Interview with Webster Tarpley : "The War on terror is a myth"

Webster G. Tarpley participated in the 2005 Axis for Peace conference, chaired by Thierry Meyssan, President of Voltaire Network. He is an eminent authority in modern methods of interference, in particular the manipulation of the terrorist threat and false flag operations. He addressed the Axis of Peace Conference on these issues, stating that “It is impossible to understand the current US policy if the scope of the September 11 events is underestimated. The attempts occurred that day constituted a coup. The war on terror is based on a myth and it has become a compulsory religion of state since the events took place. The only way of fighting neocons is by destroying that myth. The creation of a truth commission, similar to that of Russell after the Viet Nam war, could help to destroy the myth.”

Book available here ______________________________________________________________ Foreword

Before broaching the actual interview, Webster Tarpley offered his analytical perception of the present geopolitical juncture, complementing the analysis he had made prior to Barack Obama’s election [1] :

"The main US-UK project at the moment is to break up Pakistan, so it cannot become an energy corridor for China with Iran and the rest of the Middle East, as we see in the port of Gwadar. The lunatic escalation in Afghanistan which has been Obama’s trademark issue only makes sense when you see that the goal is to destroy the central government of Pakistan, and bust that country into five parts in an extension of the Bernard Lewis plan. Pakistan is a more important target than Iran.

There is also a US-UK plan to destroy the pro-Chinese string of pearls countries across the Indian Ocean. But Sri Lanka has wiped out the US-UK terror army known as the Tamil Tigers, terrorists with headquarters in London. How grotesque it was to see Kouchner and Milliband desperately trying to save the Tamil Tigers so these butchers could fight another day! Places like Zimbabwe, Sudan, Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh and various islands groups are now a battlefield between the US-UK and China, with China pushing for peaceful trade and development and the US-UK trying to sabotage those and maintain the discredited Washington Consensus against the emerging Beijing consensus, which rejects imperialist bullying of the IMF-World Bank-WTO type."

Interview

Q: Could Obama’s letter to Medvedev, asking the Russians to negotiate Iran’s abandonment of its legitimate right to a nuclear program, be seen as a diplomatic ploy to ignite a new war in the Middle-East?

Webster G. Tarpley: As I wrote in Obama The Postmodern Coup – The Making of a Manchurian Candidate, the general policy of the Obama administration is to foment conflict between Iran and Russia. They call this buck passing — playing one enemy state against another and hoping that both can be damaged or destroyed in the process. The Obama regime would like to maneuver Russia into a posture of hostility to Iran, playing on Russian fear of what Iran might finally do with nuclear weapons if they got them. With people like Putin and Lavrov, the Russians are not likely to fall for such a crude trick. The recent experiment in rioting and mob rule in Iran clearly represents a CIA people power coup, color revolution, or velvet Revolution which does not appear to be succeeding too well.

If an Anglo-American puppet were to take power in Iran, one of the first things he would do would probably be to cut off oil deliveries to China, since this is the main interest of the US and the British in the Middle East these days. Obama’s Cairo speech was nothing more than an attempt to play the Arab and Islamic world in the Middle East against Russia and China. India is also a leading candidate to become the US-UK Eurasian land dagger, but again the Indians may prove too smart to fall for this. Everyone knows that the US Congress has passed repeated laws calling for regime change in Iran, funded with $400 million [2], and Seymour Hersh has been writing in the New Yorker of the past five years or more about US espionage and provocation teams who have been active in Iran, attempting to foment the rebellions of Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Pashtuns, and others, with the goal of finally partitioning and Balkanize in Iran in the same way that Yugoslavia and Iraq have been partitioned, and Sudan may be soon.

The color revolution in Iran [3] is largely the handiwork of the "soft power" group inspired by the writings of Joseph Nye, and including Brzezinski’s [4] circles at the Rand Corporation, plus the International Crisis Group and other operatives who use left cover, humanitarian slogans, and human rights for what they are doing. If I have understood Jacques Sapir clearly, he seems to be saying that the slogans of human rights have been so abused by Western imperialists in the service of their own predatory goals that these slogans have become completely discredited because of the hypocrisy and double standards involved. If that is Sapir’s point, it is well taken. I would say that it is time to stress the economic rights of the developing countries, starting with industrialization, full employment, and an end to poverty, disease, illiteracy, and a situation where we have one billion people living in hunger on the verge of starvation according to the latest United Nations reports, and probably 2 billion people who are eking at a miserable existence at less than a dollar a day. That is the real issue facing humanity today.

Q: The Gates-Brzezinski plan envisages a new approach towards Iran. If this plan falls through, what are the chances of the United States carrying out an atomic strike against Iran as was advocated by William Schneider, Jr.?

Webster G. Tarpley: The entire basis of the Obama regime is a growing awareness in US imperialist circles that the United States is far too weak, far too isolated, far too hated, and far too bankrupt to undertake any further adventures in the Middle East directly. Therefore, they are falling back on buck passing and waging war through proxies or kamikaze puppets, much in the way that Ethiopia was played against Somalia a couple of years ago.

Q: If the United States and Russia don’t succeed in stopping Iran from pursuing its nuclear program, do you think Israel could strike Iran like it did Iraq during Saddam Hussein?

Webster G. Tarpley: The Israelis have been ordered repeatedly by Gates, by Panetta, by Biden, and by Obama himself to drop and abandon any idea of a solo breakaway ally-style strike against Iran. I write about this in Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography. I think the British are on the same line. Senator Kerry and Obama have also said that Iran has a right to a program of peaceful nuclear energy. All of this reinforces the idea that the US is desperately attempting to mobilize Iran as a kamikaze puppet against Russia and/or China. Those who continue to ignore this tendency are living in the world as it was before December 2007, when the official US intelligence estimate announced that there was no Iranian nuclear weapons program. I doubt the Israelis would start such an attack. If they do, it would of course be the beginning of a true world catastrophe. Our friends at the Quai d’Orsay should do what they can to dissuade Netanyahu & co.

Q: Since the U.S. intelligence services have acknowledged that Iran suspended its military nuclear program back in 2003, shouldn’t we accept Iran’s entitlement to a civilian nuclear energy capacity?

Webster G. Tarpley: Of course, despite the demagogy of Sarkozy and Kouchner on this point, where they have tried to be out in front. Every country has an inherent and inalienable right to science, technology, industry, and modern energy production, and in today’s world this can only mean the full exploitation of peaceful nuclear energy. This used to be the basis of US foreign policy during much of the Cold War in the form of the Eisenhower Atoms for Peace approach.

Every country in the world which wishes to assert its sovereignty and its right to development is now either pursuing or seriously considering a significant application of nuclear energy, starting with China, India, Russia, Jordan, and many others. They are following the very successful French example, which is far more eloquent than Sarkozy’s speeches. After the massive violations of the non-proliferation regime which are built into the current US-India nuclear accord, the US does not have a leg to stand on when it comes to bullying and hectoring others on this issue.

Q: The ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) system and NATO expansion constitute the backbone of U.S. foreign policy in Europe. How do you view this provocation against Russia and the potential risk of a clash among European allies?

Webster G. Tarpley: NATO expansion [5] is useless at best and highly dangerous in most of the likely scenarios. Who in his right mind would want to be committed to fighting and dying for a demented madman like Saakashvili, after he has documented his total mental instability with his kamikaze attack against Russia in August 2008? Who in his right mind would want to be committed to following the latest adventures of that gang of IMF kleptocrats in Kiev? When East Germany was incorporated into West Germany, the US gave specific commitments to Russia that NATO forces would not even enter the former DDR. Now they have gone much further. It is time to reverse this trend.

I had urged that France urgently reconsider the idea of reentering the NATO command structure. Given the US commitment to these unstable and aggressive regimes on the Russian doorstep, France might risk being dragged into a catastrophic war as a tail on the Anglo-American kite. That is no future for a great nation like France.

We can also see a possible second echelon of provocateur states composed of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine, and some others that can be thrown into action against Russia in questions like cutting off natural gas deliveries to Western Europe just about every winter. The Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi has been one of the best Western European leaders on constructive relations with Russia and on questions like the Southstream pipeline, and it is therefore no surprise that the Anglo-American scandal machine is singling him out for special slanders and attacks.

Q: In connection with the ABM Treaty, what do you think about the deployment of anti-ballistic missile shields in East European countries like the Czech Republic without the agreement of the European Parliament?

Webster G. Tarpley: I have repeatedly challenged Obama in public to take some specific steps if he wants to prove that he is really the peace angel that he claims to be. The first is to announce that there will be no deployment of alleged ABM systems in Poland, since these can easily be inserted into a first strike preventive nuclear war strategy against Russia, thereby putting the world back on the old Cold War hair trigger. Obama could simply announce "no Polish missile crisis will occur." The other step Obama could take is to withdraw all US support for further NATO expansion. That is what any sane European would be demanding that he do. Instead, we had 200,000 German lemmings at the Brandenburg gate last summer who had been duped by Obama.

Q: In the current context how do you see France’s reintegration in NATO, and its participation in the war against terrorism?

Webster G. Tarpley: I had recommended that France not submit to the authority of the NATO command [6]. President de Gaulle was absolutely right in ousting the NATO headquarters from Versailles, and in withdrawing France from the NATO command structure. This did nothing to undermine the traditional Franco-American friendship, but did prevent lawless elements within the NATO structure from causing serious problems inside France. I am thinking in particular of General Lyman Lemnitzer, who came up with the idea for Operation Northwoods [7] when he was in the Pentagon, and then went on to become the NATO commander who did so much to set up Gladio [8] in Italy and most of the other NATO countries. De Gaulle, in short, was right, and in Western world needs France to maintain its intellectual independence and its ability to develop a responsible and realistic critique of the excesses of the Anglo-American. This is what de Gaulle did, and this is what we will need French leaders to do in the future.

Q: With regard to September 11, 2001, do you think that an independent investigation will ever materialize? If so, will it be triggered by a U.S. judicial decision, or by international initiaves like that of "Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth"?

Webster G. Tarpley: The significant movement for 9/11 truth which had emerged in the US society through the end of 2006 and into 2007 has largely fragmented into impotence. As the US primary election campaigns for president began to gather momentum during 2007, many former 9/11 truth activists made the serious mistake of sacrificing their own activity to professional politicians who were promising to do something to investigate 9/11.

The Democratic left liberal candidate Dennis Kucinich delivered formal public promises that he would investigate 9/11 and also the rogue B-52 affair of August September 2007, which emerged just after a group of activists of which I was a part had issued the Kennebunkport Warning, pointing out that Cheney was in the process of making a final bid to start a war with Iran. This was at the same time that the Israelis made their air raid into Syria. But Kucinich failed to deliver on his promises.

An even larger segment of the former 9/11 truth movement was siphoned off by the Republican libertarian candidate, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Ron Paul did not make such public promises as Kucinich had done, but he privately assured 9/11 truth activists that he shared their views and would say so in public at the proper time. Based on these assurances, many 9/11 truth activists gave their time, their money, and their support to Ron Paul’s presidential efforts. But, when Ron Paul was asked about 9/11 in one of the nationally televised cable television debates which were witnessed by the entire national press corps, he stated vehemently that he considered the ideas of the 9/11 truth movement to be “preposterous” and an embarrassment to him, adding that the truth activists should stop their efforts. He also said that his skepticism in regard to the 9/11 commission report was the same as his skepticism towards any government document, no more and no less.

Finally, when it became clear that Obama had a real chance to be president, the remaining left liberals gave up all of their issues to join the messianic and utopian quest offered by Obama. As a result of Obama, the peace movement, the impeachment movement, and the 9/11 truth movement were all virtually swept away. This illustrates the important role of Obama in suppressing dissent and shielding the Wall Street establishment from mass popular agitation. Right now it would take the decisive commitment of one or more world leaders outside of the United States to bring about the necessary independent international truth commission concerning 9/11.

Q: Many citizens have discovered geopolitics and the behind-the-scenes reality of conflicts while researching the 9/11 cover-up; what would you like to say to those people who find out, much to their dismay, that many wars/attacks are actually orchestrated by States and/or interest groups against the interests of their own people.

Webster G. Tarpley: The problem of US foreign policy in this regard is not located mainly inside the US federal government, but is a result of the fact that US foreign policy is largely manufactured by powerful Wall Street banking interests who operate through such organizations as the [9], the Trilateral commission, the Bilderberger group [10], and the very insidious Mont Pelerin Society, which deals with economics.

Obama, Biden, Holbrook, and many others are the valets of these Wall Street bankers. These forces do not pursue an American national policy, which would for example dictate good relations between the US and Russia in the way that they were maintained during the American Revolution, during the American Civil War, and during the F.D. Roosevelt administration. Instead of an American national policy what we have is a policy agreeable to financiers and imperialists. This is also the mentality of the city of London, and also of parts of the European Commission and the European Central Bank. We live in an age of oligarchical preponderance across the globe. The only way that this can be remedied is by increased politicization and activism of parts of modern society which currently tend to be reduced to a stupor of passivity, apathy, and alienation by popular culture.

Q: Internet plays a very important role in providing ready access to information and in what could be called the "education of the masses". As far as you know, is there a concerted plan looming to clamp down on the Internet?

Webster G. Tarpley : One of the positive aspects of the US system has been a strong protection of free speech embodied in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. You can contrast this to the terrible situation in a country like Great Britain. The totalitarian liberals of the Obama regime are clearly very hostile to a continuation of the tradition of free speech. They would like to narrow the realm of free speech using the pretext of hate crime legislation designed to criminalize not so much criminal acts, but rather the opinions entertained by those who commit such criminal acts – criminalizing opinions is a very strange idea in jurisprudence.

The Democratic Party also seems to want to attempt to silence or intimidate the right wing or reactionary radio commentators who are very prominent in this country and to represent one of the main forces criticizing the Obama regime. This is being attempted under the pretext of forcing broadcasters who use the public airwaves to offer a broad variety of political opinions, or to reflect local community groups. A better idea would be to prohibit one corporation from owning all the mass media in a given city, and then letting free speech take its course.

Q: You have often taken a pessimistic view of the future (cf. your latest book expounding on the little faith that you have in Obama); are you more optimistic when it comes to the prospects of achieving a more peaceful world?

Webster G. Tarpley : Not believing in the demagogy of a Wall Street puppet like Obama does not make me a pessimist, but merely a realist. Obama has passed his peak and is now on a downward slide, although the danger of a new false flag operation targeting Russia, China, Sudan, Pakistan, or other news targets is now surely increasing. As a student of Plato, Leibniz, and Machiavelli, I am of course committed to optimism in so far as prospects for action in the world are concerned. I’d go with Leibniz against Voltaire on these points. I would also endorse what Dante says in the central point of his Divine comedy in the Marco Lombardo canto where it is stressed that the state of the world is not the responsibility of God, predestination, or fate, but is rather a task which is delegated to human beings who have to exercise free will. People need to understand that world historical action is at the present moment more feasible than at any other time in history, and it is time to take advantage of these possibilities before the window of opportunity closes, which it might do at virtually any time.

Q: To conclude, for someone like you who is familiar with the Machiavellian power wheels of our times, what can our readers and ordinary citizens do to help this become a better and more peaceful world?

Webster G. Tarpley : There is no reason for a world economic depression, nor for the next world war that may follow it in the same sequence of events that we had in the 1930s. Above all, the laws of economics are not mysterious at all. I lay them out in my newest book, Surviving the Cataclysm.

In order to get out of a depression we first need to do things to reduce the burden of fictitious capital and speculative incomes on the world economy. This means doing things like banning the $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble, or taxing derivatives out of existence, banning adjustable rate mortgages, outlawing hedge funds, stopping foreclosures on homes farms and businesses, putting a 1% Tobin tax on speculators, re-regulating the oil markets, and seizing and shutting down the bankrupt zombie banks which dominate Wall Street and the city of London. We need to seize the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the other privately controlled central banks and nationalize them.

They should start making 0% interest loans to productive activity, by which I mean the creation of tangible physical wealth in the form of manufacturing, agriculture, construction, transportation, infrastructure building, mining, scientific research, health care facilities, and the other prerequisites of human existence. This is especially acute here in the United States for the overall economy is approaching the point of a physical or thermodynamic collapse. We need to do things in this country like build a thousand hospitals, build a hundred ultramodern fourth-generation pebble bed high temperature nuclear reactors, build 100,000 miles of maglev rail, rebuild the interstate highway systems, and rebuild all water and sewage facilities.

We need a crash program in high-energy physics to solve the remaining problems for thermonuclear fusion power. We need a crash program in biomedical research to find cures of the dread diseases which afflict mankind. These are efforts would by definition be international. Of course, we need to fully fund and restore the social safety net which will be important for the victims of the depression over the next couple of years. To crown all of this, we will need a new world monetary conference to create a viable world monetary system to restart world trade and promote the full economic and technological development of Africa, South Asia, much of Latin America, eastern Europe, and other areas which have been denied economic development.

We need to address the great projects of world infrastructure like the Dakar to Djibouti maglev, the Cape to Cairo maglev, bridges and tunnels across the Mediterranean at Gibraltar and between Sicily and Tunisia, a Eurasian maglev system, a Bering Strait Bridge Tunnel, a new Kra canal, a Tennessee Valley Authority for the Ganges Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Amazon, and the other main river systems of the world, and the development of water transport in Africa with a system of locks and canals between the upper Nile and the upper Congo.

We should do this with the full awareness that if we do not realize such necessary progressive steps in our own time, world civilization may collapse into a period of chaos the horrors of which are difficult for us to imagine at this time, but which ought to be clear enough. My favorite litany remains one that was taught to me by a Spanish coal miner from the Asturias region of northern Spain, who told me that his personal motto was: "your choice in the modern world is clear. You can either get active, or you will surely get radioactive. So choose." This alternative has not changed so much as people might think. My hope is that more and more people will choose to get active.

Mr. Tarpley, thank you very much.