Month: December 2007

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_12_05_porter.mp3]

Historian and journalist Gareth Porter discusses the new Iran NIE, it’s dual role as verifying the peaceful nature of the Iranian’s nuclear program while also pretending to verify that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in the first place (which remains unproven, confirmation in the NIE that the Iranians can in fact be negotiated with, the deterrent value in simply being able to get their centrifuges working right, the lowered standard of their “possessing the knowledge,” to make a nuke as casus belli and his view that the NIE has greatly reduced the possibility of war.

MP3 here. (19:19)

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.

Dr. Porter was both a Vietnam specialist and an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and was Co-Director of Indochina Resource Center in Washington. Dr. Porter taught international studies at City College of New York and American University. He was the first Academic Director for Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Washington Semester program at American University.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_12_05_giraldi.mp3]

Former CIA and DIA officer and Antiwar.com columnist Philip Giraldi explains his view of the new Iran NIE, Iran’s “hypothetical” nuclear weapons program which amounts to basically nothing to have been suspended in 2003, the neocons’ pathetic cries that the CIA is out to get the vice president, the new evidence obtained, the ignorance of the Congress, the likely angle of the War Party from here, what sort of war is planned for, the U.S.-Israeli attempt to get friendly Arab governments on board and the future of U.S. occupation in Iraq.

MP3 here. (21:31)

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, blogger at the Huffington Post and columnist at Antiwar.com.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_12_05_prather.mp3]

Antiwar.com’s Dr. Gordon Prather explains his suspicions that the CIA doesn’t have any credible evidence that Iran ever had a nuclear weapons program to halt in 2003 and that the timing of the NIE may have been meant to undercut ElBaradei’s anticipated report to that effect later this month.

MP3 here. (35:01)

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.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/12-04awpatbuchanan.mp3]

Pat Buchanan, author of the new book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart, his belief that the new Iran NIE has significantly weakened Bush’s case for war, the battle between the War Party and the “realists,” U.S. use of Pejak and MEK terrorists against Iran, the costs of the Iraq war, the neocons’ efforts to create a new Cold War with Russia, his analysis of the presidential race, his affection for Ron Paul, Israel’s nuke program, why he doubts Iran would even want nukes and the peace offer of 2003.

MP3 here. (22:07)

Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/12-03awjonathanschell.mp3]

Jonathan Schell, columnist for the Nation and author of The Fate of the Earth, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger, discusses his view that the people of earth are in great danger from nuclear weapons, his fear of Iran’s nuclear program and belief that bombing them is the worst way to keep them from making nukes, the theory of mutual assured destruction as applied to Iran, the call for a “preemptive” first strike on China back in the 60s and the U.S. and USSR’s pledge to disarm their nukes under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

MP3 here. (19:55)

Jonathan Schell is the author of The Fate of the Earth, among other books, and the just-published 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.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/12-03awanatollievenandjohnhulsman.mp3]

Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman discuss their new book Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World, the damage done by the hubris of those in control of the U.S. government, the bipartisan consensus around the U.S.’s aggressive foreign policy, the insane policy in the Middle East, belligerence toward Russia and U.S. policy makers’ inability to imagine if the shoe were on the other foot.

MP3 here. (15:18)

Anatol Lieven, a former senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, previously covered Central Europe for The Financial Times; Pakistan, Afghanistan, the former Soviet Union, and Russia for The Times (London), and India as a freelance journalist. He was also an editor at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, where he also worked for the Eastern Services of the BBC.

John Hulsman examines European security and NATO affairs, the European Union, U.S.-European trade and economic relations, the war on terror, Iraq, Iran and the Middle-East peace process for the Heritage Foundation. Hulsman is a frequent commentator on all aspects of transatlantic relations, global geopolitics, and international cooperation in fighting terrorism. He makes regular appearances with major media outlets such as ABC, CBS, Fox News, CNN, CNNfn, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS and the BBC.