Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/15/22 Dave DeCamp: Troubling Developments from the War in Ukraine

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Dave DeCamp joined Scott on Antiwar Radio this week to run through some of the latest news about the war in Ukraine. The two discuss the U.S. and British personnel on the ground in Ukraine and the American plans to send more. They also talk about the U.S. plan to send Patriot missiles and the Ukrainian strikes deep in Russian territory. Lastly, they touch on the fading likelihood of peace negotiations as NATO eagerly prepares for this war to continue for years.  Discussed on the show: “US Will More Than Double Its Training Program for Ukrainian Troops” (Antiwar.com) “UK Marines Conducted Covert Ops in Ukraine, General Claims” (Libertarian Institute) “Russia Says It Will Target Any Patriot Missiles Sent to Ukraine” (Libertarian Institute) “Reports: Biden making plans to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine” (Responsible Statecraft) Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com and the host of Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp. Follow him on Twitter @decampdave This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacific Radio, December 15th, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, Shell, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of anti-war.com and editor of the new book, Hotter Than the Sun. Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. You can find my full interview archive more than 5,800 of them now. Going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. All right. Our first guest today is Dave DeCamp, news editor of anti-war.com. Welcome to the show.

Dave, how you doing? Good, Scott. Thanks for having me. very happy to have you here and lots of bad news to talk about on the site today first of all us may send troops into ukraine oh for oversight is that right yeah yeah so this is unfortunate because it looks like there's a lot of growing calls especially from republicans for more oversight of the billions of dollars and weapons and other aid that is being sent into ukraine and it looks like those concerns are going to be used as justification for for the U.S. to increase its role in the war. So back in October, the Pentagon confirmed that there was U.S. military personnel in Ukraine

conducting on-site weapons inspections. They're based at the U.S. embassy in Kiev, but, you know, and this is according to U.S. officials, they do go outside of Kiev to do weapons inspections, although they say they don't go to the front lines. And this is just a few dozen troops, military personnel that do this right now. So this was a report from NBC News this week that said they're considering sending more. And, you know, these officials that they spoke with were stressed it would be very small number of troops if they do send more. But still, it really represents this growing involvement in the war and what they quoted a former U.S. official who called it classic mission creep.

I mean, this is, you know, how things get started. And if you read this report closely, they say that Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, he wants to enhance the weapons tracking mission that's going on in Ukraine. But he also wants experts to be on hand that know how to use all these advanced weapons that they're sending Ukraine. So that's different than just this oversight mission that they say they want. So that's a sign. And that's kind of the escalation that a lot of people have expected. A lot of hawks I've seen say this, that maybe not so much Pentagon. personnel, but it could be in the form of private contractors to go in there and do maintenance

of all these weapons systems that they're sending Ukraine. So, again, it's just concerning, more escalation. And also Politico reported this week showing just the lack of oversight, because it is a real concern, all these weapons that are being flooded in, it seems like they have no way to track it. And it was actually a State Department cable that they cited from September that was written by Bridget Brink, who's the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, saying in most cases it's impossible to really track these weapons. So there is real oversight concerns, but unfortunately they're being co-opted to get more U.S. troops in the country. And we also know from reporting the Intercept

reported this that there's U.S. Special Operations Forces on the ground as well. Now, that hasn't been confirmed by the Pentagon, but there's also reports of CIA on the ground, which doesn't come as a surprise, but, you know, it's not like it's just these weapons inspectors, and it continues to grow. It's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton talking with Dave DeCamp. The question also comes up there, Dave. What happens if the Russians blow up some American special operations forces on the

ground? This is, you know, they've already been co-belligerents in the war, legally speaking and factually speaking for a very long time now, but there's an obvious path to worse escalation here if Russians kill Americans on the ground in Ukraine. Yeah, I mean, that's the big question. And that's, so if you see the second story, the second headline on anti-war.com today is the article that Will Porter wrote, and it's a British Marine commander said that British Royal Marines conducted covert ops inside Ukraine.

Now, if you read the article, first he says, oh, they went there before the Russian invasion. They helped evacuate the embassy. Then they went back in April for embassy security. which, you know, we assume when they reopen the embassies, they're going to have some kind of security like that. But then he also mentions, oh, while they were there, you know, they conducted other, they were involved in other operations that were highly sensitive and highly dangerous. And the numbers he was saying was like that they had like 300 Marines going to Ukraine on these deployments. So again, that's the question. What happens if they get caught in the middle of Russian and Ukrainian forces and some British special ops get killed?

could that draw us into the war? And I do think that the British are pretty involved because you see Russia is always accusing the British of, they said that they were involved in the truck bombing of the Kirch Bridge, which connects Crimea to the Russian mainland. And we know from the, thanks to the gray zone, they published some leaked documents that the British intelligence was helping Ukraine plot an attack on this bridge.

It was a different attack. I believe it was they were plotting, like using a boat or a missile and it ended up being a truck bombing. But still, I mean, it shows how intimately involved the British are in plotting these types of attacks. Right. And now there's a headline today on anti-war.com as well. Russia says it will target any Patriot missiles sent to Ukraine. And this is, you know, another huge escalation is not just more and more powerful weapons as America ups the ante all along and openly brags about it on the front page of everything that they can. But also, now we're talking more and more equipment that really needs Americans

to run it. Well, yeah, that's a thing about the Patriot missiles. Kelly Vlahos wrote a really informative piece about these missiles at Responsible Statecraft. You know, it says that they need at least six months to train them, if Ukrainians were to operate them, at least six months to train them to use them. And she said some batteries require up to 90 troops to operate them. So it shows how advanced this equipment is. So even if they take the whole six months, even though the whole idea is to get them air defense systems while Russia is currently, you know, bombing their infrastructure. But let's just say they train them in Germany for six months. They send the systems. I mean, if it's that advanced, you have to think they're going to send some U.S. personnel in there, too,

whether they're soldiers or private contractors. So, yes, just escalation after escalation. And I think, unfortunately, the last time I was on your show, we were talking about all this signs of diplomacy, but I think that's all kind of gone by the wayside down. I know. I was going to ask you, and then I decided to not waste time on that because apparently that's really just not happening at all. Yeah, unfortunately. Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com. And if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else.

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It's a whole new era. We libertarians don't have the power, but we do have enough influence to try to lead the left and the right to make things right. Join us at Libertarian Institute.org. Yeah, they decide only to escalate. And now we're almost out of time here, Dave DeCamp, Anti-War.com, on the line. Tell me about these strikes inside Russia and this Times of London peace about how, yeah, we told them to do it. Yeah, so there was Ukrainian drone strikes deep inside Russia. One air base that they targeted was about 400 miles from the Ukrainian border.

And they say that they had strategic bombers there that were damaged in this attack. And Russia said that they used old modified Soviet drones. So they didn't use American weapons as far as we know. But then we had this Times of London piece come out say that, you know, the Pentagon basically gave them the green light to attack inside Russia. And it says that the U.S. is no longer worried about the risk of escalation. People are absolutely crazy. But here's the reason, which is just so absurd, is that because up to this point, Russia hasn't used the tactical nuke or bombed a NATO country in response to attacks on its territory. In other words, we've already crossed the line so far and they haven't reacted.

So we can just keep crossing it. By the way, you know, in the Washington Post, you know, almost a year ago at the beginning of the war, they ran a piece where Lloyd Austin talked about his number two strategic objective here is to keep the conflict contained inside the geographical borders of Ukraine. A few months later, forget it. And it also, there's been a shift because when the U.S. first sent the high Mars rocket systems that they have provided Ukraine, they're currently equipped with missiles that have a range of about 50 miles. They said, oh, we got assurances that they won't use them. on Russian territory. Now, John Kirby, he's over at the National Security Council now, he said, you know, after that attack, they said, oh, we're not encouraging Ukraine to launch these attacks.

But it's that, you know, once they get these weapons, it's their weapons, they can do whatever they want with them. So that's a shift in policy, because they used to say that they wouldn't want them to use U.S. weapons to target Russian territory. There was an exception for Crimea then, but now it seems like everything's fair game. And they haven't given them the longer range of missiles that they want that have a range of 200 miles. But still, I mean, the Haimars, you know, they've been shelling, Ukraine has been shelling Russia from the Kharkiv region since they retook it. So, you know, they can be very close to the border and use these weapons.

Yeah. So that's always a possibility. Yeah. It's Antide War Radio talking with Dave DeKamp, news editor at antiwar.com. And that leads us to our last subject here, which is the Russians war against. against Ukraine. I know that they have taken out, especially electricity infrastructure. They've been bombing Odessa, which obviously raises the question about whether they're coming to Odessa. And there have been reports from very credible sources about the Russians building up a massive

invasion force with their reserves and so forth inside Russia, just waiting for the ground to get hard enough so they don't get stuck in the mud and they can roll their tank force in there and this kind of thing. What indications do you have about that, if any, Dave? Yeah, so it's hard to say because I think the two possibilities are that they do wait for the ground to freeze, which I believe, you know, it's getting there at this point in Ukraine. Yeah, it seems like it would be by now, right? Yeah, and launched this offensive. They've definitely built up their capabilities in that in eastern Ukraine there. But the other possibility, I think some people believe they might kind of do

kind of a slower just grinding little battles and attacks while they keep up the bombing of the infrastructure because I think that is really putting the country in such bad shape I mean they basically knocked out

all the power in Odessa the other day when they were bombing the city and Ukrainian officials say half of the infrastructure was destroyed and millions of Ukrainians are without power so it's a really bad situation for them Um, but so yeah, we'll just, time will tell what exactly the Russians will do. It seems like they have the forces for an offensive. Um, but who knows exactly if that's going to happen or what, you know, their plans are for the next few months. Yeah. Now, man, let's see if we can squeeze a couple of last points in here to. Um, one is that as late as August, Putin was reiterating essentially the same peace terms as from the beginning of the war. But then in mid-September,

They lost Northern Lahansk, and he reacted by calling up the reserves, and then also officially annexing not just the Donbass, but also Zaprogia and Kurson Oblasts, provinces as well. And now he has said, well, look, if we're going to have any talks, it's going to begin with you recognizing Russian sovereignty over these four provinces in eastern Ukraine, which, of course, is an absolute deal killer. He's escalated his side of the story here by such a great degree. Meanwhile, the Americans, if I'm right, I believe continue to insist that they're going to drive the Russians as long as it takes, whatever it takes, completely out of Ukraine and

even including the Crimean Peninsula, is still the official position of the Americas. And they told the New York Times, didn't they? They expect this war to last for years. We're all going to be dead before years of this. Yeah. I mean, that is the situation, you know, both sides are never going to come to the table unless, you know, the Americans force the Ukrainians to. That's the only way I could see it happening. But yeah, it seems like they have big plans to keep supporting Ukraine for years and years to come. You know, they're signing contracts to buy weapons for them that aren't going to be delivered for like three or four years. So that's how the U.S. and NATO are thinking about this right now. Not everybody in NATO, you know, some countries are. more reluctant to be going along with this, but it comes to the U.S. and the British and, you know, Eastern Europe, they're all in on keeping this war going. And it's just a really bad situation for

everybody in Ukraine. And, you know, you can't imagine at the end of this that they're going to end up with that territory even return to them. It's hard to imagine that. Yeah. And in fact, when Millie was saying you guys should talk now, he seemed to be saying, you guys are going to have to give up, marry a poll. You should quit while you're behind. before you get further behind. And yet, that was, as you mentioned, a couple of months ago and nothing happens. So I'm sorry we're all out of time, everybody. That is Dave DeCamp.

He's news editor at anti-war.com. Thanks for doing such a great job for us, Dave. Thanks, Scott. Thanks for having me back. All right, y'all, and that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director of anti-war.com, an editor of the new book, Hotter Than the Sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons.

find my full interview archive more than 5,800 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.