EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,053 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drum music) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- RWRoger Waters
(drum music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience. (drum music)
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) So thank you very much for doing this. I- I really appreciate it. I'm a gigantic fan, so it's- it's a real honor. And it's- it's very nice to know that you could actually play pool.
- RWRoger Waters
Well, we've only played two racks.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but I could see.
- RWRoger Waters
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I could see how you move the ball around.
- RWRoger Waters
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You gotta get a little warmed up, you know.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah, well-
- JRJoe Rogan
We just started.
- RWRoger Waters
... yeah, well, it- it is true that if you start playing pool against somebody you don't know and you discover that they do understand that control of the cue ball is everything-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
... then that's something. You think, "Oh, well, maybe we could have a game."
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, as soon as you looked at the table and said, "These are very unforgiving pockets," I was like, "Oh, you know."
- RWRoger Waters
A little bit, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Well, uh, first of all, uh, it's an honor to have you in here. I'm very excited. But, uh, second of all, uh, you're in the middle of a lot of things. You've- you've got your tour, you've got a lot of controversy going on. It's, uh ... I really enjoyed that conversation that you had with CNN because that kind of conversation is- is rare to see on air and see someone as informed as you are to have, uh, these opinions and express them so honestly and, uh, bravely.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, it was a very interesting conversation.
- RWRoger Waters
Well, I've- I'd known Michael a bit for, uh, a year or two. And he- he actually ... my last kind of engagement with him, with Michaels McConnish, I'm talking about, uh, we ... right, the interviewer, uh, was when I was playing in Miami a few years ago and the local Jewish community decided that I shouldn't be allowed to use local school children to sing Another Brick in the Wall, part two, because all during the war tours that I did, I always used local children, um, preferably from, you know, undernourished communities, um, to come and sing with me. M- I mean, between eight and 12 of them, uh, every night. And they would come in, having- having listened to the song a bit, and I would rehearse them at five o'clock in the afternoon, and then boom, at half past eight, they're on stage singing. And they get very excited and- and obviously, but it- it's a wonderful thing-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
... for them, but also for me and also for the band, to have these children come and perform with us on stage. And the mayor of North Miami Beach, or wherever it was, came under some pressure from the local community and they did ... and they weren't allowed to play. So I got some other kids, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
What was the objection?
- RWRoger Waters
That I'm an antisemite. Obviously, I'm not an antisemite.
- JRJoe Rogan
Clearly.
- RWRoger Waters
Let's get that clear-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
... straight away, if you don't mind. Um, because I'm obviously not. You can- you- you study my record going back as far as you want. Um, so that, yeah, that's- but that's always the objection because- because I support BDS and because I have for the last 16 years or so.
- JRJoe Rogan
BDS?
- RWRoger Waters
You know what BDS is. Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Well, it became a…
- JRJoe Rogan
travel, and are as prominent as you are, you're, you're probably one of the most outspoken and informed when it comes to issues on foreign policy and human rights. And how, h- when did this become a big part of your life, and when did discussing this publicly become a big part of your life?
- RWRoger Waters
Well, it became a big part of my life the day my father died, I think. I mean, I wouldn't know, because I was only five months old. My father, as you might or may not know, died at Anzio on the 18th of February, 1944. And I was born September '43. So I was only a few months old. But when it, when I started to understand some of this was when he didn't come home and start picking me up from school when I was a little kid. And then, all through my childhood, I lived ... I was brought up by my mother. My brother and I, my big brother John and I, were brought up single-handed by my mum, who was a school teacher, but she was also very left-wing. She's an interesting woman, because, um, she came from a very kind of middle class family in London. Funnily enough, they lived in Golders Green, which was sort of well-known for being a Jewish community in North London. Um, her father ran a, ran a business that ... sort of middleman in fancy goods, toys and things like that, so there was a big warehouse in London. And ... but my mother ... and she went off to boarding school, girls' school, so she was very ... brought up in a very fairly straight-laced English Christian middle class way. She then trained as a teacher, and her first teacher training was in a town called Bradford, which is in the north of London. Uh, not north of London, north of England, far north of England, in Yorkshire. And it was a huge eye-opener to her. There she was, first winter comes along, it's really cold, there's a foot of snow on the floor. And she suddenly notices that half the kids in her class are walking to school with no shoes. (laughs) And something went bing. This would have been in 1935, '36, something like that. And she suddenly went, "What?" And she started to look into social conditions there in the industrial north. And, and even then, in the, in the mid to late '30s, she understood that there were inequalities in the context of the society that she lived in that, that she felt a personal need to do something about, and she became extremely left-wing. Um, anyway, cut to later on. So our front room was always a Labour Party committee room, and she was always off in the evenings canvassing at elections or ... and dragging me and my brother to British China Friendship Association mee- meetings in the evening. And ... but she was always very...... careful and clear with us that she would... I remember one day she said to me and my brother when we'd come back from a meeting, interestingly enough at the Friends' Meeting House, which is the place the Quakers meet, you know. And yet wherever it is in the world, it's always called the Friends' Meeting House. And we'd been watching films of kapok-clad Chinese, you know, soldiers fighting against Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist puppet government and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she said, "You know where we've been tonight, don't you, Roger?" And I said, "No." And she said, "We've been at the Friends' Meeting House. That is where the Quakers meet." She said, "Well, as you know, I'm an atheist, so I can't subscribe to their religious beliefs, but I will say this. They are very, very good people." That stuck with... I can still recount that story now because it's so important. You don't have to subscribe to people's beliefs. You can... I can be a radical atheist and you can be a Hindu. The important thing is that we're good people, that we have hearts and that we care about our brothers and sisters. And s- and my mum did. I'm gonna tell you one more Mum story, and then I'm gonna-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RWRoger Waters
And then I'll stop about Mum, 'cause this is the most important bit. I was 13 years old. I had just gone through a phase where I suddenly realized I was gonna die. I don't know if all adolescents have this existential crisis in their young, in eh- early puberty, but I did. And I thought, "F me. (laughs) I'm gonna die."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RWRoger Waters
"This is scary as shit," you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
"Oh, oh my God." And I was... It might've been that or it might've been something else, but anyway, something was worrying me. And it was probably more some kind of political thing that I'd latched onto, maybe through her. And she's l- and she looked at me and she said, "All right, I'm gonna give you some advice now." "Uh, come on then, Mum." "All through your life, you're gonna be faced with difficult questions, and you're going to have to figure things out. This is my advice. When a- anything crops up, so it could be Israel, Palestine, it could be anything, it doesn't matter what it is," she said, "you must read, read, read, read, read." That's what Smaconish was telling me-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
... but he had, he hadn't. He'd only read one side. That's the difference between Michael Smaconish and me. I've tried to look at all sides of these things so I'd know a bit more what I'm t- Anyway, she said, "Read, read, read. And very important, learn everything you can about the subject that's troubling you. And importantly, uh, look at it from both si- If you, there's another opinion, make sure you study that as well," and blah, blah, blah. "It'll take some time, it'll be hard work, but when you've done that, the work is over. You have done all the heavy lifting. The rest of it is easy." And I went, "Uh, what is the rest of it, Mum?"
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RWRoger Waters
And she looked at me and she said, "The rest of it? Well, that's simple. You do the right thing."
- JRJoe Rogan
Sounds like you had an amazing mum.
- RWRoger Waters
A- amazing, amazing. Imagine giving... Ev- every young adolescent should be given that advice by a parent or someone they respect, you know, s- because it's... I'm, I've... That's been jangling around in my head ever since. Not every day, but very often I remember it. And I tell it to anybody who cares to listen as well, because it was so important.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's incredibly important, and not said nearly enough. It's rare. That's what's amazing. Like, it sound, it resonates, it sounds so powerful and true, and yet rare.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah, but what happens then, if we're sitting down the pub and I tell you that story and we've got all night, one of us will have another drink and then we might start talking about the philosophical implications of how you decide what's the right thing to do.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RWRoger Waters
Because some bloke listening to this wherever, it doesn't matter where they are, who's a, who's Zionist and who believes in the Zionist empera- uh, you know, enterprise in Israel and in the occupied terr- in fact, in the whole of the palas- palis- uh, Promised Land. Let's call it the Promised Land. It's, it's dangerous to call it the Promised Land, 'cause then you start in get, getting biblical.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RWRoger Waters
"Promised? Who was it promised to?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RWRoger Waters
"Well, ah, it was promised to the Israelis," you know. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, sorry, I didn't mean the Promised Land. I meant the Middle East." "What do you mean the Middle East? That was made up by Sykes and Picot after the First World War," you know. So, but you do get into the thing of, wow, what... Now this really is a fascinating conversation. The right thing to do. Should we start talking about now and what's going on in the world now and what the right thing to do might be? I mean, you said a, a few minutes ago that I'm a b- I've been a bit controversial, particularly recently. And part of the c- controversy is about, um, the Ukraine and what's the right, what's the right thing to... All I've done about the Ukraine is to try to lend what little weight I have, to put that tiny bit of power I have in my shoulder to the wheel of encouraging anybody I can get to listen to stop the war, including Putin. I've written to Putin. I wrote to Putin four or five days ago, 'cause people were saying, "Why don't you tell Putin? He..." Well, just hold on a minute. If you wanna join this conversation, you have to do a bit of research, you know. Well, you don't have to, obviously. You can believe-
- JRJoe Rogan
But you should.
- RWRoger Waters
You should. You... It would be wise of... If you took my mother's advice, you would, before you expressed an opinion-... about what's the right thing to do. And also, when you're thinking about it, if you want my advice, you will constantly put yourselves in the position of that young Ukrainian man or woman on the front line, and that young Russian man or woman in the front line, and their parents, and their uncles and aunts, and their brothers and sisters, and the misery and pain, and the lack of anything good at the end. And the more it- and the more it escalates, the more we send arms, the more Putin... The- the less... The only thing that they can do is start to talk to one another, just like JFK and Nikita Khrushchev did in 1962, uh, e- and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was kept secret for years and years afterwards because JFK didn't want to look like a wimp. He didn't want to look as if he'd ne- but he did. He and Nikita Khrushchev spoke on the telephone often, and at the end of it, they did a quid pro quo deal where JFK said, "I'll take all our medium-range missiles out of Turkey," and wherever else it was, Turkey was the main one, "If you take your missiles out of Cuba." So they put their hands across the ocean and shook hands, and that was the end of it. And they did it, and they kept their word. They kept their word to that bargain, and that led onto the later- later conversations between Reagan and Gorbachev from the Non-Proliferation Treaties, and all the other things that made our planet a little bit safer from the possibility of nuclear catastrophe. Not safe, but a little bit sa- until now. And now, by the second, it gets more and more and more and more dangerous as this thing is allowed to escalate. So I'm making my position entirely... All I'm interested in is a ceasefire and for talks to begin. That's all. Nothing else.
- JRJoe Rogan
What did you say to Putin when you wrote to him?
- RWRoger Waters
I said that friends of mine think that... I said... Uh, I- I need to pull the letter up if you wanna really hear it. But-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- RWRoger Waters
Okay. I'll tell you one thing I said before I pull it up-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- RWRoger Waters
... 'cause it will take a minute. Um, was that I said some friends of mine, 'cause I have a guitar-playing friend in England who wrote to me, "Why are you trying to suggest peace and a ceasefire? This man has to be... He's a monster. He's going to invade Poland, and then he'll invade the rest of Europe, and then... And unless we stand up to him now, we're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and- and all of that. So one of the things I said to Putin, "A friend of mine thinks that you're gonna invade Poland and the other Baltic States, and that you're then gonna advance on Europe and blah, blah, blah. If that's true, please tell us now so we can all just say, 'All right,' and blow ourselves to smithereens 'cause that's what's gonna happen if you do that, for sure, for absolutely sure." You cannot... If you do that, you will start World War III. We know that the Ukraine situation is complicated, and it's been 20 years in the making, and it- and it's... Well, I- I won't go into the American end of it. I'll, I mean, I- I will if you've got a minute. I will find-
- 30:00 – 45:00
I would've never imagined.…
- RWRoger Waters
out and looked on the map. But, yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
I would've never imagined.
- RWRoger Waters
N- I know, but... And you think, "Well, why the hell did they... Who- who wants, you know, hundreds of square miles of mountains and things?" Well, the Chinese, not... Because it's not just mountains. It's water, which is hugely important. The Himalayas, uh, all the glacial streams, they feed water not, uh, not just to India, okay, and- and Pakistan, but also to, um-... to the northeast of the whole of China as well. Plus, apparently, and not surprisingly, it's packed with everything that you make chips out of.
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- RWRoger Waters
It's packed and packed with... it's an absolute... it's, I nearly said it's a goldmine. Well, it's not a goldmine.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a mineral mine.
- RWRoger Waters
It's a mineral mine. It's everything that everybody who cares about making money in the world desperately needs and wants. (laughs) So it's a fascinating subject.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm, well, particularly China, right? Because China's so involved in the Congo in extracting these minerals.
- RWRoger Waters
Well, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
I mean, they, they... yeah, but to their credit, they didn't invade and kill everybody-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
... like w- the Europeans did back-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RWRoger Waters
... in the, you know, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th century. They actually went, you know, "Would you like to borrow some money?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. (laughs)
- RWRoger Waters
Which is w- more of an-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sneaky.
- RWRoger Waters
... American ploy. Yeah, it's more of a kind of modern way of doing-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
And if, if people... and who knows what they do if the people say, "Nope. No, thank you. We're good."
- JRJoe Rogan
But they said thank you.
- RWRoger Waters
They said thank you, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- RWRoger Waters
And, you know, sh- uh, yeah, should they be... yeah, of course they should. They should be allowed to do business with whoever they want. I b- I believe in the idea of what's called free trade up to that point, but it has... there has to be a fair crack of the whip of everybody. And by and large, when multi-corp-... multi-, you know, multinational corporations want to invest in underdeveloped countries, they want to do it on their terms.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RWRoger Waters
And they don't want the people who live there to get anything out of it. I mean, I've been involved in a court battle for at least 10 years now with Chevron because of the pollution that they caused in the, in the Amazon, uh, in north, uh, in north... northeast Ecuador, um, with a friend of mine called Steve Donziger, who was sent to prison-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- RWRoger Waters
... for acting on behalf of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah. …
- RWRoger Waters
They look after you. They're very, very hospitable, and very, very good in that way." She said, "But they are also very naive." And I thought, "Wow." I mean, this is from years and years ago-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
... years ago, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think-
- RWRoger Waters
I wrote a poem. I'm gonna- I'm gonna show, I'm gonna show this. I pulled this up earlier, so if you don't mind-
- JRJoe Rogan
Please.
- RWRoger Waters
... there's a poem that pertains to this that I wrote. Uh, how do I find this? Uh, why cannot the good... Oh, here it is. Yeah. Oh, brilliant, I found it immediately. So, uh, all right. So, I was, um, I wrote this just after GW Bush was elected for the second time. Okay? And it's just called America. It used to be called Why Cannot the Good Prevail? I need to wet my whistle. Or I should run out of spittle before I get to-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- RWRoger Waters
... the good bits. All right, yeah, I can keep those on. Okay, here we go. It's- it's short. (exhales) (sniffs) America. Why cannot the good prevail here in America? There is, at heart, a people just and true, open sometimes to the point of ridicule, good neighbors to rebuild the barn. The doctor's note of western legend carried forth beyond the grave. I knew your pa enough. In caucuses across the land, deliberate, they'll always stand. Defenders of the Rosenbergs, symbolic of that yearning to be better than before. They never will give up their brother to the grocer's cold machine. Belt welts livid from the strong arm of the law. On campuses, in boardrooms, over giving thanks and pumpkin pie, on hustings in committee rooms, whenever tyrants loomed, we always held in our esteem the ones who hold onto the dream, unflinching while the bullies pose and fiddle on the hill. Has commerce so reduced the free that blinded like a tot, contaminated by the dog shit in the grass, we blunder, slaves to humbug and this Texan dynasty? No. Beyond the grip of trade, the young strain beautiful and proud. The hoarfrost breath of new blood needs but nudges from the old forgotten guard to scale the moral high grounds in the clouds.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- RWRoger Waters
It makes me almost emotional to read that because I wrote that 18 years ago now. But the idea of a younger generation coming up and saying, "Enough with this bullshit. This is bullshit. This is who we are. We are the good neighbor to rebuild the barn. That's who we want to be." You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
I think the young people do have good hearts and good intentions. It's just the narrative is so cloudy, and it's so difficult to sort out what's actually going on versus what you're being told-
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that people just sort of lose interest in it.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Except for the very few that are very driven.And very disciplined and really do spend the time to look at things. And those people ultimately usually wind up becoming activists or very involved, at least.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah. And men- and many of them cling to their activism till their dying day.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
Like me, for instance.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
But I know so many, and- and they're men that, and women, that just- you just wanna hug. You just wanna go, "Oh my God, you're such a- you're so, um, dogged but also brave, and- and you've got such a big heart that you care about people enough to make a fuss." You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
It makes a difference. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it does, but that- that signal does get out there.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the people that have that signal, uh, is a- small as their audience might be, occasionally that signal will reach someone else and they'll- they'll- they'll spread it.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah. It's like, I know, I mean, this is all right. We- luckily we've got time.
- JRJoe Rogan
We got all the time in the world.
- RWRoger Waters
Which is huge because, um, that jokes a bit of my brain that wants to say, "Go on then, if you could paint a picture of the future, what might it include? What would be the first step?" You're the king of everything. What- what's the first thing that you do tomorrow?
- JRJoe Rogan
You gotta take money outta politics, number one.
- RWRoger Waters
Citizens United, pshh, gone.
- JRJoe Rogan
Number one, take money outta politics 'cause the decisions that are being made are not being made in the best interest of the people. They're being made in the best interest in the people who have money.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Right. …
- RWRoger Waters
can't have Meta deciding what we should believe about that. It's bad enough that the whole of the print section of mainstream media ... now all of television has decided what sh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RWRoger Waters
... we should believe about the Ukraine. So they're all ... uh, they're all completely happy f- to tell us that Russian soldiers have been raping babies to death, and you know, and then three days later you find out that it's unattributable, and where did that story come from?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- RWRoger Waters
And it came from some nebulous site somewhere in the Ukraine, and they're ... so, but nevertheless, it's already been printed, and it goes somewhere into the consciousness. You build up this thing of, this is ... We can really hate these people enough so that people are now saying, "We should just kill them all now. We should start the nuclear war now."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Right.
- RWRoger Waters
Some prick on Twitter yesterday said it, Thiemann or something, his name, uh ... I only know that because I've seen the tweet.
- JRJoe Rogan
What did he say?
- RWRoger Waters
What do you think-
- JRJoe Rogan
What did he say, that we should actually go to war?
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nuclear war?
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah. Go to nuclear war and wipe them all out.... because he said, "We've been threatened. The only thing to do is to wipe them out now."
- JRJoe Rogan
What is this person's position in life? What'd they do?
- RWRoger Waters
I- I- I'd have to look it up on Twitter. I've no idea.
- JRJoe Rogan
Was it a journalist? Was it a ...
- RWRoger Waters
No. I- I- I don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you know what it is, Joe?
- RWRoger Waters
Have a look.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a, that's a, such an insane perspective.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah. I haven't got (overlapping dialogue)
- JRJoe Rogan
I- I wonder how many people say things like that just to get attention and likes and just to get views 'cause I think that's a big part of what Twitter is.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like, "Look at me."
- RWRoger Waters
It's-
- JRJoe Rogan
"I'm gonna say something outrageous."
- RWRoger Waters
Well, yeah. You could be right about that. And you probably ... I'm sure you are right. I'm sure there's a lot of, "Look at me," involved in a lot of these posts that go out.
- JRJoe Rogan
W- go ahead.
- RWRoger Waters
And also a lot of, "What will think ... What will people think of me?" Which is the whole ... if you think about it, all of this, if it all developed from the beginnings of Facebook and for w- for whatever that site was that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 1:15:00 – 1:24:59
Jesus. …
- RWRoger Waters
many weapons you give them. You're just, they're just cannon fodder. That policy shows that Joe Biden and Antony Blinken and the administration, and whoever is pulling their strings, to go all conspiracy theory for a minute, couldn't give an eff about the Ukrainian people. They couldn't care less how many of them. They've said so. I saw, what's his name? Not McConnell. Lindsey Graham. I saw him in an interview the other night going, "W- we are gonna help the Ukrainians fight to the death."
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus.
- RWRoger Waters
He said it in an interview on a television station, and you go, "What, their death?" Well, I mean, I didn't, I wasn't there, so I could not, but that's what he means, yeah. Let them fight. It doesn't, who cares? They never cared about a Ukrainian before. Why should we care about them now? Well, the answer is because it suits the geopolitical aspirations of the people who buy the election that you were talking about.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
They're weakening Russia so that they can become the unipolar, you know, the hedge money can produce again this, they can rule the world. They want to rule the world. The neo- they said so back in the '90s. Paul Wolfowitz told Wesley Clark in, uh, the Pentagon-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- RWRoger Waters
... face-to-face, "We are gonna destroy seven countries in the next five years." Wesley Clark's gone public about it. We all know it because he's told us all and people go, "Well, so what?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that speech where he discusses that, w- let's, let's play that because it's very powerful.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Pe- f- pull up that Wesley Clark, um, the, the, uh, discussion where he talks about the seven countries, how they laid it out. And a lot of that has already been put into motion.
- RWRoger Waters
Absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
But there, there was a plan.
- RWRoger Waters
L- Libya, Syria's almost gone. The Yemen's pretty well gone. Um, Iran is the big, Somalia's gone. I can't remember what the others were, but we'll find out in a minute.
- JRJoe Rogan
That was a, an eye-opener for people because you're, you're listening to a general and he's discussing this.
- RWRoger Waters
Well, the general is relating the story-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- RWRoger Waters
... that was told to him by an, uh, by a Undersecretary of State at the Pentagon.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- RWRoger Waters
Or what, what I have, whatever Wolfowitz was at the time. I can't remember what his-
- JRJoe Rogan
So, right, so you're listening to someone who is one of the people that actually gets to discuss these things-
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... with the people that pull the strings.
- RWRoger Waters
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
And he's relaying it to us, so let's play it.
- NANarrator
Ten days after 9/11, a few days later-
- JRJoe Rogan
So this is, uh, retired US generally, General Wesley Clark, uh, wars were planned, seven countries in five years, on YouTube.
- NANarrator
And I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, this is a good one.
- RWRoger Waters
Oh, it's from 2000.
- NANarrator
... and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. So I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who had used, used to work for me and one of the generals called me and he said, "Sir, you gotta come in, you gotta come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no," he says, "you, we've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" (laughter) He said, "I don't know." (laughter) He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." (laughter) So, uh, I said, "Well, did they find some information collect- connecting Saddam to Al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They've just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like, we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we got a good military and we can take down governments." And, um, he said, "I guess if, er, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail." (sniffs) So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time, we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper. He said, "I just," he said, "I just got this down from upstairs," meaning the Secretary of Defense's office, "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off, Iran."
Episode duration: 2:48:46
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