6/29/20 Matthew Hoh on the Dubious Russia-Afghanistan Bounty Story - a podcast by Scott Horton

Scott interviews Matthew Hoh about the recent claim that the Russian government has been paying bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. soldiers. The headlines have made it sound as though this is a confirmed and well-sourced story, when in reality, Hoh explains, it’s all coming from anonymous American intelligence sources without so much as an attempt at independent verification of, say, specific soldiers that this is supposed to have happened to. Moreover, says Hoh, Russia has very little to gain from such a policy, and a lot to lose. The people who would benefit from increased tensions with Russia are the war hawks in the U.S. government and the big players in the arms industry. Just like with the hundreds of other lies told by the U.S. government and sold by the media to benefit powerful military-industrial complex interests, we should be highly skeptical.



Discussed on the show:



“Is Big Media Echoing Accusations to Demonize Russia and Continue Afghan War?” (Institute for Public Accuracy)

“Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says” (The New York Times)

“Spies and Commandos Warned Months Ago of Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops” (The New York Times)

“Russian Spy Unit Paid Taliban to Attack Americans, U.S. Intelligence Says” (The Wall Street Journal)

“Russian operation targeted coalition troops in Afghanistan, intelligence finds” (The Washington Post)

Afghanistan Papers

“This Russia-Afghanistan Story Is Western Propaganda At Its Most Vile” (Caitlin Johnstone)



Matthew Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and formerly worked for the U.S. State Department. Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling in 2010. Hoh is a member of the Board of Directors for Council for a Livable World and is an Advisory Board Member for Expose Facts. He writes on issues of war, peace and post-traumatic stress disorder recovery at matthewhoh.com.



This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.



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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1-uPxztDbc









The following is an automatically generated transcript.



Show TranscriptScott Horton 0:10

All right, shall welcome and Scott Horton show. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com dot com, author of the book fool's errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org dot org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com slash Scott Horton show. All right, you guys introducing Matthew whoa, I'm sure you remember that back in 2009. He was a State Department official in Afghanistan, who publicly resigned and went to the media and told Barack Obama not to launch this search because it could not work. And of course he was vindicated after being ignored and We have a lot of important Afghanistan stuff to discuss. So welcome back to the show, Matt. How are you, sir? Good, Scott, how are you? I'm doing real good. appreciate you joining us on the show again here. And you know what, I'm happy to share a press release with you this morning. The Institute for Public accuracy is advertising interviews with you or me about the subject we're about to discuss here, but I figured I'd better go ahead and interview you about it first and see if I got it right. I meant to mention you're from the Center for International Policy there. Oh,

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