Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/5/22 David Pyne Shares the Views That Got Him Blacklisted by the Ukrainian Government

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Scott interviews David Pyne about the articles he wrote on the war in Ukraine that landed him on the Ukrainian regime's blacklist. Earlier this year, Pyne wrote a piece that contained a fifteen-point plan to stop the bloodshed and pull all Russian troops out of Ukraine. But because he argued Zelensky should concede on at least some of Putin’s demands, he was criticized as a propagandist on the Kremlin’s payroll and landed on the Ukrainian blacklist. Scott and Pyne go through his proposal and discuss the historical context behind this strange moment of hypocritical idealism and censorship in our foreign policy.  Discussed on the show: “Response to Ukrainian Government Decision to Include me on a List of 28 High-Profile Americans Accused of Promoting Russian Propaganda Narratives” (Substack) “A Proposed Peace Plan to End the Russo-Ukrainian War” (Substack) “Amnesty International Says Ukraine’s Fighting Tactics Endanger Civilians” (Antiwar.com) George W. Bush's Iraq-Ukraine gaffe David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and H.Q. staff officer with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as the host of the Defend America Radio Show on KTALK AM 1640 and as Editor of “The Real War” newsletter This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. 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, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. Almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Okay, you guys, introducing David T. Pine, former U.S. Army headquarters staff officer. And here he is writing at Substack, D. Pine, that's P-Y-N-E.

depine.substack.com and he also writes regularly over at the national interest, the national interest, oh sorry, national interest.org. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Uh, well, happy to have you here. Very interesting piece you have here. Response to Ukrainian government decision to include me, that's you, on a list of 28 high profile Americans accused of promoting Russian propaganda narratives. So obviously, first of all, I'm jealous. They must not be paying attention to me just because I'm busy writing a book about it instead of posting every day. That must be it. And then secondly, also I'm curious, former U.S. Army H.Q staff officer. What rank is that before we start here on your inclusion in this weird list?

So I only served in the Army for three years. I've been served as a staff officer as a civilian. an Army headquarter staff, and I was in charge of all international R&D agreements with the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and a whole bunch of other countries. Yeah, fair enough. You know, it's important people know who we're talking about here. Yeah. Who we're talking to. And then, so you wrote for the national interest, which is partly a radical organization.

They're much more, you know, in the tradition of sort of an exonian. Kissingerian, real politic, as opposed, sort of kind of opposed to neoconservatism and liberal interventionism, although there's a bit of that there too. But there's a home for realists there as well at the national interest. And so I guess you have a pretty good idea what it was that you wrote that got you in trouble with the Ukrainian government here, huh? I do. Yeah, absolutely. So back in, I think it was either late March or early April, I published my first peace proposal plan for the end to the Russo-Ukrainian War. And that's when they, apparently that's when they accused me of being a Russian age. And I later learned, I saw a post on April 5th.

It was an article which misspelled my name, but accused me of having been in the pay of the Kremlin for years. So that was news to me. I never had any contact with the Russian government. It seems like you might have had a conversation with the FBI about that too, huh? Yeah. Yeah. So just for your listeners, so the plan that I came up with, which has since been modified in an article I published on the national interest on the 18th of June, it was kind of a 15-point plan. But the gist of it was that, you know, Ukraine would, you know, all the, all the Russian troops would be withdrawn from Ukraine other than the portion of the Dombas region they already occupy.

And, of course, Crimea, which is part of Russian, it's never, never going to change. And then I should also mention that it was the day two of the Russian invasion that the Russians first began providing their peace terms. So the Russians have actually been the most motivated, curiously, the most motivated for peace since the beginning of the invasion, which indicates that, you know, the neo-conservators are always talking about. how you know Russia has this plan to invade and take control and annex all of Ukraine and then they're going to keep going. It's going to be like, you know, Stalin in the, in Soviet days during World War II when he annexed parts of nine countries and got away with it and then turned a bunch of other ones into satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. And their own, the only changes they've made in that their peace offer, which is, you know, they would accept

today, in my estimation, is that they are willing to agree to Ukraine's entry into the European Union. And they've given up their call for regime change, which they previously referred to as denotification. But other than that, they're looking for a modest reduction in the size of the Ukrainian armed forces, the elimination of all potential nuclear, nuclear-capable systems, including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, and then as well, there are strategic SAMs, which can be used in an ABM role, and, you know, Independence for the Navos, which I've suggested we could do in a popular referendum, and then of course Crimea and arm neutrality. that probably the most important requirement of all is that ukraine would be neutral it will be banned from any nato ties whatsoever it couldn't be member of the partnership of peace couldn't have any um armed shipments um additional you know additional arms shipments from from nato and uh you know they essentially returned to its status as a buffer state before the cia funding coup um in the euro my don

Revolution of 2014. Okay, now, I mean, obviously, I already agree with everything that you're saying there, but your opponents are going to say, oh, come on, you're just giving away the whole store to the Russians. All they get to do, all they have to do is start a war, and you'll give in to all their demands, and that's appeasement, and Hitler, 1938, et cetera, like that. So what about that? Well, you know, there's so many arguments against that.

I would argue that it wasn't appeasement that started, sparked World War II, but, you was the abandonment of the policy of appeasement. I mean, I think any logical and rational person that's non-biased, which there are very few, such as you and myself, would recognize that because, you know, Hitler, of course, wanted only the, you know, Danzig and the Polish corridor. And that was pretty much the end of his, you know, that's all I wanted in terms of Poland. He wanted Poland as an ally against the Soviets and whatnot. But in any case, if those demands have been met, there would have been no war with the West.

He would have just driven East with the Soviet Union. And curiously, I find it extremely entertaining that Zelensky is being compared to Churchill, because Churchill, of course, gave away the store to the Soviets. You know, he gave away, you know, the freedom of half of Europe, including Ukraine, to the Soviets, which had committed genocide. But the Russians, of course, are not committing genocide today. According to the UN, they killed about 5,000 civilians. And according to an article I read on anti-war.com, just earlier today, a lot of that is because the Russians have stationed their troops in a created bases within schools and hospitals. So it's not like there's been any deliberate or systematic war crimes committed by Russia.

The Ukrainians have stationed their troops in schools and hospitals in Ukraine in order to maximize civilian casualties and support their claims of genocide in an effort to try to drag the U.S. and NATO into a third world war with Russia. And, you know, it's just, it amazes me because the, you know, the U.S. national security interest is completely oppositional to, to that of the Zolensky regime in that, you know, what I just said, they're trying to get us into a potentially nuclear war with the Russian Federation. And we're seeing that, and now the neocons are trying to do a repeat of that in Taiwan with the current blockade crisis. But you're absolutely right. Anyone, any dissenting voices who dare challenge the neoconservative propaganda line,

which is so popular in Congress that we should avoid war with Russia or China and that we should not be providing military aid to Ukraine and that we should instead, through our substantial diplomatic heft in support of mediating a peace agreement with Russia, which Ukraine only provides minor concessions, is immediately branded as an appeaser, you know, a Kremlin agent, Um, you know, and I, I'm a good company. You know, uh, Senator Rand Paul, obviously, uh, is, uh, one of our best foreign policy realists and, uh, you know, kind of anti-war senators in the Senate, of course. And he was put on their list merely for referring, uh, to Ukraine as a former, um, part of the Soviet Union. Edward Lufvac was put on the list for the same reason that I did,

proposing a popular referendum in the Dombos to vote on independence. But essentially anyone who opposes anything other, you know, who doesn't support a solution based on total Russian military withdrawal from Crimea and the Dombos is branded a Kremlin agent. Yeah. And it's amazing here, the overreach, where they're naming one of the most famous U.S. senators, former presidential candidate and representative and active duty National Guard officer Tulsi Gabbard. Colonel Douglas McGregor, one of the most famous retired military officers and critics. John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago widely considered the dean of the realist foreign policy school, right there with his partner, Stephen Waltz, anyway, from Harvard.

Oh, yeah, no, you guys are all just a bunch of Alger Hiss guys, I guess, and this is all a big, you know, the Venona files are going to prove you guilty yet. I guess we'll just have to wait. But so, now, what is it exactly that it matters that they're putting you on this list? What exactly are they claiming about you? Is this really a setup for them to invoke the Assange precedent that, any American violates any foreign country's law, no matter where in the world, including here in America, and we're subject to it. And you guys are under arrest. Is that it?

You know, there have been signs, you know, this Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation is part of the Russian Defense, the National Security Ministry. And there are signs that it's been at least partially funded by the U.S. State Department or other U.S. agents. And so there has been a theory presented, a conspiracy theory, which very well may be true that the Biden administration, you know, provided some support or signed off on this Ukrainian blacklist or hit list. So what they've accused me of doing again is supporting peace between Russia and Ukraine on the basis of minor territorial concessions to Russia. And if you read my proposal, it doesn't exactly say that. It says that there will be a popular referendum. And if the, if the Donvoss region votes against independence,

then Ukraine gets to expel all. Russian troops from its territory, and I don't consider Crimea to be part of Ukraine today. It's just a factor in reality. So they would essentially win the war without a single loss of one additional Ukrainian soldier. And, you know, for them, that's its heresy because it's not 100% of what they're wanting. And when they're fighting a nuclear superpower with up to 8,000, you know, anywhere from 6,000, 8,000 nuclear weapons, the idea that they could defeat Russia without any other country being willing to send their troops to fight alongside them is quite frankly absurd. I know. I mean, this whole thing is just such a tragedy. You go back to right before the war started.

All they were demanding was the implementation of the peace deal that our German and French partners signed with them back in 2015, essentially. and, of course, a promise of no NATO expansion and missiles and a few other things that, you know, if you take the Russian listed demands from December, you might say, you know, oh, you don't think you're just going to give them the whole store or whatever, but you have to admit, unless you just help bent on, you know, your agenda of getting into a conflict, you have to admit that that's a reasonable basis to start a discussion anyway. and the Americans, as my buddy Daryl Cooper says, they treat the Russians like they're just ISIS. Yeah, we don't negotiate with terrorists. You know, Putin is just Abu Bakr, al-Baghdadi, and we don't have to pay them any mind whatsoever, disregard any of their views.

And then here we are. You know, they've already taken Curzon, which means that they're only, what, like 150 miles from Moldova at this point? And obviously taking Odessa would be a hell of a horrible slaughter and god knows what would happen i guess if they do but they could they're not far and at the rate they're going they're going to end up taking the whole southern coast and then who knows what happens after that but meanwhile they couldn't negotiate the dombas even after the war started they could have negotiated the dombas and left it at that now they've lost curse on

what else are they going to lose you know the thing is just worse and worse for them but like oh yeah no don't sell out be brave fight till the end i see these uh all the um ukrainian flags on twitter saying we've just got to give them more weapons we just got to send in advisors and to help them fire all these new weapons we're giving them to defeat the russians and drive them out in total humiliating defeat it's like is that what they really think is going on here that we're going to escalate this thing that the russians are about to lose any day now and have to turn tail and run if only we would step it up a little bit? I think so, yeah, I think Zelensky is enjoying his international celebrity status.

He's doing his vogue shoots, photo shoots. He's a new fashion model, apparently. So, you know, he doesn't really have a lot, as long as the U.S. continues to provide this blank check of military support, which to date has included at least $27 billion in direct military support, which I think has been noted on your website, anti-war.com, that we gave South Vietnam, I think, $27 billion. So, or not, sorry, not $27 billion. I think it was more like $23 billion. So, you know, we've arguably given Ukraine more military than we gave to South Vietnam,

at least in dollar terms. And, you know, the irony is if the very people that claim to support Ukraine are the ones that really are responsible for the additional destruction of their Ukrainian cities, the tens of thousands of additional Ukrainians. And by the way, President Putin has essentially announced his plan to begin his annexing parts of all of four Ukrainian oblasts within the month of September. So the clock is running out for Ukraine to agree to a compromise piece. deal, which there's a new article today that I think former Chancellor, German Chancellor

Schroeder said that he spoke with Putin, and Putin is still very interested in a peaceful solution that would be a compromise agreement. But if not, Russia is ready to proceed with popular referendums in all of their occupied territories in which the entire, you know, the entire coastline of Ukraine that they've been ex- or they've occupied. by this far would be an extra rush outright. Yeah. And, you know, who knows? You can't really rely on referendums in such a situation.

But anyway, it doesn't matter, right? It's just a step in getting that done. And again, it just didn't have to be this way at all. They could have called this thing off. It's so funny that, you know, I know I'm ideologically anti-interventionist kind of a guy no matter what, but still just putting on my, you know, regular guy next door neighbor type hat and looking at it, it seems like, wouldn't it be right?

It's the expectation of everyone that as soon as this kind of violence breaks out right on Russia's border and we and our allies are involved even tangentially that we would then be doing everything we can to bring the fighting to an end immediately before it escalates out of control,

that that would be the top priority of everyone to call time out as fast as possible, right? Is that the wingnub position? Or here, I mean, here we're five and a half months into this thing. And it's the perfectly normal consensus that, yeah, if anything, we need to do more. Yeah, it's really sad. I mean, certainly that's the rational position is, you know, our only to realize that our only vital national security interest in Ukraine is to avoid a nuclear war or a third world war with Russia.

That's, you know, certainly the position that Reagan would have taken, you know, so many people invoke Reagan as supporting this kind of neo-conservative. nonsense. And based on, you know, there's no evidence that Reagan would have supported any of it. And when, you know, the bombing of, um, at the brink barracks in in Beirut occurred in 1982, uh, you know, he would kill 241 troops. He didn't, uh, send more troops. He pulled them all out. So, um, yeah, it's, it's kind of, that's kind of a myth. But, um, in terms of, uh, you know, Putin being this, this mad dictator, and there's all these articles. Hey, wait, hold up, hold up that, that last. point because I got something for you here on that

which is Bush Sr. from August the 1st, 1991. Freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism.

They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred. That's Bush Sr. from the famous chick in Kiev's speech, warning the Ukrainians that whatever Moscow's point of view is, is his point of view on their independence. He's actually trying to save the Soviet Union at that point, which is a huge, ridiculous embarrassment. But at the same time, you think about what he's saying there. I don't want to hear a bunch of right-wing ethnic nationalists going to war against Russians in the East and asking America for support. And here he's the former CIA director, so he knows all about America's Stay Behind type programs in Ukraine, obviously. He knows exactly what he's talking about. And by the way, Connolly's Rice wrote that speech.

Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, Enough Already. Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism. from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree.

It's time to just come home. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. The audiobook. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along.

Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level.

And it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woodsett's Liberty Classroom, Real History, Real Economics, Real Education. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things, comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner, Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. Yeah. Yeah, Zelensky is the despot he's referring to.

Zolensky, of course, is not only calling me and all the other much more well-known patriots, elected leaders that are America First, just calling them information. terrorists and war criminals you know subject to war crimes tribunals you know but they're also they're killing their their political opponents you know he sees assassinated hundreds or dozens if not hundreds of political opponents anyone any Ukrainian who's talked in favor of peace with Russia of some kind of compromise he's had assassinated or in prison he's even before the war began he was prosecuted CUNY and imprisoning his political opponents. Since the war began, of course, he's outlawed and banned at least 11 opposition political

parties. And then all of the main opposition networks, he's converted to, you know, force them by law to broadcast Ukrainian government propaganda 24-7. So it's as if, you know, Trump won the election and he immediately threw Obama and Hillary into prison and then forced CNN and MSNBC to broadcast Fox News, you know, continuously.

Yeah. And no one seems to care. No, you know, he's, he's the new Churchill and, of course, Churchill that's a whole other subject, because Churchill was one of the greatest war criminals in World War II, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands,

if not millions of innocents. But that's not what they mean. Yeah. But yeah, no it is incredible it's the you know the narrative building is that on the other side obviously if he's doing that to them he must be or else why would he be doing it to them and they're obviously bad guys or they wouldn't be against him since he's so great and everybody knows that and there's a complete little package of thought without having to really know anything at all so this is

whose side we're on you know so then that way like thank goodness he shut down all that pro russian media in his country or you know whatever frame he just uh as they should say when they say it, beg the question, presume the conclusion, that, of course, whoever he's shutting down deserves to be shut down. It's really Soviet-esque. I mean, Zelensky really is a creature of the Soviet Union. You know, he has, of course, the Ukraine has their own secret service that is modeled after the KGB. And, you know, it's just really a Soviet tradition to jail, prosecute, and assassinate your political opponents

and ban opposition parties. So, you know, the bottom line is, as Tulsi Gabbard stated, Ukraine is not a democracy. You know, it's technically it's an illiberal democracy, but really it's an autocracy that I'd even call a, you know, kind of a stealth dictatorship. I read a funny thing that said, listen, you know, the real differences here is they're billionaires only kind of back one small group of politicians. Instead of like in America where the billionaires give money to all the different politicians and spread it out and they all do and kind of keep it more stable that way, this leads to a lot more infighting. They need to all figure out how to bribe all the politicians a certain percent and learn to share them, you know.

Yeah. And that brings the mind, you know, of course, Hunter Biden and the Biden family's corrupt, you know, business ties. with Ukraine that arguably may have started this whole mess in the first place. I mean, it's certainly an open question is if he had not had profited by millions of dollars, you know, paid to a hundred of which, you know, we know Biden typically gets a 10% cut or even 50% based based on some stories in a hundred Biden's laptop, you know, so open question as to whether he would not have at least said that Ukraine would not have not join NATO, and thus would never join NATO, and thus forestalling the Russian invasion in

the Bruce Blitz. Well, and remember why that company Burisma hired Hunter. They hired Hunter because they were in tight with the government that Biden had overthrown. He had, you know, as they say, held the Ukraine brief there in the vice president's office under Obama. And when they overthrew the government in 2014, this company, which was led by this guy, this guy, Kolomowski, was one of the major owners of it, said, oh, no, I got to get in good with the new regime so that they don't stick the screws to me, you know? And then, like I say about the oligarchs don't own enough politicians in kind together, you know, the way they do it. They're very unstable. So that was why they said, and then what they do, they hire Yatsyn Yook's brother.

No, they hired Vice President Biden's son to come and sit on their board to be their insurance policy. And Kofor Black, I think, was on there, too. the former CIA officer. Everybody always, like, leaves him out. But I'm right about that, right? You are. Yeah, that actually started immediately following the CIA back coup of the former pro-Russian president. Yeah.

That's when it's, you know, all the business contacts began. And they actually, I mean, the kind of language they used was pretty amazing just talking about about Ukraine and just transforming it along the lines we've seen today. But, you know, I would love for it to be true that we're fighting for democracy in Ukraine. I still wouldn't support it. You know, obviously, I condemn in no uncertain terms of the illegal aggression, Russian aggression against Ukraine. I want nothing but the best for the Ukrainian people and the Russian people, by the way,

who are not our enemies. But I think another important point I wanted to make. before we go, is that, you know, Russia is only our enemy because our policies and our leaders have made it so. Russia, you know, Gorbachev actually told, you know, Secretary of State Baker that he wanted the Soviet Union to join NATO in 1990. Yeltsin brought up the same thing in 91, and then Putin himself, I think it was in 2002, you know, talked about Russia joining NATO and said all he wanted was an invitation. He wasn't going to just bank to join NATO.

He wanted a formal invitation to Russia. And, you know, in a perfect world, you know, Russia either, I mean, a perfect world, NATO would be abolished. It's something I've called for back in 2019. I think Trump was right on that. But the second best option would be for Russia and Ukraine to join NATO simultaneously. And then, you know, for all this, that would be. pretty much end the Russian threat and would break up the alliance between Russian and China

and would really go far, I think, to advance not only European security, but U.S. national security as well. Yeah. I want to give you a chance to reiterate what you mentioned there, too, is you do say in the article where you say that he's strong to support Ukraine's right to defend itself, and you even say that you support America sending humanitarian-type assistance and all that kind of thing. So I know that people, as you know, as sort of the basis of this whole conversation, never mind the smears and blacklist, people just kind of presume if you're explaining another side of the story, you have some loyalty to it. And here, you know, obviously used to work at the Pentagon. And we're speaking from an American national interest kind of point of view here. But even beyond that, in the actual fight itself, you claim your sympathy with. The Ukrainian side, not with the Russian side.

You're just being honest about what the damn problem is here. That's all. Exactly. And no matter how much the Ukrainian government tries to demonize me or if they were to target me for assassination, my position wouldn't change. I still support, you know, Ukrainian national independence. I want to negotiate the best deal we possibly can for Ukraine to preserve as much of their territory as possible. It's not about some kind of bias.

My only bias, like Senator Rand Paul, is to support what's best for the national security of the United States of America. And that doesn't mean all these endless and unnecessary wars, you know, which we saw so much of in the 20th century and since. And in fact, you also say here, when I was paraphrasing, you left out the part where you say here from Russia's continuing illegal war of aggression, which is an important point that you know should not be lost on anyone here and I agree with you that America absolutely put them up to this or you know push them into this corner but you know I think a fair analogy would be if somebody's poking you in the chest you might have the right to knock their block off but doesn't mean you definitely should you know maybe yeah exactly yeah I think that they had other options here and but I want to point out as Joe Serencioni did such a great job

of explaining that Putin was deliberately invoking American exceptions to the law in his declaration of war in February, where he essentially paraphrased Bill Clinton over Kosovo, Bush over Iraq War II, and Obama over Libya, by saying, you know, in Obama's case, we have to protect this ethnic minority that's being persecuted. In Bush's case, we have to preempt these weapons of mass destruction. And in Obama's case, the responsibility. ability to protect again, you know, this civilian population that's being massed, a genocide he claimed. And that was enough. But he was obviously being cheeky. For God's sake, he was, you know, essentially mocking America and saying, this is what you guys say when you break the law and launch a war. So that's what I say too. And I don't know if any of the Americans even noticed other than critics, but I don't think anybody in the war party even saw the irony in it at all yeah i noticed right away he's used the exact same words as president uh george w bush when he said um you know we're we're sending uh you know our military to enforce the peace how do you start a war you know how is enforcing

the peace um you know starting a war there's it's very orwellian yeah and of course we found out that the the weapons of mass destruction you know didn't technically exist but the the the very fact, you know, he said that there were weapons of mass destruction being created with U.S. assistance, and we found, you know, months, mere weeks later, you know, the U.S. government

admitted the existence of 26 U.S. funded bio labs in Ukraine. Although I don't think they're really weapons. I don't know. I need to learn more about that. I know, actually, Dave DeCamp at anti-war.com has done all the best work on that, and I should shut up until I've read it all very carefully, but I do know that, you know, Zelensky

had said, well, maybe we'll just get out of the Budapest, you know, stop abiding by our promises in the Budapest memorandum. In other words, maybe we'll start making nukes, which, of course, they have no capability of doing in any reasonable amount of time before they get invaded or anything like that anyway. So why did he even say that other than to give Putin a pretext to attack,

you know? Yeah. And the crazy thing is, you know, when Putin said that, and not only wasn't reminiscent of Bush, But the very fact that it was an illegal war of aggression was very reminiscent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which really had no rational justification at all. You know, Saddam hadn't committed any new international aggression. He destroyed all of his weapons and mass destruction under, you know, per U.N. mandates. So both wars, I think, were equally unjustifiable.

I think as you pointed out on this show, the war in Iraq actually has killed far more people than the war in Ukraine has thus far. Yeah, great. And in fact, George Bush himself couldn't help but notice the similarity. Somebody, I still can't figure out who decided to put him out there to criticize another country for starting a war, but he just couldn't do it without implicating himself. And in fact, he even says, after he noticed, oops, I said Iraq. And then he says, Iraq too, which, hey, he didn't mean Putin also is guilty for that.

He meant that's also an illegal aggressive war, too. And, yeah, so he was admitting it right there, you know. That was as close as you could get to a confession in open court kind of a thing. Yeah. To that war crime. Yep. And then everybody was laughed and they were like, ah, we forgive you, George. It's okay.

And he laughed and then it was over. Yeah, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in that room because I wonder, I think a lot of them were, uh, were kind of surprised, you know, wondering if he was going to, uh, you know, realizing the irony, I guess in that statement. But, uh, you know, I, um, opposed, strongly opposed the Iraq war as well. I've been very consistent. You know, I don't oppose all wars. I, I certainly think some were justified. Um, I think World War one especially, we could have stayed out. Uh, World War II, we could have stayed out if. if FDR and Sadden provoked the Japanese to attack. But, you know, I think it's really essential, especially now in Taiwan, and I know we probably don't have time to get into the Taiwan crisis, but it's really essential. We avoid a great power nuclear superpower war, which no one, you know, certainly we have no hope of winning. Yeah, you know, we really are in trouble. We got essentially, this massive imperial ship,

but it doesn't seem like anybody's driving. I mean, maybe like Sullivan and Blinken and Austin together are the... We're going to read a Woodward book later that says these three guys, more or less, we're sort of in charge, but it sort of seems like nobody's in charge. And it seems like to turn the thing around

to call any kind of screeching halt, we'd have to rewind time and go back and hire Ron Paul in 2008 or something. I mean, who's going to do it now, Gavin Newsom or Ron DeSantis, who's going to move America's capital to Jerusalem? I mean, man, we're really screwed. Well, if only we could have Tulsi Gabbard as the Democrat presidential nominee. And, you know, if we had an America first, you know, kind of anti-work in it like Rand Paul on one side and Tulsi Gabbard on the other, And we'd have two Ukrainian information terrorists running, and it would be a win-win for peace and freedom worldwide.

Wouldn't that be amazing to have a couple of candidates who are not too bad that you could actually like settle for? And then they run against each other in a real, like in their war of words, in their campaigns. They're really trying to outdo each other for who's better instead of who's worse on everything, you know? Yeah. Yeah, instead of being the, you know, the least of the two ebils, we could have the least of the two goods, you know. Or the best of the two goods, even. The best of the two goods. Settle for the least of the two goods, and it'd be all right.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, we can fantasize all day. We'll probably not ever see anything like that in my lifetime, but it would be cool. And you know what, hey, if people can get their head together, it's obviously the right. thing to do. You know, if the establishment says never Tulsi, eh, maybe Democrats should listen to her. You know, it's possible. Yeah, they absolutely should. And diplomacy does not equal appeasement.

We hear that from the neocons like Lindsay Graham, you know, criticizing Biden for being too much of an appeaser, too weak on China or Russia. I mean, it's ridiculous. Well, Hillary called Gabbert, a traitor while she's currently serving National Guard major. And she was like even on an overseas deployment and had to come home before she could respond. Like, geez, somebody tell the, you know, what is it, the NCIS or whatever, not the, that's the wrong service. You know what I mean?

Yeah, she's an Iraq war hero, serving lieutenant colonel in the reserves. There's no way, you know, she could possibly be a key. of being anything other than a true America First Patriot. Yeah, that's amazing. And they got away with that too. Yeah. You know, that hurt, that did not hurt the accusers. That hurt the

accused. When Hillary Clinton, of all people, made that claim, it's just amazing to think that that could stick in anyone's head. Oh, geez, if Hillary Clinton says so, it probably is right. Yeah. Well, the one consolation we have on that front is that

if she hadn't voted for the Iraq war, she would have defeated Obama for the presidential nomination of the Democrat Party and would have been elected president 2008. And then we'd all be dead by now. And it would have passed without her because Carrie

and Dashel and then we're going to make sure anyway. Yeah, absolutely. Good point. All right. Well, we'd all be better off she was never born, but it is what it is. all right everybody that's david pine find him again at d pine dot substack dot com and at the national interest he's got a really good one here how biden can end the war in ukraine and check out his

response to the ukrainian government decision to include him on a list of 28 high-profile americans accused of promoting russian propaganda narratives thank you again david thank you thank you thanks for having the show the anti-war radio can be heard on kpf 90.7 FM in L.A. APSradio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.