my name is will warts with the loose political action committee and we're here

today interviewing state senator from virginia richard black who is a retired
colonel from the US military he was also the chief Jag officer in the criminal
division at the Pentagon and he is extraordinary experience in terms of
particularly Syria where he's visited a number of times the purpose of this
interview is to get senator blacks views of the current crisis surrounding the
allegation of a chemical weapons attack in East guta in city of Douma Syria yes you
know I've been watching this very closely I think all of us have because President
Trump has surrounded himself by a War Cabinet when he chose John Bolton John Bolton
is as Extreme as anybody that you can find in the foreign policy arena very much an
extremist on on war he was one of the individuals who promoted the invasion of Iraq
which turned out to be based on false premises and yet here he is again and he is
an individual who is likely to call for war in in many circumstances so anyway so
so we we had this situation boiling up it started several weeks ago where the
British began this hysterical media campaign saying that the Syrian army was going
to use poison gas against the terrorists in the east gouta suburbs this is a very
large area deep in the suburbs of Damascus which is a sprawling city they've held
it since about 2012 and built a system of underground tunnels that they've used to
you know when the Syrians would try to restore order they would emerge from
somewhere and ambush them and slaughter a bunch of them so they had held it for all
this time and the British anyway the British claimed that the the Syrian army which
had masked to finally eliminate the the Gouda pocket that they were going to use
poisonous gas and it sounds like it was going to happen imminently well as it
turned out the the Syrian army led by the the tiger forces by the Republican Guard
by some very elite groups they they managed to burst through the enemy ranks by
attacking from unexpected quarters and they rolled over the terrorists with such
such rapidity that they actually captured the major chemical weapons facility that
was possessed by the terrorists this apparently was the facility that was to be
used to create a hoax to create an incident where the terrorists would fire on
civilians claiming it that it was the Syrians and once they they had lost this this
laboratory then then they didn't have anything else to fight with and before long a
major part of the entire good pocket had simply evaporated and so finally you had
one group which was Jaysh al-islam and it holds the the city of Douma now a little
bit further away you have another pocket which is totally held by Isis but all of
the action right now is at Duma well the Syrian army attacked Duma and they had
similar success they were they were breaking through all of the barriers that were
there and so finally Jaysh al-islam agreed that they would conduct peace talks and
they arrived at an agreement that they would move some of their people out into
other rebel-held areas they asked that their severely wounded be evacuated by bus
and the the Syrian government sent in air-conditioned buses and evacuated the the
casualties that they had and then began to evacuate the soldiers themselves they
wouldn't let them carry their heavy weapons but they let them carry their sidearms
there you know there are automatic rifles and so forth and so the evacuation was
taking place the battle for gouda was won it was essentially over and it was just
sort of a matter of arranging to evacuate the terrorists because it's been the
policy of Syria to cause as little damage to property and as few as little damage
to human life as possible and consequently rather than duke it out to the bitter
end they simply allowed the terrorists to evacuate and they've done this throughout
the war very small number of casualties and this is in this I think the United
Nations is estimating about 1,600 civilians have been killed which considering the
magnitude of this battle is very small and so so we had this situation where the
war was won the terrorists were being evacuated and then the terrorists that will
give us give us a truce so that we can kind of get some things arranged and under
the cover of the truce the white helmets who are an arm of al Qaeda and al Qaeda to
remind our viewers is the group that flew four aircraft into the Twin Towers and
the Pentagon and slaughtered 3,000 Americans on 9/11 that's what white helmet is
and so white helmet has staged a provocative incident and they portrayed it as as a
poison gas attack they claimed it was a sarin gas attack sarin gas is a colorless
odorless gas if sarin gas were here in this room today we wouldn't know it until we
fell over and yet the claims are that people smelled chlorine and so the the the
terrorists don't entirely understand the chemistry of what they're working with so
they mix up what chlorine gases which has a very strong characteristic aroma and
sarin gas but anyway they made this claim and immediately just on cue all of the
the major NATO powers said we've got to we've got to attack Syria they never said
well maybe we need to find out whether an attack occurred and we've got to find out
if it did who caused it it was just automatic okay we've got two attacks so it's
clearly a pretext and and I suspect that it was a pretext that the British were
involved in because of their hysterics several weeks before the chemical laboratory
was it was captured by the Syrian army so now here we are on the verge of attacking
Syria and it is not even clear that there was an attack there was a very credible
now and this could you know we we don't know for sure but very credible fellow he
he was a an english-speaking physician from the major hospital in Duma and he said
we've never had any casualties brought in we've never had any reports of poison gas
or anything of that sort now if if this had occurred it certainly would have had a
flood of you know casualty even if let's say their initial report was I think 40
people had been killed and even with that you'd have had a flood of people being
brought into the hospital and and everybody would have known about it well here's
the you know he's reporting but we haven't heard about anything so we don't even
know that this happened this may just simply be much like concha Kuhn which was a
it was a propaganda ploy to get us to fire missiles which we did President Trump
fired missile and now we it's not clear but we could be on the verge of attacking
the good guys to help the bad guys because once once this final pocket is cleared
out and it's not having to be cleared out by about its being cleared out by
emptying it outright buses and evacuating these people and and the people by the
way are are ecstatic that they're finally released because they've been held
hostage for since 2012 and and they're all reporting about how they were enslaved
how'd you know Jaysh al-islam was famous for they build these steel cages and they
would put women in them and then wherever they were staging an attack on Damascus
by firing mortars or artillery they would put a cage filled with with these women
hostages so that the Syrian army couldn't couldn't respond in kind so now they're
they're gone I mean the the the the war for East guta is over and there remains
only one small pocket totally controlled by Isis and the United States is
considering going in and attacking the legitimate duly elected Syrian government in
order to prevent them from attacking this last pocket of Isis in in Damascus and
the idea that we would align ourselves with Isis against the elected government
that clearly represents the people is just it is astounding uh two questions you
mentioned the British role in this and of course the British were involved in the
dodgy dossier that brought us to Iraq under Tony Blair we have the steel dossier
which is being used against the president the United States for the last year which
has under fide claims in it false claim I mean I think must be by this time we'd
say you know you can't verify after all this time there lies right and then you
have the the the screep all case where where that again involving the British who
refused to even allow a transparent investigation and and there there is an
international treaty that deals with how you how you deal with these things and
they refuse to abide by it so it's basically it's our claim and you accept it you
know don't don't look behind the screen you know ignore the man behind the screen
so what do you what do you think is is occurring in terms of the British role in
all of these situations and of course what's been pointed out is the even by de
Mistura during the UN debate yesterday the international implications of a strike
on Syria when there are Russians present in Syria who are vulnerable under such a
strike the Russians have warned that there will be consequences if Russians are
casualties either accidentally or not so we're at a very very dangerous situation
and the British are playing a very profiterole in this whole situation what's
what's your sense of this let me tell you well right now the Western world and I
the British are certainly instigators of this but we're certainly not without blame
the French are certainly not we have maneuvered ourselves to a point where the
degree of risk I think is is as high as it was when the Archduke of Austria was
assassinated causing an explosion into the First World War enormous bloodsheds
offering destruction and the First World War of course was sort of just a prelude
and and laid this the groundwork for the Second World War and the the vast
destruction that took place now what makes this worse than the first world war
situation is that while Russia you know we outspent Russia 11 to 1 our
defense budget is so big that it equals the combined total of the the next 14
largest nations in terms of defense spending Russia China Germany Korea France and
you just goes on and on yeah we have a gargantuan defense budget and and we are so
we're more than a match for the Russians the Russians I mean they're you know well
they have a fine army and fine military it's it's much smaller it's it just can't
compare however where we do have equality is with nuclear power both sides
apparently have roughly 1500 nuclear weapons that are set to go like that there are
roughly 7,000 on either side which are capable of being used in short order that is
enough probably to destroy two-thirds of humanity and certainly the the Western
world as we know it would be practically annihilating all of our major cities right
here in in Virginia Norfolk biggest naval base on earth would simply begone this
this county which has huge internet traffic would be gone the Pentagon would be
gone New York City totally gone it would it would it would totally be erased from
the earth and we have people like John Bolton who are sufficiently reckless to wear
for their self-interest they are willing to risk the death of perhaps two billion
people just simply purging them from the face of the earth and it is incumbent on
the President to recognize the extraordinary danger that we face we have been
building up to this and many of us elected Donald Trump on a promise that he was
going to reduce our sort of normalizing relations with Russia he was going to stop
trying to overthrow President Assad and work with the Syrians he was going to
downgrade the importance of NATO and he was going to give up regime change but now
Trump has done a lot of the things he promised to do but he has not done one thing
that he promised to do in foreign affairs nothing well you could take the exception
of the you know he was always very hostile towards the Iranian deal right and so he
was honest about that that's the probably the one thing that he's focused on most
but you know when General Michael Flynn was planned to be the the National Security
Advisor Michael Flynn was a he would have been a godsend for this nation he knew
where the skeletons were buried he understood what was going on and I think he
recognized the importance of drawing back from nuclear war and so we we have come
to a point probably more dangerous than any time in my lifetime and I'm counting
the time when as kids we used to have air raid drills under our desks and they tell
you you how you cover your eyes so you won't be blinded by the blasts in the back
of your neck so something won't won't hit you and break your neck and people
understood nuclear war because we had dropped the atomic bombs on Japan and they
understood what it could do today it's sort of vague it's it's very distant but the
the nuclear weapons that we have today make the ones we used in Japan look like
firecrackers they're nothing yeah so so we we are at a fantastically perilous
juncture in our history and someone needs to take control of it and say let's pull
back from the precipice I think there's I mean you raise the case of general Flynn
and and president Trump's intentions for better relations with Russia and his
opposition to regime change now what you've it's it seems very much that he's been
thwarted from carrying that out very much by the British instigated coup attempt
against his administration which which has been going on for over over a year
really as he said yesterday going all the way back to shortly after he was
nominated you're right because the thing is in evaluating you have to remember that
he was immediately placed on the defensive and they made these wild unfounded
claims that Russia coming Russia's coming they've you know they spent $100,000 on
Facebook ads half of them for Trump and half of them for Hillary Clinton oh that's
gonna that's going to change the world isn't it you know my gosh if if that could
determine the outcome of an election you and I would go out and we'd raise a
hundred thousand and we would change the outcome of an election it was it was just
so absurd and here they have been they have investigated and run this thing down ad
nauseam to where people are utterly sick of it but the problem is it immediately
put Trump on the defensive they knew that if general Flynn didn't go that we would
have you know tensions go down and that meant a lot of you know people who who deal
in the oil markets could potentially lose a lot of money on that people who run
drugs across the border could lose money there and people most of all the the most
profitable of all vices is war and if we didn't have war there were people who were
going to lose untold billions of dollars almost every major corporation profits
from war and so Michael Flynn had to go because he was the most dangerous person to
their agenda and and then they continued to make these allegations and put Trump on
the defensive to where Trump had to appear to be hostile towards Russia if I seemed
friendly they'd say AHA we told you that he really was going to normalize relations
with Russia he must be in their pocket well no he wasn't in their pocket he just
recognized that it's better not to a nuclear war the United States has been at war
in the Mideast for 17 years that is longer than the First World War the Second
World War and the Vietnam War combined that grand total we have been in longer than
the First World War the Second World War in the Vietnam War how long are we going
to fight over there and how can somebody demonstrate for you and for me one single
thing that the United States people have ever gained from this we've we've added 7
trillion dollars to the national debt now we made a big thing about how much
President Obama had added to the national debt fair enough but nobody bothered to
say well wait a minute this wasn't all just his personal inclinations 7 trillion
dollars out of a 2021 million dollar debt is from these useless stupid wars that we
fought and anybody who says well we had to do it because we had to we had to
suppress terrorism when we started off the terrorists amounted to hundreds of
people before we were finished they were launching 20-30-40 mechanized armored
divisions they were taking over capitals of countries they were you know they had
expanded they controlled an area that was larger than many countries and
slaughtering hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people where is the benefit what
have we achieved and believe me nobody loves our troops more than I do I've been
wounded in action I volunteered over and over again for frontline combat and I have
tremendous respect for the guys who go over and they believe in their country they
believe in what we're doing god bless them and my heart breaks for the ones who who
suffer but but we we get the prosthetic devices we get the caskets and Saudi Arabia
gets the oil money and Great Britain gets the Empire what is the American people
get what what do we get out of all of this stuff nothing now I basically you've got
two things which have just occurred and you've been addressing this one you had a
raid organized by Special Counsel Moeller on the office and also I believe the home
of president Trump's personal attorney president Trump said this is an attack on
the country and and the values which we stand for he called it a witch hunt again
and said that the client lawyer privilege is dead now this occurs again this is
part of this entire British operation against the president which you've described
and if it occurs at the exact same time that you have the crisis in Syria and as
you said President Trump is put in as a defensive position right where he he's
attacked for even calling President Putin and congratulating him on his election
yeah we're wanting to have a summit with him for good relations and on the other
hand he's forced in a position where he says I'm tougher on Russia than my
predecessor Obama and so he's being pressured to launch an attack which is a which
is contrary to his own inclinations and contrary to the interests of the United
States of America and and of the world and at the same time he he comes under this
at this attack from Muller which some have suggested like Dershowitz the attorney
was a Democrat you know this represents a dangerous day there's disregarding
constitutional rights this whole thing is it is a frontal attack on the US
Constitution the sixth amendment to the Constitution guarantees people the right to
counsel the right to counsel since the earliest days of the Republic has been
assured by the idea of confidentiality if you are going to have counsel effective
assistance of counsel you have to share all all of your information with them Alan
Dershowitz is a Democrat and he has a reputation as a liberal Democrat from long
ago he was an Obama supporter he was a Hillary supporter he but he to his credit
believes in the United States Constitution and he is absolutely distraught at what
has happened and he said where is the ACE the açelya ACLU the ACLU would he said
would be screaming to high heavens you you couldn't turn on any station without
hearing somebody from the ACLU had this been a raid on the attorneys of Hillary
Clinton or Obama or any other famous Democrat and it you know it shows the very
rapid erosion of the Constitution in the United States and I think it's very
dangerous and you know who knows you know if they knew everything about you or me
or any other American they could find something that we had done years ago there
was a there was a TV show back in the black-and-white days and they bet a guy they
said oh you'll get $10,000 if you don't commit a crime for one week and the guy
went for a week and they had him on on the next week they said well it looks like
you beat us and this is back in the days when people smoked
and so they said well what do you plan to do with all your money and so the guy
the the the the the host of the show opens up a pack of cigarettes and he shuffles
out to cigarette and the guy takes a cigarette and and he lights up he says well I
might do this or that and the host says well I don't think so because you just
broke a law and and the guy's jaw dropped he said what do you mean he said well the
federal law says that when you open a pack a cigarette you have to break the stamp
so everybody no matter how diligent they are everybody breaks laws because we are a
nation where almost everything is regulated everything you do everything you say
and so they know if they get into information that's held by the attorney there's
something there's something and we've got a special prosecutor who does not feel
constrained to find out certain things and if they're not there then dismiss it the
assault on the sixth amendment is the most blatant I mean I've been a lawyer since
this is the 70s and I've never seen this happen before a raid on an attorney's
office a fishing expedition to get at the client and so the sixth amendment is
being torn down just as the first amendment has been torn down the Fourth Amendment
has been torn down the Tenth Amendment is gone there's so so much of of what we
grew up with as constitutional protections are destroyed and so what is going on
with the with the search of Trump's records is is clearly unconstitutional in my
view and is immoral and it is an attack on the Constitution just a final question
which is is not even it's not so much a question I just wanted to give you an
opportunity perhaps to address President Trump what would you say to him now in
terms of the serious situation in particular but but more generally as well I think
he'll be telling look there are certain areas where I can give you tremendous
credit you know some of the economic things he's done I think have been very shrewd
very wise the worst thing of all though is foreign policy he has he has let foreign
policy lead us to the prank of the third world war and and his his campaign
promises were exactly on point we don't really have any significant differences
with Russia I mean not ones that are fundamental to the American national interest
except for stopping nuclear war that's the that is the one national interest if we
got away from that then all of a sudden NATO NATO already spends four times as much
as Russia does on their defense budget and he's complaining they're not spending
enough well if four times is enough how many times is so we need to we need to
diminish the role of the of NATO regime change needs to be absolutely out and right
now the United States has occupied with our forces a third of Syria and we've done
it secretly we've got about 6,000 troops on the ground remember no boots on the
ground about 6,000 of them couple of them were killed just just yesterday or day
before and we have a minimum of 12 American bases on sovereign Syrian territory and
we're trying to redraw the map of of Syria in a way that will absolutely guarantee
the next war and so he should go back to what he did is we we will work with Syria
we will end the war and do away with regime change all of the things he campaigned
on were great ideas and he has I would give him a zero on foreign policy right now
i think i think it's very poor and he has surrounded himself he always said i know
how to pick the very best people he has the worst war cabinet i mean at this point
we look at general mattis as being the Dov of the bunch we got nikki Haley she's
supposed to be our top diplomat you never hear her when she's not screaming
hysterically for war what kind of a diplomat is doing that a diplomat is supposed
to be trying to find common ground trying to move away from from war nikki Haley
she's similar to John Bolton that way if somebody says well let's attack Ireland
yeah ed let's attack Ireland let's go after him kill him we to get away from this I
mean we've got people who are just really irrational and even you know Kushner you
know I think he's one of them you know even a member of trumps family I think it's
a mistake to have so many family members around you know first ladies fine
everybody else they can go and they can do they can run the family business but he
needs to surround himself with people who who want to carry out his agenda and the
people he has in foreign policy right now are people who are dead set against his
agenda and that's what I would tell him is you need somebody who believes in what
you campaigned on and he needs to be your top adviser not somebody like John Bolton
who hated everything that you ever said on the campaign trail so that would be my
advice I'm not the president unfortunately so well I want to thank you very much
thank you very much it's always good to see well I appreciate all the things that
you're doing it's it's groups like yours and and all of the individuals who go out
and and you know network with with their friends on social media spread that the
film that you're going to put out on online and that that's where our power is you
so I wish you the best same to you thank you