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Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews
3/5/26 Matthew Hoh on the Lie That Iran Killed Hundreds of Americans in Iraq
00:54:07
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- [00:06]
Scott Horton
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people. What's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy mostly. When the president does it, that means that it is not a liberty. We're gonna take out seven countries.
- [00:26]
Matthew Ho
They don't know what the they're doing.
- [00:29]
Scott Horton
Negotiate now, end this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. Aren't you guys introducing the great Matthew Ho. Like our guest the other day, he's a great whistleblower from the Afghan war. He was a Marine Corps captain in Iraq War two and then was working for the State Department in Afghanistan when he blew the whistle and tried to stop Obama's tripling of the war in 2009. And he's been a great anti war activist ever since then. He's with the Eisenhower Network. And welcome back to the show. Matthew, how you doing, man?
- [01:07]
Matthew Ho
Good, Scott. How are you?
- [01:08]
Scott Horton
I'm doing great. Really appreciate you joining us here. And so you got this great article that you wrote that we're reprinting here@antiwar.com added to this stage here and it is called they are Still Lying about Iraq this Time to justify war on Iran that George a war on Iran that George W. Bush could not get. So this is a big one. I like debunking it too, sort of. You know, you and I have a comparative advantage about this, obviously, but it, it really is crucial, man. It's one of these, you know, major talking points on the war party's list of reasons why America has to go to war with Iran. They cite the Beirut bombing of 1983. And they cite, usually the claim is that Iran killed 600Americans in Iraq War Two. So what's the truth about that?
- [02:07]
Matthew Ho
Well, and the claim has even been exaggerated further, Scott, because what you hear from the White House, from the administration, from their proxies in Congress and, and in the media is that killed Iran, killed thousands of Americans in Iraq. That's the talking point. We've heard this last.
- [02:25]
Scott Horton
Oh, here we go. So now it's, now it's every roadside bomb was an Iranian bomb, not just the Shiite roadside bombs. Great.
- [02:33]
Matthew Ho
Right. And that's exactly what the president United States said earlier this week, I think it was Sunday or Monday, he was doing a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House. And he said anytime you see an American veteran and he's missing an arm or a leg or his face is half hanging off or whatever Trump said, paraphrase him he said it was because of Iran. And then if you look at the statement, the one written statement the White House has put out explaining what the objectives of this war on Iran are, you'll see it's a short statement, not even half a page. But in that half a page, twice the White House cites his justification for this war, the thousands of Americans that were killed and wounded by Iran in Iraq, man.
- [03:18]
Scott Horton
And it's just incredible. And you know, when it comes to Trump himself, you know, he always doubles or triples whatever number he wants to exaggerate anyway. And who knows what they told him, you know, if maybe they did tell him. But right going in, we all know that he doesn't know the first damn thing about Iraq War two. He doesn't know who supplied what bomb to who. He's as dumb as any, you know, Mark Levin listener out there driving around who thinks that they know about this stuff. So when he's making that claim, in a way, I want to say, wow, what contempt that shows for American servicemen that he's willing to lie right to their face like that. But it's like, yeah, no, this guy is so ignorant that he might not even know he's lying when he repeats that crap. But up until now, the line has been that 600Americans were killed by Iran in the war. That's when they're sort of kind of trying to be specific. And even that is embellished by a hundred. It was five hundred Americans who died fighting Shiites in East Baghdad and down in Najaf and whatever in 07 and 08. And you know, there were, there were some killed, including Cindy Sheehan's son. Casey was killed fighting the Sauderists in March of 2004 as well. That guy, Thomas Young, a paralyzed anti war activist guy who was shot in the spine. He had been sent to go rescue Casey Sheehan's group after they had already been killed and was also killed or shot and eventually died of his injuries. But anyway, so, so take us back, man, help people understand. I mean, why wouldn't Iran have supplied every bomb in that war?
- [04:57]
Matthew Ho
MATTHEW well, the main thing about it, Scott, is that they simply just didn't need to. You know, the same thing with why didn't, why wasn't Iran the Chief supplier of RPGs and AKs and RPKs and PKMs and all those sorts of weaponry that the Iraqi resistance utilized is because they didn't need to. There was plenty and plenty of munitions and weapons and ammunitions throughout Iraq. It just simply wasn't necessary for Iran to even do that. But, you know, maybe it's back up in terms of, when we talk about the numbers here, we're talking about 4,500Americans killed in Iraq. And of that number, yeah, roughly 600 or so you can attribute to being killed by Shia groups. And the rest, the remainder.
- [05:48]
Scott Horton
Okay, corrected on that then. I'm sorry I said I stand corrected on that then. I thought it was more like five.
- [05:55]
Matthew Ho
Oh, I'm not, I don't, I'm not certain. I just know the last Department of Defense released on this I am aware of, which came in 2019, which came at the same time that the United States was enacting sanctions on Iran, designating Iran as the irgc, the Iranian Republican Guard as a terrorist organization, and ultimately setting and setting in progress a chain of events that will culminate in the assassination of Qasem Soleimani and then the retaliatory Iranian attack on American troops in Iraq. That's the last time I saw an update on this, when the Department of Defense moved that number up to over 600. But I think that's, that's probably a fair approximation. Whether it's 500 or 600 out of 4,500 you're talking about, roughly 12 to 15% of the American deaths in Iraq were, were caused by Iraqi Shia resistance groups, Iraqi insurgent groups. And I should say that this put this out to begin with. The cause of Those deaths was the American invasion and occupation. That's the cause. If there's anyone who bears responsibility, who has blood on their hands, it's the George W. Bush administration, the politicians, the media, all those people who support this war and sustained it. They're the ones with the blood of Americans on their hands. Not the Iraqis, certainly not the Iranians.
- [07:22]
Scott Horton
Still, as you say in your article though, yeah, figuratively speaking, but literally speaking, 4,000American soldiers, Marines, airmen, National Guardsmen were killed by the Sunni resistance because America was fighting on the Shiite side in that war.
- [07:39]
Matthew Ho
Right, Exactly. If you go to the sun led
- [07:41]
Scott Horton
insurgency, 90% of that time.
- [07:43]
Matthew Ho
Right. And if you go to the article, I, I delineate that relationship that the United States has with the various Shia factions, if you will. I, I spent a brief amount of time on it. I would certainly recommend people go read your books. Enough already. And fools. Aaron, for a very good explanation of what was occurring here. Honestly, I can't give a better kudos to anyone else's work. You know, Patrick Coburn's book, the Occupation is another great book. For people to read about this. But certainly, you know, we were, the United States was on the side of the predominant Shia factions. We put them into power. And these Shia factions, particularly the principal Shia faction, the most powerful Shia faction, scary, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq were Iranian based organizations prior to 2003. So we knowingly put into power in Iraq groups that were alive with Iran. That was something that only the greatest fools and incompetence could have possibly planned to do. But somehow the United States did that. So you do. But then you have a schism of course within the Shia between those who essentially support the government, say, and those who support Maqata al Sadr. And then you, of course you have intra Shia fighting as well as intra Iraqi fighting. You have this terrible, terrible civil war in Iraq, Sunnis versus Shia essentially. That of course is caused by our invasion and occupation. But with this, these Shia groups that are alive with Makal al Sar, you know, particularly Jam as they were called, the, they fought the Americans as well. And so that's where you see this 600 number come from or from these Shia groups that were not allied with the government that were contesting with the Shia dominated government for elements of control throughout the country. And these were the Shia groups that caused those American casualties that are attributed to Shia resistance. Shia insurgent groups. Thought you muted.
- [10:09]
Scott Horton
I always do that to, to help with the time scale here for people in the war. This is really the beginning of 2007 is when George W. Bush announces the surge of 30,000 more troops to Baghdad and a brand new propaganda campaign to blame everything going wrong in Iraq on Iran. And, and it was really, you know, in my understanding, Matthew, the, the Pentagon had basically instructed Bush that yeah, sure, we're happy to surge into Baghdad, but we don't want to fight Iran. And that was in January of 01 when he visited the Pentagon. They took him down in the tank. Joe Klein had a piece of Newsweek about it and then there were others that you know, basically confirmed that. And they said, we don't want to do it because we're essentially embedded with the Iraqi Shiites, with the Skiris militia, the bottom brigade. We're turning that into the Iraqi army right now. And if we go to war with Iraq, our guys are really at risk. They could get shot in the back, like order 66 out there. And so that was one of the main reasons that they didn't want to do at the time. And so Bush said, okay, fine, but Dick Cheney still wanted to do it. And he entered into this conspiracy with David Petraeus and Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times, the same guy who was the co author of all of the Abom Parts Hopes stories with Judith Miller in the run up to the war, who's now at the Wall Street Journal, by the way. And Gordon helped lead this propaganda campaign all through the first half of 2007, where it was funny at the time. And you can find, you know, my interviews with Gareth Porter where we joked about this and stuff.
- [11:45]
Matthew Ho
Wow.
- [11:46]
Scott Horton
They kind of forgot all about Iran's illicit secret nuclear weapons program for a little bit in order to just focus on this hoax instead. Right. And, and then what they did was Petraeus attacked Maad Alad, who is actually the most nationalist of the Iraqi Shiites. There are three major factions in the United Iraqi Alliance. Dawa, Skiri and Sar. And Dawa and Skiri had been living in Iran for 20 years. Sar had stayed and he was the son of one of the founders of Dawa. And of course on the day of the invasion, I know some people noticed this and a lot of people didn't. Saddam City, the Shiite ghetto in eastern Baghdad, the day that Saddam's statue is pulled down, they renamed it Solder City. Like, yeah, this is important. You might want to take note of, you know, why this is. Anyway, they attacked Solder under the accusation that he was the most Iran tied of the Shiite factions when he was actually the least. And they ended up chasing him into Iran where he went to school and got a higher religious rank for the future, thanks very much. And then they isolated these so called special groups which was still nothing but the Mahdi Army. And they just began this claim, right. Every time a Shiite sets off a roadside bomb in this war that we have started against them, even though this is one of the factions that we're fighting to put in power, Solder is one of the biggest kingmakers in that country to this day. They said anytime that a Shiite bomb goes off, that bomb came from Iran. And they said it a hundred thousand times in the first half of 2007 and they never demonstrated it, not a single time. And when they announced they were going to have a big press conference and they were going to prove that it was true. And they laid out a bunch of materials that were supposedly part of the evidence that this was all from Iran. The part said Made in Hadithah or Made in UAE on them and etc and there was nothing that there was nothing indicating Iranian anything. And they actually closed down the press conference and didn't hold it. They had already laid out the material and curious reporters were already looking at it and saying, oh, that says Made in Hadithah on it. And so then they just shut it down and they didn't do it. And the national Security Advisor Stephen Hadley admitted, well, the evidence wasn't quite there.
- [13:59]
Matthew Ho
What this is like in June.
- [14:01]
Scott Horton
This is after months and months and months and months of these claims that these bombs are coming across from Iran. But meanwhile, and I do have it here, so I'm going to torture you all with it. It's let me share this link instead. This is from my, from my book enough already. This is the subchapter of my Rock War 2 chapter soda straws and EFPs. And I have this reprinted at my substack. It's Scott hortonshow.com and then I'm going to make you suffer. And listen to this part. Retired Marine Captain Matthew Ho, regimental engineer in 2006 and 2007 for the 7th and then 2nd Marines and he was stationed at the Joint IED Defeat Organization in 2008 confirmed to the author that quote, yes, the EFPs were all made in Iraq in workshops by Iraqis. And I have that backed up here by Alyssa Rubin also in the New York Times contradicting her podna there Michael Gordon. We have Alyssa Rubin in the New York Times, Reuters staff Andrew Coburn in the LA Times, Yochi J. Driesen in the Wall Street Journal, Ellen Nicomire in the Washington Post, David Hambling and Wired, Sam Dogger of the Christian Science Monitor, Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker and Gareth Porter in Inter Press Service that the EFPs were not Iranian weapons. And all of those journalists other than Andrew Cockburn and Gareth Porter who were doing analysis from here, these others, they were there and they were embedded with American forces finding these workshops in Iraqi Shia stan as they're raiding and and doing these battles and doing their after action reports where they find the workshop and here are the EFP factories. So the that's it. They had nothing. They're totally debunked. And then I have to add one more here because I, I really like this guy and I just love saying this. It's so funny. James Aragon who he's a Twitter friend. James Aragon at the time was an Air Force master sergeant select and was augment for the 5th Special Forces Group when that unit took command of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Arabian Peninsula CJSOTF dash AP and he was the Combined Intelligence cell night shift non commissioned officer in charge NCOIC and lead analyst for concerns related to Iranian influence in Iraq. Aragon quote, lived and breathed the secret side of the war for over 2600 hours and read over. This is still the quote, over 4,000 intelligence summaries from all intelligence agencies, end quote. During the 2007, 2008 period, he told me in an email that Iranian Kuts Force Commander K.M. solimani denied to the Iraqi Minister of the Interior Albani, who was a Shiite and would have been his friend anyway, right? Not, not an opponent, that he had any knowledge of the EFPs in Iraq. So he had that intelligence. That's, that's what access he had. He had a secret conversation of Qasam Suleimani going, dude, I don't know what they're talking about to the Iraqi minister who's his ally anyway, and he says, I never saw any intelligence that proved otherwise. So now Aragon is not here. But that speaks for itself. But can you please tell us about your role at this gigantic acronym during that time frame as a captain in the Marine Corps?
- [17:42]
Matthew Ho
So first I was in Iraq in Anbar Province with the Marine Corps. I was a captain, I was a combat engineer company commander. And so I was by that role, by the engineer officer for the regiment, the person responsible for counter ied counter improvised Explosive device operations in our regimental area of operations. So essentially going out, finding them, understanding them, allocating resources, all those things, as well as them being aware of the larger picture throughout, not just Anbar Province, but throughout the entire country. And then after that was at the joint IED defeat organization in Washington D.C. and there for more than a year and saw the information near daily on the, the what you were just describing, the constant attempt to find, to locate and raid these EFP workshops. And I saw the reports come through routinely, you know, and as you said, we would put journalists on these raids and they would go to these EFP workshops. I think maybe explain to folks, explain to folks what an EFP and explosive form penetrator is. It's a type of ied. It's a type of roadside bomb. It's very simple even, although its effects are quite spectacular. It is a weapon that doesn't use an explosive charge. It just relies on physics. And so imagine take a paint can and these were all different sizes, some were actually quite small. But just say take a paint can and set it on its side and then over, you're gonna, you're gonna load it, you're gonna fill it with explosive chart with an explosive charge. And, and then over the top of it over that opening, you're going to place a disk and it's going to be concave so that it bows inwards. And then when you detonate this device, the explosive force will cause that disc to basically fold in on itself, to ball up, to become a slug. And it, because that's being created by this explosive, this contained explosive force, you are talking about a slug that becomes very, very dense. And then of course, if you want to make this weapon more effective, utilize a material for that disc, such as copper, so it's even, even more dense. And then that slug, this incredibly dense slug, travels at an incredibly high rate of speed and it will puncture through, at that time, literally any of the armor we had, it would actually puncture our tank armor, it would puncture our armored humvees, it would puncture our MRAPs, right? Our anti IED vehicles or anti mine vehicles. It would puncture our specialized route clearance vehicles. So we did route clearance, we went out and looked for IEDs, looked for these roadside bombs and we had specialized vehicles for that called buffaloes and huskies. And this would puncture the buffalo and husky. And then when you had this very dense slug at high speed, puncturing armor, the resulting explosion, the release of energy inside the cab of the vehicle was incredible. I mean, it was ungodly. The amount of heat that was generated, the explosive force, the blast pressure, the overpressure, etc. And so the results were catastrophic. And this weapon was a weapon that the Shia insurgents, the Sunnis, never used it. If they did it, they used one or two. I mean, but I don't know of any case where they did. But the Shia that use them against the Americans, these weapons were incredibly effective. We had no way to defeat them. But again, they were relatively simple. Anyone with the understanding that I just explained could build one as long as they had a half decent machine shop. So the American argument was that this is too sophisticated a technology that for the Iraqis to do it themselves. And of course so many people went along with it, even though you had journalists from, you know what, you just read off what, 10 different major newspapers debunking this, this still holds weight. Now this idea that the Iraqis were not capable of building or using these weapons and the Iranians had to not only provide them to them, but show them how to and place them and use them, and that's just simply not true. Again, everything I saw two years do encounter IED work in Iraq and you know, at Gio, you know, that is just completely false and it's just a lie used to. Again, it was meant to get George W. Bush the Iran war that they wanted. And now it's being recycled to you to get, you know, to or to justify this war that they do have with Iran. And I think what should give a lot of people pause is if they're still recycling lies about the deaths of Americans from almost 20 years ago, how do you think they're going to handle the deaths of Americans going forward? What, what type of concern do you think they have at all for the well being of any of these service members if they're so willing to use so easily disproven and debunk lies as they are? I mean, this, this, this group is even more cavalier about this than the Bush administration was.
- [23:16]
Scott Horton
Yeah, man. So a couple things there. First of all, Gareth Porter showed how they had learned the technique from Lebanese Hezbollah, but they had learned it not from Iran or the irgc, but from the ira. And so that was, that was the origin of the.
- [23:31]
Matthew Ho
If, if people, if people Google this, you'll find it, it'll come right up. I mean, this is an EFP is essentially a subvariant of a shape charge.
- [23:41]
Scott Horton
Sure.
- [23:41]
Matthew Ho
And a shape charge is an explosive device that has been utilized probably. They probably started using shape charges about a year after they invented gunpowder. You know, I mean, it's been around for that long. So the principles behind this are very simple and you know, you don't have to be exact. This is a weapon that through trial and error, you can figure it out. It can be good enough. And were there EFPs that didn't work so well against our vehicles? Yes, sometimes. But you know what? They figured it out, you know, and others were very precise. Others were very rough and rudimentary, you know, but the, the, yeah, the idea that these are weapon systems that only an industrialized nation could produce is just absolutely absurd.
- [24:25]
Scott Horton
All right, this episode of Scott Horton show, brought to you by the books I wrote. You can see them behind me there. Enough already. Fool's errand. And then enough already. And provoked. And then of course, one might have fallen down there. But I got Ron Paul, the great Ron Paul. Scott Horton show interviews. And Hotter than the Sun. You see that one back there over there? That way. Hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. That's all interviews I did, all about nukes and really great stuff and I busted my ass on these things and you know, I've gotten a really great reception on all of them. They all been endorsed by Ron Paul and Daniel Ellsberg endorsed two of the three I wrote. He would have endorsed the third one. I know, but he died too soon, unfortunately. Tucker Carlson says that provoked is the definitive account. In fact, that's what Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate said about it too. The definitive account of the new Cold War with Russia and the war in Ukraine. So maybe check that out. Yeah, we also have to talk about David Petraeus's treason where he.
- [25:29]
Matthew Ho
Yeah, exactly, you know, gave the Shia weapons. Let's talk about that. Yeah, yeah.
- [25:33]
Scott Horton
So when he got there, this is the guy who famously said, tell us how this ends. It ends with him turning Iran's proxy force, the Bata Brigade, into the Iraqi army. First he had to stop by Mosul and arm up and pay off the Sunni insurgents. Then he went down to Baghdad where he oversaw the torture campaign in Operation Copper Green and all of that stuff. And the El Salvador option with those mercenaries torturing people to death. And you know when they say in the WikiLeaks, remember in the WikiLeaks about the wolf Brigade where they were torturing people to death with power drills through the eyeballs and through the skull. That was the bottom brigade. That's break off of the bottom brigade. Special operations working under David Petrasa. So here he is. He sends.
- [26:14]
Matthew Ho
Let's not let other one one person off the hook either. John Negrop Ponte.
- [26:17]
Scott Horton
Right.
- [26:17]
Matthew Ho
The ambassador to. He was the first ambassador to Iraq. He took over from. From Jay Bremmer and the Coalition Provisional Authority. And if people aren't familiar with Negrop Ponte's history in Central America, his connections to those death squads. After you stop, after you finish listening to Scott and I here, go and look up Negrop Ponte's past and. And things will make sense as to why after Negroponti shows up, after Petraeus Lee's Mosul goes to Baghdad, you start to see these mass sectarian killings. You start to see the torture. You start to see the bodies turning up in the streets of Baghdad being carried out by death squads. You know, as Scott was just describing.
- [26:57]
Scott Horton
Yeah, that's how I got the name El Salvador. Option was it was Negroponte who had been the ambassador back then in the 80s, overseeing all that. And then so then he builds the Baad Brigade, which is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iran, which was run by the Hakeem family, Abdullah Zizal Hakeem, now his son, who were outright Iranian agents the entire time. And then it. And same for the Dawa Party guys where almost every I Think with one exception, every prime minister since the war, starting with Ibrahim Jafari and the Nuri al Maliki and all the others since then have all been from the Dawa Party, except one of them, Al Sudani, was from Skiri. And then, so Petraeus was taking the most Iranian tied Shiite militia side against the least Iranian tied, the Iraqi nationalist among the Shiite leaders, Maad Alad. And why? Because he would regularly denounce the American and Iranian influence in the country. And they didn't want Iranian influence in the country, but they didn't want to give up their own either. They didn't want to turn the country over to nationalists who would marginalize Iran and the United States. So they would rather keep guys who were more loyal to Iran than the United States. And so they turn on Solder to prop up Dawan Skiri. And meanwhile, he's still there, you know, he ain't gone. But all this was to benefit people who were actually more on the side of Iran rather than less.
- [28:22]
Matthew Ho
And don't forget about the Iraqi National Accord, Ahmad Chalabi's group, right? They're the ones who had the ear of the American administration. They're the ones who are telling Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, passing on to Jay Bremer, this is how you should conduct the occupation. These are. And so the Iraqi National Accord had a vested interest in ensuring that a local group like would not ever have any type of role in what was going to come in the rebuilding of Iraq, of the reconstitution of the Iraqi government. You know, a quick story. I, A friend of mine who was an officer, US army officer in Solder City in 2003, and he tells a story about how he's in the, the, the battalion or actually their cab, the Calvary squadron they use in the headquarters though. And there's this youngish man standing around dressed all in black and he kept coming every day and they kept telling him to shove off because, you know, essentially the orders from the American, the orders that came down through the hierarchy of American control there was that we're building a democracy. The tribal authorities and the religious authorities have no say in anything. They are illegitimate. We are building a democracy. I mean, I saw this play out throughout Iraq. So people who actually had legitimate authority among constituencies in the population were sidelined and often rudely and brutally. And, you know, what happens inside our city is that you have these black mourning banners that are hanging down that the Americans don't understand what they are. So early on, we're tearing down morning banners in places like Soder City because we think those black banners are a call for jihad or something like that, when they are literally morning banners. Right? So no way to, to, to. No better way than to get off on the wrong foot with a population and essentially piss all over their dead relatives. Right? And then you have very early, quickly, right. I think it was the summer of, maybe it was 04, but may have been 03 that we shut down like Sar's newspaper. We did a number of things like that to sideline him.
- [30:32]
Scott Horton
And that was what started the, the outbreak of violence in, in March of 2004 in the first big fight. It was going on in Fujia. They were attacking Fuja at the same time. And I'll never forget Representative Bob Dornan
- [30:46]
Matthew Ho
on,
- [30:48]
Scott Horton
on TV being interviewed about it and saying, if shutting down this newspaper saves one American life, then it'll be worth. And of course, it just broke out in a mass violence the next day.
- [31:01]
Matthew Ho
Right, right. I mean, the, the, the, the responsibility and the accountability here for all the actions that take place one after another. I mean, in hindsight, it's just absolutely breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking. You know, I mean, and just the impunity that American leaders had throughout this, you know, as David Petraeus takes over the multinational training command and sticky, as they called it in Iraq, and you know, his. During that time, they lose 200,000 weapons. Right. The General Accounting Office of the United States, the United States federal government does an investigation and under Petraeus's watch, 200,000 weapons go missing at the same time as American troops are being killed more and more each month. And as well as this hellish Iraqi civil war has begun, and it doesn't seem like it's going to end. Al Qaeda and Iraq is blowing up things left and right. I mean, just this place is falling apart. You have a general who essentially gives $2000-002002-00000 weapons to this process and he gets promoted and then later on we have him flip the coin at the Super Bowl. I mean, just absolute impunity for the greatest incompetence you could possibly imagine. But I do want to tell one personal story of mine about this because there's a lot of corruption involved here. And so when I left the Pentagon as a captain and I got off of people like this, I got off of active duty when I was in the Pentagon in 2003, because when I had to make a decision about what I wanted to do with my future in the Marine Corps in 2002, I thought the Iraq war was over like everyone else did, and I had missed it, so might as well get off of active duty and do something else with my life. I missed the war. I had friends over there in 03 who would email me and be like, hey, you know, I brought a camera with you, with me. So I'll take photos and you can show your grandkids what it was like to have been a Marine at war. I mean, this was. This was the stupidity that we all shared in, right? So anyway, I go over actually to Iraq as a Department of Defense official. I go from the marine Corps into DoD. As a DoD civilian official, I go to Iraq. I'm placed in the Coalition Provisional Authority in the Ministry of Youth and Sport. I'm supposed to be there with $20 million to help build stadiums and youth centers and soccer fields and things like that. About four days after I get there in April or early May of 04, they say, hey, Matt, this program of yours, we're not going to do it because the security situation is really bad, and we use. Need to use that $20 million for something else. I say, okay, that makes sense. You know, car. At that point in Baghdad, there's a car bomb going off every day. You know, I mean, things were bad. And so what I come to find out, though, is that what the US had done with CPA was we had essentially assigned different ministries to different groups in Iraq's rock. So Scary, among other ministries, have received the Ministry of Youth and Sport. And what essentially happened was this $20 million for this program that was in cash that was sitting in a vault in the. In Saddam's palace that CPA used as its headquarters in the Green Zone was essentially just signed right over to scary. $20 million in cash given right to Scary, which again goes, of course, right to the Barter Corps as well as to all the, you know, the leadership of Scary, who were corrupt as hell. But the American corruption in this was also really quite deep. You had a whole class of people in Baghdad at the time. They then later on to Kabul, of course, when that surge and that, you know, you know, that grift really started happening. But these were a class of people that had come out of the Balkans, and this is where post Cold War, this development industrial complex really starts to get underway. And you essentially had these consultants, if you want to call them that, who were hand in glove with these Iraqis like Scary, ensuring that the money got transferred. And so how much of that got skinned off by Americans or by Europeans? I don't know, but a whole heck of a lot. It was real shady. I could go into great detail about it. I will tell you this, though. It occurred as CPA was leaving and State Department was coming in. And so when I went to the CPA inspector general and said, hey, look, this money's getting stolen, he said, we're leaving. Go tell it to the State Department guy. Go to the State Department guy. What do you think he says? He says, I wasn't here for that. That's not my problem. That's CPA's problem. And yeah, millions of dollars got stolen. However many tens of millions of dollars got transferred from an account that I was supposed to utilize to build stadiums and soccer fields and whatnot. You know, went to scary. And that got repeated over and over and over again throughout that entire war and of course, throughout the entire war of Afghanistan as well. I imagine the same in Syria. You can imagine the boondoggle that is going to occur with this war in Iran.
- [36:21]
Scott Horton
Yeah. Flash in my mind there of the jihadists in Syria in that tent that has the USAID logo all over it.
- [36:30]
Matthew Ho
Exactly. Just, just on the scale of it. Iraq was 26 million people. We invaded. Invaded. Iran is 92 million people. It's four times larger than Iraq. I mean, like on this, as well as that, we've now roped in all the Gulf monarchy is into this. I mean, in terms of, of, of the, the corruption and the grift and the racket, this is going to be. I had a gunnery sergeant in Marine Corps who used to say this line all the time. I mean, these people are going to be riding the gravy train with biscuit wheels. I mean, the amount of money that's going to be made off of this Iran war, if it goes forward as people hope it will, is just staggering. Yeah, yeah.
- [37:08]
Scott Horton
On rails straight to hell. They're riding it. All right, guys, well, if you're like me and pretty much everybody else, you use Amazon.com all the time because what are you going to do? They got prime. They bring the stuff right your door and all that. So that's fine. But what you do is make sure and stop by Scott Horton.org and click the Amazon link in the right hand margin there. Get yourself a bug assault shotgun, salt shotgun for destroying flies trespassing on your property. And then also whatever you get from Amazon and the Scott Horton show will get a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale, which is very nice. Yeah. So here, let's wrap on this. In 2007, as I mentioned in January, they brought W. Bush to the tank in the bowels of the Pentagon in the skiff and they told the Mr. President, we'll do the surge, but don't make us fight Iran. And here's why. The thing is, yes, can America defeat Iran in a war ultimately, could we at some cost have air dominance over their skies and bomb their military very, very badly and all of these things? Nobody doubts the power of the United States of America when it comes to just straight putting firepower on targets now patrolling posh tunes in Paktika Province and turning them into, you know, I don't know, West Germans or something. I don't that, that maybe not so much, but firepower on target. Yeah, you know, Matthew Ho and his Marine Corps friends can explode stuff, but here's the problem. They explained to the present we will not have escalation dominance. In other words, we will not control every stage of the conflict, which is the only way we like to fight. And they're going to have a say in this. And we have soldiers at risk in Iraq and Afghanistan, which no longer is the case in Afghanistan. And the numbers are much lower in Iraq, but it's still true that we have soldiers in Iraq. And then, of course, we have army troops in Kuwait and whatever other branches. I'm not sure. We have the massive air base and Central Command headquarters at Al Udid Air Base in Qatar. We have the fifth Fleet station at Bahrain. And then we have all various and sundry military bases throughout uae, Saudi Arabia and even Oman. And then, of course, there's a trillion dollars worth of economic targets all up and down the western side of that Gulf and including the Straits of Hormuz, which would be at risk there. And so could we ultimately prevail? Yeah, sure. But might it look like, you know, the invasion of front of France in World War II? Yeah, maybe to actually, you know, exercise our will there and have our way and change the regime in a way that's satisfactory to us and potentially at great cost to the rest of our military empire in the Middle East. And so let's not do it. And during that time, it was leaked repeatedly that the head of centcom, Admiral Fox Fallon, was essentially insubordinate and refusing to do it. And it was leaked like this before he finally confirmed it and said, over my dead body will we do this? And he later said, when the time comes, we'll crush them like ants. But that time is not now and we shouldn't do it. So it's, you know, he was still an admiral, but he was just saying, this is crazy that we would do this when we have all these troops in Iraq who could be slaughtered, order 66 style embedded with the Shiites the way they are. And in fact, the, the leader of the bottom brigade as well as mctad Al Sar had both said that, yeah, oh, we'll kill you all right. They said, we will do our duty was what the head of the bottle brigade had said back then. And anyways, so, so that was why Bush didn't do it. And we know that Ehud Olmert, in what, late spring of 07, begged him to do it. And he told the Prime Minister of Israel no. And this was Ariel Sharon's, you know, handpicked successor, Olmer, he told them no. And it was originally reported by Stephen Clemens. And then with multiple confirmations, it was reported in, I believe, April or maybe May of 07, that David Wormser, the principal author of the Clean Break document for Netanyahu and military advisor, foreign policy adviser, Middle east adviser to Vice President De Chany, was going around bragging that they had a plan to maybe work with the Israelis. They were thinking about working with the Israelis. Have the Israelis attack Iran and force Iran to attack American interests in the Gulf. And that would be an end run, as they put it around George W. Bush, to force George W. Bush to fight this war. And he shouted them down on advice from the professionals in the Pentagon, we're not doing this. And he told the guys in the Vice President's office, we're not doing this. And then at that same time, we know they were working on it. And then it was still a few months later in November was when the CIA and the National Intelligence Council came out and once and for all debunked the lie that Iran had a secret illicit nuclear weapons program. They only have a civilian one and it's safeguarded and they're not developing nukes and they haven't made the political decision to begin to make nukes. And that was it for, you know, the last year of Bush's presidency. War with Iran was off the table because he had said the EFP hoax is not a good enough reason to strike IRGC bases. He had told Aoud Allmert, don't you get me into this against my will. And then the CIA came and limited his options even more by telling the truth, that they weren't making nukes and he had no pretext for war. And, you know, the politics of that are pretty fraught. I mean, you figured Cheney pushing that hard against W. Bush to launch this war then. And what it took for him to say no and, and put his foot down and resist. Matt.
- [42:35]
Matthew Ho
Right. And now, of course, you have a president who is bragging about he's doing what no other president could do before, right? He's the, he is the pro. Finally, we have a president who is taking on the Islamic Republic of Iran. All the rest of them were too weak or too cowardly or whatever he says. I mean, so this, we have this mindset here of, of, of just the righteousness that is emboldened in these people, you know. And, you know, the danger is, you saw with the Bush administration how they never changed their view on Iraq, right? I mean, even when OH6 occurs, the OH6 elections occur, clear referendum from the American people, you know, the Bush fires Rumsfeld, then he puts Gates in charge, you know, and. Right. And then, then we have the surge and everything else. And it's only, you know, when George W. Bush signs that SOFA agreement with Iraq in 2008, saying we'll get out of Iraq by 2011, that's some, you know, drastic attempt to try and get Iraq out of the election conversation to try and save McCain's chance for election. And at that point, it was too late, you know, I mean, so the Bush administration never would even. They wouldn't shift on their views on it. They only doubled down on it. And then, you know, in July or August of, of 08, they signed the SOFA agreement hoping that somehow this is going to take the Iraq war out of the election. And it didn't. I mean, so with this administration we have now, my God, what are these people going to do? I mean, like, just. I think there actually is somewhat of a blessing with Trump's uncertainty, with his lack of principle, with his ability to, to, to stick to one thing for longer than his mood cycle or what his ego tells him. So, I mean, I think we're in a better position that way of having a president who might, you know, as we're recording this, there could be a, a truth social message saying, we've won, it's over. You know, that, that kind of thing. You could get that the same time, too. You look at the infatuation that they have with the tactics, with the tactical, the lowest level of warfare, which, as you were saying before, Scott, the United States does the tactical level of warfare really well. Look, in 2007, 2008, 2009, if I had to get into a gunfight with anybody in the world, I would have picked a squad of American Marines or a squad of army infantry. Right. I mean, those guys were that good in terms of, of, of that level of warfare, the tactical level. The American military does the operational level pretty well as well, though. I have a lot of critiques of it now, but it generally, it does the operational level fairly well. Despite, of course, then to Donald Rumson saying, you go to the war with the army, you have not the one you want, but the strategic and the political levels of warfare, the two most important levels of warfare, the one that determine the outcome of the wars, the American military and the American. The empire is terrible at that. And I think looking at this war of choice that we just launched, we, the United States just launched without clarity on the objectives, without understanding why we did it, without even having a cogent, coherent message that the administration could put forward, Launching a war of choice like this in the way they did it. Oh my God. What are we in for, man? What are we in for with this? I don't know.
- [46:10]
Scott Horton
I mean, I hope that this is completely silly and stupid, but my big fear is that the Ayatollah Sistani or someone of near equivalent rank is going to declare holy war here. I mean, remember? And, and look, he's also like, Kameny was very old and, yeah, conservative. Right. He's not a fire breathing radical or whatever. He could be replaced by somebody worse any day, I guess.
- [46:32]
Matthew Ho
He's so old.
- [46:33]
Scott Horton
But remember, in 04, Sistani said, hey, if you believe in God, I want you to go outside and tell George W. Bush that you insist on one man, one vote democracy, Right?
- [46:43]
Matthew Ho
Exactly.
- [46:44]
Scott Horton
Yeah. And every single Iraqi Shia from Baghdad to Kuwait to Naja and everywhere in between, all went outside and said, hey, W. Bush, you want to start this war all over again, boy? And he said, actually, no thank you, and became Ayatollah Sistani slave ever since. That's the explanation for everything we've already talked about in the show so far, why Bush fought the war on the Shiite side. Right, because the Aola Sistani turned his ass out. That's why. And he's the same guy that when Obama built the caliphate, he said, if you believe in God, I need you to grab a rifle and go kill the caliphate. And then America flew air cover for the Koods force on the ground, leading Iraqi Shiite militias to destroy Baghdadi's caliphate that Obama had built for him. And so this is a guy that when he does decide to raise his voice and tell people what to do, they do it. And he has not said anything like I declare jihad on the West. But he could and he would command legions far beyond what Osama bin Laden
- [47:47]
Matthew Ho
could have ever dreamed of.
- [47:48]
Scott Horton
Yeah, he says all good Shiites die trying to kill Americans. Oh, my God, dude. What that could mean for the future of everything is right about that, you know. But God dang, that's such a risk.
- [48:02]
Matthew Ho
Well, hang on. Let's add a few more things into here with Iraq specifically. Iraq will be the first country, as far as I understand, that will have to shut in its oil wells. That will stop its production of oil and gas, which from my limited understanding of this is a bad thing. You don't ever want to shut production down, supposedly because it's very difficult to start. It can cause damage. Wells may not restart. This is a big thing. And Iraq is scheduled to do that within the week from now, essentially six or seven days from now. That means that the 80% or more of the Iraqi federal government's revenues that come from oil and gas. Stop. That means the Iraqi federal government can't pay to keep its people in line. Does this sound familiar to anybody? You know, right. I mean, as well then to the brain trust in Washington D.C. because they're talking about this ground or ground troops using the Kurds to overthrow the Iranian regime. You know, more and more the idea being is that we're going to base them out of Iraqi Kurdistan and also out of our forces out of Kuwait, I guess, crossing the Shad Al Arab Peninsula. And that, you know, as. As we're. We're projecting these forces into Iran, which will first start as Special Forces advisors. But everyone of course remembers how that went in Vietnam or how that went in Afghanistan, where that went to. But you know, the idea then that we're going to have this projection into Iran when we possibly have everything you just described and I just described happening to the rear of that in Iraq. And we still haven't seen the amenities enter this war yet. Very possible that you'll have American forces, both, whether proximate to Iran, staging out of Kurdish, Iraqi or Kurdish Iraqi Kurdistan, excuse me, or Kuwait with Iraqi forces behind them, hostile to them, as well as U.S. naval and Air forces throughout the Gulf region and the Arabian Sea with the Ameni forces behind them. I mean, this is just a trap. I mean, you, you, any. If we were playing Risk or Axis and Allies or something like that, you wouldn't have put yourself in this position, you know, but here we are with potentially looking at that. And know this is my speculation, you know, but certainly the, the possibilities here are legion. Of what could happen. And all the evidence that we have to rely upon about American military performance, particularly at the strategic and the political levels, tells us that this is a bad situation. So maybe it will go well. Who. What do I know? But like I do, you know, it already isn't. Yeah, yeah.
- [50:44]
Scott Horton
They've already hit every American base in the region. They've already pulled, you know, defensive missiles out of American bases and left American allies and American soldiers exposed while they moved the defensive missiles to Israel. I mean, exactly. Yeah, it's.
- [50:59]
Matthew Ho
Yeah.
- [51:00]
Scott Horton
I forget the occasion. Was it when Napoleon invaded Russia? Talan said it was worse than a crime. It was a mistake. You know, this is. You should not be doing this stuff. I don't know why nobody will listen to me. I'm always right. But.
- [51:15]
Matthew Ho
No, it's just, it is.
- [51:17]
Scott Horton
I said this about Afghanistan on the radio in 2001. Thank you very much. I did. I was right about this the whole time. But I was on a little 100 watt part radio stations. Everybody doesn't just read antiwar.com and then know better. I mean what excuse could anyone possibly
- [51:38]
Matthew Ho
happen is as my good friend Mike Furner says, even losing wars make money. So always remember that. That. Well, they're already Talking about affiliate $50 billion supp for this war. That's right.
- [51:50]
Scott Horton
This morning.
- [51:50]
Matthew Ho
Yep. Yeah. I mean so there are. People are going to benefit. It's, it's. And I think they want to go with the Afghanistan Syria model where as long as American troops aren't getting killed. You mean Afghanistan 2013. 81 of the American public is against it. Most unpopular war in American history. But at that point, by 2013 we had cut casualties down to a minimum. You know, a minimum. And in Syria the same thing too. How many? A few dozen total. Killed maybe. I don't even think that many. And so I think that's their un, that's their belief is that they can manage this war. None of the things we spoke about will come to pass. The, the Qataris or the Emiratis or the Bahrainis or, or the Omanis or the Saudis won't ever come to their senses and say get the hell out of our country. You're costing us more than you're worth. We can't trust you. They're. They're banking on that. I think they can bank on Abdullah in Jordan to do that. But the others maybe not. You know, and as well then what does this mean for Turkey and Pakistan and, and everything else?
- [52:55]
Scott Horton
Yeah, yeah. Take your dice, shake them up and throw them, dude. We'll see what happens. Okay? Matthew Ho from the Eisenhower Media Network. Thank you so much for your time.
- [53:05]
Matthew Ho
All right. Thank you, Scott.
- [53:07]
Scott Horton
The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Mundo's Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's Errand. Enough already. And my latest, Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above@scotthorton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scott hortonshow.com and patreon.com Scott Hortonshow Bumpers by Josh Langford Music, intro and outro videos by Dissident Media Audio mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plus plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to 15 per month required Intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com.