3/5/26 Matthew Hoh on the Lie That Iran Killed Hundreds of Americans in Iraq

We're dealing with Hitler revisited this is the Scott Hortish show libertarian foreign policy mostly

when the president does it that means that it is not only we're going to take out seven countries

they don't know what the fuck they're doing negotiate now and this war and now here's your host Scott Horton

All right you guys introducing the great Matthew Ho like our guest the other days a great whistleblower from the Afghan war

he was a Marine Corps captain in Iraq war two and then was working for the State Department in Afghanistan

and he blew the whistle and tried to stop Obama's trickling of the war in 2009 and he's been a great anti-war activist ever since then

he's with the Eisenhower Network and welcome back to the show Matthew how you doing good Scott how are you?

I'm doing great really appreciate you joining us here and so you got this great article that you wrote that we're reprinting here at anti-war.com

We need edit to this stage here and it is called they are still lying about Iraq

this time to justify war on Iran that George A war on Iran that George W Bush could not get so this is a big one

I liked debunking it too sort of you know you and I have a comparative advantage about this obviously

but it really is crucial man it's one of these you know major talking points on the war parties list of reasons why America has to go to war with Iran

they cite the Beirut bombing of 1983 and they cite usually the claim is that Iran killed 600 Americans in Iraq war two

so what's the truth about that?

Well in the claim has even been exaggerated further Scott because what you hear from the White House from the administration from their proxies in Congress

and in the media is that killed the Iran killed thousands of Americans in Iraq that's the talking point we've heard this last week.

So now it now it's every roadside bomb was an Iranian bomb not just the side bombs great right and that's exactly what the President

United States said earlier this week I think was Sunday or Monday he was doing a medal of honor ceremony at the White House

and he said anytime you see an American veteran he's missing an arm or a leg or his face is half hanging off or whatever Trump said paraphrase him

he said it was because of Iran and then if you look at the statement the one written statement the White House has put out explaining what the objectives of this war on Iran are

you'll see it's a short statement not even half a page but in that half a page twice the White House sites is justification for this war

the thousands of Americans that were killed and wounded by Iran in Iraq.

Man it's just incredible and you know when it comes to Trump himself you know he always doubles or triples whatever number he wants to exaggerate anyway

and who knows what they told him you know if maybe they did tell him but right going in we all know that he doesn't know the first damn thing about a rock war too

he doesn't know who supplied what bomb to who he's as dumb as any you know Mark Levin listener out there driving around who thinks that they know about this stuff

so when he's making that claim in a way I want to say wow what contempt that shows for American servicemen

that he's willing to lie right to their face like that but it's like yeah no this guy is so ignorant that he might not even know he's lying when he repeats that crap

but up until now the line has been that 600 Americans were killed by Iran in the war that's when there's sort of kind of trying to be specific

and even that is embellished by 100 it was 500 Americans who died fighting Shiites in East Baghdad and down in Najaf and whatever in 07 and 08

and you know there were there were some killed including Cindy Shi-Han's son Casey was killed fighting the Sauterists in March of 2004 as well that guy Thomas Young

a paralyzed anti-war activist guy who was shot in the spine he had been sent to go rescue Casey Shi-Han's group after they had already been killed

and was also killed or shot and eventually died of his injuries

but anyway so take us back man help people understand I mean why wouldn't Iran have supplied every bomb in that war Matthew

well the main thing about it Scott is that they simply just didn't need to you know the same thing with widener

why wasn't Iran the chief supplier of RPGs and AKs and RPKs and PKMs and all those sorts of weaponry that the Iraqi resistance utilized

is because they didn't need to there was plenty and plenty of munitions and weapons and ammunition throughout Iraq

it just simply wasn't necessary for Iran to even do that but you know maybe it's back up in terms of

when we talk about the numbers here we're talking about 4,500 Americans killed in Iraq and of that number

yeah roughly 600 or so you can attribute to being killed by Shia groups and the rest the remainder

okay I am corrected on that then I'm sorry I said I stand corrected on that then I thought it was more like five

oh I'm not I'm not certain I just know the last Department of Defense released on this I am aware of which came in 2019

which came at the same time that the United States was enacting sanctions on Iran designating Iran as the RGC

the Iranian Republican Guard as a terrorist organization and ultimately setting in progress a chain of events

that will culminate in the assassination of Qasim Soleimani and then the retaliatory Iranian attack on American troops in Iraq

that's the last time I saw an update on this when the Department of Defense moved that number up to over 600

but I think that's that's probably a fair approximation whether it's 500 or 600 at a 4,500 you're talking about roughly 12 to 15% of the American deaths in Iraq

were were caused by Iraqi Shia resistance groups Iraqi insurgent groups and I should say that's just put this out to begin with

the cause of those deaths was the American invasion and occupation that's the cause if there's anyone who bears

responsibility who has blood on their hands it's the George W. Bush administration the politicians the media all those people

who support this war and sustained it they're the ones with the blood of Americans on their hands

not the Iraqis certainly not the Iranians still as you say in your article though yeah figuratively speaking

but literally speaking 4,000 American soldiers, Marines, Airmen, National Guardsmen were killed by the Sunni resistance

because America was fighting on the Shiites side in that war right exactly if you go in the army

that insurgency 90% of that time right and if you go to the article I delineate that relationship

that the United States has with the various Shia factions if you will I spent a brief amount of time on it

I would certainly recommend people go read your books enough already and fools air in for a very good explanation

of what was occurring here honestly I can't give a better kudos to anyone else's work

you know Patrick Coburn's book the occupation is another great book for people to read about this

but certainly you know we were the United States was on the side of the predominant Shia factions

we put them into power and these Shia factions particularly the principal Shia faction the most powerful Shia faction

scary the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq were Iranian based organizations prior to 2003

so we normally put into power in Iraq groups that were alive with Iran that was something that only the greatest fools and incompetence

could have possibly planned to do but somehow the United States did that

so you do but then you have a schism of course within the Shia between those who essentially support the government say

and those who support Makata al-Sadir and then you so of course you have intra-Shia fighting as well as intra-Araq you fighting

you have this terrible terrible civil war in Iraq soon as versus Shia essentially that of course is caused by our invasion and occupation

but with this the Shia groups that are alive with Makata al-Sadir you know particularly Jam as they recalled

they fought the Americans as well and so that's where you see this 600 number come from or from these Shia groups

that were not allied with the government that were contesting with the Shia dominated government

for elements of control throughout the country and these were the Shia groups that caused those American casualties

that are attributed to Shia resistance Shia insurgent groups

are you muted? I always do that

to help with the time scale here for people in the war this is really the beginning of 2007

is when George W. Bush announces the surge of 30,000 more troops to Baghdad

and a brand new propaganda campaign to blame everything going wrong in Iraq on Iran

and and it was really you know in my understanding Matthew the the Pentagon had basically instructed Bush

that yeah sure we're happy to surge into Baghdad but we don't want to fight Iran

and that was in January of 01 when he visited the Pentagon they took him down in the tank

Joe Klein had a piece of news week about it and then there were others that you know basically confirmed that

they said we don't want to do it because we're essentially embedded with the Iraqi Shiites

with the skieries militia the bottom brigade we're turning that into the Iraqi army right now

and if we go to war with Iraq our guys are really at risk they could get shot in the back like order 66 out there

and so that was one of the main reasons that they didn't want to do at the time and so Bush said okay fine

but Dick Cheney still wanted to do it and he entered into this conspiracy with David Petraeus

and Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times the same guy who was the co-author of all of the A-Bomb parts

hopes stories with Judith Miller in the run up to the war who's now at the Wall Street Journal by the way

and Gordon helped lead this propaganda campaign all through the first half of 2007

where it was funny at the time and you can find you know my interviews at Gareth Porter

where we joked about this and stuff or well they kind of forgot all about Iran's illicit

secret nuclear weapons program for a little bit in order to just focus on this hoax instead

and and then what they did was Petraeus attacked McDowell Sotter who's actually the most nationalist of the Iraqi Shiites

there are three major factions in the United Iraqi alliance Dawa Skiri and Sotter

and Dawa and Skiri had been living in Iran for 20 years Sotter had stayed

and he was the son of one of the founders of Dawa and of course on the day of the invasion

I know some people noticed this and a lot of people didn't

Saddam City the Shiite ghetto and eastern Baghdad the day that Saddam's statue was pulled down

they renamed it Sotter City like yeah this is important you might want to take note of you know why this is

anyway they attacked Sotter only the accusation that he was the most Iran tide of the Shiite factions

when he was actually the least and they ended up chasing him into Iran where he went to school

and got a higher religious rank for the future thanks very much

and then they isolated these so-called special groups which was still nothing but the Modi army

and they just began this claim every time a Shiite sets off a roadside bomb

in this war that we have started against them even though this is one of the factions

and we're fighting to put in power Sotter is one of the biggest king makers in that country this day

they said any time that a Shiite bomb goes off that bomb came from Iran

and they set it a hundred thousand times in the first half of 2007 and they never demonstrated it

not a single time and when they announced they were going to have a big press conference

and they were going to prove that it was true and they laid out a bunch of materials

that were supposedly part of the evidence that this was all from Iran

the part said made in Haditha or made in UAE on them and et cetera

and there was nothing there was nothing indicating Iranian anything

and they actually closed down the press conference and didn't hold it

they had already laid out the material and curious reporters were already looking at it

and saying oh that says made in Haditha on it and so then they just shut it down

and they didn't do it and the national security adviser Stephen Hadley admitted

well the evidence wasn't quite there why this is like in June

this is after months and months and months and months of these claims

that these bombs are coming across from Iran but meanwhile and I do have it here

so I'm going to torture you all with it

it's some let me share this link instead

this is from my book enough already

this is the sub chapter of my rock or two chapter

so to straws and EFPs

and I have this reprinted at my substack it's Scott Horton Show.com

and then I'm going to make you suffer and listen to this part

retire marine captain Matthew Ho regimental engineer in 2006 and 2007

for the 7th and then 2nd Marines and he was stationed at the joint IED

Defeat organization Gietto in 2008 confirmed to the author that quote

yes the EFPs were all made in Iraq in workshops by Iraqis

and I have that backed up here by Alyssa Rubin

also in the New York Times contradicting her podna there

Michael Gordon

we have Alyssa Rubin in the New York Times

Reuters staff Andrew Coburn in the L.A. Times

Yochi J. Driesen in the Wall Street Journal

Ellen Nicomire in the Washington Post

David Hamling and Wired Sam Dawger of the Christian Science Monitor

Seymour Hirson in New Yorker and Gareth Porter in Interpress service

that the EFPs were not Iranian weapons

and all of those journalists other than Andrew Coburn and Gareth Porter

who were doing analysis from here

these others they were there and they were embedded with American forces

finding these workshops in Iraqi Shia Stan

as they're raiding and doing these battles and doing their after-action reports

where they find the workshop and here are the EFP factories

so that's it they had nothing they're totally debunked

and then I have to add one more here because I really like this guy

and I just love saying this it's so funny

James Ergon who he's a Twitter friend

James Ergon at the time was an Air Force master sergeant select

and was Augmented for the fifth special forces group

when that unit took command of combined joint special operations task force

Arabian Peninsula CJSOTF-AP

and he was the combined intelligence cell night shift

non-commissioned officer in charge in COIC

and lead analyst for concerns related to Iranian influence in Iraq

Ergon quote lived and breathed the secret side of the war

over 2600 hours and read over this is still the quote

over 4,000 intelligence summaries from all intelligence agencies

and quote during the 2007-2008 period

he told me in an email that Iranian Coots Force Commander

Kossum Soleimani denied to the Iraqi minister of the interior

Al-Balani who was a Shiite and would have been his friend anyway

not an opponent that he had any knowledge of the EFP's in Iraq

so he had that intelligence that's that's what access he had

he had a secret conversation of Kossum Soleimani going

dude I don't know what they're talking about

to the Iraqi minister who's his ally anyway

and he says I never saw any intelligence that proved otherwise

so now Ergon is not here but that speaks for itself

but can you please tell us about your role at this gigantic acronym

during that time frame as a captain in the Marine Corps?

So first I was in Iraq in on-bark province with the Marine Corps

I was a captain I was a communist and a company commander

and so I was by that role by the engineer officer for the regiment

the person responsible for counter IED counter

and vice-explosive device operations in our regimental area of operations

so essentially going out finding them understanding them

allocating resources all those things as well as I'm being aware

of the larger picture throughout not just on-bark province

but throughout the entire country and then after that was

at the joint IED defeat organization in Washington DC

and there for more than a year and saw the information

near Delhi on what you were just describing

the constant attempt to locate and raid these EFP workshops

and I saw the reports come through routinely

and as you said we would want journalists on these raids

and they would go to these EFP workshops

I think maybe explain to folks what an EFP in explosive form

penetrator is it's a type of IED it's a type of roadside bomb

it's very simple even though it's effects are quite spectacular

it is a weapon that doesn't use an explosive charge

it just relies on physics and so imagine take a paint can

and these were all different sizes

somewhere actually quite small but just say take a paint can

and set it on its side and then over you're going to load it

you're going to fill it with explosive charge and over the top of it

over that opening you're going to place a disk

and it's going to be concave so that it bows inwards

and then when you detonate this device the explosive force

will cause that disk to basically fold in on itself

to ball up to become a slug and it because that's being created

by this explosive this contained explosive force

you're talking about a slug that becomes very very dense

and then of course if you want to make this weapon more effective

you utilize a material for that disk such as copper

so it's even even more dense

and then that slug this incredibly dense slug travels at an incredibly high rate of speed

and it will puncture through at that time

literally any of the armor we had it actually puncture our tank armor

it will puncture our armor on these it will puncture our M wraps

our anti-IED vehicles or anti-mind vehicles

it will puncture our specialized route clearance vehicles

so we did route clearance we went out and looked for IEDs

looked for these roadside bombs and we had specialized vehicles for that

called buffaloes and huskies

and this would puncture the buffalo and husky

and then we had this very dense slug at high speed

puncturing armor the resulting explosion

the release of energy inside the cab of the vehicle

was incredible I mean it was ungodly the amount of heat that was generated

the explosive force the blast pressure the over pressure etc

and so the results were catastrophic

and this weapon was a weapon that the shea insurgents

as soon as never used it if they did it's a they use one or two

I mean but I don't know of any case where they did

but the shea that used them against the Americans

these weapons were incredibly effective we had no way to defeat them

but again they were relatively simple

anyone with the understanding that I just explained

could build one as long as they had a half decent machine shop

so the American argument was that

this is too sophisticated the technology that for the Iraqis

to do it themselves and of course so many people went along with it

even though you had journalists from what you just read off

ten different major newspapers debunkiness

this still holds weight now this idea that

the Iraqis were not capable of building or using these weapons

and the Iranians had to not only provide them to them

but show them how to emplace them and use them

and that's just simply not true again everything I saw two years

doing counter IED work in Iraq and you know

at Jaito you know that is just completely false

and it's just a lie used to again it was meant to get George W. Bush

dear Ron war that they wanted and now it's being recycled

you to get you know to or to justify this war that they

do have with Iran and I think what should give a lot of people pause

is if there's still recycling lies

about the deaths of Americans from almost 20 years ago

how do you think they're going to handle the deaths of Americans going forward what type of concern

do you think they have at all for the well-being of any

of these service members if they're so willing to use so easily

proven and debunked lies as they are

I mean this this group is even

more cavalier about this than the Bush administration was

yeah man so a couple things that first I'll get a portal showed how

they had learned the technique from Lebanese Hizbala

but they had learned it not from Iran or the IRGC but from the IRA

and so that was that was the origin of

if people google this you'll find it it'll come right off I mean this is

an EFP is essentially a sub variant of a

shape-charge and a shape-charge is an explosive

device that has been utilized probably

they probably started using shape-charges about a year after they invented gunpowder

you know I mean it's been around for that long so the fringes behind us are very simple

and you know you don't have to be exact

weapon that through trial and error you can figure it out it can be

good enough and were there EFP's that didn't work so well against our vehicles

sometimes but you know what they figured it out you know

and others were very precise others were very rough and rudimentary you know but

yeah the idea that these are weapons systems that only

an industrialized nation could produce is just absolutely absurd

all right this episode of Scott Horton Show

the books I wrote you can see them behind me there enough already

fools errand and then enough already and provoked

and then of course one might have fallen down there but I got

Ron Paul the great Ron Paul

Scott Horton Show interviews and hotter than the Sun see that one back there over there that way

hotter than the Sun time to abolish nuclear weapons that sell interviews I did

all about nukes and really great stuff

on these things and you know I've gotten a really great reception on all of them

they were all been endorsed by Ron Paul and

Daniel Ellsberg endorsed two of three I wrote

he would have endorsed the third one I nobody died too soon unfortunately

Tucker Carlson says that provoked is the definitive

account in fact that's a Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mattay said about it too

the definitive account of the new Cold War with Russia and the war in Ukraine so maybe check that out

yeah we also have to talk about David Petraeus's treason where he's

well yeah exactly you want to go gay to Shia weapons let's talk about that yeah

yeah so when he got there this is the guy who famously said tell us how this ends

it ends with him turning Iran's proxy force the Pot over gade into the Iraqi army

first he had to stop by Mosul and arm up and pay off the Sunian surges then he went down to bag that where he oversaw the torture campaign

in operation copper green and all of that stuff in the El Salvador option

with those mercenaries torturing people the death and you know when they say in the wiki leaks

remember the wiki leaks about the wolf brigade where they are torturing people death

with power drills through the eyeballs and through the skull that was the bottom brigade that's

right off of the bottom of the gate special operations working under David Petraeus

and so here he is he sent that that's not let other one of one person off the hook either John

Negra Ponte right the ambassador to he was the first ambassador to Iraq he took over from

John from Jay Bremmer and the coalition from his authority and if people aren't familiar with

Negra Ponte's history in Central America his connections to those death squads after you stop

after you finish listening to sky and I hear go and look up Negra Ponte's pass and things will

make sense as to why after Negra Ponte shows up after Petraeus leaves Mosul goes to Baghdad you start

to see these mass sectarian killings you start to see the torture you start to see the bodies

turning up in the streets of Baghdad being carried out by death squads you know as Scott

was who's describing yeah that's how I got the name El Salvador option was it was Negra Ponte

who had been the ambassador back then in the 80s overseeing all that and then so then he builds

the bottom brigade which is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iran

which was run by the Hakhine family Abdul Aziz al-Hakhine now his son who were outright Iranian

agents the entire time and then it and same for the Dawah party guys where almost every I think with

one exception every Prime Minister since the war starting with Ibrahim Jafari and the Nureal Maliki

and all the others since then have all been from the Dawah party it's at one of them all Sudani

from scary and then so Petraeus was taking the most Iranian tide Shiite malicious side against

the least Iranian tide the Iraqi nationalist among the Shiite leaders Maktat al-Sadir and why

because he would regularly denounce the American and Iranian influence in the country and they

didn't want Iranian influence in the country but they didn't want to give up their own either

they didn't want to turn the country over to nationalists who would marginalize Iran and the

United States so they would rather keep guys who were more loyal to Iran than the United States

and so they turn on Sader to prop up Dawah and scary and meanwhile he's still there you know he

ain't gone but all this was to benefit people who were actually more on the side of Iran rather than

less and don't forget about the Iraqi national accord Akbar Chalibi's group right there are the

ones who had the ear of the American administration they're the ones who are telling Rumsfeld and Wolf

Whits passing on to Jay Bremmer this is how you should conduct the occupation these are and so

the Iraqi national accord had a vested interest in ensuring that a local group like Maktat al-Sadir

Maktat al-Sadir would not ever have any type of role in what was going to come in the rebuilding of

Iraq of the reconstitution of the Iraqi government you know the quick story I a friend of mine who

was a officer U.S. Army officer in Sader city in 2003 and he tells a story about how he's in the

the battalion or exit their cab the Calvary sort of squadron they use in the the headquarters though

and there's this youngest man standing around dressed all in black and he kept coming every day

and they kept telling him to shove off because you know essentially the orders from the American

the orders that came down through the hierarchy of American control there was that we're building a

democracy the tribal authorities and the religious authorities have no say in anything they are

illegitimate we are building a democracy I mean I saw this play out throughout Iraq so people who

actually had legitimate authority among constituencies in the population were sideline and often

rudely and rudely and you know what happens in Sader city is that you have these black

morning banners that are hanging down that the Americans don't understand what they are so early

on we're tearing down morning banners in places like Sader city because we think those black banners

are a call for jihad or something like that when they are literally morning banners right so no

no better way than to get off on the wrong foot of the population and essentially piss all

over their dead relatives right and then you have very early quickly right I think it was the

summer of maybe it was oh four but million oh three that we shut down like Sader's newspaper we

did a number of things like that the side by him and I was going to start the outbreak of violence

in March of 2004 and the first big fight it was going on in Fallujah they were attacking

Fallujah at the same time and I'll never forget represented Bob Dornan on on TV being

interviewed about it and saying if shutting down this newspaper saves one American life and

it'll be worth and of course it just broke out in a mass violence the next day right right

I mean the the the responsibility and the accountability here for all the actions that take place

one after another I mean in hindsight it's just absolutely breathtaking absolutely breathtaking

you know I mean and just the impunity that American leaders had throughout this you know as David

Betrayus takes over the multinational training command and then sticky as they called it in Iraq

and you know his during that time they lose 200,000 weapons right at general counting office

of the United States of the United States federal government does an investigation under Betrayus'

watch 200,000 weapons go missing at the same time as American troops are being killed more

and more each month and as well as this hellish Iraqi civil war has begun and it doesn't seem

like it's going to end Al-Qaeda and Iraq is blowing up things left and right I mean just

this place has fallen apart you have a general who essentially gives 200,000 dollars 200,000

weapons to this process and he gets promoted and then later on we haven't flipped the coin at

the Super Bowl I mean just absolute impunity for the greatest incompetence you could possibly

imagine yeah but I do want to tell one personal story of mine about this because there's a lot of

corruption involved here and so when I I left the Pentagon as a captain and I got off of people

like this I got off of active duty when I was in the Pentagon in 2003 because when I had to make

a decision about what I wanted to do with my future in Marine Corps in 2002 I thought their

rock war was over like everyone else didn't I have missed it some eyes will get off of active duty

and do something else with my life I missed the war I had friends over there no three who would

email me and be like hey you know I brought a camera with you with me so I'll take photos and you

can show your grandkids what it was like to bin a marine at war I mean this was this was the stupidity

that we all shared it right so anyway I go over actually to Iraq as a department of defense

official I go from the Marine Corps into DOD as a DOD civilian official I go to Iraq I'm placed

in the coalition's original authority in the ministry of youth in sport I'm supposed to be there

with $20 million to help build stadiums and youth centers and soccer fields and things like that

about four days after I get there in April or early May of of 04 they say hey Matt

this program of yours we're not going to do it because it's a security situation is really bad

and we use the need to use that $20 million or something else I say okay that makes sense you know

at that point in Baghdad there's a car bomb going off every day you know I mean things were bad

and so what I come to find out though is that what the US had done with CPA was we had essentially

assigned different ministries to different groups in Iraq so scary among other ministries have

received the ministry of youth in sport and what essentially happened was this $20 million

for this program that was in cash that was sitting in a vault in the in Saddam's palace that

CPA uses its headquarters in the green zone was essentially just signed right over to scary $20

million in cash given right to scary which then goes of course right to the botter core as well

as to all the you know the leadership of scary who were corrupt as hell but the American corruption

in this was also really quite deep you had a whole class of people in Baghdad at the time they

then later on the Kabul of course when that surge and that you know you know that grift really

started happening but these were a class of people that had come out of the Balkans and this

is where of course Cold War this development industrial complex really starts to get underway

and you essentially had these consultants if you want to call them that who were handing glove

with these Iraqis like scary ensuring that the money got transferred and so how much of that got

skinned off by Americans or by Europeans I don't know but a whole heck of a lot yeah it was real

shady I could go into great detail about it I will tell you this though it occurred as CPA was

leaving and State Department was coming in and so when I went to the CPA inspector general and said

hey look this money is getting stolen he said we're leaving go tell to the State Department guy

go to the State Department guy what do you think he says he says I wasn't here for that that's not

my problem that's CPA's problem and yeah millions of dollars got stolen however many tens of millions

dollars got transferred from an account that I was supposed to utilize to build stadiums and

soccer fields and whatnot you know went to scary and that got repeated over and over and over again

throughout that entire war and of course throughout the entire war of Afghanistan as well I imagine

the same in Syria you can imagine the boondoggle that is going to occur with this war in Iran yeah

flash in my mind there of the jihadists in Syria in that tent that has the USAID logo over it

exactly just just on the scale of it Iraq was 26 million people we invented it they

erad is 92 million people it's four times larger than Iraq I mean like on this as well as

that we've now roped in all the Gulf monarchies into this I mean in terms of the corruption

and the grift and the racket this is going to be I had a gunnery sergeant in Marine Corps

used to say this line all the time I mean these people are going to be riding the gravy train with

biscuit wheels I mean the amount of money that can be made off of this aram war if it goes forward

as people hope it will it's just staggering yeah on rail straight to hell they're riding it all right

all right guys well if you're like me and pretty much everybody else you use amazon.com all the time

because what are you going to do they got prime they bring the stuff right to door and all that

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show will get a kickback from amazon's end of the sale which is very nice yeah so here let's wrap

on this in 2007 as I mentioned in january they brought w bush to the tank in the battles of the

Pentagon and the skiff and they told the mr. president will do the surge but don't make us by

iran and here's why that thing is yes can america to be iran in a war ultimately could we at some

cost have air dominance over their skies and bomb their military very very badly in all of these

nobody doubts the power of the united states of america when it comes to just straight putting

firepower on targets now patrolling poshtunes in patika province and turning them into you know

i don't know west germans or something i don't know that that maybe not so much but firepower on

target you know Matthew ho and his marine core friends can explode stuff what here's the problem

they explained the present we will not have escalation dominance in other words we will not control

every stage of the conflict which is the only way we like to fight and they're going to have a say

in this and we have soldiers at risk in a rock in afghanistan which no longer is the case in

afghanistan and the numbers are much lower in iraq but it's still true that we have soldiers in

iraq and then of course we have army troops in kwait and whatever other branches i'm not sure we have

the massive airbase and central command headquarters at all you need airbase in cutter we have the

fifth fleet station at barrain and we have all various and sundry military bases throughout

ua e Saudi Arabia and even oman and then of course there's a trillion dollars worth of economic

targets all up and down the western side of that golf and including the straits of hormones

which would be at risk there and so um could we ultimately prevail yeah sure but might it look like

you know the invasion of france in world war two yeah maybe to actually

you know exercise our will there and have our way and change the regime in a way that satisfactory

does and potentially a great cost to the rest of our military empire in the middle east and so

let's not do it and during that time it was leaked repeatedly that the head of sent com admiral fox

fallen was essentially insubordinate and refusing to do it and it was leaked like this before he finally

confirmed it and said over my dead body well we do this and he later said when the time comes we'll

crush them like ants but that time is not now and we shouldn't do it so it's you know he was still

an admiral but he was just saying this is crazy that we would do this when we have all these troops

in Iraq uh who could be slaughtered order 66 style embedded with the Shiites the way they are

and in fact the the leader of the bottom brigade as well as mctaught all started had both said that

yeah oh we'll kill you all right there's a we will do our duty was what the head of the bottom

brigade had said um back then and anyways so um so that was why bush didn't do it and we know

the aehood ulmer in what late spring of oh seven begged him to do it and he told the prime minister

israel no and this was aerial shirone's six you know handpicked successor ulmer he told them no

and it was originally reported by steven clements and then with multiple confirmations it was

reported in i believe april or maybe may of oh seven that david ormser the principal author of

the clean break document for netanyahu and military via their foreign policy advisor milleys

advisor to um vice president day chainy was going around bragging that they had a plan to maybe

work with the israeli's they were thinking about working with the israeli's attack iran

and force iran to attack american interests in the gulf and that would be an end run as they put

it around george w bush to force george w bush to fight this war and he shouted them down on advice

from the professionals in the pentagon we're not doing this and he told the guys in the vice

presence office were not doing this and then at that same time we know they were working on it and

it was still a few months later in november was when the cia and the national intelligence council

came out and once and for all the bunked the lie that iran had a secret illicit nuclear weapons

program they only have a civilian one in its safeguarded and they're not developing nukes and

they haven't made a political decision to begin to make nukes and that was it for you know the last

year of pushes presidency war with iran was off the table because he had said the eft hoax is not

a good enough reason to strike ir gc bases he had told a hudolmert don't you get me into this

against my will and then the cia came and limited his options even more by telling the truth

that they weren't making nukes and he had no pretext for war and you know the politics of that are

pretty fraught i mean you figured chainy pushing that hard against w bush to launch this war then

and what it took for him to say no and and put his foot down and resist man right now of course

you have a president who is bragging about he's doing what no other president could do before

right he's the he is the pro finally we have a president who is taking on the islamic republic of

iran all the rest of them were too weak or too cowardly or whatever he says i mean so this we

have this minds that here of of of just the righteousness that is embolded in these people

you know and you know the danger is you saw with the bush administration how they never changed

their view on a rock right i mean even when oh six occurs the oh six elections occur clear

referendum from the american people you know the bush fires rumsfeld they put the gates in charge

you know and and right and then we have the surge and everything else and it's only

you know when george of your bush signs that sofa agreement with a rock in two thousand eight

saying we'll get out of a rock by two thousand eleven that's it's some you know drastic attempt

to try and get a rock out of the election conversation to try and save McCain's chance for election

and at that point it was too late you know i mean so the bush administration never would even

they wouldn't shift on their views on it they only doubled down on it and then you know in

july or august of of oh eight they signed the sofa agreement hoping that somehow this is going to

take the rock war out of the election and it didn't i mean so with this administration we have now

my god what are these people going to do i mean like just i i think there actually is

somewhat of a blessing with trumps uncertainty with his uh a lack of principle with his

ability to to to stick to one thing for longer than his mood cycle or what his ego tells him

so i mean i think we were in a better position that way of having a president who might you know

as we're recording this there could be a a truth social message saying we've won it's over

you know that kind of thing you could get that the same time too you look at

the infatuation that they have with the tactics with the tactical the lowest level warfare

which as you were saying before scott the united states does the tactical level warfare really well

looking in two thousand seven two thousand eight two thousand nine if i had to get into a gun fight

with anybody in the world i would have picked a squad of american marines or a squad of army

infantry right i mean those guys were that good in terms of of of that level warfare the tactical

the american military does the operational level pretty well as well though i have a lot of critiques

of it now but it generally it does the operational level fairly well despite of course then two

down rumsum saying you go to the war with the army you have not the one you want but the strategic

and the political levels of warfare the two most important levels of warfare the one that determined

the outcome of the wars the american military and the american uh the empire i want is

terrible at that and i think looking at this war of choice that we just launched we the united states

just launched uh without clarity on uh the objectives without understanding why we did it without

even having a cogent coherent message uh that the administration kept up for launching a war of

choice like this in the way they did it oh my god what are we in for a man what are we in for with

this i don't know i mean i hope that this is completely silly and stupid but my big fear is that

the ayatollah sastani or someone of near equivalent rank is going to declare holy war here i mean

remember and and look he's also like comedy was very old and yeah very conservative right he's not

of a fire breathing radical or whatever he could be replaced by somebody worse any day i guess he's

but remember in oh four sastani said hey you believe in god i want you to go outside and tell

george w bush that you insist on one man one vote democracy right exactly yeah and every single

iraqi shea from bagdad to kawaii to najaf and everywhere in between all went outside and said

hey w bush you want to start this war all over again boy and he said actually no thank you and

became ayatollah sastani slave ever since that's the explanation for everything we've already

talked about in the show so far why bush fought the war on the Shiite side right because the ayatollah

sastani turned his ass out that's why and he's the same guy that when obama built the caliphate

he said if you believe in god i need you to grab a rifle and go kill the caliphate and then

america flew air cover for the kud's force on the ground leading a rocky Shiite militias to destroy

bagdaddy's caliphate that obama had built for him and so this is a guy that when he does decide

to raise his voice and tell people what to do they do it and he has not said anything like

i declared jihad on the west but he could and he would command legions far beyond what Osama

bin Laden could have ever dreamed of yeah he says all good Shiites die trying to kill Americans

oh my god dude what that could mean for the future of everything is right you know but god dang

that's such a risk well hang on let's add a few more things into here with a rock specifically

a rock will be the first country as far as i understand that we'll have to shut in its oil

wells stop it's it's production of oil and gas which from my limited understanding of this

is a bad thing you don't ever want to shut production down supposedly it gets very difficult to start

it can cause damage wells may not restart this is a big thing and a rock is scheduled to do that

within the week from now essentially six or seven days from from now that means that the 80%

or more of the Iraqi federal governments revenues that come from oil and gas stop that means the

Iraqi federal government can't pay to keep its people in line does this sound familiar to anybody

you know all right i mean as well then too the brain trust in washington dc because they're talking

about this ground in their ground troops using the Kurds to overthrow the Iranian regime you know more

and more the idea being is that we're going to base them out of a rocky Kurdistan and also out of

our forces out of Kuwait i guess cross in the shot all our peninsula in that you know as

as we're projecting these forces into Iran which will first start as special forces of visors

but everyone of course remembers how that went in Vietnam or how that went in Afghanistan where

that went to but you know the idea then that we're going to have this projection to

Iran when we possibly have everything you just described and i just described happening

to the rear of that in Iraq and we still haven't seen the amenities enter this war yet

very possible that you'll have American forces both whether proximate to Iran staging out of

Kurdish Iraqi Kurdish or Iraqi Kurdistan excuse me or Kuwait with Iraqi forces behind them

uh hostile to them as well as u.s. naval and air forces throughout the Gulf region and

arabian sea with the amany forces behind them i mean this is just a trap i mean any any if we

are playing risk or access an allies or something like that you wouldn't have put yourself in this

position you know but here we are with potentially looking at that and you know this is my speculation

you know but certainly the possibilities here are legion of what could happen and all the evidence

that we have to rely upon about american military performance particularly after strategic and

the political levels tells us that this is a bad situation yeah so maybe it will go well who

what do i know but like i do you know already isn't yeah they've already hit every American base

in the region they've already pulled um you know defensive missiles out of American bases

and let the american allies and american soldiers expose while they move the defensive missiles

to Israel i mean exactly yeah it's yeah um i forget the occasion was it when Napoleon invaded

Russia that tally ran said it was worse than a crime it was a mistake you know this is you

should not be doing this stuff i don't know why nobody will listen to me i'm always right but no

it's just it is it's about afghanistan on the radio in 2001 thank you very much i did i was

right about this the whole time but i was on a little hundred watt part radio station so

everybody doesn't just read anti-war dot com and then no better i mean what excuse could

you want power i mean what i'm the excuse in the half of this as my good friend mike

furner says even losing wars make money so always remember that yeah that we're already talking

about a affiliate fifty billion dollar supplemental for this war that's right i mean i mean

on the point yeah i mean so they are people are going to benefit it's it's uh and i think they'll

they want to go with the afghanistan syria model whereas long as american troops aren't getting killed

you mean i afghanistan 2013 81 percent of the american public is against it most unpopular

war in american history but at that point by 2013 we had cut casualties down to a minimal you know

a minimal and in syria the same thing too well i have made a few dozen total killed maybe

i don't even think that many and so i think that's their under that's their belief

is that they can manage this war uh none of the things we spoke about will come to pass uh the the

the guitarries or the emorades or the barraines or or the umani's or the Saudis won't ever come to

their senses and uh say get the hell out of our country uh you're costing us more than your worth

we can't trust you uh they're they're banking on that i think they can bank on a duel in

in jordan to do that but the others maybe not you know uh and as well then what does this mean

for turkey in pakistan and and everything else yeah yeah man take your dice shake them up and throw

them dude we'll see what happens okay Matthew ho from the Eisenhower media network thank you so

much for your time all right thank you Scott the scott horton show is brought to you by the scott

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