YouSaid · the spoken record

Scott Horton

lines on the record: 802
first: 2025-08-24
most recent: 2025-08-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“In Hillary Clinton tried to smear her with Russia Gate, the pathetic diseased dying windbag Robert Windrum from NBC News attempted to smear her as well as he attempted to smear my colleague and editor and friend, Hunter Dorensis, as part of the Russiagate hoax is absolutely ludicrous reporting. Have you ever heard of anything that Robert Windrum ever reported in your life? Can you think of anything? We go, oh, Robert Windrum, he's the guy that did this. No, he will only be known when he dies, which will be soon as a disgrace to humanity and to his profession for his disgusting and despicable eyes against Tulsi Gabbard, against Jill Stein, and against Hunter Dorens. May he burn in hell. So anyway, and his entire NBC News organization too, and that's why they hated her, it's because she told the truth.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first thing was this she absolutely just knew better and was immovable like Stonewall Jackson on this issue. You're not going to be able to convince her these are moderate rebels. Those lies don't work here. So now that put her severely on the outside of the consensus and with authority she actually knew what she was talking about. That was her problem. And that was their problem with her. They couldn't fix that. And then of course even though they loved her, oh man, they groomed her. People forget when she first came in. She's pretty. She's intelligent. She's in the military. She fought in Iraq or, you know, is a quote-unquote combat bet because even though she wasn't pulling triggers there, she was shelled while at Camp Ballad. So she's earned her stripes as an official combat veteran in that sense. And she's a woman and she's a Democrat. And this is everything that they wanted.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who tend to be the more fanatical and the more violent, whereas people who actually know more about it will say, actually, as Muhammad says, you better not do that and that kind of thing, right? And I cite all the studies in Fool's Air, and I have the footnotes in Fool's Air showing that directly and including some of the 9-11 hijackers, including the bulk of the fighters for the Islamic State Caliphate. They're just regular Iraqis who are conscripted in thing fighting for ISIS, but that didn't make them even necessarily that political, much less motivated by simply theology to behave in these ways. You know what I mean? Sure.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it depends on the sect in the region, the region, and everything. But the super majority of them, quite apparently, are quietists. Their job is not to question the civil authority. Their job is to do what civil authority says. That's why they're the civil authority. That's how most people feel about their governments anyway, right? Bin Laden's problem was he was political and he had these political goals for this earthly realm where we exist today. he really was Loretta Napoleone, the great Italian journalist, compared him very much to like a Leninist, where he's trying to overthrow this world and have things the way that he wants it to be in a way that even, again, radical and fundamentalist Muslims usually don't believe in. And usually, in fact, the studies have shown it's amateurs who are actually kind of new at Islam and don't know that much about it.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, crazy tech theory, Salafi, whatever ideology. And especially, I call them bin Ladenites because it ain't just that they're Salafis, because there are innumerable, I don't know, hundreds of thousands or millions even of Salafis and Wahhabis in this world who are quietists. They don't have politics. Their politics are, your king is your king because God made it that way. You're not questioning that, are you? I didn't think so. We used to have that tradition in the West, the divine right of kings and that kind of thing. If you're a good Muslim to a great many Muslim people, never mind their leadership, but I mean people out in the world.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tulsi Gaffer knew who was who, and she knew that Assad's enemies are Al Qaeda in Iraq, in Syria, and you couldn't have tortured her into switching sides in that war, right? That doesn't mean that she's soft on Iran, but it means that she once bin Ladenite's dead, dead, dead, and she's supposed to be siding with them now, and we're all supposed to be encouraging them to overthrow this secular dictator who protects and backs the Christians, the Shiites, the Druze, and even, and somebody argued with me the other day in a YouTube comment somewhere I saw about, because I had said the majority of Sunnis backed him too. I think that that's true. And certainly it was true of the middle class in Aleppo. And it was certainly the fact that the Syrian Arab army was always majority Sunni Arab, serving that secular government just because they were Sunnis didn't mean that they were bin Ladenites.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Medical unit at Balad Air Base north of Baghdad for like a year. And I've never heard her talk about this part of it, but it is clear there's no question it's impossible otherwise. She saw our guys screaming and dying in front of her, right, over and over and over again. Okay, so that's why she has that gray streak in her hair like Nancy from Nightmare on Elm Street. It's because of that. So now the Democrats are saying, forget what you know about the shirts and skins lady. We're on the skin side now. We like Al Qaeda now. Now, Lex, like quite frankly, like every other idiot in Washington, DC apparently could not have told you the difference. Tulsi Gabbard could”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tulsi Gabber never said that Bashar Assad is a good man. She never said he's a hero. She never said America should a lie with him. She never said anything like that. What she said was Assad is less worse than his enemies. America is backing Al Qaeda. Now, if you know anything about Tulsi Gabbert, she has never been, is not and has never been against the war on terrorism. In fact, when she was running for president, she put out statements defining Al Qaeda so broadly that she said hundreds of groups are linked to Al Qaeda in the world and that she's willing to fight them. Okay, she is a over the line to unreason hawk on killing bin Ladenites, okay? But she, and by the way, why, Lex? Because she fought in Iraq War II, not fought, but she was in Iraq War II in a”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Promoted to captain in the Army National Guard, who I believe only left the National Guard to become Director of National Intelligence. American military officer, right? Oh yeah, I'm so sure she's such a traitor. She may even still be in the National Guard. I'm not sure if that works when you're the DNI. But anyway.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And now, Mike Flynn is a Ron Hawk. He hates the Ayatollah and the Shiites and that whole thing is an absolutely pro-Israel Zionist guy, 100%. But his point of view was, well, let's just bomb Tehran. Just because I hate the Shiites doesn't mean I want to back Osama bin Laden's suicide bomber head shopper brigades against their friend in Syria. What the hell is this? It's crazy. Same thing for Tulsi Gabbard, by the way. The most controversial thing about this woman supposedly her entire career somehow she was a toady of Assad is what Barry Weiss told Joe Rogan and he asked her what's a toady and she said I don't know and he said how do you spell it? And she said with a Y and had no idea even to spell the word that she was trying to smear Tulsi Gabbard as some kind of agent of Bashar al Asad. Tulsi Gabbard who at that time was a major later.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're backing the bin Ladenite Caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq is wide open for the taking, and you can go back and check my archives from especially the first half of 2014 where I'm interviewing even the despicable Jonathan Lande and all kinds of anyone that I know who knows anything about the bin Ladenites. I'm interviewing them mostly so I can browbeat them and tell them I on the ball everybody this is what matters right this is the most important crisis that could possibly be going on And we know now that Mike Flynn was the head of the DIA at the time. And he, we know from Seymour Hearst, there's an article called Military to Military in the London Review of Books about how Mike Flynn was heroically insubordinate and was giving secret intelligence to the Germans to give to Assad to use to kill the bin Ladenites, to kill the CIAs terrorists on the ground there. And that's what got him fired from the Dihon.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At antiwar.com, we're freaking out. And I've been saying on my show this whole time, Western Iraq is wide open, Patrick Coburn says Western Iraq is wide open, red alert man, this is the problem here. We're backing these guys. There's nobody seems to think about the next stage of this conflict. I remember even Michael Schuyer said on my show I think the big problem right now is Boko Haram, and I'm like, excuse me.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By June of 2013, Baghdadi splits from Jolani and creates ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Iraq and the Levant, or whatever they called it, in Arabic, the acronym is pronounced Dash D Aish. And so when we say Isis, ISIL, the Islamic State, the Caliphate or Dash, that's all the same thing. That's Al-Qaeda in Iraq went to Syria, consolidated eastern Syria. Now, that's in June of 13. Six months later, they hoist the black flag over Fallujah.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he sent an emissary who had been an original veteran of the Afghan war named Al Suri to come and negotiate between Baghdadi and Jalani. Baghdadi killed the guy and declared a state in eastern Syria. Now at this time Assad has to pull his forces back from the east and consolidate. All the population centers other than Raqqa, all the other big population centers are in the west of the country Hama Ham, Zaleppo, and Damascus. He has to try to protect these areas, and so he ends up being forced to leave eastern Syria basically wide open. So”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The late spring, early summer of 2013, you now have a split between Baghdad, who's now also come to Syria, sorry from your point of view this way, into Syria, and now Baghdadi and Jalani, the leaders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria, split. And it's a fight over control and over really over oil wealth and who controls their gangster spoils or a bunch of terrorists, but also over doctrine too. Baghdadi is more like a Zarkawiite. And Baghdadi is saying, I want my caliphate now. Against the advice of Ayman Al Zawahari, who is now the surviving leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq after bin Laden was killed in May of twenty eleven. Zawahi is the one who said, no, we should fight the far enemy. Don't create a state now because you won't be able to hold on to it. Just keep fighting.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Syria. Now, this goes on for two years, and you have bin Ladenites from all over the place, including Chechens and Chinese Uyghurs and people from all over everywhere, coming to join the Jihad, just like in Iraq War II, Egyptians and Libyans and whoever come to join the thing. And by”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bandark and empty's jails and whatever, but for the most part, like these guys are volunteers. There's not an organized state army on the ground that's like conscripted them and controls them to that degree. So who's out there fighting? The guys were fighting are the ones who don't mind dying. The ones who are absolutely the most committed to this revolution. And we know who they are. They're bin Laden and Zawahari and Zarkawi's guys. Al Qaeda in Iraq in Syria going at that time by the name Jabbat al-Nusra, which I'm told roughly translates from association of assistants or helpers, and that they're Al Qaeda in Iraq in Syria, the same guys that were the vanguard of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq War II are now the vanguard of the Sunni insurgency in Syria. And while there's just one line on a map between them, we're still on the side of the Shiites in Iraq, but we're on the side of the Sunnis.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And bin Ladenite standing within earshot said, What did you just say? Boom, and shot the 13 year old boy right in the face to death. That's one of the moderate rebels. That's the moderate rebels. And what were the moderate rebels the whole time? The ones who were, quote-unquote, moderate the Free Syrian Army, the guys with shorter beards who would come and talk to the Americans who would, their famous pictures of them in tents that say U.S. AID on them. And their job was just receiving the money and the guns and delivering to the bin Ladenites. Just like with the war in Afghanistan in the 80s or something.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're not supporting bin Laden heights, and in fact, the bin Ladenites, if they're not backed by Assad just to make the protesters look bad, then at least they are only benefiting because we just won't give enough support to the moderates. That was our position, but that was not true. From the very beginning it was clear these guys are lunatics, man. There was a boy in twenty early thirteen, a boy had a fruit stand. And one of the bin Ladenites or just some guy said, hey, give me a discount on this orange. And the kids said, 13 year old boy, I believe He said, I'm sorry. I can't give discounts. I wouldn't even give a discount to Muhammad himself.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The libertarian institute who's written these massive long form studies on the origins of the Syria War for the Libertarian Institute and shows how, yes, you would have peaceful protest, but then the bin Ladenites would be there and would snipe cops. Of course, for the direct purpose of provoking a reaction, it's exactly how they started the Kosovo war. They'd assassinate police officers, forcing the military to intervene to radicalize and increase the whole situation. It was the same thing that they were doing there as how they got the whole thing started. And again, it's literally Al-Qaeda in Iraq thus taking the lead at that time. Remember hours ago when we talked about truth, falsity, and our position, while our position was we're supporting moderate.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is our answer to your support for the Dawa. Why does Saudi Arabia in conspiracy with Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, Reza Berdowan, and all these guys? Why are they back in the bin Ladenites in Syria? Because we put the Dawa Party in power in Baghdad. This is their answer to that. So this is, again, the redirection. We empowered the Shiites so much now we got to move to limit them again, mostly because that's what our allies want so badly, especially the Israelis and the Saudis. And so from 2011, we knew this is not a revolution. This is not an uprising. I don't care if there's footage of protesters on TV or even if Bashar al-Sah's forces are shooting them, which they were. I would note, although it's proven by Sharmin al-Narwani and the great journalist William Van Wagenen, whose book on serum I'm going to publish any day now.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jelani, you know as Al-Shara, the self-appointed president of Syria right now. That's Abu Muhammad al-Jalani, lets he join the Jihad because he was inspired by September eleventh. He told Frontline that you damn right he fought and killed Americans in Mosul and Ramadi in Iraq War two. Then he went to Syria to help lead the so called uprising, revolution, civil war? In Syria, no, again, we have from two thousand eleven that Prince Bandar bin Sultan was emptying Saudi jails and sending all the jihadists off to Syria to fight. They were on the record. I have the quotes where they say, Is it Bandar? Bandar says we're sick and tired of the Shiites, and they're going to find out, whatever, I forgot the exact. It's in there. And then the other quote was from a guy named Prince Turkey who said, Dash, that is Isis, that is Al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Agent in his main agent in Iraq was a guy named Abu Muhammad Al Jalani. And then later, you know, his boss was this guy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was apparently the second leader after Zarkawi. Some say that the first leader after Zarkawi was actually made up, that there was no leader, and they just sort of put this persona out there. Well, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sure existed. These guys had all been locked up in Kampbuka together and had, you know, kind of reorganized Al-Qaeda in Iraq. And when America left, they sprung them all loose. They're ready to go. So Baghdadi tells Jolani, go to Syria.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And again, the heroic Patrick Coburn. It meant that all western Iraq was wide open. No man's land, no consolidated political authority anywhere ongoing low level Sunni insurgency led by bin Ladenites, even when the Americans leave by the end of 2011, they still leave a few CIA guys and drones there, and as we joked, on the show in real time, Lex, me and Jason Dits from antiwar.com would joke that we're still doing drone strikes in Iraq after the withdrawal, but we still got Spizer and we're still doing drone strikes. Why? Not that we're killing the bin Ladenites. We're aiming at their heels because we're trying to chase them west into Syria where they're heroes. In Syria, they're the moderate rebels. In Syria, they're just trying to fight for freedom against the forces of evil bought this tyranny. These are bin Laden's guys. These are Zarkawi's guys. It's been.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was a big part of why the Sunnis fought so hard in the first place was because, remember, they're losing control of the national government while all the oil is down in the south near Basra and up in the north near Kirkuk, where it's going to be controlled either by the Shiites or by the Kurds, now by the Shiites. And so what does that mean for the Sunnis? They have some oil, but it's virtually all undeveloped oil and much less of it in the predominantly Sunni areas of the country. So when they lose control of the national government, they lose control over all the spoils, right? And so they get nothing. And so the Shiites idea is by the Shiites, I mean the supreme Islamic council of Abdulaziz al-Hakim, the Dawah party of Nuri al-Maliki and their murderous forces. Their idea, they're just as chauvinistic as the bin Ladenites. Screw you guys, man. You can just burn in the sun. We'll do nothing for you. We got nothing for you. But what do that mean in practice?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They didn't want the whole country. They only wanted Shia Stan. They only wanted the land basically from Baghdad over to Iran and down to Kuwait, down to Najaf. Down to the Saudi border. They didn't so much worry about the Sunni Iraqis of Fallujah and Takrete and Mosul. Let them burn in the sun, man. Screw them. I should have said,”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In creating a caliphate, as long as the American Empire is here to erase it again. So we fight the far enemy, we fight a long term strategy to bog the empire down, bleed him to bankruptcy, force them all the way out, only then can we have our perfect Islamic State we want to create. Sarkawi says, no, I want that now. This was his doctrine They called their group Islamic State of Iraq just about, I forget it was just before he died, I believe it was just after he died, they started calling themselves that. But very clearly, you know, betraying their intentions, if they were to have the ability to take over anything, that's their goal. And they have that level of ambition. Now, it's very important to note that in Iraq War II, when I say America fought that war as a civil war for the Shiite side against the Sunnis,”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In fact, worse, Abu Musab al-Zarkawis, suicide bomber brigades. Remember, we talked about how the local Iraqi Sunnis had turned on Al Qaeda. It wasn't America and the Shiites that defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq. It was the local Iraqi Sunnis that did so, and they're the ones even who turned in, Zarkawi to the Americans to kill. I know the interrogator I interviewed the interrogator who without torture, but by being a nice guy got the information. Tell us where's our Gaoe is, we'll get him. And the guy told him and they got him. This is in the summer of 2006. They killed him. And at that time, Al-Qaeda in Iraq then renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq. And we all got a good chuckle out of it because you guys don't control a single county anywhere in Iraq. There is no state. But at the same time, we said, aha, though, look at what they're talking about. Bin Laden's policy always was. Just keep fighting. There's no point.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is there anything you could do to move it faster? And Obama, on a less funny version of the joke about I could tell you, but I'd have to kill ya, he says. Well, nothing that I can tell you because your classified clearance isn't good enough. In other words, and check my date on this again, was it twelve or eleven, I forget? No, no, this would have been twelve. This is twelve. Yeah, March 12th. And so he's saying, it's already on, Jeffrey. We're doing it, buddy. He's he doing? He's working with Britain and France, Turkey, Israel, Saudi, and Qatar to back Osama bin Laden's suicide bomber brigades”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See if you can control F for classified or clearance. Can we talk about Syria as a strategic issue? Talk about it as a humanitarian issue as well, but it would seem to me that one way to weaken and further isolate Iran is to remove or help remove Iran's only Arab ally Obama absolutely. Okay, this is why we want to weaken Syria is an easier way to weaken Iran. As they continue to talk about here, he's saying that we are intervening there and this is a way to weaken Iran in this way and then Goldberg says”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, just so people understand the headline there is he is telling Jeffrey Goldberg to please tell the Israelis that they can trust me, that you trust me, that I promise that I really, really, really, really, really, really mean it, that if the Ayatollah breaks out for a nuclear bomb, I will go to war. I will not let him get one. Jeffrey, please tell them I'm not lying about this. Okay, that's where that comes from. That's what he's doing there. But now, will they show you the whole thing or you're paywalled here? Maybe if you put it in archive.is, can you copy and paste that and put it in archive.is? Oh, you got to just sign in. So now...”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you type in James Clapper and Slam Dunk in Syria there, let me see if I got this right. The Obama doctrine. That's the article. Okay, not a slam dunk. Okay, I'm glad we clarified this. It's a different article. The article is called As President I Don't Bluff. It's another interview of Obama by Jeffrey Goldberg. And in this article is where Jeffrey Goldberg, well, I'll tell you what. No, no, no. This is just the political. Do the Atlantic, yeah.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did say a positive thing about him, which was he told Barack Obama I'm not going to vouch for this chemical weapons lie here, buddy. No slam dunk. And that was a reference to George Tennett telling George Bush. It's a slam dunk, sir. Ain't no one else want to know what's funny about that? Is that George Tennett said, oh, that's not there? They're throwing me under the bus. I didn't say that a rock's possession of chemical weapons was a slam dunk. What I said was you can convince the American people with this story. That's the slam dunk. In other words, I wasn't lying. I was saying, Mr. President, you'll be able to get away with this lie. That's George Tennett's defense of that statement. Anyway, so Clapper was saying, well, this ain't a slam dunk. I won't stand by it. By the way, as long as we're talking about Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, it may be the same article.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He also is the guy who planned Operation Storm where they cleansed the Kragina and eastern Slavonia in nineteen ninety five of Croatian Serbs, he's also the guy who lied that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He could prove it from the satellite pictures. He saw the guy that lied that Vladimir Putin helped Saddam Hussein move those chemical weapons to Syria is why we can't find them. He's also the guy that lied, that the NSA is not all up in your phone seizing all of your data, which is what motivated the hero Edward Snowden to leak until the truth, and he's also the guy that lied that Donald Trump was a blackmailed suborn agent. Vladimir Putin who helped to usurp Hillary Clinton's rightful throne in a coup d'etat and take over this country. And of course he's a paid analyst at CNN. And if Donald Trump doesn't give him life in prison, I'm going to really regret it.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Peshar al Assad was behind the gas attack. And Dempsey, who was then the chairman, Admiral General or Admiral Dempsey, who was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also gave a public statement who said, I don't know why we have to do this right now. And so at that point, his own staff was telling him, Mr. President, like, hey, if anybody asks me, I'm going to tell them that I told you that I can't even prove that this is true.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's like that. They're like, come on, everybody, we're going to Sarah running drunk down the street, and then they look, and nobody else is coming with them. It's just the Israel lobby. It's just as plain as they. Whose interest is this in? Nobody else cares. Nobody else wants to do this. Nobody else believes the lies that, oh, the day that the chemical weapons inspectors arrive, Assad gassed a bunch of people, huh? Give me a break, dude. This whole thing is so stupid. And then, so they couldn't do it. The Israel lobby basically failed. Then importantly, this is the one good thing I'll ever say in my life about James Clapper. And by the way, this was a secret, they didn't tell us this. We only found this out later from Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, Commissar Goldberg, the former prison guard and ruthless abuser of Palestinian captives. He wrote in the Atlantic that James Clapper told Barack Obama, it's not a slam dunk.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is August of 13. And at this point, Barack Obama reaches out to APAC in the Israel lobby and asks them to please do everything you can to push this. Now, I have to say, I don't know what was going on there, but I actually thought that he was being kind of sarcastic there. So at that point, there was nobody pushing for war with Syria except the Israel lobby. And Obama seemed to be saying, hey guys, if you want this, you need to really stick your neck out for it. But the thing is they stuck their neck out. It's almost like member in that Will Farrow movie where he goes to college and he's running naked down the street and he thinks everybody's behind him, but he's just wasted old school.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But whatever. I don't know how to measure that. But at that time, they were extremely influential. And they led the charge. We do not want to bite this war. And you might remember this, Lex. You had army soldiers and marines and navy sailors would be holding up pieces of paper in still shots and in short video clips that said, I didn't join the Marines to fight a civil war for Al-Qaeda in Syria. Remember that? And those were going viral as a bunch of them.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Attack of August 2013 in Ghouta, which the war party tried to claim that Assad did it in order to launch a war there, and they were trying to get us to do it. At that time, first of all, Barack Obama is the commander in chief at this point. It's not the same as George W. Bush. And, you know, escalating the Afghan war that was already going on, and we have to win it, and that's the consensus or whatever. That's kind of one thing. But Obama wants to start a new war in Syria now. The American right said, I don't think so. And in fact, on this point, all hail Stephen Bannon, because it was Bannon and Breitbart that led the campaign that at that time Breitbart was an”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why? Because Israel's foreign policy interests not those of the United States of America. Now, what's the true history of that war? They called it an uprising. They called it a revolution. We're skipping Libya here, but they supported the bin Ladenites in Libya. Then this was Hillary Clinton's bank shot to take the Libyan Islamic fighting group and Ansar al-Sharia, the same guys that did the Benghazi attack of September 11, 2012, and send them on to Syria for the next jihad. Now, in Libya, Gaddafi wasn't a Shiite and this wasn't about that, although the Israelis did hate him and want him gone. But in Syria, it was all about this redirection policy and continuing the redirection policy of trying to weaken Assad as essentially a consolation prize after America screwed up so bad by putting the Shiites in power in Baghdad. And so this is why we have to do this. And there was a whole chorus around that time. And if you remember the first major fake Serenity”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They freaked out and they attacked Julian Assange, and they said, aha, we caught WikiLeaks posting a fake document. Cause this is not a state department document, this is an article that we ran at foreign policy, and you obviously copied and pasted it and are running it at Wikileaks. And not only that, but you've changed it. And then Assange says, no, you cooks. This is a memo that somebody wrote to Hillary Clinton. And apparently it was Jamie Rubin who wrote it, and then he submitted the same essay to you to run it foreign policy. That's what happened. And the article is about Madame Secretary. We got a support bin Ladenite headshopper suicide bombers in the greatest act of treason that you could possibly imagine because Israel matters more than the United States of America and the three thousand killed on september eleventh. That's why I'm paraphrasing roughly. The real reason to...”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe it was that morning or soon after that. And I'm virtually certain it was David Rothkop who was then the editor of foreign policy, and I can't remember who else, one of his right-hand men at foreign policy. com, the journal of it's a journal of foreign policy journal. I forgot if there's a specific think tank behind them. Anyway.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing in verse, it was a secret memo that he wrote to Hillary Clinton, and they later published it as an essay in Foreign Policy Magazine. You can pull it up right now if you want, Jamie Rubin. I'm pretty sure it's 2011. If it's 12, I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure it's 11 in foreign policy magazine. And I don't know, type in Syria, Assad, and Israel. The reason we have to do this is for Israel. The real reason to intervene in Syria. There was a funny anecdote about this one, too, Lex, because I just happened to be screwing around on Twitter that morning. That Assange published the State Department cables”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The average person they'd have had to read Mearsheimer in 07 to know or read Justin Romondo at antiwar.com to even know what is a Neokon? What's the difference between them and the rest of the Republicans? And what do they have against Iraq so bad? And what is that agenda about? And what does that have to do with the Lakud Party in Israel? You didn't think that. If you ask, you know, like Dave Chappelle and his skit, it's all like he tried to kill my daddy kind of stuff, right? Because people just don't know this deeper layer to it. Well, in Syria, it was just as obvious as it could be. The war party in America the Israel Lobby, right? It is all Zionists led by the Lakunix and the Neoconservatives, but on the so called liberal side too, people like Jamie Rubin, who had worked for Bill Clinton, wrote a John.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The multi ethnic secular dictatorship in Syria, the last country in the Middle East where you can get a drink, those are the extremists. And we got to support the bin Ladenite insurgency against them. Now, this is the reason that Barack Obama supported Al-Qaeda in Syria. It's not because he was a secret Muslim terrorist with an allegiance to bin Laden's goals. It's that he was a secret George W. Bush with allegiance to the American foreign policy establishment's goals, including the neoconservatives and the Israel lobby in this country Lakud interests in this country. And at that time, you know, in Iraq War II,”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You read the article and it's all Connolly Lisa Rice and her people trying to explain that oh, you know what? It's not really about Sunnis and Shiites legs. It's about moderates and extremists and the Bothists are the extremists in this, you're saying, right?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's what they're telling you because Assad is friends with Ayatollah, and Assad helps Ayatollah arm Hezbollah, and Israel, as per the clean break. What's the clean break? Is the clean break from Oslo? Forget Rabin and Perez. We are going to steal all that's left of the West Bank and Gaza Strip sooner or later, but we don't want to have to worry about Hezbollah on our northern flank. We need to neutralize them somehow. Syria wormser wrote was the keystone in that arc of Iranian power, which was true, but of course he was the one who added Saddam Hussein to that same arc. Now they're saying oops, we have to fix this, and it was the neoconservatives, Elliot Abrams and Zalme Khalilzad, who came to W. Bush and said, Sir, we really screwed up here. We have to turn this thing around now. And Bush understood.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meaning, okay, we're going to get rid of these secular Botist regimes. There are fundamentalist terrorist wackos running around right now. He acknowledges that. And he says, but America will just have to find better allies against fundamentalism than the Bathists. So now maybe some idiot could write that as policy advice for the Lakud in 1996, maybe before the Cobar Towers, but then they kill our airmen at Cobar Towers. And then they bomb the embassies, and then they bomb the coal, and then they hit us on september eleventh, and then they lead as the vanguard of the Sunni insurgency that killed four thousand of our guys in Iraq war two. And now you're telling me that we still better find better allies against the bin Ladenites than the Baathis? bin Laden?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if you're lucky. And Margley says, yeah, exactly. Or it could be the Bin Ladenites could take over. Now back to David Wormser in a clean break and coping with crumbling states, in coping with crumbling states, wormser says We have to expedite the chaotic collapse to Syria. Expedite the chaotic collapse to Syria so that we will control the outcome which will be more to our liking. And he says, and he's acknowledging bin Ladenite terrorism is what he's referring to here with the recent history at the time he's writing this in 96 And he's saying, Now, there's a lot of talk about the dangers of fundamentalism.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Muslim Brotherhood to create the first major government in exile to try to use, to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And I got to tell you, man, we used to joke on my show going back to, I think, 2004 or 2005 would have been probably the first time that I had asked Eric Margalese. Hey, Eric, if they do, because Eric Margolese was there, just like Patrick Cobra, he was there when Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, had crushed the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama in 1984, or was it 82. And he crushed him and he killed like 20,000 people in this horrific thing to crush the Muslim Brotherhood. Margles was there, knew all about it, told me that story. And I says to him, I says, well, if the neocons get their way and they overthrow Bashar al-Assad, then what organized force is there in the country after the Bathis that could possibly take over authored than maybe the Muslim Brotherhood?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source