LAROUCHE ON BRITISH RADIO
Stop Cheney's 'Guns of August'
Nuclear War Plan
Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed by telephone on Aug. 1, 2005 by James Whale, on talkSPORT, which is billed as the number-one commercial radio station in Britain. Whale previously interviewed LaRouche on March 18, 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War; he also spoke to EIR representatives on Nov. 2, 2004, Election Night. On Sept. 1, 2004, LaRouche was interviewed on talkSPORT by Mike Mendoza.Q: ... Lyndon LaRouche has warned of Cheney's "Guns of August," that they threaten the world. And the last time I spoke with Lyndon LaRouche, I did feel quite worried afterwards. Lyndon, I hope you're not going to depress me quite so much this time.
LaRouche: I don't intend to depress people, I intend to try to prevent some horrible things from happening.
Q: I think it's about time that some of the horrible things in the world were stopped from happening, Lyndon. I tell you.
LaRouche: I agree, quite. The point is, we've known for some time, that Cheney has a war plan, it's a nuclear war plan. The pretext is Iran. And the run-up for the Iran business, which is probably scheduled for this month—most probably—is pretty much an echo of what was done in the case of the run-up to Iraq.
Q: Go through this slowly with me, Lyndon, if you would. Let me just do a little bit for people who have never heard you before. Let's just do a little bit about your history, okay?
LaRouche: Yes, sure.
Q: How did you start getting out into this thing?
LaRouche: Oh, years ago. I was really an economist, fairly good at it, and I got into politics, in the middle of the late 1960s, and 1970s. I was involved with Reagan, in the project we had jointly, which became known as the SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative], which was a near-miss, but I was never ashamed of what we did there. And I'm quite a contentious character in the United States, but I'm a significant figure in the Democratic Party, and on fairly good terms with much of the leadership of the Congress.
Q: Do you think there's ever a chance that the Democratic Party will get back into power in America?
LaRouche: Oh, I'm sure of it. We're, in a sense, in power now. That since January of this year, President Bush has been more and more a lame duck, in our terminology here. But the power lies essentially, naturally, in the institutions of the Senate, because the Senate is the institution which deals with irregularities, shall we say, in the Presidency—chiefly. So, we're trying to do things, knowing that there's an onrushing world financial crisis of horrible dimensions, and these continued threats of wars, that people start because they don't want to face financial problems, and therefore we are concerned. And there is a dangerous situation.
But, overall I'm optimistic, in the sense of going into a war that you don't know you're going to win, but you're determined to win, and you know you have the potentiality of winning. So therefore, you go at it that way.
Q: Okay, right. Now let's talk about your latest "message to the world," if you will. In it, you say that Dick Cheney's "living out an American version of Hitler in the bunker, lashing out at Republican Senators who have dared to resist his mad tirades." Now, I mean, I don't know much about him at all. Every time I see him interviewed, he seems a fairly benevolent, elderly gentleman, a man who's had his own medical problems which have been well documented, and a man who's probably coming up to his final few years in political office.
LaRouche: Yes, he's, of course. like many people in public life: He's a tool of something behind the scenes—which is rather typical of our political system anyway! There are very few exceptions to that.
So, he is a nasty fellow. He, as Secretary of Defense, came up with this scheme for using mini-nukes for preventive nuclear warfare. At that time, the first Bush Administration, Bush 41, under the guidance of James Baker III, who was then Secretary of State, and Brent Scowcroft, who was a key figure there, tried to stop it, and did stop it. But once George Bush II was put in the Presidency, and Cheney as Vice President, he began to scheme in these directions and push into the Iraq war; and he is now pushing us into what he also planned, back then, the Iran war.
We have a position where a ruling was made. We've now deployed nuclear weapons to theater commanders. We now have, under STRATCOM, an order from Cheney, as Vice President—which is not really within the Constitution for him to do this, but he did it—for preparing for a preventive war on Iran, under the pretext of anything that looks like a 9/11 equivalent against the United States. We are at that point.
Q: Yes. But, what you're saying, first of all, is: Does something like 9/11 have to happen to the States, before this will happen, or do they just have to think it could?
LaRouche: Either way. It's just a question of politics at this point: What can they get by with?
Q: But what does Cheney hope to gain from the mass slaughter of probably millions of innocent people?
LaRouche: I don't think Cheney thinks that way. I think this is a case of a political character, who's a secondary figure, more of a Mafia boss than really a thinker or a planner; who is on autopilot, headed for catastrophe—and not really concerned too much with the consequences of what he's doing.
Q: But Bush must be concerned, surely. I mean, if—
LaRouche: Bush is not—I don't think Bush is really in it. Bush is a man of limited intellect, and limited comprehension of what's going on around him. To some things he reacts passionately. To other things he reacts with a very curious indifference to reality. As, for example, when you have a President of the United States, who says that U.S. government bonds, which are part of the essential security system of the international monetary system, and says they're nothing but worthless pieces of paper, you know you have a President who is not quite all there. And in that situation, a fellow like Cheney, rising as Vice President way beyond the Constitutional limits of what a Vice President is allowed to do, is serving, actually, as an acting President. He's taking over. And I don't think George W. Bush really understands what going on.
Q: Now, you've been in London and the United Kingdom quite often. You must be aware of the kind of—the disdain of, I think, probably the majority of people in this country, I'm sure a lot of people disagree, the disdain that people hold the American legal system in at the moment.
LaRouche: Well, we've had some problems. All countries have these problems—the United Kingdom has had such problems at times—
Q: We're not very happy with our own government, either!
LaRouche: I know, I know! I realize that.
Q: You know, everybody says, "Well, you voted Blair back in," and I'm yet to meet anybody who admits to voting for him! How that happened, I've no idea!
LaRouche: I understand—we have these kinds of problems, don't we?
But, we have to think on a higher level, you know, if we're really citizens—
Q: Well, we don't have to go too high. Let me tell you, Lyndon. Because, we feel now—or quite a few people in this country—we were taken into this Iraqi war under false pretenses, as I'm sure you know. And so far, upwards of maybe 150,000 innocent people have been slaughtered in Iraq. And it hasn't certainly made us in this country feel any safer. Obviously, you're aware of the problems we've been having recently.
LaRouche: Yes, well, you've got a mess, for example, coming out of Central Asia, spilling out of the Brzezinski's great adventure in the soft underbelly of the Soviet Union: We have failed states supporting a drug operation, which is spreading across Eurasia, and is threatening civilization generally. And these wars that we're running, like the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, and so forth, by destabilizing parts of the world that can be nicely managed, with some usual difficulties, we are now turning this into an area of chaos.
And we are in a period of madness: And I think that some people are realizing it, and I hope that we begin to come more to our senses.
I can assure you, that in the United States, around the Senate, and around our intelligence institutions, our military, our senior diplomatic circles, they do understand these kinds of problems. And they are determined to try to stop them, and cure them.
Q: Okay. Now, you reckon that there is a grave danger, that Cheney is going to allow, or Bush, I suppose, will have to allow, a limited, tactical nuclear strike on Iran?
LaRouche: Which I don't think you could stop. Once you set fire to the fuse, the main charge is going to go off.
Q: So, do you think that the thinking behind this, the rather—well, the rather demented thinking behind this, as far as I can see—is that it'll make the world a safer place? If they can find a reason that doesn't incur the wrath of the rest of the planet, they'll go ahead and they'll nuke Iran!
LaRouche: I think what you're dealing with—remember, we had this Hitler problem back in 1933. And people—when the German military walked away from the situation, when they could have prevented Hindenburg from putting Hitler in as Chancellor—then people laughed at Hitler, when he was Chancellor, said "he's going to be out soon." But then, Hermann Goering set fire to the Reichstag, and dictatorial powers were granted to Hitler, and it didn't stop until the end of the war!
Now, this time, we don't have the great military capabilities, except for nuclear weapons, to conduct general warfare. But you have people like Cheney, who are thinking like some of those behind Hitler then, think they can pull off an operation, and they have no comprehension—remember, Cheney is a draft-dodger, and here he is planning wars! And this kind of situation is the danger.
Sensible people, around the world, know that warfare, except for defense, is a pointless operation in this day and age. The consequences are immense. There are other ways, and better ways that we can handle security problems, than going to general war simply because we're angry.
Q: Okay. Do you think America has got the psyche now, that nobody can touch them?
LaRouche: No, I don't think so, no. That's what you will get from a largely managed section of our news media. But most Americans are quite distressed. The lower 80% of family-income brackets are more or less, as you were probably saying, the same as the lower 80% in the United Kingdom: They're not too happy with the present situation, and they're not too well-off, shall we say. They're not happy. But, they don't know what they can do about it.
So therefore, it comes to a question of leadership. In my view, the Democratic Party—and Republicans, we have a large number of Republicans who think the same way, in the Senate and elsewhere: That we have got to put this thing back in shape. And then the people will find a leadership they can trust. They will support it, we can deal with the problem. Right now, we're in that in-between situation: We have a Presidency which does not function. It's a menace. It's a menace to the planet, as well as to us. And we have not yet put the checks and balances in, to get this thing under control.
Q: Do you think you can get them in, before this very worrying scenario that you've laid before us, comes to reality?
LaRouche: We're very close to it. The month of August is therefore very dangerous, just as the month of August was in 1914, and was actually up to the run-up to Sept. 1, '39.
Q: What is it in that order?
LaRouche: We're in a dangerous period. But I think—
Q: Lyndon, give me a few—I've got to take a commercial break right here, so if you'll just wait with me, we'll come right back.
LaRouche: Why sure....
Q: Okay, welcome back. I'm speaking with Lyndon LaRouche, who, in his most recent writings, is warning that Dick Cheney is probably going to plunge the world into a small nuclear war—if something's not done.
You think August is going to be the crucial month, Lyndon?
LaRouche: Could be. You know, it's like military questions, in general: You have to have a war plan, you have to have an estimate of your situation. You do not try to predict too tightly, but you are prepared, in a timely fashion, to deal with what might happen. And you consider your prospects.
So, we're now at a point, where the real issue is, of course, the financial crisis. And that thing is ready to blow. This makes things very touchy. It means—
Q: Why is America's economy, so, kind of shot, at the moment? I mean—
LaRouche: Because we've been an idiot for 40 years. For 40 years, we've been destroying the U.S. economy. We are now, still, nominally, the masters of a world monetary system, by virtue of the dollar. We're crashing the dollar. And the whole thing is about to come down, because of these financial derivatives kinds of nonsense, as typified by the hedge-funds crisis. We're sitting there, like idiots! We got ourselves into this mess: We destroyed our industry; we destroyed our agriculture; we're living off the back of the rest of the world—and we think we can go on like this forever? No. Certain countervailing things begin to come in and hit us, after, say, 40 years of lunacy.
Q: Do you think the European Union, and the togetherness, if you like (although not that togetherness—ahem!) of countries in Europe, is affecting the dollar? The euro could quite easily replace the dollar?
LaRouche: Well, the euro is a farce, from my standpoint. You have a worthless currency called the euro. It's a currency against which no credit can be issued; half of the countries such as France, Germany, Italy, and so forth, can not generate any credit, to get out of a loss position! So therefore, you have a worthless currency, the euro, controlling Europe. And the Continental Europeans can do nothing.
The United States has the responsibility, because of the role of the U.S. dollar in the international monetary system, to prevent the collapse of the dollar from causing a chain-reaction collapse of the international monetary system. We simply have to take our responsibility, and organize pledges to make sure this dollar is not going to collapse—that is, the monetary system is not going to collapse from under us.
Q: Do you see that the euro will actually fade away, eventually, and that all countries that adopted the euro will go back to their national currency?
LaRouche: The tendency will be that. You will find on the continent of Europe, there's a prevailing desire to get back to the nationally sovereign currency arrangement. They don't like it, they don't like the euro, they don't like what's happening to them, they don't like their hopelessness. This thing is about to blow up.
Q: Okay. Now, listen, let me just go over this other thing with you about the mini-nukes: which you say, reading bits you've written, that they're now under the control of theater military commanders. Is that—do you have proof of that?
LaRouche: Oh yes. That's U.S. official policy. That's been a policy for some time.
Q: But it's not well known. I didn't know that, Lyndon.
LaRouche: Well, it's actually published. It's well known. It's all over the U.S. It is an official policy. That's what we're working from.
The question was, was Cheney just sticking this in, in order to have such a policy, or did he have an intention?
Q: So, let me get this right: The theater commanders, i.e., in Iraq, or wherever they may be, or cruising the Mediterranean on their aircraft carriers or whatever—they actually have these mini-nuclear warheads with them now; and if they deem it necessary, they can use them, without—
LaRouche: No, it's not quite that simple. You probably have a large storage of these, at Diego Garcia, for example. Our operation would come through the Strategic Command, STRATCOM. STRATCOM has received the order from Cheney, to proceed and prepare for such an attack, against Iran. We've talked to all leading circles in the Congress, and elsewhere, about about, personally, before I issued my statement. I issued my statement on the basis of having an evaluation from people in leading strategic positions, leading political positions, who said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, who's going to blow the whistle?" They looked at me—I blow the whistle.
Q: Okay—are you going to find yourself locked up, Lyndon, before long?
LaRouche: Oh no! There's always a danger in politics. You know, people opposed Hitler and they got into trouble, right. But you do what you're supposed to do anyway, don't you?
Q: Okay, right.
Let's just look at this: Iran is now saying that they are going back to developing their nuclear power. If they're developing nuclear power, they can't be that far away from having a nuclear bomb—in fact, they may even have some, already. And the thing that worries, you see, Lyndon: You guys in the U.S. are a long way away from all this, and we in Europe are not. All right?
LaRouche: Well, you see, you have a different situation between North Korea and Iran. North Korea is a very special kind of state.
Q: Yes, well, I would have thought if you were going to hit anybody, it would have been North Korea before Iran!
LaRouche: Well, North Korea is not that much of a problem, if we approach the thing properly.
Now, in the case of Iran: Iran has no interest—there are two things to bear in mind, here, strategically: The nuclear option is terrible. It is a mistake, in general. But at the same time, you have to think about what we're looking at. We're not looking at regular warfare. What Cheney's talking about is a nuclear surrogate for regular warfare. We are not looking on this planet at prolonged regular warfare: We do not have the capability of prolonged regular warfare. We're looking at irregular warfare, of the type of thing, we're seeing that Iraq is degenerating into, that Afghanistan is degenerating into. The danger is, the whole planet becomes a mess of irregular warfare, or so-called guerrilla or similar kinds of warfare. Some people call it "international terrorism." We are spawning that, by pushing these military war options, we are creating the preconditions for a rapid escalation of irregular warfare. And that, we're not prepared to deal with.
Q: Okay, now tell me: That you think that the recent bombings in London have provided Tony Blair with his own, as you put it, Reichstag Fire. Do you think that this is going to allow—we've already seen armed police on the streets of London like we've never seen before, and over the rest of the country as well: Is this playing into the hands of people who wish to become a little more gung-ho, I think we would probably say?
LaRouche: I would say, that the danger of the spread of what people call terrorism, which in many cases is irregular warfare—in other words, it's not terrorism in the simple, simplistic term. But it has the effect, which is equivalent to terrorism.
Irregular warfare: We're going to see assassinations of key political figures around the world. We're going to see this kind of thing: This is irregular warfare! What Tony Blair is dealing with, is simply an eruption, caused by the general state of the world, of irregular warfare, and it's blown up in London! As it's going to blow up in other places, as in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Q: Okay. To deal with this then, Lyndon, we need another "political will" if you like, another political ideal?
LaRouche: Exactly.
Q: Okay, well, that's not going to come. Not going to come in our country, for at least another three, four years!
LaRouche: The United States—we have the position and responsibility of providing an initiative for one thing: It is not necessary to have a total collapse of the international monetary-economic system. We can reorganize it. You will not find, in Europe, the will to undertake such a venture. You will find, a will to do that in the United States, if we get our act together: We did it before, and we can do it again. If we act, if the initiative comes from the United States, I think we can be assured that a good deal of Europe will line up with the United States, maybe with some bickering, but line up, on a common-interest project, to avoid this kind of catastrophe. And that's what I'm working for.
Q: If America were to use limited nuclear weapons against Iran, in say, the next few weeks, few months, whatever, what would be the response of the American people?
LaRouche: We don't know. They probably would be demoralized, or, they might even react as, in a sense, they did to 9/11. I'm not sure. I don't think anybody's sure. I don't think anybody can precalculate—it is incalculable. But it generally sounds to me, messy.
Q: Yes, you see, this term "mini-nukes" gives it a kind of, almost a feeling that it's acceptable—do you know what I mean?
LaRouche: Yes. The problem is, that this mini-nuke business can lead to detonating thermonuclear weapons, which are sitting there in various places, are not on the playing field right now. But the danger is, that an extension of warfare, of strategic significance, as an attack on Iran, will set into motion a kind of tidal wave, which can lead then, to the actual involvement of thermonuclear weapons.
Q: It's not a very happy picture that you paint, Lyndon. But, at least, you do—you qualify by saying, of course, it's not too late. Something can be done.
LaRouche: Otherwise, I wouldn't bother talking!
Q: Yes, exactly. Like the people I've had on before, telling me it's all written in the Bible anyway. All we got to wait for is the false Messiah, and then we're halfway to the—to the end of time!
LaRouche: Well, the human race has never been wiped out, and it's probably been on this planet for about 2 million years. So, I think I can be rather optimistic about the ultimate resources of the human race for survival.
Q: Yes, Lyndon: that's before we found there was an extra planet in the Solar System. Who knows what's going to happen now?
LaRouche: I love that!
Q: Lyndon, thank you very much, indeed. It's always interesting.
LaRouche: Thank you, good to be with you.
Q: Lyndon LaRouche. And, if you want to find out more about Lyndon, you can go to his website, www.larouchepac.com.
