ISIS Defeated In Syria - So Why Drop White Phosphorus?
The last enclave of ISIS is being defeated in eastern Syria, yet the US reportedly dropped white phosphorus which killed a number of civilians. Are we making it worse?
The last enclave of ISIS is being defeated in eastern Syria, yet the US reportedly dropped white phosphorus which killed a number of civilians. Are we making it worse?
The last enclave of ISIS is being defeated in eastern Syria, yet the US reportedly dropped white phosphorus which killed a number of civilians. Are we making it worse?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
I'm doing well, and we're all set to go.
And we're still searching.
We're searching for our celebration to be let loose at the end of a war.
It looks like we had to postpone that celebration with Korea and in that war.
And I don't think we're ready to celebrate the end of the war and our presence in Afghanistan and a few other places.
But, you know, we were hopeful at least that we were going to get some troops home from Syria and move in the right direction.
At least Trump was saying the right things.
But it looks like things aren't going as smoothly as we would like because the debate now is how many troops are we going to keep there?
And the first announcement was Trump would bring the troops home, except for.
Then they had to add it.
Except for, we'll have to keep 200 here.
But these other 200 over here, we better keep those.
So there's 400.
So he wants to bring home 2,000.
And you know what happened?
You know, the Bolton crowd went wild.
And so it's sort of in limbo, but on the table that we would bring those troops home.
As long as we can establish a presence there, we can still be the policeman and settle any disputes that might break out between East and West and U.S. and Russia and the Kurds and whoever.
But so it is still set up to do that.
But just recently, and what got our attention this morning is the report of our side, supposedly our allies, you know, used white phosphorus.
And that there were some people killed.
I think some children and women were killed by this.
But white phosphorus is supposed to be nasty stuff.
And, you know, it's so nasty that they're even willing to say, well, neither side should be using white phosphorus.
But here it is, it's happening.
And then I think the contradiction here is, well, but we're told the war is over.
We're getting ready for our parade.
But now they're saying that, oh, yeah, well, we have pockets.
It's still, we have won.
And I think Assad has won, you know, and that's winding down.
It certainly is different.
But we haven't winded down our interests in that area.
So it'll be interesting to see how this works out.
It seems like it's much easier to get involved than getting out.
It's the sort of opposite.
In the old days, it was hard to get in, but when we got in, we got out.
But now we just ease into these places.
Yeah, there was no congressional declaration that Assad had to go.
You know, it wasn't Trump that started this thing.
It was those peace NIC Democrats and the president who won a Nopel Peace Prize.
So he must be a good guy.
He's for peace.
But anyway, it's a mess over there.
And I expect you to sort all the pieces, huh, and tell us exactly what's going to happen tomorrow.
Well, you know, it started, you know, Trump was on his way home from Hanoi.
And the failed summit, remember, as you point out today, better a no deal than a bad deal.
So I think he was searching for a bit of good news.
He landed in Alaska, met with some troops there, and here he declared, ISIS is 100% defeated.
And that was the thing.
He needed a good news story, and that was it.
But obviously, not because here we have the story.
Here's an interesting thing related to that, though.
It makes you wonder how well informed he is.
And this could be fake news because it is the mainstream media.
But I saw a press report this morning, I think it was from the New Yorker, that President Trump has kind of lost interest in the daily intelligence briefings.
Did you see that?
Yeah, and that Bolton receives them instead, and he delivers the highlights to Trump.
So anyone who would want Bolton as your news filter, that's pretty bad news.
So that might explain why Trump says the war is over in Syria, and then Bolton is coming in with some info.
But the white phosphorus was used apparently in eastern Syria against the last bastion of ISIS.
And as you point out, it was used near a village, and apparently some women and children were killed.
It's a pretty nasty, nasty weapon.
You know, if you look back over the last decade or two and try to figure out each administration which key person was closest to the deep state, and there's been several.
But, you know, for instance, under George W. Bush, I don't think there's any question who was the closest, and that was Dick Cheney.
He probably had more clout and power than the president did.
I think Bush was disinterested in it, but he went along with it and just played those games.
But it was Dick Cheney.
In this case, I don't think there's much doubt.
I think it's Bolton.
There's been warnings about him getting back in.
Pompeo is a neocon supporter, but I don't think he doesn't come across as being the boss or the chief architect of this, but Bolton does.
He just shows up, you know, when it's necessary.
Like, it looked like he pulled it out of the fire, you know, for the neocons when they were about to have a peace breakout in Korea.
So all of a sudden, he writes, and he tells the president, you can't do it this way.
You have to do it.
And Trump backed out and they concocted an excuse for not signing it.
So there's no doubt that that invisible government, the deep state, still has tremendous influence.
And it's a bad situation because it doesn't reflect the American people's desires.
Most American people, you know, aren't all that interested.
But when they are, I guess they can get pretty frustrated with the whole situation.
A few years ago, I wrote an article that I love the title.
It was something about how McCain is the Energizer Bunny of Interventionism.
I think that title has to go to Bolton now.
And he must tweet with both hands because he's tweeting about Venezuela this morning.
Don't you dare touch Guaido as he comes back into town.
He's tweeting about Korea.
He's tweeting about Syria constantly.
Threats, threats, threats emanating from his fingertips constantly.
And you have to see his fingerprints on this use of white phosphorus on this increasing U.S. activity, even though, as his own boss says, the war is over, the other guys won.
You know, it's just incredible.
Well, you know, this is early in the day today, but a lot still could happen today with Guaido going back in and the threat by Bolton.
You know, it is a threat.
So something, you know, could break out even today.
Somebody gets shot and killed.
And, oh, we don't know who did that.
That was just a renegade.
But there could be something like that.
So I would suggest that we all pay more close attention to what's happening in Venezuela, especially today.
Yeah, absolutely.
And the whole white phosphorus thing really is, it kind of underscores the hypocrisy of the U.S. government because we talk about chemical weapons.
You know, Trump lobbed a few bombs over there on the turns out false claims that Assad used chemicals against his people.
And actually, the OPCW report just came out, the final report on that, and it didn't find any sarin gas, just traces of chlorine.
So we bombed them to smithereens, or at least some vacant buildings to smithereens on these false reports.
Yet when it comes to white phosphorus, you know, it's not cut and dry because according to international conventions, it can be used to illuminate.
It can be used to provide camouflage for troop movement, but it can't be used when civilians or when humans are in the area.
And the U.S. has a history of using it in Iraq and Syria.
The OPCW has noted that, yet here we are the great arbiters of all the bad guys using chemical weapons.
You know, the top diplomats aren't meeting right now, but there are some generals, U.S. generals and Russian generals meeting right now.
And I would think that in a meeting like this, that the American generals would be working from a weaker position than the Russian generals, because I think in essence, Russia and Assad have won the war and our side have lost it, but we're not going to give up, even though we backed off and changed the position.
But this is the determination by the Bolton crowd is we're not going to get out of here.
We are not going to leave.
And I would not be surprised for a minute that those 2,000 troops never leave.
But then I got to thinking, well, let's say they do get it down to the 400, which is sort of on the table right now.
But does that include all CIA agents, which are really the troublemakers?
Does it include special forces?
And does it include contractors?
Contractors.
The other day when we talked about the casualties in Afghanistan, I was amazed at the tremendous number of contractors that died, but they're non-people.
Over a thousand.
They're unofficial.
So they will never be discussed because that's top secret.
You can't even bring that up in a hearing because that would be, I guess, that would be injurious to national security to tell the people what our armies are doing secretly.
Closed session.
Well, the issue with Syria and other places where the U.S. is intervening is not whether there's 400 troops or four troops.
It's the issue of national sovereignty.
We expect, and rightly so, that our sovereignty is respected by others.
And we spend a lot of money, theoretically at least, making sure that happens.
That's what our military is for.
Yet when we go around the world violating the sovereignty of others, putting troops on soil where they're not welcome, it really, if they think that the rest of the world doesn't see this double standard, you're missing something.
Yeah, but they were back to the old argument again.
Well, we have to have a presence there.
We don't want to leave because we have to send this warning to ISIS and the bad guys.
Because if we leave, the bad guys are going to come in.
And they never once considered the fact that the bad guys, the ones who are causing a lot of violence, are usually responding to exactly what we're talking about.
And that is the interference in the sovereignty of these countries.
And so if we have a group staying there, hundreds or a couple thousand and say, well, we're not going to fight anymore, but we're just there in case of an emergency, they're serving the incentive for ISIS and these other people to come.
And they don't, you know, they're not exactly sure what will happen, but they say, well, we have to be there to prevent it.
And they don't realize they're literally the cause.
Literally the cause.
And, you know, today, even as we speak, hundreds of ISIS fighters and the human shields they've been using are desperately trying to get out of these areas.
They're trying to escape.
The war is over.
They're trying to get out.
It really is the end of this war, as Trump rightly said before.
But the question is: we have to find an excuse to stay.
We have to find an excuse to remain in the country.
Bolton let it slip a few weeks ago.
It wasn't Pompeii that said, we've got to watch Iran.
Find An Excuse To Stay00:04:18
That's the big thing.
That's what they want.
Well, this one in Syria has now been going on for eight years, so it's getting to be a long skirmish.
Fortunately, it has been quite not nearly as bloody as Iraq and Afghanistan, but it still is a gnawing nuisance.
It might be a favorite approach for the neocons because they have this danger is out there, and we have to prepare.
Boy, we better spend weapons.
Look what the Russians are doing now.
Even though we back off on a treaty, the Russians now are backing off on a treaty and a confrontation, and therefore we have to have more weapons and we have to compete.
We have to have a spaceport and just be prepared.
So I think the incentive for the military-industrial complex to be quite happy is there.
We will continue to build the weapons.
And even if these other countries who spend just a small amount of money to ours, we can blow it up and say, boy, look at this weapon that they have.
We have to have one that is even bigger and faster, you know, and just another excuse to spend more money.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, speaking of the U.S. role in the world, you know, I would close out with an interesting article that we put up on the site, Dr. Paul, on the RonPaulInstitute.org site, citing a Gallup poll.
Gallup does a poll about perceptions of the U.S., perceptions of the most important countries in the world, you might say.
And it's interesting, there's a great disconnect.
I would encourage people to have a look at our website.
But according to this poll, a Gallup Worldwide poll, Americans who believe that the rest of the world has a positive view of them is 59%.
59% of Americans believe the rest of the world has a positive view of America.
And in fact, the rest of the world was polled, and it's only 31%.
So there's a huge gap in perception between how the U.S. feels that the rest of the world sees them and how the rest of the world actually sees them.
And Eric Zoyce, who wrote the article, points out probably that discrepancy can be explained by the mainstream media, you know, and its continuous propagandization of the American people.
So it's something to think about in the context of what we're talking about today and U.S. foreign policy in general.
Very good.
And I think it would be interesting if they could go back several decades and sort of trace that polling, because I would think the further back you go, the more favorable the rating would have been for the United States.
But because of our interventions and the mischief we've been involved in and the flaunting of it, you know, the use of sanctions and financial controls and also the frequent use of bonds has made us less popular.
It has made us less safe.
It has made us more poor.
So there's no advantage whatsoever to this, and yet it's still, the scare tactic is national security, protect our freedoms, protect our Constitution.
I hope that is wearing on the American people because that just isn't true.
We're not protecting our liberties.
We're not protecting our national security.
We're not being made safer, and we're being made poorer.
And I think it's going to end.
I think the empire will end and we will have to pay the bills.
Sometimes the payment comes later.
You know, I remember in the 60s when we had a policy in the government of guns and butter.
We could fight Vietnam War and expand the welfare state, and the penalty was paid for in the 90s.
The economic penalty was paid for in the 1970s.
So what we're doing now, the financial system is a little more sophisticated, and they can prolong the so-called boom period.
But believe me, the longer you prolong it and talk people into doing these things, the bigger the bust will be.
And if you measure it by the amount of debt that's building up for these various reasons, boy, people should be prepared because the day is coming when we will have to pay back for our extravagance.
And of course, the only real extravagance that I don't like is the extravagant destruction of our liberties because I am convinced that if we have our freedoms, our liberty, and a limited government, no matter how much payback we have to have and liquidation of debt, I just think if you have one's liberty, you can work your way out of it.
Challenging Non-Intervention Policies00:00:21
But that is being challenged too, and that should be on the top of our list.
And that, of course, would mean that we would accept a policy of non-intervention in economics, non-intervention involved in our personal liberties, and non-intervention overseas.
That is what we're striving for.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.