com wants to negotiate for a post nine eleven war in iraq about saudi funded tera richard branson's alleged harbor and occupation and why sanctions are not the answer in north korea and does donald trump continue to send troops to afghanistan expanding the longest war in american history former u.s. state department official matthew hoh tells us the war that cost more than ten thousand dead or injured british soldiers is based on a pack of lies. coming up in decades going underground but first today is september the eleventh the anniversary of the washington backed coup to oust the social democrat president of chile salvador allende it marked a watershed in the so-called cold war and the beginning of a new neoliberal fat's right economics that would destroy the post-war consensus his milton friedman of the infamous chicago school who inspired reagan and thatcher talking about what pinochet's military dictatorship in chile meant to him and it's not so much the death squads torture and cia training chile was

a case in which military regime headed by putin. was willing to switch the organization of the economy from a top down to a bottom up performance and in that process a group of people who had been trained at the university of chicago in the department of economics who came to be called the chicago boys played a major role in designing and implementing economic reforms in fact powerful elites would use this military dictatorship as a top stone for privatizing everything in civic society and they took the credit for a boom even though chile's copper mines the big source for revenue in fascist chile whenever privatized a tool these elites would go on to support islam is to movements in their quest for ever more territory and resources the u.s. and u.k. would fund the groups linked to saudi born asama bin ladin and of course sixteen years ago today bin laden would care. we have an attack on the united states both

nine eleven is of the product arguably of a system that according to one academic can and must be replaced humans have a fundamental need rate for the free creative work. to drool be any kind of. domination mr servant. of the law simply really should only a niece of a true lucian is going to have to justify. but she could be dismantled the group were free cooperative we're just. talking you know i'm trying to ski there in the new film accidental anarchist is the former u.k. diplomat called russ he saw the nine eleven two thousand and one attacks first hand and he's the founder and executive director of consultancy independent diplomat thanks so much for coming on the show good just see you again so we know that

within minutes of the nine eleven attacks in washington the new york the so-called deep state which are getting so much as i work in london as iraq just take us back to what it was like you saw it they attacked and i didn't i i wouldn't say it was immediate i mean i there was a tremendous sense of the u.s. and indeed to a degree the u.k. government being totally bewildered by what happened on that day i remember being in the u.n. security council the day off the woods and the u.s. delegation being without instructions about what to say at the u.n. security council about the attacks so the narrative of having to go off to iraq took a long time actually took several weeks but you saw in a sense that two things are connected there was a policy vacuum off the nine eleven the government didn't know what to do had to respond to had to reassert its legitimacy to defend the population and the neo-cons jumped into that moment and claimed that iraq was the major threat that's what i saw that's how that story. again you were the diplomat as usher at the memorial

service in new york you describe in your amazing film of. accident just what it was like when tony blair if you call the people here for the foreign office in london. having a ball nibley was these were foreign office people just to be fair my old employer they remember they were number ten people which was different i mean there's a culture in government that the top dog barks the loudest that everybody has to make way and that was a culture that unfortunately seemed to inform their behavior in even in such a sensitive and tragic situation as the families gathering together after nine eleven and you know we have to clear away we have to make sure everything's right he's going to get this pew to hell with the whole poloi they can wait outside in the rain except in that case the hard to lawyer with families of people who've been killed in the attack so it was a particularly egregious experience now on this anniversary why do you think

today's race still refuses to give access to information regarding saudi connections to the eleven two thousand and one i don't know but i can only speculate what seems to me to be absolutely over us which is the saudis would have put pressure on the u.k. government not to release such a report because it would be embarrassing to the saudi government because although bin laden and the nine eleven hijackers were in many ways opposed to the saudi government there is no question that the global policy of the saudis in promoting wahhabi and extremist ideology around the world is the garden from which terrorism has grown and that there is an intimate connection between the policies of the saudi government and the explosion of extremist terrorism around the world and that fact has to be denied and the u.k. has a very lucrative relationship with saudi arabia which it wishes to protect the saudi government of course denies that doing all they can to fight islam is. well they've

created a monster which the now in some ways they are fighting but they were part of that creation and the continuation of the fight in the terms that we have framed as a war against terror has in a way legitimized that battle as a legitimize the opponent in a curious way because bin laden and the others wanted a war and we gave them a war when in fact after nine eleven there was a choice of whether we treated the perpetrators of that horrific attack as criminals or legitimate fighters and incense by in a sense by declaring a war on terror we legitimize the enemy if you see what i mean the attacks you opposed to afghanistan when it was pretty dangerous as you've written about what does it make you feel that the hundreds of british soldiers still there enough. escalate to fifteen thousand u.s. soldiers in afghanistan today. what is going on today is the logical continuation of a policy that has been going on for a long time under previous administrations too but evidently it's

a failed policy taliban is increasing its territorial control in afghanistan clearly there needs to be a discussion with the taliban if that conflict is ever to come to an end because the current balance of forces suggest there's going to be endless conflict in afghanistan which is a horror show and nobody predicted that would happen after the allied intervention in afghanistan after nine eleven there was lots of kind of idealist rhetoric about bringing democracy to afghanistan which i think looking back and again i was part of this was incredibly incredibly naive that you could just go into a country and transform its institutions transform a deeply fractured and divided country into care here and democratic unity that was just stupid in the extreme and yet that was the rhetoric we happily uttered using nine eleven and saw the light and found it independent diplomat is a consultant see just. depended on

illegal funding very often more often than not n.g.o.s i think you've mentioned that you tried getting money from richard branson before realising something startling yeah we tried to get money from richard branson foundation before realising the organization was holding a kite flying a kite surfing festival in the occupied territory the western sahara where we had advised the people trying to allow ourselves to terminations for the western sahara at the front of the. which is illegally occupied by morocco and you know an occupation in which virgin is now complicit by holding sports festivals and building hotels in morocco except except for etc and this to me was the starkest example of the case where when you're trying to transform a system in favor of justice to a very uncomfortable extent your reliance on the people who are already powerful in that system of injustice to get funding you can't run on fresh air you have to pay people you have to travel you have to run an organization and that means going to

where the money is and sometimes that means facing these very uncomfortable choices about who gives you money i wish it were not the case i think every leader of an ngo probably feels the same way as me it's best to be frank about it because i think it's a problem that we need to address. to come on the program and. asking for funding for me that bother the a bit uneasy or also the fact that you realize you weren't the good guys that you always thought you were when you're fighting the battles on behalf of the british foreign office what you say to people in the foreign office today but it's a career where i think people in the commentary. believe we are the good guys on north korea yeah in this go to korean crisis everybody thinks they are the good guys that's the trouble and i think in the british government like all western governments but i suspect in all governments people us around. by people telling

each other a narrative that they're doing the right thing and it is one of the reasons i am convinced that creating an elite of people to run affairs according to a different moral system is a profound mistake and it is why i believe enough loss of your family is the most people governing themselves without such institutions and because at the moment tens of thousands of refugees escaping a country with a defacto leader he was even was one of the good people we know there's a debate in israel israeli arms for the me and government do you see the situation . as a part of the analysis i think i think is a very good example be it a nobel peace prize or suchi was a liberator by the kind of babel celebrities that. group you know george clooney is in this world is this kind of humanitarian political heroine and now she's revealing how to true colors now she's in government and i suspect you know it is government that does force this odious position upon her of defending what is

essentially ethnic cleansing in iraq and state of the i'm sure she's doing it to keep the military happy because if she doesn't keep the military happy and tell their version of events that they are protecting all the people of rakhine state which is a great test lie she would lose power she worries about being deposed perhaps a military coup is on her mind so she thinks she has good reasons for taking this line publicly but it is despicable she's defending what is essentially atrocities and potentially genocide we're talking about in the case of the i should just ask about the role of sanctions because certainly the nikki haley the u.n. the america's best of u.n. saying this will be the way with north korea sanctions after all what you were part of against iraq that killed all those children head of the two thousand and three war what. actions against countries and in conflict. sanctions is now a very broad spectrum of things from comprehensive economic sanctions to. naming

people and cutting off their bank accounts and access to the financial system or stopping them travel with travel bans individuals within the system so you're looking at that spectrum when you're talking about sanctions the needs of the civilian population must always be paramount among the factors when you're considering sanctions the people of north korea have suffered enormously comprehensive economic sanctions may have their appeal as a coercive measure against the regime but if they are going to cause comprehensive suffering to the north koreans then they need to be real politically as a percentage of the target well i. think politicians need to get a lot more intelligent indeed the media and the public need to get a lot more intelligent about how they talk about sanctions that we distinguish between certain types of sanctions so we get to know what a good sanctions what a bad sanctions i think you know targeting individual people who are responsible for instance for war crimes is legitimate and is one of the few sources of coercion that the international community may have short of the use of force there are

people out there who will do bad thing at doing is going to alter kim jong un's family and it's going again you may well be right the options are very bad you know i'm not claiming that targeted sanctions against the regime are the answer for this crisis but i'm also saying that economic conference of economic sanctions against north korea will cause an awful lot of damage to the population have already suffered and therefore i think they should not be the rule of choice but equally military force should not be the tool of choice that doesn't leave a not an awful lot of options apart from actually talking with the d.p. r. k. regime which is obviously the way this needs to go garner us thank you. we contacted virgin about the allegations made in the. they said the w k c was a client safe in series run by a third party not of age and when can ross first contacted us we reacted swiftly and raised the issue with you organizers is no longer a sponsor of the series and we categorically reject any suggestion of complacency

after the break suicide bomber. base in afghanistan in the past few days a former advisor to the pentagon describes the power corruption and lies in the longest war now with. more coming up than bob to have going underground. for a single purpose. of. training very young. eight months of intensive school. raps. and they save lives.

as one of the basic instruments to drive an economy. lead to tragedy. and. many lives have been broken. lost money through the back under don't buy creditors people see no future that face would happen you know you become ill you two job your relationship breaks down you become a casualty is dead a life long crap or is there a way out i was actually going to bed and i have no wooden reichl to debian from so much.

welcome back many u.s. officials have resigned over the global war of terror which has cost american taxpayers more than two trillion dollars and destabilize regions right around the world after the attacks on washington new york sixteen years ago today one of them is an iraq veteran who has worked for the pentagon and the at the state department before resigning over the usas longest war in afghanistan where british troops continue to be deployed multi award winning senior fellow at the center for international policy matthew hoh joins me now from wake forest north carolina matthew thanks for coming back on the show before we go to this longest war this post nine eleven longest war your reaction to. yet another attack on this time on baghdad air base in afghanistan in the past few days well the attacks are in that senior as long as we're there this war and the taliban are tying into that fact that we recently dropped leaflets on to that part of afghanistan northern

afghanistan and i'm not leaflet there is a dog carrying a flag reported to be the flag of the taliban i guess the white banner of the banner of the taliban but it has a qur'anic expression on it and so understanding that dogs are seen as on quickly unhealthily in muslim culture this is an incredibly stupid thing to do is why the u.s. air force possibly draw pictures of dogs eating quranic script. yet you know it boggles the mind that you could be this incompetent but it also could be another thing actually it could be then this understanding that we're at this point in the war in these wars where. the generals who are in charge of the wars who really control the war trump goes along with what president trump goes all of what they say they are attitude is a gloves off attitude that the way these wars will be conducted is the end state is

military control it is winning by military force and that means punishing the population and that then trickles down to the lower levels and so you have maybe one star generals or colonels or majors who make these decisions because they feel empowered to do so so this goes in line with what we've seen in the broader american campaign throughout the middle east in iraq in yemen in syria now with the airstrikes with just the punishing air strikes against populations where they by our air forces or by the saudi or forces just devastating cities infrastructure and slaughtering people yelling yemen i should say trained by the best who are fair in britain but i mean on afghanistan maybe even before the first of the new trump escalation arrived and suddenly emerged there were only

supposed to be eight thousand u.s. troops there and suddenly four thousand extra troops according to the wall street journal are in afghanistan u.s. troops whether they come from. the pentagon is going to say in general mattis who is now the secretary to fat and said and this is you know united states not to go on too long a tangent but the united states we've had a tradition of this supposed to be this understanding of civilian control the government civilian control the military has been completely abrogated here where you see that three of the most important. the shins and three of the positions that trump is really being weighed in on by the secretary defense the white house chief of staff and the national security advisor or all either former generals or in case of h.r. mcmaster a serving general have a military junta the democratically elected leader. it is but this is these are the dangers because what you have is that whereas in under bush and obama as incredibly

immoral it impractical and counterproductive as their policies were the middle east at least there was a political or checked or a goal tied to their end state and those policies were governed by a president and a team of advisors who were in who took the political considerations into effect under trump the military generals who are in charge of these policies no longer have such restraints and more importantly no longer see the world in anything other than their own military lenses so again this is how you can get these men who see themselves as modern day legionnaires roman legionnaires who view the american empire as the apex of civilization that warfare is a constant state if throughout human human history and that these wars must just be managed by violent force by subjugating the enemy population not

working with them not trying to set up elections or win hearts and minds or do any kind of economic development and so that's what you see here but i'm going to get on to the development in a second but when you were in the state department within the as just after nine eleven did you deliberately on the count the number of u.s. troops being deployed to the u.s. was. no no they did not david absolute did not. do that they would do there's always going to be a fudge number right because you've got all these thousands of people moving back and forth but that's not what this is this was a deliberate under-counting. general mattis who is now the sector defense he claims that it's not my fault this is the policy i parroted however just a few years ago he was in charge of our entire essential command which includes afghanistan so this was his policy and now he stands there and lies and says he doesn't understand how this policy works because he's new to the situation that why and in the lies on top of about why they were lying about the numbers just kind of

just really goes to show the malfeasance that is presence within the pentagon within the american militarized foreign policy and then of course within the trump ministration that allows all this and forces it really through it's through the way handles its own government its own military they obviously have run up or a british operations when they're over there as well but i mean more than ten thousand british servicemen and women were killed or injured since nine eleven in deployments fighting the good fight in afghanistan you're talking about the law is what about the fact that there are millions of school children school girls are being educated and all the other things we're told about the happening because we're spending these hundreds of billions of dollars. oh absolutely for many years for many years for the better part of the last decade and a half the american government in the british government in. nato and other

european governments have said that our troops they are are our service members who are there in afghanistan killing and dying are the benefit to the afghan population to be measured though it's so great and one of the things they've said is all these millions of schoolgirls all these schools we've built been secured we provide have allowed all these children particularly girls to go to school in the millions and what we know is it's not true he afghan government amidst the numbers have been false the average attendance is only thirty percent of what the afghan government and the american government have been reporting for decades for a decade and a half basically and in some places it cases it's as low as ten percent of the student population actually exists that was being reported so great and see if they have health care and have comes all these things and lies i mean is the most visible outcome of the whole afghan war seriously i mean more drugs on the streets

of in a city washington d.c. and london absolutely and at least i believe in in europe you're meeting you're out you're the heroin is coming from afghanistan any united states we're still lying about it and our government claims it's all coming from mexico which is impossible is the only industry the only thing that has been successful there besides the the american in the european defense contractors that have made just tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars off of these wars has been the drug trade in afghanistan went from having almost no poppy cultivation. to you know the growth of the the plants that produce the heroin. to now having about ninety five percent of the worlds. supply and do lie that's associated with this is that the taliban are controlled drug free now the taliban will tax

a drug trade and take money from it of course and for the most part but the people who are control of the drug trade are the very people that americans brits danish canadian you know except for forces had been in bed with for the last decade and a half a day they are the people in the afghan government they are the warlords the militia commanders and the afghan governors in ministers they are the ones who control the drug trade and we've known this as assuming the it's not the international heroin cartels that are talking directly for the white house they tip of a ten downing street and that it's the arms companies is it what us now than when general eisenhower talked about the military industrial complex. hijacking democracy. it is it's it's worse because if in the united states there is a complete disregard for providing the social services needed at

wawa we go abroad and kill people so under president eisenhower and john f. kennedy saw the same thing and in lyndon baines johnson as well who succeeded john kennedy who didn't run for a term in office again because as president because the vietnam war was immoral and unwinnable he knew it but also because his domestic priorities providing health care to the people in britain made him possibly even improving upon a civil rights situation were impossible due with the vietnam war and so what we see in this is why america can kill a million plus people in the middle east since nine eleven and while we also have the highest murder rate in the industrialized world it's why we're the biggest arms export are and we also personally own three hundred fifty million guns right it's why america had eight hundred military bases around the world and the most prisons and the most prisoners if you look at where our priorities are and how much we're spending on our social services you will surely see that our priority is either

militarized efforts overseas war or militarized efforts at home so yes i think it's much worse than under eisenhower just briefly and finally if you are still at the state department then do you think that there will be voices in a state department viewing a hydrogen bomb from north korea as an opportunity to sell arms to south korea more than anything else. oh absolutely and we've seen that we've they've already said they've shrunk president trump has already authorized the sale of more weapons to south korea they were going to increase the amount of warhead amount explosives at the korea south koreans could have on top of their bombs on top of their rockets on top their missiles which is going to create an arm through a little mini arms race on top of the arms race it's already existing in asia but absolutely and of course for years now going back through president obama and under president obama's monetization plan for nuclear weapons. we now have

usable nuclear weapons smaller more usable nuclear weapons and so now we have a president from with these generals around him who see the world only in a military view who have usable nuclear weapons with north korea as a potential target so it is a very very dangerous situation but it's also a goldmine for the for the united defense companies that euro thank you and that's it for the show will feel wednesday when the british broadcasting legend no edmonds advises u.k. shadow chancellor john mcdonnell how the german cool with the power by a landslide field and people will leave you with a one hundred sixty nine years to the day of one of a lot of just official mass executions in american history the hanging of members of island st patrick's battalion fighting on the side of mexico against the usa.

what is the real function of media in the west today to inform citizens or parrot the interest policies of the political elites it would seem corporate media can't get enough. years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with a gun if a bad guy tried to get to one of my family members he would have better a lot better and i think they are and hurting whatever my my baby says my book was published in the year two thousand more than half a million americans have been killed by firearms in the us. this is a middle school we go through drills and we put ourselves in real scenarios it was interesting to see. so

the subject to track down each gun owner who i'd met and photographed those years ago i don't know this but we are not a. city it's not coming from the trump of ministration which is being victimized by this. imaginary hobgoblin of russian collusion with the trump campaign is being used by trump and the knees and adversaries to do to limit his presidency. with this manufactured sentenced to public will. when the ruling classes protect themselves. with the final merry go round if.

we can all middle of the room see. the real news is. the u.n. security council is set to vote on the functions against north korea over its latest nuclear test. and. threats and peace and security. terrified and looking for a way families of suspected i still find a way that fate in a refugee camp in iraq is among the first news networks to gain access to the camp . the you were in his office through these women's faces not to reveal the names and most importantly not to tell anyone where they're being held.