Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/5/24 Dave Decamp on Syria, Gaza and Ukraine

Episode Date: December 7, 2024

Dave DeCamp was back on Antiwar Radio this week to talk about the latest news coming out of the Middle East and war in Ukraine. They discuss the Jihadist advance toward Syria’s capital city of Demascus, the ongoing slaughter and ethnic cleansing happening in Gaza and the pressure the US is putting on Ukraine to lower the conscription age. Discussed on the show: “Al-Qaeda Linked Militants Seize Major Syrian City of Hama” (Antiwar.com) “Report: US Offered To Withdraw Troops From Syria in Exchange for Assad Cutting Ties With Iran” (Antiwar.com) “US Frames Syria Airstrikes as ‘Self-Defense’ Despite Happening Amid an Ongoing US-Backed Offensive” (Antiwar.com) Scott’s Thread on Syria from Enough Already “Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza” (Amnesty International) “Ben Gvir Says Netanyahu Is ‘Open’ To Expelling Palestinians From Gaza” (Antiwar.com) 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: 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, December the 5th, 2004, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is 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. 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 at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show and all your favorite podcatchers and video sites and things out there, you can find it. And, of course, you can follow me on X, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show.

All right, welcoming back to the show, anti-war.com's news editor and host of anti-war news, Dave DeCamp. How are you doing, Dave? I'm good, Scott. Thanks for having me. Very happy to have you here. What a busy week and in the most horrible kinds of ways. Can you get us caught up on what is going on in the world, maybe starting with Syria, please?

Yeah, well, the big news today is that the Syrian Army announced that HTS, which is the al-Qaeda offshoot, led by Al-Julani, who was the Amir, who was the Emir. of al-Qaeda in Syria. They have apparently taken the city of Hama after taking Aleppo in a pretty lightning offensive that they launched last Wednesday. And there's been reports of very heavy fighting on the ground. And they're making some pretty rapid gains here. So this comes after over a year of increased Israeli airstrikes on Syria. This war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which is a main ally of Syria. And part of that war has been. been to hit the border crossings from Syria to Lebanon. And that was part of the reason why they

increased all these airstrikes on Syria. So Syria was vulnerable because of that. And the HTS took advantage and they launched this big offensive. So this is pretty big. I mean, it seems like the war is back on. And then in the east, you know, there's other fighting in the northeast. You have the Turkish-backed groups, the Syrian National Army they call themselves. Turkey also backs HTS. There's reports that they got the word from Turkish intelligence to go ahead with this offensive. But then you have this other kind of faction that's fighting against the Kurds in the northeast. And then where the U.S. has actually been directly involved is in the eastern DARE-Azor province, the SDF, which is the Kurdish force that the U.S. backs.

They just launched an offensive. It seems like that kind of died down, but they tried to capture some villages controlled by government forces and the U.S. gave them artillery support and then some air strikes. So, you know, it's just, again, it's just back on. And the U.S. is looking to take advantage of this HTS takeover, Al-Qaeda takeover. Jake Sullivan says the U.S. is not going to cry over this, even though, again, this is an al-Qaeda group taking over Aleppo, taking over this major city in Syria. Well, you know, some people listening might just think, well, I don't know, has Bob? Bala versus Al-Qaeda, let them kill each other, and who cares?

It said that one of those groups knocked the towers down. The other one didn't. One of them is the enemy of the American people. The other is the enemy of the American government. Yeah, that's right. And again, Jolani also, his past, he was also loyal to ISIS to al-Baghdadi back in the day. Then they had their split in 2013. You know, you hear, just go online and go to some Western news sources.

some Qatari funded new sources, and you're going to see this whole whitewashing campaign of who Jalani is of what HTS believes. They're saying that they want diversity now. But this is a guy, again, who founded the Al-Nusra front, which was al-Qaeda in Syria. And then he made his public split in 2016, and he's fought against the other al-Qaeda affiliate, Harass al-Din. So this is, it's just totally, he's been whitewashed. Well, he fought against Americans in Iraq War II.

He boasted that. He was infalued. Yeah, that's who this is. You know, it's really something. I know you're aware of this PBS frontline interview that they did with Jolani back in 2021. And they also interviewed James Jeffrey at the time, who was Trump's envoy, special envoy to Syria. And in that interview, he says that he was in contact with Jolani. They were sending messages back and forth. Jolani's message was, oh, we don't want to fight you. And then, you know, he would say back, basically, that sounds good. You know, we're not going to mess with you. That's what

the U.S. was telling him. And you really got to wonder if the war party listens to this show. Because, you know, I used to make fun of them for years saying, look, man, Bashar al-Assad, you can say whatever you want about him. But he wakes up in the morning and shaves his chin and puts on a three-piece suit.

Which goes to show that he ain't a bin Ladenite. And that is what is at issue here. Jolani is. And that's the discrepancy for anyone who's not in on these wily schemes. This sounds completely crazy to even discuss and then but what they do? Martin Smith dressed him up in a three-piece suit

and interviewed him for front line and I properly barbecued Martin Smith on these very airwaves for it for half an hour. He almost cried. Now how dare he dress him up in Western clothes and tell everybody he's not Al-Qaeda anymore. Somebody said to me this morning on X. Oh, he renounced Al-Qaeda. No, he did not either. What are you talking about? I've seen that interview that he did with Al Jazeera. And he doesn't say anything about renouncing Al Qaeda in that interview just because the American War Party says so. And Dave, please explain to me and to the audience is so confusing. Why would the American War Party prefer Al Qaeda to the Shiites, Dave DeCamp from anti-war.com? Well, so we have a report up on the page today based on a few things that were reported

this week by the New York Times and Reuters that apparently the U.S. has been offering making some offers to Assad over the past year. And they said this was part of a two-pronged approach with Israeli airstrikes, you know, ramped up Israeli airstrikes and then these diplomatic offers from the U.S. And some of these offers included pulling U.S. troops out of Syria and lifting sanctions. And what did they want Assad to do? They wanted him to cut ties with Iran. They wanted him to end his alliance with Hezbollah because they wanted to disrupt the weapon shipments

that go through Syria. And why do they want to do that? It's because that's what Israel wants. That's one of the main reasons why the U.S. has stayed in Syria. You know, everybody goes back when Trump said he was going to pull out of Syria, and then he said he was going to stay to, you know, secure the oil. Another reason why he said he was going to stay is because Israel asked him to stay. And this is more clear than ever right now with the just what's happened over the past year. The timing of this, you know, there's the ceasefire in Lebanon, and then that's when they decide to go. And there's, you know, what they call Syrian rebels. There is one report in

the times of Israel saying that, you know, we have no problem with Israel. We love Israel. And there's also a former Israeli intelligence official saying that he's been in contact with these groups, that they want to open an Israeli embassy in Damascus. So the reason why the U.S. prefers these guys, these al-Qaeda guys, to Assad and Iran, is because that's who Israel prefers. Yeah. All right. So tell me, is this really real these reports I saw of American A-10s strafing the Iraqi military and militias coming to help Assad against al-Qaeda? Because that's high treason. So that was in the east where the Kurds are fighting. That was, according to Al-Monitor had a big write-up of this. It hasn't really been reported elsewhere. According to U.S. sources, what happened was the SDF, the Kurdish, the Kurds in the east, went on an offense. against these villages that are some of them are controlled by these Arab tribes that are loyal

to Assad and some of there is some also just Syrian government forces there. There might also be some of the Shiite militias have a presence there as well. So they were on the offensive and the U.S. was giving them artillery support. And then according to this report, then a U.S. base came under a rocket attack and then the A10s came out and launched those strikes. So that's, as far as I know that, That's what happened. And it was against Syrian, actually the Syrian government forces. But it's amazing. Publicly, you know, you see the U.S. military, U.S. Central Command, they put out this press

release about these strikes and they say, oh, we launched a self-defense strike in eastern Syria. There was an imminent threat to our base. And we launched a self-defense strike. But they were backing an offensive in eastern Syria, taking advantage of the al-Qaeda offensive in the West. So as far as I understand, that's what happened. And they haven't given any direct air support actually to HTS, at this point at least.

Man, those Kurds playing the enemy of my enemy right now. Al-Qaeda is making major advances against the government. Al-Qaeda that has murdered the hell out of these Kurds for years. And they go, oh, good. They've opened up an opportunity for us to also seize some land from the government. Not from Al-Qaeda. Oh, now they're vulnerable because they've turned their back to us as they go against the SAA. but let's also go against the SAA right now and get away with some murder while our al-Qaeda enemies are also getting away with murder.

My goodness, they don't really think that far ahead, the YPG guys, I guess. This is anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton. I'm talking with Dave DeKamp about the absolute insane situation in Syria. And folks, if you go to my ex account at Scott Horton's show, if you page down a little bit, you'll see I posted a long thread of my entire Syria and Iraq War III. chapter from my last book enough already it's all there for free for everybody to read and it's explaining the background of why it is that what dave de camp is telling us now is not crazy and untrue it's crazy and true america's on the side of the bin ladenites against the sheites as you

heard him say because that's what israel wants and of course the roots of this are in iraq war two W. Bush moved Baghdad to Tehran's side of the ledger, and they're trying to make up for that. But the only way they can, they can't send American GIs to Syria. So they send suicide bombers. They send the guys who were the bad guys in Iraq War II to be the moderate rebels in the war in Syria, just the same year, beginning in the same year, 2011. And this is the war that finally came to an end with the beginning of the Trump administration in 2017. where he called off CIA support for al-Qaeda, and he finished bombing ISIS.

And we've held a status quo up until this time with al-Qaeda ensconced in this one province, the Idlib province, protected by the Turks. And, you know, we've been talking about this this whole time, but I blame myself, Dave, for not saying, geez, they're going to launch a major offensive out of there at some point, right? Just like Hamas, locked up in their pen. Like, these guys are not done.

so we should have been predicting this all along and I concede that I wasn't but you know they certainly have had their own little mini al-Qaeda state there I certainly wasn't predicting that it was all going to end well I don't know what I thought was going to happen Dave but that's why what sounds like maybe weird conspiracy stuff it really is right America's on the side of the Sunni insurgency against the al-a-white dictatorship because they're friends with the Shiites

in Iran and in Hezbollah and people are getting killed like crazy right now and you're telling me that they just seized Hama as well yeah yeah and the Americans and the Israelis are celebrating yeah or not crying about it as Jake Sullivan put it Jake Sullivan who you know sent that infamous email to Hillary Clinton in 2012 that al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria that was him and And everybody can read that at the WikiLeaks. It's AQ is on our side. There's a space between the A and the Q if you want to Google the exact quote there.

It'll come right up for you, folks. And it's Jake Sullivan, the current National Security Advisor. Some would argue the presumptive president of the United States right now calling these shots. He and Blinken, I guess, are the committee of two that decide whatever Biden's going to do. And that's their attitude. And, you know, in my book, folks, I'm not that much of a writer. Really what I do is I just assemble quote after quote after quote after quote of these guys saying, yeah, it's treason all right, but we're doing it because that's what Israel wants. And they hate the Shiites more.

So I guess we do too. September 11th and Iraq War II, notwithstanding. It's all good. As long as Osama's dead, then I guess it's perfectly okay for John Brennan and his heirs to direct bin Laden's legions. That's the world that we live in. It's nuts, but it's true. here's another one amnesty international has accused israel of committing genocide in the gaza strip dave de camp is that correct yeah that's that's right this report just came out from amnesty

international which is you know one of the biggest human rights groups in the world um and this isn't just like a little press release that they put out the full report is nearly 300 pages long it's very kind of meticulous research, and they really documented a lot of the Israeli war crimes and the evidence of genocide here. So, you know, this is, you know, you see that the U.S. government likes to use Amnesty International and these other groups like Human Rights Watch, if they're ever going after, you know, a government that the U.S. has in its crosshairs. But I'm sure we're going to see, they haven't had the State Department press conference today, but I'm sure we're going to see them, you know, deny again that it's genocide like

they have all along and twist themselves into knots to justify continuing to arm Israel and continuing the weapon shipments. I mean, the things that they've justified over this past year, it's just, I don't know how these people sleep at night, but hopefully this adds some kind of pressure. I mean, with Trump coming in and this team of Zionists that he's assembled, they're not going to care about this Amnesty International report. But I don't know. Hopefully this does something, at least, to move the needle because it's every day.

I mean, with everything that's been going on, all the escalations in Ukraine, now the situation in Syria, Lebanon, the situation in Gaza has just gone completely under the radar. But it's still every day. Dozens of people are being slaughtered. They're bombing. These tent camps, they're starving people to death. The aid levels are at their lowest level yet. And it just goes on every day, kind of out of sight at this point. hang on just one second for me here you guys i'm so proud to announce the publication of the libertarian

institute's 14th book it's israel winner of the 2003 iraq oil war undue influence deceptions and the neocon energy agenda by gary vogler former senior oil consultant and deputy senior oil advisor for u.s forces during iraq war two remember how i wrote in enough already about how Ahmed Chalabi sold the neoconservatives on a plan to rebuild the old British oil pipeline from Mosul and Kierkuk Iraq to Haifa Israel, if they would only get the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein for him, and how they bought it because they are as dumb as they are corrupt? Well, Gary was there. As senior civilian consultant to the DoD and Iraqi oil ministry, he had a unique window and experience witnessing the Pentagon neocons and their machinations on behalf of Israel before and

during that war. And it turns out that even though they did not get their pipeline, as Vogler demonstrates, the neocons and their Lekudnik bosses figured out an effective plan B anyway. You are going to love Israel, winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War by Gary Vogler, available everywhere. Check it out, along with our other great books, at Libertarian Institute.org slash books. Hey, y'all, let me tell you about Robertson Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. Nobody trusts the U.S. dollar anymore.

Foreign governments are stocking up on gold instead of $100 bills. One, they know they need to, and two, that means you need to, too. Interest rates are up, but for some reason not much for savings accounts. Park your money there and watch Uncle Joe Biden just counterfeit its value away. You can see how the Fed is afraid to raise rates to beat inflation for fear of popping the current bubbles, at least before the election. So more inflation it will continue to be. Gold is your shield against monetary and price inflation, just like 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.com. That's R-R-B-I.C-O. The number three headline on anti-war.com this morning is that Ben Gavir says Netanyahu told him he is, quote, open to the possibility of expelling the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, as though that's not what they're already in the middle of doing.

Yeah, you look at the situation on the ground. It's very clear that they're focused right now in getting them out of North Gaza. they have settlers have actually been going into Gaza and scouting locations and you know the IDF soldiers have helped some of them come in

you know this is something I think that could I think settlements could start popping up there a lot sooner than than we might think because there's all these areas where the IDF is working to bulldoze

and destroy every building there was a report from drop site news it's this Palestinian journalist Eunice Tiraui he's a great father follow on Twitter. He basically just follows the social media of IDF soldiers and reports on the things that they post. You know, they post themselves blowing up buildings, all this sick stuff, wearing women's clothing, you know, of these women who've been displaced and just really sick stuff. And there's a documentary, by the way, a relatively new documentary produced by Al Jazeera. Of course, we know they're going to be on Al-Qaeda side in Syria, but they did a pretty decent documentary about this. that's essentially just made of footage that the Israeli military filmed of themselves and each other committing these war crimes.

Yeah, you know, I've heard some people say, you know, it's like imagine if they had like TikTok in the concentration camps during World War II. I know. It is like that. It is absolutely sickening what they do and killing whole families at a time. Anybody who just looks at X at all, click on a couple of things with Gaza so that the algorithm recognizes that you're interested. at all and man it is a horror show out there and like you know just one yesterday you could imagine like a whole giant magazine article being written about this if it was an anecdote from world war two or something right is this long march of people being you know cleansed as they call it being forcibly displaced and this guy standing there filming the parade of people coming and then a sniper just shoots him and there's even in the crazy you know video footage you can see the drops of blood flying in the air as he gets

hit with a rifle round and falls to the ground i don't know if he died or what nobody knows nobody cares not here and it's just and this goes on all day everybody imagine the wakeomasker would if bill clinton did a waco masker every day day after day after day after day for more than a year that's what they're doing some days it's worse than a waco massacre that's a 86 people, civilians, Texans, Americans, same thing. Every day what they're doing to those people. It is just sick. It is just sadism.

And I think, you know, it's got to be just the cognitive dissonance. That if they're so evil, then how come we're on their side? So it must not be that bad. And you know what I mean? People got to rationalize somehow. When, in fact, what Israel is doing, they are demonstrably. the most sadistic and brutal and criminal regime on the face of the earth without any comparison

the closest might be the chikoms just because they have a single party dictatorship over so many people and and have a very brutal regime when it comes to a lot of their law and order so called but you know this the other runner-up would be the washington d c and who's underwriting and aiding and abetting every bit of this yeah i mean that's the thing about this genocide report this is not possible without all these U.S. weapons and political support and votes at the U.N.

and everything that Joe Biden's given to them over the past year. And to go back to what that Palestinian reporter who follows the social media, he found out that there is a private Israeli company that works on settlements in the West Bank, currently bulldozing everything that they see in North Gaza. So again, the implication there is that this is a company that builds settlements, and they're doing a lot of the demolition work now. You can get a job working for them, you know, an Israeli civilian can go work for them. So these settlements, and this is what, you know, it's the U.S. is funding and your tax dollars are funding and is this conquest, this takeover of Gaza that guys like Ben Gavir want, that these settler leaders want. this woman, Daniela Weiss, she's the leader of the Nashala movement, who's just, you know,

wants all the Palestinians, all the Arabs dead or, you know, get rid of them all so we could build these settlements. By the way, she's the same lady. I'm glad that she's making herself, I mean, I regret that it's in this fashion. I'm glad she's making herself a public person, again, more to remind us who she is, the same lady, Danielle Weiss. She's the one who explained how back in the 1970s, as soon as you. as they seized the West Bank, she worked, oh man, I'm 99% on this, Dave. I'm almost certain

that she said, she worked with Ariel Sharon, whatever his rank was at the time, to plan where they would put the very first Israeli Jewish colonies on the West Bank in order to divide it to prevent there from ever being a Palestinian state from the very beginning. And firsthand source boasting about that that was the role that she played then. And I mean, that's what she's saying. She's been saying, you know, we're going to do the same thing in Gaza that we did in the West Bank. We're going to start just with a little camp, you know, near one of the military bases. And then it's going to turn.

And then all of a sudden there's going to be a kitchen in the camp. And then there's going to be a house. And then there's going to be kids. That's right. Creating backs on the ground, they call it. Yeah. She says she has 400 families that are ready to go. There's people camped out at the fence.

Okay. So listen, everybody. It's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton. I'm from anti-war.com and so is Dave DeCamp. He's our news director and a host of anti-war news. And we're talking about what's going on in the Middle East here, obviously. And this is where we get back to where we started in Syria.

And I hope that this makes sense to people, even though it's a convoluted crazy mess. But this is the root of our whole project here in this millennium so far. It's all based on the doctrine of the clean break that Richard Pearl and David Wormser wrote for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, and it said, our problem is that Iran uses Syria to arm and support Hezbollah. And what we want to do is we want to be able to steal all of Palestine without having to worry about Hezbollah on our northern flank, causing us a problem while we're busy killing and stealing land from the Palestinians. We need to neutralize that threat on the northern border. That was the name of the game. That was what it was all about. And so to complete that, what they said we should do

is what Netanyahu and America eventually should do, because these are the men who guided W. Bush into Iraq later on. It's a focus on overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Because then somehow through lies and magic and stupidity, this was never going to work. But they believed that they would have dominance over the Iraqi Shia, which is where Shiite Islam originates and its highest leaders are down in Najaf, not in Iran. And we go to those Shiite clerics and we'll tell them to tell Hezbollah to stop being friends with Syria and Iran and to be friends with Israel instead, and that will neutralize the Shiite threat on Israel's northern border so they can finish stealing Palestine without having to worry about their northern flank. Well, how'd that work out?

What have we been studying for a year here, everybody? The Israelis killing the Palestinians and stealing their land and having to deal with rockets and missiles coming in from Hezbollah on their northern flank. So obviously it didn't work, did it? David Wormser and Richard Pearl, they failed. What they did instead was they empowered Iran. They gave Baghdad to Tehran, not to Tel Aviv. And so ever since then, they made Hezbollah and Syria and Iran far more.

powerful. And of course, W. Bush did this at the encouragement of Benjamin Netanyahu, who are Richard Pearl and David Wormser. They're Benjamin Netanyahu's agents in America. That's who they are. That's who they wrote the program for in the first place was for him.

And so that's where we come full circle. Now you understand why America is backing Bin Ladenite suicide bomber, headchopper, lunatic maniacs in Syria right now. It's because they hate the Shiites more, because the clean break didn't work. And they only empowered their rivals, not our enemies. Their regional rivals to a massive degree by handing Baghdad over to them and their friends. And so now they're

trying to make up for it. It's the same story since 2011. And now there was a ceasefire for a while, and now it's back on again. And all why? So that the Israelis can finish land rustling. That's all it is is crime. It's like, you're my age. I'm almost 50. I was raised on the A-Team. And the plot of every episode of the A-Team is somebody's trying to steal land from a good man. And the A-Team comes and protects him. It's like the Ronin or whatever. Well, that's who the Israelis are. They're the bad guys. They're the land wrestlers. And that's who we're aiding and abetting. And that's why America is back on the side of the bin Ladenites. So that Israel can get away with bloody murder and theft. Sorry. That's

the history of the last 20 years of American foreign policy over there, 25 years. That's what's going on, folks. And when you look at anti-war.com and you read those headlines and click those articles and read those articles and say, I don't get it. That's it. That explains it why all these absolutely nonsensical things like Americans cheer as Al-Qaeda takes on secular dictator actually do fit in this puzzle. And so I'm sorry to break it to you. you but that's and like i've been at antiwar dot com for 20 years so that's why i know all this stuff we've covered it all along and that's what it is and then that's why i got to read headlines today like amnesty concludes is committing genocide and israel strikes on al masawi safe zone

killing 20 Palestinians cowering in a tent and we got to read this stuff every day that's why that's what's all about it's the clean break and it's failure so i had to come up with a question for dave dave tell me what's going on in ukraine I see headlines that say the Americans insist that they must lower their conscription age, again more. Yeah, this is really something. You know, we saw these reports recently that the U.S. was pressuring Ukraine to lower their conscription age from 25 to 18. They want them to start drafting 18-year-olds. And this comes, you know, at a time when there's no path to Ukrainian military victory.

They just want to keep the war going. They just want to basically escalate it as much as possible before Trump comes in. And it also comes after there was a Gallup poll that for the first time found the majority of Ukrainians, 52% want peace talks to end the war with Russia. So I was really surprised yesterday. I mean, I know Blinken is Blinken, but I just didn't expect them to say something like this publicly. This was at an interview, he's over in Brussels for a NATO farm ministers meeting, and he's

saying, oh, you know, Ukraine's got to send younger people into the war. as if right now the thing that Ukraine needs to do is go send more people to die in this war. But that's what the U.S. is pushing for. They've done all these escalations with the long-range strikes, the anti-personnel mines, which they're sending them to Ukraine specifically for use in Russia, in Kursk. Biden's trying to get another $24 billion to spend on the war. Johnson said no, the House Speaker, so it doesn't look like that's going to go through. And, you know, we'll see. I mean, there's about a month and a half left. I think it's pretty clear that Putin's going to wait to see what Trump is going to do before there's any big response to these strikes that have been happening in Russia.

And, you know, hopefully, you know, this guy, Keith Kellogg, who Trump has appointed to be his envoy to the war, he's a Russia hawk. And, you know, he's been writing about how they can end the war. But a lot of these proposals don't seem like anything Russia would go for at the moment. moment. But hopefully, Trump coming in just cools things down two days ago. I mean, there's real logic, too. Only Nixon can go to China. Everybody knows Nixon is such an anti-communist. No one can call him a communist. So he can make a deal even with Mount Saiton. That's the way the dynamic works there, the social psychology of the situation, if the president is willing to insist that that is their role to play. But, geez, I mean, Secretary Rubio, What's the best case scenario there, David, ain't too good, man. Yeah, I would imagine whatever Trump's agenda is, Rubio's going to try to advance his agenda, the neocon agenda, essentially.

Absolutely. Aren't you guys? Well, we're out of time for today, but that is the great Dave DeCamp. He is our news editor at anti-war.com, and he is just on top of everything that you need to know every day and including also on his great podcast, Anti-War News. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, Scott. All right you guys. That's anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director over at 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. Find my full interview archive at Scott Horton.org. And I am here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on 90.7, KPFK in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.