Western Standard - February 27, 2023


EXCLUSIVE： Europe furious over Biden blowing up Nord Stream


Episode Stats

Length

40 minutes

Words per Minute

174.7811

Word Count

7,053

Sentence Count

457

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

27


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Seymour Hersh has been a journalist for over 50 years, and has been in Washington, D.C. writing anonymously about sources for over 40 years. He has been with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. And now, he s working anonymously for the Western Standard, reporting on the sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea by the U.S. government.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to another edition of Ottawa Expose. We're not exposing Ottawa today, we're exposing
00:00:15.160 Washington. My name is David Creighton, I'm the Senior Parliamentary Columnist for the
00:00:19.900 Western Standard. I'm joined today by the legendary Seymour Hersh, who really needs
00:00:26.120 no introduction if you've been following journalism and investigative reporting for the
00:00:30.840 last 40 to 50 years. Mr. Hirsch recently wrote an article for Substack that was very explosive
00:00:38.880 and it described an explosion in the Baltic Sea and Mr. Hirsch says he has gained intelligence
00:00:47.860 that says the United States blew up the Nord Stream pipelines.
00:00:54.220 Now, Seymour, I'm not going to imagine in any way where that intelligence
00:01:01.100 and where that information came from.
00:01:02.940 You received it.
00:01:04.320 But I'd like to know before you talk to the individual or individuals
00:01:08.680 who pass this information on, did you suspect from the beginning
00:01:13.120 that the sabotage operation were obviously a U.S. operation?
00:01:19.480 John Haskell- You know, we always have a lot
00:01:22.860 of suspicions about everything, you know, and it's hard to say.
00:01:28.960 Did I brood about it?
00:01:30.260 No, I was probably thinking of other things.
00:01:32.420 But I will say that I'm, I've been around for, what, 50,
00:01:38.460 my God, 300 years as a journalist in Washington writing anonymously
00:01:42.360 about sources and writing for the New York Times
00:01:44.520 and the New Yorker and other places like that,
00:01:46.860 London Review of Books.
00:01:48.440 And so, over the years, I get to know a lot of people.
00:01:52.460 And they become friends too, you know, people on the other side,
00:01:57.880 you know, it's in the intelligence community.
00:02:01.480 And so, last fall, after the, it was, if you remember,
00:02:06.680 the pipeline were blown up on the 26th of September.
00:02:10.420 And then it just, I don't think I, I was doing,
00:02:18.140 I've been doing something else involving a lot of talk
00:02:20.220 to people, like historical stuff about Vietnam,
00:02:23.540 because I did a lot of stuff on Vietnam,
00:02:27.020 and from the massacre of My Lai back in 69,
00:02:30.340 and Vietnam's always been sort of haunting me, because, you know,
00:02:34.720 we say things like, yes, 58,000 American boys died,
00:02:38.300 But, you know, the other side lost two,
00:02:40.000 between two and three million,
00:02:41.520 as if it doesn't make much difference.
00:02:43.340 So, but I just happened to ask somebody about it,
00:02:46.300 and I began to learn a lot about it, and from people involved,
00:02:54.020 and I guess you could say people who maybe, all I can say is,
00:02:58.720 I said people have, I think what I wrote was people had knowledge
00:03:02.180 of the operation, and that's about all I can say.
00:03:05.080 because I know when you're talking
00:03:06.880 about the United States president blowing up pipelines
00:03:09.960 that belong to an ally, at that point,
00:03:11.960 it was called Nord Stream 2.
00:03:14.020 There were two major pipelines from Germany direct,
00:03:17.900 from Russia directly into Germany.
00:03:20.000 The first was called Nord Stream 1.
00:03:21.500 It was, got going in 2011.
00:03:25.120 And it just made, it provided cheap methane gas to Germany,
00:03:31.980 which is a major industrial nation, just built up.
00:03:37.720 It's, for example, it's got a company called BASF,
00:03:40.580 which is the largest chemical company in the world.
00:03:43.440 And it has the automobile dealers we know about,
00:03:45.740 the companies, you know, Mercedes, et cetera.
00:03:50.000 And so it's just, and Europe thrived on this gas.
00:03:54.140 And of course, we always saw, going back to the Kennedy days,
00:03:57.760 We saw the richness of Russia was in its oil and gas,
00:04:02.960 and we always worried about Russia selling stuff directly
00:04:05.760 to the middle, to Western Europe.
00:04:08.240 That was always, we always thought Russia would, 1.00
00:04:10.640 the phrase that Biden's people have used is weaponizing the gas.
00:04:16.300 So that was a longstanding issue.
00:04:17.740 So then, as if Nord Stream 1 isn't bad enough,
00:04:22.000 a second pipeline was built.
00:04:24.260 These are financed, Gazprom, I know the details very much
00:04:29.160 on the first one, owned 51%, had stockholders that owned 51%.
00:04:34.100 It was the Russian company very controlled
00:04:37.200 by oligarchs close to Putin.
00:04:39.140 And obviously, in one year, $45 billion flowed
00:04:42.500 in from this pipeline into the treasury of Russia.
00:04:46.800 So you can imagine how much money that was in there.
00:04:49.600 The other 49% was owned by four companies in Europe
00:04:53.680 who got access to the gas, and they were selling it downstream,
00:04:57.900 which is down the local gas distributors for local homes all
00:05:00.940 over Western Europe and Germany, of course.
00:05:04.300 So everybody was happy.
00:05:05.600 Everybody was warm and comfortable with pipeline one.
00:05:08.860 Pipeline two came at an awkward time for us
00:05:12.720 because we were fighting a war in Ukraine.
00:05:15.360 And we didn't want, at the wish of the United States,
00:05:21.580 I'm not, I shouldn't say wish.
00:05:23.860 All I know is that the German Chancellor a year ago,
00:05:27.440 before that pipeline was completed, Nord Stream 2 was,
00:05:30.400 these are billion-dollar projects, was completed in 20,
00:05:33.340 late 20, early 21.
00:05:34.640 He sanctioned, he stopped it.
00:05:36.200 It's full of gas and he stopped it.
00:05:38.040 Obviously a deference to the wishes of President Biden.
00:05:43.180 Biden has made a stand in the Ukraine against Russia, period.
00:05:48.680 He's made that stand, that's been his issue.
00:05:51.260 He's also made a stand, making a stand against China.
00:05:54.480 I'm not sure where he's going with all of this stuff.
00:05:57.180 But I will tell you that I did work at the New York Times
00:06:00.180 for seven, eight years, and I know how it works.
00:06:03.280 And I can tell you that I don't understand the reporting
00:06:06.040 from the Times and the Washington Post and my old magazine,
00:06:10.380 The New Yorker, because they're presenting a much rosier picture
00:06:13.880 of what's going to happen than I get from my friends.
00:06:15.780 I haven't written about it, but I think we're going to end
00:06:18.660 up in real trouble in Ukraine.
00:06:20.540 And certainly, over the last year, Germany, you know,
00:06:26.100 which is after, you know, they spent a decade destroying,
00:06:29.780 you know, murder, you know, bombing, murdering, 0.64
00:06:31.900 raping Western Europe, they've, to get back 0.97
00:06:35.740 into the good graces, they've sort of very,
00:06:38.300 not much interested in being an army.
00:06:41.120 And so they were being pushed to spend, to invest great,
00:06:44.160 hundreds of millions of dollars, US dollars,
00:06:47.460 in this aid for Ukraine.
00:06:49.580 And of course, they didn't have the same passions,
00:06:55.400 the same with Western Europe, and even some elements
00:06:58.040 in NATO didn't have the same passion for supporting Ukraine
00:07:01.580 as much as we have.
00:07:02.640 We've probably spent $100 billion so far.
00:07:05.880 We've added it all up.
00:07:07.360 Some of this money to come yet, but incredible amounts
00:07:10.340 of money to support Ukraine.
00:07:12.920 And I think by late fall last year,
00:07:15.780 when the pipelines were blown up.
00:07:18.220 And what I did know is that at very best the information going
00:07:22.020 to President Biden, the intelligence that was available,
00:07:25.860 and I'm not sure who read what, was at the best a standoff,
00:07:32.020 a neutral standoff through the next six, eight months.
00:07:35.460 And now it's pretty clear that Russia is not going
00:07:38.540 to lose this war despite what you read in the papers.
00:07:41.280 You know, they're going to defeat Ukraine.
00:07:44.300 And even with all our money and all our arms.
00:07:46.400 And the question is, what do we do if that gets close?
00:07:48.400 Are we going to escalate some more?
00:07:50.200 That was a question.
00:07:51.200 That was a question.
00:07:52.400 Go ahead.
00:07:53.700 David Rubinstein That's exactly the problem.
00:07:56.200 I mean, I think the United States and NATO are fighting not only
00:07:59.600 a losing battle, but one that could potentially lead
00:08:02.500 to a nuclear confrontation.
00:08:04.900 And but if the United States intentionally blew up a pipeline,
00:08:11.000 Is that a declaration of war on Germany, on NATO, on Russia?
00:08:16.440 David Plylariou Well, you got the real problem with the issue.
00:08:19.400 As you know, the White House has emphatically denied this
00:08:22.180 and will never admit it because of just what you asked.
00:08:25.720 I don't know if it's, you know, let's put it this way.
00:08:30.500 It's not only a bombshell for the pipeline,
00:08:32.720 it's a bombshell for Western Europe
00:08:34.780 because in late September is close to October, November,
00:08:40.440 And I think, I don't know what's in Biden's thinking,
00:08:44.320 but the only rational guess or estimate you could have is
00:08:50.440 that Western, you know, the war looks
00:08:53.180 like it's going to get stalemated.
00:08:54.680 It's late September.
00:08:57.000 Winter's coming.
00:08:58.300 The pipeline's been sanctioned by Germany.
00:09:01.340 The first pipeline, Nord Stream 1, was stopped by Putin.
00:09:04.940 He cut it off himself about a year earlier in opposition
00:09:09.460 to the rhetoric that was going on.
00:09:12.220 But the second one was going to be the only means
00:09:17.720 of keeping Europe, Germany and Europe warm and with gas,
00:09:21.900 you know, with low-cost gas and electricity.
00:09:26.560 Gas drives the turbines that produce the electricity in Europe.
00:09:30.220 And don't forget, Europe has no natural resources.
00:09:32.760 So there's, Biden had to worry about the Germans wavering
00:09:38.600 because they're traditionally since the end of World War II,
00:09:41.980 Germany has been very cautious, you know, very cautious
00:09:44.880 about being a military country given its relationship with Europe.
00:09:48.460 I mean, they bombed and raped and killed in Europe for a decade. 0.61
00:09:51.600 And to get in, even to get into NATO, what they did took a lot
00:09:54.460 of the famous phrase was when Willy Brandt,
00:09:57.760 some of your older people would know that when he was their chancellor,
00:10:00.360 it was Ospolitik.
00:10:01.660 Ospolitik meant we're going to be good neighbors.
00:10:04.060 We're going to show you.
00:10:05.200 We're going to be an industrial gold mine.
00:10:06.540 We're going to trade with you.
00:10:07.840 We're going to make things cheaper for you.
00:10:09.140 We're going to get cheap gas for all of you.
00:10:11.900 That was us politics.
00:10:13.400 Anyway, so what happens is you have to say to yourself,
00:10:16.000 German, the German people, and I know this from calls
00:10:19.640 from the Bundestag, I don't do any political talk.
00:10:21.480 I don't talk to anybody in politics.
00:10:22.740 Even in the last 50 years, I'd never testify,
00:10:25.000 even in my own Congress.
00:10:26.340 I'll see congressmen and I'll talk to them privately,
00:10:28.340 but I don't test, I'm not a public figure
00:10:29.900 when it comes to that stuff.
00:10:31.480 And so the Germans, I'm getting a lot of calls from people
00:10:33.900 in Germany and other countries.
00:10:36.200 Some places, the price of heating is five times more.
00:10:40.080 Some places, even more.
00:10:41.640 It's going up like crazy.
00:10:42.900 And in summer, the electrical power that's used
00:10:47.440 to generate air conditioning often comes
00:10:49.800 to the turbines run by gas.
00:10:52.860 So, I mean, we're looking at a real serious problem.
00:10:55.560 Germany and Western Europe's now discovered 0.53
00:10:58.540 that when there's a push, a shove, and crisis,
00:11:01.700 Joe Biden would throw him to the wind and continue to support
00:11:08.840 and cut off their chances of, cut off the chances of Russia 0.95
00:11:13.300 weaponizing its gas to, you know, to tell Europe don't support.
00:11:17.740 And by doing that, he just blew it up so they couldn't waver.
00:11:21.700 He made an amazing statement, but he didn't trust them enough not to waver.
00:11:26.220 And if they got the gas, they would waver, they would be pro-Russian. 0.90
00:11:30.840 It's very primitive thinking, I think, and that's what he did.
00:11:34.160 And he gave the order, and there were Americans
00:11:36.300 who did the bombing, I've written about that.
00:11:38.160 It's not just a story, if you read the story, it's a long story
00:11:42.220 and it's full of specifics, a lot of specifics we don't have
00:11:45.000 to get into, but clearly either I've got a great imagination
00:11:48.900 or somebody's telling me stuff, one of those two.
00:11:51.820 The White House and my old newspaper,
00:11:53.740 the New York Times, obviously sees this as my imagination
00:11:57.080 or that I'm dealing with a source that's a ghost,
00:11:59.020 I'm not sure what they think.
00:12:00.720 But they've called your story fiction,
00:12:03.360 is what their official response was.
00:12:05.180 David Plylarioui Oh, the White House.
00:12:06.480 David Plylarioui But yeah, the White House.
00:12:07.480 But how can they possibly even say that when we have Joe Biden
00:12:12.620 saying he's going to take this pipeline out?
00:12:14.980 And it just seems like too much of a convenience.
00:12:17.380 David Plylarioui He said it in February before these guys
00:12:20.220 in Norway even had much going.
00:12:23.460 But I'll tell you what, if I were a reporter in Washington,
00:12:27.360 which I was, here's what he hasn't done.
00:12:32.200 He's complained bitterly about me through AIDS.
00:12:34.820 Nobody, no senior officials spoken out,
00:12:37.900 the press people spoken out, the same for the CIA.
00:12:40.700 I didn't even ask the CIA because I assume if you ask
00:12:43.000 the White House it's the same, I got a heated denial
00:12:45.360 from an aide, somebody in the press office.
00:12:48.320 And so the President has a very special power.
00:12:51.800 He can task, that's the internal word,
00:12:54.420 He can test the American community to do what he wants.
00:12:58.240 There's something called the Office of National Intelligence,
00:13:00.240 which is through legislation in the last decade or so,
00:13:04.460 that office has become the senior, the boss of all intelligence.
00:13:08.800 And that office has a director of intelligence
00:13:11.220 who has tremendous control over assets.
00:13:13.760 He can get, he can pull everything from the NSA,
00:13:17.300 other agencies, et cetera.
00:13:18.920 So all you have to do if you're the White House
00:13:20.420 and you want to prove that it's not so,
00:13:21.920 task him to give me a paper on it, you know, in late September.
00:13:25.480 Or you can test the, there's an intelligence director
00:13:29.360 in the CIA called the DI, Director of Intelligence,
00:13:33.460 that produces a lot of great reports.
00:13:35.480 A lot of very smart people doing a lot of very smart stuff there,
00:13:37.520 believe it or not.
00:13:38.820 And there's also a lot of dumb people doing dumb stuff
00:13:40.820 in the field, but mostly on control or demand of others.
00:13:44.480 Dumb others. 0.58
00:13:46.560 Anyway, have you had any, have you had any pushback
00:13:50.860 from the Vice Administration?
00:13:53.060 David Rubenstein, Let me just finish this thought.
00:13:54.460 David Rubenstein, Yeah, sure.
00:13:55.460 David Rubenstein, You can ask that,
00:13:56.460 and there's a secret group inside the agency
00:13:57.960 that does intelligence for our guys in the field.
00:14:00.760 And for our guys in the field doing something covert,
00:14:02.560 we got to know if somebody stumbled onto them.
00:14:05.100 So we monitor a lot of intelligence agencies around them.
00:14:08.660 He hasn't asked anybody anything.
00:14:10.560 Why hasn't the President asked?
00:14:12.160 If he didn't do it, why doesn't he get a report?
00:14:13.960 And that'll tell him who did it, or give him a good clue.
00:14:16.160 I mean, we're awfully good at that.
00:14:17.960 And I assume other countries are just as good at that.
00:14:20.360 I assume the Russians are, but the Russians aren't speaking.
00:14:23.100 But anyway, so that's another question I would ask,
00:14:25.520 but it's not getting asked.
00:14:26.960 Keep on going, David.
00:14:27.960 I'm sorry, interrupt you.
00:14:29.160 David Rubenstein I'm just curious, have you had any pushback
00:14:31.560 from the Biden administration in terms of phone calls,
00:14:35.260 or have they ransacked your apartment?
00:14:37.260 David Rubenstein Cheney once, when he was,
00:14:41.920 before Cheney became vice president, Cheney's very smart,
00:14:44.220 by the way, he may have walked out from Yale,
00:14:46.500 but he's got a very high IQ and very droll in his own way.
00:14:50.620 He's very, he's got a sense of humor.
00:14:52.540 I get a lot of work against him in a way after he, after he, you know,
00:14:58.260 it is a fact that, you know, that al-Qaeda knocked 0.90
00:15:02.320 down two buildings, 9-11 was al-Qaeda, bin Laden,
00:15:06.640 mostly connected, almost tremendously connected to Saudi Arabia
00:15:11.440 and the security people who do stuff
00:15:13.180 for the Saudis are Pakistanis.
00:15:16.180 but no connection to Iraq because Saddam hated the crazy Muslim 0.96
00:15:22.980 terrorists and no connection to Syria
00:15:25.620 where because Bashar Assad hated the Muslim terrorists.
00:15:30.120 So we decided a year and a half after that that the solution
00:15:33.400 to al Qaeda is to take on Iraq and then we take on Syria.
00:15:38.140 Neither one of which, both of which are led by presidents
00:15:40.480 who are as hostile to Muslim crazies, radicals as we are. 0.55
00:15:45.180 I mean, so there's always a funny question about, you know,
00:15:50.860 why it's, you know, who are we to tell somebody else he can't
00:15:54.720 do what he shouldn't do?
00:15:56.020 I will tell you, this doesn't mean that by, I mean,
00:15:59.160 I can tell you, I have no use for any president, you know,
00:16:02.200 Putin starting a war, the most bloodiest war
00:16:05.360 in Western Europe since World War II.
00:16:08.120 I mean, we had the Balkans and we had stuff with the Chestnets, 1.00
00:16:12.460 But this is really much, you know, he, the fact that he did it,
00:16:16.580 it will be a stain on him the rest of his life.
00:16:19.900 So let's get rid of the notion that there's any idea
00:16:23.140 that there was something virtuous that he did.
00:16:24.740 He didn't have to do what he did.
00:16:26.280 On the other hand, he didn't do it without being pushed.
00:16:29.640 He did it without being pushed.
00:16:31.280 We expanded NATO when we promised not to.
00:16:33.700 And we put missiles in Poland that are eight minutes away, 0.92
00:16:36.900 you know, 80, 800 miles away from Moscow.
00:16:39.500 Very aggressive.
00:16:40.700 who made nuclear overnight.
00:16:42.500 Yeah.
00:16:43.900 Just think what would happen if Russia put missiles
00:16:47.140 in Mexico or Canada, or God forbid, Canada.
00:16:49.940 Or Cuba.
00:16:51.240 Well, I served with NATO in Bosnia in 96.
00:17:00.560 And I thought NATO was always a very credible organization
00:17:05.440 for collective security.
00:17:07.640 Now that just about everybody is a member of NATO,
00:17:11.200 it's like nobody is a member of NATO.
00:17:13.440 And I'm not prepared to go to war for the security of Albania.
00:17:17.960 And I don't think a lot of Americans are either.
00:17:20.900 But do you think the irony of this might be that Joe Biden is going on and on and on,
00:17:24.900 but NATO has never been more united?
00:17:27.360 If the United States blew up Germany's pipeline
00:17:31.020 and it's keeping Europe in deep freeze this winter,
00:17:35.200 Could this not lead to the dissolution of NATO
00:17:38.380 or incredible rivalry?
00:17:40.720 Mark McClellan, M.D.: I will tell you,
00:17:42.360 were you serving the armed forces then in 96?
00:17:45.820 Because I had a dear, my college roommate ended
00:17:49.000 up in the Foreign Service.
00:17:50.580 And in order to get to FS01, you know, when he was a two,
00:17:53.380 he had to do, he had to do NATO as a diplomat.
00:17:57.380 I got to tell you, it's the, at that time they had
00:18:00.680 about 28 members.
00:18:02.060 You know, they started with 19 mostly in Western Europe.
00:18:04.320 And then now you have, you know, Spain, you know, Italy is
00:18:07.220 in there with Montenegro, places like that.
00:18:09.020 I don't know who else is in there.
00:18:10.320 I should take a list.
00:18:11.920 I always make a joke that, you know, one of the, maybe it was one
00:18:14.760 of those countries that did the, you know, landlocked countries
00:18:17.100 that did the mining, blew it up, you know.
00:18:18.640 But anyway, NATO was, they celebrate the annual holidays
00:18:25.400 of all the countries, so which means every 30,
00:18:28.600 every other weekend, there's a reason not to go to work,
00:18:31.260 you know, some countries got their national weekend.
00:18:33.860 And anyway, it's just, I think things are heating up in Germany.
00:18:42.920 I know that.
00:18:43.960 Very much anger about, they, clearly, Western Union, 0.82
00:18:48.560 we've always had their back.
00:18:50.820 America's always had their back after World War II.
00:18:53.580 And one of the good things that came out of what we did
00:18:55.700 was rebuilding Europe and making sure the countries
00:18:58.740 were plural societies.
00:19:01.300 I mean, the CIA in some places where it could.
00:19:03.860 Our CIA, for example, in Italy, we threw in with the Mafia 0.91
00:19:07.200 because it was so powerful, and the Christian Democrats
00:19:09.380 were so corrupt, rather than elect a guy leading
00:19:13.460 to the left, you know, in 46.
00:19:15.160 We did that too, and we did the same in Greece.
00:19:17.660 But in Europe, it was pretty much, it evolved
00:19:20.880 into the kind of, you know, great places to live
00:19:24.060 and live and work, you know.
00:19:26.300 And so, you're asking the right question.
00:19:29.920 You know, one person I know well who knows that part
00:19:33.220 of the world very well, a military officer,
00:19:35.820 but in intelligence, said to me, well, the question now is,
00:19:39.420 who's going to be the first country to leave NATO, you know?
00:19:43.480 I mean, I'm serious, because he started something,
00:19:46.680 Joe Biden, that he didn't understand, and that's largely
00:19:50.320 because he's surrounded by these, you know,
00:19:54.220 I call them Lincoln, Blinken, and Nod, Tony, Anthony Blinken,
00:20:00.020 and the Secretary of State, and Jake Sullivan,
00:20:03.160 who ran this little White House operation I was talking
00:20:05.600 about when they wanted to have options on what to do.
00:20:08.900 He was the guy to set up the stuff in a way.
00:20:13.140 And you, what's the name, Victoria Newland,
00:20:18.480 who's the undersecretary, whose husband was one
00:20:21.600 of the leading neocons that pushed in after 9-11
00:20:24.580 to go to Iraq, and so Kagan.
00:20:30.020 And, I mean, it's just, I'm a journalist, but I'm also a citizen.
00:20:37.560 And I think there's something, like you do, there's something really wrong
00:20:42.620 with what we're doing in Ukraine to the point where the President
00:20:47.320 of the United States is willing to throw Germany 0.92
00:20:49.780 and Western Union to the wind.
00:20:52.040 David Plylarozeau Yeah.
00:20:53.340 David Plylarozeau He's afraid they wouldn't support him more
00:20:55.740 in Ukraine for the gas, so he knocks off the gas.
00:21:00.500 That's what he did, and that's exactly what happened.
00:21:02.880 And by the way, the pipeline was full of gas, 750 miles full
00:21:08.000 of methane gas, that's why it was such a big bubble.
00:21:10.060 It wasn't pumping, but they had filled it.
00:21:12.040 David Plylarussohn- Yes.
00:21:13.340 David Plylarussohn- Then they sanctioned it,
00:21:14.980 and once they filled it, they couldn't take it out.
00:21:17.540 And so it had been there.
00:21:18.840 Nothing happened to it in a year, but it just didn't,
00:21:22.400 as you say, the implication of the story is so amazing.
00:21:25.340 I don't think the White House is ever going to acknowledge it.
00:21:27.880 How can they?
00:21:29.780 So it's not .
00:21:31.340 David Plylarioui I don't think the Russian Federation
00:21:34.020 would have dissolved the Warsaw Pact if they knew NATO was going
00:21:38.660 to continue to expand and encroach on its own borders.
00:21:41.620 And it's .
00:21:43.260 David Plylarioui I think they've always considered Ukraine,
00:21:46.800 Russia, as a subculture. 0.78
00:21:48.500 And you know, in the 1930s, 31, 32, there were famines.
00:21:51.920 and Stalin let 22 million die for lack of food.
00:21:55.200 He took the rice up north, up to Russia.
00:21:57.620 So they've always treated it as subculture,
00:21:59.300 and it's a huge country, and it cuts them off from Europe.
00:22:02.540 And he's always wanted that blocking group there,
00:22:04.560 but Putin, the leader of Russia, has always had it.
00:22:07.020 And Putin's not a communist anymore.
00:22:08.560 He's a big nationalist, and he believes in the mythology
00:22:12.880 of Russia, you know, and that's a simple way of putting it.
00:22:15.560 But he's not going to let, he's not going to let there are
00:22:21.260 There are certain provinces that border Russia
00:22:22.980 that he's going to keep, the Nets and others.
00:22:25.180 He's going to keep the Crimea. 0.96
00:22:26.960 I'm sure he's willing to deal about other stuff,
00:22:29.080 but right now it's not going to be able to stay.
00:22:32.840 I think six months ago they could have cut a deal maybe
00:22:34.860 with something, give him a year to stay.
00:22:37.340 But he's not going to stay.
00:22:38.900 And the more we talk and the worse we go, and Biden was just
00:22:43.940 in Europe ginning up the Poles and the Hungarians 1.00
00:22:46.720 who don't like Russia anymore.
00:22:48.740 And everybody, look, NATO never wanted Ukraine.
00:22:54.980 They would be buying into that incredible corruption there.
00:22:58.360 It's just incredible.
00:22:59.660 And now we do things like we're giving them the Patriot missile,
00:23:02.360 which takes a year to train.
00:23:04.180 And each missile costs a million dollars.
00:23:06.460 And the M1 Abrams tank, which runs on almost like jet fuel,
00:23:10.920 very expensive high-end fuel.
00:23:13.260 They're all going to be left starving for gas.
00:23:15.920 And it's full of equipment that you have to train these guys
00:23:18.220 on one side. None of these things have anything to do with it. It's going to be a war in which
00:23:23.980 Russian artillery is going to pound the hell out of the Ukrainians. Ukraine is burning
00:23:30.940 shells at 400 times the rate we did in combat. They burned more in a month than we burned when
00:23:37.580 we were in combat, American soldiers, in a week. The difference is, in America, if you want to
00:23:44.460 to build, get more weapons quickly, you have to negotiate
00:23:47.640 with corporations and get, you know, agreements
00:23:50.360 and contracts and lawyers.
00:23:52.460 In Russia, the armaments factory is state-owned.
00:23:56.360 So he's got it going.
00:23:57.760 He's going to have many more missiles.
00:23:59.060 He's not running out of missiles.
00:24:00.360 It's all the talk about begging from North Koreans 1.00
00:24:02.460 or begging from China.
00:24:04.020 He's got the, he's producing missiles out.
00:24:07.920 And so it's just, the end game is very bad.
00:24:11.460 And what are we going to do?
00:24:13.160 it was in Europe last week, the president ginning up, ginning up support for a war that won't win.
00:24:19.320 I don't, so what's the end game? I don't see. Well, you know, I've, I've been, I've been a hawk
00:24:24.440 most of my professional life as a military officer and as a, a small C conservative pundit,
00:24:31.560 but I have never been more disgusted with the cheerleading that's going on amongst journalists
00:24:37.400 in Canada, in the United States, and in Europe pushing us
00:24:43.120 towards this nuclear confrontation.
00:24:46.380 I don't know.
00:24:47.760 I think, believe it or not, despite what you've read,
00:24:53.180 I read what Putin has said.
00:24:55.480 I read the translations.
00:24:57.300 In Sochi, once, years back, he said, you know,
00:25:00.060 if we have to all go to hell, we're going to all go to hell. 0.84
00:25:02.360 But I don't think we're going to hell.
00:25:03.500 If it's a nuclear holocaust, I still think we'll go to God. 0.98
00:25:05.840 He said, but that's, but since then, their doctrine is really plain
00:25:10.700 about no first use.
00:25:12.100 And I don't, I'm serious.
00:25:13.600 It's a really strong doctrine.
00:25:15.540 And so, what that means if it's going to get started,
00:25:20.840 it might not be by him, you know?
00:25:22.900 I don't know what to tell you.
00:25:24.540 It was, I'm sorry.
00:25:26.440 David Plylaroza A. I really think this is like the First World War
00:25:30.980 in that we seem to be sleepwalking towards this inevitable confrontation.
00:25:35.400 And it's not inevitable.
00:25:36.900 We need to start talking peace in Ukraine.
00:25:40.200 And we're stumbling into this potentially
00:25:42.840 catastrophic situation.
00:25:46.000 David Rubenstein, Jr.: Well, as a military guy,
00:25:47.800 then you know you've read about, you know,
00:25:49.960 the dumbest war fought was World War I.
00:25:52.940 You know, the trench warfare would, you know, it's just,
00:25:57.500 it's, every time I start reading about World War I, you know,
00:26:00.960 the literature, the poetry, Sassoon, and the lines.
00:26:05.340 It's just amazing.
00:26:07.840 On the other hand, there should be, in America,
00:26:12.220 what we're missing is a military voice saying what you're saying,
00:26:15.360 a high level one.
00:26:16.660 They're not.
00:26:17.960 I don't, the last, the new chairman, the chairman of the JCS,
00:26:24.340 the last couple have been not much Millie
00:26:26.740 and the guy done before him.
00:26:28.560 The last good chairman was a guy named Norm Dempsey,
00:26:31.600 who was chairman, and he retired in 05 after four years.
00:26:34.960 And here's where the press is strange.
00:26:36.820 We, I'm sorry, I've got to turn off my phone.
00:26:39.280 I just, I thought I'd have done it.
00:26:40.580 It's okay.
00:26:41.880 You know, what I thought I did, but who cares?
00:26:43.540 Phone rings a lot.
00:26:44.860 I'm sure it does.
00:26:46.160 I'll tell you something about Norm Dempsey.
00:26:48.460 He was, went to West Point, majored in English, and was one
00:26:53.540 of the few West Pointers that was allowed to go
00:26:55.360 to graduate school for two years.
00:26:57.260 He went to, I don't, was it Duke or, he went to some competent
00:27:00.580 school and he studied Yeats poetry, Irish poetry,
00:27:03.880 which he was interested in music.
00:27:05.680 Got his master's degree and then became a warrior,
00:27:07.760 became a division commander in combat, made four stars,
00:27:11.320 made the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
00:27:13.580 And so when he retires, there's a retirement ceremony.
00:27:16.720 It's on YouTube or some place.
00:27:18.420 You know, it's had me a couple of them.
00:27:20.040 Last time I looked about me and something his.
00:27:23.280 And this retirement ceremony, instead of giving the bellicose
00:27:27.040 speech there, though this is Obama and everybody's giving,
00:27:32.120 oh la la la, he sang an Irish ballad about it's been a good time,
00:27:36.060 farewell my troops, I'll miss you.
00:27:38.000 And then on cue, I guess, instead of the speech, he looked
00:27:42.840 and nodded and his children, he had three or four children
00:27:49.320 with a lot of grandchildren, they let all the kids come
00:27:51.360 and they all ran and they jumped into his arms.
00:27:54.680 That was his farewell statement.
00:27:57.320 And the next day, this is August 31st, the next day,
00:28:01.760 Instead of going in six corporate boards, as every chairman has
00:28:04.700 for, you know, $3 million and building a house on the bay,
00:28:09.520 you know, by Annapolis, you know, the Chesapeake Bay,
00:28:12.040 there's a lot of beautiful homes there, he went and joined the faculty
00:28:16.420 at Duke as a visiting professor of military ethics
00:28:20.620 and literature or poetry, and nobody picked it up.
00:28:25.360 Nobody reported on it.
00:28:27.000 We don't honor the, we only honor the guys that, you know,
00:28:30.440 do their four years and stumble around and walk in the Raytheon
00:28:34.300 or Bose Allen and make billions.
00:28:36.600 It's so interesting to me how we miss things.
00:28:39.280 You know, you miss them.
00:28:40.580 And so we're in trouble.
00:28:43.340 We're in trouble.
00:28:44.640 We're in real trouble because we don't have the military leadership we want.
00:28:47.580 Those guys are still planning for in case Russia wins, 0.89
00:28:51.680 they're still thinking about what kind of peace
00:28:53.940 of dream we're going to have with Russia. 0.52
00:28:55.640 I'm serious.
00:28:57.040 I know I can't make this up.
00:28:59.000 I'm serious.
00:29:00.400 That's one of the planning groups.
00:29:02.000 I'm sure you have a lot of planning groups for everything.
00:29:03.960 That's pretty comical.
00:29:05.200 I don't know what they smoke over there or what's in the water.
00:29:08.320 Steve Winickman Sweeney Well.
00:29:09.620 Steve Winickman Sweeney They come out and these retired guys
00:29:11.580 that go on TV for CNN and MSNBC and other places.
00:29:15.040 Steve Winickman Sweeney And Fox, yes.
00:29:16.260 Steve Winickman Sweeney Fox.
00:29:17.600 They're out there.
00:29:18.600 They're in some zone that doesn't exist.
00:29:20.360 Steve Winickman Sweeney No, they're all itching
00:29:21.700 for a war with Russia.
00:29:23.000 Steve Winickman Sweeney Of course.
00:29:24.000 Steve Winickman Sweeney Well, yeah, you got it.
00:29:25.300 Steve Winickman Sweeney Yeah.
00:29:26.600 Steve Winickman Sweeney What branch were you in?
00:29:28.100 Air Force.
00:29:29.400 Ron Charles- Oh, yeah, were you raided?
00:29:30.700 Were you up in the air?
00:29:32.000 Were you on the ground?
00:29:33.300 What were you doing?
00:29:34.300 Ron Charles- Well, I was up in the air a lot,
00:29:35.600 but I was a public affairs officer.
00:29:36.600 I was a flak.
00:29:38.000 So I was, I knew the, I knew where the skeletons were buried.
00:29:42.100 Ron Charles- Well, John Kirby is the current flak
00:29:44.600 for the Joint Chiefs.
00:29:45.900 Ron Charles- And I've never seen a more incompetent person
00:29:47.500 in my life.
00:29:48.800 Ron Charles- Well, but actually, he was at, he's not,
00:29:50.800 he's just doing the job.
00:29:52.100 I knew him back when he was at the Pentagon as a spokesperson there.
00:29:55.200 And I was, this is, I did a lot of stuff on CIA operations
00:30:00.520 that were really crazy in places like Iran for the New Yorker.
00:30:04.400 And I was interfacing with him a lot.
00:30:06.320 I always liked him.
00:30:07.540 And I saw him, I talked to him about this long before I published
00:30:13.740 because that's what I do, I just give a heads up.
00:30:16.640 And I was surprised to see John out there doing peddling.
00:30:21.600 And last week he made a statement,
00:30:23.760 same statement they made earlier but that made news and so they got him to do it but they haven't
00:30:29.840 got sullivan to do it or blinken i don't want to i'm maybe i'm going to force them to do it or
00:30:35.600 victoria newland or the president to say anything or the head of the cia and then i don't see those
00:30:40.560 guys talking look they did it they're stuck they did and even if somebody inside admits it they'll
00:30:48.880 say, that's just wrong.
00:30:51.020 Show me a video.
00:30:52.780 You know, they're not going to stop denying it.
00:30:55.880 And what they get away, as you know, they have, you know,
00:31:00.380 much too much authority, I think, much too much briefing
00:31:02.940 of the New York Times and the Washington Post.
00:31:05.240 And so they've managed to cool those papers out, tell them,
00:31:07.440 I'm sure privately say, he's absolutely wrong.
00:31:09.740 He's gone nuts on this and all this stuff that they say.
00:31:12.800 And but, you know, in the long run, you can't stop,
00:31:19.200 can't stop truth from coming and something will happen.
00:31:21.940 Stephen Winick- Something will happen.
00:31:23.640 Stephen Winick- Now, your most recent article I was reading,
00:31:26.880 you have discussed how the Norwegians have historically played a role
00:31:32.060 with assisting the United States in their wars.
00:31:35.620 I find it fascinating that the United States never declared war
00:31:40.040 in Vietnam but yet waged war in Vietnam for 11 years.
00:31:43.800 Are they doing the same thing?
00:31:45.840 Is this like the Gulf of Tomkin resolution?
00:31:48.800 Stephen Winick- The piece I did, it was Wednesday.
00:31:51.280 I did, I mean, I did it because for two reasons.
00:31:54.600 Everybody's denying everything about the story.
00:31:59.100 Norway, why would Norway do it?
00:32:00.640 Norway was a big player in North Vietnam before the war was declared.
00:32:05.520 Norway had, the Norwegians are great seamen.
00:32:08.420 And they have, they, beginning about late 19, in the 1980s,
00:32:13.780 we ran what they call PT boats in World War II.
00:32:16.860 You know, John Kennedy and the PT boat.
00:32:19.180 And by the way, John Kennedy, I read a lot of his letters
00:32:24.260 that he wrote to people when he was overseas.
00:32:26.520 He's a very witty, funny, charming guy.
00:32:29.080 And I just wish he'd stayed out of politics
00:32:33.660 because he wouldn't have had Vietnam.
00:32:35.080 But anyway, it's another story.
00:32:36.860 But there was a lot of, he was, had a lot of, you know,
00:32:39.300 he was, he was apparently quite an attractive man.
00:32:42.620 And so, and so Norway built a super PT boat.
00:32:48.820 They have some funny word for a lot of armaments, fast and good.
00:32:52.820 And they sold a bunch to America.
00:32:54.900 And then they sent a bunch in about 2000, early 2000,
00:32:58.780 in 1964, early on.
00:33:01.040 We were only fighting in the south and we undeclared war.
00:33:04.340 But we were also doing some stuff on the north
00:33:06.280 that they admitted, you know, that they were doing some patrolling
00:33:09.380 and one of our ships was fired on by a PT boat.
00:33:13.400 And that led to Johnson to make the speech that led to the Congress,
00:33:16.960 a speech saying they, we've told North Vietnam to stay out 1.00
00:33:20.640 and they attacked our ships and I have to respond by bombing the North 0.87
00:33:23.960 for the first time, all that stuff.
00:33:25.300 I wrote, that speech was only five minutes.
00:33:27.600 It's in the piece I just wrote Wednesday, I put on Wednesday.
00:33:30.600 Why? Because Norway was deeply involved in the dirty war we were running 0.99
00:33:35.640 for at that time probably for close to a year.
00:33:38.200 It was nine months or six months anyway, for sure.
00:33:41.100 Longer than that probably.
00:33:42.600 And not only were they running operations on the coast
00:33:45.360 of North Vietnam, the Norwegians were involved
00:33:49.240 in manning the boats.
00:33:50.800 They're great sailors and they know how to do stuff.
00:33:53.360 They know how to shoot guns and they're tough.
00:33:54.660 They don't like communists any more than, you know,
00:33:56.520 most people in America don't.
00:33:58.660 And Navy SEALs were involved in doing kinetic operations inside.
00:34:04.260 And they, and I wrote that some even got wounded badly
00:34:07.360 and as a seal can, they're really tough,
00:34:10.200 crawled their way back to a pickup point and they got a rescue
00:34:13.420 and they got the Medal of Honor all in secrecy.
00:34:15.500 All this was being done without anybody in America knowing it
00:34:19.560 with the idea of provoking,
00:34:21.300 convincing North Vietnam to stay out of it. 0.95
00:34:23.560 And North Vietnam just kept on going, sending people down.
00:34:26.780 And so Johnson, they manipulated when one of the,
00:34:31.400 our destroyer in, they thought there was a submarine,
00:34:35.400 a torpedo attack on them.
00:34:37.900 And the commander issued a signal, you know, message report, alert,
00:34:42.100 you know, it's a critic they call it.
00:34:43.800 Probably went right to the White House.
00:34:45.100 I'm under attack.
00:34:46.400 And then he rescinded it 20 minutes later saying no, no,
00:34:49.300 it was just a stoner guy.
00:34:50.900 There was a lot of high waves and they were all rattled
00:34:53.200 and he made a mistake.
00:34:54.800 You know, I can tell you, I'm not shocking anybody,
00:34:57.200 but some guy in the, you know, in the bottom of a,
00:35:00.260 of a destroyer or American cruiser spends a lot
00:35:03.440 of time reading, you know, reading porn.
00:35:05.760 Believe me, having been there.
00:35:09.740 That's a big deal.
00:35:11.040 Anyway, I don't know, but maybe in the public office,
00:35:13.800 but socialism's office, you didn't dare bother.
00:35:15.780 But anyway, that's what you do when you're 22
00:35:18.120 and you're locked up below, you know, nine hours,
00:35:20.460 12 hours a day anyway.
00:35:22.720 But he screwed up.
00:35:24.100 And what McNamara and Johnson did,
00:35:26.500 They ignored the second cable saying it's not true,
00:35:29.060 and they used the first cable as justification
00:35:31.860 for bombing the North.
00:35:33.200 So I wrote that because it's parallel to where we are now.
00:35:36.980 He's committed, I didn't say an act of war.
00:35:39.760 I don't think I wrote that.
00:35:41.060 He's committed a great mistake.
00:35:43.380 He screwed up.
00:35:44.680 He's told the North, he's told rather Germany,
00:35:48.800 it's like an analogy with, he's told Germany and NATO,
00:35:54.140 When push comes to shove, I'll throw you over the wall.
00:35:56.240 You can be cold.
00:35:58.740 I don't care.
00:36:00.040 If you're not giving enough money to Ukraine, screw you.
00:36:02.440 That's what he's done.
00:36:03.740 And he's basically lied when he says he doesn't do the,
00:36:07.640 he's lying now to push us in the war,
00:36:09.840 like Johnson lied to push us in the war.
00:36:11.640 That was the purpose of that piece.
00:36:13.240 And I actually have more to say on that issue,
00:36:15.240 and I'll do it again next week.
00:36:16.940 I'm going to, you know, it doesn't, you know,
00:36:19.840 I don't know what's going to make the major papers
00:36:23.540 and the networks of America begin to wake up
00:36:25.740 that there's something going on here.
00:36:27.440 Anyway, you and I have yapped too long.
00:36:29.140 I've got to go.
00:36:30.440 I haven't had.
00:36:31.740 David Plylariou I know.
00:36:33.140 This has been fascinating because I think what happened
00:36:35.440 with Nord Stream is the historical equivalent
00:36:39.040 of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914.
00:36:43.640 David Plylariou Don't say that.
00:36:45.140 I haven't gone there in my thinking.
00:36:46.840 I just want, I mean, look, guess what?
00:36:51.940 I think you're totally right.
00:36:53.540 But, you know, the good thing is, in the real world,
00:36:56.380 it doesn't matter where you or I think, you know.
00:36:59.940 I watch cable, I stop watching cable television in America,
00:37:02.840 CNN, MSNBC, and all that stuff.
00:37:05.140 I don't like Fox News, even though Tucker Carlson's interesting
00:37:08.800 because he's very, I've known him years ago.
00:37:11.040 He's very smart.
00:37:12.340 I don't, you know, I'm not into the politics,
00:37:14.400 but he figured out right away what's going on with the pipeline.
00:37:19.080 And he wasn't afraid to say it, like on other people.
00:37:21.980 But I will say this, that when I watch cable news,
00:37:25.840 they'll have some serious issue, and then they'll have a panel on.
00:37:29.120 And so, let's say it's a bunch of journalists,
00:37:31.420 something that's going on in the media, and they'll say
00:37:33.280 to three White House chiefs, you know,
00:37:35.680 I don't know why all these reporters go on TV so much.
00:37:37.920 I never did when I was a reporter at the New York Times.
00:37:40.020 Anyway, and they begin to say, so what's the thinking
00:37:42.240 at the White House?
00:37:43.480 And the three panels all begin with the first two words
00:37:45.940 that are the most deadly in the world, I think.
00:37:48.180 So, it doesn't matter what you and I think
00:37:51.660 about whether this is going to be a 1914 review again.
00:37:55.300 But it does matter that we are thinking that way.
00:37:59.520 You know, in other words, yeah, this could be the beginning
00:38:03.460 of not something nice, something very un-nice.
00:38:07.160 Steve Winick- Yeah.
00:38:08.500 Steve Winick- All right, wonderful cheery note.
00:38:09.800 I'm going to go back to whatever I'm doing.
00:38:11.360 What am I doing today?
00:38:12.580 Steve Winick- Okay.
00:38:13.980 Steve Winick- I don't know.
00:38:15.280 Steve Winick- It was a pleasure
00:38:16.280 and an honor to talk to you today.
00:38:17.580 I've been a fan for all of my professional life in your work.
00:38:22.580 And keep it up.
00:38:23.600 Keep it up, my friend.
00:38:25.060 Let me tell you something.
00:38:29.240 It's important for guys like you who care about stuff to do what you do.
00:38:35.900 It just is.
00:38:36.580 And right now, you're a very distinct minority in the media crowd.
00:38:43.300 You're somebody who actually figures out that there's a problem here
00:38:45.880 and wants to do something about it, and I think that's great.
00:38:49.800 That's why I'm here.
00:38:50.720 Goodbye.
00:38:51.040 I'm going to whether I'm going to.
00:38:52.740 Okay.
00:38:53.300 I think I have to go shopping or something, something like that.
00:38:56.200 Okay.
00:38:56.740 You have a good day, and I hope we can speak again.
00:38:59.720 Thank you.
00:39:00.500 Did you get blasted by this last storm or not up there?
00:39:04.440 Yes, but not as bad as you did.
00:39:08.520 Anyway.
00:39:10.060 You don't talk like a next.
00:39:12.120 No, who?
00:39:13.120 None of that.
00:39:13.940 None of that.
00:39:14.480 No.
00:39:14.960 Big vowel.
00:39:15.420 Ron Charles- None of that, no.
00:39:16.720 Ron Charles- Why not?
00:39:18.020 Ron Charles- Probably because I grew up on the west coast
00:39:21.760 of Canada and near Vancouver.
00:39:25.420 Ron Charles- I got to tell you something.
00:39:27.360 My wife and I have gone hiking up there,
00:39:29.640 up towards Whistler, you know, in the summer you can hike
00:39:33.260 up to Glacier Lakes.
00:39:35.380 It's an unbelievable part of the world.
00:39:37.360 You know, I don't know, you guys know, it's just great.
00:39:40.620 I always, one of the great parts,
00:39:41.920 Vancouver is one of the great cities in the world too.
00:39:44.020 Ron Charles- It's gotten too big though.
00:39:45.320 It's gotten too big.
00:39:46.320 It's gotten too big.
00:39:47.320 Best Chinese food, though, you can get.
00:39:49.320 Goodbye.
00:39:50.320 Bye-bye.
00:39:51.320 Canadian Shooting Sports Association.
00:39:53.320 Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.
00:39:58.320 These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations
00:40:04.320 and legislation in Canada.
00:40:06.320 And more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of
00:40:10.320 the wrong people who become a member.
00:40:12.320 It's absolutely worth every penny.
00:40:15.320 You can become a Western Standard member for just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited