
It's kind of alarming to think that's the case.
I get emails from people saying, I'm so glad you're doing this.
And I just think, wow, this stuff is just right out there.
I mean it's right on the table.
I mean how – it doesn't take a genius to find it.
And the idea that there's only a few of us doing it is just a little shocking.
Yeah.
Well, the coolest thing is when you see an actual real conversation about Israel on TV, it just goes to show how insane the usual discussion is.
I'm sure you saw the thing where Glenn Greenwald was on there with – oh, what's his name?
The former prosecutor guy, Spitzer.
Yeah.
And I'm thinking one time Morning Joe was out sick and so it was Queen Noor of Jordan and Pat Buchanan and Mika Brzezinski and – oh, what's his name?
One other guy.
And they just had the most reasonable discussion of Israel for like 40 minutes of Israel and Palestine with no Morning Joe to interrupt with his stupidity.
And no offense, Joe, but, I mean, come on.
And it was really good and it just stood out.
They're like, wow, I can't even believe it.
There's an actual conversation that admits that there's such a thing as an occupation going on on American TV.
Wow.
Neat.
Wow.
I have to check that episode out.
That's great.
The exception that proves the rule, as they say.
Yes, that is the exception.
Although I hear also that the Greenwald-Spitzer conversation was unbelievable or that Greenwald took them apart.
Oh, yeah.
He was great.
He was absolutely great.
When I first moved here to Los Angeles was in January of 2009.
And when I first got here, basically sometimes CNN, they're in over their heads so deep that they just switched the switch over to CNN International.
And they were showing just in a square on the side of the screen footage of all the air raids on the Gaza Strip and white phosphorus bombs going off right there live on CNN International.
And they have a pretty blonde lady, but she actually knows what she's talking about.
She's apparently a real journalist, and she's asking real questions.
And the difference in the standard of journalism between the CNN that the rest of the world sees and the CNN that they show us on any given day is just – it's extraordinary, man.
Yeah.
It really is.
No, I know.
It's like a curtain pulling back a curtain.
Although, you know, I continue to feel it's going to change, you know, and that there's signs of change and positive development.
But, you know, it's a slow process.
Even today, there was an anti-Zionist piece on the Daily Beast blog today, Daily Beast site, by Thaddeus Russell, basically saying, hey, you know, there was ethnic cleansing here, and this is the problem.
These wars, this is a state of permanent war, and it's just what the State Department predicted 60 years ago, that you're only going to establish and maintain this state by force.
Right.
And I actually didn't realize that.
There are a lot of very interesting quotes.
We're featuring that as our spotlight article today against the Daily Beast piece by Thaddeus Russell, where he quotes all Truman's advisors telling him not to recognize Israel.
This is a sand trap you're going to get stuck in here.
Yeah.
And, well, here we are, 2010.
Hang tight, Phil.
We'll be right back.
Everybody, it's Philip Weiss from the Mondo Weiss blog, mondoweiss.net.
You can put the Liberty Radio Network on the air in your area.
Visit broadcast.lrn.fm to learn how.
Broadcast.lrn.fm.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio on the Liberty Radio Network, lrn.fm.
I'm talking with Philip Weiss.
He's the author of the Mondo Weiss blog, The War of Ideas in the Middle East.
That's mondoweiss.net.
Welcome back.
Still there hanging on?
Okay, now, this is the funniest thing I read in a long time.
I usually don't laugh out loud reading the news.
I laugh out loud about other things, but not so much the news reading.
And yet this is hilarious, man.
I can't believe this scoop you got here.
Petraeus' e-mails show generals scheming with journalists to get out pro-Israel storyline.
Tell me all about it, Phil.
Okay, well, you know, I think it involves, are you friends of James Morris?
No, I've been the recipient of his e-mails in the past, though.
I'm a bit familiar.
Okay, so that comes into the story, and we'll get to that.
But you'll remember that last March, Petraeus was going to testify to Congress about, just to the Senate Armed Services Committee, about the status of CENTCOM.
And right ahead of his testimony, Mark Perry reported on Foreign Policy Blog that Petraeus was going to ask that Israel-Palestine be switched from European command to central command, which covers Middle Eastern stuff.
Right now, Israel and Palestine are under the European command, and not under what was Petraeus' command.
And Perry's report said that Petraeus wanted to do this because Israel-Palestine was basically so important to American interests across the Middle East, and that the failure to resolve this conflict is endangering American lives.
And in his actual testimony before the Senate two days later, Petraeus said, yes, this is really a conflict that is fomenting anger across the region.
Well, the funny part about all this is that even as this report went out from Mark Perry about these very realistic statements on Petraeus' part, Petraeus was trying to sort of pull them in a little bit with his neoconservative audience, and even maybe his base, if you think of him as a political character.
And so he was in communication with Max Boot over at Commentary Blog about, let's portray this in a different light.
And so what you see, these emails came to light because Petraeus, through some sort of carelessness, sent along one of the stories on Commentary that he had played a role in.
He sent along this story to an activist whom I know named James Morris, the guy I asked you about.
James Morris, as you indicated, sends out emails to a lot of people.
He's very engaged in this issue.
He has been since I met him five or six years ago.
He has been saying that Israel has played a role in the Iraq war.
And let's get to the bottom of this.
And he plagues journalists and policymakers and anyone who he thinks will listen with his analyses of how Zionists are playing a role in our foreign policy.
And he plagued General Petraeus with his notes, too.
And when I say plagued, I mean it in a good way.
He was bugging him.
And Petraeus sent along a note back to James Morris saying, FYI, this is what I really think, basically.
He responded to this guy.
And he sent this commentary article that he had played a role in.
And at the bottom of the story, he had attacked all his emails.
He didn't realize it, but all his emails with the author of the story, Max Boot, Petraeus had left on his notes.
So not only did James Morris get this story, putting out the official Petraeus line, but James Morris received all the email correspondence between Max Boot and General Petraeus.
And these emails are the most craven things you've ever seen in your life.
Well, hold on one second, because I like the part where you didn't even notice, because these emails are so often and so long.
Like, what are you going to do?
You get a million emails a day.
And then he emailed you back and said, Hey, Mondo Weiss, didn't you ever read that exchange between Petraeus and Boot that I sent you?
Yeah, I mean, James and I are friends.
James first sent me this email in May.
When he got this thing from Petraeus, he sent it along to me in May.
And only last week, and I didn't read it.
I get a lot of emails.
And then last week or so, James said, Hey, Phil, did you ever read Petraeus' email when McChrystal lost his job and Petraeus was replacing him?
And that's when I looked at it, and I couldn't believe what I was reading.
Because, again, Petraeus sends along his private emails under an FYI to James Morris.
Journalists often worry, well, can we use someone's email when you get in touch?
If someone writes something in email, can you quote it?
And I generally don't quote it.
But this is a case where the general, the most important general in the American war effort right now, says FYI to a left-wing activist and includes his own email.
Talk about carelessness.
Oh, yeah, he's got nobody to blame but himself there.
And now here's the thing, too, about this, is that Petraeus, who, you know, I guess he's no Stanley McChrystal in terms of, like, his alpha maleness or whatever.
But he is supposed to be the most heroic general.
And one day he's going to be the commander-in-chief and all these things they say about this guy.
And the whole tone of these emails is not even, don't worry, Max, I'm really good on Israel.
We'll always protect Israel because I'm a big tough guy general and this is my stand.
Instead, he's like a whining little sissy.
Oh, Max, don't be mad at me.
Please tell the Israel lobby not to be mad at me.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
The tone of these is really not, I mean, it's not really befitting.
I mean, and the worst one is when he says to Max, hey, Max, do you think folks would like to know that I had Elie Wiesel and his wife over to my private quarters the other night and I'm going to be giving this speech on the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp.
So it's really, he's basically sucking up to this neocon about the Israel lobby.
Well, yeah, and one of the worst neocons too, Max Boot, the guy that wrote the case for American empire, the guy that in the Wall Street Journal bemoaned that not enough American blood had been shed yet in Afghanistan to bind us all to the war effort.
You know, this guy.
And you know what?
I can speak.
I need to speak for my producer Angela Keaton here when I point out that that's not the worst.
The worst is that Boot responds.
No, it's OK.
Don't worry.
I don't think that's relevant because you're not being accused of being anti-Semitic.
And Petraeus responds, Roger, with an exclamation point and a little smiley face.
That's the worst part of all.
I know, isn't it just like, you think about the dignity of the office, and this guy is sending along a smiley face to a neocon who says not enough blood has, I didn't even know that one about not enough blood has been shed to bind us to the war effort.
Yeah, well, and it's in response to, don't worry, I got you covered.
You know, on the whole, you spoke the truth, but don't worry.
We're going to, you know, smooth things out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's a really, it's an embarrassing moment.
And, you know, again, we owe it to James that he turned this up.
You know, it was through James, you know, endless efforts on this part that, you know, just sending emails to people constantly that, you know, he gets a response from a guy like Petraeus.
Yeah, indeed.
I mean, I never bothered even trying to find out Petraeus' email address.
What's he going to do?
What's he going to do?
Come on my show?
Yeah, and it's not like Petraeus is ever going to email you or me.
But, I mean, another part of this is the, you know, a few weeks later Petraeus received an award from American Enterprise Institute.
And you've got to wonder whether, what Petraeus' game is here.
I mean, how much of, you know, people say that he wants to run for president.
Is he setting himself up with the Israel lobby now in this kind of, you know, patty cake way just to make sure that he gets plenty of contributions?
Yeah, well, he's been talking about running for president for years now.
The first one I remember was an Iraqi politician said, so, you're going to run for president?
And he said, well, not this time.
Talking about 2008.
Wow, wow, wow.
Anyway, hang tight, Phil.
We've got more with Philip Weiss coming up after this, y'all.
Anti-war radio.
Mondoweiss.net.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with Philip Weiss about General Petraeus crawling around on his belly before the Israel lobby and the neoconservative movement in America.
Isn't it hilarious?
It's great.
I'm glad you picked up on it, Scott.
And my wife, who's around here right now, keeps holding her finger out and reminding me that she is the one who told me such a great story.
So I've got to give her a little credit.
Oh, that's good.
Well, I'm happy to hear that.
She gets the credit.
You hear that, everybody?
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
As soon as she saw those emails.
I mean, they are just laughable.
I mean, you look at them, and you think, what?
Just like you're saying, crawling around on his belly.
What is a general doing, you know, sending this kind of, I don't know, friendly little emails to a nobody journalist, you know?
Yeah, you know, man, I wish David Hackworth was alive.
Unfortunately, the Pentagon murdered him with their Agent Blue poison that gave him bladder cancer and killed him.
But if he was around right now, he would be calling out David Petraeus, calling him a perfumed prince and a little sissy.
And it would be, you know, in a contest of military macho, Hackworth would have him.
It would be so great.
That is such a perfect line, a perfumed prince.
I mean, it's...
Yeah, that's what he called Wesley Clark back when Wesley Clark was trying to get us into a war with Russia in 1999.
Wow.
Wow.
That's great.
That's great.
And it rhymes with Petraeus, too, you know, when you're throwing Petraeus.
Yeah.
Boy, and, you know, that name just sounds like a Roman emperor to me.
I can just picture him in a toga commanding his Praetorians to go around killing people and stuff.
Yeah, and he's got that air about him.
But then, you know, then you read these emails, and he's, like, talking about dinner with Elie Wiesel and writing Roger with a little smiley face, and it's just like, oh, my God.
Well, I guess everybody's got to be henpecked by somebody, huh?
You got my number.
Oh, man.
All right.
Well, so...
So, Scott, I just got to ask you, I mean, do you see any signs that this issue is – that the Israel lobby issue is changing?
I mean, I'm always right in the middle of it, like I tell you.
I'm stuck in it.
And so every little thing that happens, I think, is the greatest news ever.
Well, I think if the lobby's reactions to what they see are any indication, then, yeah, we're making progress, because their reactions are getting more and more hysterical and more and more outside the realm of even plausible.
You know, yeah, Ayman al-Zawahiri hired a bunch of mercenaries to bring tricycles to little children in Gaza, whatever.
You know, I don't think anybody in the world believed that.
In fact, I was about to ask you about this leaked Luntz poll.
Majority of Americans don't support the Israeli flotilla raid.
I'm reading this off of the ThinkProgress blog.
Have you seen this?
Yeah, it's great.
Yeah, I saw it.
And now, I mean, this is really – and I was actually just talking with Grant Smith about this on the show in the last hour – he was saying, hey, look, this is showing a real break in the TV monopoly on what Americans believe about things.
And he was saying this is probably what got Joe Lieberman talking about shutting down the internet quick.
It's that, wait a minute, the American people are now able to find out about what's the situation in the West Bank and Gaza from a source other than CNN, BCBS, or whatever it is now.
Yeah, well, that's a great analysis.
I mean, Grant's great, and that's just perfect.
I mean, just the idea that we're sort of – I mean, because, you know, once you break the censorship on this thing, I mean, it's not – it's a black-and-white story.
This is oppression.
This is a story of oppression.
And the only answer they've got in the end is, you did this to the Indians, so we get to do it.
And you've got a point, but this thing's happening before our eyes, and there's 22 countries that are full of, quote-unquote, Indians surrounding them.
So it's just unsustainable.
Yeah, and what about, hey, this is what we did to the Indians.
We've got to stop them, you know?
Yeah, I know.
What about that?
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
That's great.
I mean, it's funny, too, because when I was a kid, everybody – you know, we were taught to feel bad about what happened to the Indians.
And, well, they had this thing called Manifest Destiny Kids, which was this crazy idea that God wanted us to kill everybody and take their property from them.
And everybody feels really bad about it now, and Custer's not so much a hero as we thought he was and whatever.
But, you know, I don't know.
Now I guess maybe we're back to hooray for Custer, you know?
I was saying that to somebody else on the show.
Sorry to be so repetitive.
That's what they want us to do.
I mean, I think, though, going back to the poll, that's great.
It's great information, and it just speaks to the fact that, you know, just too much has happened.
I mean, most of the Democratic Party voters now have a negative view of Israel.
And so this ship, it's the elite who are holding out here.
It's the elite.
It's the congressmen.
It's the mainstream media.
You know, it's just the pundits that want us to believe that Israel is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
And the American people are wiser about that.
So, yeah, I love that poll data.
Well, you know, I think here's one example, too, where, you know, as we proceed a few weeks away from the flotilla raid and all that, you have all this propaganda about the relaxation of the items on the banned list on the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
And yet everybody knows, I think, or at least here's our opportunity to use this Internet technology to point out that it's all about how many trucks are allowed in, not necessarily what all is on the list, cornflakes or not.
It's whether they're allowed to trade or aren't they.
Right.
You know, come on.
I know, like, I mean, all the business, I mean, you've got thousands of businesses in the Gaza Strip that are shut down because they can't get goods.
I mean, it's just crazy.
They can't sell what they're, I mean, it's just, you have students in there that can't travel to fulfill those studies.
I mean, this is like the Warsaw Ghetto in our time.
I mean, I'm not saying the outcome is going to be like the Warsaw Ghetto.
I don't think it's a genocidal impulse, but it's close.
It's a racist effort to, you know, deny these people any freedom.
Well, and outside of the neoconservative movement, what about, you know, you say you're kind of immersed in this discussion there in D.C.
Are you making any progress among the people whose opinion actually matters, you know, in terms of they actually have power and influence to do anything about it?
Well, I guess what's happened, the best sign of this, there is a change going on.
And, you know, the best sign of it is things like, I mean, last time we talked about this Peter Beinart article in the New York Review of Books.
Right.
He is a guy who was the stalwart in the Israel lobby who got presumably thousands of dollars from AIPAC when he was helping AIPAC during the 2008 election.
Who helped Lyons end the war with Iraq.
Yeah, and yeah, one of the guys who got us into the war in Iraq.
And here he is coming out with a big article saying the American Jewish leadership has failed, and it's abandoned liberal values, and we've got to come out against the settlement.
Now, this guy is a Zionist.
He wants to save Israel through this.
But he recognizes that this country is behaving in a neo-fascist way, in some ways in a neo-fascist way, and others in just pure despotic tyranny.
And in his latest article that I saw on the Daily Beast today, he said we have to preserve the possibility of a Zionist democracy.
He knows it's not a reality.
There's no such thing as a Zionist democracy.
He's just trying to preserve that possibility.
But what I'm getting at here is when you have an important writer like Peter Beiner to the Israel lobby itself, breaking away, he's doing that not just on his own.
He's doing that because the base is shifting.
And this is the elite.
This is the American Jewish community, which has played such an important role in controlling the policy here.
Yes, controlling.
I mean, if you look back over the history of this, this is the most powerful community in terms of setting this policy.
And it's beginning to fragment somewhat.
And partly through my efforts as a Jew to say, hey, this is not, don't do this in my name.
And so you see these important Jews like Beiner breaking free, and then you see writers like Thaddeus Russell on Daily Beast today, too.
As I said before, just calling Israel a state of perpetual war.
And he's Jewish, or he's from a Jewish background.
And so I think the moment has arrived in which Jewish liberals are allowed to say to stop calling black white.
This community has been told to call black white forever.
They've been told to say that apartheid, it's great, hey, it's a democracy.
They have taken this order, and just like any other horrible story from George Orwell or Arthur Kessler, they've defended this type of behavior again and again.
Now they're not doing it.
And so that's the great thing that I think is changing.
And when you let young people start to think freely on this, it's just what you were saying about Grant Smith.
If you give people the keys to an understanding and awareness and knowledge about this, then I think the ballgame's over, because it's not a complicated story.
Well, and I guess it begs the question whether the people of Israel can ever snap out of it.
Did you see this thing in Ynet News today where the Israeli judge, this Israeli judge is saying we should learn from Goebbels.
And we should be like the Nazis, the way they disseminated the protocols of the elders of Zion.
And this is exactly what I've been accusing the neocons of for the past few weeks up here, is disseminating the protocols of the elders of Islam, basically.
This conspiracy that says Islam mandates this terrible war to destroy us and from within and all these things, just like the Nazis said about the Jews.
And so I wonder whether the American liberal Jewish establishment that is snapping out of it could ever get their point across to the people of Israel that you guys are spinning off into a black hole here.
I don't know.
They're brutalized.
It's a brutalized, politically brutalized population.
