Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who has gained international respect for his independence and integrity as a commentator on conflicts and foreign relations. This week, he was banned on the Twitter social media platform for challenging Western claims of a massacre in Bucha, Ukraine, allegedly carried out by Russian troops. Moscow denies the claims, as have other independent analysts who point to evidence that the incident was a false-flag provocation perpetrated by NATO-backed Ukrainian Nazi regiments to undermine Russia internationally and bolster Western objectives. It is a foreboding sign of the times that Ritter should be banned for daring to question dubious narratives. (He was later reinstated following a public outcry against censorship.)

In the following interview for Strategic Culture Foundation, he makes the crucial point that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is exposing the involvement of the U.S. and NATO in the training and weaponizing of that country’s dominant Nazi regiments. That is why Western media have been so vehement in trying to distort the conflict and blame Russia. The truth about Western dirty involvement in Ukraine would be too much to bear for the Western public.

When Ritter served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s he later challenged Western media and government claims that Iraq was harboring WMDs. Those claims were used as a pretext for the U.S.-British war on Iraq launched in 1993 that cost over one million lives, destroyed a nation, created millions of displaced and millions of casualties, as well as spawned international terrorism. It later turned out that the WMD claims were based on deliberate lies for which no Western leader has been held accountable. Scott Ritter was vindicated in his warnings against that war and it is one reason why he is widely respected among international public opinion.

Ritter is a critical commentator on U.S. conflicts and foreign relations. He is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the Soviet Union implementing nuclear arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and as a UN inspector in Iraq (1991-98) overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. He is the author of Scorpion King: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump (Clarity Press, 2020).

Interview

Question: Do you think that Russia has a just cause in launching its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24?

Scott Ritter: I believe Russia has articulated a cognizable claim of preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The threat posed by NATO expansion, and Ukraine’s eight-year bombardment of the civilians of the Donbass fall under this umbrella.

Question: Do you think Russia has legitimate concerns about the Pentagon sponsoring biological weapons programs in laboratories in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: The Pentagon denies any biological weapons program, but admits biological research programs on Ukrainian soil. Documents captured by Russia have allegedly uncovered the existence of programs the components of which could be construed as having offensive biological warfare applications. The U.S. should be required to explain the purpose of these programs.

Question: What do you make of allegations in Western media that Russian troops committed war crimes in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities? It is claimed that Russian forces summarily executed civilians.

Scott Ritter: All claims of war crimes must be thoroughly investigated, including Ukrainian allegations that Russia killed Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. However, the data available about the Bucha incident does not sustain the Ukrainian claims, and as such, the media should refrain from echoing these claims as fact until a proper investigation of the evidence is conducted, either by the media, or unbiased authorities.

Question: Do you think the alleged Russian bombing of a hospital and an art theater in Mariupol were false-flag provocations?

Scott Ritter: Both locations are available for detailed forensic examination that would either confirm or refute Ukrainian allegations that these locations were struck by Russian aerial bombs. Other data, such as the existence of any NATO radar data that would put Russian aircraft over these two locations at the time of the alleged attack, should be collected. A detailed forensic examination of each site would go a long way in proving or disproving the Ukrainian claims through the collection of weapons fragments and the evaluation of environmental samples which would show the chemical composition of any explosive used, thereby allowing a better idea of what weapon or explosive was used to destroy the sites.

Question: Western governments and mainstream media have denigrated Russian objectives to “demilitarize and deNazify” Ukraine. The West says Russia has invented or grossly exaggerated these problems as a pretext for invasion. Do you think this Western denialism is because it doesn’t want to acknowledge that Russia may indeed have legitimate concerns, and secondly that to acknowledge would mean admitting that the West is part of the problem in the current war?

Scott Ritter: The irony is that the West had thoroughly documented the extent of the Nazi ideology in Ukraine’s civil, political, and military structures during and after the 2014 Maidan coup. This documented reality was deliberately obscured by the same sources that had previously documented its existence once the Russian invasion occurred. To acknowledge the existence of this odious ideology by NATO would require NATO to acknowledge the role it played in training and equipping Azov regiment personnel since 2015. The Russian documentation of its ongoing de-Nazification effort in Ukraine is a source of continual embarrassment to NATO, as it exposes the scope and scale of NATO’s role in empowering the militarization of Nazi ideology in Ukraine.

Question: For about four months before the Russian intervention in Ukraine, the Biden administration was asserting non-stop that Moscow was planning an invasion. Do you think this is a case of great intelligence on the part of Washington or the culmination of provocation by Washington resulting in Russian military action in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: We now know that the U.S. intelligence community under the Biden administration is committed to a policy of haphazardly “declassifying” intelligence for the purpose of shaping public opinion (so-called “getting ahead of the story”). There is no evidence that the intelligence regarding potential Russian military action was based upon anything other than politicized speculation derived from a crude analysis of Russian military dispositions void of any context. Any genuine intelligence assessment regarding the timing of any Russian military action would have incorporated the domestic political imperative of getting Duma [Russian parliamentary] approval for the deployment of Russian forces outside the borders of Russia, which carries with it the requirement of a cognizable justification for this military action under the UN Charter. This required political steps such as Donetsk and Lugansk declaring independence, and then petitioning the Russian parliament to recognize this independence, so that Russia could legitimately invoke Article 51. None of these factors was knowable when the Biden administration was issuing its warnings of imminent attack, thereby certifying the “intelligence” as being derived from fact-free speculation, and not intelligence at all.

Question: The Western media are reporting that the Russian military operation in Ukraine is floundering because it has not over-run Ukraine entirely. As a military expert, how do you see the Russian operation proceeding?

Scott Ritter: Russia is fighting a very difficult campaign hampered by its own constraint designed to limit civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure and the fact that Ukraine possesses a very well-trained military that is well led and equipped. Russia deployed some 200,000 troops in support of this operation. They are facing some 600,000 Ukrainian forces. The first phase of the Russian operation was designed to shape the battlefield to Russia’s advantage while diminishing the size and capacity of the Ukrainian ability to wage large-scale conflict. The second phase is focused on destroying the main Ukrainian force concentration in eastern Ukraine. Russia is well on its way to accomplishing this task.

Question: Do you see danger from Ukraine being turned into a proxy war by the United States and NATO partners against Russia in a way that attempts to repeat the West’s covert war in Syria or the Afghanistan war (1979-89) with the Soviet Union? There are reports of foreign legions being sent to Ukraine via NATO countries. Do you think there is a Western plan to embroil Russia in a proxy war that is aimed at sapping Russia politically, economically, and militarily?

Scott Ritter: The Ukrainian conflict is a proxy war, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively. While there appears to be a NATO/western plan to embroil Russia in a “new Afghanistan”, I don’t see any risk of this conflict dragging on for more than a few more weeks at the most before Russia accomplishes a strategic victory over Ukraine.

Question: There is an arrogant assumption among Western governments that they can impose crippling economic sanctions on Russia in a similar way to what they did on Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea among others. But would you agree that if Russia begins to impose its own counter-sanctions by restricting oil and gas exports then the Western states may end up reaping a whirlwind that is devastating to their societies?

Scott Ritter: Russia was warned well in advance about the scope and scale of U.S.-led sanctions that would be imposed if Russia were to invade Ukraine. Russia has prepared its own counter-sanction strategy which will not only defeat the Western sanctions but further strengthen Russia’s economy by decoupling it from the West and Western control/influence. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this counter-campaign as the Russian ruble is strengthened, the Russian stock market enjoys positive traction, and Europe and the U.S. flounder economically. The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind.

It would seem that the defining theme of the Ukrainian Crisis in 2022 up until the last few days should be “lots of action via inaction”. The Mainstream Media has really been making it seem like by February 16^th Russia would either liberate or invade the Ukraine depending on how your political views interpret the situation. Even Russian media figures on nationwide television, which are generally willing to bend over backwards to make peace and concessions, seemed to be willing to sign off on finally just ending things the hard way. This stunning “about face” was a great cause for concern that only someone living in Russia would be able to understand. The narrative shifted from a perpetual begging for peace and cooperation from the good ole Global Hegemon to “fix bayonets” overnight. This is cause for concern and the fact that the Ukrainians seemed to have launched a proxy war means that the Ukrainian Crisis is getting very hot. We should take a look at the events that have happened thus far in 2022 to understand how this dangerous situation is developing.

Russia is getting frustrated.

Regarding the change of heart within the Russian punditry, it must be stated that the bloodthirsty image of Russian foreign policy is a myth of projection from the West. Russia tends to be reactive and since it has always been a Land Empire, it has had to live with those it brings into the fold, i.e. it cannot simply slaughter its way into further expansion. However, despite this, a certain member of the Duma known for having a conspiratorial slant provided a few options to solving the Ukrainian Crisis on his YouTube channel including a preemptive nuclear strike on Nevada (to hit some of America’s arsenal, while killing no actual Americans) to somehow scare the U.S. into backing off. This type of “reasoning” is exactly what destroyed the United States’ reputation and unprecedented wealth during the Bush II era of global murder sprees. Furthermore, a limited strike to scare the Americans off at Pearl Harbor sure didn’t work out very well for the Japanese who are subjugated to this day.

Any missile attack on America in any capacity would trigger a full atomic retaliatory strike ending the existence of humanity, i.e. it is an idea that would create the exact opposite of the desired effect. This example is very extreme (it is the only time I have ever heard anything close to this discussed in respectable public in Russia) and the nuclear option is thankfully well outside the Overton Window of Russian public opinion, but the fact that it came from a popular politician without any consequences is a sign that the nation’s legendary patience is running out. Russians are simply exhausted from having their language and culture repressed across their former territory and watching their brothers and sisters being genocided in the Donbass.

The Big Day came and nothing happened.

And so February 16^th came and went, Russia didn’t go in, but the United States and many NATO allies pulled out diplomats, military instructors, and other human assets out of the Ukraine entirely. NATO’s staff itself has even fled. This makes logical sense if one really expected a war, but the dubious “just trust us” type of supposedly insider info that was presented to the world via the Mainstream Media was not very convincing. Even Zelensky himself asked the West to present him with the evidence of the upcoming invasion. The leader of the side “to be invaded” is not even publicly 100% sure it would happen. So this begs the question, why pull everyone out, when in reality there was no real sign that anything was going to go down? Is this a “fake it till you make it” type of reasoning, where they need it to look like an invasion so they may as well act as if it is an invasion?

For those who believe in the whole “evil globalists want to start WWIII in the Ukraine” conspiracy, you should know that pulling out American (and EU) assets would be counterproductive to that end. Thankfully, as it stands now there really isn’t much of a human USS Maine or Twin Towers that the Russians could be accused of targeting. Most commercial flights over Ukraine have been canned as well. And with good reason, as no one wants a repeat of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 disaster. All of this is good news for those who do not want to die in the fires of nuclear Armageddon. The False Flag catalyst has been locked away in the closet at least for now and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

When Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Kiev he came out strong in his wording then basically implied that the U.S. wouldn’t do anything directly for Kiev. U.S. President Joe Biden has flip flopped a bit but ultimately seems to be happy throwing military surplus at the problem to hopefully make it go away. Zelensky, possibly in a fit of stress induced madness has made it clear that Kiev never needed America anyways and is ready to deal with an invasion by itself with no need for foreign troops on its territory. Good luck with that.

The Ukrainian military has also now stated that they are not planning an invasion of the breakaway Donbass region. Which in our bizarre 21^st century doublespeak means “yes we are going to invade” but more on that later.

About 45 days of pure tension and inaction lead up to February 16th.

Although the media push was strong, the actual action or rather inaction taken by Washington\Kiev was palpable up to February 16th. Like a car with a busted muffler idling on a cold morning, it sounded like something is moving or happening and yet nothing budged an even an inch.

But this inaction regarding the Ukrainian Crisis in 2022 is not the exclusive realm of the Anglo-Saxons. The Russians sent their men back home rather than invading, but all along Moscow has claimed that they were just moving troops for scheduled exercises (with the Belarussians) that were never a secret to anyone. Furthermore, the Russian side has a strong argument that it can move troops over its own territory as it sees fit and should not be seen as invasion prep. Again the question of one’s political leanings will determine if you think the Russians were telling the truth on this issue.

To the great joy of the Russian masses the Duma passed a resolution to recognize the DNR and LNR breakaway republics of the Donbass as independent. In reaction to this excitement and the opportunity to perhaps take the Donbass back without firing a single shot, Putin reaffirmed his commitment to the Minsk Agreements, international law and all sorts of other things that don’t excite voters, i.e. the President of Russia said “no” to the move, which looks like a fresh steaming hot plate’s worth of inaction.

I have said many times that the Western myth that Putin’s popularity is somehow fake is complete trash. He is extremely popular and under his leadership he took Russia from laughing stock to challenger to U.S. hegemony. He has done a lot, but there are two things the Russian public will never forgive him for #1) Blowing the opportunity to take back most of the Ukraine during the chaos of 2014 and #2) the insanely unpopular state pension reforms. Putin acknowledging that the vote at the Duma was a reflection of the will of the people, then still saying “no” was essentially doubling if not tripling down on unforgivable move #1.

Perhaps Putin fears that any attempt to bring the Donbass home in a loud way would doom Russia to have to fight the war it just avoided. After all, they have given Russian citizenship to everyone there anyways, they use the ruble and have essentially de facto become a part of Russia, so the waiting game may look like the brightest path to some behind the Kremlin’s walls. Also the fickle Russian elite may grow too tired of sanctions and bow down to Globalist pressure turning their back on the Tsar. The real threat to Russia is the elite betraying Putin to maintain their lifestyles.

And so the first 45 or so days of 2022 looked like an intense game of snooker with both players endlessly taking safety shots as to not let one red ball get far enough away from the pack to allow the other side to take the initiative. But sadly it looks like out of frustration and fear Kiev has stepped in to take the cue and carelessly slam the red balls about the table to get the show on the road. The inaction phase is sadly at an end.

I hate being right when I predict that thousands will die.

Judging by the results of the pseudo negotiations at the beginning of January I wrote that it seemed to me that the only compromise position acceptable to all who actually matter in the Ukrainian Crisis would be a proxy war. There are many people who fall into the trap of only believing in things that they like, I however do not and I just want to make it clear that I am not advocating for war, nor do I think proxy wars are a “cool” instrument of geopolitics, I just think that is what is going to happen based on the evidence.

So now the Ukrainians are attacking like never before. Officials in the Donbass have asked civilians to leave for Russia and a shell from the Ukrainian side has hit Russian territory. So far this has NOT been used as an excuse for the Russians to go in, but it certainly is dangerous. The Russians have also picked a rather poignant moment to do some hypersonic missile tests to show that they mean business and that Mutually Assured Destruction is not a thing of the past. All of this is happening and we haven’t even made it to the end of the first quarter of 2022.

So ultimately we can see that the Russians didn’t take the Mainstream Media’s bait so now the proxy war will begin as Kiev’s forces are going to try to take back the Donbass. Since they were armed by the Americans it is likely the Russians will in turn arm the locals with some high tech goodies of their own. And the fighting will be done seemingly between the locals with heavy support from the bigger powers. People are going to die in great numbers and probably the majority of them will be hapless Ukrainian conscripts who were blown to bits by Russian-made missiles they didn’t see coming. This will not be a heroic war of man, gun and willpower but a question of whose missiles are more accurate, but at least we are not going to all die in a nuclear war, so that’s nice.

There is growing evidence that President Donald Trump briefly froze U.S. military assistance to Ukraine for political goals. Max Blumenthal explores how the Ukrainegate scandal overlooks the dangers of those weapons sales to Ukraine and the corrupt interests behind it.

Under Trump, U.S. military assistance has prolonged a bloody proxy war with Russia, killing thousands in Ukraine and enabling far-right Ukrainian forces — all while enriching weapons manufacturers and DC lobbyists.

Guest: Max Blumenthal, Editor of The Grayzone and author of “The Management of Savagery.”

Watch/read Part 1 of this interview here.

TRANSCRIPT

AARON MATÉ: Welcome to Pushback, I’m Aaron Maté, here with Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone and author of several books, including his latest, The Management of Savagery. We’ve been talking about several of the other facets of the Ukrainegate scandal that have gone ignored.

In this part, Max, let’s focus on the military assistance to Ukraine that Trump briefly froze and the outrage about that. We’ve been talking in the previous segment about the corruption of Joe Biden and others when it comes to Ukraine. Let’s talk about it now in the context of this military assistance, and I have to note that Kurt Volker, who up until just this week was the State Department envoy, the US envoy to Ukraine, has a huge conflict of interest that is not being discussed. So I want to read to you a paragraph from the Washington Post talking about Kurt Volker. It says, “Volker started his job at the State Department in 2017 in an unusual part-time arrangement that allowed him to continue consulting at BGR, a powerful lobbying firm that represents Ukraine and Raytheon. During his tenure, Volker advocated for the US to send Ukraine Raytheon-manufactured anti-tank Javelin missiles, a decision that made the missile firm millions of dollars. BGR has said Volker recused himself from all Ukraine related matters in response to criticisms about conflicts of interest.” That, from the Washington Post this week.

So, Max, we have here the top US envoy to Ukraine keeping his job as he’s in this post at a lobbying firm that is making millions of dollars off the sale of missiles that he himself is lobbying for in his position. So there’s that angle and then there’s the fact that what is the impact of all this. Well, the impact on the ground has been to prolong a bloody and disastrous proxy war between the US and Russia because it’s US military assistance that has kept this thing going, basically, similar to what the US did in Syria. And all this is not being discussed. Your thoughts on this, Max Blumenthal.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, it is being discussed in the sense that Trump is selling out our ally, and there’s all of this outrage that, quote-unquote, aid is not being provided to Ukraine. The aid being military assistance, and it’s sort of, it seems to be aid the way that it’s provided to Israel, where loans are given to Ukraine and they’re paid back to the American arms industry to, what, create jobs? Today it was announced by Raytheon that they’re expanding their Tucson campus to handle new weapons manufacturing demands, thanks to the $39 million deal just approved by the Trump State Department to send these Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine.

Now, I reported on Kurt Volker’s relationship with the BGR Group, which is headed by Raytheon, one of the Raytheon’s top lobbyists in Washington, Ed Rogers, while he was also executive director of the McCain Institute, named for the man who issued, who authored the bill in the Senate, demanding all of this military assistance to Ukraine and serving as Trump’s liaison to Ukraine. And I thought this was a bizarre relationship, and I wrote about it again last year in 2018 and nobody in Washington paid attention. The mainstream media wasn’t really concerned about this obvious case of official corruption, and now they are because Volker’s out, he’s kind of maybe considered a bad guy because he played a role in shepherding Giuliani to Ukraine or helping Giuliani to dig up dirt on Trump’s opponents. But this was a serious issue. I think that Volker was actually seen as a check on Trump’s impulse to do détente with Russia, and that’s why this wasn’t brought up. Because Volker did play a role in influencing Trump to authorize, for the first time, to do something that Barack Obama refused to do: to authorize the initial shipment of these Javelin anti-tank missiles to the Ukrainian military to turn up the heat on Russia.

Now, if you go back to the Republican convention in 2016, you can start to understand the origins of this Ukrainegate scandal that we’re talking about now. It was there in Cleveland where [senior Campaign advisor on policy and national security] J. D. Gordon, [rejected a proposed amendment to] the Republican National Committee platform about [sending] offensive weaponry to Ukraine, which was, a call for “offensive weaponry” [instead of] “appropriate assistance.” [“appropriate assistance” was the final language used]. And this was immediately seized on by the Democrats, who were starting to ramp up their Russiagate narrative and push the collusion theory that Trump had engaged in a quid pro quo with Putin to remove a call for offensive weapons to Ukraine in exchange for Putin interfering in the election against Hillary Clinton and hacking her emails, or whatever. Seems, it seemed, like, patently ridiculous to me, but, you know, the Huffington Post went with a headline at the time, “The Big Winner at the Republican National Convention: Vladimir Putin.” And so it’s always…it’s a win for Putin when one of the major parties in the US takes a turn towards détente and peace. Barack Obama had refused to authorize those very same offensive weapons because his National Security Council and his foreign policy team believed in advancing the Minsk II accords, at least to some extent, which would have de-escalated the proxy war in the east of Ukraine. Of course, all those people and the Ukrainians, they’re just bullet stoppers to us, we don’t care about them. And so the pressure mounts on Trump to authorize these offensive weapons, do something to prove that you’re not a Russian puppet! And Trump explicitly says, “I am NOT a Russian puppet. I authorized anti-tank busters to Ukraine!” He actually has come out and said it. It was a symbolic arms shipment for Trump to show that he wasn’t a Russian puppet.

For the Ukrainians, for the people in the east of Ukraine who are on the pro-Russian side, it means something very different, because they’ve been engaged in a trench war since 2014-2015. People in the frontline communities there have been dying in the sporadic artillery attacks, and there hasn’t been a tank battle since 2015, so the point of sending these Javelins, it doesn’t provide any defensive…it provides no defensive quality for Ukraine or the Ukrainian people. All it does is continue escalating this proxy war.

And so what we’re talking about now is not something that is in the interests of progressive people. We’re not talking about suspending human…, you know, aid for humanitarian programs, the way Trump has done to the Palestinians. Talking about suspending aid that actually directly interferes with something that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been elected to do, which is to make peace with Russia. There is a constituency for peace throughout Ukraine on the pro-Russian side and on the nationalist side, and he was elected to do what he’s doing now, which is called the Steinmeier Formula, named for the foreign minister of Germany, where elections will be held in pro-Russian areas in the Donbass in exchange for a withdrawal of Russian military support. And that is just, that just seems to me to be a good thing. The “quote unquote” international community is behind it. You know who’s against it? The neo-Nazi elements in Ukrainian society who are out in the streets protesting it and hardliners in Washington, including people who are close to Joe Biden, who’ve been wanting to constantly turn up the heat against Russia and use Ukrainians as bullet stoppers. And so I think it’s time to look into how this deal developed and what the effect is on the ground.

And one last point. Who put together the plan that McCain advanced in the Senate? It was the Atlantic Council and the Brookings Institution, two centrist, militaristic think tanks in Washington. And who funds both of those think tanks? Raytheon. Who is the defense secretary right now, who has signed off on this deal with $39 million of Javelins to Ukraine? The former lobbyist for Raytheon, Mark Esper. Who was funding John McCain? Raytheon. Who was supporting the firm of the former Ukra…ah, US liaison to Ukraine, Kurt Volker? Raytheon. So basically this deal is also the product of official corruption in Washington.

AARON MATÉ: Max, I’m going to add one more name here, someone who’s playing also a very prominent role in this, and that is Adam Schiff, the leader of the impeachment inquiry. As you reported on, I’m going to quote from you here, that the arms industry has rewarded Schiff handsomely as he has pushed Russiagate, which has pushed Democrats into adopting the same kind of militarist posture that Ukrainegate is doing now, and you write that, “Schiff’s largest donor in a previous campaign cycle at $12,700 was Northrop Grumman, the defense giant. Raytheon, the manufacturer of the Javelin anti-tank missile system, was close behind it with $10,000 in contributions. In all, arms giants accounted for over one-sixth of Schiff’s total donations.”

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, and the Atlantic Council just paid to send one of Schiff’s top staffers to Ukraine on some mysterious trip in September. But, yeah, Schiff has never met a war, a Washington war, he didn’t like. He’s even supported the US-Saudi war on Yemen, and he is one of the favorite donors…a favorite, uh, you know, recipients of arms industry donations. I mean, you just look at how much money this previously unheard-of member of Congress in California gets; I mean, he’s just raking a millions of dollars from corporations in the arms industry.

In 2013 Adam Schiff actually was treated to a $25,000, sorry, $2,500-a-head fundraiser by Ukrainian-born, California-based arms dealer named Igor Pasternak, and Pasternak has really benefited from the proxy war in eastern Ukraine. He got a lucrative contract, a lucrative contract to supply the Ukrainian state border guard with surveillance systems, and then he got another deal to replace the Ukrainian military’s old AK-47s with the new version of the M16. And the funniest thing is, I think PolitiFact has done some fact check on whether Schiff has a relationship with a Ukrainian arms dealer named Pasternak, and they declare that it’s mostly false by focusing on the fact that Pasternak has US nationality and that he was only born in Ukraine, but he’s from Kazakhstan, and they kind of nitpick. But it’s completely true that Schiff is deeply involved with the arms industry and they’re paying him for a good reason. This is someone who has pushed a narrative. I think it’s a…this is a ricochet effect of it. I think, you know, Schiff has his own vain ambitions for being in the limelight and pushing Russiagate, but there’s a ricochet effect which is benefit…it’s benefitting his donors for him to push this Cold War narrative.

AARON MATÉ: And, you know, I don’t claim to say that it’s intentional, but I have to note that as all of this outcry is going on in Washington about Trump briefly freezing the military assistance to Ukraine — because again under Congressional pressure he did unfreeze it and now it’s been approved as we saw with new Javelins sold just this week — but as that was going on, as you mentioned, this Ukrainian peace process is going forward. Just this week Zelensky, agreeing to hold elections in the Donbass, this region where Ukrainian forces are backing Russian-backed forces, which is a huge step forward. And it’s in this outcry over Trump and this claim that he’s endangering Ukraine, what is actually happening on the ground in Ukraine is being ignored. And as we wrap, Max, I’m wondering if you can comment on just how the scandals that Democrats have embraced, how aligning themselves with the national security state throughout Trump’s presidency, instead of resisting him for all of his dangerous policies to the country and to the world, but resisting him from the point of view of the imperatives of the national security state, where they don’t like his talk about having better relations with Russia, for example, about what that has done to just the overall progressive/liberal cause in general.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, I saw Common Dreams, one of the websites that was really one of the major sources of critical analysis and reporting during the invasion of Iraq, retweeting David Frum yesterday, and it really reflects the atmosphere where the kind of progressive movement has been, un…almost unwittingly domesticated and neutered by the national security state into this kind of anti-Trump resistance where anything that harms Trump is…and anything that opportunistically hurts him is acceptable, even if it advances a new Cold War, which no progressive should support. And so here we are again, freaking out about the suspension of $400 million in military aid at a time when the Ukraine is going through a historic shift, moving towards peace.

We should be talking about how this affects Zelensky. You know, and it also upset me the way Trump treated Zelensky, that he kind of just treats him like this…this little colonial puppet. It upset me the way that Joe Biden treated Viktor Shokin, where the American vice president can just simply come in and fire the attorney general of another country and then go to the Council on Foreign Relations and brag about how he got rid of the “son-of-a-bitch.” It just shows our whole colonial relationship with Ukraine. This country has been turned into bullet stoppers by Washington. It’s been through two color revolutions, the Maidan coup has destroyed its gross domestic product, its export sector has been wiped out because its historic trading relationship with Russia is gone, corruption is sky-high, the people who looted all of the IMF loans and put them into foreign bank accounts are in power, and Ukraine has seen a migration crisis that’s almost on par or maybe worse than Venezuela’s, but we never hear about it because it’s of our doing.

So, we should actually start looking at this from an anti-war point of view, and we should also consider the fact that Ukraine’s interior ministry is controlled by someone, Arsen Avakov, who has been the benefactor of the world’s largest collection of neo-Nazis and helped integrate a neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Battalion, into the country’s National Guard. So that they now receive or have received US military assistance and Canadian military assistance. This is serious, like, you know, the progressives and anti-Trump people who are freaking out about the Proud Boys marching through Portland. Why aren’t they talking about the fact that we keep sending hun…tens of millions of dollars of offensive weaponry into a military that has a literal neo-Nazi battalion integrated into its ranks?

The 2018 NDAA blocked — thanks to some intervention by Democrats in the House — supposedly blocks assistance to the Azov Battalion, but it’s impossible to know how that will take place. There… it’s… we’ve reported at The Grayzone, as Asa Winstanley reported at Electronic Intifada, that the Azov Battalion is receiving Israeli weapons, and actually the Ukrainian Embassy in Israel attacked us for it. But they confirmed it at the same time. And they are taking US weapons into the field. So we should actually be talking about arming neo-Nazis with US taxpayer dollars and we should also talk about the fact that, as you and Ben Norton discussed, a would-be US domestic terrorist who wanted to kill Beto O’Rourke, and many others sought to go to Ukraine to train with the Azov Battalion. We should talk about how the Rise Above Movement, a white nationalist group in Orange County, actually did go to Ukraine to train with the Azov Battalion, and how Ukraine is becoming a global center of white nationalist activity, as the US is sending these advanced weapons there. But that discussion is only taking place within some sectors of alternative media that still maintain an anti-war point of view. It’s not taking place on Democracy Now!, it’s not taking place that I’ve seen at The Intercept, and I just don’t know how an institution like Common Dreams comes to retweeting one of the architects of the Iraq war, David Frum, just because he’s against Trump. But that’s really a sign of the times.

AARON MATÉ: You know, on the media front, I can only think of one exception, which is an article in Ha’aretz, which is headlined “Rights Groups Demand Israel Stop Arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine,” speaking to that controversy that you mentioned before. We’re going to leave it there, though. Max Blumenthal, final comments as we wrap.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Go to The Grayzone.com for more great reporting like this.

AARON MATÉ: Sounds good. Max Blumenthal, senior editor of The Grayzone, author of several books, his latest being The Management of Savagery, thanks very much.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Thanks a lot, Aaron.

Editor’s Note, October 9 2019: This transcript has been edited to correct errors about J.D. Gordon’s role on the Trump campaign and about the RNC platform on Ukraine. Gordon served as a senior Campaign advisor on policy and national security. And the RNC platform was not altered — an amendment that called for sending offensive weaponry was simply rejected.

thegrayzone.com

People in Baghdad are fearful that the next war between the US and Iran will take place in Iraq, which is only just returning to peace after the defeat of Isis. Alarm that Iraq will be sucked into such a conflict has increased here because of recent Israeli drone attacks on the bases of the Iraqi paramilitary group known as the Hashd al-Shaabi, which is accused by the US and Israel of acting as a proxy of Iran.

“The new development is that Israel has entered the conflict in Iraq,” says Abu Alaa al-Walai, the leader of Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, a militant Shia paramilitary movement with ties to Iran, speaking in an exclusive interview with The Independent in Baghdad. He says that three Israeli drones attacked one of his bases in the Iraqi capital, called al-Saqr, on 12 August, leading to the explosion of 50 tons of weaponry. The Israelis confirm that they carried out the raid, which was preceded by several others, claiming that they hit Iranian missiles on their way to Syria and Lebanon.

It is the likelihood of US complicity in the Israeli action which could provoke a political crisis in Iraq. Abu Alaa says that an unpublished Iraqi government report on the attack reveals that the Israeli drones were launched from a US base called Kassad in Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria. “Iraqi radar tracked one out of three of the drones travelling at 140km before, during and after the attack,” he says.

US policy in the Middle East is notoriously incoherent and contradictory under President Trump, but allowing Israel to make pin-prick attacks from a US base against the Hashd looks peculiarly like self-destruction from an American point of view. It has already led to a bill passing through the Iraqi parliament demanding the withdrawal of US forces from the country.

Asked if Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada would attack US forces, if there is a war between the US and Iran, Abu Alaa replies: “Absolutely, yes”. He expresses enthusiasm for drone warfare, saying that the successful drone assault on the Saudi oil facilities on 14 September makes battlefields more equal for groups like his own. “We are working day and night to develop drones that can be put together in a living room,” he says.

Drone attacks on US bases in Iraq would not enjoy the same element of surprise as those on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, but the bases are certainly vulnerable. In many respects, they do not add to US strength in Iraq but they could become American “hostages” in Iraq in the event of an Iran-US conflict.

The future of the Hashd al-Shaabi as an Iranian-influenced state-within-a-state is the crucial issue in the struggle for influence between Iran and the US. Washington is pushing for the role of the Hashd to be reduced or even eliminated, but these efforts are likely to prove ineffective and even counterproductive.

The Hashd is a political as well as a military organisation and is so well established in Iraq that there is not much the US can do to reduce its influence. Its parliamentary representatives did well in the last general election in 2018 and its support is essential for any stable Iraqi government.

A similar pattern has held true in Iraq since the US invasion of 2003. The US wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, though without benefiting Iran. But the downfall of Saddam’s Sunni Arab regime was inevitably followed by a political revolution in which it was replaced by the Shia majority and, to a lesser degree, by the Kurds. Try as they might, US diplomats and generals in Baghdad could not avoid cooperating, often covertly, with Iran.

Not much has really changed in the years that followed. The ruling Shia majority has an Iraqi national identity, but this is matched, and usually overmatched, by a strong religious Shia identity. Given that Iraq and Iran are among the few Shia-led states in the world it is scarcely surprising that they feel that they have much in common. Post-Saddam Iraq saw the first Shia Arab government take power in the region since Saladin overthrew the Fatimids in 12th century Egypt. “Religiously speaking, Iran gives Iraq strategic depth,” says Dhiaa al-Asadi, a leading figure in the populist religious movement of the Shia leader, Muqtada al-Sadr.

President Trump and previous US administrations have repeatedly made the mistake of denouncing Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Hashd in Iraq as Iranian proxies pure and simple. This is a mistake because these powerful paramilitary movements are rooted, above all else, in the local Shia communities. Iran may have fostered these groups but it does not have command and control over them.

Another reason why Mr Trump’s bid to roll back Iranian influence is unlikely to get anywhere, is that Iran’s paramilitary allies have been victorious, or at least held their own, in the wars in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen over the last two decades. Many Iraqis resent this fragmentation of power, complaining that “the Hashd is strong and our government is weak” – but there is not a lot they can do about it. Iran is adept at playing Iraqi political chess games and acting as the broker between different factions and centres of power.

The US is not strong enough to oust the Hashd in Iraq, but that does not mean it will not try. The US must have known that Israel was firing drones into Iraq since it controls Iraqi airspace, but using Israel as its proxy in Iraq is a risky game.

Iraq has enjoyed a couple of years of relative peace since the defeat of Isis with the recapture of Mosul in 2017. The hundreds of security checkpoints and concrete anti-bomb blast walls in Baghdad have largely disappeared. The city is full of new restaurants and shops and the streets are thronged with people until late at night. But many Iraqis wonder how long this will last, if the US-Iran confrontation escalates into a shooting war. “Many of my friends are so nervous about a US-Iran war that they are using their severance pay on leaving government service to buy houses in Turkey,” said one civil servant.

There are good reasons for them to be worried: US and Saudi authority in the Middle East has been damaged by Iranian-inspired attacks – the Iranian modus operandi is normally to act through others – on oil tankers in the Gulf, a high-flying US drone, and the Saudi oil industry. So far, Mr Trump has not thought it is in the US’s interest to hit back, but he cannot indefinitely absorb this kind of punishment without looking weak.

Iraq is one place where the US and its allies could try to retaliate and their main target is likely to be the Hashd. This could in turn provoke attacks on US bases which look vulnerable in the age of the drone. Iraqis dread the idea of another military conflict, but they fear it may in any case be heading in their direction.

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