Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/4/23 Dave DeCamp on the Kremlin Stikes, US Airstrike in Syria and Biden’s Assange Hypocrisy

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

Dave DeCamp joined Antiwar Radio this week to run through some of the week’s biggest foreign policy stories that he’s been covering at Antiwar.com. Scott and DeCamp discuss the drones that struck the Kremlin and examine how this fits into the larger picture of the Ukrainian war effort that we now have a clearer understanding of after the Discord leaks. They also talk about the U.S. airstrike in Syria and the relentless hypocrisy that the Biden Administration showed toward Julian Assange while celebrating World Press Freedom Day.    Discussed on the show: “Blinken Says Ukraine’s Army in Better Shape Than Discord Leaks Show” (Antiwar.com) Scott’s interview with Daniel Davis “Civilian Reported Killed in US Drone Strike in Northwest Syria” (Antiwar.com) “On World Press Freedom Day, State Department Refuses to Acknowledge Julian Assange Is a Journalist” (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: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, May the 4th, 2023. 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, an editor of the book, hotter than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons.

You can find my full interview archive, almost 6,000 of them now going back to 20 years ago at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show and, in fact, all those other video sites as well. And you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show. Okay, introducing Dave DeCamp. He's anti-war.com's news editor, and he hosts the podcast, Anti-Wore.

news with Dave DeCamp as well. Welcome back to the show. Dave, how you doing, sir? I'm good, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Very happy to have you here. Lots of huge and important news to talk about. First, let's do the drone strike in, not just in Moscow, but on the Kremlin the other night, night before last, I guess it was. Tell us everything that you know about it and then also give us a rundown on what everybody's saying about it. Yeah, so this was Wednesday morning in Moscow. Two drones, they looked like small drones attempted to attack the Kremlin. There were some videos that went around online that I'm sure a lot of people have seen. And the Russian side said that they used electronic warfare systems to take these drones down. One of the

videos, though, really shows the Kremlin. And you see this drone turn into a little fireball right above the flag. So definitely kind of a symbolic thing here. And Russia is saying that it was an attempt on Putin's life. It was an assassination attempt and they have the right to respond. So you have the hawks in Russia, you know, in the state Duma and their legislatures, you know, calling to, you know, bomb Kiev and kill Zelenskyy. Medvedev said something similar. So, you know, if you look at these attacks and the videos and the drones, it doesn't look like it was really a serious attempt, you know, to kill Putin, but it was an attack on the Kremlin. and you have the Ukrainians are denying any involvement, especially Zelensky.

But we have, you know, what we recently learned from the Discord leaks. You know, I would say when it comes to Zelensky, maybe he would want some symbolic drone attack on the Kremlin. But I don't really see how this serves him very well because it does set up for potential retaliation. That could target him. But these recent Discord leaks showed that he might not have control over all of the Ukrainian intelligence services. There was one leak that said SBAU agents, Ukrainian SBU agents, attack the Russian surveillance plane in Belarus. You know, they went against orders. And we've seen in recent weeks, it seems like attacks inside Russian territory have really stepped up.

More of these drone strikes shelling, you know, across the border, sabotage, two trains have derailed. And Russia's response now, the thing that they're saying today on Thursday, which is definitely concerning, is that they're blaming, you know, the U.S. and NATO for this drone attack. So what does that mean? How are they going to respond? You know, they're not directly saying that the U.S. carried it out or plotted it. They said everything Ukraine does, you know, the West bears responsibility. So it's definitely a concern for escalation. Now, I would guess that Russia is just going to increase maybe their airstrikes and bombardment of Ukraine in infrastructure in response. I haven't seen, you know, it's not clear, though, what exactly they're planning. But, you know, that's something, that's how they've responded to other attacks inside Russian. territory. That's when they started bombing all the infrastructure was when the Crimean Bridge was blown up. That was back in October 2022. Until then, they hadn't really done that, you know, these kind of large-scale strikes on energy infrastructure and transportation. So we might see more of that. Maybe they'll start targeting other things as well. So that's what I would expect to see. And hopefully, you know, nothing further than that. All right. Now,

let's talk about the Discord leaks and what all was revealed in there. You have a piece here. Blinkin says that Ukraine's army is in a lot better shape than those Discord leaks seem to indicate. What about that? Yeah, so I was actually just listening to your recent interview with Daniel Davis yesterday. And one thing he said was, you know,

yeah, these Discord leaks show that they're lying. It says that they don't think Ukraine can regain any significant territory. They don't think negotiations are going to happen, that they're preparing for a stalemate. And Davis said, you know, well, the unfortunate thing is that nothing's going to come of this.

nobody's going to learn a lesson, nobody's going to be fired. And what Blinken said yesterday in this interview with David Ignatius was basically that he just showed, you know, it doesn't matter. They're actually in good shape. Don't worry about those leaks. But just a week ago, Politico reported that current assessments, because that intelligence assessment that said, it said that Ukraine's counteroffensive is going to fall well short of, you know, what they're expecting. And that was from early February.

So Blinken said, oh, you know, things can change in a month, two months. three months. Don't worry about it. But Politico just reported on April 24th that current assessments also say they're not going to, they don't expect them to gain much territory. And specifically, they don't expect them to have the success that they did last year when they retook the territory in Kharkiv and in Kurson in the south there. And they did retake a significant chunk of territory, but it was nothing, you know, huge. So they're not expecting anything bigger than that. So still, current assessments are still saying that. So it looks like Blink. is still just, you know, lying about this war. And he also said, you know, even if they,

if they do have success, he didn't say, oh, then we can have negotiations. No, he said, it's up to Ukraine to depend how far that they want to go and we're going to sustain our support. So basically continuing this line of it's as long as it takes. And that actually breaks from, you know, the hawkish Republicans, like Michael McCall, the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, He just said the other day, oh, this counteroffensive, you know, support for Ukraine hinges on this counteroffensive. They have to regain territory for us to continue support. And then we can talk about negotiations.

Now, McCall's been saying that Biden hasn't done enough. He's saying send the fighter jets, send the long-range missiles. But you have Blinken kind of being even more hawkish than McCall in that sense, saying, oh, it doesn't matter. You know, even if they regain territory, we're still going to keep backing them. So, yeah, it's just another, it's an indication that despite. these leaks, you know, the Biden administration is still just set to keep supporting this thing. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee Hot Soss

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and this show will get a little kickback too. That's Rickasali.com slash Ron Paul. Casali is C-A-S-A-L-I, Rick Casali.com slash Ron Paul. And there's free shipping, too. All right, now, I'm getting mixed signals about Crimea. Obviously, they don't have the ability to invade and conquer Crimea. If they don't have the ability to take Maripal, obviously, well, I don't know, obviously, but seemingly one would go before the other.

On the other hand, they keep hitting it. Even while, as you write here, Blinken has public. Warned that, geez, that's a red line from the Russians that I don't think that we should cross. But, you know, the other day there was a drone strike on an oil refinery at the Sevastopol Naval Base, I believe, are right next to it. And what other attacks have gone on? And what indications do you have about any changes in terms of America and or Kiev's policy toward Crimea now? Well, yeah, there's been a few drone attacks similar to the one that was in Sevastopol that happened the other day. Things like that, nothing major, but still, again, you know, as I said, the Crimea is a red line for Russia as Putin demonstrated by starting those energy infrastructure bombings after the Crimean Bridge was attacked. And you have Blinken recognizing that. But then you have Victoria Newland has previously said that the U.S. supports Ukraine striking Crimea. And this is something that goes back, you know, way earlier in the war. This has kind of always been the official U.S. position is that, you know, Crimea is Ukraine. So their policy is

Don't use our weapons to attack Russian territory, but Crimea is Ukraine. You know, they told me that last summer, the State Department, when they first sent those high Mars rocket systems. So the U.S., that's always been, you know, they're willing to support Ukrainian attacks on Crimea. Russia still has that land bridge from Crimea to Russia to the Dombas. So it's just a matter of if they can, if Ukraine can push through there to get in closer range for the rockets and, you know, make a serious attempt to attack Crimea.

because, you know, it does sound like almost a bluff Ukrainian officials constantly saying they're going to retake that peninsula when it's so, you know, that just doesn't seem impossible. But they keep talking about it and we see these sabotage attacks. So maybe if they do gain some territory, we might see like some real attacks on Crimea and then that risk a huge escalation. Well, you know, all these discord leaks and all these, you know, reports even in the post in Politico as you do such a good job of keeping us up to date on here. here where they say that, yeah, it's true. They're running out of ammunition. They're in a lot of trouble. How is that anything that the Federal Reserve and Lockheed can't solve? They say they're running out of anti-aircraft missiles or they're running out of artillery shells. You have a piece here that the U.S. has just announced another $300 million arms package. How about out of

ammo is the West if they can't keep Ukraine armed up? Yeah, well, that's, The thing is that they're saying, you know, and U.S. and NATO officials have said this, that Ukraine's using ammunition at an unsustainable rate, like the entire NATO alliance cannot make as many shells as Ukraine is using. But then again, they do have a lot of stockpiles. And, you know, the ammunition concerns were more discussed a few months ago. And since then, the U.S. has been sending them, you know, a lot of these, you know, a few hundred million dollars arms packages that include this ammunition. The EU is trying to scrape up a million shells for Ukraine. But that's a lot of these. taking a while so yeah this really the question is is can they keep sustaining this i mean they have the money but it comes to production you know they really need to ramp up production if they want to maintain this for the long run and that's going to take months and years to really do so i think in the short term i'm not sure it doesn't seem like you know they will be able to keep sending all this ammunition and they're also trying to prepare for war with china too so yeah we'll have to hold that one Until next week.

Yeah. Well, until the next interview here. Okay, now, real quick, there's two more subjects for you to tackle in just a couple of minutes, two or three, if you could. The first one is this drone strike in Syria developing story today, and then, of course, Julian Assange. Yeah, so the drone strike in Syria that was on Wednesday, May 3rd, that U.S. Central Command announced that they launched a drone strike in northwest Syria that killed a senior al-Qaeda member. they didn't release the person's name. They didn't release any other details, really. And then there's reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is a British-based organization, you know, very anti-Assad, very pro-West, not the best source, but they have local sources

telling them that the U.S. drone strike did not kill an al-Qaeda guy. It killed a sheepherder. And the people, their sources said that this person, this 60-year-old man was not affiliated with any militant organization, so it sounds like they killed a civilian. And it's kind of a, does not much media attention on this drone strike. The U.S. has been launching these a lot in Idlib against al-Qaeda guys or ISIS, and they don't get much attention. But in this case, it looks like they probably killed the civilian. And I kind of thought something was fishy based on the CENTCOM press release. I mean, it was just one sentence, and it had no information. So I'm going to try to pester them. I asked the Pentagon, they referred me to CENTCOM. I haven't

heard back from them. I'm going to try calling them again. So this is like Haras al-Din instead of good al-Qaeda, Hyatt 2-Hawsham. Yeah, that's the U.S. usually targets Haras-Al-Din, who's the offshoot of HTS, which is the al-Qaeda group that controls Idlib. That we still like. That our government still favors, right? Yeah, I would guess, again, this is just a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's HTS that's giving the U.S. intelligence on these other al-Qaeda guys. And go herders. Okay. And last, real quick, who's this Julian Assange? And what's he got to do with the American government being the greatest heroes of free speech in the world?

Yeah, so this was Wednesday was World Press Freedom Day. Of course, Blinken and Biden, I mean, they just come off so hypocritical, just so full of it. And you had Matt Lee from AP asking the State Department spokesman, if the State Department considers Assange to be a journalist, and he wouldn't answer the question. And Sam Husani asked him something similar. you know, about what about the revelations that WikiLeaks has shown? And he said, oh, I'm not going to comment on Julian Assange. It's just he's charged with these criminal charges and that's that. And also Biden at the White House Correspondence Dinner said journalism is not a crime, but they're trying to put Julian Assange away for 175 years for doing journalism. The good news is there's been some pressure from Congress, Rashida Talib, and about six or seven other progressives. You know, the squad sent a letter to Merrick Garland recently telling them to drop the charges. There's been pressure from the New York Times

and other media outlets. It seems to me just like more people are talking about it that weren't really before. So hopefully that momentum keeps moving, but they're just so full. I mean, you got to, this is why the world is not taking this administration seriously and not following along on everything

because they're just so hypocritical. All right, you guys, that's Dave DeCamp. He's news editor at anti-war.com. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, Scott. All right, John. that has been anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton.

I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.