Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/11/26 Lindsey Snell on the Troubling New Regime in Syria

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Journalist Lindsey Snell returns to the show to talk about Syria. She first recounts her experience getting kidnapped by the Jihadists who now control the country. Scott and Snell then debunk all the propaganda we’re being fed about Jolani and the rest of his “moderate” rebels who now, with Western backing, are closer than ever to establishing their caliphate in the Middle East. Discussed on the show: Things Aren't Great with Lindsey Snell Lindsey Snell is a journalist covering conflict and crises in the Middle East and North Africa, especially Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Tunisia. She currently lives in Germany. Follow her on X @LindseySnell  Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/ or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country? Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years.

They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Porton. All right, you guys. Introducing again, Lindsay Snow, in a little while.

She is an independent investigative journalist, and her YouTube channel is called Things Aren't Great, which is a great name for a YouTube channel, and you can see all of her great reporting there. And really brave stuff firsthand stuff from the front lines of the Terror Wars, especially there in, Syria. Very happy to have you back on the show. How are you done? I'm good. Thanks so much for having me.

Great to be back. Yeah. So your speciality is the bin Ladenite regime now in Syria. And irony of ironies, I know it hit you harder than the rest of us, but still I share with you the irony. This was the, I'll put this back up here. This is the latest from al-Qaeda to diplomat. I interviewed Syria's man in D.C. It says. I was recently appointed Syrian. I should have muted that tab or something.

I think you can mute tab, can't you? Anyways. So, well, go ahead and tell us about Muhammad Katani and how you came to be in his acquaintance there. So, Muhammad Kanatri, actually. I can't see without my ring glasses on. Sorry. No worry.

I'm sure it's probably not his real name anyway, so fine. There you go. So when I went to Syria in summer of 2016, I crossed in. I went with the pre-Syrian army, as I always had to report on the situation. You had to embed with a faction. There's no way to sort of go rogue going on your own. But this time, al-Qaeda, Jevital Nostra, had taken over more and more of the Aleppo countryside, and even areas that were pre-Syrian army areas were now Nusra areas.

And this was really scary because, of course, Nusra had already kidnapped a bunch of foreign journalists. It was really a nice payday for them. When they would negotiate ransom, they'd get anywhere from 2 to 5 million for a foreign journalist. So hugely, hugely scary. But Mohamed Kanahtri was sort of like an emissary. Even a diplomat back then, he said that he was a Nusra member, and he said that he cleared everything for me. Nassar knew I was there.

They were completely fine with it. Everything was fine. And I went about my work. You know, I went to military sites and hospitals and talked to civilians and did all the things I would normally do. But then, about a week into my trip, I was kidnapped by Jevital Nisra.

And while Kanishi wasn't there, Kanatri showed up after I was taken to the place I was taken to. and he was translating for the Nostral leaders to me and sort of relaying instructions from them to me. And yeah, I hadn't heard or heard from or seen him. He disappeared from social media after that. And then a few months ago, I see that he's been named Charger de Ferris to the United States

and he lives in D.C. This Al-Qaeda member. Okay, well, so now in this clip, correct, me if I'm wrong here, this is your interview of the guy before his guys kidnapped you, correct? Yeah. And as you can see, he wanted to cover his face, but his identity wasn't, you know, hard to prove outside of that. And when I think back, because I was kidnapped, I think a day later, a day after this interview, I think why did he do this interview if presumably can you already be kidnapped?

And I realized it's because when you're kidnapped, of course, they take everything, they take their phones, your computer, your hard drives, your passport. So I think he assumed that this would never see the light of day. And that's why he did it. Probably covered his face to Hedge's best, but yeah, I mean, it was right before I was kidnapped. There's been Lodd Nights with tow missiles right there. Nice B roll. So, okay, well, a couple things.

First of all, let's just stick with that interview for a second. What did he have to say to you in that interview? A lot of it, and a lot of it that I didn't include in the YouTube video was him sort of distinguishing between ISIS and Nescroft. You know, we're not like them. We both want Sharia law, but they're actually maniac. You know, we're not just about the cutting hands and cutting heads. Like, we are about that. We are about the cutting hands and cutting heads, the Sharia law punishments.

But it's a whole lifestyle. We're good to the people. We're fighting the Assad regime. We're protecting the people. Suicide bombing isn't suicide bombing. It's sacrifice bombing and it's a beautiful thing. And people are just so happy to do it. You have to be trained for a long time to do it.

Music is haram. Smoking is haram. Women should wear the Nakhav, meaning not just the hijab, but everything but your eyes showing. And actually, oftentimes your eyes are sort of concealed by like a mess or something. So no part of the woman is remotely visible. Yeah. And America's bad.

America wants to destroy Syria. America secretly supports the Assad regime and the factions that support from America, which were a lot of three Syrian army factions at this time. And, you know, Nessar would attack them and take the weapons and the vehicles every time America wouldn't do a weapons drop. It was almost like, you know,

someone could say that America was indirectly arming Jabid al Nistra, knowing that this would happen, knowing that they're going to arm these weakened factions and Jebedal Nistra is going to come in and get foe missiles. And, you know, I was kidnapped and moved around, and a Ford F-250, a brand-new Ford F-250, and I didn't see a dealership in Aleppo,

so I'm assuming that came from the Americans. So, yeah, he had lots to say. Yeah, man. I don't know where you were at the time. You may have been too close to the action at the time to know this story, but there was one where a poor guy that owned a plumbing business in Corpus Christi, Texas, had sold his work truck and got a new truck.

and somehow his old work truck had ended up in the hands of the bin Ladenites over there in Syria who were driving around murdering people with it. And it reflected terribly on his business and everything. And he had to like beg and plead that he doesn't know. But obviously it must have been the State Department must have bought his truck and given it to these bin Laden knights because he sure didn't have anything to do with it. And, you know, there was a story in United Press International. No, no, no, sorry, not UPI.

Oh, dang, I'm sorry, it's right on the tip of my tongue. I bet you know what I'm talking about, though. It's like national public radio, only international, but it's very much along those same lines. Oh, damn me, I'm sorry. Is it Radio Free Liberty, the U.S. funded one? No, no, it's more like left-coded, like liberal, progressive-coded, more like NPR is.

PRI, Public Radio International. Okay, yeah. PRI, that's how I got it. It was the lady's jingle in my head. This is PRI. They had a long story about the State Department providing all of these trucks to, oh, just the moderates,

but of course these ended up in the hands of the Bin Ladenites and probably had a lot to do with that long parade of Helix Toyota pickups that rolled into Mosul in those iconic pictures that everybody remembers those long convoys of ISIS, rider's rolling into Mosul, what would have been a couple years later, you know. But yeah. So, okay, so now you're, I'm sorry, where were you when you interviewed him again now?

In Aleppo? In the Aleppo countryside, the western countryside of Aleppo, Kofferhalib, is the name of the village. It's very small, sort of midway between Idlib and Aleppo, basically. Okay. So you interview the guy, and then the next day, either on his orders or he had no way to stop, them or he was in on it and knew or some kind of thing. Like obviously you were kidnapped and then taken where and for how long? Taken to a different house.

It was like a safe house and there was like a jail cell set up in the basement that they kept trying to get me to go into. It was just for a few days, maybe five days. Also in the countries, I've been more towards, more towards Idlib, which of course is their don't hold. and he appeared and he said, you know, I think it's just a misunderstanding. You know, they just got information that you're a CIA agent.

They just make sure that you're not. This is, by the way, the exact verbatim what they told every foreigner that they kidnapped. We got information that you're a spy. But obviously, it's just a ransom grab. Like, I knew immediately. There was just no question that that's what was happening. But he played along like, oh, no, they just need to make sure that you're okay.

You'll be out. and working again in like a few days. It'll be over really soon. It was very clear. And as, you know, he was there the next day and he was very clear that things were not progressing well. And I was getting angry. And the last time I saw me was telling me to move to the basement,

this jail cell thing in the basement. And I was just like, I'm claustrophobic. It was like dark and obviously I'm scared out of my mind at this point. So I refused. And then, Conantri disappeared the next day. at 250 full of Turkish Nestor militants came and took me to an actual prison, like full of actual men, blood on the walls of myself, I guess because I wasn't compliant enough.

And how long were you held there? Just two days because I've written about this and foreign policy, actually. So a surer council, like the religious leaders of Messer came, and talked to me when I was in the prison. And they asked me, like, if we let you go right now, what would you do? And I knew, like, there's no way in hell they're letting me go right now.

Like, this is just a route. And I said, I want to stay. I want to marry a Mujahideen and join you. But it's Haram for men to be guarding me and men to be, like, looking in on me. Like, I need to be with sisters, women. And so the wives of this very, like, star council, these leaders,

their wives came, you know, and the cob and gloves and with all their kids. And I stayed with them in a house in like a deserted part of a coffer novel in the countryside. There were two houses behind us or full of their husbands and us were militants and some guard dogs and us, like three women and close to a dozen kids in a house. Scott Horton flavored coffee. I drink this stuff first thing in the morning. every morning and then right around 2 o'clock when the potential siesta starts to kick in. No siesta. More coffee. Moondos artisan coffees. Get it. They hate Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party. Well, moon does supports peace. Just go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Scotthorton.org slash coffee.

Hey guys, I own LibertyStickers.com again. Isn't that great? Time is a wonderful thing sometimes. Check it out. Here's some of them. LibertyStickers.com. Everyone else's stickers. suck. Crazy. And then how did you, and I'm sorry, because I'm pretty sure you told me this story before, but I just don't remember the details anymore. And it's, it's really fascinating stuff. So how were you able to finally get out of there?

Well, this is a crazy story. And I always tell people, like, I would have made up something that sounded a lot more plausible. I was going to make something up. But I'd taken a little kitten while I was working before I was kidnapped, obviously. And they let me keep this kitten the whole time, including in the prison. I just had this little kitten with me. And so I was bored. I was with these women for more than a week in this house.

Eventually they started letting me use one of their phones with the GPS disabled, like all the messaging apps disabled. But I made a Gmail. Like I went on the browser. I made a Gmail. I messaged to Front in Turkey who had very strong connections to people in my area. I managed to take pictures and sort of, they sort of figured out where I was based on that

because it was three houses. Like it was very, very clear on a Google map satellite where I was. And so we made a plan. Every time I got the phone, I would, like, email, and he would contact his friend who was also in Coffernobble. We made a plan that he would come early in the morning, like 5 a.m. before the first prayer, and pick me up on his motorcycle and sneak me out. And he came, like, three days in a row,

and I kept getting really, really scared. Like, I was just scared to run. and finally, like, I got the phone again. I managed to send an email. And he's like, he told my friend, like, he was going to Aleppo the next day because the battle for Aleppo was raging. It was like, this was when the Assad finally took back

Aleppo, like all of it. Or it was a couple months before. So he's like, this is your last chance. So I can't help you because I'm going to the, I'm going to fight. And so, um, it was the next morning. The only person awake was this little, kid, maybe three or four years old little boy.

And I basically took the kitten and I threw it off of the port. And like I acted like I was looking for the cat. The little boy was like, kitty, kitty. And the little boy was helping me look. And the second I got off the port like onto the ground, I hauled ass for the road. And the guy was, thank God, waiting there. And so he took me to his house. and he'd be there for a few days with his wife, with his pregnant wife.

I'm forever grateful to this man. He was a member of Rarstam, which they're not exactly moderate, but he hated Nusra so much, and he found them so cropped, and this is always funny to me. He hated Nessor so he was helping an American journalist escape them because of how F-up they are. And now they're the government, so. Right.

Well, get to that in a second, but on the question that the bin Laden night raised in that interview there on the comparative moderation of Al Nusra versus the Islamic State, I'm interested in that because you're actually the third person that I know personally who was kidnapped by Al Nusra and lived

rather than hitting their head cut off. You know, David Anders. and my friend William Van Wagonin, my friend and colleague William, who wrote Creative Chaos and you. And then actually, it's bothered me because I think there's one more, and I hate it.

I'm not sure if Mitchell Prothero was ever kidnapped by him. I don't think so. I think there's one other person I know that was kidnapped by them that I can't think of. Sorry. But anyway. Theo Padnos? I'm sorry?

Theo Padnos? Oh, no, I know of him, but I don't know him. So that doesn't count. But yeah, I do know about that guy. I think I was supposed to interview him one time and then nothing happened. I don't remember what happened. Anyway, I'm sorry.

Point is, though, that like, okay, so just to catch people up real quick for everybody tuned into the story late, al-Qaeda in Iraq was essentially the bin Ladenite vanguard of the Sunni-based insurgency in Iraq War II. And then Obama took their side in Syria, starting in 2011. and for about two years until, not that he stopped, but about two years into that is when sort of the Iraqi-dominated faction of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria split from the Syrian-dominated faction of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria.

That's ISIS splitting from Nusra, basically. And ISIS was led by a guy who said, I want to create my caliphate now, declared a state in eastern Syria in 2013, invaded Iraq a year later in the summer of 14, and created the caliphate and all that. And America hated that. That made them look bad and that was a bridge too far.

And they went to war against the caliphate in Iraq and eastern Syria. But they kept backing Al Nusra in Western Syria, even through the end of Obama's presidency and into six months of Trump before Trump finally canceled the thing in 2017. So that support for Al Nusra was ongoing. And then as you imply there, or as you said there, stated there, they took over the government because the refugees, even after they were beaten in the war, when the Russians intervened and everything, and they were beaten in the war,

they were driven into the Idlib province, and they were basically held up there for through essentially all of Trump and almost all of Biden, right? And then at the very end of Biden, they finally broke out of their pen in an October 7th-style thing, only more bin Ladenite than Hamas and seized Damascus in this way. So I guess, and as I know you well-known can explain even better than me, and I like this story about how, you know,

the Turks and the Americans and the British and everybody worked to rehabilitate this guy. They put him on PBS front line. I don't know if you ever heard me Grill, Martin Smith that did the PBS Frontline. No, I didn't. Yeah, it was pretty fun. because I used to know him from Iraq War two days,

and so we had a little bit of mutual respect there, but then so I felt like giving him the third degree over what he was doing there. But it was in this clear campaign to rehabilitate this guy. I actually have two books, Lindsay, that I have not read yet, but both of them are about how, yeah, the magical transformation of al-Qaeda from terrorists to statesmen over there in Syria.

One of them is by Aaron Zelen, who I'm sure you're familiar with. I forgot the other one. Anyway, so, but my question to you, is like, well, is there any truth to that that, like, Jolani is a little bit less psychopathic than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was or not?

Yeah, absolutely. And I have to say, like, I wasn't scared for my life because I knew what Mr.R had done with the other captives. I was like, this is just going to really suck. I'm going to lose two or three years of my life and be a captive.

In my case, because of the, you know, the proclamation I made, like, I want to join you. Like, I know that they were, like, actively looking to marry me. off. Like at one point, these Nesseroids brought home like fancy underwear, like lingerie. I was like, oh, crap. Like, if I don't get out of here, I'm going to end up with some jihadi husband. But yeah, I knew that they weren't going to cut my head off. I knew I wasn't going to be like a, by a sex slave. I knew I wasn't worried for my physical safety outside of the airstrike,

which were increasing. Yeah, and I don't think that he's, formed and I don't think that he's actually moderate. I think he's just viable. And I think it's a long game situation. You know, at the end of my interview with Kanatri, I said like, what is the future of Syria? And he says, you know, we're going to end the Assad regime and we're going to make an Islamic state. And it doesn't matter if it takes 10 years. We're going to do it. And I think like we're in early days now. We're completely in the honeymoon period, which by the way, hasn't been been great because, you know, there have been sectarian massacres in Suwaita on the coast, like Aloit and Druze massacred, increasing terror attacks on Christians.

Like, it's a nightener. It's like an Islamic healthcape already, but it's okay enough for the West to pretend that a funky dory, that it's going to be great that there's a future and it's inclusive and there's going to be like a real government. And it's not. It's just, it's cronyism. You know, Kanatri, like people all, Syrians ask, like, how is this guy qualified? Like, he speaks okay English, but like, other than that, it's because he's related to

Jolani's wife. Like, Jalani appointed his brothers. It's like the Assad regime 2.0 Islamic flavor. That's all it is. Hey, look, you guys, Scott Horton show swag and Scott Horton Academy swag. Just look right there under the YouTube. Health insurance. Who can afford it?

with the subsidy and who wants a subsidy, there's a better way crowd health. It's not health insurance. It's a crowdsourcing community. Basically, the way it works is you pay cash, first 500 bucks up front for whatever doctor visits you have and you crowdsource the rest. And the more you help others, the more they help you. There's a nominal monthly fee. And in fact, you'll save and get a big discount, only $99 for the first three months if you go to join crowdhealth.com slash horton. That's join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. Man, there's so many different questions I want to ask about all this. But I guess let's focus on the maskers for a minute.

Can you talk a little bit about it? Because it sounds like it's not even that they're diet ISIS caliphate. They really are as bad just with a little bit better public relations, maybe. Not quite throwing gays off the roof, but taking sex slaves among the Alawites, right? and outright butchering people. I've seen the video myself. Yeah. And that's, you know, this happened in spring of 2025.

There still aren't fair numbers, really, because, of course, the steering government did an investigation that was an absolute jam into the, into the massacres, and really no one's seen justice. But well over 1,000 people, probably more like 3,000 people, slaughtered, mostly aloys on the coast. And this past spring, I saw because I've got like a Facebook where I follow nothing but them. They celebrate it.

Like it's like a holiday for them now. Like we did this great thing a year ago. We killed so many of these people a year ago. Even like I, you know, made little tribute videos using the war crime videos to these guys themselves films. Like the videos were they're massacring people. It's just there was never any justice. There was never any outrage. You know, there were EU officials in the country meeting.

with Joani at the time and just actually everything was fine. Like this is just like a weird aberration and it wasn't. And then you know a few months later it was the Drew's massacre and Suida and the violence hasn't stopped, especially against the Eloades. There are ongoing kidnappings all the time and you know, they're dootings all the time and it's just it's a disaster and again the West is just pretending like it's fine. Like it's not an endemic problem. Well, Lindsay, he's not calling himself the Caliph.

He's calling himself president, even though he hasn't stood for election and obviously doesn't plan to anytime soon. He's wearing. He would weigh. Yeah, I used to wonder, I guess I still do wonder, whether they were listening to my show because I would always just make the most obvious

kind of boiled down point for all the public school victims out there that like, okay, this guy, Assad wears a three-piece suit, and shaves his chin in the morning. And this guy, Jolani, dresses like Obi-1 Canobi, and sent out legions of suicide bombers with his big bushy beard, see how that works. And then, or not that bushy, but you understand. And then they dressed him up in a three-piece suit, right?

Like, not even just a suit, but a three-piece suit with the vest, too. When they did the front-line thing, and I'm like, hey, wait a minute, where they actually listened my show, and they thought that, like, well, that'll do the trick? Like, that's the only difference that really counts. And I guess they got away with it so far, but. And, you know, there were so many massacres during the Nistra times, like the suicide bombings. Like, there was a Drew's massacre.

And so Jolani, at the beginning of his rehab campaign, I'm sure not at his own, not of his own volition, went to these Drew's leaders and said, you know, it's really bad what happened back then. It was 2015, this Drew's massacre. But, you know, the people that were involved in that, they're not us. Like we got rid of them. We took care of them. And things are going to be different now. And it's just been that, like out of loop,

but then they're still killing these people. It's just mind-blowing, but also not surprising at all. Right. And even back, I believe it was in 2016 when he made his official public break with Al-Qaeda. But even then, he didn't renounce Al-Qaeda in any way.

He even said in the statement, like, I hope that Zawahiri and his friends understand that we have to do this for public relations reasons, that we're not changing our goals, but we have to be able to call ourselves something else. Which is something that Bin Laden himself recommended was that we need to change our name to other things because we've got, you know,

Zarkawi kind of made us look at, you know, that kind of argument or something, you know? So that was even where they came up with Jabad al-Nusra and all of that was just, you know, essentially public relations there. But, um, okay. Yeah, I was there captain when that's, happened. Like I, and so the day that he like showed his face, you know, the women I was with like they were just fawning over him on their phone like, oh, he's so beautiful. Oh, he's so beautiful. And they showed me and I just see this, you know, he's in the robe with the beard

and he just looks like he crawled out of the cave. And yeah, it's beautiful. Great. Amazing. Um, and now, uh, you, you play in one of your videos I watched you play that clip of Robert Ford, the former ambassador to Syria bragging about how he worked with this British NGO to help to sort of rehabilitate their image and all of that. So people can go and check that out. Again, it's things aren't great is the YouTube channel, which is a great name for a YouTube channel. If people want to see that clip. So we know what was going on here, right?

Like it was no coincidence or like a mystery, what was going on where it's Martin Smith from Frontline PBS that's going to, you know, really kick this whole thing off. And then they brought in Murtaza Al Qaeda from now DropSite, who I'll never respect, you know, like no matter what, because I remember his interview with Jolani, where he doesn't ask him about, so you thought September 11th was awesome, and you fought and killed Americans in Iraq

in fighting in Mosul and Ramadi, huh, or any kind of, you swore your blood oath loyalty to Osama bin Laden, the butcher New York City, pal. What about that? Mertaza Hussein did not ask him any of those questions at all. He just acted just like Martin Smith, like a doormat to, for the CIA to use their al-Qaeda guy,

to launder this public relations campaign for the guys. Unforgivable. So he'll always be Mertaza al-Qaeda to me, him and the other Al-Jazeera people and whoever all went along with that at the time. Sky News, Sky News and not Sky News there, but Sky News English went there after the earthquake. I think it was 2021 or 2022.

And they didn't put, you know, Javital Nasser leader or, sorry, HDS leader, or Al-Qaeda leader, or anything like that. They put rebel, commander. That's what they called him. Just completely like equalizing him with the so-called moderate opposition. Yeah. It's just, it's enraging.

And let me ask you because I might be wrong, but I think I got a little video in my head still of a footage of him, at least standing there as people are beheaded in like a public square somewhere back years ago. Do I have that right? I don't think so. There's a picture of a guy. in like a beheading scene and it looks vaguely like him, but I don't think so. But regardless, he was the leader of this group

and there are many videos. And there are other officials that are still completely involved in the new government who are in videos where like a woman's being killed for adultery. And that was just sort of like a common thing. You know, there's videos of white helmets for helping clean up after the executions. Right.

That may even be the same video that I'm thinking of there. I remember in 2013, early 13, I think it was. I'm pretty sure the story was in the telegraph where there's a young boy like 13 years old has a vegetable cart and a Nusri guy standing there but just some guy comes up and tries to like haggle a deal. And the kids said, hey, listen, I couldn't give you a discount on that orange

if you were Muhammad himself, something like that. And the Al Nusir guy goes, What did you say? Boom, and he shoots a 13-year-old kid in the face dead. You're not allowed to say that you wouldn't give a discount to Muhammad or whatever, these humorless bastards like these bin Ladenite freaks. Like, that's who these guys were this whole time. The kind of people would murder a 13-year-old boy for cracking a joke that didn't even mean anything, you know?

They haven't disavowed this ideology, and that's the thing. And yes, they're Muslims. There's a big difference between like a Muslim. moment Nostra and they haven't disavowed like all that they were. So you know, we've changed or I was young. No one has said like we don't want an Islamic state. We don't want this thing that we were fighting for that we sacrificed so many men for. Like you don't know.

They want that. They still want that. It's just like I said, they're waiting it out. So now in the past I've always argued that like, geez, Bill Clinton thought, you know, he could bribe these guys buy a. their loyalty by supporting them in Bosnia and Chechnya and whatever, but that didn't work. Oops, that kind of thing. So, but I wonder then, I mean, maybe that's not the same with these guys.

On one hand, the Al-Qaeda ideology always was, don't create a stake because America will just destroy it. So you might as well just keep fighting until America's finally gone. But now Al-Qaeda has tamed America and figured out that all they got to do is sell themselves as the vanguard against Hezbollah and the Shiites. and America will do whatever they want. And so they'd be damn fools to knock any more of our towers down now. On the other hand, all the same motives that they had for engaging us in that,

you know, what they hoped would be this cataclysmic, you know, contest between America and Islam back then, all still remain. And in fact, I have a whole mess of articles and studies that I've been reading here lately, including one by Europol and some others about the, the reinvigoration up in Loddite movements across Europe and across the world, mostly as a reaction to the war in Gaza over the last few years, which is no surprise if you consider how what would now be comparatively meager little massacres like Kana, 1996, helped cause September 11th.

I mean, what the hell do we have coming now? And I wonder what you think about the role of Alnusra, you know, going forward here as a threat to American national security and innocent American civilian lives, even though, you know, the Republicans and the Democrats have done so much for them lately. I mean, I think it's definitely

maybe not imminent. Like, I don't think that even an American in Syria right now is going to, they're not going to touch an American in Syria right now. They are very much like being on their best behavior. You mean, in terms of like these little terror cells, I think they're going to write them off as ISIS. Anything that happens that's going to be written off as ISIS.

And that's, it's a failsafe. And it's kind of really smart for them to do that. Just like in Syria, you know, it's not strictly the government that are committing the massacres against the Jews and the Alloids because they've got all these tribesmen, tribesmen who are completely loyal to the government, acting up the test of the government. But when something happens, the government can say, it wasn't us. It was the tribes. And we tried to get under control.

Like they've got henchmen and ways to excuse everything. It's just sort of like a masterclass and bullshittery that, really the West helped them help them cry. Hey, you guys, go check out my substack, Scott Horton Show.com. If you subscribe there, you can listen to the audio book of Provoked, at least the first few chapters of it,

Scott Horton Show.com. Okay, guys, me here for Matt Sersely, your new tax lawyer, and he's not just an accountant, he's a lawyer, and he knows exactly how to protect your neck. He serves small businesses and high-salorie professionals to help you structure your money so that you pay as absolutely little in income tax to the revenues as possible. No gimmicks here. You have to follow the law, but he knows it backwards

and forwards and will do a great job for you. Your new tax lawyer, Matt Sersely, at agoristaxadvice.com. And then so does that that public relations care that they're exercising right now as far as Westerners, does that apply to Syrian Christians as well? Because I know there's what, at least a half a dozen different major different sects of Christians there, right? We haven't seen a Drews or Al-Owhite-style massacre against the Christians, and I think that is very much

because they know that the American people and the American politicians cling to the Christianity cause. Like, anytime something happens, you had, you know, politicians and pundits saying, when the Al-Aid massacre was happening, like, oh, they're Christians being killed. And it's actually, no, they're not Christians,

but they're still, you know, minorities who don't deserve to be killed. Like, that shouldn't be the bar, but it is for Americans. And they know that so well. Right. So I think that, you know, the terror attacks have happened. It's because the Christians aren't adequately protected. But I think that really they have marching orders, not to mess with the Christians at this point.

All right. And then what about? Same with the Kurds to a much lesser extent, though. I'm sorry? Sorry, same with the Kurds to a much lesser extent. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. What about the Shiites? And then especially the Kurds, I know that you've written a lot.

about that because they had their own major U.S.-backed, armed force, the SDF there. And so that's been a huge question about their role in the new system. They're not going to have a role. I mean, they're going to have a token role. And that's, I mean, pretty much the government, the parliament, it's all necessary hardliners and tokens, you know, a handful of tokens. So right now, the integration is happening. and there have been massive attack on civilians.

Some of them were turning to Rosaline because they had been displaced when Turkey attacked in 2019. And most of their houses were taken over by S&A and militants, mostly from like Derasor and other parts of the country. So the civilians, convoy of civilians going back home were attacked. People were attacking Kobani and initially. All over the place were these places that were controlled by the SDF

that are now being folded into the Syrian government. And they're a massive attack. And again, these are tribesmen. So the government can say it's not a, like, we want an inclusive, we want everyone to be happy together. But no, it's the government. It's the government and their loyalists just making sure that there won't be any protest against them taking everything over. It's really sad. And it's really unfortunate because, I mean, you know, the curve definitely fought a lot for America and fought a lot.

to ISIS. And I think we all pretty much expected what's happening to happen. Maybe not with, you know, Nessera as the government. But we all expected America to screw them over. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah. Yes. It was coming sooner or later for sure.

We're even just on the very, like, you know, the most minimal basis that we're going to side with the Turks. And the Turks hate the current Syrian or otherwise. So it is what it is, you know. But, uh, so. I guess for the last subject here, Lindsay, I'm hoping you can help explore for us the situation between the Israelis and the Turks in Syria. So as far as I know, Turkey has a whole hell of a lot of influence among the Nusru regime. But then again, I have no idea what divides there are there. I actually got an email from a guy saying, don't oversimplify because it ain't that simple in this kind of thing.

although I don't remember exactly what he said. But then also, I don't know if the Israelis are backing any groups on the ground now or not, but I know that they've stolen a big chunk of the territory, including a big mountain on the outskirts of Damascus and all that. And the government in Israel continues to threaten, especially not Tali Bennett, the guy who did the Kana Masker of 96 that caused September 11. He keeps threatening Turkey and saying that Turkey is Israel's next target, which sounds pretty crazy since they're in NATO

and have a much bigger army than any of their other neighbors. But I wonder, I mean, you keep talking about, for example, how they can go, oh, well, it's just these tribesmen. In other words, I mean, yes, that's deniable BS. But on the other hand, too, like, they don't really have a state there, right? These are a bunch of bin Laden night wild men, even the tamest of them in their vest, right? Like, you know what I mean?

So it seems like, I guess I'm interested in. And the relative power of Israel, Turkey, and the new Syrian government itself inside Syria and the future there and whether especially the powers there, Turkey and Israel are headed for a real clash there. I think that everything between Turkey and Israel has been and it is the other. It really is. I mean, most of or half of Israel's oil still being shoveled through Turkey, Azerbaijan oil, shuttled through Turkey. The parade never stopped between Turkey and Israel, even though Turkey insisted it had for all the years of the Gaza War. They just kept finding new ways to hide it.

This is completely the government is complicit in this, and both sides, Erdogan and, you know, the foreign minister of Israel just back and forth talking nonsense about each other. But nothing has changed. I don't think that there will ever be any sort of clash between them. And in terms of Israel inside Syria, you know, so I know a lot of, you know, bloggers and journalists who have been all over Syria. And the only trouble most of them have had has been when they've tried to enter an area even remotely close to the idea. Like any of these outposts, they're completely protected.

Like you can go anywhere else in Syria, but like they give them a wide berth. Israel can do whatever it wants in Syria. Like no one has more power probably. And I think that Turkey knows that. Turkey's not really going to try to encroach on that. And Turkey, I mean, also has pretty much unlimited power in Syria, too. I think they're going to divide it up. Like Israel will annex what it wants.

Turkey will, Turkey almost has basically annexed what it wanted. You know, the border areas. Yeah, it's all theater between them, but they're both occupiers in Syria. Well, you know, I have a theory that if this guy, Jolani is as tame as he's portraying him, himself as now, then one of his own guys is going to cut his head off and replace them because they're all a bunch of cooks. Ultimately. Matter of time.

100%. Yeah. When you see that, they attacked a convoy when there was like an American with them. 100%. The hardliners are going to rise up. They're going to be terror attacks more and more. ISIS was already like starting to regenerate in areas where the SDF had knocked them out. It's going to be just a terrorist hellhole, like more than it already is.

I wonder if America will be at war with the bin Ladenites back again after support. them again after supporting the Kurds and the Shiites against them before, after supporting them again after. I wonder, because this is the most powerful ISIS Caliphate anywhere in the world. There's nothing else like it. I mean, it's crazy, right? This is actually American officials warned of this. Like after, you know, when ISIS, the Caliphate started to like dwindle,

before it was knocked out, it was the strongest Al-Qaeda iteration anywhere ever. And of course, now it's just, now it's the government. But I know, like, I just know in my heart, you know, I'm, I'm smeared by all these journalists who support the Giovanni regime. And I mean, screw them. But I also know that down the line, five years, 10 years, whenever it happens, the West has to plate this beast that they created, these people are going to, again, flip. And they always will have been against these terrorists. That's how it always is. Yep.

I know. We'll be America back on the side of Iran and Hezbollah again. And we'll switch back to Al-Qaeda again, and I'll have to write enough already to. Oh, Lindsay, thank you so much for your time on the show and all your great work. It's really appreciated. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. Absolutely. All right, everybody, check out her great page here. Things aren't great on YouTube. And here is the Twitter account at Lindsay Snell. There, follow her on X. Thanks, good. The Scott Horton show is brought to you

by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc., moon dose artisan coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, fools errand, enough already,

and my latest, Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above at Scott Horton.org, and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provote at Scott Horton Show.com and Patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show.

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