Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* Sarkis Soghanalian, The Armenian Viktor Bout

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

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Hey everybody, Lions Head by Donkeys is live in Belfast at the Oye Music Center Saturday, 26th October. Tickets are still available and if you can't make it to Belfast, good news, we are live streaming it and tickets are still available for that as well. You can find both of the links for either of those tickets, or both, in our show notes. So click on those and get your tickets. Our merch store is restocked. So if you missed any of the live shows, specific merch, at wherever date that we went to and you couldn't make it to, it's all on our merch store, LLBDmerch.com.

So get your orders in while they last. We only have certain sizes and certain numbers and whichever one it happens to be. So you want something get your order in once again, that is LLBDmerch.com and the link will also be in the show notes. Thank you Very rarely our weapons deal is like oh the Minister of Defense met the Department of State and now we have a deal It's always like the Department of State sends sarcis to your minister He's like I got some shit that fell off the back of a truck. Do you want it?

Yeah, and to different expos and whatnot. I mean, I have been to many of those. And like the kind of people you see there, you don't necessarily think, oh, they might be representing some Ministry of Defense of some country. I don't think so. It's just some sweaty guy in a suit.

Yeah. Now, further evidence of US involvement in this whole Falkland situation, or at least bare minimum, knowledge, is very simple. They kept working with Sarkis. If he wasn't doing exactly what they said and he helped sink a Royal Navy battleship or cruiser, you'd get fired for that. They took it on their chin like, oh well we probably didn't expect the Argentinians to actually use one so successfully,

but we did sell them that shit. Maybe you just guys had some hard feelings towards the Brits still, you know? Look, I can say this as an American, we're always keeping one eye open around the fucking Brits. You're gonna show up in your red coats, you're gonna put your fucking monarch back in our money. Suddenly, you know, we're gonna have to eat smack parm and pee wet.

I don't want to be near them. Yeah, you know, Brits go around getting- You're gonna confuse our podcast for a political group and rip our sign down again? You know, Brits be going around getting friends and frenemies. Yeah, that's right. And another thing is, while this is going on, he's still working with them on bigger things. Because if you remember, we're talking about the 70s and 80s. There's a big war that happens smack dab

in the middle of there. And it's one that we've talked about quite frequently on this show. Because during the 70s and into the 80s, the US had been very, very, very close with one man, Saddam Hussein. No way. Now for those who don't know who Saddam Hussein. No way. Now for those who don't know who Saddam Hussein is,

I'm just kidding, you know who Saddam Hussein is. For those who don't know who Saddam Hussein is. The reason for this is quite clear. He was a bulwark against post-revolution Iran, right? Those two were locked in the Iran-Iraq War. It's horribly destructive. We did a seven part series on it years ago. Go listen to that for more detail.

However, at the time, Iraq is under an arms embargo and the US announced their official neutrality in the conflict, meaning the Reagan administration would have to find, let's say, creative means of getting around it. So through back channels, they encouraged agents of Iraq. I don't mean like Iraq's version of Sarkis which I actually assume is just Iraqi Sarkis. It's just like an Armenian guy from Mosul. He's just like another Armenian guy out of Mosul. And they're cousins. So what you got for me? Of course they're cousins. I mean this guy is a Syrian Lebanese Armenian. He must have like at least 40 cousins. And I'm not even counting the distant ones.

Look, as a Western Armenian myself, I'm sure if I trace back my family roots... Please don't. Our families are from the same village. So things are just better, you know, stay hidden. In Sarkis's defense, I'd still rather be related to him than my own father and grandfather, so... You might be, you know. Dad? dad is that you Papa Sarkis now and by agents of Iraq I don't mean Armenian Iraqi Sarkis I mean like the Iraqi ambassador to the United

States right yeah like go talk to Sark, he'll get you straightened out. He'll find some way to get weapons who then may or may not be ours. Very mindful, very inventive. Exactly, very Sarkis. Very Sarkis. Since Sarkis didn't officially work with the US government, he would be the government's loophole. Billions of dollars exchanged hands for artillery, air defense missiles, ammunition, the works. Though most of these weapons were sourced from European countries like Germany

and France. No Belgium? No, they would have to produce weapons first. I'm just kidding. They produce a lot of weapons, but no. So French and German weapons. A lot of French artillery because France makes very, very good artillery. Saddam Hussein, being a dictator with a shitty military, likes big shiny things. Loves berets and loves French weapons.

Exactly. I mean, at one point he tried to build a cannon that could fire into space. Saddam, picture perfect super villain guy. Though when there was a gap in that, when there was enough European weapons to go around, there was always Bulgaria to lean back on as well. Hey, Bulgaria is Europe just as much, you know? Who is to say otherwise? They even entered the Schengen zone recently.

That's how they got into the Schengen zone. Like, I see you also deal weapons to shady characters in War Zones. Welcome to the European family. Bring Romania. Yeah. All this is organized by the CIA and was the brainchild of Vice President George HW Bush who previously Served as the CIA director and would of course go on to be president when we invaded Iraq. Yeah But this is all just the beginning it was clear within a few years of the war beginning that

Iraq let's say wasn't doing so well because Saddam Hussein's a fucking idiot. For more information on this and why things turn around again, go listen to our 10 hour or so. More information about why Saddam Hussein is an idiot. I mean, he did have a personal magician, so like, that kind of rules. We did, like I said, we talked about the Iran-Iraq war for like 10 fucking hours. Go listen to it. I mean, to be honest, that's how long you need for that, right?

Honestly, we could have gone longer, but I was starting to lose my mind. That was our first real long series, and I was actually writing it as we were recording it, but like in a week by week thing. And I called into sick at work because I had a day job at the time because I needed more time to work on it. Sorry, people of Seattle, I needed more time. Let me just say I'm glad I just joined the production recently because I didn't have to produce 10 hours of Saddam Hussein.

I mean, there's a lot of characters in that story. Saddam Hussein was simply the only one with a magician. Okay, back to our boy Sarkis. The US knew in order to stabilize things for Iraq, so they might be able to actually win the war and most importantly to topple the revolutionary government of Iran, they were going to need to give him more weapons, a lot more weapons. Also poison gas, but that would come later. That was mostly Germany, ironically enough. Enter a man name, and I swear to God, US diplomat William Eagleton.

Quite possibly the most American. He could have gone by Billy Eagles. Yeah. That guy's forehead says, just American. And you can pay, like if you close your eyes and picture Billy Eagles, he is perfectly bald. He doesn't have much of a neck. He looks like an American police officer, but in a suit. That's what he looks like.

Now he recommended that the Reagan administration simply reverse its policy of neutrality, allow shipments of US arms into Iraq through third countries. So that means America sends weapons to say Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia then sends them to Iraq. Not saying Saudi Arabia would do that at the time. That's what a third party transfer looks like. That's what Russia's called parallel imports. That's what Russia calls its economy, but the third party is just Dubai.

It's just a... Or Israel. Yeah, just any country, to be honest. These days, things are tight. Some people in the government supported this, though others were more concerned. To carry out Eagleton's plan, old Billy Eagles, the U.S. would have to lift its arms embargo against Iraq, which would require a congressional vote. Right.

Reagan was like, yeah, that ain't going to work. But you might not know a lot about Ronald Reagan, but here's a very quick, short and dirty history of him. He never gave a single fuck about what Congress said about anything. And if you ever look at like, wow, why is this one thing bad in the United States? Like, why are roads falling apart?

Why do we have no, yeah, why do we have no mental hospitals? It's just like Reagan's theme music blaring over the loudspeaker like a WWE wrestler. Now, the alternative to this was arming Iraq secretly without lifting the embargoes and without informing Congress in circumnavigation of the law. The Arms Expert Control Act prohibits the transfer of US weapons to embargoed nations at all to include third nations. Eagleton's bold plan was, what if we just did it anyway? Yeah. Like, fuck it. And also it's like, well, we could selectively lift the arms embargo, but not tell everybody about it and do it without congressional approval.

And lawyers were like, that's's illegal and he was like, yes I know So people kind of agreed to this and they suggested look we get it we get a loyal stooge down in Egypt They'll do this for us. Mm-hmm. Let's just send Sarkis to set it up Let's just get Sarkis now they first they like the State Department talked to the CIA and the CIA is like we got a guy it's Sarkees let's just use him he's the best choice for the job he has connections everywhere if there's a dictator that we want to talk to Sarkees is drink cognac with him.