JACK STOCKWELL INTERVIEWS
LYNDON H. LAROUCHE, JR.
'The Guns of August:
Hitler in the Bunker'
Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed on July 28, 2005 by Utah radio host Jack Stockwell, on Salt Lake City's KTKK radio station. Here are excerpts.
Stockwell: My guest, ladies and gentlemen, Lyndon LaRouche, hasn't been on the show in a long time. This may be a fortuitous day for you to be here. You were on my show on the 11th of September, 2001. And the attacks on the World Trade Center began prior to the show, but we discovered what was going on while you were on the show. You made some interesting remarks at that time, that turned out to be very prophetic, and without your knowing anything other than what we knew as far as news coverage was concerned—very prophetic statements.
And now! Here you are, less than 12 hours later, since the House voted to go ahead and pass CAFTA [Central American Free Trade Agreement]. We're coming up on the August break when some dangerous things can happen in the government, when the House and Senate aren't there to watch what's going on in the Executive branch. We're sitting here on the edge of the dynamite, the black powder keg of the financial bubble over this entire planet. We are quagmired in Iraq. I was paying tribute to the Chinese this morning, for buying at least a $1 billion a day in Treasury bills to keep our dollar pumped up—otherwise things would be a lot worse than they are now. So, in the midst of all this, what a perfect, fortuitous time for you to be on the show.
LaRouche: Thank you.
Stockwell: So, you got plenty of lead-ins there! But, one thing, before the CAFTA thing showed up at the last second, one thing I definitely wanted you to address, is what we can learn from Pericles of Athens, and the "Guns of August," as we sit here on the edge of what in the world an insane White House can pull next?
LaRouche: Well, it's not just the White House. It's more specifically, it's Dick Cheney. You know, the President really doesn't function—some people don't like to say that, but it's true, and we have to deal with reality. We can not deal with protocol, when reality is that important.
But therefore, Cheney is much more significant in the command structure in Washington, than the President in many respects. The President has these impulses, he says these things and so forth. But, sometimes I think he's shocked by Cheney.
What's happened is, that we've had for some time—the American Conservative magazine has put out the report, that the Strategic Command, under Cheney's orders, is moving for a "nuke-plus" attack on Iran, should the present antics in London and elsewhere, terrorist antics, escalate into the United States, in the form of something which is interpreted as a replay of 9/11. And this is being run with Tony Blair of London.
We got on the case of this plan, and it broke down—we checked with a lot of Senators who know this situation; we checked with a lot of people in the intelligence community, who know the situation—and it came down that nobody was going to blow the whistle publicly. You have something, I think Sy Hersh is on the case from the New York Times circuit on this investigation. But somebody has to blow the whistle. So, I said, the other day, "It's me."
So, I put out a report that Cheney is—we're in a Guns of August situation, which the month of August, if the Senate does go on recess, and that is not settled yet; actually the leader of the Senate Democrats—Reid, is pushing to keep the Senate in session, because there are a number of issues which require that, and also a lot of people are concerned—including Republican Senators, of some significance—that we not leave the doors unlocked for Cheney while the Senate goes on vacation. Because, the plan is, right now, is to go to war!
Stockwell: Yes.
LaRouche: And the plan is, you see this funny business about pulling back from Iraq, we don't know what's going on there, but something is going on. But there's a shift into a pre-emptive war plan.
Now, the danger of this arises, from the way in which the financial situation is going down the tubes. And you're in something like the Guns of August, as in 1914 and 1939. You're in a period, in which someone can play the game of "Hitler in the Bunker," and Cheney wants to do that. And it's our opinion, and I'm speaking of a group of people with whom I'm in touch—it's our opinion, that that's on the edge, and it has to be dealt with.
And therefore, I blew the whistle, with a statement called "The Guns of August: Hitler in the Bunker," in which Cheney is pushing to get us into war. Whether it's going to happen or not, is not certain. Whether he intends for it to happen, is certain. The orders are cut. It's an active operation, a Strategic Command directive from him. The fuse is lit. And if the fuse goes off, in August, presumably, it will happen.
My point was, in putting the point out, somebody had to say it. And by saying it, maybe we have a chance to prevent it from happening.
Stockwell: What's the chances of Reid getting the Senate to stay in session?
LaRouche: I don't know, we're working on it.
Now, we've got this thing in Central America, a piece of insanity, which makes everything just that much more complicated and worse.
The joint's going nuts. It's an extremely dangerous situation. Harry Reid is a very intelligent, very capable fellow, in the position he occupies. We have also a number of Republican Senators who realize what Cheney represents, who despise the creature. So, there is a lot of muscle going on. My point was to put my weight on top of this situation, and to say the things nobody else wanted to be the first guy to say. We'll see what happens in the course of the next couple of days.
Stockwell: Well, you have a situation here, you know, in the sense that—when Secretary Rumsfeld was on, I think it was Stephanopoulos's program about a month ago, and Stephanopoulos asked Rumsfeld pointblank, about military action with Iran, it really hit me like a hammer between the running lights, when Rumsfeld didn't have a clear answer and said, "I'll have to check with the Vice President on that."
LaRouche: Yeah, sure!
Stockwell: He didn't say, "the President," or "the Joint Chiefs"!
LaRouche: No!
Stockwell: He said, "I'll have to check with the Vice President on that." I think that's when it became more real to me, than ever before.
LaRouche: Well, this is what's going on. You have a President who's not functional. People don't like to say that, but the guy is nuts. His father knows he's nuts. His mother, I guess, also knows he's nuts.
But, the poor guy! I mean, he really is a menace, and he's not nice at all. He's sort of your "dry drunk," who'll slap you on the back on the bar, and then put a knife in your back if he doesn't like you. But, you know—"Hail fellow, well met" at one moment, and then the next moment, who knows where he is.
But, the problem—and Cheney is not the problem. Cheney is—he is a problem; he's a thug, he's a sociopath. That's a fact, not a slander, not a libel. And he's dangerous.
But, what he represents is this: We're in a situation in which the international financial system is going to blow. This financial system is finished, in its present form. The fight is on now, and the leadership will have to come from the United States, it will have to come from, largely, within the Senate. Because the Senate is the only body which has a repository of sanity, not to take the place of the Executive, but to get the Executive to be sensible.
We're going to have to take leadership from the United States, to deal with the biggest financial crisis in modern history, and it's coming on fast. It can not be stopped in its present form. What we can do, is we can take emergency action, which keeps the crash from sinking the world economy. And that's where we are.
This is not a depression: This is a breakdown crisis. Many people in the Congress are beginning to realize it. Other circles are realizing it. In Europe, among leading bankers, they know it. But Europe has nothing, no one has the guts in Europe to take this on, and they don't have the kind of political system in Europe, which can deal with this kind of crisis.
If the United States takes leadership and says, we're putting this thing into bankruptcy receivership and reorganization, and going back to the Bretton Woods system, then the Europeans can go along with it. And then we can get out of this mess. But, if the United States does not act, does not show leadership, I don't see much chance for the world. I see, we're going into the deepest kind of crisis you can imagine.
Stockwell: Who in the Senate even begins to demonstrate some understanding, or even having a grip of what you just said.
LaRouche: Oh! There are—a lot of them do! In the Senate, there's an increasing awareness of this. This went through ebbs and flows, at one point, they say, "Ah" of me, "you're right—" but then they would say, "but it's not going to happen that soon." Then things happen, and they say, "Oh! It's going to happen soon."
So, it's that kind of shuffling. And people are afraid of taking the leadership, that's the problem. See, under our system, normally, you would have a President, and the President would be convinced that he faces a crisis. And he would have various people in the Senate and elsewhere, who would be called in, who would agree with him, and would say, "Mr. President, okay, let's talk about it, we'll support you." And the President would act. And that's the way we would deal with the situation, normally.
We don't have a functioning President. We have something worse, in the form of a Vice President, who is working for a bunch of international synarchist crowd, the same people who gave us Adolf Hitler and Company and World War II. That crowd is behind the scenes, and they're using this thug, this menace, Cheney, who's bullying everybody in sight. And so, we don't have a functioning Presidency.
The only thing we have now, from my standpoint, is, we have the Senate, which is the best rallying point, for our institutions to push for certain things to happen, which would in effect cause the Presidency to act in a sense. And that's where we stand....
Stockwell: ... If you're just tuning in, Lyndon LaRouche is on the program, live, this morning. And interestingly enough, ladies and gentlemen, when you hear Mr. LaRouche say, that it was necessary for he himself to take the step forward because a lot of other people don't, when you read certain op-eds that show up in the New York Times, the Washington Post, sometimes in the Wall Street Journal—but usually the Post, even sometimes the Washington Times, but, the New York Times; and you find other people using verbiage that Mr. LaRouche was using a year or two ago, and it's in their words now, almost word for word, the same phrases—they won't mention the "L-word" because it could be the end of their career. Is that not correct, Lyndon?
LaRouche: Well—it might be—
Stockwell: But, at the same time, they understand what you're saying, and they're saying it from a position that other people can then, again, themselves quote, without quoting you directly, for fear of what Cheney might do to 'em.
LaRouche: Well, what there is, actually—I think most Americans don't understand it clearly—that there is actually an intelligence community, which is not just the official intelligence community of the United States. But the United States does have, centered around the institutions in Washington, and with international connections, the United States does have a group of people, in service, out of service, who generally talk about things together, and who cut into and touch all kinds of institutions. And there is a leadership in the United States. You know, about 1,500 to 2,000 people, who are a key part of the real intelligence capability of the United States; people who are in service, or not in service, but they're all talking, they're all part of the same community of people who talk about these things. And I'm part of that. I've been in that for a long time, more now than ever before.
And so therefore, what's going on, is, we're all discussing things. It passes back and forth among us. I can get a pretty good reading on a consensus among this layer of people, within 24, or 48 hours any time, on hot issues. So, there is, in the United States, an intelligence community.
Stockwell: Now, let me interrupt you. This also includes retired flag officers?
LaRouche: Yeah, sure! Because, see, the point is, you're talking about intelligence. "Intelligence" should mean "brains"; should mean "developed brains." So, you have people who care about the country. They're not acting, because they're getting paid, or rewarded, though some people are. Or, because they're in position or not in position. They're people who care about the country and care about the world. And we, generally, end up talking to each other, and passing the word around, in the course of every day, every week.
So, there is a consensus out there. The problem is, our system, which is unique—our system of government, apart from the literal language of the Constitution—we have a tradition that goes back to the American Revolutionary War and before, of people who are organized as citizens, who care about the country. And who cut into institutions, as some are members of institutions, some are not: but we care about the country. And that's what I'm a part of. And that's what's going on.
I'm the loudest mouth, in a sense. I say things that other people are afraid to say. And other people are happy that I say them, though they wouldn't want to say it themselves—
Stockwell: I appreciate that
LaRouche: That's my job!
Stockwell: Now, you've got Hersh, with the New Yorker, who doesn't seem to pull any punches or worry about any repercussions.
LaRouche: He worries. But he does a good job. He's a Gene McCarthy man from way back, and went into the New York Times, and made quite a career at the Times. And he's around, he's still functioning. He is what he is, and he's useful....
Stockwell: Lyndon, there certainly is grounds for impeachment of both the President and the Vice President. Is anybody talking about this? I mean, instead of just holding the Senate in session during a normal break, so that they can hold reins on the Vice President, and what he would possibly do during August, why don't they just do what needs to be done?
LaRouche: It's a problem: We have a system, which should work. We have people who do understand some of the problems. But they're not clear on the solutions. And there're two aspects to it. First of all, impeaching the Vice President, first, and then dealing with the President afterward, is something that probably should happen. There's not agreement on how that's to happen, however, even though there's an understanding of the situation becoming urgent. And you will find, on the Republican side of the aisle, as well as the Democratic side, a clear understanding: Cheney must go. Bush is a problem; Cheney must go. That is understood.
And you will probably see, the attempt to utilize what our special prosecutor is doing, in the Valerie Plame case and related things—
Stockwell: Fitzgerald.
LaRouche: Yeah. Is going at the Cheney apparatus, which includes Scooter Libby, his chief of staff, who is an old Marc Rich lawyer, and that tells you a great deal. So, they're going at that.
Now, the problem is, is economic policy problems: We've been going through, for a long period of time, especially since the course of the 1960s, we've been undergoing changes which became crystallized under Nixon and following—or, shall we say, "under Kissinger and Brzezinski"; we underwent a change from being what we were as a Constitutional republic, we went to a crazy kind of system which is now running the country. And the Baby-Boomer generation who came into maturity in the 1960s, generally were drawn into this new way of thinking, which we are all too familiar with. And then, my generation, generally, left the active position of control and leadership in government and outside of government, during the early '90s. And now the Baby-Boomer generation, which is the 68er generation, generally, has taken over key positions.
They're conditioned to ideas about economy, which from my standpoint are nuts. Outsourcing is nuts; globalization is nuts. What just happened on the vote on Central America, is nuts. But the large part of the Baby-Boomer generation has been conditioned to this, and they're only beginning now to realize that "maybe there was a mistake here someplace!"
That we have to go back to being an agro-industrial power, with a lot of infrastructure. We need that. People understand that, they understand it in the Senate. But! The dynamic is, "No." The dynamic is, "We're not ready to do that."
So, what we need is, in a crisis like this, is, not really to get rid of the negatives. I mean, taking people out and shooting them to eliminate the problems doesn't work. You have to present positive alternatives to the problem. and mobilize people positively about solutions, and let the problems push you into working on those solutions.
Stockwell: And therefore, you have faith in the Senate that there's enough people who understand this, that given the right impetus, and the right form of leadership, can band together an actually advise-and-consent kind of action?
LaRouche: In a sense—
Stockwell: And do something, that would actually hold the Executive branch under control?
LaRouche: I think that you have, people, who in their conscience in the Senate, you could get a majority for the impeachment of Dick Cheney. You might not have a majority for the impeachment of George Bush; you might have a majority for "George, why don't you retire?"
But, for hatred, among Republicans as well as Democrats in the Senate, the hatred of Dick Cheney is really something—a real phenomenon. And it's justified. Cheney is not something unto himself. He's only a thug. He's an enforcer. He's like a Mafia hit-boss. And it's a bunch of bankers behind him, as typified by Halliburton or George Shultz, or that whole crowd. It's that crowd is a problem, as it was with Hitler, was the problem, really in World War I and World War II. This kind of force, this financial forces behind the scenes, trying to deal with their problem, which they see as a financial management problem, by going to the ultimate solutions, war, to shake the whole thing up! Destroy this country, destroy that one.
And you're getting it again! This financial system is doomed. It's coming down. Globalization was a terrible mistake.
Stockwell: They understand that. And there's enough of them that understand, the only way out of this problem, is the way they've gotten out of the problem in the past: War!
LaRouche: Well, that's what you're getting from the banking circles.
Stockwell: Right.
LaRouche: You're talking about the people behind—not the bankers we know by name—
Stockwell: It's not the banks, it's the power behind the banks.
LaRouche: Yeah—financial oligarchy.
Stockwell: Right.
LaRouche: The same crowd: wealthy people who control finances, and think they should run the world. Behind the scenes.
So, they take a thug, like Cheney. He's the Vice President, he was put in by Shultz, as a team to create the Bush Administration. And he took over! And he's a real thug—and he's got these bankers behind him. He doesn't really understand—. He's not a very intelligent person. You don't have to be intelligent to be a Mafia boss.
Stockwell: You just have to be brutal.
LaRouche: He is brutal. That's all he is. And he's a guy who's a failure on the football field; he was a failure at college; he was a failure in life. And his wife, who is one of the stars, you know, of the high school campus, she picked him up out of the dump, got him a college education, and has moved him into powerful positions over the years. And he still is just a thug. But he is a thug for somebody, just like a Mafia hit-man in your neighborhood.
Stockwell: Okay. Now, with that description and definition of the Vice President, we sit here on the edge of a break. At the same time, the President could easily put Bolton in as Ambassador to the UN, anyway, overriding any halting actions on the part of Congress, when Bolton has been his point-man all along for attacking Iran. And then there's all this war talk coming out of Israel, coming out of Tony Blair's people, that, if we get the slightest indication of nuclear development for fuel for weaponry on the part of an Iranian reactor system, we are going to do a first strike.
Now, you have all those forces coming together, right now, at the beginning of a normal break for the Senate....
Stockwell: Now, I was talking about all these forces, these dynamics, many of which have similar control devices involved; but, coming together, now here, at the beginning of August. This next 30 to 35 days could be a most interesting period in American history.
LaRouche: Yeah, we're coming to the point, that the system of change we went into, especially in the middle of the 1960s, with the emergence of the "68er generation," which was called a cultural paradigm shift—we went from, with all our faults, coming out of the war, we were a nation committed to agriculture, industry, and infrastructure, in terms of economy. We were committed to a system, an international monetary-financial system, that worked. It had many defects, there were a lot of evil people and stupid things going on, and so forth; but the basic idea of what an economy, how it should work—we used to have a fair trade philosophy in pricing of goods, that, if we wanted something produced, you had to give a price which would cover the capital costs, the education of the people who produced the goods and that sort of thing—we went away from that. And we went into what you saw in the streets with the so-called "68ers." They went crazy in the middle of the Vietnam War.
And that generation that went crazy, is now in power. That is, they are occupying most of the leading positions in government and outside government. Some of them are good people, but they're a little bit screwed up, because of this generational problem.
So, we now come to the point, that, as a result of several things, but especially, the generational change, we went away from being an agro-industrial, infrastructure-based power, we went away from the kind of education that produces a labor force that's capable of leading the country and capable of running our industry successfully. We're no longer the leading nation in the world. We ship our jobs overseas to cheap labor, and watch our own country stink for lack of production. You look at whole sections of the country, if you go through the map: They're disintegrating! ...
Stockwell: Okay, now: Let me ask you this. As kind of a clarification of where we are historically, right now, let's assume, in the light of what happened at Offutt Air Force Base last August, when there were psychologists, military people, political people, religious people, meeting in a big confab, regarding the use of nuclear weapons—maybe limited to "bunker busters," whatever else—but, kind of, the idea was, "how are we going to sell the American people on using nuclear weapons against the Iranian people?" In that light, that the preparations have already been laid in place to deal with this, in the sense of public relations, let's suppose that we don't muster the strength, the gumption, whatever, in the Senate to hold Cheney and Shultz, and the Trilateralists, and the Council on Foreign Relations and all these people, in a control situation; and Vice President Cheney gets to have his little war with Iran: What do you see happening, if it actually gets that far?
LaRouche: Well, you can forget the human race for about three generations. At least as a human race. Because there's no way you can start this kind of nonsense, and not lead to incalculable effects.
Remember, first of all, you have a world monetary-financial system, which is not ready to collapse: It's ready to disintegrate. If you start something—you see what's happened in Iraq. Idiots don't want to see what happened in Iraq; they don't want to see what happened in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was turned into a failed state, which is now one of the biggest drug-running operations in the world, which is going through all the adjacent parts of the world. You have an insurrectionary condition throughout the Middle East. You have Africa is a hellhole. You have South and Central America are about to disintegrate. You want to start a nuclear war? You have to be insane.
There is no issue which needs to be dealt with on the basis of deployment of nuclear weapons. You start a nuclear war, you're going to get a thermonuclear war! And you're going to get chaos.
And the key thing to this, is the situation in the international financial-economic situation. The system is about to disintegrate! We have over 6 billion people on this planet—6 billion. If we go ahead, with this kind of thing, we're going to go down, to less than a half-billion!
So, the people who think in that direction are clinically insane! At least in a functional sense. There's just no way—.
Look, I had an experience, where I had a confluence of understanding with President Ronald Reagan, where I proposed to his immediate circles, what became known as the SDI. The President then, who was always, of course, against Henry Kissinger, and against MADness—that is, against the Kissinger thermonuclear deterrence policy—was interested, because what I was saying, coincided with what he believed, and deeply believed. That Kissinger was evil, and their system was insane. And when people like Teller and others told him, that what I was saying was right and was workable, he went for it!
And during that period, I had a discussion with the Soviet government, where I was doing a back-channel on behalf of the President, which became known—well, the President named it that—the SDI. Now, the Soviet government, like an idiot, turned us down, publicly. And that was the end of the Soviet Union. I told the Soviet government at that time, I said, "If you do that, you're going to go under in about five years." They went under in six—so I was off by a year.
If they had accepted it, we would have had a workable solution for the world problems, at the time. We'd have had a change in our own country, a new perspective, new outlook, we could have won. Not won the war, but we could have won the peace. And in a situation like this, in the world, what you're looking for is not how to win the war; but to win the peace. And any competent military specialist will tell you that. The object of military capability is to win the peace, not the war! And people who want the war, like the people behind Cheney, they're going to give you Hell.
And that's our problem now. The people who say, "We've got to go, we've got to stop them, we've got to stop them"—I demonstrated, in what I did with SDI, or what I did in designing it, that that works! That approach works! It has always worked for us, in European civilization, whenever we did that. Whenever we did the opposite, we got into trouble. And the same thing is true now.
You've got to get Cheney out. We've got to rebuild the world. We've got an international financial system is collapsing; we have terrible conditions of life in Central and South America, and Africa and other parts of the world. These conditions of life themselves, will bring on warfare! We've got to build peace! We've got to build a world order among nation-states, which is constructive, which gives optimism to the human race. And we've got to build a system of secure peace. And we need a good military for that purpose, and I think anybody who understands military science will say that: The object of war capability, the ability to fight war, is to secure peace. And if you haven't defined how you're going to get peace, don't start the war....
