Dave DeCamp and Dave Smith dissect the Trump administration's illegal Yemen bombing campaign, driven by Israel's Gaza ceasefire violations rather than genuine security needs. They expose the hypocrisy of labeling Houthis as Iranian proxies while detailing over 1,000 U.S. strikes causing hundreds of civilian deaths. The discussion extends to the high risks of a U.S.-Israel war with Iran, where Netanyahu's threats aim to leverage Palestinian negotiations despite unrealistic demands for total nuclear dismantling. Ultimately, the hosts warn that limited strikes could trigger catastrophic escalation, proving these policies are immoral countermeasures designed solely to protect Israeli expansion. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Immoral Bombing of Yemen00:15:07
What's up?
What's up?
Welcome, everybody, to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith, and today I am thrilled to welcome back to the show the great Dave deCamp, who of course is the news editor over at anti-war.com, and he's also the host of Anti-War Radio is the name of the show.
Is that right?
Anti-war news is the...
Anti-war news.
I'm sorry.
Anti-war news.
So somebody, Dave, as I've said both to you and behind your back, publicly and privately, somebody who has been like a tremendous resource for me over the years.
If you go to anti-war.com, as I do every day, Dave is always writing something, just about every day, it seems, multiple things most days, to just kind of keep you up to pace with the latest of what's going on in foreign wars.
And very, you know, fortunately for you, it's been business has been busy.
So you have not, if you had the concern that you were going to be put out of business because there just wouldn't be too many foreign wars going on, that problem you don't have to worry about.
But anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to join us once again.
How are you?
I'm good, Dave.
Thanks so much for having me.
It's an honor to be speaking with the leader of the woke right.
That's right.
I didn't, it wasn't a job I was applying for.
But you know, sometimes sometimes they just find you.
But well, yes, of course.
Well, you're a good, you're a valuable member of this woke right.
We have these wild woke views like, you know, don't go on government mass murder sprees unless you really have to, which is so.
It's basically critical race theory right there.
So you, you had pitched me on the idea, which I very quickly jumped on, but that we should do an episode really kind of, you know, talking about what's been going on in Yemen in Trump's campaign against the Houthis there.
You had made the point just off air before we started here that it really is kind of amazing how little attention this conflict is getting.
It's like, it feels like only if you live in the United States of America or Israel, perhaps, is it just kind of like a normal thing to go on bombing campaigns?
It's not even like big news.
You'd think for most countries, that'd be like a really big deal if you started dropping bombs on another country.
For us, it seems to be very run of the mill.
Yeah, yeah.
And what's been happening in Yemen over the past month for about a month and a half now has been some of the heaviest bombing that we've seen in the country over the past, you know, 10 years.
And this is a country, you know, I really liked your post when Trump started this bombing campaign again, because you said something that I thought was great, that the good news is there is a diplomatic solution, a ceasefire in Gaza.
I mean, that's what this is all over.
But as, you know, we know the U.S. has been bombing Yemen heavily for a long time, really starting in 2009 with Obama's drone wars.
You know, I believe the first U.S. airstrike was launched in Yemen under George W. Bush, but Obama really ramped things up against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
And these were, you know, when we talk about, when people talk about Obama's drone wars and all in the extrajudicial killings and bombing weddings, a lot of it is Yemen.
You know, a lot of the most horrific atrocities committed by Obama went down in Yemen.
And then in 2015, that was when the Saudis, the UAE, and other Arab countries formed this coalition to go after the Houthis, who are officially known as Ansar Allah.
They took over the capital and the U.S. backed them in this war, even though a few months earlier, as Scott Horton always likes to point out, the U.S. was cooperating with the Houthis against al-Qaeda.
This is a familiar pattern that we see around the region, especially in Syria where we end up siding with Al-Qaeda.
So, you know, the background there is from 2015 to 2022 about the U.S.-backed horrifically brutal war bombing campaign, ground campaign blockade, you know, on scale with the barbarity that we've seen in Gaza.
And this went on throughout the whole first Trump administration.
I know it's an issue you've been very good on and talked about a lot.
I remember there was a clip.
You went on Joe Rogan and like the clip they put on YouTube was you talking about this history that I'm talking about now.
So I know you're aware of this.
Most of your viewers are like, you know, what we're dealing with here, all this context, but most people just aren't.
So then when Trump starts bombing them again, they say, oh, it's to protect shipping lanes and everybody kind of falls in line.
And I mean, I even see libertarians saying, well, we got to protect the shipping lanes.
You know, isn't that the purpose of the U.S. Navy?
And so like the other important historical context here for what's happening now is that after October 7th, after Israel unleashed its brutal bombing campaign on Gaza, the Houthis started targeting Israeli shipping, essentially declaring like a blockade on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea.
And in January 2024, President Biden launched a new bombing campaign in Yemen against the Houthis with the UK.
And as I predicted at the time, and it wasn't very hard for me to predict, anybody who knew anything about Yemen and the Houthis knew that like a limited bombing campaign isn't going to stop them.
If anything, it's going to embolden them and rally their supporters around them.
They're trying to make a name for themselves as like the only Arabs really standing up for the Palestinians.
And so after a year of that, nothing stopped the attacks.
In fact, they expanded their attacks to start targeting American and British shipping.
And then after a year, they did stop their attacks.
Well, what got them to stop was a ceasefire in Gaza on January 19th.
They stopped.
And in March, in early March, when Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, not letting any food in, which there's still, you know, that's still in effect, complete violation of the ceasefire deal, the Houthis announced that they're going to re-impose their blockade on Israeli shipping.
And just a few days later, the Trump administration unleashes this really, you know, heavy bombing campaign, much heavier than what Biden was doing.
And again, they're doing this instead of just making Israel implement that ceasefire deal that it signed in January, instead of just cutting off the aid to Israel.
I mean, that's the key here to the regional calm.
So, I mean, that's, again, the important context here.
So when we see people say, oh, oh, they got to stop attacking U.S. ships.
Actually, the Houthis, a senior member of the Ansar Allah Political Bureau said, told Dropsite News that they would be willing to agree to a ceasefire with the U.S. We'll stop attacking your warships if you stop bombing Yemen.
I tried to get the State Department, the Pentagon, the National Security Council to answer that.
You know, would you consider a deal like that?
And I never heard back.
And they do actually usually get back to me.
So, I mean, this is just the reality.
You know, Heg Seth and Trump say if the Houthis stop targeting American ships, we'll stop bombing Yemen.
Well, here they are saying, we will stop.
But they're also saying they're going to continue the blockade on Israel.
And that's what this is really about.
Yeah.
Well, so it's like, I really think that, you know, the point that I've tried to make about this, like more recently, you know, like, but when you mentioned, you know, me talking about this on Joe Rogan's podcast a few years ago, I mean, the point I was making at the time was like, we should stop doing this.
Like it was still going on.
And I was like, we should stop doing this.
This is horrible.
I mean, it's just like, you know, horrifically immoral to bring this type of destruction on the poorest country in the Middle East for no strategic reason other than what Obama officials stated that it was like, oh, this helps our relationship with the Saudis or something like that, which is, you know, insane.
But I think today, when we bring it up, it's more important to understand the point that you were making in there that this is not going to defeat the Houthis.
I mean, I'm sure you're kind of like me in this, that when, you know, when you first saw the Houthis enter this fight, when they made it clear that they were going to stick up for the Palestinians, there is part of you that's like, oh, God, no, because Jesus, like the people of Yemen have just been through so much.
And you know, one way or the other, whether it's justified or not, this is going to bring even more, you know, destruction toward Yemen.
But the point is that if they made it through the seven or eight years of a Saudi invasion, a total blockade, these massive bombing campaigns, they made it through.
I mean, you know, it was what was considered by the UN and many other humanitarian organizations to be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world through all of those years.
And that didn't unseat the Houthis.
Then it's just a joke to think that launching a few tomahawks is going to like get them to wave the white flag.
And so you have, on one hand, very clearly, there is not a military solution short of another war in Iraq.
Like, I mean, I think certainly if the U.S. wanted to invade Yemen, we could overthrow the Houthis, as we learned from all these terror wars.
We'd probably have other problems to deal with, insurgencies and whatnot.
But yeah, I mean, if we want to go spend another $3 trillion and lose another, you know, few thousand U.S. soldiers and maybe have 10 or 20,000 more commit suicide in the aftermath, okay, we could do that.
That's one option.
The other option would be the ceasefire that, I mean, you just can't overstate this, that Trump's envoy negotiated or at least got done.
I guess it was basically the same ceasefire that had been kicked around for quite a bit.
But it just seems so obvious, like, not that it's like, oh, look, why?
If it was any other country and Trump's envoy, Witkoff here was able to work out this ceasefire and then one country started violating it and it causes more problems for us that they're not living up to.
It'd just be so obvious what the answer is here.
It's only because it's Israel that this is even the conversation goes to like, well, then I guess we got to fight this war for them.
Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, as you mentioned, you know, the Trump administration, they, they took this as a big victory in the first few weeks that they got this ceasefire.
Right.
And now Israel has completely abrogated that deal.
And, you know, we see this daily slaughter happening every day and they're literally starving children now.
I mean, there's no debating that they're not using starvation as a weapon of war now that they haven't let any food in in almost two months.
And what we've seen in Yemen, so you mentioned during the Saudi war, the Houthis survived that.
They didn't just survive it.
They actually got better at fighting.
And the thing that really made the Saudis in the UAE sue for peace was the fact that Houthi missile and drones started hitting oil fields and oil infrastructure deep inside Saudi Arabia and in the UAE.
They hit some targets there as well.
And we're seeing a familiar pattern here in the U.S. bombing campaign just in recent weeks.
The Houthis have shot down seven US MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are these big drones.
They're used for surveillance that can be used to launch airstrikes.
And they've downed a total of 21 of these drones since October 2023, but seven just in recent weeks.
And U.S. officials have been telling the media that they're actually getting better at targeting them.
And the U.S. also just lost an F-18 overboard off an aircraft carrier that apparently the aircraft carrier, the Harry Truman, had to make a hard turn to avoid a Houthi attack.
So, you know, U.S. warships have incredibly advanced air defense systems, but it almost seems like it's only a matter of time before a Houthi drone makes it through.
And then we might see some American casualties.
And then what happens?
So it seems like in response to this, to these airstrikes not working, they're just ramping them up.
The U.S. military or the Pentagon put out this press release on the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
And somehow they were bragging about bombing Yemen.
They said that they struck more than 1,000 targets in Yemen in just again, like a month and a half, a little less than that.
And they've killed hundreds of civilians.
These have been some of the most brutal airstrikes we've seen in Yemen.
On April 17th, the U.S. bombed a fuel port in Hodeida, the Red Sea province, and killed, according to the Yemen Data Project, which tracks this stuff, killed 80 civilians.
And this is mostly port workers.
I mean, this is a massacre on a huge scale.
And barely anyone has noticed in the U.S., at least.
Obviously, people in Yemen are very aware.
And there's also just the other day on Monday, they bombed a migrant detention facility in northern Yemen and killed 68 people.
And it looks like they're all African migrants.
And the real, you know, what reason, why would the U.S. bomb this facility?
I don't think the U.S. would intentionally slaughter a bunch of African migrants.
But how bad is their intelligence that they would bomb this?
The really kind of egregious thing about it is that the Saudis bombed the same place three years ago in January 2022, right before the ceasefire between the Houthis and the Saudis.
As I understand it, it was a different building, but it's like the same facility.
And the Saudis killed 91 civilians in that strike, 91 African migrants.
Three years later, the U.S. bombs the same place.
And they claim, oh, we're having incredible success.
We're killing all these Houthi fighters and taking care of their air defenses and everything.
But I mean, it's just, they have no way of knowing that.
They don't really have, they don't have people on the ground.
I saw at one point a statement from the CENTCOM spokesman said something like, oh, we've killed hundreds of their militants based on open source reporting.
Well, open source reporting means it's just what you could find on the internet.
I mean, it goes to show they just don't know what they're bombing and their solution is just bomb, just bomb away.
So yeah, it's really criminal what's happening here.
It's completely unauthorized.
Another, this is an important point here because you see people justifying it saying, oh, the War Powers Act lets the president engage in military action for two months if there's an imminent, you know, under an emergency, if there's an imminent threat.
Well, that signal chat showed us that there was no imminent threat.
They were saying, you know, JD Vance said, hey, maybe we should put these plans on the shelf for about a month, work on the messaging.
And Pete Hegseth, who was, you know, wanted to do it right away, even said that if, you know, you wanted a pause, we could pause it.
And, you know, and he was the one arguing in favor of doing it.
So that shows there was no imminent threat.
So it's completely illegal.
It's immoral.
It's failing.
And it's only being done to ensure Israel can keep killing Palestinians in Gaza.
So this is really just, I think, one of the worst things happening right now under this new Trump administration.
Sorry, I don't mean to smirk as you say that, but there was something in that just seemed like almost what should be the tagline for U.S. foreign policy.
Illegal War Powers Abuse00:05:02
It describes all of it.
It's illegal.
It's immoral.
It's not working.
And it's only being done for Israel.
That seems to kind of describe every military action that I can remember over the last 25 years.
And, you know, It's wildly frustrating that really, I mean, the only reason anyone's even talking about this on a broad when I say anyone, obviously, there are the good, there are people who care about this, but broadly speaking, amongst the American conversation is because of this Signal Gate thing.
And still, it seems like the story there, the scandal is just that this Atlantic hack journalist happened to be added to the Signal chat.
And I've been saying from the beginning that exactly your point, the real scandal here was that portion of the chat where JD Vance offers the most impotent pushback, but I guess I should give him credit for being the only one who seemed to offer any pushback where he does kind of say, he does say, I think we're making a mistake.
I think this is everything against what we ran on, but then goes, I mean, hey, I'll be, I'm totally on board if you guys want to do it.
But then Hags, right?
You said Hag Seth in response to him goes, I get your point.
You know, I get what you're saying.
And look, this isn't time sensitive.
We don't have to do this right now.
And so, in other words, right?
They, the, look, the War Powers Act.
And I'm, I think it was, I think Rothbard had a piece on this where it was like, look, the War Powers Act was horrible because it basically just gave the president the authority for two months or 90 days or whatever it gives you to start a war.
You know, it's like it was already in the constitution that you need the Congress, so we shouldn't have even added that.
But even within the War Powers Act, it's like, yes, the threat has to be imminent.
And so, no, you don't, if you have the option to seek congressional approval, you don't have the right to just launch military operations.
But like, it's crazy that that never even comes up as a thought.
Nobody even thinks to themselves, oh, well, if we don't have to do this right away, then we have to go to Congress and get approval for this.
Just not even, not even a thought anymore.
Yeah.
And I think that's a big risk here when we talk about the potential for war with Iran.
Like, it's not like they're going to have to do this big media thing like they did with Iraq and this buildup to like get the public on board.
They could just bomb Iran.
I mean, like, that's just the way that the executive branch operates now.
So, yeah, I mean, this is something when it comes to Yemen that I think, you know, we've seen some like very mild pushback from some members of the Senate.
I know Rand Paul joined a letter questioning the authorization.
And there was another letter from like three Senate Democrats about the civilian casualties.
But they didn't even say, like, challenge the fact that the U.S. was bombing Yemen.
They're basically just saying you should try to limit civilian casualties.
So, yeah, I mean, the sad truth is, is that if they did go to Congress, they would get the approval, but still, it is still illegal, what they're doing right now in Yemen.
And the next possible escalation is backing a ground offensive against the Houthis, which would essentially be restarting the war that the Saudis failed at.
You know, there's these factions on the ground saying that they have like 80,000 fighters or something, but I don't even think that would be enough.
Because if you've seen what's happening in Yemen, you know, the Houthi leaders been calling for these rallies and I mean, these pictures from the capital, like hundreds, it looks like hundreds of thousands of people come out.
And a lot of them have AK-47s.
Like they're, this is, again, you know, really emboldening the Houthis and making them this kind of resistance faction that they that they really want to be.
So if we continue down this path of escalation, I mean, it's just going to be just such a disaster.
And, but again, it just doesn't seem like anybody's learning this lesson in the administration, even though one of the best arguments against bombing Yemen when Biden started doing it, doing it, was written by Mike D'Amino, who right now is the head of Middle East policy in the Pentagon.
So unfortunately, it looks like, you know, his views are not winning the day.
Even though right now we still haven't had a strike on Iran, I think that risk is pretty high.
And it's just a shame that a guy like D'Amino doesn't seem to be steering the policy.
Well, or how about a guy like Donald Trump?
I mean, Donald Trump said, I'm sure you've seen the clip, but when Tim Poole had him on, he did get this amazing soundbite out of Donald Trump.
And it was right, it was right after Joe Biden had just bombed Yemen for the same reason.
And Donald Trump went off on how stupid this was and how, oh, this is all these guys ever want to do is drop a bomb on someone rather than pick up the phone call and pursue diplomacy in this whole lecture.
And man, like we could use a guy like that to be president right now because it just seems like so obvious.
Coffee Sponsorship Break00:02:43
But, you know, look, it just seems to me.
And I know that sometimes, you know, it's funny because sometimes the, speaking of Tim Poole, like the Tim Pools of the world will say they're, you know, there's like, you know, there's the, of the Trump kind of broad coalition, right?
There's like the people who are like total Zionists want to support Israel.
There's the people who are, you know, huge critics of Israel.
And then there's kind of the people in the middle or whatever.
And people like Tim Poole will say like, oh, why are you guys so obsessed with Israel?
Like, why are you just always talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
I mean, you know, what?
Are you talking about what's going on in sub-Saharan Africa right now or in Southeast Asia or where, you know, like, why do you care so much about this conflict?
But it's like, you know, aside from it just being like something horrific is being done with my tax dollars.
It's really this.
It's like, this is really what it's about.
It's like now because we support Israel, we have to now be drawn into yet another war in the Middle East with an even larger war looming behind it, which it seems like there's this huge effort to get us into.
And like this is the, this is the whole issue.
It's not just like, it's not just like Israel can do this to the Palestinians with American money and that's it.
It's like, oh, this also requires us constantly being at war with other Arab states or other Muslim states as a result of it.
And this is what we're opposing here.
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Missile Drones and Rebels00:09:00
Yeah.
And when Biden was in in 2023, when this all, you know, popped off, the U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria came under like constant like rocket and drone attack because the U.S. was supporting what Israel's doing in Gaza.
And it culminated in three U.S. Army soldiers being killed in a drone attack.
So, you know, this is very much the reason for why the U.S. keeps these bases in Iraq and Syria.
I mean, there's been all these reports recently about the Trump administration.
You know, they're drawing down troops in Syria.
Initial reports said they might pull out, but who was arguing against it?
It was Israel.
Israel wants the U.S. to stay.
Now it's under the pretext of keeping Turkey out of certain areas.
You know, after they got rid of Assad, Iran's ally, now they're saying that the new government, you know, they're justifying invading southern Syria and occupying it and bombing it.
So yeah, I mean, this is the key kind of to everything, especially today.
Like, again, with Yemen, this is just so obvious.
It's more in your face with the situation in Yemen.
I remember there was a report from YNET, Israeli media, because so after the U.S. started bombing Yemen on March 15th, and they also preempted Israel breaking the, completely breaking the ceasefire.
It was March 15th that the U.S. first launched the airstrikes on Yemen.
And it was March 18th that Israel completely ended the ceasefire and killed like 400 and I think it was like 470 Palestinians in the first 24 hours, including like a lot of kids, like nearly 200 children.
And so you look at the timeline and after that March 18th, when they started bombing Gaza again, then the Houthis started firing missiles at Israel again, kind of separate from them declaring a blockade.
Now they're shooting missiles and drones at Israel.
And there's a report in YNET that said the U.S. told Israel, don't worry about these attacks.
You know, you guys don't need to respond.
We'll take care of it.
Because Israel did bomb Yemen, I believe, two or three times last year in response to these attacks.
But so it is just blatantly in your face about this bombing campaign in Yemen is about Israel.
Of course, there's other factors, including just the profit, the military-industrial complex.
That's always a factor.
But this is very just so clearly about just ensuring Israel can continue to do whatever it wants.
And it's really shameful.
I mean, again, I mentioned the blockade.
Like Trump has the ability to get on the phone and say, let the aid into Gaza or I'm going to cut you off.
And every day he doesn't do that.
I mean, it's just, it's just really shameful.
Yeah.
And it seems like at least in, you know, and we'll see how that develops, but at least like in Ukraine, Trump is certainly willing to say like, hey, look, if you want our support and you're relying on us, then okay, but we have some expectations.
We have some boundaries and conditions that come along with that.
And yet it just does, it almost never seems to be the case with the U.S. relationship with Israel.
And, you know, to your point, this is something I've kind of been hitting on a lot lately, but I find this to be an interesting dynamic.
But like, okay, if you know like what I know now, what you probably, you know, better than I know, but like if you know about the war in Iraq and you really know, you know, like, okay, you could go read through like the project for a new American century or you can read the clean break memo or you can read Netanyahu's old writings or whatever.
And you could see that like, okay, the Lakudniks in Israel and the neoconservatives, their counterpart in the United States of America, they wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein since at least the 90s.
Okay.
And they were very upset that they didn't overthrow him in the first Gulf War.
And they wanted to have plans to overthrow him all throughout the 90s and well before 9-11.
However, that was not, first off, there weren't podcasts and there wasn't social media and there were, you know, whatever, there were newsletters and stuff like that.
But this was not something that was widely known.
It probably was widely known within connected people in DC, but it wasn't widely known by the American people.
And the propaganda, at least, for going into Iraq was no, it had nothing to do with that.
This has nothing to do with Israel.
This was about 9-11.
This was about nuclear weapons and the fact that Saddam Hussein was in on 9-11 and now he has nukes.
So he's friends with these terrorists.
They could end up getting a nuke and nuking the United States of America.
So there was at least, you know, there was some good old-fashioned propaganda there where Joe Sixpack in America could very reasonably, seeing what was said on the TV, say to his friend, well, we got to go see about these nuclear weapons.
I mean, we can't let that, you know, we can't let that go.
But there just simply is no propaganda like this with the Houthis.
Nobody is even attempting to make the argument that some, aside from the fact that they could be a problem for some of our ships where as.
I can't remember, was it JD Vance or Pete Hagset, or I think both of them acknowledged on the signal chat, like a very small percentage of our trade even depends on any of this, but like that's the best they got.
It's just so obvious that this is about the conflict in Gaza.
However you feel about it, that's what's going on here.
And you do wonder, like, again, it seems to me like, I guess, two thoughts.
Number one, it just seems like everything else, it seems so short-sighted by even the pro-Israel factions.
And then, you know, just because I have, you know, been getting a lot of this heat thrown my way lately, it kind of seems like, almost like I've gotten to the point in debating about Israel that nobody is even, nobody anymore is even saying like, oh, you got to go debate this guy or something like that.
Like I was getting a lot of Douglas Murray was the one who everyone always used to throw at me.
They used to go, oh, you should debate Douglas Murray.
He'll destroy you on this.
And now they're like, okay, people said Josh Hammer was going to destroy me.
Dennis Prager was going to, but now it's, no one's even trying to debate that anymore.
They're just basically saying that I am responsible for all of the Jew hatred online or something like that.
And, but I just go for all these people who like Jew hatred on Twitter is their biggest concern.
Like, well, what do you think?
What do you think getting into another catastrophic war in the Middle East on behalf of Israel is going to make this country look like?
What do you think the response to that is going to be?
It almost to me seems like a call to their bluff.
Like you must not actually be that concerned about this because otherwise this is the last thing you would want to do.
Well, yeah, yeah.
I mean, people, they don't seem to really want to engage with that point.
And this, when it comes to Yemen, because again, it's more in your face.
Like it's just, this isn't even part of the discussion.
I mean, when do people say, oh, debate me on whether or not we should be bombing Yemen or something like that?
And of course, the talking point when it comes to Yemen is that they're, you know, the Houthis are backed by Iran.
If you read any mainstream coverage of it, they call them the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
They're the rebels, even though they've controlled Sana now for over 10 years.
And an important point because people, you could look at a map and you'll see the Houthi controlled areas in the west and the rest is not controlled by them.
But that's where 80% of Yemenis live.
That's where most of the population lives.
So it's an important point.
And Yemen used to be North and South Yemen.
It's basically North Yemen that they control the former country.
But anyway, so the narrative is that they're Iran-backed and they certainly receive support from Iran.
What level, we don't really know.
Essentially, how I understand it is that Iran probably helped them develop their missile and drone program, giving them these like missile components and drone components.
But they make them domestically.
So it's not like they rely on Iran for weapon shipments.
And this is something Trump has said, oh, Iran has to cut them off or we're going to blame them for every attack.
And he actually said something recently, like a couple of weeks ago, just in a press conference, he said, did you know who knew the Houthis make their own missiles and drones?
Could you believe that?
It's like, yeah, I knew that.
A lot of people knew that before you started bombing them.
But anyway, back to your point.
So it is the narrative that it's like, this is the Axis, the anti-Israel Axis.
And I do think, you know, Hezbollah is basically neutered at this point.
Assad is out of Syria, they do really see the Houthis as a major thorn in Israel's side because they just keep getting better and better at being able to send missiles and drones, you know, in these long-range attacks.
So, you know, that's that's a big part of this is trying to take out another one of Israel's enemies in the region.
And of course, the big one is Iran.
And I also think part of this bombing campaign is kind of as a threat to Iran, you know, because Trump's saying he's going to bomb Iran if they don't reach a deal.
It's not an idle threat when you see him using two aircraft carriers and B-2 bombers stationed in Diego Garcia to bomb Yemen to, you know, really bomb the crap out of the country.
I mean, over a thousand airstrikes.
Iran Backed Houthi Threats00:16:04
It's just, it's really insane.
And yeah, I think the fact that the U.S. is doing this for Israel could increase anti-Semitism more than you saying, hey, maybe we shouldn't help kill babies in Gaza.
Even more than mentioning the name Paul Wolfowitz, you think?
You think this could.
That was too much.
Yeah, I know.
It really was.
It was the moment.
It was the moment.
You know, one thing about this anti-Semitism stuff, like, I think, you know, obviously, if you go on X, you see this stuff, you see these kind of anonymous accounts that Jordan Peterson is talking about on Joe Rogan, I guess.
But I think not talking about this stuff and pretending like Israel doesn't have this influence over our foreign policy, yeah, like will add to that, fuel that fire more.
But having people that can honestly discuss these things and aren't anti-Semites, but can discuss, you know, realistically what's happening will lead less people down that path.
So that whole talking point is just nonsense.
Yeah, I right.
I completely agree.
And there's something, you know, there's like, I mention this a lot on the show because it's, I don't know, I think it's, it's important and it's important particularly to me, but like, so, you know, what pulled me into the libertarian world and set me on this trajectory to be whatever I am now was the Ron Paul Giuliani moment.
And that Ron Paul was just making this, what I found to be at the time.
And then since obsessively reading about this for many years, I've just been more and more convinced is the truth is that like, you know, there is a consequence to certain military actions and that leads to creating a lot of hatred in the world.
And that, you know, there's all these different kind of like, you know, different people have noted this.
Of course, obviously, General General McChrystal's insurgent math, 10 minus 2 equals 20.
You know, you keep killing people and there's a lot of innocent people who get killed in the press and then more and more people join up to the resistance.
But it is even as you're saying that, you know, and of course, as Scott Horton points out and demonstrates in his book, Enough Already, you know, on September 11th, Bin Laden and all of his men were like a few hundred people.
And then at the height of the global war on terror, it's like tens of thousands of bin Ladenite Islamists who are fighting.
Like it's just, it's right in front of you that you're not eliminating them.
You're creating more of them.
But as you say this, it's maybe even like the first time I'm thinking about it exactly in this way.
But imagine you could zoom out, like go back 20 years and you were to say, or maybe 25 years to keep all of them in, but like in terms of like Israel's enemies in the region, because again, this really was, anyone can go read the Clean Break memo.
Like this was the strategy.
Their strategy was like, listen, we're going to have a break from the peace process.
We're going to have a break from this idea that we have to settle the Israel-Palestine issue in order for Israel to make peace with the broader Arab and Muslim world.
And instead of settling that issue, we can just take out Israel's enemies in the broader Muslim and Arab world.
And imagine you were to say to Israel, hey, you know your big enemies?
All right, Saddam Hussein, gone.
Muamar Qaddafi, gone.
Bashar al-Assad, gone.
Hezbollah's leadership, totally annihilated.
Like all of that.
And they go, ah, shoot.
Now we got to go see about these Houthis.
And you're like, oh, it's just kind of proof.
It's like, yeah, you can never whack-a-mole enough to get them all gone.
You just can't keep doing this to the Palestinians and think that there's not going to be resistance against that.
And it's like in the same sense that like even just within the Israel-Palestine conflict, like Israel's been dominating and occupying them for 60 years and they're still dealing with resistance.
You can never put it out enough because people do not much like to be brutally oppressed.
And there's going to be resistance to that.
It just seems so obvious to me.
Yeah.
And when you talk about insurgent math and all that stuff, I mean, this applies, I think, so much with Yemen, with kind of who the Houthis are, like what their identity is.
For the background of them, you know, something Douglas Murray said in your debate was he was like, oh, Iran colonized, you know, these countries.
He said that they colonized Yemen.
And it's just such an absurd, it's funny for like a British guy to say that in the first place, but for like to say that Iran colonized Yemen.
I mean, again, it's just, it shows he has just no understanding of the situation in Yemen, who the Houthis are.
They're a specific sect of Shiite Islam.
They're Zaidi, Zaidi Shiites.
And the area of North Yemen, like their kind of stronghold, Sadda and most of the area that they control now, was ruled by Zaidi Shia Imams for a thousand years until the 1960s.
And the Houthis, they started, I believe they were called the Believing Youth.
They started as like a religious movement, kind of as a pushback to the Sunni, you know, Wahhabism that the Saudis were pushing in Yemen.
So they started as a religious movement, but they have very deep roots in the country.
And yeah, they're allied with Iran politically because they ended up being on the same side of certain things.
But this idea that they're, that Iran, you know, you know, because people, again, if you read the media every day and you see Iran backed, Iran backed, Iran's proxy, the Iranian proxy, you would think that Iran like plucked some Shiites out of its own country and dropped them in Yemen, but it's just, it's just not true.
And again, their whole identity is, you know, part of this resistance against Israel, against U.S. imperialism, against the Gulf monarchs.
And you, you do what the U.S. is doing now, bomb residential buildings full of civilians to kill a guy, one guy.
And then, you know, you think that's not going to, you know, you talk about the insurgent math.
I mean, this is just really building up their support.
And my hope is that the reality is, because we see this talk about the U.S. backing a ground campaign, but what I'm also hearing is that the other factions in Yemen, some of them have rallied behind the Houthis now in response to them being the ones, you know, really the only ones sticking up for the Palestinians at this point.
So it's like it really just kind of building up their whole, like just their whole thing, their whole identity, their whole narrative.
And if you're a Yemeni, just a regular guy in Yemen living in these conditions, I mean, you just got to put yourself in their shoes.
We see what's happening in Gaza every day.
Oh, well, that's why we're being bombed now by the Americans because we're standing up for all those, you know, those dead children you see on the news every single day.
We're the only ones, you know, standing up for that.
And that's why the Americans, you know, the evil empire is bombing us.
I mean, that's just, it's just fertile ground for more recruitment for the Houthis, like to kind of a ridiculous degree.
Yeah, no, that's, that's exactly right.
And it is the, I know like, you know, certainly I do know that, right, like Iran was arming Hezbollah for a while.
I think this is a part of a major part of the reason why they wanted Bashar al-Assad gone.
But it is interesting.
First of all, like anytime Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis, any of the Hs get written about, it's always Iran-backed.
And Yet.
This logic never seems to apply like.
It's not like.
If Jordan ever does anything, they must be referred to as the Us Backed Jordanians do this, or the Us Backed Egyptians, or the?
U.s Backed Saudis, or the?
U.s backed Israelis, or the.
You know what i'm saying.
Like it's.
It's just they never like, apply this standard across the board.
By the way, I mean again, you know a point I love to make, but you could also call Hamas, the Israeli Backed Hamas militants launched october 7th.
You know like, if you were to say it like that, it would, first of all, it would actually be much more accurate um and uh and and much more damning and eye-opening to the whole situation.
But it is an interesting tactic that they use.
That you're never.
You know it's.
It's funny because if I um, let's say I were to argue with someone, like maybe on Joe Rogan with uh, someone with a posh British accent, I were to say that like hey, you know, the National Endowment FOR Democracy and the US AID poured a hundred million dollars into the Maidan revolution.
Well, that now i'm denying agency.
You know like, you're denying agency if you bring that up and yet referring to every militant group in the region as an Iranian proxy is somehow not denying agency, and so like, you're put like not even saying that Iran hasn't been political allies with some of these people, but they are their own groups with their own motivations as well.
Yeah yeah, and as I understand, you know Iran has a lot of sway over Hezbollah.
You know they're very closely aligned with them over the Shiite factions in Iraq that the Us helped put in power, and.
But when it comes to Yemen, I mean, the Houthis are, like known as being much more their own thing.
Um so yeah, it's just and i've seen people say the opposite, but it's just not true, like so.
But whenever we see you know what little mainstream coverage there is of the situation it's like oh, U.s.
Airstrike in Yemen killed 65 migrants.
The Iran-backed Houthis say, like they just kind of acting, like everything's not really a big deal what's happened.
It's like oh, it's just the, the Iran-backed Houthis that that we're bombing.
You know, don't worry about all these civilians.
Um so yeah, it's just uh, and you talk about the consequences of, of blowback and everything, for what's happening now.
It just um, it's just.
There's such a better way to approach the whole region at this point and I don't even think like Trump wouldn't be like, I think, if Trump really wanted to bring peace he, he has the ability.
I mean again, it's all Gaza's the key um, but it just doesn't seem like he wants to do that.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Do you, what do you make of Donald Trump, who appears to have at least temporarily thwarted the Israeli plans to launch attacks on Israel, excuse me, on Iran?
And now over the last couple of weeks, Netanyahu's been saying they're about to do it anyway.
But it does seem like the plans that they had laid out involved the U.S. helping them because, of course, they can't actually do any of this stuff without our help.
Do you think, I mean, like, this does seem to me like a small temporary win, at least, given a bad situation.
But do you think he's like, like you said, I mean, he could be pushing for peace in this region and he doesn't seem to be using any of the leverage he has, which is substantial.
What do you make of that?
Where do you see this all going?
Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that he's even just saying, like, oh, if we don't reach a deal, we're going to bomb them is not, you know, that's not good.
You don't need to approach these negotiations like that.
And I mean, when he was asked about this report recently, and somebody said it was in his time interview, they said, oh, do you think Netanyahu is going to drag you into war?
And he said, he said, I'd go willingly.
Basically, he said, I could go into it willingly.
And that if we do attack, Iran will be leading the pack.
So he's, you know, really making these threats.
And a lot of people kind of point to his first term and like the threats against North Korea.
But again, we're talking about a situation where in the same region, the U.S. has all this firepower that's bombing another country.
And a big part of the buildup, sending the bombers, sending the aircraft carriers and also sending air defenses to it, actually to Israel to prepare for this potential war with Iran.
Like the U.S. has the military posture to do it.
So, I mean, the fact that he chose not to bomb Iran, I mean, I don't, it's hard for me to give him credit for that because like it shouldn't even be a possibility in the first place.
But it's just concerning.
You know, it does seem like he wants a deal.
He does keep saying that and while he makes these threats.
And it looks like the negotiations are advancing.
I mean, they've had three rounds and both sides say they're going well.
On the other hand, you have the Trump administration officials like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz saying publicly that any deal must dismantle Iran's nuclear enrichment program altogether, which that's just not even, that's just a non-starter for Iran.
But it looks like that's not the demand that they're making behind the scenes.
So, I mean, it's tough to say where this is going to go.
There was recently over the weekend, a huge port explosion in Iran that I believe killed 60 people.
And with things like that, I mean, the Iranians haven't made the accusation that it was an attack or sabotage, but Israel has a history of sabotage attacks inside Iran and of doing them to sabotage diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran.
They did it.
They detonated an explosive in an Iranian nuclear facility in April 2021 when Biden started negotiations with Iran.
But again, so far, no Israeli sources have taken credit for that or in the Iranians.
There's like an Iranian member of parliament who accused the Israelis of being behind it.
But the fact is we don't really know at this point.
But something like that, like a sabotage attack, we might see things like that that Netanyahu might do to try to sabotage the diplomacy, because I think he sees this as the time.
This Trump administration is his chance, possibly his last chance to get that war with Iran that he's always wanted.
And then, you know, imagine if the U.S. and Iran are engaged in a war.
He could just do whatever he wants to the Palestinians in Gaza.
There's not going to be nearly as much attention on it.
They could advance their designs in the West Bank more freely.
So, yeah, it's, you know, he has a lot of motive to make this war happen, Netanyahu.
Do you think the way I've always felt about this, as I've been paying attention to it over the last, you know, couple decades is that it seems to me that the Iranians, you know,
much like I think this is kind of the way it always works with governments in general, but like governments are, they kind of have to at least pose as your protectors in order to preserve any perceived legitimacy amongst their people.
And so the Iranians, like, for example, when they responded to the Israeli attacks back last year and they sent those rockets or they sent those missiles at Israel, but they gave the U.S. warning and they didn't really send everything they had.
They essentially, it seems like similarly to after Donald Trump killed Soleimani and they kind of sent like some rockets at U.S. bases, but didn't kill anybody.
Soleimani Assassination Risks00:09:44
Like they want to, you know, they basically want to act as if they've responded to kind of save face with their own people.
But then at the same time, they don't really want this fight because they know.
I mean, you know, if you could picture where Iran is, like if you could picture a map of them, like their neighbors are Iraq and Afghanistan.
They've seen what the U.S. military has done to their two neighbors while threatening to do it to them for these entire 20 years.
And it does almost seem like they're, you know, they're, they don't actually want this fight.
They want to, you know, posture as if they're not pushovers and that they will respond.
I think what a lot of the, you know, it's like, I almost think about, you know, like an analogy would be that like, you know, it's imagine you're like walking with your wife and your two kids down the street or something like that.
I think we both got the same amount of kids.
You're walking with your two kids and your wife and you're surrounded by much tougher guys and they're like talking shit and they're disrespecting you.
And you're almost like, all right, okay, just take it.
Let's keep walking.
Like, I don't want anything to happen to my family here.
But like at a certain point, if they cross the line, you're going to be like, well, I guess I got to fight these guys and land as many punches as I can.
I'm probably going to lose, but I have to do something here.
And it does seem like the Trump administration and the Warhawks are presenting this as if it is an option to just take out the Iranian nuclear sites, like to just have a massive bombing campaign in Iran.
And then that's it.
We don't have to do like a full invasion like we did in Iraq.
We could just do that and then go back to life as normal.
My guess would be there is no way that Iran could allow that to happen without some type of response.
And they have a lot of responses available to them.
But what do you think about that?
Like, do you think, is it possible for the Israelis and the American military to just take out the Iranian nuclear program?
And that's that?
I do not think so, but that is the talking point we hear.
Like I remember Tom Cotton said that recently in a hearing, and you see people who support this idea of bombing Iran, acting like it'll be no big deal.
But I think it's very clear, you know, if they take that step, because, you know, what it would take to try to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities would be dropping the U.S.'s heaviest bunker busting bombs.
They're like 30,000 pounds because they built these facilities deep underground in anticipation of something like this happening.
So if the U.S. goes out and drops those bombs on that, I mean, they're going to respond.
And the fact is, is that they have advanced ballistic missiles that can hit, I believe, about 10 U.S. bases in the region, probably more.
And as, you know, this is something Tucker's been talking about a lot lately.
The Pentagon assessments are like hundreds or thousands of American casualties.
And then what happens?
Is Trump just going to be like, oh, well, that's that?
No, then it's going to become an even bigger war.
I don't really see a situation where the U.S. like tries to invade Iran.
I mean, it's just not realistic.
Like nobody has the will.
None of the people in the U.S. have the will.
The U.S. military doesn't have the will.
Where are they going to invade from?
But I could see just like really heavy bombing, maybe some ground fighting in like Iraq or something until somebody says, all right, enough.
I guess we just got to negotiate here or something.
But like, yeah, it's just, there's no way that the U.S. just takes out the nuclear facilities and that's it.
The other thing is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
That's what U.S. intelligence has said.
That's been the consensus since the early 2000s.
But they use their nuclear program essentially as leverage and they kind of use the threat of it turning into weaponization as leverage.
And the conversation has changed inside Iran.
You're seeing more calls for the Ayatollah to reverse his ban on making nukes.
And an advisor to the Ayatollah said that if the U.S. and Israel attack, then we could change our position on nuclear weapons.
They want there to be consequences for bombing them.
And that New York Times report was interesting.
It said that the plans to attack Iran could set back their nuclear program by a year.
So suggesting that, oh, they actually can't completely destroy it, which makes sense.
So yeah, it would be like bombing a country under a phony pretext of them having a nuclear weapons program and it could actually create one.
So the whole thing, for every reason, it's just would be a very foolish thing to do.
And there's just no reason to be this hostile against Iran right now, except for Israel.
Yeah, no, that's right.
And, you know, it's, it reminds me even, right, like Douglas Murray said to me when I pointed out that the war in Afghanistan was not just about taking out al-Qaeda, but that we launched a 20-year regime change war against the Taliban.
And he goes, well, you got dragged into the quicksand of war.
And it's like, right.
Yeah, that's right.
That sure can happen.
Like, if you look at the original, you know, authorization of use of military force against Iraq, it was very narrow to take out Saddam Hussein.
We took out Saddam Hussein very quickly, but then we were there for another two decades and I still have some military forces there today.
Even at the beginning of the Ukraine war, Joe Biden was very clear that the Ukraine can win with sanctions, that we could support them just with sanctions.
That was supposed to be the extent of American involvement.
And you just see this all over the place.
So the idea that, right, like we're going to, that we're going to just bomb the crap out of Iran, but that'll be it.
Man, you want to talk about risky games?
That is a risky one.
And as you said, it just seems like it would, you know, it would be a situation where they would have to really respond.
And if they really responded, then how the hell are we not going to really respond to that?
I mean, you know, again, just try to try to even imagine, you know, they there was after Trump killed Soleimani, there was some restraint showed on both sides of that.
And look, you could say killing Soleimani was probably one of the worst things Donald Trump ever did, just in terms of how risky a move it was.
But then you could also say that one of the best things he ever did was just leave it at that and not, you know, respond any further.
But if you could just like run a counterfactual in your head and imagine that like the Iranian retaliatory strike had killed 10 U.S. servicemen, is it is it possible that Donald Trump would have, I certainly don't think so.
I don't think there's any world in which Mr. Tough Guy, Donald Trump, with all of his Miriam Adelson money and all of the neocon hawks that he has around him, it would possibly be able to say, you're going to just let them kill 10 U.S. soldiers and not have a bigger response to that.
And so this is, you know, the quick sound of war, as even neocon Douglas Murray would call it.
You just see it right in front of you.
And again, for what benefit are we even playing with this game so that the country of Iran that poses no threat to any of us might continue to pose no threat to any of us?
It's just, it's madness.
Yeah.
And fortunately, it seems like the lesson Trump got out of the Solemani thing was that he could hit Iran hard and not really suffer any consequences.
That seems to be, and you see this kind of talking point from him and like his supporters, like, oh, you know, Iran didn't do anything after that, after we killed Soleimani.
Well, they killed Soleimani under the pretext that he was helping plot attacks on U.S. bases in the region.
A U.S. soldier was killed a few weeks earlier in Kirkuk, Iraq.
And we don't really know who launched that rocket.
And then in March of that year, more American, I believe two, one or two, or maybe some British soldiers, I forget exactly the number, but at least one American was killed, like just a couple months later.
So the whole talking point is, oh, Iran didn't, you know, nothing happened after we killed Soleimani.
It kind of solved all the problems, but it's just not the case.
So, but that is, you know, you hear Trump whenever, you know, you know, how he always says, oh, this would have never happened if it was me.
Iran was broke.
He touts his first, you know, administration's Iran policy, even though it was a complete failure, as like this great thing that like brought peace, which is just not the case.
So unfortunately, it seems like that's, that's his thinking.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So do you, I mean, if you had to, you cover this stuff, you know, for a living and in much more detail than I do.
Sheath Underwear Ad Read00:04:23
What, if you had to guess, where do you think, where do you think happens from here?
Man, it's tough.
You know, I think one big risk here, we talk about American casualties is the Houthis.
They're full of surprises.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see one of their drones or missiles hit a U.S. warship, or maybe they'll try to target a base across the Red Sea in Djibouti or something.
Or who knows?
I mean, you just never know what they might be able to hit.
There's a risk there, and then of the U.S. really escalating in Yemen and trying to back a ground invasion.
And but what, you know, obviously the big thing is Iran.
And a few weeks ago, I was much more pessimistic.
I thought it was like inevitable.
You know, when he started bombing Yemen and was making all these threats and Israel's just unleashing in Gaza again, it's just like, oh, wow, this is, we're actually just going to go into war with Iran, aren't we?
But since the negotiations started and the fact that they seem to be, you know, there's progress happening.
They've even had some direct engagement.
And it looks like obviously Iran doesn't want a war with the U.S.
And I think they're making that very clear to Trump.
So that I think the risk is a little lower.
But it's so hard for me to imagine them signing a deal with Iran.
It's like that was like the Iran, that was like the JCPOA that Obama negotiated because like every Republican is going to be against it.
Even, you know, it's just hard for me to imagine like an Iran nuclear deal happening right now.
And that is the thing it seems like will is the only thing that'll prevent war.
So I think the chances are still pretty high of this turning into the U.S. and Iran launching some strikes.
Sorry, the U.S. and Israel launching strikes on Iran.
I think there's a good chance of that still happening here.
And then who knows where things escalate from there.
But it's just, you know, I just don't see, I follow the stuff in Gaza every day, the negotiations.
It's like you saw Trump the other day saying, oh, he told, claiming that he told Netanyahu he's got to be good to the people in Gaza.
And, you know, we're taking care of the aid situation, but there's no aid.
There's no food going in there.
And they're just killing dozens of people every day.
So it just doesn't seem like he's willing to put any pressure on Israel to stop that right now, even though the American, the Israeli hostage with American citizenship has apparently, according to Hamas, has gone missing after an Israeli airstrike.
I mean, you think that would be enough if that was his priority to get him to stop this, but it just goes on.
It just goes on and on.
And everybody's focused kind of more on the domestic stuff here in the U.S.
I mean, for a good reason, there's a lot of stuff happening, but it's just, you know, one thing really kind of showed how the media views all this stuff.
After the Signal Gate thing, Trump was in the Oval Office talking to reporters and they were like grilling him about them having this conversation in Signal and including the Atlantic reporter.
And he was trying to deflect and the way he was trying to do it.
He's like, I don't get why nobody asked me about the airstrikes against the Houthis.
They're going great.
We're launching all these.
We're bombing them.
And like nobody is saying, well, actually, they're not going great.
Like nobody challenged him on that.
They just kept asking about the thing.
So it's like, you know, and this is the issue.
I mean, even with all this going on with Iran, it's like a lot of Americans don't just don't really follow it.
And that if this does lead to the U.S. and Israel bombing Iran, Iran hitting back with missiles, killing Americans, then that's it.
You know, we're at war with Iran.
And, you know, however, that will play out.
So there's just a real risk of this unless something really changes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And man, it's, it probably can't be overstated.
How as disastrous as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and Somalia and Yemen, as bad as they were, Iran is biting off a lot more than any of those.
I mean, by far.
And they're much more formidable.
And that's not to say that they're a more powerful military than the United States of America, but like neither was the Taliban.
And they outlasted us in that war.
So yeah, it's dangerous times.
I tend to agree with your assessment.
I would love to think that these negotiations could lead to a deal, but just looking at the people just around Donald Trump, I mean, it just seems like every one of them is going to oppose this.
And so we will see.
Staying Informed on Truth00:01:11
But I do appreciate, as always, Dave DeCamp, you coming and helping us understand this stuff better.
Please let people know where they can find your work or anything else you want to promote.
And let them know.
Yeah, well, my writing is at antiwar.com.
And if you look at the news section at the top, there's usually a few articles by me there.
And I have a show called Anti-War News with Dave DeCamp, where I basically go over the daily news stories five days a week.
It's on YouTube.
So if you're watching this on YouTube, you could go subscribe to that.
Also on Rumble, Odyssey, and most people listen to the audio, the podcast.
It's great to kind of just throw on.
It's like 30 minutes a day to get updated on the foreign policy stuff.
It's kind of for foreign policy nerds and it can get pretty depressing to listen to it every day, but people seem to like it.
So, but yeah, that's it.
And follow me on X at DeCamp Dave is my handle over there.
Yeah, absolutely.
Listen, I can't recommend Dave's work highly enough.
If you do want to stay informed on what's going on, and yes, it is depressing, but you know, it's always better to know the truth than to bury your head in the sand.
So anyway, thank you again, brother, for as always.