have the opportunity to invade other countries. and do you think though, do you think that, you know, you said the oil was so important for going into iraq, d ready thing oil. was that important for going in know in the year 2000 there were 7 countries who did not join the us central bank and look 2001 afghan. then 2003, iraq, 2011 livia and syria. then off of that. yeah, he just, you know, just makes me think that is a motive for invading a country. you mentioned these countries here who essentially got invaded over the past 20 odd years. general wesley clark knew forced our general that he, he came out. he actually started talking publicly about this didn't he said i, i came up, a commander came into my office one day through a stack of papers on my table and said, we're going to me invading 5 countries and 7 years or something like that, wasn't it right? so you know the story as well. i briefly but it's interesting for me because 911

happened. we knew it was osama bin laden and al qaeda in afghanistan. we started in afghanistan, 2001, and then we switched to iraq. that's a big question that i believe american citizens who live in natal allied countries. you know, we need to start asking questions why? well, you can watch or a special a coverage of the oliver story throughout the day. here in ortiz, international and on our website, r t dot com. ah, all rights, everything you ever wanted to know about to tell us, but we're afraid to ask next. catch the latest episode of modus operandi with manila chum. right?

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ah. oh, hello, i'm manila chan. you were tuned into modus operandi. the political lexicon gets a re brand traditionally called a qu, they top now coined regime change, but the deadly results remain the same. this week will examine the anatomy of a qu. what's it look like? how does one develop and who is most often to blame for the former us marine corps intelligence officer, turned un weapons inspector, scott ritter. shed some light on the issue. all right, let's get into the m o me . i said tomato, you say tomato. i say coo,

the u. s. government says regime change when one party or group assumes power by force, that usually leads to a lot of bloodshed, whatever the word game that's known, the world over as a crude, a tom. but in the age of social media sensitivity and kindness in recent years, terms like bloody coo or a thing of the 20th century in the 21st century pop culture as dictated by and proliferated by the us state department. we now call it regime change, toppling whoever is labeled a dictator. authoritarian or despot regime change is much better packaging for selling a war destabilization against another country or sometimes even against your own. so what is the m o behind a cou? i mean, regime change. how do they spring up, or are they actually grown?

so for that, let's turn to a military expert with international experi. he was one of the 1st voices to blow the whistle on w. m. d. 's in iraq, which we know ultimately found saddam hussein to be on the receiving end of regime change. scott ritter is a former us marine corps intelligence officer and later became un weapons inspector . scott, always good to see you. a coo, coo, that's a 4 letter word. the u. s. government has largely purged that sort of language from its official lexicon. the term is now regime change. recently we heard president biden and others in his administration say the quiet part out loud in regard to vladimir putin. they said this proxy war in ukraine is actually about regime change . so let's 1st address the, the shift in language here. why doesn't the us use the term coo anymore?

i mean, you said it's a, it's a 4 letter word. it's a dirty word. there's a lot of negative connotation attached to it. many us supported crews in the past of produce the leadership of that that has been embarrassing to the united states. it's also something that tries in the face of a international law cou implies that we are actively supporting a military junta up to forcefully take over a, from a government oftentimes a democratically elected government. and we don't want to encourage that anymore. so we speak of regime change, see a regime change could be as simple as a, an election that you voted out a regime. it's very harmless, lidless, nobody gets hurt. a regime change can also reflect the independent will of a sovereign people who cited to liberate themselves from an oppressive regime. or

this is wife. in the case of a, my don in, in the ukraine in 2014, we speak of a revolution, a regime change where the people ousted the pro russian. you know, a victory on a coach. we don't admit that it was a could a tar carried out by ultra training. osh ultra nationalists of funded and supported by the united states one would be a blatant violation of international law. the other one is the lawful expression of free will by a sovereign people. and indeed, if one takes a look at the sanctions that were imposed on russia a prior because of the special military operation. this was a regime change operation. this was about bringing harm to the russian people of such a scope and scale that the russian people would become alienated, a disenfranchised up from the russian government and rise up and removal at him, recruited from from power a regime change, but never

a coo and what are the characteristics other kill, how might one know if they were being code? generally speaking, we speak or could a talk an implication is military. so the, the 1st key is that there are guns involved. there's usually violence involved or the threat of violence regime changes. i said it's a, it's a more, you know, warm and fuzzy thing. an election. you know, maybe a demonstration, but the ku is guys in uniforms. kicking the door down when he guns in your face saying your day is done, you're finished. sometimes they shoot you other times they arrest you sometimes just escort you out, put you on an airplane and fly you off. but generally speaking, when we speak of a coup, it sub men in uniforms who are coming in forcefully removing from power. then in replacing you with martial law because of the, the genesis of the crew is some sort of dissatisfaction toward sub there,

the kind of constitutional rule that has been transparent. so the idea is to suspend the constitution replacer with martial law. and then the military will work to restructure society in a way that suits their needs and then and only then they may seek to transfer power back to civilians. but this time, the civilian population will understand that if they get out of step one more time, they'll be could again, i mean one only has to take a look at the history of turkey. recently. they had a succession, and $960.00 seventy's eighty's, ninety's of military coups. you knew as a coo attention st. all right, so i heard so theologists say that one of the things that are part and parcel of acute talk is being able to shift public opinion. language is one of those methods . it's one of those tools. what would you say are other methods of fomenting a cou?

i think one of the key aspects, if you're going to foment a coup, is to create economic discomfort. it's hard for a military to successfully carry out a qu, when the population is satisfied, the government hour. and you know, it goes back down to james carville, and the advice he gave to bill clinton when bill clint was 1st running for president. stop, talk about foreign policy and i was, it's the economy, stupid. and that's a lesson that, you know, every american politician understands at the end of the day. it's about, are you better off today than you were when the current power came in to power? is the answer is no, then they run a risk of, you know, being ousted by an election. but if you can do a qu, your bypassing the election, you go straight to the ouster part. one of the ways that you want to foam into qu, is to take advantage of, you know, economic difficulty to eliminate the people from the government by pointing out

that the reason why they're suffering economically is because of the bad policies of the government. you're generally want to tie the economic difficulties to notions of corruption, that these are the people you intrusted to look out for your welfare. but instead of looking out for you, they're only looking out for themselves. they're enriching themselves, short base johnson stuff, she want to create this mythology in many cases, probably true of your corruption, of a, of a leadership be lead out of touch with the, with, with the people. so these are the kind of sentiments you want to abs because one of the most vulnerable periods of a crew is when a 1st happen. i mean, the person more scared than the president that's being forcefully moved from power . is the people doing it because you've just taken a big step into the unknown. if a cou fails, you're off times accuse of treason, and you can put up against the wall and you get shot, where you're the one being sent on exile. and one of the best ways to make a crew fail is that the people go to the streets. all right, so,

so let me get this straight sanctions that are probably likely a tool then to help foment a to the united states. and it's infinite wisdom is under the impression that we can exacerbate economic tension in a targeted country. um, by imposing sanctions we, we did this with the rock a place that i had an intimate experience with. you know, our policy early on in the, in the saddam regime, in the post gulf war period was that, um, we were hoping that there would be a coup that we would get the, his military leadership to apply the $75.00 cent solution, which is the price with $9.00 millimeter board, the back of his head and. and then replace him with someone that looked like saddam talk like saddam. but this was a name saddam, and he did saddam that didn't work. so then we went into a prolonged period of trying to apply pressure on iraq through economic sanctions under the belief that if we made the right the iraqi people suffer,

that they would rise up. and that generals would recognize the suffering and say, we now need to get rid of saddam. but that didn't work. why? because jane sanctions generally backfire against those people who are imposing them, either politically or in the case of what's going on with russia right now. they just actually blow black and you suffer worse economically. with iraq. what happened is the iraqi people rallied around their leadership instead of alienating the iraqi people from the iraqi leadership. director leadership was to say the economic suffering that you have right now isn't because of me. it's because of these outside powers that are opposing sanctions. you will be hard pressed to find any examples of economic sanctions actually working. generally speaking, when they apply sanctions, they had the opposite effect. instead of encouraging a coup against a leader, you what removed you actually strengthen the hand about leader. it's worked and it's worked against us and iraq. it's worked against us in iran working against us

in russia. all right, so who is our never spontaneous events, right? they are engineered, they're a process, they take time and planning, civil unrest for as organic, as many of them appear oftentimes, especially in this day and age. those 2 are engineers. who tends to be behind the engineering of today's modern civil unrest. whether you know it's domestically or abroad, can you think of any persons or groups or countries that come to mind? i mean coups are socially engineered. and even though we speak of a military coup it's, it's not the us military's job to go in and create conditions for a good, a tough. that's the job of the central intelligence. and that's who's behind the vast majority of the nefarious actions in the world today. or the c i a's job is to

go in and i say manipulate societies, they do that by buying off politicians. they do that by funding oppositions. they do that by a deliberately undermining economies. or they do that by planting this information by taking control the media, seating the media with, with false narratives or narratives to support their point of view. but, but basically, ah, by manipulating aside from the inside out. it's so it's done by intelligent services and the intelligence services that do this more than anybody else are the united states and the british m. i 6, i think anywhere you go in the world, if you scratch deep enough, you're going to find the cia. and i'll say this, i mean, i know there's people out there who believe the cia has been used. i believe that ca analysis used to be solid when i was doing the soviet target. i had high respect for other than the sofa vision within um ca that was responsible for soviet

analysis. um, i even had respect for some of the a c i officers who were working the operation side against the soviet target. um, but today, um, you know, when i take a look at it to see i, they bring nothing positive. if you have a ca station in an embassy in your country, they're not there to help you. they're not there to help you there. they're hurting their job isn't to, you know, promote your interest. the job is there to solely promote the interest of the united states. and even if you think you have a cooperative relationship with them, it's not, it's only cooperative in so far as to see. i use it as being beneficial to a larger intelligence plan. a larger villages are good. so they're either working with you to try and bring unrest somewhere else in the world or they're working in your country who fall ment unrest in your country so that there is an outcome. ready beneficial the united states, not necessarily beneficial to you, but i would say the number one, a bad actor in the world today is the central intelligence agency,

which basically exists to create the conditions that further american power, usually at the detriment of the nations that they're involved or it's scott ritter and don't go anywhere. there's a ton more to unpack here. coming up next. can we blame a qu on mark zuckerberg. we'll examine the role of social media in modern day coups . we're going to discuss it when we return, sit tight, the ammo will be right back with a with

with, with, with this is with the law school or b only for, for with us. you know, we do mobile school could border slash look logical. yeah. because i thought that was good enough. i just wonder, was it for me little social skills, off the relationship disclosure record what, what sub which is work for those who will do it or who will suggest recently bought feet long. all you simply want to put less room. would you do less? ah,

mark zuckerberg could some of the 21st century coups be blamed on facebook. right? like i'm not trying to be sued for a liable or slander, so i won't lay these issues squarely at his feet, but nowadays regime change operations happen right before our very eyes on social media. scott ritter is joining us again. scott, thanks for sticking around. still want to talk about so in the 20th century, a post mortem of places like iran, 1953. she lay 1973, bolivia, 1980 iraq, 2001 libya 2011. and i believe future historians will refer to ukraine in 2014 as an example. all had so called us intervention in lieu of the term coo or regime change operation. what's been the result of us

intervention for some of these places? well, 1st thing is, none of these places emerged better after the u. s. intervention than they were before us intervention. everything the united states touches when it comes to this kind of activity where there's a dies. there's not a single example where the united states went in and touched the country and said, i'm intervening to achieve a change in regimes and everything came up, smell of roses. it doesn't work that we look at libya under gadhafi priorities, and i must sit here is singing the praises gadhafi. i'm not going to pretend to use some sort of wonderful democratic leader and all this done. so he was gadhafi, we know who he was, what he was is a man who cared about his country, but he was a man who invested heavily in the infrastructure, his country. if you take a look at the infrastructure of libya, pre 2011, it was a, it was a, it was a nation who is doing okay. i mean, the high standard of living, modern facility post us intervention. libby is, is, is, is

a hell it's, it's chinese and tatters. infrastructure ruined. it's a civil war. nothing good. and we can go across down the road. every single place that we touch is up worse off. it was before we touched what happens when a head of state perhaps say rejects us aid or intervention? oh well, um they probably don't last very long. um. it's rare to have a leader that says we, we don't want your assistance. we don't want your help. we're going to go it our own way, because normally the united states were not a benevolent nation. we don't have a tendency go out, offer assistance to people just because they needed. and out of the kindness of our heart, we offer assistance when it benefits us. when there's an outcome that we desire and that outcomes usually linked to a geopolitical um you know,

impact that we want that furthers what we call our national security interests. so . ready a nation refusing help means that they have competed a process of achieving an outcome. that's a decision makers have made a decision, is necessary for a larger objective. so we can't just simply go, oh, okay, i don't want our help. gosh, we'll walk away from this one. if you don't want our help, and we're going to find somebody who does want our help. if you reject american assistance, you're rejecting or you're doing, you're not just rejecting assistance, you're hurting national security. and now you become a threat to the united states and threats need to be removed. so we'll find a way to removing what role does the traditional legacy media play if any, in coo and, and for this i'm referring specifically to the tv and to prep. well, normally speaking, traditional legacy media is that which the majority of

a population you know, gets their information from and, and generally speaking, it's government troll, depending on where you're in or government influences even here in the united states. the people who report on government things know that there hostages to certain sources of information that are comprised primarily of anonymous senior level government officials who feed them data that allows them to have a headline story. you remove the government source, you really got nothing. so legacy media is there to promote a way of thinking, so you can either gain control of the legacy media. if you see a start planting stories that undermine faith in the government or is you're the government. you can, um, you can seize control yourself and only put forth stories that, that, that are favor. would you? this is why there's a new kind of media, the social media, facebook, the twitters telegram,

whatever that's out there that allows an entire round to be to be put there. um, but even then that's, that's not as effective as one would think. i'm, you know, united states is called it digital democracy where we use these are the social media platforms to engender public unrest. um it, again, it, it hasn't been the successful. it failed in egypt. it failed in iran. it failed in turkey. it's failing in russia. it failed just about everywhere that we've we've tried to use it. um and the other thing about legacy media is that it is, it can be used by the government um to a so a mission. so let's say at the the u. s. legacy media, you know, one would think that, you know, russia tried to exploit it to alter um, you know, the point of united states, but we use it the united states government uses it to shape american opinion and indeed try and influence opinion abroad. because american media has historically

had a, a rather positive cache attached to people were like, you know, when walter cronkite speech people listen um, but that is gone. there are no more walter crack. it's an american media. american meat is a total cell out a to the u. s. government. we see that in ukraine today, where it is become a veritable a stenographer for a deliberately misleading and falsified intelligence. information leaked by the u. s. government. they've even acknowledged that they've admitted it yet. we're leaking stuff, we know it's not true that we want to get it out there to shape perception. and that's the role of the media to day to shape perception. it's no longer to inform people. it's the shape perception. and that means you're not the media that just means your simple and out. ella, as you mentioned in and take advantage. lydia deserves a whole separate address. social media plays an outsider role in our everyday lives . what's in there and act uncouth. you know, i was involved with iraq back when there wasn't some meaningful social media. so we,

we don't primarily with the legacy media. and one of the ways that we fomented or supported the notion of a coup in iraq was to be programmed the american public to get them to accept it face value. anything negative that was said about saddam hussein and said i'm st. iraq. and that was largely successful. i mean, i was somebody who was empowered with truth 1st hand truth. i did the chop for 7 years. there was no one had better access to the reality of iraqis weapons of mass destruction status than me. um, but them, i couldn't get traction in the mainstream media. they were very successful in um, down clain. but i had to say in exaggerating a counter opinions on today, we have a situation in ukraine where i have taken a contrarian position a to the mainstream narrative. and i was able to gain some traction in social media because it's not controlled. or at least we thought it wasn't controlled by mainstream me. but what we found out is it actually is

a thanks to the 20162020 elections of united states congress. and the powers that be, have determined that social media is a through a direct threat to american democracy because of the people who access social media can't be controlled by area of it that that's being shaped by mainstream media. there's alternatives. so the government is what pressure on social media to silence voices of descent. and i have course been famously banned from twitter. um, what controllers is have on coups united states again has for some time now been trying to implement a policy of aaliyah digital democracy. it's basically using social media to foment social unrest, the can lead to regime change type activities and targeted nation. so iran has been famously targeted for this of the 2009 green revolution of what's going on today in regards to the, the, the, the, the a, the poor lady who has a,

who lost her life in police custody over a job. you know, was she murdered by the iranians? no, she died of a heart attack apparently corded with video. but that didn't stop on the cia. and my 6 some other a foreign elements using social media to create a narrative to create a perception inside iran, the fomented unrest. and that's the role of social media today in that, in that regard. but it's not succeeded. there's a couple reasons why one social media is internet based and the internet can be turned off. and that's the end of it. um, and 2 of the social media works, you know, 2 ways of you. you can promote your idea, but there's a lot of other ideas out there. so oftentimes the targeted information package you're trying to get out gets looted by other information. that's that. so that's competing for time. space on the, on the social media it's a, it's an imperfect platform. um,

a lot of people. ready believe there's promise and hope in it for changing the way people think. but at the end of the day, a people think the way they're going to think and um, a tweet or facebook posting isn't going to change that reality. scott ritter. thank you so much for staying with us to talk about this. so you can see a rose by any other name. i forget it at the end of the day, close regime, change intervention, whatever you want to call it, the end result is the same. these stabilizing of that country, blood death, violence, you get the picture. crews are inherently undemocratic. yet the hen germonti, who aide in this, this sort of political destabilization purport to be spreading democracy, ironic that's going to do it for this week's episode. modus operandi the show that dig deep into foreign policy. i'm your host manila chan. thank you for tuning and

we'll see you again next week to figure out that ammo a broker with hungry browns via telecom nord stream pipelines that terrorist stock done cold for an official un investigation stressing about seduction. and then can never be repeated also ahead on the program from won't be made a scapegoat for africa's problems or thrown into a tug of war for influence. according to president, much colon ahead of is foreign nation, 2 of the continents coming and made much recent opposition to piracy his presence with sculpus.