NOVANEWS
On Thursday, the US Senate confirmed Brennan, the top White House adviser on the so-called war on terror and purported architect of Washington’s assassination drone operations, as the next head of the CIA.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Scott Rickard, a former US intelligence linguist from Florida, to further discuss the issue of US drone policies. Rickard is joined by the additional guest of the program, George Lambrakis, a former US diplomat, from London. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview with Scott Rickard.
Press TV: Well, Mr. Rickard, Senator Rand Paul said that being bombed in your sleep is not the American way.
Your take? Is it the American way, as we are seeing the US using more and more drones in many more countries?
Rickard: Well, it is certainly the American way outside of the United States. Rand Paul’s grandstanding was nothing more than just a noise to gain attention, in my opinion, for his potential presidency bid in 2016.
Obviously John Brennan was unfortunately approved as the director of the CIA and this is a longstanding push for folks that are committing crimes and war crimes as Americans that are continuously promoted and no one is held accountable. John Brennan is by far one of the largest war criminals in the history of the United States. And have this guy even considered for the office of the director of CIA is just complete embarrassment for the United States of America.
Now for Rand Paul, obviously this guy is playing both sides of the fence. He is trying to become a Republican and he is actually just another tool for all the lobbies, the Zionist lobbies, and all of the war lobbies and the banking lobbies that basically run the United States’ government.
So, I look at the situation as the status quo unfortunately in the United States and the drone program is just yet another program of unwarranted and illegal murder around the world.
As I said many times, the Americans have murdered over 25 million people in the last past century. You know, we are killing half a million people a year around the world.
So this is a tremendously poor move for the United States to continue to allow these kind of people in these positions and hopefully we will have some kind of movement here in the United States that will start rising up against these type of tyrannical leaders that we have.
Press TV: What about that, Mr. Rickard, basically that there is no choice, that the local government cannot control, it has to be done in order to stop them from attacking the United States?
Rickard: Well, Mr. Lambrakis comes from a long line of propagandas for the State Department. This gentleman spent his entire career basically writing and drafting materials for the State Department that were falsely reporting around the world, but supporting the American agenda.
We are looking at it in an environment where obviously there is many many people being murdered by Americans and we have been attacked. And by the way, those attacks were actually planned and orchestrated within American soil, the last attacks.
Most of those Saudi citizens were actually operating on American soil for over a year. So, you know, a lot of these guys that talk about the terror and the horrible things that are going on in the world, they are very minute compared to the volume of American activity around the world.
American activity around the world is by far ten times, if not a thousand times, more than any other country and most countries combined.
So, this is not a legitimate debate when you are actually looking into the roots of what we are talking about. The roots of what we are talking about are a country that is dependent on a military infrastructure for its economy, a country that is dependent on its financial control of the American dollar around the world.
We have gone country after country and by using drone strikes obviously they are not targeted against individuals. These drone strikes go after groups of people, just like you described. And they are a violation of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions do not allow you to use heavy weaponry and artillery against individuals. These guys are not even armed some of the times that they are being assassinated.
So, these are absolute war crimes, they are absolutely inhumane. US is one of the biggest human rights violators and Kissinger is the one to begin with.
Operation Condor in South America, they are currently holding trials down there and they want Kissinger to actually speak in those trials and to talk about his involvement in Operation Condor, which he was involved. And in fact, the Operation Condor was murdering people not only in South America but also on American soil.
So, these are the situations that Mr. Lambrakis is very familiar with, there are things that have been covered up for decades. He is a master at covering things up. That is what he was trying to do.
Press TV: [Referring to a viewer’s comment on Press TV’s page on Facebook] He says basically, if the same thing would happen in the United States, how would the United States react to a foreign power coming with drones and assassinating someone on American soil?
And he says I very much doubt that there will want it, therefore it makes the US drone assassinations in foreign lands illegal and should be stopped. Your take on that comment, Sir.
Rickard: Well, obviously that is absolutely correct. I mean it is hypocrisy. It is unbelievable that the Americans can continue to act illegally and operate illegally, attacking and murdering in other countries.
And if anyone even tries anything like that in this country even if…, you know, look at the Shah of Iran that was a great example, we were harboring a criminal that they are asking for. That is why they took the hostages in Iran.
So, the facts are as we do not play by the same rules that we hold the rest of the world accountable for. And we are the victors, we are the destroyers, we have continued that model.
You know, this gentleman [referring to the other guest of the program] has been involved with the guys like Dean Rusk and Richard Helms. This has been going on for over a half a century and he was at the roots of some of these problems after World War II. Dean Rusk was responsible for starting the Korean war.
There were two and a half million people killed in the Korean war. And that is why I say [it]. And there is just multiple multiple multiple military incursions around the world, endless endless propagation of war.
Press TV: Mr. Rickard, your perspective on that, if we look at Iraq after US invasion, we are talking about millions of Iraqis being killed and that is just one country.
Does the United States value human rights and is the life of an Iraqi or an Afghani or whomever, for example, Somalian, do they value it the same as an American life?
Rickard: Well, absolutely not. I mean it is ridiculous to say that Americans value human rights a hundred percent. I mean obviously, there are groups and there are great things that the American does. To say that I am angry and I am hateful and I am anti-American, these are absolutely, he is calling somebody like a conspiracy theorist. They constantly go after and belittle people that are critical of some horrific wrongdoings of the United States.
And these horrific wrongdoings, unfortunately they are war crimes. And people are never held accountable. When you win a war, you are not held accountable for your war crimes. And we have been winning wars over and over again for the last century.
And these were incredibly murderous wars and most of our victims are extremely poorly armed and most of the time they are being armed, they are being armed sometimes in the past by the Soviet which is a communist empire that Mr. Lambrakis came out of fighting. That was one of Dean Rusk’s major focus was to be a combat against the communist empire.
Now at this point, the Americans manufacture most of the weapons around the world. We are the largest manufacturer. Most of the firearm weapons are manufactured here in the United States, almost all the ammunition.
Press TV: Are you saying basically, for example, you said that the United States has been the victor in these wars, so is it the one who is victorious who basically determines who is the war criminal or not? Because there are many people around the world that would write now they believe very much that someone like George W. Bush or even Barack Obama actually are war criminals, Tony Blair, and the list goes on and on. However, these were the so-called victors in the war.
Rickard: Absolutely. Students in America grew up on a book called the Encyclopedia Britannica. It was not the Encyclopedia Americannica. These were books that were made for us to learn and basically learn the way the history was going to be written for the victor.
And what we have learned, we have all been fooled. And unfortunately, perhaps this guy Lambrakis continues to believe what he was taught and he is living in his own Disney Land like I said the last time that we had a debate.
This poor guy believes what he has actually learned over the years and he has never seen behind the curtain. He has actually worked with the people behind the curtain to continue to fool the people on the other side.
