Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/2/25 Kyle Anzalone on the New Year’s Day Terrorist Attacks

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Kyle Anzalone returned to Antiwar Radio to discuss the pair of terrorist attacks that happened on New Year’s Day and the unnecessary U.S. actions in the Middle East that might lead to more. Discussed on the show: “Will Backing Terrorists Backfire Again?” (Antiwar.com) “The Islamic State in ‘Khorasan’: How it began and where it stands now in Nangarhar” (Afghan Analysts Network) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. 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: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, January the 2nd, 2025, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. First show of the new year, Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of Anti-War.com. and I'm the author of the new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine.

You can find my full interview archive, more than 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org. And you can follow me on X, if you dare, at Scott Horton's show. All right. And introducing anti-war.com's opinion editor, Kyle and Zillone. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Kyle? doing well Scott happy to be back on very happy to have you here we have important news to cover I hate to say I told you so but that's not true I love to say I told you so but I'm not really sure if I can say I told you so there's been a couple of terrorist attacks and yet

they're very mysterious and mystifying and so I wonder if it's my prediction that American support for Israel's horrific slaughter in Palestine has led to this blowback or whether we're dealing with entirely separate and different circumstances. So I'll ask you a very broad question such as, could you please tell us everything that you know and think you know and would like to speculate about the New Orleans and Las Vegas terrorist attacks on New Year's? Right, Scott. And I guess the first thing we could say is it does seem that these two attacks are related apparently both trots were rented using the same app and both from texas both the drivers of both trots who i believe are now both deceased uh i believe the driver of the truck in los

Vegas was the only person who died there and then of course the driver the Vegas guy was from Texas too yes that that's uh was a report i got this morning from local uh Louisiana news affiliate it there who said they had that from the FBI. Okay. Both were in the Army as well, and they actually, on that particular report, they said they were actually stationed at the same base. And so that would certainly suggest that, you know, these two men knew and coordinated this attack together. And so that's not confirmed yet, but that is a speculation at this point that both attacks were carried on. I'm doubtful about that, honestly. Well, I mean, okay, the thing with the both using the same app to rent an

electric truck or whatever, that's something. But Fort Bragg, I mean, the one guy was stationed in Germany and the other guy hadn't been in the army for years. And so there's hundreds of thousands of people in and out of Fort Bragg all the time. So I think that's not a correlation, unless we know that they were in a chat group together and they both had deployed to Afghanistan, but again, that doesn't even imply that they've ever met each other. other had any idea of each other. And then it seems like their motivations would have been seemingly very different too. I mean, the one guy, his brother, the New Orleans guy, his brother told the New York Post that, well, he's been a Muslim this whole life or converted when he

was a child or very young, but has been radicalized recently. And that guy's a Bangladeshi American. I don't know, born and raised in Texas, though, they say, I don't know. But then the other guy's a white guy from, I thought I had read he was from Ohio or something. I don't know. But, and he is, was currently, a green beret, special forces and was currently stationed in Germany, was home on leave, they're saying. And then I guess the question is, and I'll ask you this, do you know about this? I've been trying to catch up here. The latest on X about his politics. seems like there's at least one picture. I don't know if this is confirmed, but it looks like him from other confirmed pictures of he's wearing a Ukraine trident shirt with Slava

Ukraini, the fascist slogan of the UPA on the front. And then there are pictures of his wife, I guess screenshots of her social media being a good little Democrat and that kind of thing. So I wonder if it's really just a coincidence. I saw one guy, Stephen L. Miller was saying, imagine you plan your big Tesla car bomb attack and then not only does the bomb fail, but you get overshadowed by another terrorist a thousand miles away. I'm killing all these people in New Orleans. I don't know. I'm always hesitant to get out ahead of these stories because I see how quick everyone else is to jump to conclusion. So I always want to really just kind of wait. But I don't know. It all seems very crazy.

Yeah, certainly it would it would be a very, I guess, big coincidence that they were ever at the same base together and ended up carrying out a terrorist attack on the same day, both using electric trots rented from the same app, but didn't happen to come across each other while at that military base. And have two separate politics from each other. I will say, Scott, I don't have a lot of information on the Las Vegas bomber. I just haven't had a chance to look into it. And I've tried to be very careful with the information coming out. We know after the Pulse nightclub shooting with Omar Mateen, the Obama administration really altered the narrative, right? They tried to make it out to be that this guy went out and did this because he hated the gays. And that's why he went to a gay nightclub and shot and killed, I think, what, 50 people in that attack when really, of course, it was blowback from the U.S. drone war, particularly in Pakistan. And so what information we're getting now, it's hard to, you know, really say what's definitive.

I did see the FBI said of the New Orleans truck driver, the attacker there, that he was, had pledged allegiance to ISIS before this summer. So, you know, six, seven, eight months ago that that was the case. And he had driven from Texas straight to New Orleans and along the way had posted a series of videos. videos, basically saying that he was considering doing something violent. Initially, he said he had planned to kill his own family, but was worried that the media would then misrepresent his true objective, which was to punish the nonbelievers. So it would certainly seem that he had embraced the jihadism ideology here, Scott, although who knows what connection he had to people outside the United States.

Now, the FBI has come out and said, and I was almost surprised. by how blatantly they said that this they're they're pretty sure that this guy did not act alone that they believe they discovered other iEDs around new orleans against none of them exploded and they're they're still looking for more people so this could be an ongoing incident unfolding in new orleans still i wonder about that didn't seem like much of a team effort to me but yeah we'll see i you know i did see you know the new york post they sent a reporter out and found that his house was just a wreck and was, you know, like just it was filth and hoarding and that his business had failed and he was just a total loser at this time. And now we know

he was born and raised in Texas. He said in his video that's on YouTube that the only time he wasn't in Texas was when he was deployed in the Army. And then we know that included time in Afghanistan. But yeah, the New York Post said like his life was falling up. part like his business has failed and he was at a point of desperation clearly here so um but yeah and then the one in uh Vegas it does seem pretty strange that he would do a suicide bombing out front of a trump hotel and then of course everybody's crediting the cyber trucks stainless steel construction for the truck not coming apart and i don't know if you saw this but the glass windows and front door of the hotel were not even shattered that the explosion was funneled virtually completely

up and down and the sides of the back of that cyber truck held um but doesn't it seem strange though that somebody would be a currently serving special forces guy and then but his bomb is just gas cans and fireworks i don't know i don't know it it does seem strange to especially when, you know, the event in New Orleans clearly was at least planned out well enough to know where there would be a large number of people where, you know, you could carry out a mass casualty attack. And it didn't seem like from the security footage that the Trump Hotel was particularly busy at that time. And it is Las Vegas on New Year's. And so you would have to imagine that somebody could have figured out a time where there would have been far more vulnerable people. And so, you know, I take your point there that this could have been some kind of more symbolic suicide or something like that to do this.

And Elon Musk's Trump at car in Trump's hotel to maybe protest the current administration or something along those lines, especially because if you watch the video, it does seem that there's a lot of fireworks in the bat there. You see them going off. And, of course, you would assume that somebody in special operations would understand. and how explosives work a little bit better and why, you know, wouldn't have created a lot of shrapnel. Now, maybe the person was really mentally unwell. And there is kind of a narrative online, Scott,

that these electric cars are essentially rolling time bombs that start these huge fires and have these huge explosion. So maybe they thought there would be some kind of secondary explosion or some kind of battery acid that was thrown. But obviously that didn't happen. Yeah. Yeah. very strange thing currently serving special forces guy like you got to figure if he's

the worst kind of russia gate truth there and pro-Ukraine war guy in the democratic party right now i mean they did there is a picture of him as i said i don't think it's 100% confirm it it does look like him from other verified pictures of him uh wearing a slava ukrainis shirt and then there's also uh i saw a screenshot of a conversation online conversation they didn't have the original link back though, but seemed like he was saying to someone that, yeah, I'm going to send a guy your way who wants to go volunteer and fight with you guys over there, something along those lines. So he was like Ryan Rout, the guy who had taken or tried to, I guess, was in the position to try to take a shot at Donald Trump at his golf course in the summer was, you know,

somehow tangentially involved in recruiting at least one guy to go over there and fight. Another possible coincidence, but possibly meaningful thing. You know, I don't know. And Scott, one point I want to make particularly about the New Orleans attack is I think Americans really need to realize how vulnerable we are here and that, you know, this is just some guy who rented an F-150, you know, there's far bigger truts than I'm sure you could rent. And there are far other, you know, more populous places that people could get to on a road and run people down.

And so even if this wasn't some act of international jihad and maybe the New Orleans guy was really just a mentally ill cook who watched too many videos online and basically poisoned his mind with violence until he enacted in himself. And the second attack is some kind of glorified suicide or something like that, that, you know, we have spent a year, over a year now, supporting the Israeli armed. the genocide in Gaza. And as you've been saying, and I think you know, you're very correct about this, that there's a real risk that this is going to generate some blow bad terrorism here in the United States. And, you know, this could be enacted that. It may not be. But certainly,

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Gold is your shield against monetary and price inflation, just like a lot of. it always has been. Now, Tim Fry and the guys over at Roberts and Roberts are recommending gold over silver since the world's almost 200 governments are putting their own pressure on the price, which should help everyone else who make similar calls on their own.

Of course, Roberts and Roberts can help you with platinum, palladium, and silver as well as gold. Don't let the Fed and the war party inflate all your savings away. Look up Roberts and Roberts at rrbi.co. That's rrbi.c.c.o. yeah i think that's totally right and it's you know look i'm not for negotiating with terrorists i'm not for giving into terrorists and signing on the bottom line and obeying them because they

threaten us screw them but the fact is that the u.s. government's doing things it should not be doing they're backing atrocities they should not be backing and they are increasing the risk of terrorist attacks against all of us if the guy who knows about this vagus thing man i don't know but if the guy in um in uh new orleans was not motivated by what's currently going on in gaza well then i guess i would just be amazed that he's going to sign up as a lone wolf bin ladenite essentially it seem seemingly here while this is going on it's the worst series of atrocities since the height of a rock war two you know going on in the gaza strip right now and so it's very likely played some role

in his radicalization here and it's just one guy apparently I don't know about these other IEDs they're saying but just think if he had had a team of two or three or four friends with him in the back of that truck all ready to jump out and shoot at the cops fend off the cops while they finish

slaughtering others in a way that this one guy wasn't prepared to do something like that I'm not trying to give people ideas but I'm just saying and use your imagination. It's pretty simple. Four or five guys can hijack an airliner, crash it into a nuclear power plant. One guy can hijack a gasoline truck

and crash it into a crowd of people. I mean, so, yeah, again, it's not a matter of, well, we should give in because terrorists are threatening us, but it's certainly a matter of we should stop doing wrong, sinful, horrible things that we have no justification for doing in the first, first place that are likely to bring on these deadly consequences to American civilians. And I'll

remind the Los Angeles audience that the original plan for the planes attack on September 11th included hitting the library tower in downtown L.A. So being on the west side of the mountains doesn't separate Californian civilization from the rest of what America has to suffer. We've seen that in the San Bernardino attack as well. Right. And Scott, when we're talking about U.S. policy this year. We also had to point to the situation in Syria where for over a decade, the U.S. has backed and propped up terrorist organizations against the government by Shah al-Assad. And after 14 years of that, they finally overthrew the guy. And now we have Abu Mohammed al-Jolani sitting on the throne in Damascus. This is a man who watched the 9-11 attacks. And that inspired him

to go and fight against the Americans in Iraq. He is. somebody who was the deputy to al-Bed Daddy, the leader of the Islamic State, and then formed the al-Qaeda affiliate group in Syria. So this is a hardened jihadist who has appointed international jihadists like Uyghurs from China are Jordanians to be members of the new Syrian government. His spokespeople have said that they are going to enforce Sharia law and they have dismissed women from their positions in government and have basically said that, not in the nature of women to have these jobs. These are extremists that we have empowered in Syria.

And, you know, I think it's so important, Scott, this past week at anti-war.com. We ran an excerpt from your new book, Provote, as a viewpoint. And what we pointed out there and what that your excerpt points out was that in the 1990s, the U.S. was backing the jihadists, in the sense, in the war in Bosnia, that we are supporting the Muslim faction there, but some of the bin Ladenite jihadists ended up there fighting for the same side that the Americans were on. And that still blew up in our faces on 9-11. And so, you know, just because we back the jihadists and help them to take over Syria, doesn't mean that they're suddenly going to be friendly with the Americans and leave us off of their attack list.

Yeah. And especially when now it's years later and there are all different factions, right? there are Islamic State factions in Syria. There are Islamic State factions in Tajikistan and in Afghanistan. You know, the Taliban is currently fighting some Islamic State factions there, which if you go back and read my book, and there's a great article by Bornan Osman, who wrote at Afghananalysts.org all about how ISISK was created by Afghan intelligence in the first place. and I write about that in Fool's Ayrn. But anyway, that's where ISIS K. also comes from. And there are all different legions of these international bin Ladenite groups.

Some of them under various levels of control and influence and alliance ship with the West and with our GCC allies, as we see in Syria, others possibly not so much. I don't think that it was the U.S. that sent ISIS to attack Moscow. They wouldn't dare. And they warned the Russians, but then they bragged to the New York Times that they didn't give them a lot of information. They just said, you guys better look out. There's an attack coming, but they didn't give them everything they needed to know. But they had the terrorists who did it under full surveillance. But I think that's a great example of a team of guys that whoever they're working for, they're not working for the West or for the Russians. And evidently not for the Saudis, because that would be the Americans too.

they would have their hand on that same lever here. And so also, as we've discussed for this, I can't believe it's been almost a year and a half now that they have kept on this horrific bombing campaign in Palestine that it's only the regional Shiites who are coming to the Palestinians' defense, even though the Palestinians are mostly Sunni Muslims, and there are some Christians, but I think there are virtually no Shiite Muslims there.

They're all Sunni Muslims, but it's the Shiite axis of resistance, so called there, led by Iran, now Baghdad, because of America's Iraq War II, and it used to be Damascus up until a couple of months ago, and Hezbollah, they're the ones who are sticking up for the Palestinians, but that means that in the global market of terrorism, they're kind of leaving, they're, they're, they're kind of one humiliating the bin Ladenites, especially the Syrian ones who are willing to get down on their knees and do whatever the Israelis say, that gives the other bin Ladenite groups out there all the more incentive to show that they're the real tough guys and they're the ones who are really willing to attack the West, unlike the tamed Jolani and these other groups, and unlike the Shiites who are going to remain a separate alliance. So they're incentivized to do it. And here's another thing, as long as I'm rambling to you, Kyle Anseloam from anti-war.com, about all the weird incentives here. The whole argument for al-Qaeda attacking the United States was they had to get

rid of the far enemy first. Bog us down, bleed us to bankruptcy, force us out the long way and the hard way. So we don't come back. So then they can wage their local revolutions and not have to worry about the superpower coming and bombing it off the face of the earth again. And I had argued that 10 years ago after Obama built the caliphate for Baghdadi but then declared war on it and bombed it again that he was really proving Zawahari right that there's no point in building a caliphate now as long as the Americans are going to blow it back up again if you do so that would tend to argue for the far enemy strategy of continuing to attack the United States until we finally go completely bankrupt fighting the lost war but now

Joe Biden has really, I think, undermine that by saying, I'll build you caliphate. I'll protect it. America, Turkey, and Israel have helped the Idlib province bin Ladenites to seize all of the important parts of Syria. Not the far east under the control of the Kurds, but still the rest of the country. and so take that Zawahiri we'll just build a caliphate for you and not bomb it we'll just keep it and so and then as you say they're hiring foreigners

they actually put out a call for like Aliyah of Muslims from around the world they have renounced nationalism and said Syria is not for Syrians Syria is for all true believing Muslims that meaning ones who want to sign up with them to come come from around the world to come and build this new bin Ladenite caliphate there so there's an

argument against them attacking us they got us right where they want us paying their bills so i don't know but then again like you say you bribe them in one place it doesn't mean that you've really bought off all of them and especially not when you continue to motivate them in other places right and scott you know one thing to point out here is even if jollani really does does, is saying they're in Damascus and telling his lieutenants and things not to allow attacks to be carried out against the Americans, because that would be the one thing that would draw the Americans into bomb his caliphate that he has set up. I mean, I'm sure you saw the same videos I did after the fall of Assad, the banks and Damascus being looted, piles of cash

being carried out. I know Israel destroyed most of Syria's significant military installations, but still a lot of arms and other weapons are given up taint shells. All this can be turned into bombs and explosive equipment or the weapons could be sold and that money used to fund international jihadism. So even if, say, Jolani doesn't believe in that, he certainly has people in his government who do believe in forms of international jihad, some of the leaders of his military, some of his new generals, brigadier generals, are actually Uyghurs who want to form an independent new, like Turkish state in Xinjiang China. And then, of course, you have Jordanians and other people in their government who also

had their own ideas on what the jihad are. And so if they end up with a pile of cash, they could easily end up funding some of these attacks and some of these groups under Jolani's nose. And, you know, this is an al-Qaeda state that we have helped to create. are now going to allow to fester, I'm guessing until some eventually in a tad does come out of there. And just like Afghanistan, we're going to have to say, oh, now we have to go in and go to war again there. Yeah. Well, I think that's right. I mean, especially when we have a change in power here, um, back to Donald Trump and, you know, Tulsi Gabbard being pretty good on Russia and China.

and I think less worse than the rest of them on Iran. I think she's not as hawkish on the Shiites, but she is obsessed with the bin Ladenites. And this is why she was against the overthrow of Assad is because it was in favor of the bin Ladenites, guys. Not because she is a Russian or a Syrian agent. It's because she had just been in Iraq War II where these guys were the bad guys.

and now she was being told to support him and she decided no well she's going to be the director of national intelligence here and the secretary of defense is an Iraq War II veteran as well and and so I mean what did Obama do when they built the caliphate in 14

he built it for them basically I'm not saying he deliberately encouraged them to invade Western Iraq but it was still 100% his fault that they did and then once they did happen Yeah, once they conquered Western Iraq, two months later, he launched a full-scale war against them. Sent in the special operators with their laser pointers and the Air Force.

They were even flying into Crete. They were flying literally as air cover for the Iranians could's force on the ground in liberating to Crete from the Islamic State. And then that was the war that Donald Trump finished in his first year in office back in 2017 through early 18. there. And so I agree with you. I don't, what are they going to do? They're really going to let him not just have Idlib province, but they're going to let bin Ladenites rule. Well, then again, I should add the caveat though, right, that he clearly is under Western control and protection and public relations tutelage here. I mean, you're right, he's surrounded by cooks and he may not be able to control them. But he certainly, Jolani certainly does not want trouble with the USA right now. now. So, but how Trump's cabinet is going to handle this situation, it's such a crazy situation. It is really a mystery of how it's going to play out. I'm dying of anticipation. Yeah, I completely agree with you, Scott. I think there's been a couple really notable developments in the past week. The UK, a U.S. and a Ukrainian official all went to Damascus to meet with

Jolani and expressed optimism that it was going to go well. The U.S. actually removed their $10 million bounty on Jolani. However, they didn't remove the terrorist designation from his organization. So we had a U.S. official from the State Department meet with the leader of a designated foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. That's really crazy. Now, there was a second meeting between a U.S. official and, Jolani. And that meeting apparently was the U.S. warning Jolani that they were seeing too many

attacks against minority groups. So I don't know if that actually means anything if we're looking at taking a little bit of a tougher stance against Jolani. But that statement or that meeting did come after a statement from the Israeli foreign minister, the new foreign minister, Sa'ar there. And he called the government in Damascus illegitimate and said they were committed to extremist ideologies. And of course, there seems to be a lot of pro-Israeli sentiment in the incoming Trump administration. And so if the Israelis, if Tel Aviv is uncomfortable with Jodlani being in charge of Damascus, I mean, it may be because Netanyahu has his eyes on a bigger land grab or just wants to bomb another neighbor. But it still may be that the Israelis encourage Trump to do something

about the government in Damascus now. Well, I don't know. I mean, yeah, They've gone from being thrilled that they broke the Shiite crescent to now realizing that, whoa, these guys seem potentially dangerous for the medium term. And so then again, I mean, the Turks really completely control them. Which I think is Netanyahu's bigger issue is the increasing Turkish influence. Now that's not Iran. Now it's Turkey. And so then we have to crush what remains of the Syrian state.

Right. just like that time the Netanyahu told W. Bush to get rid of Saddam for him and then oops now that Saddam's not there and Iran is empowered. Now we need you to take them on for us. I'm beginning to not beginning. I'm continuing to

see a pattern here. Oh man. All right. I'm sorry. We're out of time. Everybody, it's anti-war radio. That is the great Kyle Anzalone. He is our news editor over at the Institute. He is opinion editor at anti-war.com and he hosts two great podcasts, Conflicts of Interest and the

Kyle Anzalone's show. Thank you again for your time, dude. Thank you, Scott. All right, you guys, and that's Antire War Radio for today. Happy New Year. I hope for more peace and liberty in 2025. Check me out at Scott Horton.org for all the archives. I'm at Scott Horton's show on all the other sites, and I'm here every Thursday from 230 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.