Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter discusses the newly assertive U.S. role in relations with Israel, how ending nationalism-inspiring threats against Iran will allow a moderate government to take hold, Israel’s inability to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities without U.S. help, how missile defense provokes nuclear proliferation and why nuclear weapons can and should be abandoned in our lifetimes.

MP3 here. (42:45)

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. He is the author of numerous books, including Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement and Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change.

Frida Berrigan, columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, discusses the frantic U.S. defense contractors lobbying for stimulus money while promising job creation, the prospect of a militarized outer space, Lockheed Martin’s overpriced and unnecessary F-22 Raptor and why the commonly held assumption that World War II ended the Great Depression must be challenged.

MP3 here. (23:33)

Frida Berrigan is Senior Program Associate for the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. She is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus and a contributing editor of In These Times magazine.

Doug Bandow, author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire, discusses the Bush administration’s foreign policy legacy, why maintaining a U.S. military presence in S. Korea makes less sense than ever, the difficulty of negotiating alternative U.S. supply routes to Afghanistan while taking a hard line on Russia and Iran, the high cost in Iraqi lives for their “liberation” from one authoritarian government to another and the demise of Bush’s two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

MP3 here. (21:45)

Doug Bandow is a recent addition to the Cato Institute. His new and archived articles can be found at Antiwar.com/bandow.

Mark Ames, author of “The Cold War that Wasn’t” in The Nation, discusses the dominant narrative and ideological underpinnings in the U.S. press regarding the recent Georgian attack on South Ossetia and subsequent Russian counterattack on Georgia, the attempt to portray Russia as the aggressor by floating the idea of a first-strike cyber war despite the lack of any evidence, the alleged poisoning of Ukraine’s Victor Yushchenko and the current dispute between Yushchenko and Yulia Timoshenko over her reaction to the Georgia war, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, the precedent set by U.S. intervention in Kosovo, the danger of putting “defensive” missiles in Eastern Europe while the U.S. foreign policy establishment contemplates first strike capability, U.S. NED support for the Russian National Bolsheviks, the “shock therapy” robbery of Russian resources under Yeltsin’s autocracy in the 1990s and the consequences.

MP3 here. (64:25)

Mark Ames is a journalist who has written for several publications including the New York Press, The Nation and GQ Russia and is the founding editor and regular contributor of the Moscow-based newspaper The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond and The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia.

Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent for Canada’s Sun National Media and author of the brand new American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World, discusses the importance of maintaining level-headed relations with Russia, the consequences of U.S. support for Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia, Pakistan’s decreasing stability and our increased interference, the beginning of the “pipeline security wars,” the war party’s bogus explanations of the causes of terrorism and the Arab world’s former admiration for America.

MP3 here. (53:24)

Award winning author, columnist, and broadcaster Eric S. Margolis has covered 14 wars and is a leading authority on military affairs, the Middle East, South Asia, and Islamic movements. He is foreign correspondent for Canada’s Sun National Media and author of War at the Top of the World and the brand new American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World.

Dr. Gordon Prather discusses the different uses for varying yield nuclear weapons for missile defense, the tactical and strategic handicaps of our missile defense systems, what it takes to build a nuclear weapon and the difference between a nuclear weapons program and what the Iranians are doing.

MP3 here. (31:09)

Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. — ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Wade Boese, research director of the Arms Control Association and contributing writer to Arms Control Today, discusses the missile defense system being implemented in Poland and the Czech Republic, under the facade of defense from Iran while actually threatening Russia and China, the current and future status of Iran’s missile capabilities, the reality that Iran has no reason to attack the west anyway, the threat still posed by U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, the unwillingness of the Bush war party to reduce U.S. nuclear weapons despite the START Treaty with Russia initiating the process, possible changes to U.S. nuclear posture by the two presidential candidates, the futility of missile countermeasures and how an effective missile defense system would likely only increase U.S. aggressiveness.

MP3 here. (41:26)

Wade Boese is the research director of the Arms Control Association. Boese writes for Arms Control Today, prepares ACA fact sheets, and maintains contact with the press and public on these issues. His work has been published in The American Prospect Online, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Defense News, The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Times, and Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. He also contributed to Challenging Conventional Wisdom: Debunking the Myths and Exposing the Risks of Arms Export Reform.

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, discusses the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent to weaponize space, the 1997 blueprint to control space, “Vision 2020,” how the corporations are our overlords and control society, the proposed mining of Mars by Halliburton, how the military will control who can or can’t travel in space, the economic fascism of socializing costs while privatizing profits, how “Operation Paper Clip” brought 1500 top Nazis to America to start our space program; the CIA; and the MK Ultra mind control experiments, how the Downlink Listening Stations, controlled by STRATCOM, spy on Americans, the danger of the United Command, the future war between the U.S. and China for the world’s resources, the arms race that America has caused by threatening China and Russia, how the “economic draft” will supply endless soldiers for endless war, Rods from God and the necessity of dismantling the military industrial complex.

MP3 here. (37:42)

Bruce Gagnon, a Young Republican turned peace activist during the Vietnam War, is director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

Philip Giraldi, former DIA and CIA officer and columnist for Antiwar.com, discusses his scoop for the American Conservative magazine that the information leading the FBI to Ben Ami Kadish came from inside the Israeli government, speculation that it may have been an attempt by antiwar factions in Israel to thwart scheduled testimony by Israeli intelligence agents in favor of the bogus story of the North Korea/Syria nuclear weapons program, the promotion of Gen. Petraeus to commander of Centcom, the remaining danger of war with Iran given a suitable pretext, the detriment of the narrative of the indivisibility of Israeli and American interests, the natural divisions between groups like Hezbollah, al Qaeda, the Iranian Mullahs, the War Party’s claims about their cooperation, the FBI’s bogus terrorism prosecutions since 9/11, America’s regime change in Somalia, the case for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and the McCain prescription for confrontation with Russia and China.

MP3 here. (39:51)

Philip Giraldi is a former DIA and CIA officer, partner at Cannistraro Associates, Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance, contributing editor at the American Conservative magazine and columnist at Antiwar.com.

Jonathan Schell, author of The Fate of the Earth, and The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger and visiting lecturer at Yale University, discusses the case against nuclear weapons, the destructive power and military obsolescence of America and Russia’s nuclear arsenals, the treaties the U.S. government has signed promising to dismantle our nukes, the administration’s war against the non-proliferation regime, missile “defense” in Eastern Europe and the first strike option, NATO expansion, the arguments that nukes are good for preventing war among great powers or that North Korea or terrorists could “hold us all hostage” if our governments ceased to hold nukes, nuclear winter, the end of the age of empire, what needs to be done to get going on abolition and Hillary Clinton’s belligerence.

MP3 here. (40:36)

Jonathan Schell is the author of The Fate of the Earth, and The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger. He is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute and a visiting lecturer at Yale University.

Update: Your host’s reference to Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of Barack Obama’s refusal to endorse Harry Truman’s nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mistaken. I was thinking of this, but that (otherwise wonderful) author was apparently thinking of the time last summer when Clinton denounced Obama for promising not to attack our ally Pakistan with nuclear weapons, “just in time” for the 62nd anniversary of those horrible war crimes against the Japanese.

Sincere apologies to my guest and audience.