Jeremy R. Hammond, founder and editor of Foreign Policy Journal, discusses newly disclosed documents that shed light on pre-9/11 negotiations between the Taliban and U.S. about handing over Osama bin Laden, the 'warning fatigue' that lead to U.S. officials ignoring Taliban tip offs of an impending Al Qaeda attack, the competition between Unocal and Argentina’s Bridas for an Afghanistan pipeline contract, the disputed authenticity of video evidence of bin Laden claiming responsibility for 9/11,...
10/27/10 – Robert Parry – The Scott Horton Show
Robert Parry, founder and editor of ConsortiumNews.com, discusses the other factors besides the 'surge' that led to decreased violence in post-2007 Iraq, why it’s still important to fight the conventional surge narrative that elevated Gen. Petraeus’s career and influenced strategy in Afghanistan and how the rigid neoconservative ideology of Bush administration policymakers significantly delayed a truce with the Sunni Awakening groups.
10/27/10 – Matthew Rothchild. – The Scott Horton Show
Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, discusses the Pentagon’s Northern Command that has assigned an Army combat team to secure the U.S. in apparent contravention of Posse Comitatus, the ease by which the Executive Branch could circumvent Constitutional restrictions on declaring martial law, Halliburton-built U.S. prison camps useful for rounding up 'enemy combatants' and American citizens alike and how another 9-11 (or even a failed bank bailout) could spell the end of...
10/26/10 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show
Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the 3-way Shi'ite alliance of Moqtada al-Sadr, Nouri al-Maliki and Iran that formed in general opposition to U.S. occupation and attacks on Sadr's Mahdi Army in particular, indications that Maliki had foreknowledge of the successful 2007 plot to kidnap U.S. soldiers in Karbala, the give-and-take exchange of political favors between Sadr and Maliki, the Bush administration's attempt to exterminate the Mahdi Army — which...
10/25/10 – Jason Ditz – The Scott Horton Show
Jason Ditz, managing news editor at Antiwar.com, discusses Richard Holbrooke’s admission that military victory in Afghanistan is impossible, the unhelpful and over-broad application of the 'Taliban' label to a a myriad of groups opposing occupation, why the 'clear and hold' strategy is apparently too boring to pursue for long, schizophrenic U.S. policy in Somalia and why WikiLeaks’ biggest leak ever could use a university graduate program to help sort through the nearly 400,000...
10/25/10 – Andy Worthington – The Scott Horton Show
Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, discusses Omar Khadr‘s plight from when he was a 15 year old battlefield prisoner in Afghanistan to a 24 year old defendant in a Guantanamo courtroom, how Khadr's guilty plea deal covers up the gaping legal holes in the Military Commissions that a trial would have exposed and how the U.S. ignored international standards of conduct regarding child soldiers.
10/25/10 – Scott Horton – The Scott Horton Show
The Other Scott Horton (no relation), international human rights lawyer, professor and contributing editor at Harper’s magazine, discusses the maintenance of order and civility in Kyrgyzstan despite a rather chaotic election result, the already infamous Frago 242 order (revealed by WikiLeaks) issued from high up the chain of command that demanded U.S. soldiers ignore the torture and human rights violations perpetrated by their Iraqi allies, Donald Rumsfeld’s (purposeful?) ignorance of the...
10/22/10 – Nat Hentoff – The Scott Horton Show
Nat Hentoff, senior fellow at the CATO Institute, discusses the media’s narrow spectrum of allowable opinions reflected in the firing/retiring of Juan Williams, Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez, the dangers lurking within the massive Obamacare bill, the bipartisan uproar against a judicial ruling excluding evidence obtained by torture in the terrorism prosecution of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and how the government torture apparatus’s continued use explains Obama’s 'look forward not back'...
10/22/10 – Grant F. Smith – The Scott Horton Show
Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C., discusses former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s just-declassified 1987 statement (excerpted from a still-classified 46 page declaration of damage) that called for the harsh punishment of pro-Israel spy Jonathan Pollard, how the release of Weinberger’s full declaration could substantiate allegations that Pollard’s disclosure caused the death of many CIA agents, the story of Israel’s 1954...
10/22/10 – Jim Hanon – The Scott Horton Show
Jim Hanon, writer and director of the documentary Little Town of Bethlehem, discusses his film (the story of three men of different faiths who grew up in Israel and the occupied territories who put aside their differences to work toward a non-violent solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict), why the term 'settlements' does not adequately describe the Israeli homes built atop stolen Palestinian land, a reminder to American evangelicals that there are indeed Palestinian Christians and why...
10/22/10 – Nick Turse – The Scott Horton Show
Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives and editor of The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan, discusses the construction boom in U.S. military bases that puts the scheduled 2011 Afghanistan drawdown in doubt, how Obama has abdicated his role of commander in chief to his generals and why it remains difficult to understand the purpose of the huge waste of blood and treasure in Afghanistan.
10/22/10 – Stephan Salisbury – The Scott Horton Show
Stephan Salisbury, author of Mohamed's Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, discusses the double life of famed civil rights movement photographer and FBI informant Ernest C. Withers, journalists who gave up on scrutinizing governmental abuses to act as official stenographers and apologists, how zealous FBI informants create more terrorist plots than they uncover, the vast scale of NSA information gathering and the crackdown on political activism since the run up to the...
10/22/10 – Thomas Nash – The Scott Horton Show
Thomas Nash, Coordinator of the Cluster Munition Coalition (StopClusterMunitions.org), discusses the encouraging progress being made on the internationally-binding Convention on Cluster Munitions treaty, the devastating bombing campaign against Laos during the Vietnam War that left behind some 280 million cluster munitions that continue to kill and maim decades later, the refusal of the most prolific cluster bomb using-and-producing countries (U.S., China, Russia, Israel) to sign the treaty...
10/21/10 – Robert Murphy – The Scott Horton Show
Robert Murphy, author of the blog Free Advice and ConsultingByRPM.com, as well as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, discusses the bearish economic indicators that contradict the official "recovering" story, why relatively stable consumer prices could be the calm before an inflationary storm, how government regulation often benefits big business through regulatory capture and increased barriers to competitors and how the Republicans give the free market a bad name when they don't...
10/21/10 – Roger Charles – The Scott Horton Show
Roger Charles, a freelance journalist and investigator, discusses the two dozen Oklahoma City bombing witnesses who saw a John Doe #2 and contradict the Timothy McVeigh lone-wolf theory, the possibility John Doe #1 is not McVeigh and why the tangled web of government lies and coverups could prevent the truth about OKC from ever emerging.
