[00:00] All right, we got good news, Americans. We got away with our illegal occupation of Syria. Good for us. No consequences. We are invincible. Who else should we invade since that went so well? Well, uh, just a reminder, the US has been illegally occupying Syria since 2014. But now that regime change has softened things up for us, we're suddenly on friendlier terms. Washington wants to make that official. The New Arab reports that a senior US delegation is set to arrive in Damascus
[00:30] in the coming days to sign an agreement with the Syrian government to formalize the US presence, the military presence, marking a significant shift in US policy. So, this would be retroactive, meaning we'll just pretend it was cool that we were there all along, even though it was not. This is a textooked pivot being framed as a step towards legitimacy but really a way to cement US influence in Syria. Ensuring that the e that we have easy access to strategic territory, trade routes, oil. Remember
[01:03] President Trump during his first term saying we just wanted to keep them from having the oil, keep it for ourselves. So yeah, we got away with it. All good. All good. No accountability, no reckoning, not even a slap on the wrist for the chaos, the displacement, the suffering that the United States has enacted on Syria since uh well, if we're really going to it's not just the Obama years. We got to rewind the clock all the way to the 1949 CIA backed coup. If you like us are lifelong learners, then this is a great place to go to school
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[02:06] life. Uh so again, these are self-paced and you can start whenever and wherever. So start your free course today. Head on over to hillsdale.edu/redacted to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. One more time, that's hillsdale.edu/redacted. Former CIA agent and whistleblower John Kuryaku joins us to discuss because he has been talking about this for a long time. So um up top, all good. Yeah. Way to go, John. We got away with it. Yeah.
[02:37] Does this feel good? Should we take a victory lap? Who else should we invade? Winning. I know, right? We're going to have We're going to have 2,000 troops freed up. We can now invade pretty much anybody we want. Uh, I will say a couple of things have surprised me about this. Uh, first of all, have you seen it anywhere in the American media? Cuz I haven't, and I look for it. It was the Turks who leaked this story 5 days ago with no following statement uh from the
[03:08] Pentagon. So the Turks are the ones that are saying, "Hey, you know, the Americans are engaged in uh discussions with the new Syrian government. Those discussions are taking place in Ankura. And what it looks like is going to happen is that the US is going to withdraw except for one small base which we may keep just one person on. One person just to say that there is a US presence in Syria which is nuts to me. But the bottom line is what what you
[03:39] just said. Right. That's what I'm going to say. Sign me up for that job. Oh, no problems protecting yourself when you're the only American in an isolated base in southeastern Syria. So, when you have been murdering civilians from that base for a decade, you are exactly right. You're exactly right. I I was having a conversation with a friend earlier today about the illegality of um sending combat troops overseas without approval from Congress. And you know, when you
[04:09] think about it, this is an impeachable offense that has been committed by every single president since Harry Truman. Every single president. The last time the US Congress declared war was on December the 8th, 1941, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But the Constitution is very clear. If we are going to engage in war, it has to be after a vote uh in Congress. and we just don't bother. You know, Congress has
[04:40] attempted half measures over the years. Um, you know, they'll they'll do authorizations for use of force. Those are just resolutions. They don't have the the impact of law. Um, they they just pretend that the president is is not sending troops or they talk about approving uh on a on a budgetary basis, an appropriations basis, enough to feed and clothe and arm the troops. But that's not the same as a declaration of war. So now we're going to withdraw these combat troops uh from Syria. They
[05:12] should never have been there in the first place. But are we bringing them home? Remember, this hasn't been reported by the US government. It's the Turks telling us what the Americans are doing. Are we going to send them to Somalia or to the Sahel where we already have other combat troops or are they actually coming home? We don't know. Well, what we've been seeing is that Israel is starting to step up attacks on Syria. So maybe we want to get the heck out of there. Is there an angle there and sort of let them have at it? There very well could be. The conventional
[05:44] wisdom was that the Israelis and the Turks were the big winners in the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Everybody agreed that that was the case. They were the big winners. And you remember in the in the immediate couple of days after Assad's overthrow, the Israelis went in, they pushed in past Golan um just a couple of miles. And everybody said, "Oh, well, you know, they should they shouldn't have done that, but we understand that the Israelis probably want to have a little bit of a buffer
[06:14] zone." Well, listen, there's nothing in international law that says you can have a buffer zone. Number one. Number two, the Israelis never said that they were going to stop there and have a buffer zone. Since then, and it's been a couple of months now, they have repeatedly bombed Syrian territory, including inside the city of Damascus, and it looks like that's going to be the Israeli policy now, that nothing is going to change with the Israelis as far as military attacks on Syria. So, it could be, and forgive me if this sounds
[06:46] a little bit conspiratorial, but it could be that the US doesn't see an upside to being in the middle between the Israelis and the new Syrian government. So, it's better just to leave. You know, Matt Gates, Congressman Matt Gates was on the floor of of Congress before he left Congress pushing to get us out of Syria. He was he was sort of vilified by all those neocons in Washington who wanted to continue this war. We were we were giving him huge
[07:17] rounds of applause. We're an anti-war show. Uh and we can't stand neocons. And so pushing to get them out of of Syria, bring our troops home. Um he was vilified for it. Of course that didn't pass. But the argument they used, John, as you know, was that it it it would undermine the United States of America. It would make the United States of America less secure. That's what they told us. If we brought these forces home, you saw it all over social media, Matt Gates. No, no, this will make us less secure here in the United States.
[07:47] How is that possible? Right. It it just it's an incredible faulty analysis to me. First of all, if you want to occupy a country like Syria, and I don't know why you would want to occupy a country like Syria, you're going to need four maybe 500,000 troops, not 2,000 troops. The reason why we sent uh 2,000 troops during the Obama administration was very was very simply to counter the Russian presence. We
[08:19] didn't have any reason to be in Syria other than to stick our thumb in the eye of the the Russians. Now, the Russians, of course, had been invited into Syria by the Syrian government. Well, now the Russians are gone, and there's no reason to be in Syria anymore. And so, I think that's the calculation that has been made. It this had nothing to do with with violence. It had nothing to do with war. It had nothing to do with terrorism. ISIS is gone from Syria. It's been gone for a long time. This had to do with saving face,
[08:50] right? Steven Gowen's great book called Washington's long war on Syria goes back to Bashar al-Assad's father and how the United States hated him because he was an Arab nationalist meaning he thought that Arabs should build things for themselves. They should because Syria doesn't have a ton of oil. They have oil but not a ton considering when you compare it to their neighbors. But they thought that Arab money should be used for Arab prosperity and we could not have that. And that's why we've always set our sights on imploding Syria. And
[09:23] what do you think of that? I think that is exactly right. You know, we we danced with with um Hafz al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad's father a couple of times, and things were especially good during the uh the Gulf War in 1990 911 because the George HW Bush administration convinced the Syrians to to send a couple of hundred troops to uh to uh Kuwait to help liberate the country. So, it was all good. But you're right, Arab nationalism has always frightened the United States and it's always frightened
[09:55] the Gulf Arabs because they're royalists. They're they're all run by royal families. And so this idea that a country like Syria could maybe join with a country like Egypt, which they did. They changed the name briefly to the United Arab Republic. uh it was a they they merged as as one country that just panicked the west because they were non-aligned and in Washington if you're non-aligned that used to mean ah you're
[10:26] really secretly with the Soviets and it panicked the Saudis and the Kuwaitis the Bahrainis at all because they were anti-royalist well now here we are all these years later and the Saudis are finally willing to establish diplomatic relations with Syria. Why? Because the Assads are gone and there is a former leader of ISIS and al-Qaeda now running the country. That if we tick off the scariest ones, right,
[10:57] there was Gaddafi, there was Saddam Hussein, and there were the Assads. We got them. Those were people who wanted prosperity for their own nations, and we thwarted that. So Clinton, as Hillary Clinton said, we came, we saw, we killed Gaddafi. Yeah. So the neocons are high-fiving themselves over this, and the rest of us can just feel absolutely horrid in our stomach for what we did to those civilians. That's how I feel about it. I want to puke. John, what I got to ask you. We had Syrian journalist,
[11:27] friend of the show, Kavor Almasian, on the show, you know, many, many times. But but Kavor told us in the after the fall of Assad and the you know the takeover by Golani and and all of this and this basically CIA backed coup that led to this whole thing. Um I said you know do you think Syria will exist any longer? And he said I I'm sad to say I don't think Syria will exist anymore. You know the Turks to the north, you have Israel. Do you think what does the future of Syria look like to you? I think Syria will uh continue to ex
[11:59] exist, but perhaps not looking exactly the way it has always looked. Uh the Turks are there to stay. They're going to be there forever. They talk about a buffer zone. They talk about wanting to work with the the Syrian Kurds. They can't work with the Syrian Kurds. They don't they don't they're not able to work with any Kurds. Turkish Kurds, Iraqi Kurds, Iranian Kurds, Syrian Kurds. Makes makes no difference. the the Turks hate the Kurds, so they're going to keep this buffer zone. Uh the
[12:31] Israelis apparently intend to remain uh as occupiers even if it's not a lot of territory. The Israelis are not going to leave Syria. And there still are areas of Syria where there are armed uh bands of uh Muslim fundamentalists. And so, you know, God forbid that the that the Iraqis decide they need a buffer zone, for example, then what do we do? And then Lebanon is falling apart. What does it mean for the border
[13:03] between Lebanon and Syria? So, I think Syria will continue to exist, but maybe not exactly the way it looks today. Our guest is John Kiryaku, someone who knows this area better than just about anyone. Always appreciate your insights, John, for keeping it real. My pleasure. We have a comment right now that says, "Who cares about Syria?" I mean, okay, we we kill people there, John. Why should we care about Syria? Yeah, because Syria is a key to stability in the greater Middle East. You know, it's
[13:33] it's bad for everybody when governments are not viable. You mentioned Syria's oil. They have just a little bit of oil, enough for themselves, not really enough to export. But it's in America's interest for the Syrians to have a self- sustaining economy, for example, because when people are able to make a living, they don't turn to religion uh as a as an opiate. They don't uh they're they're not easily radicalized. They don't seek
[14:03] to to leave the country and go overseas where they could be radicalized. We need for the Syrians to to be able to build an economy that keeps Syrians in Syria and everybody happy. Right. Thank you. Right. And when you had Assad there able to control these more fundamentalist sects and be able to keep, you know, so that you didn't have that spilling over. Um Yeah. I mean then, you know, you saw over the past 24 actually the past six hours, John, we see head of al-Qaeda calling for the assassination of President Trump. That's right. Um I mean, you know, before we
[14:35] get you out of here, your comments on that, saying that we need to these, I guess, Muslim radicals need to rise up and now assassinate President Trump. This is coming from the head of al-Qaeda. That was a very alarming report when it uh when it first came out. But you have to look at what al-Qaeda is right now. The al-Qaeda that he represents is is the core al-Qaeda. It has I'm going to go out on a limb and say a few dozen core members. They have no access to President Trump. I think the bigger
[15:07] threat to US interests is al-Qaeda in the Sahel in Africa places like Moretania, Mali, Nijir, Bkina Faso, uh even parts of Ghana and Nigeria. It's it's exceedingly dangerous there now and a lot of those governments are in danger of falling. That could draw the United States in. It's not a direct threat to President Trump. Um, but in terms of a threat to President Trump, I think really that's all talk.
[15:37] Someone in the chat says, "Why is that, Clayton? Because we effed around over there for the last hundred years. Cut the [ __ ] We don't belong there." Hallelujah. Yeah. They sell us lies. Like they always Yeah. They sell us lies through Sirius. So, we need to constantly have this exercise. And we see you. We don't believe this [ __ ] That's We don't We don't believe it. That's right. Yeah. All right. Thank you for this, John Keryaku. Always a pleasure to have you. Thanks, John. Good to see you both.