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Language: en
The following is a conversation with
Scott Horton. He's the director of the
Libertarian Institute, editorial
director of anti-war.com,
co-host of Provoked, and host of the
Scott Horton Show on which he has done
over 6,000 interviews since 2003.
He's the author of Provoked, Enough
Already, and other books and articles
that have over the past three decades
criticized US foreign policy, especially
in regard to military interventionism
and the military-industrial complex.
This is the Lex Frman podcast. To
support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now,
dear friends, here's Scott Horton.
I think one of the darkest and most
disturbing chapters of modern American
history is everything that happened
around conducting the so-called wars on
terror. I think to me it was a wakeup
call. I think it was a wakeup call to a
lot of Americans in understanding and
seeing the military-industrial complex
and seeing what the government's
capacity is to mislead us into war and
to continuously erode basic human
freedoms. Uh if I can allow me to list
some of the estimates from the cost of
war project from Brown University just
so we understand the cost of these wars.
The post 911 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen led to an
estimated 900,000 to 940,000 direct
deaths and 3.6 to 3.8 million indirect
deaths. And the cost in terms of dollars
was $8 trillion with 2.2 two trillion on
Afghanistan and 2.9 trillion on Iraq and
uh Syria and the result on every front
as we'll talk about I think it's fair to
say that did not accomplish its purpose
and in fact if we even just look at the
human toll of the people of Afghanistan
I was also looking at the the numbers
before the war and after the war percent
of Afghans facing food insecurity went
from 62% to 92% of children under five
experiencing acute malnutrition went
from 9% to 50% of Afghans living in
poverty went from 80% to 97%. So it was
extremely costly for Americans and it
was extremely costly for Afghans as you
do in your book enough already. Uh can
you lay out how the full history the
full context of how it is that the
American people were misled into this
war on terror that was so costly in so
many ways?
>> Yeah. First of all, thank you for having
me again. It's great to be with you on
the show. One important statistic uh
that you could have mentioned from the
cost of war project as well is 37
million people displaced from their
homes, right? And the same group um it
was Lex, I'm telling you was at least 5
years ago. God, it's the future now.
This maybe 7 8 years ago that they did a
study that determined that 30,000
American servicemen had blown their own
brains out since then. Well, one way or
the other, deliberately crashing their
motorcycle or whatever it is. So, talk
about the cost of war. That's far
beyond, you know, the actual deaths in
the war. We had about 4,500 in Iraq and
about 2500 in Afghanistan of just
official airmen, marines, and soldiers
on the ground killed, plus contractors
and all that. So, that's speaking not
just to the things that could be
measured, but you can just imagine the
the scale of suffering that's going on
in the veterans minds.
>> Yeah. And you know what too, like you
would have guessed this probably, right?
You probably know more about this
subject than me. It was a New York Times
headline, I think yesterday, was, "Oh my
god, look at or maybe it was the Wall
Street Journal. Look at this insane list
of the kinds of drugs that all these
depressed soldiers get put on. Here's 15
different psychoactive drugs, all to
temper the side effects of the others
and whatever where
you know, and then they say that this
could lead to suicide because of course
we know that, right? They even have to
say that on TV sometimes that some of
these drugs cause suicidal or homicidal
obsessions and this kind of thing that
we know that's one of the side effects.
So some percentage of these guys might
have made it if the government health
care system hadn't helped them in the
end is another bitter irony. You know um
the whole thing is just you know you
said we got nothing out of it. I I said
half inest but it is serious but it's
also it shows by relief what a disaster
this is that the only thing we did get
out of it like literally was
advancements in prosthetic limbs for
amputees
whether if they lost their limb in war
or otherwise like if you want to boil it
down what did anyone get out of this
other than you know some people got a
dividend check from Lockheed or that
kind of thing but that's not to the
benefit of the society whatsoever so
that does not count you I'm talking
about what society got out of it, what
America got out of it. We have better
Luke Skywalker hands than before. That's
it.
>> I don't think there's any more clear
illustrations of the complete failure of
the military-industrial complex. How did
this begin? How do we get into this?
>> Yeah. Well, so I'll try to tell the
somewhat fast version. Although, Lex,
that's a kiss of death every time I say
that.
>> Please,
>> we'll go through.
>> Please go the slow version.
>> Okay. So, the slow version is
we'll start with the end of Vietnam.
Okay. So one major aspect of the end of
Vietnam was that Richard Nixon felt like
he had to bribe the military-industrial
complex some other way. And so one of
the things that he did was he turned to
the sha resopi in Iran and asked him to
increase arm sales. Now I guess I could
go back. I think everybody knows that
the CIA uh helped with the coup of 1953
to reinstall the sha who was the son of
the last dictator and had already been
in for a while and they put him back in.
And so now this is uh and that was in
53. So now this is in the early 70s, 20
years later. And Nixon saying, "Hey, you
know, really help me would be if you
would buy a bunch of fighter jets." So I
think it's kind of notorious, right,
that Iran still has F4s and F-14s.
That's where they got him from was the
Nixon and Ford administration in this
push to do that. And the Shaw was
apparently pretty obsessed with looking
very first world with his very fancy
first world army that he couldn't really
afford. And it helped to destabilize his
regime somewhat. And then I don't know
the full extent of America turning on
him before the revolution, but I know
that by the time of the revolution in
1979, he was sick with cancer and very
sick. And the Americans secretly knew
that. CIA knew that, you know, but it
was not public knowledge that it was
whatever stage 4 or whatever. He was
doomed. And so they knew the revolution
was coming and they were trying to
figure out how to handle it. And there
was the revolution was coming anyway.
And it wasn't just there's going to be a
change of leadership. When we say
revolution here, we mean mobs in the
street demanding an end to the old
regime in huge numbers, right? A very
large-scale popular revolution. And
they're trying to figure out how to get
the handle on it. Some of Carter's
critics said what he should have had
done was had the military just massacer
all those people. That'll shut him up.
Or like, you know what I mean? They're
trying to figure out what to do. Well,
the CIA and the State Department told
Jimmy Carter, listen, this Ayatollah
Kmeni, he's not so bad. We know this
guy. He was part of a group of Shiite
clergy who helped to agitate against
Mosedc in 1953. And so we have at least
some contact and we think that we can
deal with him.
>> Did they actually believe that?
>> I I think so. Is this incompetence or
malevolence? Like how does this whole
process happen that you go into this
process of regime change and keep
installing people that are creating more
and more
uh instability and destruction in the
world and then you use that to then
justify invading and starting wars. How
does this happen?
>> Well, there's a lot of things and the
whole time we in our discussion here,
we'll be talking about a massive
conspiracy of interests at play all the
time. But this is and I've never read a
bunch of books about this. I probably
should at least interview these guys. Uh
you'd be interested in this if you don't
already know the subject is public
choice theory. It's kind of a branch of
libertarian political economy studies
that says that essentially one of its
major aspects is that there really is no
national interest the way you and I
might think of it sitting here hashing
it out across the table because what
becomes the national interest is the
interest of the people in charge of
making the decisions for the nation. And
so they all ultimately are private
choices, aren't they? And the national
interest becomes subsumed by what's good
for me now. And so telling all my bosses
they're all wrong is not good for me
now. And on the very basic level, you
know, I've read quite a few books just
from former insiders like Daniel Ellburg
and other people like that. Ellburg
tells a story of where he's the deputy
under secretary of state for making up
nonsense or whatever it is or defense of
the no state, I believe. and his whole
job is making his boss look good whether
he agrees with him or not. And then the
hope is that next year he'll be in his
boss's position and his boss will move
up one and then he'll his job will be
making his boss look good then and how
and he explains how the truth and
reality just gets washed out of this.
Right? Um another famous one or should
be famous is my friend David Hardy who
wrote the best book about the Waco
massacre. He is a great lawyer and he
had been a former Interior Department
cop and he said there's truth and
there's falsity. Like that's the world
we live in. But in government work
there's our position and our position
takes place on an entirely different
plane than truth and falsity. Our
position is the thing a bunch of people
in a room agreed that they would say and
do as they can in committee like come to
a consensus and then a lot of times once
those decisions are made now to go back
on that decision means that you are
attempting to disgrace the people who
led the decision-making on that thing
and say that they were wrong and they
shouldn't have done the thing they did.
Now they got to do this instead. And so
you see just an absolute unwillingness
to make change. And this is something
that capitalism ultimately like
everybody's got ego problems, but
ultimately the boss has to look at an
accounting sheet and say this isn't
working. So I'm going to have to swallow
my pride or go out of business. Right?
In government it's not like that. The
worse they do the better off they are.
This is why it was the soldiers in
Vietnam called the military itself, the
army itself the self-licking ice cream
cone because it means that they cause
chaos but then chaos is their job is to
go and fix that. And so, you know, and
and if you're a government bureaucrat
getting paid way above the market, then
what do you want to do? Go get a job? U
a great example of this I cite in the
book is at the end of the Afghan war,
there are multiple military uh officers,
like not too too high, but like high
enough to be quoted by the news saying,
"Well, now that that's over, we're
looking for other things to do. So,
we're going to pivot to Africa and go
find some Islamists there because we are
looking for ways to stay globally
engaged because of course that's their
interest to do. Whether that's good for
Africa or good for the American people
is just it's kind of a separate question
that they're not really dealing with.
And so, I think that's a huge part of
it. I mean, one of the things was
William Sullivan said that, well, Kmeni,
he's like the Iranian Gandhi. Well,
first of all, he's not a pacifist. But
second of all, didn't Gandhi kick the
British Empire out of India? So, what
are you saying? You're deliberately
putting in a guy who's going to limit
your influence there and it's going to
declare independence for you from you.
How are you going to handle that? Like,
they don't seem to think this through.
And I I have to say that one of the
great disappointments of growing up is
you find out that the rest of the adults
aren't so smart. They're just regular
dudes like you. And I think a lot of
times state department people might have
very advanced knowledge doesn't mean
they have very advanced wisdom. You know
this is something else Danielle Ellburg
talks about is when you have access to
classified information then you don't
pay any attention to anybody who doesn't
because what do they know? You know all
these things that they couldn't possibly
be taking into account. So you
immediately close your circle of people
who you listen to. And I'll tell you
great example of this from my own
experience was I interviewed a CIA
analyst uh apparently a pretty important
executive at one time in the terror war
named Cynthia Stoer and I asked her I
forget if it was in the interview or
not. I hope I'm not like speaking out of
school. I believe it was in the
interview that I asked her about well I
can't remember the exact context but I
asked her about well don't you read
Patrick Coburn? And she goes who's
Patrick Coburn? And I go who's Patrick
Coburn? Patrick Coburn is the most
important Anglo in Iraq. He's the one
who understands all of this stuff more
and better than all of y'all. And he
writes in the Independent. You can read
it for free. Just register with your
email address for God's sake, man. I
can't believe. And she's like, "Who even
is that?"
>> So, a lack of basic curiosity, uh, rigor
of research, understanding the
situation. and she could know a lot of
secret things but without understanding
what he understands she does not
understand what she needs to know. I can
promise you that much. You know I think
it's a basic lack of humility. The ego
grows the power grows. Then you to
self-preserve to maintain power. You
start deluding yourself in that in those
closed rooms. You start shutting
yourself off from the reality of the
world. And then as as your own delusion
drifts, you're more incentivized to grow
that delusion, incentivized to hide, to
do secrecy, and then it just goes off.
And that's that's why I was hoping you
could speak to uh more to Daniel
Ellburg. So the importance of somebody
like that. So it sounds like if we think
about the machinery of how this happens,
it feels like heroic whistleblowers are
essential to this process. If we talk
about Snowden and Assange and uh one of
the OGs is Daniel Ellburg
>> who uh just reading here was an American
military analyst, economist and renowned
whistleblower best known for leaking the
Pentagon papers in 1971. Can you tell me
about who he was and the importance of
him?
>> Oh yeah. Well, he's an absolutely
brilliant guy. I I'm proud to say I was
a friend, you know, for 10 15 years
there. I don't know, quite a while. So
he endorsed my first two books. I'm very
proud to say. and um and he did not have
a chance to read Provoked unfortunately,
but I know he would have liked it cuz we
were email buddies and I know that he uh
thought very much along the same lines
as me and John Mirshimer and others, you
know, as as people are probably
familiar. I think we'll get more into
that, but um on that issue, he was
great, but um he was a brilliant genius
and and he was a nuclear war planner.
That was his second book was called The
Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a
Nuclear War Planner. And he had
liberated a bunch of documents about
nuclear war as well. But he had decided
with his quote unquote co-conspirator
that they should just focus on Vietnam
first. That's the thing that it matters
the most right now. And that was the
Pentagon Papers. And then all the papers
that he had hidden away, he gave them to
his brother and his brother lost them.
And so then he decided later, you know
what? I remember enough of this stuff
that I can go ahead and just write it
from memory. And he was so brilliant,
dude. I mean, I don't know what his IQ
was, but I know his father built the
first u assembly line for the atom bomb
and they asked him if he would do the
same for the H bomb and he refused for
moral reasons. So, that was his
background in the first place and he's
just such a great guy, man. So, he's a
person who was able to see the situation
like you mentioned like that room and in
that room understand that there's some
shit that's wrong that's going on here
and to be able to speak up. and he was
at Rand, right? His job was writing and
this was when Rand I guess was much more
important and very closely tied to the
Pentagon and their whole thing was like
writing up game theory nuclear warfare
plans. One of the things he did was he
found out and and Jack Kennedy had to
fight like mad. They had to go back and
forth over and over and over to even get
the war plan from the Pentagon and they
finally got the war plan from the
Pentagon and it said that if we have a
nuclear war with the Soviet Union, we
nuke every single city in the Soviet
Union and China. So that would be I
don't know if that includes all the
Warsaw pack, but it includes all the
republics and China. And the thinking
was that if America and the Soviet Union
destroy each other and Europe, well,
we'll be damned if we're going to leave
Earth to those dirty chiccoms. So we're
going to kill all them, too. And that
was the thinking in the thing. And it
was Ellberg told Kennedy that. And
Kennedy told Ellburg to make sure and
forced the Pentagon to rewrite the plan
and narrow that thing down. So, I mean
that's part of the guy's background
where he comes from. I beg people to
read the pen uh it's called Secrets, a
memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon
Papers and then also the doomsday
machine. And by the way, his first book,
Secrets, begins with his first day on
the job. I was joking around earlier.
He's deputy under secretary of state for
whatever it was. Was it I can't remember
if it state or defense. Maybe it was
defense. It had to have been defense.
Forgive me for before. And then the
first thing that happens when he clocks
in that day for his job is the thing
starts coming across the teletype. Ships
attacked in the Tonkan Gulf. And then
he's reading, "Oh, never mind. That was
a mistake." And then he sees the
president run with it anyway. And now
the historian Gareth Porter says that
actually Magnamera lied to BBJ and he
can prove it. I can't cite all the
chapter and verse, but I trust Gareth.
He's great. And he says that actually it
was McNamera lied LBJ when they knew
that it was a mistake.
>> And the same thing happened again and
again. You take a little piece of
information
>> and run with them in order to justify
war. That's right. That's going to be a
theme. Absolutely. What what was what
was uh important in the Pentagon Papers?
What are some key ideas?
>> Okay. So, so the Pentagon papers first
of all was and and he wrote this while
he was working at RAND that he had full
topsec clearance and they were
commissioned by secretary of defense
magnamera to write a real secret top
secret history of the Vietnam war in the
entire history of our involvement in
Indochina since the end of the second
world war. And so that was what they did
was they wrote like eyes only for the
secretary of defense type material. So,
it had everything in there and Ellberg
was in charge of writing it along with
Leslie Gelb who shut his mouth and went
along and later became the chairman of
the Council on Foreign Relations and was
a good dog, right? But anyway, um they
were the ones who wrote it together and
Nellsburg was brave enough to liberate
the thing and he tried to leak it to the
Senate over and over and over again.
Mike Grall eventually started reading it
into the record and then finally the New
York Times got the courage to start
publishing the thing and it showed that
they knew that they couldn't win all
along. They knew that the South
Vietnamese government could not stand.
they did not have popular consent that
the insurgency in the south was not just
based on support from the north but
their own indigenous revolution against
what they see you know as intolerable
foreign intervention and and wanted to
force us out and it's funny cuz McName
later says that I guess he didn't read
the Pentagon papers that no we were just
sure that it was the capitalists versus
the communists like all this stuff about
they didn't want to be ruled over
foreign white devils and that never
occurred to us, you know, like come on.
Um, you know, as Chsky said, come on.
America invaded South Vietnam. That the
government that was inviting us to stay
was the government that we put in there
or at least after we overthrew the one
we didn't like, the one we put in there.
No different than, as we're going to
talk about, uh, Hammed Carzi inviting us
to please stay in Afghanistan. It's
like, come on, who's zooming who here?
Um but um so it showed and that was the
deal and that was why it was such a big
deal and how he made Nixon's enemies
list and all these things even though it
didn't really expose Nixon it exposed
LBJ and and the predecessors but um it
was a huge shock that they have been
lying to us and lying us and lying to us
deliberately knowing that this is got to
be somebody else's problem. Right?
There's a phone call of LBJ saying to a
Republican senator friend of his that I
can't be the first president to lose a
war.
So, right, he's just going to retire
first and make it Nixon's problem,
right? Same as George W. Bush said, "Oh,
the end of Iraq, well, that'll just have
to be up to other presidents to decide.
Not my responsibility. All I did was do
it."
You know, and that's how they are. And
they have that's their is this is also
part of the economics of democracy too
where they have uh such and I'm not
arguing for the opposite but I'm just
saying the reality is you have such
short terms of office you have very high
time preference right instead of like
working on long-term projects about
what's the future of mankind going to
look like a 100 years from now you're
looking at a much shorter time horizon
you know including who's going to
finance your next election so that
you'll have any say so whatsoever and as
Yoda and Palpatine agree that like all
who have power are afraid to lose it
because what if the other guy had it
instead? It would be worse. Everybody
knows that which is of course a huge
part of the story of the American empire
here, you know. Well, but fundamentally
that's cowardly, right? So what what we
want from leaders from great leaders is
courage. And courage means making
difficult decisions that are going to
make the world a better place long term,
the country a better country long term.
And that means if you start a war, that
means understanding the full cost of
that war and how it's going to have to
end. And then if if you understand the
full cost of war, you're not going to
start it.
>> Yep.
>> Right. Uh so how does how do we go from
the CIA 1979 the Shaw Ayatollah
>> Mhm.
>> Nixon.
What is the thread that now starts
inching towards the '9s and
>> right
>> towards 911 in Iraq? I know there's so
much, but we're going to do it, man. Um,
so here's what happens. America goes
ahead and allows Ayatollah to get on the
plane in Paris, France, and go home.
Now, I remember even as a kid saying,
"But aren't the French our friends?
Wouldn't they have checked with us
before doing that?" In fact, I just
recently found the clip of Peter
Jennings interviewing him. And the
smartest thing Peter Jennings can think
of to say is, "So, how do you feel on
your triumphant return, Mr. Ayatollah?"
Right? Which USA is just completely
aiding in a betting, right? These are
shots they called and made happen,
right? they sent him home to inherit the
thing and then they did work with him.
Uh people forget man and I was just very
young at that time. Um but I you know
was raised kind of in the atmosphere of
all of this and even back then people
conflated the revolution itself with the
hostage crisis as just one story. It all
is spoken in one breath. But in fact the
revolution was in February of 1979 and
the hostage crisis didn't break out
until November. So what was happening in
the meantime? Well, one of the things
was the Americans were warning the new
Iranian regime about threats from the
new dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein,
who had just overthrown the government
in a bloody coup d'eta. No revolution
there. And you can watch the video of
this. Have you ever seen the video?
Saddam's overthrowing Iraq. And he he's
got a huge stadium of guys and he just
starts calling names and everybody whose
name he's calls has to go out back and
get shot. Like it's gnarly, man. I think
that video is a
dark study of human nature. It's
terrifying.
>> Oh, it is. That's ugly, man. That's
>> because everybody is afraid and of
there's a disgusting face as Satan has.
I don't know. I don't know if if there's
a sadistic.
>> Sure. He was a psychopath, man. No
question. He was a brute of a dictator,
right? There's a lot of El Presidentedes
in the world. Not all of them like train
their sons to torture people from the
time they're young and stuff. Oh fuck.
All the cowards in that room. But then
you have to ask yourself, what would you
do if you were in that room?
>> Yeah. You've already been bested at that
point. I mean, they could all rush the
stage, but that ain't going to do them
any good, you know?
>> But before you, how did you get to that
room?
>> Yeah.
>> And then that's why you have to give
props to whistleblowers. You have to
give props to people that stand up and
risk their life in situations like that,
which in those parts of the world is
even harder than it is in the United
States of America. And you know, by the
way, I usually forget to mention this
when I tell this story. Takes another
few seconds to mention that Saddam
Hussein had been groomed by the CIA
since the 1950s on and off. And he had
been part of different dictator regimes
on and off. He'd been in exile in Cairo
for a little while and this kind of
thing. And then in the 70s leading up to
the coup, I think it was really closer
to the Soviet Union. And um and so we'll
get to the I guess I'll mention it now.
The huge irony of the fact that in the
Iran Iraq war
it was America supporting Saddam Hussein
and his Soviet military versus Iran and
it's American one, right? Um
>> the absurdity of this is insane.
>> Well, I'm skipping ahead a step, but I
just like that part. Um but so okay, so
America supports the revolution in 79 in
February.
They're warning this guy, hey, you
better look out for Saddam Hussein and
his intentions. And we're going to get
back to that in one moment here. Um, and
they were also warning him about the
threat from the Soviet Union. Now, why
is that? Well, that's because,
skip over Iran. Now, we're talking about
Afghanistan and Zabin Brzinsk's policy
that let's support the mujaheden in
Afghanistan in order to try to provoke
Soviet intervention there. And so
there's a memo and people can find this
at scorton.org/bear use if you want to
look at it. It's um from You want to go
ahead pull it up?
So if if you allow me to read uh
President Jimmy Carter's July 3rd, 1979
finding in quotes authorizing covert
support for the mujahedin in Afghanistan
>> secret sensitive
>> and the important part is provide
unilaterally or through third countries
as appropriate support to Afghan
insurgents. This is now a finding is an
order from a president to the CIA to do
something. That's what a finding means.
So this is an order to CIA to do this.
Now on that order they did start pouring
in support to the mujadine. Now I have
to tell you that my best uh experts on
this like Eric Margalles and I got this
also from reading Andre Sakurov the
famous Soviet nuclear physicist and
dissident that they both said that it
wasn't American support for the
mujaheden that really provoked the
Russians into invading Afghanistan
because what it was was the sock puppet
dictator was a basket case and he had
created so many enemies that he just
couldn't hold it together. So the first
thing the Soviets did when they invaded
in December of 79 was take him out back
and shoot him and replace him with a new
guy. So that was really the cause of the
Soviet intervention there. They had a
commi sock puppet regime. It was not one
of the Soviet republics, right? But they
had a sock puppet regime there, but they
they wanted to, you know, um maintain it
and it was falling apart. So they rushed
to intervene. However, Lex, the point
still remains that the United States of
America was trying to bait the Soviet
Union into invading Afghanistan. And
we're going to get back to why this so
relevant to the Iran thing in just one
second, but let's stop and talk about
this for a second. Why would they do
that? And they would do that also
because of Vietnam. Because at the end
of Vietnam, Americans had what the
government considered to be a mental
illness, Vietnam syndrome. That meant
that Americans didn't want to do this
anymore. contain communism at this cost
and who really cares if Vietnam goes
commie we do business with them now you
know and so um people weren't into it
anymore so this is where Zign Brzinski
and his uh he was national security
adviser under Jimmy Carter and uh his I
guess counterpart at defense a guy named
Walter Sloum they came up with this
brilliant idea that what we'll do is we
will bait the Soviets into overexpansion
Now, we don't want them to invade West
Germany, but the Afghans are expendable.
So, if we can bait the Soviets into
Afghanistan and bog them down, we will
be adding straw to the camel's back.
This is a way to inflict because by
then, think of it, the word Vietnam,
that's not even the name of a country
over there somewhere anymore. Vietnam at
that time, that word means some
horrible, stupid, no wind quagmire thing
that you shouldn't have done. you shot
yourself in the foot and the leg and
lost your friend Jimmy down the street
and everything and for we don't want to
do that. You know, that was what Vietnam
meant to America was like, "God dang,
what a mistake that was." So now they're
saying, "Let's do that to the Reds."
Okay, we'll bog them down, bleed them to
bankruptcy, and force them out the hard
way and and hurt them in doing that. So
that's what they were trying to do. That
was the wisdom behind the operation in
the first place. And now if you go click
back one to Brazinski, you'll see where
and he later misprinski
but
>> national security advisers big new
Brzinsk's memo to President Carter on
December 26th 1979 regarding the Soviet
invasion of of Afghanistan.
>> And the important part here I mean
there's a lot it's a bit but if you go
down you will see where oh here this
could become a Soviet Vietnam while it
could become a Soviet Vietnam. In other
words, see they're already talking about
in that context here in writing. We see
and it's from Robert Gates's first
memoir, by the way, where he says it was
Brazinski and Sloukum, by the way.
That's my source for that when I say
that those two were the ones really
innovating this policy. Um, and he says
the initial effects of the invention are
likely to be adverse for us for the
following reasons. And then he says that
it'll make the hawks talk about how we
better do something about Iran. And he
says this could bring us into a
head-to-head confrontation with the
Soviets. So this is very interesting,
Lex, because well, one, this is why
America's passing intelligence to the
Ayatollah about threats from the
Soviets. We think that now that Iran is
essentially destabilized because of the
revolution and we just deliberately or
at least were trying to and apparently
succeeded in a sense in baiting them
into invading Afghanistan. Now we're
worried that they're too expansionists
and that they're going to roll into
Persia next and then they'd be right on
the Persian Gulf and we can't have that.
So that was when Jimmy Carter announced
in his speech in 1980 the Carter
doctrine that said that the Persian Gulf
is now an American lake and we will take
any move by any power read the USSR to
move into the Persian Gulf as an attack
on the United States itself. Right? were
like bringing the Gulf those waters into
NATO, right? Giving a full war guarantee
to keep the Soviets. They And by the
way, a regime Oh, I'm sorry. I'm
skipping one. See, go back. I'm forgive
me for the It's hard to to stay in line
here. The hostage crisis breaks out in
November 79 because David Rockefeller
from of course Standard Oil of New
Jersey aka Exxon and Aramco and all
those things. Um the chairman of the
Chase Manhattan Bank at that time, he
was very close with Jimmy Carter and he
convinced Carter to let the Shaw into
the United States for cancer treatment.
That was what caused the riot at the
embassy and the seizure of the hostages.
Now, I don't know and and I'm sure there
are books about this that I just haven't
read yet, you know, kind of thing that
explain whether it really was the IRGC
that took the lead in that or whether it
was the students who did it or what, but
obviously the government held the
hostages and kept the thing going. So,
they bear responsibility for that. But
the point being that America had been
trying to work with the Ayatollah up
until then. The idea was not that, oh,
Shiite fundamentalist Islam says that
all white Christians from North America
must lay down dead right now because
that's their religious belief. Look at
them ranting, we're the great Satan and
burning our flag. And then but so when
so many people when the story begins
with they're calling us great Satan and
burning our flag, then well, they just
hate us and so we're just going to have
to do something about that. And you
know, I I remember meeting a guy one
time who said, "Listen, Al Qaeda hates
us for all these complicated reasons."
And he explained them. And then he goes,
"But not Iran. They just hate us." I
remember when I was a boy, they were
burning our flag and calling us Satan.
So it's like, "Yeah, but well, they had
a reason, too. Not that it justifies
them doing anything sinful or criminal,
but I'm just saying they also had
reasons for reacting the way that they
reacted." America had launched a coup in
53 from that same embassy. And by saying
that they were going to cure the Shaw's
cancer seemed to be an indication to
them that we were going to try to
reinstall him in power and cancel the
revolution. And so they were preempting
that. Again, not a justification for
everything that happened there or
whatever, but just to tell the whole
story in a way that I've told that story
people before. Like I never knew that. I
always thought that it all happened in
one big show, you know. And never do
they admit unless sometimes the
Republicans accuse Carter of this.
They'll tell the part about that Carter
was so naive as to send the Ayatollah
home. although that's usually always
left out. Um, but so now he announces
the Carter doctrine, giving a war
guarantee to Iran that he now officially
hates and is holding our hostages and
completely humiliating him. Right. And
there's Operation Eagle Claw where they
sent forces into Iran and that was a it
was supposed to be a rescue mission that
ended up in disaster where the planes
and the helicopters crashed into each
other. They were already leaving anyway
cuz it was going to be botched. and then
they crashed on the way out. And so that
was a big humiliation for Carter as
well. And then, oh, and I should also
tell you that um Gareth just found this.
is a classified document um that he only
found in the State Department records
that showed that just after the Carter
doctrine speech, Brazinski in a private
meeting with the Saudi foreign minister
and also with his deputy Warren
Christopher who was later Clinton's
secretary of defense, he admitted that
we don't think there's really a Soviet
threat to Iran.
Bazinski himself admitted that. So the
pretext for the Carter doctrine was fake
and he admitted it himself. They weren't
really afraid of that even though they
were pretending to be afraid of that as
a result of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan that they were trying to
provoke.
>> And we should also give a shout out to
Gareth Porter. He has uh written about
the Vietnam War books including Perils
of Dominance and Balance of Power and
the Road to War in Vietnam.
>> I have to say I believe that he is the
most important journalist of the war on
terrorism era. I call him Gareth the
Great. He's a good friend of mine. I've
interviewed him 300 something times on
my show about essentially everything
he's written since 2007. He is the best
of the best of the best.
>> It's not just the war in Vietnam. It's
he he writes also about the continued
>> absolutely specialized in Iraq,
Afghanistan, exposing the entire fraud
of David Petraeus and his career. He
wrote the book manufactured crisis on
the Iranian nuclear program. That is by
none the the very best book on that.
>> You're absolutely right. Vietnam,
Cambodia, Syria, Iran, and uh the war on
terror. All things he's written
extensively about
>> Gareth Porter the Great, man. Absolutely
great.
>> I learned so much from him. I I couldn't
begin to explain.
>> Fair enough. So, the story continues.
>> Yes.
>> Carter.
>> So, another aspect of the Carter
doctrine was that Carter gave the green
light to Saddam Hussein
to invade Iran. Now, first thing is why
Saddam Hussein want to invade Iran? It
ain't just because he likes doing what
Jimmy Carter says. He had his own
reasons. Now, picture your map over
Iraq. I know you got one in your head
there. Everything from Baghdad over east
to Iran and down to Kuwait. That is what
you could call Shiastan. Predominantly
Shiite Iraq, right? And then there's 60%
of the population. Super majority. In
the north you have the Kurds who are
Sunnis but their Kurds a separate
ethnicity than the Arabs. And then you
have the Sunni Arabs who are another
20%. Well, Saddam Hussein was a secular
Sunni Arab leading essentially like like
on the Simpsons the Kami Nazis, the Both
party who are like sort of both a little
just a fascist state essentially, right?
With Arab characteristics or whatever.
Um and but uh and and not an entirely
sectarian one. He had Christians and
Kurds and Shiites in his government and
things like that. It was not, you know,
like just a caricature or whatever. It
was a balance of power act. But after
the Iranian revolution, Saddam had real
reason to fear that the Shiite
revolution was going to spread to Iraq
and that Iraqi Shiites, at least the
armed and convinced ones, would choose
their religious sect and their alliance
with Iran on that basis over their
national and ethnic sect as Iraqis and
Arabs, right? Separate from the
Persians. So, and he had real reason to
believe that, including that members of
the Dawa party and people loyal to the
Hakeim family were uh Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim and his people. They left to go
to Iran and they chose Iran's side in
the war. So, Saddam Hussein's solution
to that was to conscript all these
people and force them into his army and
march them east against Iran and use
them in that way. And this led to an
absolutely brutal World War I. maybe
Russia Ukraine style trench warfare
tanks artillery and there's planes and
and ships and it was a hell of a war for
9 years all through the 1980s as the
United States almost entirely backed
Saddam Hussein except for when they
backed the Ayatollah remember Iran
Contra and during Iran Contra what did
they do they went to the Israelis and
they said hey you're still friends with
the government in Iran you guys don't
mind the Ayatollah one bit and have
maintained your friendship there. We
want to sell them some missiles and try
to get the hostages out and then take
the rest of the proceeds from the
missiles and give them to the Contras in
Nicaragua. And this is what became the
great Iran Contra scandal.
>> And so we should also say and and you
highlight the importance of
understanding Iran Contra. So this here
reading a major political scandal in the
United States during the mid1 1980s
senior officials in President Ronald
Reagan's administration facilitated the
secret sale of arms to Iran which was
under an arms embargo with the proceeds
being used to find uh Contra rebels
fighting the Sandinista's government in
Nicaragua despite Congress explicitly
prohibiting such funding.
>> Yep. And this is of course supposedly a
side story, but a huge part of the side
story is it absolutely was true, as the
great Gary Webb reported in the Dark
Alliance series and in his great book
Dark Alliance, that and many other great
journalists as well, that the CIA had a
massive operation to bring cocaine into
the United States by the truckload and
plane load to sell it to poor Americans,
blacks especially in LA. But also, yes,
it's true. They even made a Tom Cruz
movie after years of calling us
conspiracy cooks and all this. The movie
is about a guy named Barry Seal whose
job it was to fly guns and money down
there and cocaine up here uh for the
Contra for the CIA and into Bill
Clinton's Arkansas where he was read in
on this. And the operation was run out
of the vice president's office, George
HW Bush. And that much is true. in the
same they had the I know less about but
they had this is where all the cocaine
from Miami Vice was coming into uh
Florida in the same way and this is
where the crack epidemic came from in
South LA and throughout the country
really in in many places and they just
don't give a damn about us man Congress
said you can't have any money to fund
the contress and they said yeah but we
want to anyway so this is how they did
it
>> so the CIA would help orchestrate this
kind of transport of drugs
>> absolutely right and And then they
completely destroyed the heroic Gary
Webb for exposing this. And they didn't
murder him, but they drove him to
suicide. And you know, his his good
friend Robert Perry, the great
journalist, verify that. No, it really
was a suicide. People thought it was
suspicious cuz he shot himself twice,
but that does happen sometimes where
people flinch on the first one, but it
was his father's gun and he was totally
depressed and he signed his house over
to his wife and somebody stole his
motorcycle and he was like at the at the
and but they had run him out of his job
at the San Jose Mercury News. They first
ran him to the Hollywood beat and then
he eventually he just quit and went to
become an investigator for the
California state legislature.
>> So the CIA doesn't have to kill you
directly. They can psychologically
destroy you.
>> That's right. Yeah. They put the gun in
his mouth either way um for doing the
right thing. Uh but anyway, and and
didn't get any facts wrong. The only
thing that anyone had to attack him on
was like the graphics editor put like a
phrase out of context big on the page or
something in the newspaper. You know
what I mean? It was like something silly
that made it sound like he was saying
the purpose of the mission was to
destroy the black community when that he
never said that. What he said was they
didn't give a damn about those people. I
don't even know if he addressed that,
right? But he certainly wasn't saying
that was what it was about. It was about
funding the Contras. But anyway, so they
found their separate ways of doing it.
And this is one of the things that made
me like this is I don't even have any
idea where I first learned this, but I
knew this while Reagan was still in
office or at least by the time Bush
Senior was in office when I was still
just like maybe a freshman in high
school or younger than that. I knew that
Ronald Reagan was a dope pusher. The
same guy with the just say no and the
same guy with the massively increased
penalties for people engaging in just
simply the possession much less the sale
and trade and drugs. And so there are
people who went to prison for decades
for life essentially and literally for
just possession of the same drugs that
the government was bringing in. And so
how are you ever going to believe in a
security force like that again? I never
have. I don't know why you'd even need
to see a Waco massacre or any other or
an Iraq war or any other thing to detest
these people. That's who they are. You
know, I had this um it's the only part I
really remember about it, but uh there's
this great film producer named Kevin
Booth. He was Bill Hicks's best friend
and producer and he did a documentary
about the drug war where they show this
guy and he goes, "Oh, they're all in
prison and they're filming them through
the gate and they're all yelling and
whatever. You can't really make out
much, right? They're all like yelling
over each other." And one guy finally
like makes everybody be quiet and he
looks at the camera and he goes,
"Listen, I'm doing 35 years cuz I had a
few rocks in my pocket. Does that sound
right to you?"
I was like, "Dude, it was Ronald
Reagan's cocaine in his pocket." Like,
that guarantees a full pardon, man.
Right. What are we talking about? That's
not fair. It's a dark aspect of human
nature that the people that try to, if
we talk about drugs, to ban drugs.
And really, anyone who tries to ban a
thing are often secretly participating
in doing that thing.
>> Bootleggers and Baptist, you know. Um,
just on a small tangent, sure. Have you
ever since you're a Texan, have you ever
met Bill Hicks?
>> No, man. I learned about Bill Hicks like
a month after he died and so they
started playing Sane Man on the Access
Channel all the time and I was like, "Oh
my god, who's this guy?" And then
they're like, "Oh, he just died."
>> But I he has been a huge influence on
me, you know, in in a lot of ways. So,
I'm very much a Hixon. I apologize for
that. It's good to do a shout out back
to the drug war and that involvement
from Carter and on and Reagan and uh
Iran.
>> Well, yeah, let's go back to Iran cuz
the cocaine is really tied up in the
contra end of the scandal. Point being,
America's back in Saddam, except when
they're helping Israel back Iran and by
selling them these missiles. And there
even I don't have my footnote anymore,
but it's findable, I'm sure, where they
did talk about, you know, what we do is
we support one side till they start
getting ahead a little bit, then we
support the other side a little bit more
and go or we authorize the Israelis to
increase support for Iran and play them
back and forth against each other. So
that's just not just, you know, offshore
balancing and peace time. That's
balancing in wartime, encouraging them
to keep killing each other, which is
some pretty horrific policy to do.
>> Could you also comment during this stage
and this thread will continue? What role
does Israel have to play in this in this
part of the story with Iran?
>> Well, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know
much about what they were saying about
America's Iraq policy during that time,
but I know that they were still friends
with the Ayatollah, and we're not going
to get to them switching gears on the
Ayatollah until Rabbine in 1993. So hold
that thought. So the the war is still
going on. We have to mention the
chemical weapons too.
>> Yes.
>> America bought them. Taxpayers bought
them. There was a huge Iraq gate scandal
it was called where people were put on
trial for the money but then they their
defense was but the government made me
do it. What are you talking about? This
was a whole thing to do and they were it
was German chemical weapons I believe
and maybe some French but that were
bought with supposed agricultural loans
from the United States to Iraq. And they
had a sophisticated biological weapons
program too uh with anthrax and the
rest. And the Americans sent them the
precursors for the germs that he would
need. During the Iran Iraq war in 1980
to 1988, Saddam Hussein's regime used
chemical weapons extensively against
Iranian forces and Kurdish civilians.
Most notably in the 1988 Halabja attack
that killed an estimated 5,000 people
and injured 20,000 more. There is
substantial documentation that Western
governments, especially the US and some
of its allies, provided Iraq with dual
use technology, intelligence, and
materials which facilitated Iraq's
chemical weapons program. Y and it goes
on,
>> let me drop two good footnotes for
people here. The first one would be
Shane Harris, who's now at the
Washington Post, you know, very official
national security beat reporter. He
wrote a piece about this at foreign
policy.com a few years back where he
goes into extensive details. So, as far
as like authoritative sources, there you
go. Okay. Nothing conspiratorial about
this narrative at all. But then you want
to do a deeper dive onto it, then go to
fff.org
and it's this is the future freedom
foundation and there they have a page
and I'm sorry I always get the headline
wrong, but it's something like where did
Saddam get his WMDs or where did Saddam
get his chemical weapons? Um, you know
what you can do? You can go site
fff.org or and then that way you search
just that site and then you can do
chemical weapons Iraq and I bet you'll
find it.
Yeah, right there. Where did Iraq get
its weapons of mass destruction and I
had mentioned this I I guess on the
Tucker show and so I I actually talked
with Hornberger and I I went back and I
found and I made sure that all of those
links are up to date and work for each
of those stories. So people can go
through and and take a very close look
at those are just articles, never mind
all the books about it and stuff which
there are plenty. So, this is a set of
links uh assembled by Jacob
Hearnburgger. The title is where did
Iraq get its weapons of mass destruction
on