Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/22/25 William Van Wagenen on the CIA’s Covert War to Remake the Middle East

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Scott brings William Van Wagenen on to talk about his new book Create Chaos: Inside the CIA’s Covert War to Topple the Syrian Government. They talk about why Wagenen was first drawn to the topic before digging into the details we know about covert US policy in Syria, Iraq and the region more broadly.   Discussed on the show: Creative Chaos: Inside the CIA's Covert War to Topple the Syrian Government by William Van Wagenen Why he was drawn to this topic “Questions Mount Over Failure to Hit Zarqawi's Camp” (Wall Street Journal) Israel, Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War: Undue Influence, Deceptions, and the Neocon Energy Agenda by Gary Vogler “The Redirection” (The New Yorker) William Van Wagenen is the author of Creative Chaos: Inside the CIA’s Covert War to Topple the Syrian Government. He has a BA in German literature From Brigham Young University and an MA in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. You can read his other writings on Syria for the Libertarian Institute here. Follow him on Twitter @wvanwagenen This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. 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

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archive. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and x at scott horton show all right guys introducing william ban wagon and he is a research fellow at the libertarian institute and is a great investigative journalist and we are so proud to announce that we have

finally published his great book creative chaos inside the cia's covert war to topple the Syrian government and um it is our 17th book i believe at the libertarian institute and you can find that libertarian institute dot org slash books and of course at amazon dot com where right now of course it's number one in syrian history and i think it's number two or three in terrorism but it's doing great and this is such an important work and the long form you know massive investigations that William did for the Institute you know previous to this that were you know basically the basis of the research for this book I was so heavily dependent on all of that work for my explanations of the war in Syria

and Iraq War III in enough already all errors mine and a lot of other sources too I read a bunch of books and this and that but man did I reread everything that william wrote for sure before i was done with that to make sure that i knew i was right and so this book is so fantastic and i demand that you all not just get it but also read it creative chaos welcome to the show how you doing william hey i'm doing well thanks scott thanks for having me on yeah man uh very happy to have you here so the bad news and the good news is that i haven't read this book in like a year so you'll just have to remind me what it's all about you You want to start with how you got interested in this topic in the first place?

Yeah, so I've been, you know, following events in the Middle East for, I guess, about the same amount of time as you. I think we're about the same age and first went to Palestine in 2003 and then spent time in Iraq during the war in 2005 and 2006. But I didn't know that much about Syria, even though, you know, I followed everything else pretty closely. So at the beginning of the war in 2011, I kind of, you know, believe the mainstream narrative. There was a dictator suppressing peaceful protests for democracy, things like that. I kind of believe the general narrative about the Arab Spring in general. But as I started, you know, to just learn more and research more about Syria and then what happened in the early days of the war and how it all started and then also started researching more about the different armed groups that were fighting against the Assad government that were portrayed as being moderate rebels again fighting for freedom and democracy, the more I researched that, I realized, well, Actually, these are extremist Salafist militias.

Many of them are chock full of al-Qaeda fighters from Iraq and from Lebanon. And there was also a lot of reporting in the Western press at the time that once it kind of became clear that al-Qaeda in the form of the Nusra front and ISIS that those groups were active in Syria in the fighting, There was a lot of propaganda or reports in the Western media saying that Assad had created these groups as a way to discredit the Syrian opposition and try to gain sympathy with the West and try to appeal to the West, the U.S. and Europe as a partner in the so-called War on Terror. And again, as I looked more and more closely at it, I realized it was very clear that, no, actually it was the U.S., Israel, Britain and France, primarily Turkey as well, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, that this coalition of intelligence agencies from those countries, that they were the ones who were, you know, clearly supporting ISIS and Jhaphatanusra. And anyway, so once I saw that contradiction, kind of saw through that propaganda, I guess you'd say, you know, I just kind of got obsessed with the topic and started writing, as you mentioned, these really massive articles for you at the institute. And, you know, so that's kind of the origins of where the book came from, all that research that I did, as you mentioned. Great. Okay, man. Well, look, I'm just. As lucky as I could be, and I'm so grateful to have you as, you know, an associate by way of the Institute and to have proximity to your great work here.

Can we start with the neocon plan to destroy Syria? Yeah, so, again, you know, the mainstream narrative is that the Arab Spring protests, not only in Syria, but also in Tunisia, Egypt, etc., were these grassroots protests? to overthrow these Arab dictators. But if you look at it more closely, you can see that these Jewish neoconservatives that had a lot of influence in the Bush administration, they are the ones who actually began the planning to topple the Syrian government. And it was that planning and those policies that were then picked up or continued by the Obama administration to try to talk to

the Syrian government in 2011 and the Tunisian government and the Egyptian government and the Libyan government and the Yemene government. All of those Arab Spring protests were actually sparked by the Obama administration, the State Department, the CIA working closely with tech companies like Facebook, Twitter. But again, the origins of it, it goes back to the Bush administration. I'm sure your listeners are, of course, aware of, I guess, two important things. One is the Yanon plan, which is an old Israeli plan, to try to divide both Iraq and Syria, and turn that, you know, divide them up into weak, ethnic or religious-based statelets that would have no ability to challenge Israel. That's Israeli policy that goes back to the 80s.

And then also, I'm sure your listeners remember the revelation that came from Wesley Clark, the former NATO head, who said that members of the Bush administration told him after 9-11 that there was a plan to take out seven countries in five years. And that, of course, is what led to the Iraq invasion in 2003, but then it's also what led to the Syria war in 2011. So people like Richard Pearl, especially, were making plans to topple the Syrian government back in 2005, 2006, 2007. And again, it's basically on behalf of Israel. And as, you know, a couple, maybe it's already been two years now, but the EIR Institute published this great book about the Iraq War called Israel, the real winner of the Iraq War, I think it is. And, you know, that was an excellent book showing that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was really for the sake of Israel. It was to extract oil from Iraq that could be sent to Israel.

And at any rate, it was basically neo-conservatives in the Bush administration and later the Obama administration that were guiding this policy to also toppled Bashar al-Assad, just as Saddam was toppled, but in a more indirect way, again, using these and these astroturf protests and then combining that with an al-Qaeda-led insurgency. So when the protests finally broke out in Syria in 2011, the protests themselves were organized by a lot of activists, Syrian activists, who had been on the U.S., the State Department payroll. They had been flown out to conferences in New York and Beirut to learn how to use these new tech tools. like Twitter and Facebook to organize protests.

And then on top of that, the U.S. released all these top members of the Islamic State in Iraq from the prison in Camp Abuka in Basra. They released a lot of these guys in 2009, 2010. And then in late 2010, they sent them all to Iraq, or sorry, to Syria, from Iraq to Syria, to then start attacking Syrian police and security forces, but like under the cover of these protests. So in the Western press, we got the impression that, again, there are peaceful protests and that Bashar al-Assad was cracking down on them by having his security forces mercilessly open fire on peaceful protesters. But in reality, these Al-Qaeda-linked fighters would infiltrate the protests, shoot members of the Syrian

police and security forces, and also do false flag killings of protesters as well, blame those on the government in an effort to basically, you know, create hatred for the Syrian government that didn't exist before and get the snowball rolling of a, you know, quote-unquote revolution. Now, William, let me ask you here. That's kind of how it all began. Yeah, let me go ahead. Oh, sorry, I could have just let you finish that sentence, probably.

let me just ask you here as you know william the show obviously we deal with very specialized subject matter and deep deep dives as your book is and getting all into this which i want to do but the same time the show is also for beginners and people who are kind of new to this and probably just heard of me yesterday and you today okay right so they would be very rational to think that this is probably probably just heard of me yesterday and you today okay right so they would be very rational to think that this is probably not right what do you mean America would be on the side of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers I mean if you're just full truther and of course the suicide bombers always work for America with no exceptions and I guess you just take that for granted or something but I think for a normal person which I don't believe that by the way but you're just a normal person you might wonder if it's really right like make me understand why what could possibly be a good enough reason or compelling enough reason for the American war parties switch sides

in the war on terrorism to the terrorists. Circa 2011? Isn't that the exact same time that Barack Obama is literally killing Osama bin Laden in Pakistan? What do you mean he's taking the jihadis side in Syria? No, that's a great question. And I guess the basic answer is, I mean, a lot of these Islamic radical Islamic groups have connections with U.S. intelligence, and they go back decades, and even further than that, have connections to British intelligence, especially the Muslim Brotherhood. And I guess the basic idea is if there is a government or a state that you want to weaken or create chaos there, overthrow it, you've got to find some people crazy enough to. If you can give them some weapons and some funding, you've got to find some people that are crazy enough to go after that government and fight on your behalf as a proxy.

And again, there's just a long precedent, you know, going back to the 80s with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. I mean, the UK was like the center of London especially, but even it happened in New York. They were Islamic groups that had connections to MI6 and the CIA that were recruiting fighters to go from all across the world to go to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets, the Soviet army, which had occupied Afghanistan. Obviously, the Saudi intelligence and Pakistani intelligence were crucial partners in that effort. But a lot of this activity, you know, began, especially in London. And so then from there, the same thing happened in Bosnia. In the 90s, the U.S. and the U.K. were intelligence were recruiting Islamic extremists. A lot of them born in the U.K., like South Asian background, Pakistani or Libyan background also to go fight in Afghanistan and then in Bosnia.

and then even in Kosovo. It's well documented that the CIA was supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was fighting to help NATO break off Kosovo from Serbia. And Iman Azawahri, who was Bin Laden's right-hand man. He was running training camps in Albania that were supporting the KLA and fighting on NATO's behalf. So there is this long precedent. And then after that, you get to 9-11.

And, you know, whatever your view on 9-11 is, of course, as you mentioned, there are people who would say that that was an inside job. And basically the Israelis orchestrated 9-11 in order to basically force the United States to take Israel's side in launching this so-called war on terror so that, again, they could topple these seven governments in five years. Or on the other hand, if you think, well, no, you know, Osama bin Laden did do 9-11. This was blowback. Whatever your view on 9-11 is, there is an indisputable precedent that in Afghanistan, in Bosnia,

and in Kosovo, the U.S. and the U.K. were supporting al-Qaeda groups. And so it doesn't, it isn't, it shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to understand that if the U.S. and UK, again, for Israel's benefit, wanted to topple the Syrian government, that using these al-Qaeda militants in, you know, in these prisons in Iraq would be, you know, the best way, the best way to do it. I mean, it's, it's pretty hard to launch a full invasion, you know, the, the Israeli lobbyists in Washington and the, the people in the Pentagon that were Zionists that launched the Iraq War. That's a pretty big project to pull off to get the entire U.S. military to invade a country. And it's a little bit easier just to throw some money and weapons at some Islamic extremists. And, you know, you just use them as a proxy to create chaos in Syria or wherever else. And I'm of the view as well. maybe this is different from you, that al-Qaeda in Iraq, I mean, going back to the Zakhawi days, that, you know, Al-Qaeda in Iraq was a creation of U.S. and Israeli intelligence, basically by way of the Kurds, by way of Masoud Barzani.

You know, the Kurds were basically running al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2003, 2004, 2005, because the Israelis wanted a sectarian civil war there, just like they later got in Syria, you know, people in the U.S. military, I think a lot of the U.S. military members, whether generals or even low-level soldiers, I think they went into Iraq thinking that they were going to bring democracy, they were going to do some nation building, they were going to improve life for Iraqis. But, you know, the pro-Israel neocons in Washington who really orchestrated that invasion, They had different ideas. The invasion was just the first step. The second step was to destroy the Iraqi state, divided up into a Kurdish area, in the north,

a Sunni area in the west, in the Shia area in the south. So a strong Arab leader like Saddam Hussein could never threaten Israel again, and again to extract oil, especially from Kerkuk, to be sent by Turkey to Israel. That was a major goal of war. And the best way to do that was to have a guy like Zarqawi, you know, doing suicide bombings against the Shia in Karbala and Najaf and in Khadamiya, the Shia area of Baghdad. And then also to support groups like the Bader Brigade, these guys and the Taoist Party that had been in Iran for decades. Hire these guys, put them in the Minister of Interior, send these des squads around Baghdad and murder Sunnis. you know, detain people because they have a Sunni name, take them to the basement of the

Ministry of Interior and use these power drills, put a power drill through someone's leg or through their shoulder or eventually through their head and, you know, just create a sectarian civil war. So I don't know if there's time to go into it, but the whole history of al-Qaeda in Iraq has the footprints of the Kurds all over it. You'll notice that suicide bombings basically never happened in the Kurdish areas and the the relationship between al-Qaeda in Iraq and then later ISIS and the Kurds is just is just rock solid and not that many people know that and that has implications for the Yazidi genocide in 2014 as well where basically that genocide even though ISIS carried it out did the killing the raping and murdering the enslaving

of Yazidi women but that was all facilitated by Masoud Barzani and the Kurdish Peshmerga who are close allies of the United States and especially Israel, Israeli intelligence has a very strong presence in the Kurdish region of Iraq. So anyway, it's a very, very long answer. But the point is, regardless of your view on 9-11, there's all these other instances or precedents of U.S. and allied intelligence agencies supporting al-Qaeda to achieve their goals. again, going all the way back at least to Afghanistan in the 80s. And so, you know, I was just, that's one thing that motivated me to really write so much about Syria and eventually to do the book, is I thought like you, that that's very scandalous, you know. I can't believe that the United States is supporting actual al-Qaeda groups like Jabhatanistra and ISIS.

And it's even, I mean, it should be even more. more shocking that, you know, that the current president of Syria, Abu Mohammed Adjalani, who now goes by the name of Ahmed Ashah, that he's now the Syrian president. There's literally a former ISIS commander as the president of Syria. And he was immediately recognized by the Americans and the British and basically everybody else. And now he's, you know, actively working to divide Syria according to Israeli goals. If you want, we could talk about that a little bit. But at any rate, I just found that very scandalous that the U.S. who was supporting al-Qaeda,

and they were constantly in the Western press saying that actually it was Assad who was supporting al-Qaeda and ISIS and Nistra. And that was just so disgusting to me that that's what motivated me in a large way to write the book. Yeah. Well, that last one was a huge bit of completely upside-down ridiculous propaganda at that time that ISIS was, oh yeah no Assad is creating them just to discredit the rest of his enemies

and this kind of thing pretty ridiculous now but I want to talk about a record too some more so I mean there was a lot of fighting over Kier Kook and I think ultimately at least

at that time the Kurds had the advantage and cleansed a hell of a lot of Sunnis out of Kier Kook during that era of like 2006 through maybe five and six. So I guess that would coincide with your theory then if essentially the

meanest of the Sunni insurgency are bought off by, is it Talibani or Barzani, who's their biggest benefactor or both? That's, you're saying, really the secret power behind the bin Ladenite Sunnis, well, the bin Ladenite led Sunni insurgency in Western Iraq. Yeah. And so, for example, as I mentioned, all these Mujibati, jihadine went to afghanistan to fight for the cia against the soviets in the 80s sure well by the i mean first of all yeah no we all know that and it's in the book that you know bill clinton backed him in bosnia kosovo and cheschnya and all that but now we're talking about post 9-11 and post you know now into iraq war two which by the way the washington post version has it that the

cia and the nsc were complaining to them that they knew the saudis were backing the sunni insurgency against us all this time although I don't know. I guess that could have been one department of the CIA complaining about another one or something if they're really working. And, of course, it's the Sunni insurgency that killed the vast majority of the Americans who died in this thing. So if America and Israel are working with the Kurds to back the Zarqawiites to kill American soldiers and Marines, it's, I'm not sure I really, you know, but I guess I'd just ask you, like, please elaborate about exactly how you know that. I mean, I know that you spent time in Kurdistan. I know that you know and interviewed all these Yazidis at length and all of that. So you can just talk a little bit more about the mechanics of all that and how exactly it works.

If you can, like, elaborate about the 2004-2005 era is the real, like, dawn of the worst of the Sunni-based insurgency there, right? Yeah. So, and this is something I only realized or learned, you know, pretty recently. And again, I was in Iraq way back in 2005, 2006, and I've been studying that war for a long time. And only 20 years later did I think I kind of have a more accurate view of what happened, which is that, again, going back to the Mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviets, it's not very well known, but there was a pretty big Kurdish contingent.

So once these Kurdish Mujahideen came back, You know, after 1991, there was the U.S. No Fly Zone over the Kurdish region of Iraq. And these Mujahideen were all, the former Mujahideen were all there, these Islamic extremists who had a Salafist ideology. And what were they doing? In the 90s, a civil war broke out between Kurds, between Masoud Barzani's KDP party based out of Erbil and Jalal Talibani's P-UK party based in the other half of Kurdistan in Sulemania.

And Masoud Barzani basically gave weapons and funded these Mujahideen that had returned from Afghanistan, and they fought with him alongside the KDP Peshmerga against Jalal Talabani's Puk-U-K-Peshmerga. These Mujahideen, they established their own Islamic emirate in Halabja, or near Halabja, which again, your listeners might know because that was the town that was gassed, presumably by Saddam in the 80s. But Halabja is famous for that. But in the 90s, near Halabja, there was these Islamic Emirates that were being,

that were full of these Kurdish mujahedin training camps, were, again, supported by Massoud Barzani. He was using these guys to fight against his Kurdish rival, Jalal Talibani. So then, after 9-11, as we know, Paul Wolfowitz, like the day after 9-11, he went to whatever meeting, maybe it was a national security council meeting with Bush and the guys and said, hey, guys, so when are we going to invade Iraq? And, you know, people were a bit confused by that.

They're like, well, I thought al-Qaeda was in Afghanistan. It was even that day. And, of course, Rumsfeld and the Pentagon, too. Contact Wolfowitz for connections between Saddam Hussein and OBL, sweep it all up, things related and not in the handwriting of Stephen Cambone, the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Yeah, and Cambone, he played a big role in Abu Ghraib stuff, which maybe we could get to. So, so anyways, they needed, of course, a way to connect Osama. bin Laden to Saddam Hussein to justify the invasion.

Of course, they have the weapons of mass destruction excuse, but they also kind of have this dual track effort to also say, well, Al-Qaeda and Saddam are working together and 9-11, so we got to invade Iraq. So the easiest way to do that

was to basically plant Zarakawi in Iraq or point to the fact that he was in Iraq and say, maybe you don't agree he was planned there, but at least look, there's this guy's Akawi. He's in Iraq. And that proves that Saddam and al-Qaeda are working together. And so this is what Colin Powell focused on in his UN speech a few months

ahead of the Iraq invasion. Well, I can definitely point out, you know, part of this, I don't know who put him there. I mean, I know that he left Afghanistan and went to where he was not directly tied to bin Laden he had met him before or whatever but was not his agent not sworn loyalty to him and then right had somehow traveled to Kurdistan and then from there and i knew this better before and i should have saved like a maybe i do have an article william somewhere where i saved all these links back then i could try to recreate the old stuff but there are a bunch of stories man i think even books are written about this but the most famous thing is jim micklesheski at NBC News had this, but there's CIA and Special Forces guys have written about this,

people who live through it, and just, I don't know, man, there's got to be at least six or seven or eight or more sources about this, which is about how the Special Forces guys on the ground, CIA, Black Ops guys on the ground before the war, they wanted to kill Zarqawi. And the Pentagon wanted to kill Zarqawi in Kurdistan, where he's safe and protected from Saddam. As you say, they're pretending Saddam is backing this guy. They even pretended Saddam operated on him, gave him a peg leg, and saved his life. So not only is he supposed connected to Osama, but here he's directly connected to the dictator who must have authorized the peg leg operation, right? And so this is a lie that they got from Ahmed Chalibi. But the Pentagon

is saying, let us kill him and Bush turned them down over and over and over again. And I'm not exactly sure the mechanism I kept bringing it up but it was one of those things it was really obvious like I told you to stop asking me about that and this guy really you know obviously they built this giant legend about him at the time that he was just responsible for the whole insurgency and that's why you were supposed to discredit the whole insurgency as not nationalist insurgency at all but all of it is bin ladenite inspired craziness right as evidenced by the existence of this guy's archery. So they needed him as the excuse to start the war,

and they used him terribly as a scapegoat for the whole insurgency once the war began. But they absolutely coulda kill them, and not just woulda, coulda, shoulda, but the lower authorities begged Bush for permission to kill him, and were denied time and time again for months leading up to the war, which is one of the worst scandals of the war, quite frankly. And if you're telling me that, yeah, America was in on it with Barzani

to back AQ against our guys. And that is on the level of the highest treason in all history right there, where Republicans still to this day deserve to be strung up for that. And CIA officers, too, sounds like. Yeah. So as you mentioned, you know, half 50% of the reason to go to war in Iraq was because this guy's Raqawi, who wasn't even in a part of Iraq that was under Saddam's control.

It was in a part of Iraq under U.S. control and Israeli control in Kurdistan in a training camp full of Kurdish mujahideen on Masoud Barzani's payroll. Oh, and they tortured the Libyan. And as you mentioned. And they tortured the Libyan Ibn Ali into saying that it was Saddam who taught him in Zarkawi how to make chemical weapons. And that was why supposedly he was making ricin and other chemical weapons there. yeah right isn't that the same torture myth that they got or the same chemical weapons myth that they got out of alibi was the connection to zarkawi too do i remember that correctly i believe so i'd have to double check but i'm sorry to interrupt you dude i i i'm sorry go ahead but definitely

they tortured alibi to create that link between saddam and al-qaeda but and chemical weapons as well yeah so so they've got the zarqawi there and as you mentioned They have, of course, they could have killed them. And in fact, the Pentagon, there was a general, there's a big article about this in the Wall Street Journal, I forget. I apologize, I forget the name of the article, but it was published sometime in 2002. And this American general wanted to bomb this training camp, whereas Paui was supposedly there. And they sent the request to Bush and Bush's cabinet, and they literally couldn't get an answer. They just got ignored.

They got zero answer. And the general later said that this is one of the best targets they ever had in terms of like the intelligence was good. There was going to be zero collateral damage, zero civilians killed in the strike. And they couldn't get permission. They couldn't even get Bush, whoever's pulling the strings behind Bush, whatever. They couldn't even get an answer. Finally, once Powell then goes to the UN, blames all this. stuff on Zarqawi and says, we got to invade Iraq. Finally, when they invade Iraq in March

of 2003, they finally bombed Zarqawi's training camp. But guess who wasn't there? Right. Of course, Zarqawi, you know, by some. I blame the CIA right now, William, because every time I try to Google that Wall Street Journal article, my Mozilla crashes. Yeah, maybe we've got to use the index or something. So as soon as they no longer, you know, needed him as a pretext and the invasion was already, you know, launched, finally they're like, okay, now we'll bomb the training camp. But, you know, again, either they tipped him off or he was escaped, so they were okay to bomb the place. But then, you know, it gets worse. Again, like I said, if you go back to the Yanon plan in the 80s, this was Israel's policy is to divide these countries.

So it wasn't enough to just topple Saddam and then try to like let Iraq flourish and become like a functioning country and a functioning state, lift the sanctions. Like again, I'm sure most American generals and soldiers thought was the agenda. But these neocons in the Bush administration, they had other ideas. What they wanted to do was create additional chaos and basically implement stage two of the operation. which was to divide the country, which requires a sectarian civil war. Let me ask you something because my idea that, I'm sorry, I don't mean to quibble with you all through your thing here. I'll let you have you say. But my idea there was that, no, it was supposed to be easy.

If you read the claim break, it was supposed to be easy to tame these Iraqi Shia. But the problem was Ayatollah Sistani came out and said, hey, if you believe in God, I want you to go outside and demand one man, one vote, and challenge W. Bush, basically. You ready to start this war all over again, boy? And then this is in January of 04. And Bush said no. And I had told Sistani said in no uncertain terms, then me and my guys are going to write the new constitution and rule the new government. And you're going to bow down to us, not the other way around.

And how do you like that? And Bush could either cut and run then or go ahead and complete the job for Iran's men. And it seemed like it was – and this is why I was not surprised. It is astonishing, but it should not have been surprising the level of treason and what they did in Syria because we already knew from March. I always say March, but I think maybe it's May of 2007 when Seymour Hirsch wrote the redirection that we knew. And hell, I had an article in Newsweek about we want to switch back to the Sunnis from the spring of 2006, where it was Khalil Zad and Abrams said we really screwed up here. And to reverse this, we need to do the redirection where we tilt back toward the bin Ladenites.

And so that policy was from 06. That was kind of at the core of the awakening strategy in Iraq. where it was not so much aligned with the bin Ladenites as trying to marginalize them, but it was aligned with the bin Ladenites in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Iran, where they were back in Jandala, cutting people's heads off and doing suicide attacks and all that. All of that, the redirection was year, two and a half, two years before Obama ever came to town, right? So when he continued Bush's policy in Syria, after all, it was Elizabeth Cheney, who created the government in exile, including the Muslim Brotherhood, that they were trying to put in power.

to replace Assad. I actually was just Googling that footnote for my interview with Lex Friedman, where I try to sound as much like you as I can. Well, yeah, again, I guess, you know, these days I feel like I disagree with Seymour Hirsch more and more. And I feel like maybe there was less of a redirection and more of, again, like in Iraq, just literally supporting both sides. I mean, it's the old Iran-Iraq war strategy where you fund both sides so that they kill each other. And if one side's going to win, then you kind of back off supporting them and you support the other side.

And when that side's going to win, then you back off and support the other side. And as long as both sides are killing each other, then you are happy. Well, those of you who listen to me tell you to listen to Mike Swanson at Wall Street Window and Tim Frye at Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc. had bought a bunch of gold, must be doing great right now, and should probably donate to the Libertarian Institute. Robertson Roberts is the best. It's a matter of trust. There's no flashy gimmicks,

risky schemes, or bait-and-switch scams here. Robertson-Roberts is here to help you protect your wealth. Any portfolio ought to have a solid percentage in medals. For us Austrian school types, even more. Go to Robertson-Roberts Brokerage, Inc. at R-RBI.co to protect your self for monetary inflation. That's rrbi.co. Hey, y'all, libertosbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas

designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's Libertasbella.com. y'all I've been working on the audio book of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. I've now finished and posted part three of the audio book to my substack and Patreon at Scott Horton Show.com and patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. So that finishes all of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

I know there's still a long way to go, but just these first two chapters are almost ten hours of audio to get you started. I promise I'm doing the rest as fast as I can. get the audiobook of provoked first subscribe at scott horton show.com or patreon.com slash scott horton show i mean but isn't it right though that the sheites weren't supposed to have a will of their own i had told sistani was not supposed to pull out a giant rubber stamp and veto w bush's plan they wanted to create a government a caucus system where they handpicked leaders of different factions to essentially do what they were told and then they found out that actually the super majority doesn't need us that bad you know they'll take our help but they're at the end of the day who's zoom and who right i don't know i just don't think paul wolf which is that smart i read the clean break and i think the thing that david worms are is most convinced about is that he's smart otherwise he wouldn't be listening to chalaby he's telling himself this guy chalaby i trust him and he's this is going to be great you know i mean i don't know if you read especially like

they wrote a whole book about the clean break called Tyranny's ally was like Chalaby assures us this is going to be dope dude yeah I mean you know there's probably a lot of different agendas and a lot of different tactics and things

so it's kind of hard to say but at least you know the pattern that I notice is that again going back to you know again the Yanon plan or even David Wormser's writings where he's constantly saying we've got to break these states up into small ethnic or familial

tribal statelets you know one way or another you you want to try and get there and again like civil war or sectarian war is kind of the easiest way and so when for example after zsaupawi escaped the bombing in 2003 after the u.s invaded um you know he his This original group of people were Kurds. The original fighters around Zarqawi were Kurds. From there they started recruiting Sunni Arabs. But the al-Qaeda in Iraq, they continued to be controlled by the Kurds. And by that, I mean literally like Kurdish politicians.

So for example, in Mosul, in 2007, there were all kinds of of murders and killings of Christians and Yazidis in Mosul. And all of the Yazidis I talked to, they say that these Al-Qaeda groups that were murdering people in Mosul, that was one of the most dangerous places in the country, that these al-Qaeda groups were literally being run by a Kurdish politician that's high up in the KDP, his name is Qasro-Gurani. And that's what all these Yazidis say is that the Kurds were running, the Al-Qaeda groups that were killing them and the Christians.

Like, for example, these Yazidis and Christians would get kidnapped in Mosul, and Kurds would come and take over their homes. When they would pay ransoms to get these people out, they'd always have to deliver the ransom to a part of Mosul that was under tight. control the Kurdish Peshmerga. This is where all the activity was. And again, with the Yazidis, there's a much bigger history there, which I guess, again, if there's time I could talk about. But again, if you notice, when Zarqawi started doing all these big suicide bombings, he first hit the UN building, then again, he was hitting Najaf, he was hitting Karbala, he was hitting Baghdad. All these suicide bombings were sparking, you know, eventually sparked a civil war between the Sunni and Shia, but almost never was there a suicide bombing in Kurdistan.

And Zarqawi supposedly would say, oh, we're fighting these Shia because they're collaborating with the Americans, which they were, you know, the Shia, as you mentioned, you know, Sistani. They said, hey, let's have elections, and the Shia filled the police units and the new army, including the Bada brigades, as I mentioned, who were just massacring and killing people through the Ministry of Interior, and that was all, you know, supported by the Americans, David Petraeus, James Steele, these guys who were involved in the Dirty War in El Salvador, they got moved over to Iraq to run those death squads. But again, it was basically the, at the end of the day, on both sides, these groups were being controlled.

So again, all the Al-Qaeda groups, they never did suicide bombings in Arbeel. I think the one or two cases I've been able to find where they did suicide bombings. Again, they were bombings against, like, PUK offices, you know, like it's an interview. They would do a suicide bombing, but it wasn't even against the KDP office. It was against the PUK office. So anyways, the origins of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in Iraq are Kurdish, but with an Arab, you know, front, which was Akawi. There was a tough fight over Kirkuk in those days, though, wasn't there? between the Sunnis and the Kurds?

Well, the Kurds really wanted to take Kerkuk, and they initially tried during the invasion in 2003. They tried. But they were unsuccessful, and this was another reason why they were using al-Qaeda, especially against the Yazidis, was that they wanted to basically annex Kerkuk because there's so much oil there

and incorporate it into a state, And then they wanted to have a referendum where they would have all of the Iraqis that live in these so-called disputed territories, which were like on the borders of Kurdistan, which meant like Sinjar, Bashika, other areas near Mosul. And both the Kurds and also the Skiri, Hakim's guys that were close to the Americans, both of those groups with help from the Americans, they managed to ensure. this clause in the new Iraqi Constitution was passed in 2005, which said, again, there would be after, there would be a census in Kirkuk to see who's really Arab, who's really Kurdish, and then we're going to have a vote in all these areas that were, quote unquote, disputed, which the Kurds really wanted, which also had a lot of oil in them, especially Bashika. And they had this referendum planned, and they were supposed to do it in 2007. So what the Kurds needed to do was to terrorize the Christians and the Yazidis, make them think that the Sunni Arabs, specifically al-Qaeda, was trying to commit genocide and kill them. And as a result, that would force the Yazidis to say, in Sinjar,

which is under central government control, to give up and say, okay, you know what, in this upcoming referendum, we'll go ahead and vote for the Kurds because they will protect us because these crazy Arabs, Sunni Arabs from al-Qaeda are killing us. But again, it was the Kurds who were behind these al-Qaeda groups in Mosul and elsewhere. So I'll give you this major example to hopefully illustrate the point, which had special significance to me because in January of 2007, So this referendum I'm talking about was supposed to take place later that year in December 2007. So I was in Iraq working for a human rights group in late 2006, early 2007.

And I went to Sinjar to visit a little village and I got kidnapped. And the people who kidnapped me, they claimed that they were basically, bathist resistance fighters fighting against the American occupation and they said they were Arabs and yeah they kidnapped me and

that's who they said they were they were Arabs right so once I got released I realized that actually it was members of the Kurdish Democratic Party that had kidnapped me and there's a high That is again Barzani's guys right

Barzani's guys that had actually kidnapped me, but they just pretended to be Arabs. So that was in January 2007. Now, if you fast forward just a few months to August 2007, there was the biggest terrorist attack in the history of Iraq took place. In a place you would never imagine, in these two tiny Yazidi towns in Sinjar, called Telazir and Sibbashir Khidder. Now, remind us where Sinjar, is this like between Mosul and Kurdistan, right?

It's, well, it's, uh, sorry, west of Mosul and near the Syrian border. Oh, west of Mosul, forgive me. Okay. But again, these are, these are areas that the Kurds want to annex as part of this referendum. Oh, right, right. I'm sorry. Now, Mount Sinjar, this is where Rock War III started, supposedly where the Americans, the excuse was that Reason Magazine believed was we got to go rescue the Azidis from Mount Sinjar. Yep, the exact same place.

When Iraq War III, when, I'm sorry, when, pardon me, when I say Rock War III, I mean the beginning of the war against the Caliphate in August of 2014, after they really created it, not just in Eastern Syria, but Western Iraq in June of 2014, just so people can stick this on their timeline somewhere.

Yeah. So if people remember from the Yazidi genocide, all these tens of thousands or more Yazidis were stuck on top of Sinjar Mountain and were starving. They were surrounded by ISIS. When I was kidnapped, I mean, I was within, I was stuck in, in, in some tiny room in a place where I could see the mountain from where I was. And I'm sorry, what year was this again? This way back in 2007. Okay. So I'm kidnapped in 2007 in January. I got released, thank God.

And so a few months later in August, in that same area, in these two tiny Yazidi towns near the base of Sinjar Mountain, turns out there was the biggest terror attack in Iraq's history, probably the second biggest one only to, well, I don't know, but roughly 1,000 Yazidis were killed when these four truck. bombs entered these two Yazidi towns and detonated, again, killing at least a thousand people and just flattening large parts of these two towns. And immediately, immediately, the next day, in fact, I should say an Iraqi interior ministry official said that the explosion resembled a mini-nuclear bomb. The very next day, the U.S. military and the Peshmerga of Masoud Barzani, they came out and said, oh, this has all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda. All the hallmarks of al-Qaeda.

Again, blaming it on the Sunni Arabs, basically, who are also living that area around the Yazidis. But all of the Yazidis I interviewed, they tell me the story, which, is that at that time, the Peshmerga, Barzani's security forces, they were the ones who had checkpoints surrounding these two Yazidi towns. And like a half an hour before these two massive truck bombs entered the towns, all of Barzani's Peshmerga, like clockwork, withdrew from the checkpoints just in time for these truck bombs to enter and detonate and murder a thousand and people. So every Yazidi that you talk to from those towns, they say, well, yeah, the bombings were

blamed on Al-Qaeda, but we know that they were completely coordinated by Massoud Barzani and the Peshmerga. And now, didn't you tell me before? So again, sorry, and maybe that sounds fantastic, but then shortly after that, some of the Yazidi leaders, many of which are actually on the payroll of the KDP and are kind of co-opted, a bunch of Yazidis. leaders came out and said, oh, you know, Al-Qaeda is terrorizing us. And in this upcoming referendum, which is going to take place end of 2007, just three months later,

they said, you know, we better vote in the referendum to join the Kurdish region under Barzani because we need the protection from al-Qaeda. So again, all this was happening again at the same time that in Mosul, that Barzani's guy, Kasuro Gorani, was running death squads, killing Yazidis and Christians, and taking over. over their neighborhoods and homes in Mosul. And all of it was to just terrorize Yazidis and Christians to make them say, hey, we better vote to join the Kurdish region. Otherwise, we're going to get exterminated.

So maybe that sounds kind of crazy, but the exact, exact, exact same thing happened then seven years later in 2014. With the Yazidi genocide itself, again, your readers might or your listeners might remember that in June 2014 it was a total shock seemingly out of nowhere ISIS with just a couple hundred guys

a couple hundred fighters managed to take over Mosul Iraq's second largest city and then that was in June 2014 and then in August 2014 they invaded Sinjar and they did the genocide

again which people maybe are more familiar with taking these Zizi women as sex slaves and pushing them up onto the mountain where they were starving, et cetera. But again, there's dozens of Yazidis that have interviewed that survived the genocide. They said the exact same thing happened in 2014. After ISIS took over Mosul, number one, a bunch of Kurdish commanders in the Iraqi army basically withdrew their forces to allow ISIS to come in and take over Mosul. And instead of defending Mosul from ISIS, the Peshmerga, you know,

immediately sent their forces to Kirkuk to take over the oil. And within literally a week, they were exporting it to Turkey. And then from Turkey, it was put on boats and sent to Israel. And then in August, two months later, again, the Peshmerga still occupied Sinjar and had checkpoints around the whole area. And after ISIS took over Mosul, the Peshmerga publicly, the head of the Peshmerga in Sinjar, he was saying, Yuzidis, don't worry, we will defend. offend you to the last drop of our blood.

A lot of Yazidis were scared to death. They had ISIS on three sides of them, and they wanted to, like, escape and go to Erbil or De Hook. But the Peshmerga wouldn't let them. They said, no, why are you leaving? You have to stay here. We're protecting you. Don't worry. And on August 3rd, again,

liked clockwork, just like in 2007, to allow these truck bombs into the two Yazidi towns. But this on a much larger scale, all across Sinjar, the Peshmer. Merga, like, all at once withdrew without firing a bullet and allowed ISIS to enter all these towns in Sinjar and massacre Yazidi men and enslave Yazidi women and allowed them to perpetuate the genocide. So it's this constant pattern of the Kurds using al-Qaeda or ISIS or the Islamic State, you know, whichever name they happen to be going by at the time, to terrorize. Yazidis and Christians and that part of Iraq on the one hand, but then also to do these

suicide bombings against the Shia in other places. And these are policies that were designed to basically tear Iraq apart. Now, wait a minute. Let me ask you because... Sorry, that's a lot of info. No, no, it's okay. I just, I want to make sure and follow up on some little points here and there, at least, including you're saying that the CIA, I mean, it would make sense.

Of course, the agency's embedded working with the Kurds all through Iraq. but you're saying this whole thing essentially was a plot by Washington to help the Kurds help al-Qaeda while they're fighting the American military who are fighting on the Shiite side in the civil war this entire time that we're talking about here well the the Kurdish role of Masoud Barzani with ISIS is indisputable with the Americans I'm you know I'm not sure I don't I don't have the proof if that was also an American policy there's some indications of that. I personally think that's the case. What about other reactions by the Americans against Barzani at that time?

Did they tilt toward Talibani or did they threaten Barzani that like, hey, man, we know what you're doing and it's pissing us off or this kind of thing or anything? Not that I've ever, not that I've ever found, no. Makes me want to go back at Reed old Romando here. Now, one thing, speaking to Hirsch was, Hersch had, hang on one second, Hersch had an article I don't know what year anymore Maybe earlier like 05

Called Plan B And it was about how They recognized that the clean break thing didn't work They were going to get They were not going to get an oil pipeline to Haifa They were not going to have a compliant Shiite government like in the clean break fantasies So instead plan B was

We'll just make a deal with the Kurds And I remember because Romanto's article At the time was the stab in the back See we did this whole war for Israel And now they're going behind our back to go ahead and break them up and, in a way worse than what the Americans have planned anyway, other than maybe Senator Biden at the time, by making their separate oil deal, especially, with the Kurds over American soldiers their bodies. Yeah, I mean, we know the Israelis do not mind killing Americans. Again, all your listeners, I'm sure, are aware of the USS Liberty. by the way i'm sorry before we go any further let me just say i found your wall street journal article

that you mentioned it's called questions mount over failure to hit zarkawi's camp this is one of the many many articles about this that's the one in the wall street journal from o four that you mentioned is by scott for some reason with only one t scott j paltro sorry go ahead again uh we know that the Israelis do not have reservations about killing American soldiers, which we know from the USS Liberty incident. So if they are funding an insurgency with the help of the Kurds that's killing American soldiers, maybe some American officers or generals knew about this or intelligence people, or maybe they didn't. I don't know. I can't. I can't speak to that. But the Kurds were doing that. I know that 100%. And the Mossad has an extremely, extremely close relationship with the Kurdish Peshmerga and their intelligence service, the Parastin.

And Seymour Hirsch did write an article, in fact, about this, where he talks about that relationship. It goes all the way back to the 70s where the father of Masoud Berzani, Molo Mustafa, was getting help from the Kurds. And people don't often realize that there were many Kurdish Jews. that left the Erbil region in the 1950s and came to Israel and settled in Esterote, especially, which is right near the Gaza border. A lot of people don't realize that there were a lot of Kurdish Jews, and now in Israel it's very common to hear like Kurdish music. And in fact, the biggest, craziest extremist Zionist in Israel, Itamar Ben-Gavir, he's Kurdish. Are you kidding? He's Kurdish.

And Seymour Hirsch wrote this plan. I think it might even have double check, but it might even be the article you mentioned, the Plan B, where he talks about how the Mossad not only gives weapons and training to the Kurdish intelligence and to the Peshmerga, but they also created units, Kurdish units that resemble the Mousd-Arabin, which is in Israel, there are areas. Arab Jews that speak Arabic and blend in in Palestinian society, even marry Palestinian women, to carry out undercover operations.

There's the Duvdivon unit that's maybe it was last year. They kind of gained a little bit of attention because they burst into this hospital in the West Bank dressed as women and they murdered some, I think, Hamas guys. Well, not Hamas, but some Palestinian resistance fighters in the West Bank, the Dov-Divon, Israeli soldiers that, again, speak Arabic, blend in an Arab society. Seymour Hershard an article saying that the Israelis had created the equivalent of those among Kurds to infiltrate Arab society. So, again, the connection between Israeli, Israeli intelligence, and the Kurds is exhalese. extremely close. And so if you have them, you know, doing false flag stuff, detonating bombs, again, killing Yazidis and Christians in Mosul on the one hand, and then, you know, setting off bombs at the UN, you know, or at the shrines in Nudge off, or this is speculation on my part, maybe blowing up the mosque in Samara in 2006,

which really triggered the worst of the Iraqi Civil War. I don't have evidence from that, but I'm just speculating that maybe they did it. But these are all things, again, that create sectarian war, which is, again, helped Israel to divide the country and get that oil, which they wanted ever since the 2003 invasion.

And as you mentioned, they immediately wanted to get that pipeline going to Haifa, and when that didn't work out, later the idea was, hey, if we can help the Kurds take over Kerkukuk, and instead of sending oil through the central government to Baghdad and then exporting it, and the central government would never, of course, sell oil to Israel. So instead, if we can get the Kurds illegally without Baghdad's permission to send oil to Turkey

through a special pipeline that the Kurds and the Turks built together, even before ISIS invaded and before the Kurds could take Kerkuk, and send that oil to Turkey and then to Israel, then, again, this is a major win for Israel. And so this is what happened in 2014. Like I mentioned, after ISIS took over Mosul with Kurdish help, and then that allowed the Kurdish Peshmerga to take over Kerkuk and get access to all this oil,

within one week they were exporting it to Israel. And within one year, according to the Financial Times, just one year later, Israel was getting 77% of its oil from Iraqi Kurdistan via Turkey. It would go by pipelines to the Sehan port. He would go from through Kurdistan to, again, through Turkey. And Erdogan's son-in-law was in control of the energy ministry. So he'd take his transit fee.

And then they'd put him on tankers in the Sehan port, and they'd send it right to Haifa. And there was no competitors even buy the oil because everyone has relations with Iraq. And so the central government, so they couldn't buy this illegal Kurdish oil, but the Israelis could. In fact, the Kurds even, they even tried, or the Turks, sorry, even tried to put some oil on a boat, on a big tanker, and they sent it to the U.S. And it was sitting off the coast of Texas, but a U.S. judge ordered the ship seized because, again, it was illegal for anyone to buy that oil because it didn't go through Baghdad.

And so that ship sat there for like months off the coast of Texas. but again only people that could even buy the oil Israel had a completely captive it was a completely captive market they were the only ones that could buy that Kurdish oil so all of this again it goes back to 2003 they wanted to get the oil through the hyphen pipeline and it didn't work so they tried again in 2014 but supporting ISIS by way of the Kurds was the way to do all of that yeah all right wait so first of all firstly this entire conversation is the prequel to the story in your book in a way so i want to have you back next week to talk about that rather than go for

another hour now i think it'd be better if we just do another uh section of the interview later but i wanted to ask you one more thing about what you're talking about in the days of iraq war two i believe you told me before maybe just in a regular conversation that part of why you were so convinced that the Yazidis were right that the that the Kurds not only kind of allowed that truck bombing to happen to them but were even behind it in the first place was because they didn't see another reason there didn't like unlike in 2014 where they're trying to consolidate all of this territory and enslave whoever they want and do whatever they want we're in the days of Iraq were two, the bin Ladenites or even the Sunni-based insurgency had no particular need to go after

these Yazidis at all. They were hiding out somewhere and it wasn't like they were even trying to take over their hideout. You know what I mean? Where they are safe in the in the foothills of Mount Sinjar and whatever kind of thing away from the rest of the conflict of the war. So that was one of the reasons I think you told me before why you were more convinced of their story about how Barzani had really directed the bin Ladenites to do it because they essentially there was no other rational reason for them to even bother going that far out of their way to launch that truck bomb attack of again 07 you said right yeah and if if you got time for another story I can tell you another kind of crazy story tell me a story man I love this stuff you're you do such great

work I demand everybody read this book it's so good and we're only just barely scratching the surface of what this guy can tell us. Please do continue. So by the way, if you let me write the book about, you already said you would. So thank you. But if I can write this book about the Yazidi genocide, this is all the history I'll go into. Of course. Yes. We'll publish it. We already have a deal. So that'll be, you know, half of the book would be about all this, all that buildup I've been talking about. So to give another example, the supposed, you're saying, like you said, why would al-Qaeda have a reason to go after these Azidis? They're just off in Sinjar, this remote place.

I mean, it really feels like the edge of the earth. There's not much there. And like I say, I could understand why they would in 14, just because they want to take over this whole area. But in 07, they would need one reason or another to go that far out of their way. Is that a fair way to characterize it? Yeah, so part of the supposed reason, again, to go back to chronology, I got kidnapped in Sinjar in January.

of 2007 then in April 2007 in Bashika which is a little town that's like right on the border between Mosul and Urbiel kind of on the border and again this disputed area between the central government and the Kurds there's a little Yazidi town called Bashika and there's a lot of oil there and the Kurds were actually signing deals with like Chevron and other Western oil companies to exploit the oil fields in these disputed areas, even though they didn't have any control over them yet. So that's a whole other angle is the oil part of it, which these American companies were signing deals with the Kurds that were totally illegal on land

that didn't even belong to the Kurds. And this little town, Bashika, was one of those places. So in April 2014, in Bashika, there all of a sudden, And when, you know, there's this very famous case where this video went viral, essentially, and got shown even on CNN, Western channels, about this poor Yazidi girl who got stoned to death, supposedly by this mob of Yazidis, and supposedly by members of her family. Her name was Dua Khalil Aswad. and so the rumor went around that she had converted to Islam and ran away with a Muslim boy and so because of that her family did an honor killing and stoned her to death and supposedly in response to that is why Al Qaeda did these huge truck bombings a few months later

in August in 2007, a few months later, in Telazir and Sibbysheh, Khadr. But again, I've interviewed Yazidis, who were from Bashika, and it's even mentioned in Western media reports, and you can even see it in the video, because again, the video, there was somehow, like, now it's very common for things like this to get filmed, you know, with cell phones. Back in 2007, it was not common. And not everyone had an iPhone to pull out at the time.

But somehow someone videotaped her death. It's super brutal, literally people taking big rocks and just crushing her head with it. But in the video and then also in multiple reports, even in these kind of smaller Western-funded media outlets, people say, including the Yazidis from Boshika that I interviewed, they say that in the crowd of the people stoning her to death were literally Peshmerga, security forces. The Peshmerga security forces literally just sat there and watched this

girl get stoned to death. And so, the Yazidis say the same thing. They say, look, this was a setup where they killed this girl, filmed it, spread it around through the media that even put the tape on CDs and took it around

all the mosques in Mosul and spread the word that the Yazidis had killed this newly converted Muslim girl. And it basically sparked pogroms in Mosul. All the Yazidis had to leave Mosul, all the students that were studying there, people that went there to go

see the doctors, the Yazidis that were working there, especially women. They all had to, like, escape from Mosul. And about two weeks later, there were these 14 Yazidis who were traveling on a bus between Mosul and Bashika.

And they were stopped by these gunmen, supposedly Al-Qaeda. and they were taken off this bus and executed these 14 guys. So I talked to a member of the Mosul police at the time. And he said to me that the area of Mosul where this bus was stopped and these 14 guys were taken off the bus and murdered, this was in a Kurdish-controlled neighborhood.

And this guy was completely convinced that, you know, the Kurds had murdered these guys. And on top of that, he said there were many cases where he was in kind of an anti, like a counterterror part of the Mosul police for like six, seven years during that period. And he said they would catch al-Qaeda guys at different times. And they would literally like arrest them, hand them over even to the Americans. And then within days, these guys would get released and they'd be. back on the streets, these al-Qaeda operatives. All

of it was based in the Kurdish-controlled neighborhoods of Mosul. So again, all of this was to terrorize the Yazidis and convince them that if you don't vote for this referendum that was supposed to take place in 2007 in December, but Nuryal Maliki, the prime minister

at the time, he ended up refusing to hold the referendum even though it was part of the Constitution. But the whole idea was to terrorize the Yazidis and say, you better vote for us, to join the Kurdish region. Otherwise, al-Qaeda is going to keep killing you, you know? Yeah.

All right. Maybe the final segue is, again, if you think it's crazy that, you know, the U.S. was supporting al-Qaeda in Syria in 2011, again, there's all these connections between the Kurds and al-Qaeda and, you know, by extension, the Israelis and potentially the Americans, although, again, I can't prove it. But then when all these Islamic state or al-Qaeda in Iraq guys were in prison in 2008, 9, and 10 in Buka, the al-Qaeda insurgency was largely defeated by that time. Again, you mentioned there were the awakening groups, and like the insurgency was basically, he had been defeated. But all of a sudden, in 2009, all these Islamic state leaders just magically, got released and uh from these prisons from buca prison and others and then they all ended up in syria and then there was this huge CIA operation called operation timber sickibor a billion dollars a year supporting al-qaeda groups to topple Assad yeah so we're going to talk about that

next time i mean our interview today we got a good hour and it was essentially just part one of so that you understand why Obama would do such a thing essentially and i i'm really glad that you've gone into such detail about the Kurdish role and all of this the that is the Iraqi Kurdish role we're not talking about the PKK YPG leftists we're talking about Barzani and i guess i'd like to know more about Talibani and his role in any or all of this during that time someday but um i definitely want to pick up uh and talk a little bit more about this book because i have so much to learn from you plus i want other people listening to say man i should buy and read this book that this guy William Van Wagonin wrote, which is on sale right now at Amazon.com, published by the

Institute, our 17th book, Creative Chaos, Inside the CIA's Covert War, to topple the Syrian government by William Van Wagonin. And can we just do this again next Friday? Yeah, that would be awesome, man. And if I can just take 30 seconds to make one final point, everybody knows that ISIS carried out a genocide of Yazidis in 2014. The U.S. recognizes it, all these countries recognize it, everyone knows what happened to the Yazidis, these women taken as sex slaves, and they know how sad and tragic it is. Almost nobody, at least that's not Yazidi, knows that actually the person responsible for the Yazidi genocide was Masoud Barzani of the KDP, who is currently the head of the

biggest political party in Iraqi Kurdistan, who travels to the United States, you know, has traveled to the United States regularly in the past, who still gets military aid from the United States, who gets a military aid from Germany. Nobody knows that Masoud Barzani is responsible for the Yazidi genocide. They only used ISIS as a proxy, just like, for example, in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982, the story that many people know where these Christian philangist militias, carried out a massacre against Palestinians in a refugee camp in Beirut. But everybody knows that Ariel Sharon was responsible because his troops were in control of Beirut,

that part of Beirut, and his soldiers allowed the Christian phalanjus to enter the camp and massacre these Palestinians. So everybody holds Ariel Sharon responsible for the Sabroen Chitila massacre. It's almost a perfect analogy for what Masoud Bar-Bariz. Barzani and the Peshmerga did in Sinjar on a much larger scale. And almost no one even knows about it. Everyone's saying, condemning ISIS at the UN, you've got Nadia Mirad, you've got Amal-Cluni in front of the UN saying, oh, the Yazidi genocide, give us money because, you know, it's so sad. They will not say that it was Masuad Barzani, the best friend of Israel, the U.S. in Germany, who carried out the genocide. Sorry, that's the final thing I just want to emphasize.

Yeah. All right. Well, listen, so come back next Friday and let's talk more about Syria. Okay, awesome, man. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you, William.

Again, everybody, the book is Creative Chaos. It's on Amazon right now. Thanks for listening to Scott Horton Show, which can be heard on APS Radio News at at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton's show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org.