06/30/09 – Scott Ritter – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, welcome back to Anti-War Radio, it's Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas.
We're also streaming live worldwide on the internet at chaosradioaustin.org and at antiwar.com slash radio.
It's my pleasure, welcome back to the show, Scott Ritter, he's a former UN weapons inspector and is the author of Iraq Confidential and Target Iran and the Art of War for the Peace Movement and all kinds of great books.
He writes for truthdig.com regularly.
Welcome back to the show, Scott, how are you?
I'm doing great.
I appreciate you joining us on the show today.
Thanks for having me.
So let's talk about Iraq first.
This is a war that I know you did everything you could, I was watching in 2002, you did everything you could to try to stop this war and they had it anyway.
According to the papers today, this is really the beginning of the end, the American soldiers are leaving the cities and withdrawing to their bases in preparation for complete withdrawal by the end of 2011.
What do you make of this?
Well, I mean, look, first of all, this is a policy that is put in place by the Obama administration and we need to acknowledge right up front that the administration that's in Washington, D.C. right now didn't create the mess in Iraq and it's an extremely difficult mess to get out of.
There's not going to be any graceful exit from Iraq.
You know, if this retrograde action continues unabetted, you know, it looks as though we'll have the majority of American ground combat troops out of Iraq by next year.
My concern, however, is all the caveats that are attached to it.
Yes, we have the troops withdrawing out of the major cities, but the troops can be brought back in.
You know, one of the big caveats is that this move makes sense if the Iraqi forces are capable of maintaining stability on their own.
We've got 600,000, you know, members of the new Iraqi army in the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere, you know, tasked with this very difficult job.
My concern is, you know, I share the negative assessment of many military professionals who are on the ground in Iraq that the Iraqi army and the security services simply aren't up for the task.
What happens when, in a week's time and two weeks' time, a Shia neighborhood, let's call it Sadr City, erupts in unrest and militias seize control?
The army counterattacks and is unable to make any headway.
The Sunnis and the Abimeya rise up and do the same thing, and now you have two major neighborhoods which have basically declared independence from central governmental authority, and the Iraqi army is unable.
Maybe there's mass defection.
Now what do these American troops and their bases in the desert of Iraq do?
Will the Obama administration leave them in the base and continue the retrograde action out of Iraq, or will they succumb to political pressure and say that the retrograde action is put on hold while we recommit, we resurge American troops back into the urban areas to restore stability operations?
I'm very concerned about what's going on, because, frankly speaking, I don't think President Obama and those who advise him have the moral courage to complete this withdrawal if Iraq starts to crumble.
Well and they would say they have the moral courage to reintervene to save Iraqi lives.
And I would say then, you know, all you've done is continue the circular process of futility.
I don't think there's a military professional out there that will tell you we can prevail militarily in Iraq.
It seems to me, and I don't know where you are on economics necessarily, but it sort of reminds me of our economic situation here in America where basically the Pentagon is like the Federal Reserve, and they've pumped in all this power to an investment in Maliki that is not really warranted necessarily by the actual market value of power in the country and where it would necessarily go.
So then when we withdraw to the cities, that's like, you know, finally raising the federal funds rate or something, and if the bubble pops, the answer is what?
To either one, let there be a correction and a recession and let the problems work themselves out and let organic power somewhat try to come together in Iraq in a reasonable, mutually agreeable situation among the people there, or do like Tom Ricks says and reinflate the bubble and you put the troops right back in there to keep the power off balance?
Well, the troops are already there, I mean, let's be clear, these troops have not come home.
They're in Iraq, they're a short distance from Baghdad.
Camp Victory is one of the big bases that we put our troops in, that's basically Saddam International Airport, and, you know, the troops are there.
It doesn't take very much for, you know, the president to, say, recommit.
It's not as though that we have to mobilize a division here in America, ship it overseas, prepare it and insert it into Iraq.
They're already in Iraq.
And so I think that, you know, pretty much the writing's on the wall.
I would be pleasantly surprised, I would be extraordinarily happy if the Iraqi people were fed up with violence and they basically said, look, we're done fighting, get the Americans out of here, and let's let the Iraqi government and the political process work itself out.
Unfortunately, the events of the last few weeks where, last week, where we had 250 Iraqis killed in a matter of days because of Iraqi on Iraqi violence leads me to believe that, you know, the violence has not, you know, gone away, that, you know, the surge basically treated the symptoms, i.e., prevented Iraqi on Iraqi violence by, A, segregating the population through ethnic cleansing, and that's what, you know, that's what occurred, and, B, inserting an artificial element, American military power, into the equation.
We never dealt with the underlying causes for the violence, such as Shia-Sunni disagreements, Arab-Kurd disagreements.
You know, a lot of Americans aren't aware, or maybe they are, they're just not focused on it, that within a week or so, the Iraqi government's going to begin bidding on, you know, oil service contracts, and every major oil company in the world is lining up, and people go, see, that's a good thing, if they can get their oil economy going, and I need to point out that Iraq today produces less oil per year than they did when Saddam Hussein was kicked out of power.
So things haven't gotten better, they've gotten worse in the oil generation area.
Well, they have no kind of real agreement about where that oil revenue is going to go, and...
Or what the contract's going to be.
Maliki wants instant money, which means he's willing to sell the future of Iraqi oil to international companies.
Wiser people say that's mortgaging the Iraqi future to internationals, so that they get the wealth, we get nothing, you know, we want to do it, so it's a services contract, a technical services contract, so, you know, the companies make a profit, but the majority of the money generated by the generation of oil from Iraqi soil goes to Iraq.
I think you're going to see Maliki prevail, because he's going to say, we need short-term stability.
So they're going to bring in these oil companies, and you're going to find that you're not going to get stability.
A, it's going to become horribly unstable, and B, eventually, Iraqis are going to say, we're going to do it all over again, we're going to nationalize the oil industries.
And America's too fed up with conflict in the Middle East to intervene, I think these oil companies are insane to try and go in there and rape Iraqi oil, like they're trying to do with these contracts.
But the bottom line is, there's this perception of stability that's emanating from Iraq right now that is totally unwarranted, and, you know, I keep cautioning people that the problems inherent in Iraq in a post-Saddam era have not been dealt with.
These problems are still there, it's like using your economic analogy, you know, we've fixed nothing, we've simply, you know, we've borrowed money, mortgage money to generate some cash flow, but when that's gone, we're back to square one, and that's what we are in Iraq right now, and it's important that we not get caught back into a cycle of every time the Iraqi government fails, we have to insert American troops, because that is a short-term solution with no long-term future.
The bottom line is, American troops are a major part of the problem that affects Iraq today, and getting them out of Iraq is the best thing we can do to push Iraq on the path of solving its own problems.
Well now, I think it is very important the way you emphasize that they didn't really meet any of those so-called benchmarks that were to define whether the surge had worked or not.
They were all supposed to be met by October, I think even September of 2007, and, well, like I talked with Patrick Coburn last week, and he said that the so-called sons of Iraq, the awakening councils, the former Sunni insurgency, that they certainly don't have the ability to try to take back Baghdad.
They lost that part of the civil war.
But at the same time, the Maliki government doesn't really have the ability to take over the predominantly Sunni parts of the country either, and so there is basically that division of power there that they're either going to have to go back to full-scale war there and one side be defeated, or they're going to have to work something out.
But so far, Maliki has not started hiring them into the army, not above the level of Buck Private, anyway, and that whole situation between the former Sunni insurgency and the new Shiite government that the U.S. has created, it has not been solved at all.
I mean, that whole thing, I guess I don't know whether it's going to be a violent confrontation, but it's certainly not a resolved situation yet.
No, it isn't, and I think history shows that it's going to become a violent confrontation.
I mean, if I were a betting man, I'd put all my money on it becoming a violent confrontation.
I see no chance whatsoever, especially with the current Da'wah-dominated Maliki government, that Shia radical, Shia fundamentalist party backed by Iran.
I don't see any chance of Maliki compromising in a meaningful fashion with the Sunni.
But, you know, we also have to bring up the whole issue of Muqtada al-Sadr and the fact that there is an indigenous Iraqi Shia movement that has broken ranks with the Iranian-backed Da'wah and the Supreme Council Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the parties that currently govern.
And what happens when the Muqtada al-Sadr's people also say, okay, it's time for us to be given some of the political power we deserve, given the number of supporters we have, etc.
History also shows that that, too, is a confrontation that rapidly degrades into violence.
And again, the last time that they went toe-to-toe, Maliki sent the army down to Basra and they got beat.
Not a total butt-kicking, but they did not prevail in a dramatic fashion.
It required foreign intervention in the form of British and American military power to broker a truce.
I see, again, the Shia, I see a split in the ranks of the Shia.
And no one's talking about the Kurds, the Peshmerga.
Right now the Kurds are making a lot of money, making money hand-in-fist through oil deals that they have brokered independent of the Iraqi government.
And the Iraqi government is saying, that oil belongs to all of Iraq, it must be brought back into the fold.
And the Kurds are thumbing their nose and continuing to go forth.
What happens when the Iraqi government attempts to impose federal control over what is ostensibly a breakaway section of Iraq, a lawless section, when you think about federal government?
Well, plus there's been a real power bubble there in the form of Kurdish control over Kirkuk, which is not necessarily, you know, monopoly power there by them is not necessarily justified by the demographics, and yet they've taken it.
Now the question is whether they're going to have to retreat back their power into Kurdistan or whether they're going to fight for Kirkuk with all the Arabs.
I think the answer is they're going to fight.
But again, Iraq does not have a history of nonviolent solution of these problems, and partly that's due to Saddam Hussein's reign of dictatorship, and a lot of it is that when the United States invaded, we undid whatever mechanisms of negotiation that did exist in Iraq, because there were vehicles that facilitated conflict resolution, peaceful conflict resolution between Shia and Sunni and Kurd and Arab.
It wasn't perfect, but it did exist, but we came in and we swept that all away, and basically we imposed the rule of the gun, and that's what exists in Iraq today is the rule of the gun.
It certainly isn't the rule of law, and I just see all of these underlying problems in Iraq having not been solved.
We treated the symptoms, which is the violence.
We did it superficially by imposing even greater violence on the Iraqis so that they chose the lesser of two evils, but now we're removing the American military from the problem.
The disease still exists, the cancer will spread, and we're going to have a terminally ill patient.
And I just hope that the Obama administration has the moral courage and the political wisdom not to re-engage in a meaningful fashion.
I know it'll be tough, because they're going to get beat to death, just like they did recently over the issue of Iran and the Iranian elections.
They're going to get beat to death for doing nothing, but the American people will praise Obama's wisdom when Iraq blows up into this deflagration of ethnic violence and American troops aren't caught in the middle.
Well, yeah, it really is a sad situation.
I mean, a lot more people, it sounds like, are going to have to die one way or the other, and it's true, certainly, that any time there's a major skirmish anywhere, that could be used as an excuse by the military to move their forces from the base right back into the city.
Although, you know, there were massive bombings last week, and the Pentagon spokesman was saying, ah, no, that's no big deal, and clearly he could have glommed onto that and said, oh yeah, see, we have to stay in the cities because of that, but clearly his instructions were to play it down and to go ahead and continue to declare victory and so forth.
And I know that Patrick Coburn has said, from his experience in Iraq, that the Americans do have to leave because we have installed a majority there, and whatever Maliki and his party's problems are with the Kurds and with the Awakening Councils and so forth, basically, the super majority of the people of that country and the government that we've installed in power there want us out.
And he says that's basically the basis of the ceasefire between the Saudarists and Maliki's government is as long as Maliki sticks by his status of forces, what they call the withdrawal agreement and forces this government out by the end of 2011, then he won't have a problem with Saudar, you know, probably, unless he breaks that.
Do you think that that's really the case, that basically George Bush ended up telling the truth when he said, as they stand up, we'll stand down, and they've installed these Iran factions in power, and they don't really need us anymore, and they want us out?
Well, the problem is we can't treat it in isolation.
We need to remember, I mean, you yourself just said that we stood up these Iran factions.
That would be fine if the United States had cordial relations with Iran.
But right now, U.S.
-Iranian relations are deteriorating.
The fallout over the dispute of presidential elections is real.
The Obama administration is stepping out of the shadows in terms of acknowledging that it is interfering with the internal affairs of a sovereign state.
It's acknowledged that it's seeking money to fund opposition forces inside Iran.
The nuclear issue has not been resolved.
The point is...
Wait, let me stop you there.
Obama acknowledged that he's spending money trying to influence the situation in Iran?
The Obama administration, just late last week, acknowledged that they have asked the Congress of the United States for tens of millions of dollars that will go to funding opposition movements in Iran.
Yes, absolutely.
The president didn't come out and say that, but it's his administration acknowledging it, so, you know, it's a statement of fact.
And never forget, it was an Obama administration official, Jared Cohen, working in the United States Department of Policy Planning staff that not only made the call to continue to ask Twitter to continue to keep its services up, but was responsible for funneling tens of millions of dollars prior to the election to Iranian youth movements and Iranian women movements and elements of the Mousavi election for the purpose of generating a viable opposition to Ahmadinejad.
If that's not interference in the sovereign affairs of a state, or the domestic affairs of political affairs of a sovereign state, I don't know what is.
Now, Scott, hang on a second.
I'm sorry, because we only have about five and a half, six minutes left to talk about this, and this is a whole other interview here, but I really want to kind of parse this as best I can.
Clearly, there were tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Tehran and all that.
To what degree do you think that that was basically due to the fact of American intervention?
Look, I was in Iran prior to the election, years prior to the election, and I will tell you that inside Tehran, in northern Tehran, there is a viable opposition that will exist independent of any outside interference.
When Ahmadinejad was performing poorly, when the economy was in the tank, when international sanctions were pinching all Iraqis, if they had held the election then, he would have lost.
There was a viable opposition.
But the reality is, thanks to the surge in price of oil, Ahmadinejad was able to take hundreds of millions of dollars and go out and buy the vote.
You say, oh my God, how can that happen in democracy?
Come on.
Every American president does it.
We buy the vote.
Pork, you know, pork barrel spending, et cetera.
Ahmadinejad did.
He was a genius in the way that he manipulated the needs of the Iraqi or the Iranian people, using this money.
That doesn't mean that all opposition went away.
There's significant opposition, and I'm not going to denigrate or belittle or be dismissive of the Iranians who went into the street.
But I will tell you this.
When you accept American dollars, you have tainted your movement in the eyes of the majority of the Iraqi people.
And the fact is, there are elements within the Iranian opposition movement that have accepted the American dollar.
And in doing so, they've discredited the whole movement.
It doesn't mean that every Iranian in the street has an American dollar wedged in their pocket.
All it takes is funding 200, 500, 1,000 of these hundreds of thousands of people out there, and you've destroyed the credibility and the viability of the entire movement.
That, unfortunately, is what has occurred.
The Iranian government has the evidence.
In the near future, you will see them trot out the emails, the email exchanges, the bank accounts, and all the data necessary to show that money was funneled in prior to the election to these opposition groups.
That doesn't mean that everybody's in the payroll.
What it means is that there is interference.
That doesn't mean that there isn't a viable opposition.
It means the viable opposition is not going to be able to grow and sustain itself politically in Iran, because they're going to be tainted by this American involvement.
Well, now, I kind of have my own little theory, which was that all the Jandala attacks leading up to the election was a CIA plot to help Ahmadinejad win, just like when George Bush, maybe accidentally, in July 2005 told the people of Iran, you better not vote for the right-winger, and then they all did, that basically the neocons, as Daniel Pipes and Max Boot and others said, they would prefer Ahmadinejad.
And it seemed to me like, why have Jandala do a bunch of attacks when it's not going to weaken the government?
It's going to, you know, worse the health of the state.
Ahmadinejad protecting the people of Iran from foreign-funded terrorists would seem to help him.
And so, I kind of wonder, is it the people in the street who are backed by the United States, or is it, you know, the other way around?
Well, first of all, it wouldn't be the first time that American policy fought itself, and it wouldn't be the first time the CIA fought itself.
But, you know, there are two realities here.
One is that under the administration of George W. Bush, CIA money did make its way to Jandala and other groups to carry out acts of violence, direct action against the Iranian regime.
According to the Obama administration, this action stopped and ceased.
The Obama administration is not involved in that.
But it's also a matter of record that tens of millions of dollars, starting with the Bush administration, went to fund these youth movements, fund these women's groups, fund other elements of the so-called soft revolution, and that the Obama administration did in fact continue this aspect of the Bush administration's policies.
It's the same people in the State Department under George W. Bush that are running the policy under Barack Obama.
And they came up with the policy, and they're implementing the policy.
Does this mean that there aren't some people in the Obama administration, Dennis Ross and others, that privately want to see Ahmadinejad stay in power because it simplifies, you know, creating a more hardline position?
I'm sure there are.
But I will say that the official policy of the Obama administration was to encourage a soft revolution, soft regime change, getting Ahmadinejad out of power and somehow undermining the authority of the theocrats that rule in supreme fashion.
Well, you know, it's always interesting.
If you go back and look at the different color-coded revolutions, I think anybody would be hard pressed to say that all the people protesting in Ukraine or in Kyrgyzstan or in Lebanon when they attempted color-coded revolution there, that all those people were just random mobs.
They all certainly have their own agendas, and probably the vast majority of them mean what they say.
But what you're saying, it seems, is the real important underlying truth, which is, yeah, but who's paying for it?
How is it that they have as much power as they do?
And it's, well, the National Endowment for Democracy and the CIA.
There's a difference between mom and pop holding apple pie bake sales to raise money for an operation, which is a lot of grassroot movement, peace movements here in the United States, and an organization suddenly receiving a lump sum of $20 million.
They may front a bunch of mom and pops who are honest and definitely believe what they're saying.
But suddenly the ability to have a bus on demand, to fill people up in the bus, send the bus here and there, to have telephones, to have computer access, instant communications, that's not something that comes from a grassroots movement.
That's something that comes from central planning, central authority, and central funding.
And I would say that in the case of at least a segment of the Iranian opposition, it is funded fully by U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Scott Ritter, thank you very much for your time on the show today.
Okay, thank you.
Everybody, Scott Ritter is the author of Target Iran.
He writes at truthdig.com and a whole pile of books, Iraq Confidential and Endgame.
And I'm looking at the shelf over here.
Where's the Scott Ritter section?
Anyway, we'll be right back with Bruce Fine right after this.