April 9, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:45:15
3645 SYRIA! - True News: Week In Review - April 9th, 2017
This week there is only one story to talk about – the Syria Chemical Attack and President Donald Trump’s military response on the 100th anniversary of the United States entry into World War I. Infuriating many of his supporters who oppose foreign wars and nation building, President Trump’s decision to launch 50+ Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria has sparked a significant debate across the nation. Will the United States aim to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and add Syria to the list of failed nation-building military interventions? Only time will tell. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
It's Mike and me, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio, here to talk to you about this week's events.
You know, there's some times where we have to cast the net fairly wide to get gripping topics, but this week, not so much the case.
Mike, see if you can refresh me.
What are we going to talk about again today?
Something?
Well, I had prepared a ton of topics for this week's show, and then the whole Syria situation happened.
So we are going to be talking about Syria and And only Syria today.
We were going to talk about the terrorist attack in Russia.
We were going to talk about the terrorist attack in Sweden.
We had a bunch of other great stories.
But the thing that's on the forefront of everyone's mind right now is Donald Trump's intervention in Syria.
So that will be the primary focus for our discussion today.
Now, let's just put it in a bit of framing first, because, I mean, people are tense and upset and volatile about this, and I understand that.
I mean, people have a lot invested in the success of Donald Trump, and there are people, of course, who view criticism of Trump I think?
I or Mike or both of us, just because we criticize a decision that Trump has made doesn't mean that we've turned on him and we're now anti...
Like, no, this is...
You criticize people you respect.
Like, if you've ever had someone in your life, when you give up criticizing them, you've kind of given up on the relationship because it means that you don't think they'll listen, that nothing good can come of it, nothing better can come of it, and so on.
It is not a healthy relationship to say, everything he does is fine.
And this 40 chess move, we may not understand it now, but trust me, over time, that's...
What religious-y?
You know, he's a man.
He's a man.
He makes mistakes.
I make mistakes.
Mike, one day, will make a mistake.
This all can happen, and we need to be in a conversation about all of this.
So that's sort of the first thing.
Criticism is a sign of respect.
And it is funny, of course, how people criticize me and then say, well, you shouldn't be criticizing Trump.
It's like, well, you're criticizing me in an attempt to improve my behavior, saying I shouldn't criticize someone else in an attempt to improve their behavior.
Well, and I think it's important, too.
There's been so many people that have lost their minds throughout the Trump campaign and have no credibility to actually criticize the Trump administration, whereas we have not lost our minds.
Say, when the media spun a random comment on an interview into, Donald Trump is completely changing his immigration policy.
I think I've lived through that headline about a dozen times by now.
And yeah, lots of people freaked out about that.
Oh, my God, you've betrayed us, Donald Trump.
And it was a big, fat nothing burger.
There is a certain credibility that we have in that we haven't freaked out in the past when Donald Trump has done something or the media has spun as if Donald Trump was or going to do something that was going to betray his base.
But now there's something that lots of people are concerned about, and I think there is legitimate reason to be concerned.
Criticism and feedback is certainly warranted.
And those that have the credibility to offer that criticism, now's the time.
Yeah, I mean, if all you've done is hate on Trump from the beginning, then no one's going to listen to you about this.
But hopefully, people who've been somewhat supportive of the candidacy will be listened to more.
So with regards to Syria, it's not all or nothing.
There's three, to me at least, three important issues.
And Mike, of course, feel free to let me know if there's more or fewer, for that matter.
So the first is the Tomahawk missiles themselves.
First of all, a lot of them missed.
Now, that seems to me somewhat important.
What are they, a million bucks each, something like that?
A million and a half, a million and a half each, and a lot of them missed.
Now, that's not good because there are a lot of Russians in the area, and if you're going to lob close to 60 Tomahawk missiles and a majority of them are going to miss or a significant proportion of them are going to miss, that's kind of important.
I think at a million and a half, you can expect, I don't know, Hitting stuff.
Or most of them hitting stuff or whatever.
But as far as I understand it, after he lobbed all these tomahawks into this airfield, they used it again within a couple of days.
So that's $100 million worth of military hardware with one job.
Tomahawks, you had one job.
And your one job was to take out an airfield.
And $100 million later, you didn't do it.
And who knows where the other ones landed?
What might have happened?
What if you landed in a Russian barracks?
A hundred miles away.
I don't know.
So that's sort of risky.
So it's a risky thing in and of itself.
There's not smart bombs.
It's not perfect.
There's a fog of war.
There's problems.
You know, these missiles are just another government program going to work about as well as the others.
So that's the first thing.
That's the initial strike itself.
And then there's the question of...
The escalation, does it escalate from here?
And the third is the most important, and that's where my particular criticism comes from.
There have been rumblings about regime change in Syria.
Now, that is a complete disaster, and that will overcome and overshadow and eclipse virtually just about everything else that he wants to do domestically.
If he gets involved in another multi-trillion dollar, useless, disastrous, ungodly, destructive, migrant-spawning war in the Middle East, that will be an unqualified disaster.
So for me, the strike is bad enough.
It seems to me somewhat of an emotional reaction to seeing pictures of dead kids, which of course is why they show you pictures of dead kids.
It's why you didn't really see the mangled bodies that Tommy Robinson and others were tweeting on Twitter, the mangled bodies of the people driven over by trucks in Sweden.
But you saw the bodies and you heard the seven-year-old, quote, Syrian girl seems to be reading off a script while being interviewed and so on.
So it's the regime change aspect of things that is the most troubling.
And if they'd said, no, no, this is a one-time thing, but again, he's not going to say what he wants to do in the long run, because that's going to be, I guess, showing his hands.
And Trump has been consistent on that.
He's not going to forecast what he's going to do, which makes smart from a strategy standpoint, but is likely to freak out your allies and your supporters.
If you're wavering or you have your Secretary of State giving lip service to regime change and then the next day saying we're not changing our policy on Syria, I don't know if he's changing it from yesterday or the week before or when they're changing it from, but...
It certainly is going to provoke some concern.
And listen, everyone out there, take a deep breath and remember your principles.
It is not loyalty to a person.
It is not loyalty to a party.
It is loyalty to principles.
Otherwise, we're all just a bunch of trailing in the wake, dragged along behind a speedboat hacks.
And the principle is very, very simple.
When Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, pursued regime change in the Middle East, Decent, moral, intelligent people went nuts and hated everything that she was doing.
Why?
Because she was pursuing illegitimate regime change in the Middle East, and in particular Libya and what happened in Libya, which had a lot to do with the migrant crisis.
If you hated the idea of Hillary Clinton pursuing regime change in the Middle East, and there was every reason under sun and moon to hate that, then you can't just switch principles because Trump's at the helm and Tillerson is at the helm.
If you hated it when Hillary pursued regime change in the Middle East, you can't just turn around and love it now.
It's wrong to do that.
All right, well, let's set the table a bit more and go through this.
One thing I think a lot of people are overlooking is what happened in September of last year.
Less than a week after a ceasefire agreement had been brokered by Russia between the United States and the Syrian government, the United States carried out an attack in eastern Syria that killed Bashar Assad's forces.
The Syrian military released a statement claiming the airstrikes were, quote, conclusive evidence that the United States and its allies support ISIS and other terrorist organizations, end quote.
And a United States defense official at the time commented that the strike, quote, appears to be an intelligence failure, end quote.
It appears to be an intelligence failure, yes.
Good job there, buddy.
Well, I just wanted to mention that.
Sorry, I just wanted to mention here, too.
So there was an intelligence failure in September of last year that resulted in America mistakenly blowing up a whole bunch of soldiers.
But they know for sure that Assad ordered and executed a chemical strike In Syria.
No intelligence failures with regard to it.
One day to figure that out, and they got it perfectly right, but they have other intelligence failures that have them bombing the entire wrong place.
The same intelligence department that thinks Donald Trump is a Russian plant.
And Hillary Clinton was not guilty.
So U.S. Central Command at the time said, Syria is a complex situation with various military forces and militars in close proximity, but coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit.
The coalition airstrike was halted immediately when coalition officials were informed by Russian officials that it was possible the personnel and vehicles targeted were part of the Syrian military.
The coalition will review this strike and the circumstances surrounding it to see if any lessons can be learned.
So again, right there.
Complex situation.
Lots of people grouped together.
It's hard to differentiate one person from another, who's on what side and all that.
But we're completely sure that Assad did the chemical weapons attack in Syria the other day.
Okay.
So Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook at the time said, while we are still trying to determine all the facts, if we mistakenly struck a Syrian military position, we regret doing so, especially the loss of lives.
So the United States killed Syrian forces while they had a ceasefire last year.
That's pretty much an act of war against Syrian forces.
But in war, sometimes things happen.
Fog of war, it's confusing.
So if you're going to use that as an out as to why the US isn't even And are we really going to start establishing the principle that anytime a country violates international law, other countries can rain missiles down upon them?
I mean, does America in particular really want to have that principle established and enshrined in the minds of everyone?
Russian President Vladimir Putin said, this comes from the problems in the U.S. is facing on the Syrian track.
They still cannot separate the so-called healthy part of the opposition from the half-criminal and terrorist elements.
In my opinion, this comes from the desire to keep the combat potential in fighting the legitimate government of Bashar Assad.
But this is a very dangerous route.
So, again, everyone at the time is saying, hey, it's very difficult to tell people apart, but now we're sure.
So for some additional context, everyone has seen Trump's tweets saying, Regarding Syria from 2013, the first time that this chemical weapon situation really became a major, major story regarding Syria.
At the time, Trump's current defense secretary, Jim Maddog Mattis, he said, on Syria, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to have to determine what is the end state we want.
This war needs to be ended as rapidly as possible.
That's the bottom line.
But if the Americans go in, if the Americans take leadership, if the Americans take ownership of it, it's going to be a full-throated, very, very serious war.
And anyone who says this is going to be easy, that we can do a no-fly zone and it'll be cheap, I would discount that on the outset.
We need to be very clear about our military end state, contributing to what political end state.
Otherwise, you're liable to invade a country, pull down a statue, and then say, now what do we do?
We all want to do something to stop this, but the desire to do something, the intention to do good, does not take the place of pragmatic what is possible.
We have no moral obligation to do the impossible and hawk our children's future because we think we just have to do something.
End quote.
So that's Mad Dog Mattis, Trump's current defense secretary, 2013, and I think that quote is pretty applicable to what's going on in Syria right now.
Well, the idea that you can have a nice war, that you can have a clean war, that you're going to be welcomed as liberators and everything's going to go hunky-dory.
You know, this is brutal real politic, and I'm not making any moral advocacies here.
I'm just talking about the brutal realities of history.
Now, from a brutal real politic, facts of history standpoint, war, ever since really the Second World War, you could argue a little bit earlier, but war has involved civilians.
And because they're sort of total state and civilians are often involved in the production of war materials and so on, war has involved civilians.
Now, at the time, and even afterwards, there were very few complaints about the bombings that went on from the Allies against Japan and Germany towards the end of the Second World War.
I mean, everybody knew that there were women and children who were being blown up in Dresden and Berlin, in Germany and in Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
Everybody knew there were women and children being blown up.
And for the most part, people were, well, it's a regrettable necessity in order to win the war, to finish the war.
That's what people thought.
And again, afterwards, there have been some criticism, but in general, for the most part, certainly at the time, people were saying, well, that's what we have to do.
They're the bad guys, we're the good guys, and we have to drop bombs on civilians in order to win the war, or we can't possibly avoid civilian casualties in the prosecution of the end of the war.
And so for the most part, people were relatively okay with that.
And it is one of these acid tests.
Which is, if you are really concerned, and only concerned, about the safety of non-combatants, then it may not be that you're in the very best place to win a war.
And again, I'm not advocating the ethics of it or anything like that.
That's a whole other topic.
But don't be fooled.
Don't be pulled into war by people who tell you that it can somehow be less messy than it is.
Because then you go in, you don't finish.
Number one, you don't finish, which means that it's been worse than a waste of time.
It's been a waste of resources than a destruction of prior stability.
And also, of course, remember that the Middle East, there is that IQ issue, right?
I mean, Syria's got an average IQ of 83, which means that no matter what happens, you're not getting a democracy out of this.
We had...
Dr.
Helmuth Nyberg on the show to talk about this, that once your IQ as a culture drops below 90, you really don't have a capacity to have a democracy or a republic.
And so these two sort of basic facts...
Very, very important.
And I have a huge amount of sympathy for the Middle East.
I mean, the Middle East, I mean, okay, it's a rough regime.
It's a brutal regime.
It's got a brutal history.
There are brutal ideologies there.
But it's kicked around a lot by the powers and always has been.
And I think one of the reasons is that everyone is sold on this bloodless war with a wonderful outcome.
And neither of those historically is valid.
And if people understood that, I think that the region might have a chance for some sort of stability or at least more than it has now.
There is no solution for what's going on in Syria right now that doesn't involve massive amounts of bloodshed.
Regardless of how many resources are poured in from the international community, it's going to be a mess.
It's going to continue to be a mess.
The massive bloodshed won't come up with this.
It won't produce a solution either.
Just traumatize the population.
Well, and the United States certainly doesn't have a moral high ground when it comes to the idea of civilian casualties.
I mean, how many US raids and bombings go by without some type of collateral damage with a civilian casualty?
There's been raids since Trump has been president that he has authorized.
That have had civilian casualties.
So if we're going by the, if you kill innocents or you kill civilians, if you kill women or children that aren't necessarily part of a fighting force, we get to bomb your country.
If that's the principle, well, okay, well, then that opens up a whole new realm of discourse regarding what could happen to President Trump in the United States of America.
The thing that most people are hanging their hat on is the specific use of chemical weapons.
That is the dividing line.
Now, I don't quite understand and maybe some people in the comments can explain it to me or maybe, Steph, you can explain it to me.
I don't know that the people that are killed by some kind of weapon really care that much what weapon is killing them.
If you're dead, you're dead.
But there is this big fog around chemical weapons.
Chemical weapons are bad.
That is a red line.
Now...
We're in a war zone in Syria.
We're not in a war zone, thank goodness.
I'm not in a war zone, thank goodness.
But there's lots of people in a war zone in Syria where chemical weapons are being used.
The New York Times has reported that lots of the rebels have used chemical weapon attacks dozens and dozens of times over the last several years.
So these weapons are being used by the rebels.
Assad, is he able to use those weapons?
Well, apparently not.
And why there is this classification of weapons, which this is the no-go point.
I mean, I understand for nuclear, but chemical weapons which major Western world powers have used fairly recently That being the no-go point currently, modern day, is a bit fishy and strange to me.
If the use of chemical weapons is so dastardly, then the radicals who are currently fighting Assad's government have, and again, we can reference you, we put all the notes to this below, of course, the New York Times has referenced that they've used chemical weapons over 50 times.
So why on earth, if chemical weapons use is so terrible, why on earth Is the US allied with the rebels who've used chemical weapons more than 50 times?
You understand?
If chemical weapons are so heinous, why is America on the side of people who use chemical weapons?
It makes absolutely no sense.
And also, it's a big topic around the fishiness of it all, but 70 people...
I mean, that's a drone strike, you know?
I mean, that's one of the 20,000 bombs per year dropped by Obama's presidency can easily round up 20 bodies.
And why this is such a different, serious, horrifying thing, there's no context.
It makes no sense.
And as we talked about before, why Assad would do it when the world is either neutral or mostly on his side when he's winning, why would he do this?
To kill 70 civilians and turn world opinion against him?
It makes no sense.
Oh, the motive question.
There is no motive that makes any sense that Assad would have done this.
Now, the people responding to those that point that out say, but he's just a madman.
He's crazy.
He does all kinds of crazy things.
Then why has it taken six or seven years and he's still not defeated?
If he's just crazy, if he just does things randomly, he arms his soldiers with ducks, he drops cotton balls from airplanes.
If, you know, like, there was a Roman emperor who set his troops to wage war against the sea.
Now, that guy was crazy.
Go battle the sea.
Go defeat Poseidon.
And literally, he had his soldiers slashing at waves.
Now, that guy's crazy.
I don't think this guy is crazy.
Yeah, here's the actual deal from the New York Times here.
It says, ISIS used chemical arms at least 52 times in Syria and Iraq, report says.
The Islamic State has used chemical weapons, including chlorine and sulfur mustard agents, at least 52 times on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq since it swept to power in 2014, according to a new independent analysis.
More than one third of those chemical attacks have come in around Missoula, the Islamic State stronghold in northern Iraq, according to the assessment by the IHS Conflict Monitor, a London-based intelligence coalition and analysis service.
So there you have it right there.
The people that the United States is possibly selling arms to and supporting or using chemical weapons, and yet we're upset at Assad for maybe unprovingly using chemical weapons.
Now Russia's getting swept into this because after the deployment of chemical weapons in 2013, that whole deal, the United States and Russia entered an agreement that ensured inspectors would be given immediate unfettered access with a comprehensive list of weapons Syria possessed and would ensure that the weapons were removed and then destroyed.
Now Snopes, for the longest time, had said, there are no chemical weapons in Syria.
That's true, according to Snopes, the people that are the arbiters of truth on much in the way of social media these days and approved by Google and all that kind of stuff.
No chemical weapons in Syria.
They have retracted that report now, oddly enough.
They just retracted it.
So it was true until it wasn't.
And of course, if Google and Facebook and other companies get their way, right, or some elements within those companies or other companies get their way, then the argument that there may be chemical weapons in Syria would have been flagged as fake news.
Until this narrative came along, in which case the argument that there were no chemical weapons available to the Syrian government would now be fake news.
And this is why the whole label of fake news is such crap.
And just before we move on, I want to say on the point of civilians, well, New York Times reported on March 24th of this year, very recently, the American-led military coalition in Iraq said Friday that it was investigating reports that scores of civilians, perhaps as much as 200, residents said, had been killed in recent American airstrikes in Missoula, the northern Iraq city at the center of the offensive to drive out the Islamic State.
So, killing civilians.
We're going 80 in Syria.
To 200, apparently, in Iraq as a result of American airstrikes.
Just something to keep in mind.
Also, April 3rd, 2017, an anti-Assad journalist, this is from Zero Hedge, on April 3rd, 2017, an anti-Assad journalist tweeted that the next day he would be launching a media campaign to cover airstrikes on the Hama countryside, including the use of chemical weapons.
It is not clear how the reporter was able to know that chemical weapons would be used an entire day before the attacks occurred.
There is always that kind of fishy stuff that's floating around.
It's not proof, but it may be something for further examination.
Remember the Yemen raid in February?
Trump's February Special Forces raid targeting al-Qaeda in Yemen killed nine children under the age of 13, with the youngest victim being a three-month-old baby.
And that's the raid that the media attempted to portray as a failure.
Then it came out that there was significant intelligence gained from the raid that led to arrests and that type of thing.
This stuff happens with military interventions.
I don't like any of it.
And propaganda, you know, propaganda is essential to war.
You know, there's a reason why war is called a theater.
Yeah.
A family member of those killed in the raid said, it is true they were targeting al-Qaeda, but why did they have to kill children and women and elderly people?
If such slaughter happened in their country, there would be a lot of shouting about human rights.
When our children are killed, they are quiet.
You know, we're not seeing photos of those children.
Splash across national news.
We're not seeing that.
You know, when you see the kids on TV, head straight to the shelter, because this is the next sound you'll hear.
And hopefully you'll get to hear something after that.
Okay, so we've established the United States intelligence.
There's some questions about the intelligence, just going back to when they, oopsie, attacked Syrian forces in September.
And from a moral high ground standpoint, It's a bit of a challenge giving the U.S. strikes.
But you can say, hey, the U.S. not using chemical weapons, so this is different, right?
Well, unfortunately, the U.S. uses depleted uranium shells and used white phosphorus in Iraq.
Now, you may say, well, that's Iraq.
That's different.
No, the United States even confirmed that it used depleted uranium shells in Syria.
So let's jump into the Washington Post from February 16th of this year.
Months after the Pentagon said it wouldn't use a controversial type of armor-piercing ammunition that has been blamed for long-term health complications, U.S. aircraft fired thousands of the rounds during two high-profile air raids in Syria in November 2015, the Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday.
So, two years later.
Whether exposure to depleted uranium causes adverse health effects has been debated.
When it was used during the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo, the United Nations advised that children stay away from the impact zones.
The Iraq government also routinely stressed the danger the munitions posed to its people, soil and air.
Depleted uranium rounds were used in hundreds of thousands of attacks during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and again in the opening of the 2013 invasion of Iraq.
So just we'll go into a little bit about depleted uranium.
This is again from the Washington Post.
Depleted uranium is the byproduct of the enriched uranium needed to power reactors.
Depleted uranium is roughly 0.7 times as radioactive as natural uranium, and its high density makes it ideal for armor-piercing rounds.
In 2014, the United Nations report on depleted uranium munitions.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said that, quote, The existence of depleted uranium residues dispersed in the environment when observed as confined contamination of soils, vegetables, water, and surfaces does not pose a radiological hazard to the local populations.
Okay.
The agency did say, however, that direct contact with larger amounts of depleted uranium through the handling of scrap metal, for instance, could result in exposures of radiological significance.
So this is a fiercely debated issue.
Some people say depleted uranium.
That's okay in small doses if you come into contact with it.
Other people are saying, oh, it's really, really bad.
It causes all kinds of cancers, that type of thing.
This is one of those things that the studies on it are pretty slim.
And for moral reasons, it's not like you're going to continually expose people to large quantities of depleted uranium just to see how they do.
A lot of it is soldiers coming back from war.
Maybe they have shrapnel, which contained depleted uranium, which is constantly pumping all kinds of nasty stuff into their bloodstream.
You have people that inhaled it.
Can you possibly classify how much they inhaled and then tie that to the amount of health effects that they have?
No.
But we do know that it is a radioactive material that causes problems.
And let's move on here.
The International Coordinator for the Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, this is Doug Weir, said, given the international opposition associated with the use of depleted uranium, we had been pretty astonished to hear that they had been used in Syria.
The United States consistently states that weapons are for anti-armor use, although the record from Iraq was further evidence that this doesn't really bear close scrutiny.
Now more to some of the problems with depleted uranium.
Congenital malformations!
Oh, that's something you love, right?
In the city of Fallujah that has surpassed Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki even in the wake of the nuclear bombs that were dropped at the end of World War II. And the persistence of elevated urine-uranium suggests ongoing mobilization from a storage deposit, such as shrapnel or inhalation, which results in chronic systematic exposure.
So if you inhale a lot of this stuff, it gets stuck in your lungs.
It is a long half-life, and it's constantly pumping out all kinds of negative stuff into your system.
Again, do we have long-term studies that show the impact of this?
I mean, they've tried.
There's all the incentives in the world saying that we don't want to actually draw conclusions to the dangers of depleted uranium.
Can you imagine the lawsuits, the U.S. federal government that exposed its own soldiers to high levels of this stuff?
Not to mention, you want to talk about any type of reparations or lawsuits from the citizens in Iraq and the other countries where this has been used, any type of moral high ground regarding war crimes, if you can show the significance of Depleted uranium and how dangerous it is, man, it looks tough for the United States and its allies, which use this stuff pretty frequently.
So, normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because in addition to being radioactive, uranium is also a toxic metal.
It's weakly radioactive, but is persistently so.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry states that To be exposed to radiation from uranium, you have to eat, drink, breathe it, or get it on your skin.
Now, if you're in Iraq and this stuff is floating around, is it going to get on your food?
Is it going to get in the water?
Are you going to breathe it?
If it goes airborne, are you going to get it on your skin?
Kids are out playing.
Remember the UN said you might want to keep your children away from where those bombing sites were.
Well, when the bombing sites are everywhere, that's a bit difficult.
Now to go on a little bit more.
In early 1997, British Army doctors warned the Ministry of Defense that exposure to depleted uranium increased the risk of developing lung, lymph, and brain cancer and recommended a series of safety precautions.
According to a report issued summarizing the advice of the doctors, quote, Inhalation of insoluble uranium dioxide dust will lead to accumulation in the lungs with very slow clearance, if any.
All personnel should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long-term risk.
The dust has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph, and brain cancers.
So all the studies that are being done on this and the use of this is fairly new.
We're just talking about a couple of decades here.
The long-term risks really aren't known.
So there's no type of long-term understanding as to what this can do.
But it's still being used, and it's being used in Syria by the United States.
In early 2014, the UK Pensions Appeal Tribunal Service even attributed birth defect claims from a February 1991 Gulf War combat veteran to depleted uranium poisoning.
Modern warfare as a whole is biochemical weaponry against the human form as a whole.
We'll talk about the Gulf War in a second.
So regarding this, a 2005 study concluded, In aggregate, the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to depleted uranium.
End quote.
Studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukomogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure.
Now...
When I asked in 2003 about Iraq's complaints about depleted uranium shells, Colonel James Norton of U.S. Army Material Command stated in a Pentagon briefing that, quote, they wanted to go away because we kicked the crap out of them.
He was then promoted to public relations.
No, he wasn't.
It's just a joke.
In 2012, and we talk about this more in the Iraq, a decade of hell, one study described the people of Fallujah as having, and I quote, the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied.
Now, for those who are, I guess, a little bit younger, you may not remember all of this stuff regarding the Gulf War syndrome or Gulf War illness.
Astonishing.
So, 1990 to 1991, there was, of course, the Gulf War when Saddam Hussein was supposed to have invaded Kuwait and all.
Anyway, so you can look into that more if you want.
So, almost 700,000 U.S. veterans served in the 1991 Gulf War.
And of that close to 700,000, about a quarter of a million are afflicted with enduring chronic multi-symptom illnesses.
I mean, serious, serious stuff.
I mean, we're talking chronic diseases, functional impairment, hospitalizations, chronic fatigue, syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, and just bad, bad health overall.
And this has been going on for more than 20 years afterwards.
And why?
Do you know?
Nobody even really knows for sure.
So there is, of course, depleted uranium.
There was sarin gas.
Now, people say that Hussein or Iraq did not use chemical weapons in the Gulf War, but they sure as hell.
The Americans blew up a hell of a lot of places with some pretty gross stuff in it, and just lots of soldiers were exposed to that.
There was smoke from burning oil wells.
Vaccinations against the potential use of chemical weapons were pretty rough.
Of course, you know, combat stress and psychological factors and so on, and it is pretty rough.
It is pretty rough.
And the damage that was done to these people, I mean, they didn't, you know, a lot of these people didn't have like limbs blown off and stuff like that.
And this was a war that was kind of one-sided.
This was a pretty easy war, so to speak.
Except, of course, this effect on the minds and bodies of more than a quarter million soldiers who were there has been lasting now, decade after decade after decade.
And the amount of cost that this brings.
You know, people say, well, why is the cost of American health care so high?
Well, it's not completely inconsiderable.
These wars of imperialism, which have left people, by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands, broken in mind and spirit, unable to productively function in society, massively consuming healthcare resources.
This is why, this is why any kind of escalation in Syria, particularly regime change, I mean, that's gonna be it, man.
Well, remember, too, America sprayed 20 million gallons of chemicals, including Agent Orange, on Vietnam and surrounding countries.
Over 400,000 people were killed or maimed.
500,000 babies were born with birth defects, and 2 million are suffering from cancer and other illnesses.
In 2012, the Red Cross examined a million Vietnamese that have disabilities or health problems related to Agent Orange alone.
So now we're more aware of Agent Orange, and the use of it is looked down on.
But at the time, hey, this is just the thing we're using.
And look at the long-term effects.
If we talk about depleted uranium, is it going to be the same thing?
You can make the case that it certainly could be.
This is about 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War.
A million Vietnamese have disabilities or health problems related to Agent Orange alone.
40 years, give or take.
And this is not even counting all the landmines and all the other stuff that's scattered.
War used to end, if this makes any sense.
Like, war used to end when you used sort of conventional explosives.
You know, when they stopped bombing...
Germany, or I guess the non-radiated parts of Japan, when they stopped momming that stuff, well, it was kind of over.
But now, war is a very different matter.
War has an extremely long tail.
It has a long tail in physical destruction, in mental destruction, in birth defects, in genetic damage.
It permanently alters the trajectory of entire civilizations, and this doesn't even count.
The $6-7 trillion, that's with a TR, trillion dollars the United States spent on invading countries in the Middle East after 9-11.
What is that going to do to the long-term future and prospects of the American economy, of investment, of jobs, of stability?
What's going to happen when that money needs to get paid back or can't be paid back as it can't?
Obviously, I mean, that alone is almost...
Half of the entire GDP of America for an entire year.
It is no longer the war that it used to be.
The foundations and realities of war have changed.
War, biochemically, genetically, from a health standpoint, war doesn't end anymore.
So again, if you are going to say that the use of chemical weapons in Syria was so heinous that it necessitates some type of foreign intervention, In order to make that claim with any level of credibility, you need to show that the people that are going to intervene aren't doing things currently that are just as bad, if not worse, from a long-term standpoint.
I think you're going to have a very difficult time doing that if you want to make that case.
Now, in 2009, the Human Rights Watch reported that Israel's military fired white phosphorus.
You know, white phosphorus, the same stuff that the United States and allies were using in Iraq.
They fired it over crowded areas of Gaza repeatedly and indiscriminately during the three-week war, killing and injuring civilians and committing war crimes.
White phosphorus burns in contact with oxygen and causes deep burns when it touches human skin, sometimes to the bone.
Human Rights Watch researcher Fred Abrams said, quote, In Gaza, the Israeli military didn't just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops.
It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren't in the area and safe smoke shells were available.
As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died, end quote.
Now, I am aware that there is dispute to this Human Rights Watch report.
There's lots of people that say, no, it wasn't white phosphorus.
Visually, it looks like white phosphorus.
It's similar to something else that was used.
The reason I include this is If it was white phosphorus, again, you have a major country using something which I don't know how you'd classify it different than sarin in regards to its disastrous effects as a weapon.
And if they didn't use it, well, there's a whole lot of credible institutions saying, oh no, they did use it.
So even years later, in areas where they have Lots of high-definition cameras and lots of people there, lots of witnesses.
It's in dispute.
So years later, it's in dispute.
We don't know.
Yet, a couple days after something happens in Syria, U.S. intelligence that thinks Donald Trump is a Russian plat is absolutely sure as to what happened.
Like they were absolutely sure back in 2013 when they said, Assad used chemical weapons.
And then the UN came out and said, no, we think it was the rebel forces.
And then everyone's just like, oh, and it just kind of petered out because no one knew.
And how can you know?
As US intelligence admits, boy, there's lots of people kind of clumped together and we don't really know what's going on.
It's really difficult to determine who's on what side, what's doing this.
It's so tough to know.
But again, U.S. intelligence, they know.
They know that a couple days later, it was Assad, he did this, and we have to bomb them.
Go to 10 historians and ask 10 historians, what were the causes of World War I? Oh, God.
You'll be lucky if you only get 10 answers.
And of course, the common example is the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
That was the justification for the invasion in 2003.
Look at the Gulf of Tonkin incident that sparked wars.
Look and tell people There's still dispute over the causes of World War II. I mean, go back to the Battle of Agincourt, I'm sure.
And think of how many people have poured over all the source materials that led up to, which are almost all declassified and available, that led up to World War I, and nobody knows.
But, within 72 hours, you can.
Figure out that an attack occurred.
You can get facts on the ground that for sure it is chemicals.
You know for sure that it came from Assad, that he ordered it, that he's fully responsible for it, and you can already have a response punching down from the stratosphere within 72 hours.
You know, beginning of World War I, 100 years later, or more than 100 years later now, nobody knows.
But this one, we've got totally in the bag.
Give me a fucking break.
Well, just given the track record of U.S. intelligence over the short term...
Skepticism should be the default position for the entire American populace.
How much stuff do they have to get wrong before you stop trusting the first reports?
They had no idea.
They had no idea that the Soviet Union was about to fall.
They had no idea about 9-11 coming up.
But they've got this one.
But, you know, I guess there are things on the other side because at least everyone in the world agrees who killed JFK and why.
At least that has been completely laid to rest and there's no doubt about that.
Even though there was video of it at the time.
And there's still lots of people who dispute what actually happened.
So this idea that you can get this stuff tidied up, put away, tickety-boo, within 70 hours is madness.
Well, I just wonder, has anyone thought to ask Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes since he determines what is true all the time, very easily, without any problems?
It's not a process.
It's not complicated.
He's got it.
We should just ask him and he can tell us what to do.
Well, not many people know this, but Scott Pelley is actually immortal.
Highlander style, because he first shows up in history, again, I mean, I hate to sort of drop this big scoop in the middle of this show, but he actually first shows up in history as the oracle at Delphi that told Socrates' friends that Socrates was the wisest man alive.
And he said, you know, the oracle at Delphi is omniscient and never lies, always knows the truth.
So Scott Pelley, actually, he may have lived before that, but certainly 2,500 years ago, he functioned as the oracle at Delphi.
And so we should just submit all of our questions to him, because he has no problems with epistemology, never gets anything wrong.
Wow, so that means guerrilla mindset even kicks the ass of years and years and years of knowledge beyond that we could comprehend.
I actually suspect that anyway.
All right.
Well, next is a quote from Ron Paul regarding this incident.
He said, What happened four years ago in 2013, you know, this whole thing about crossing the red line.
Ever since then, the neocons have been yelling and screaming.
A part of the administration has been yelling and screaming about Assad using poison gas.
It makes no sense.
Even if you are totally separate from this and take no sides of this, and you are just an analyst, it doesn't make sense for Assad under these conditions to all of a sudden use poison gases.
I think it's zero chance that he would have done this deliberately.
Now Trump, this is after the election in November, when asked about Assad, he said, I'm not saying Assad is a good man, because he's not.
But our far greater problem is not Assad, it's ISIS. Now let's move to the timeline leading up to the attacks themselves.
All right, Trump's UN Ambassador Nikki Haley on March 30th said, quote, Do we think he, referring to Assad, is a hindrance?
Yes.
Are we going to sit there and focus on getting him out?
No.
What we are going to focus on is putting the pressure in there so we can start to make a change in Syria.
The U.S. can't necessarily focus on Assad the way that maybe the previous administration did.
End quote.
She then spoke of pressure to rid Syria of Iran's influence, saying, quote, that is really the problem, end quote, and indicated that the US would be working with Turkey.
Oh, it's always lovely when you can work with Turkey.
The country that has a referendum in a few days regarding pretty much making their leader a de facto dictator, which he already is, but it's just making it official.
Working with Turkey and other countries to bring, quote, peace and stability back.
You pick and choose your battles and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,
on March 30th, said, Turkey Justice Minister Bakir Balzdog said, It was determined after autopsy that chemical weapon was used.
This is in reference to the recent chemical attack.
You see, many of the bodies and many of the people injured were shipped to Turkey, which is completely impartial.
Turkish Health Ministry said, according to results of the first analysis, there were findings suggesting that the patients were exposed to chemical substance, sarin.
Then World Health Organization experts took part in autopsies, again in Turkey, And came to the same conclusion.
The victim showed signs of nerve gas exposure, including suffocation, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, constricted pupils, and involuntary defecation.
And this is also from Doctors Without Borders.
So lots of evidence that chemical weapons were used.
It's nice that Turkey is one of the people on the ground that's giving us information, completely impartial.
But this does not indicate who used those weapons, of course.
Well, and the idea that America has huge problems with unjust dictators who slaughter civilians is ridiculous.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
I mean, let's look at Saudi Arabia, right?
I mean, Saudi Arabia also stones and beheads its own citizens.
But Saudi Arabia has been involved in a truly ghastly war.
It's called the Forgotten War in Yemen.
And they are regularly raining death down on civilians and hospitals and crowded marketplaces and schools.
And Yemen is the Arab world's poorest nation, so naturally it's the geek that gets beaten up by everyone else.
There was one single attack.
It hit a funeral hall in Yemen's capital.
140 people gathered together, As mourners, we're dead in one day.
That's actually roughly twice the death count that is supposed to have happened with Assad's, quote, chemical attack, right?
And is this, well, we've got to do something.
We've got to replace the leadership in Saudi Arabia.
No, America's got troops stationed there helping to stabilize the existing theocratic dictatorship.
And John McCain's foundation has taken a million bucks from Saudi Arabia.
And Hillary Clinton's foundation has taken massive amounts of money from Saudi Arabia.
They fund just about everyone in the world, some of whom are up to not so very pleasant things.
And they also sell massive amounts of weaponry to Saudi Arabia.
So this is the kind of context you're just not going to get from the mainstream media because it puts to lie the whole narrative of, well, you know, what, you think Assad is a great guy?
It's like, compared to what?
Compared to Saudi Arabia?
Are you kidding me?
Clearly the problem here is Assad isn't writing checks, and certainly not checks that are large enough in order to get people to look the other way.
Well, on your point about Saudi Arabia, I was going to get to this a bit later, but Nikki Haley, again, UN ambassador for the United States, she actually said, every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency, Russia has stood beside him.
Again, does the US really want to play that game?
Because the US has stood beside...
Well, no.
The US perfectly won that game with the complicity of the mainstream media never putting anything into context until the, quote, alternative media, also known as the unbought media, the honest media, the truthful media, the intelligent media, the not quite so pretty media.
There they got away with it for decades, hundreds of years, thousands of years, if you go back enough.
This new development where the facts can actually come out and be put into context, ooh, that's kind of an unexpected boon to the human race that people weren't really expecting.
All right, so back to Nikki Haley.
After the attack, she did what you normally do when you want to make a sound, logical, rational case for intervention in Syria.
She held up photos of the child victims to the UN Security Council and then recited eyewitness accounts of the chemical attack.
Men, women, the elderly, and children gasped for their very last breath, and as first responders, doctors, and nurses rushed to help the victims, a second round of bombs rained down.
They died in the same slow, horrendous manner as the civilians they were trying to save.
How many more children have to die before Russia cares?
End quote.
You could take her quote and you could apply it to any of these American military interventions that have occurred for decades since Trump became president.
You could apply them all to the exact same quote and just swap out Russia for America and it still applies.
All right, now, Senator and waterboy Marco Rubio also jumped on the pile and said, quote, So again, this is the thesis that Assad is a blithering idiot.
Or he's just a madman who acts randomly and can't be trusted.
But even if this is all true, even if Assad felt all military restraint flying away, it still does you no good whatsoever to risk this.
It still does you no good whatsoever to order a chemical attack against civilian targets.
Killing babies does not advance your war aims in any way, shape, or form.
And of course, he knows, Assad knows, just as everybody else knows, that now you have the internet, and you have cell phones, and apparently you have perfect Wi-Fi in the middle of a war zone.
So he knows that this can all be broadcast and can turn world opinion against him and so on, so I don't know.
I mean, it's just a tiny bit of critical thinking is all that's required.
Good job, government schools.
I think you've created a massive, multi-generational cannon fodder vat.
Well, and hey, maybe Assad did gasses people.
Let's say that happened.
We, on this show, and hope that people all over the place take the approach of innocent until proven guilty.
Not just innocent until, eh, we got some stuff that maybe...
Innocent until proven guilty, especially if it's going to potentially lead to military escalation, which could provoke World War III, you know, with Russians moving warships closer to United States ships.
It's not a great situation.
So I don't think any of these politicians, including Trump, really want to operate on the idea of guilty until proven innocent or, boy, if there's some fog in some way, there's a If allegations and fog make something true, maybe Trump is a Russian agent.
Hmm.
Maybe all those people that accused Donald Trump of sexual assault before the election, but shit, we just got to believe they're true.
Who needs an investigation?
Who needs to really get down to it?
Who needs to really look into things before we assign guilt to an individual?
Nah, let's just, you know, there's a lot of people saying it.
It's kind of foggy.
It sounds right.
Let's go with it.
No, that's not the approach I take.
That's the approach Steph take.
That's not the approach any rational philosopher will take.
And I hope that's not the approach that the United States will continue to take when it comes to their military policy and any type of intervention.
All right.
So President Trump on April 5th said this.
Yesterday, a chemical attack, a chemical attack that was so horrific in Syria against innocent people, including women, small children, and even beautiful little babies.
Their deaths was an affront to humanity.
Those heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated.
The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this horrific attack and all other horrific attacks for that matter." So this is April 5th, and you have the President of the United States already assigning Assad the complete responsibility for these attacks.
That's really quick.
That's really, really quick.
Then on April 6th, on Air Force One, President Trump was asked, Just to follow up on that, though, do you think that Assad should leave power in Syria?
And President Trump said, I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, and he's there, and I guess he's running things, so something should happen.
Now, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said that Russia's support for Assad is not unconditional, but that their country demanded a full investigation of the suspected chemical attack, How unreasonable!
A full investigation before action.
Damn Russians.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, quote, Now,
the story from Russia's defense ministry is that toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal in munitions factory in the town's eastern outskirts.
When asked what proof Moscow has for that assessment, Peskov said that Russia is the only legitimate foreign power on the ground in Syria and therefore, quote, Yeah.
He's not wrong!
Because if it was Assad, then Assad is going to try and hide all of his complicity.
And if it were the rebels, then they're going to try and hide all of their complicity.
So then you're going to go and try and figure out a crime scene in the middle of a war zone when people's lives and deaths are hanging on the balance.
Where everyone has a massive bias.
Yeah, it's not going to be conclusive.
That's why you don't get involved in these kinds of things.
They still haven't figured out conclusively what happened in 2013.
But again, a couple days after this happened, Assad is absolutely guilty.
Very tough to swallow.
So then, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, this is April 6th and before the bombing, said, quote, The Syrian regime, under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad, are responsible for this attack.
And I think further, it's very important that the Russian government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime.
Tillerson was asked, does Assad have to go?
And Tillerson said, quote, Assad's role in the future is uncertain.
And with the axe he has taken, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people, end quote.
So this is where...
I personally started to become concerned.
Because after saying the Syrian people will govern the future of Syria, which, hey, how about that as an idea?
How about the American people govern the future of the United States?
How about that as an idea?
How about the Canadian people govern the future of Canada?
How about that as an idea?
And now it switched in just a couple days to, it would seem there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people.
No role for him.
That means regime change.
Oh, it'll be peacefully.
Well, let's continue with the quote where he elaborates.
Someone says, And what steps is the United States prepared to take in order to remove him from power?
And Tillerson said, quote, the process by which Assad would leave, I think, requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS within Syria to stabilize the Syrian country and to avoid further civil war and then work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving.
Excellent.
You know, that actually gives me some comfort.
Because if regime change requires the full defeat of ISIS and the complete stabilization of Syria...
Never gonna happen.
Yeah, let's put that on the infinity list, shall we?
This is like unicorn talk.
I like magic and puppies and fluffy things.
Okay.
But a political process.
So, okay, let's assume stuff.
Let's assume.
That Syria's been completely stabilized.
You know, the country that had an average IQ of 83 before the Civil War and before anyone with high IQ options fled the country.
I'm going to assume it's lower than 83 now.
I'm just going to go out on that limb.
So we're going to then, after all the tension has stopped, which is very difficult with a population of that IQ anyway, because...
Violence and crime is correlated to IQ pretty strongly.
You can see our presentation on the truth about crime for more on that.
So let's assume that happens, then we're going to have a political process that will lead to Assad leaving.
Do you think Assad would support this political process that would lead to him leaving?
I'm guessing not.
I wonder if that means that whoever would be, like there'll be democratic elections in the new Jeffersonian style republic that emerges out of Syria.
There'll be free elections and maybe Rex Tillerson is going to go on the ground and stump for whoever's going to be opposing Assad.
You know, he'll come and give speeches and bring a brass band and they'll put banners up and maybe they'll, you know, drop leaflets from B-52s and so on.
And then the media will really complain that a foreign country is interfering in another country's election process.
And they'll be really, really upset about it because, you know, you wouldn't want America to be hacking the Syrian election or anything like that because that's really terrible, terrible stuff, you see.
So, oh God.
I really feel sometimes we're trapped in a madhouse that is alternately horrifying and comical and actually becoming a little less comical every day.
So Tillerson was asked, so will you and President Trump organize an international coalition to remove Assad?
I think his last statement was pretty clear.
But nonetheless, Tillerson said, quote, Those steps are underway, end quote.
This is when I hit the panic button, personally.
Yeah.
Tillerson was asked, Has President Trump been talking about that with other leaders?
And Tillerson said, quote, We are considering an appropriate response for this chemical weapons attack, which violates all previous UN resolutions, violates international norms, and long-held agreements between parties, including the Syrian regime, the Russian government, and all other members...
End quote.
Not like the United States is a great track record of always adhering to international norms, long-held agreements between parties, and all UN resolutions.
But, you know, that's neither here nor there.
So then the bombing happens.
The bombing happens.
A statement by Syria's military said that the U.S., quote, aggression, end quote, had killed at least six people in indirectly aided militant factions such as the Islamic State by weakening Syrian forces.
Separately, Syria's state news agency, SANA, reported that at least nine civilians, including four children, were killed near the airbase.
Neither report could be independently verified, so take that with every grain of salt imaginable because, again, if you're Syria, you're going to want to say that children are killed.
And if there's no way to independently verify it, who knows?
Who knows?
But, of course, this has led to people saying, so there were photos of dead kids, so we have to bomb Syria, which then kills more kids.
If children were killed in this, I mean, that just shows you the insanity of war in and of itself.
Now, as far as how much destruction was actually done to this base, well, within 24 hours of the American strikes, monitoring groups were reporting that jets were once again taking off from the bombed airbase.
If this was, we need to take out the airbase that dropped chemical weapons in some way, shape, or form, well, they really didn't.
They didn't take out the base.
They took out some planes, but they didn't take out the runway, and that's an interesting fact, which the people that believe in the Donald Trump 4D chess regarding this will say, oh, well, maybe this.
He did something minor that everyone was in agreement on to show strength and But it's not going to be a big deal, and everyone's just putting on a show with Russia moving their warships closer to the U.S. and withdrawing from agreements and that type of thing.
I'm just saying that that's something that people are throwing out there.
Well, and so the Syrian rebels thought it was great.
And the fact that the U.S. has been turned into the ISIS Air Force is not particularly great for those with the eyes to see.
So there's a guy named Mohamed Alush.
He said on Twitter, he's a key figure in the Army of Islam faction.
He said, hitting one airbase is not enough.
There are 26 airbases that target civilians.
The whole world should save the Syrian people from the clutches of the killer Bashar and his aides.
So you understand their motive.
Yeah, it's great.
We may have got America to hit one airbase.
Now we just have to get them to hit the 26 airbases in total that are on our list of, you know, bad places for us.
Since you mentioned that, I just, there's a website that I really like.
It's called the Conservative Treehouse, but they posted something today which had my jaw just hit the floor, talking around, you know, bias and what people want.
They said, quote, To get the United States to bomb Syrian bases,
you just have to somehow do a chemical attack that's kind of murky.
We're not going to do a full investigation.
We're going to trust some intelligence on the ground.
Well, then you're just incentivizing far more chemical weapons attacks, which are supposedly the thing you want to stop in the first place.
You're incentivizing the rebels to use chemical weapons in a way that's going to make it murky or make it look like Assad did something.
So then there will be more Airstrikes.
Or maybe the U.S. will put boots on the ground.
Maybe the international coalition will come in.
Maybe they will just topple Assad.
And then the rebels, hey, the rebels win!
Their opponent gets trampled.
The incentives here are very clear.
And it is important who used the weapons.
Because the incentives are for the rebels to make it look like Assad used the weapons.
So their enemy is taken out.
And their enemy, Assad, was winning.
Was doing really well in the battle.
Looked like...
Looked like he finally was going to be able to maintain power.
They were going to let him be.
And he was pushing back ISIS. Russia working to push back ISIS. The United States has talked about pushing back ISIS. And has collaborated with Russia and Syria to try and attack the Islamic State.
So everything was looking good for Assad.
And then murky, confusing, who knows who did what?
Chemical weapons attack.
Yes, it matters who used the chemical weapons if you're going to launch a strike against someone specifically for the use of the chemical weapons.
It's like, well, somebody raped somebody, so let's just throw everyone in jail.
Oh, God.
What really matters is the rape victim.
OK.
If you want to live in that world, fine.
I don't.
Well, a lot of people won't get to live for very long in that world.
Yeah, because there were two things that Trump talked about.
I mean, I guess two aspects to his candidacy that were fairly appealing to people.
He said that he was going to take out ISIS again.
We'll see.
He's got a good plan.
Knock the hell out of ISIS. Knock the hell out of ISIS, right?
Now, if one of the first major – well, the first major military action that you take as president – Is to bomb people who are attacking ISIS. It really doesn't look like you're on the verge of taking out ISIS. So that is, you know, bombing the enemies of ISIS who are attacking ISIS. Not that great.
Secondly, people were terrified of Hillary Clinton's warmongering and wanted an America-first, non-interventionist policy, non-nation-building policy from Donald Trump and his administration.
Hillary Clinton called for the U.S. to take out Syrian government-controlled airfields just hours before Trump launched The strikes.
So for those who's like, wow, Hillary Clinton is a total warmonger, we want peaceful, maybe even isolationist America first Trump.
Well, if Hillary Clinton says, well, the US got to take out these government controlled airfields, and then Trump goes ahead and does that, I think people feel that it may not be quite the difference that they were looking for in voting for Trump over Hillary.
Now, the Daily Mail reported that a Syrian military source claimed that it had already, quote, learned of the American threat, end quote, and that precautions were taken, quote, in more than one military point.
We learned of the American threat and expected military bombardment on Syrian territory.
We took precautions in more than one military point, including the airbase.
We moved a number of airplanes towards the other areas, end quote, the official said, adding that they were forewarned, quote, hours before the strike.
so again who knows Random Syrian military source on the ground, Daily Mail's reporting that.
Lots of people have looked at that and said, see, this is some type of 4D chess move from Trump that everyone knew what was going on, but he blew something up and it destroyed the Russia narrative that Donald Trump was a Putin hack and all that.
I'm just saying that that's something that people are saying, and this is a piece of information.
So, there was a lot of conjecture, and we'll get to this a bit later, but the deal is...
They informed Russia what was going to happen through their agreement that they had regarding making sure U.S. forces and Russian forces don't bump into each other in a fatal way.
There's an agreement to discuss troop movements and all that kind of stuff.
But it's not like Trump directly called the Kremlin and said, hey Putin, I'm going to do this, at least that we know of.
So I'm sure as soon as it comes down that, hey, if you got people around this airbase, you better get rid of them.
I'm sure that's moving up the chain to Putin as quickly as possible, and everyone's going to figure out what's going on.
And if the Syrians, well, clearly the Syrians are the allies of the Russians, they're probably passing along that information, I gotta think, to tell the Syrians what are going on that would probably lead to these precautions being taken.
And there's lots of people pointing at this and saying, see, he's still a Putin hack.
He's in the pocket of Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Can you imagine if any Russians were killed in this attack?
Today would look quite a bit different than it does, and it already doesn't look great, but World War III, it would be on.
It's a funny, funny thing too, right?
So you have to be, if you're in the mainstream media in particular, you have to be pretty careful with the word.
Well, it's two things you have to be careful when accusing someone of something.
Number one, you have to say alleged if it's not proven.
Mm-hmm.
Fair, right?
And number two, in general, you will try to get the other person's statement, right?
Like whoever you're accusing of, you know, someone is such and such, right?
If it's not proven, if it's not been established in the court of law, if they've not admitted it publicly or whatever, then you have to say alleged, right?
And then you generally will try to get a comment from the person so that, you know, he denies and that's, you know, it's not perfect, but it's, you know, somewhat fair.
Now, the Assad thing is, Nobody's saying alleged, even though there's no proof.
And secondly, you know, we got a lot of comments on the last video, Mike, where people were saying, well, why doesn't Assad just deny it?
Why doesn't his government just come out and say that they didn't do it?
Hey, guys, guys, he did.
His government did say that his military was not responsible for this.
Just because the media isn't reporting that.
Yeah, just because the media is not saying alleged and is not including the fact that he has denied this doesn't make it automatically true.
But this shows you what the standards are of the media.
that, you know, if there's somebody who's accused of kidnapping a dog, they'll have to say alleged.
And they'll try and get a comment from the guy so that they can say, you know, you know, I'll see this in articles.
Repeated calls were not returned or whatever it is, right?
We tried to contact the guy to get a response and so on.
This guy's put out a response right out there in the world.
And they're not including it at all, which shows you just how committed they are to their journalistic ethics effectively.
If a guy's accused of kidnapping a dog, we'll be very, very careful.
But if it's a giant war that could have repercussions for the next hundred years, eh, throw journalistic ethics to the wind and just say, report that it's true and not include the denial.
Well, that goes all the way to the top with Trump in his statement because he wasn't throwing out alleged either.
But the argument would be that, well, he is intelligence information that shows it to be true and he doesn't have to say alleged and he certainly wouldn't want to paint it as alleged.
No, I get that.
I mean, they can say, well, the president said it, so we can say that it's true and all that.
But anyway.
Because that's always been great in the past, just taking the president's word for stuff.
That's been fantastic.
We haven't learned anything, have we?
No.
No, we haven't.
So Trump came out and gave a statement following the bombing.
He said, quote, Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians.
Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children.
It was a slow and brutal death for so many.
Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack.
No child of God should ever suffer such horror.
Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria Years of previous
The previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically.
As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen, and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.
Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and to also end terrorism of all kinds and all types.
We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world.
We pray for the lives of the wounded, and for the souls of those who have passed.
And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, and then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail.
Good night, and God bless America and the entire world.
Thank you." I think justice requires an investigation beyond what the intelligence agencies, which think Donald Trump is a Russian plant, have to say Days after something happened in a very murky war zone that they are already on record admitting.
It's very difficult to determine who does what and the attack that happened in 2013, they still don't know.
Do you think that Trump doesn't know that America is allied with these rebels who themselves have used chemical weapons over 50 times?
I mean, do you think he doesn't know that?
I mean, this is a Google search away.
We're not some giant investigative journalist armed with billions of dollars of resources.
I mean, this is just basic facts.
If the chemical weapons are really terrible, then confirmed, as far as I understand it, at least reasonably confirmed, 50 plus times chemical weapons used by the rebels that the US is allied with.
I mean, this isn't even that complicated.
One guy, murky situation.
Last time they accused him of chemical weapons turned out to be invalidated.
The rebels were actually, they messed up using or deploying the chemical weapons that were supplied to them by Saudi Arabia, an ally of America that America arms and is now arming rebels with chemical weapons.
So this isn't even that complicated.
Sure, chemical weapons are bad.
Okay, fine.
So let's say that Assad did this.
That makes him bad.
But it still makes him only 150th as bad as the allies of the U.S. in this region fighting against Assad.
So I don't know.
It's very strange.
Like either he doesn't know it or he knows it and is just completely blanking out on it.
Either way, it's not, you know, and look, I can understand it.
If you have a giant alphabet soup of intelligence agencies telling you all this stuff, do you necessarily say, well, okay, but I'm going to go hit Google for a bit to, you know, to figure things out?
I don't know.
Well, Trump was saying a lot of this stuff during the campaign.
I think he said Obama was the MVP of ISIS for arming them and doing all kinds of things along those lines.
Right.
So the interesting part of this is you can't claim the lack of knowledge, given that I mean, people pulled up his tweets from Syria talking about the dangers of regime change, all this stuff that he put out.
When Obama was facing a decision in 2013, and people were like, see, what happened in 2013, Trump?
What happened?
Well...
I think part of it is that you have a very sentimental portion of the voting population in America and around the world.
Very, very sentimental group that shall remain unnamed.
Very, very sentimental group who look at these pictures of bodies and listen to this seven-year-old Syrian girl, to me at least, reading a script designed to get the U.S. to act as the Air Force of ISIS.
And they're like, I don't – go do something!
And so if Trump didn't do something, what would happen?
Well, he's cold and he's callous.
He doesn't care about children.
And the media would just have something else that they could pounce on him and drag him down with.
And then, of course, it's like, well, he's not attacking because Russia's on the other side.
This confirms that he's a stooge of Russia!
All this kind of stuff.
And, you know, I mean, this Russia stuff, I mean, it has been this idefix, this obsession, this mania, this OCD, obsessive communist disorder that's been going on with the media for a long time.
And I mean, it sounds, you know, for those who are sort of looking at it objectively, well, it's just crazy autistic screeching, but you can really tie up a president with this kind of stuff, and you can prevent him from getting a lot of things done.
so if he can go pound some sand and not kill that many people and blow up that narrative and move forward and then not have everyone screeching at him that he doesn't care about children and what about the children and what about the children like there was this woman who was interviewing this guy as some expert about this and she played for him the seven-year-old kid reading as I see it off a script you know this girl in Syria and it's like that's her rebuttal A seven-year-old saying she wants to play and go to school.
That's her rebuttal?
This is how we're now conducting geopolitics is with crayons and scripts?
I mean, so objectively, we would look at this and say, well, this is completely insane.
But again, maybe it's roughly half the population, maybe slightly more, you know, pretty sentimental.
And I don't know how to spin that in a way that doesn't end up with people just blowing their brains out emotionally, so to speak, and not having any reason left to process things with.
Okay, so what you're talking about here is, it's Banna al-Badi is the name, and CNN interviewed this seven-year-old Syrian girl and asked her, Banna, do you blame President Assad for this chemical attack?
And she responded, Yes.
So, yes, that's all the proof you need.
It's all the proof you need.
Some seven-year-old kid believes that it's true because she has a really thorough understanding of the geopolitics, of the motivations, of what's on the ground.
She's already seen the orders from Basaj.
She knows.
She's seven.
She's seven.
She's seven, doesn't speak English, apparently is a foreign policy expert, knows all the military intervention and geopolitical consequences of any type of strike.
You know, it's true.
Kids do say the darndest things.
It's true.
Well, there's also, it's interesting, too, there's photos of her with, at this point, I'm just going to call him the asshole from Turkey.
That's his new name, Erdogan.
Her and him embraced in a very cuddly fashion.
Many people believe that this Bana kid is just a propaganda arm of Turkey.
It's kind of hard to dismiss that.
And yeah, reading off cue cards doesn't understand the language.
Getting fed stuff from her mom.
And there's some rumblings about who her dad is that is just speculation.
But if the speculation's true, it's not good.
But yeah, let's not take our foreign policy advice from seven-year-olds.
And I think that could be a universal...
I don't care if they're an American seven-year-old.
Now, eight, yes.
Eight, absolutely.
In fact, eight-year-olds should be given the vote.
Because at least eight-year-olds, if they're given the vote in the West, will vote to change government schools.
Because they're really trapped in the belly of the socialist beast when it comes to government schools.
But yeah, no, I mean, eight for sure.
Seven, I mean, that's insane.
So this is from The Intercept.
They say that the CIA has spent more than a billion dollars a year...
To arm the anti-Assad rebels for years and years and years.
And the US began bombing in Syria in 2014.
A billion dollars a year to the people that the New York Times is reporting have used chemical weapons exclusively.
Hey, I have an idea!
How about if chemical weapons are bad, you stop funding people that are using chemical weapons?
How about that as an idea?
Will they face any negative repercussions?
Is that on the table?
I'd like to talk about that a little bit because I think there's a lot of things that Americans can do with that billion dollars annually that's apparently going to fund people that Trump has admitted.
We have no idea who these people are.
And, you know, if you do topple Assad, if we get there, if everything goes the way that Tillerson was suggesting and there's the political solution, you know who's going to be In charge of Syria?
It's going to be someone from that group that's using chemical weapons.
So having people in charge that are using chemical weapons is really bad.
We got to get rid of Assad so we can install someone politically that is from a group that has used chemical weapons.
How the hell does this work?
Does this make any sense logically?
No, it makes no sense logically whatsoever.
No, no, Mike, Mike.
No, no, come on.
If you are a shareholder in a company that is selling Tomahawk missiles to the United States military, it makes total sense.
I mean, ka-ching, baby!
You know, it's blood money, but you can spend that anywhere you want.
Shockingly, folks, I know, brace yourself, but the stock price for the company that stocks the missiles...
It went up 2% the next day.
Just pointing that out.
And the media is dying off, right?
I mean, we know that the mainstream media, the legacy media, the dino media, whatever you want to call it, I mean, they're dying off.
They're running out of advertising money.
Their actual audience literally is dying off.
They're so damn old.
And this is one of the reasons why they're going after YouTube monetization and trying to attack the alternative media.
But if there's a war...
Well, again, follow the money.
If there's a war, people tune into the media a lot more.
They can charge a lot more money for ads and they can reverse, at least for some period of time, their inevitable decline in the long run.
But I think that the alternative media or the honest media It's going to backfire as so much other stuff has done for them.
It's going to backfire in that their naked bloodlust is so on display.
Their lack of critical thinking, their incredible manipulations of everyone...
And, I mean, it's not even subtle.
You see all these gorgeous women who are these anchors looking with scorn and distaste at anyone who's skeptical of the administration's claims of absolute certainty about Assad's role in this chemical attack and so on, and bringing on little girls and Kunio repeating that it's a fact and it's true and this cannot stand and so on.
I mean, they are really, really, I think, going to look pretty bad.
And we'll find out over time.
The truth may never come out, but it may come out sooner than people think.
Also in Trump's statement here, I have to point out, he said, as a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen in the region and continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.
That's referring to trying to change Assad's behavior, and all the attempts to do so have failed.
You know, laying the entire refugee crisis and how it's impacting the West on the feet of Assad is pretty rich.
First off, There's lots of destabilization happening in the Middle East that wasn't Assad being responsible for it.
Lots of funding of groups in the Middle East that it wasn't Assad that funded many of these groups that then went rogue, I guess you could say rogue, just continued doing what they were doing and what they were trained to do in a different fashion.
That wasn't Assad.
That was many Western countries.
And it's not really Assad's fault that many Western countries appear to be suicidal with, like, refugees?
We can't tell the difference.
Can't vet these people.
Don't know if they're ISIS. Don't know if they're terrorists.
Don't know if they're just some peace-loving, I'm trying to flee a war zone type person.
Let them all in.
Why not?
That's not Assad's fault that that's the plan.
So laying the entire refugee and migrant crisis at the feet of Assad is pretty rich.
Well, also, let's say that crazy jihadists end up in control of Syria.
Is everyone going to go back?
Is everyone going to just love it there?
Or are more people going to flee?
I mean, good Lord, what's going to happen to the Christians?
What is going to happen to the world's oldest community of Christians in Syria if crazy jihadists get a hold of the powers of the state?
Well, there's a lot of people upset, too, on the Christian front that this airbase, which I think?
So you get all the quote-unquote rebels and all the other factions jumping on, you know.
Oh, good.
We have an advantage.
Go for it.
Well, same is happening in this case.
And there's lots of people very concerned about this Christian town that's near the airbase and what could possibly happen there.
So it's something to keep an eye on for the future.
And last but not least, Saudi Arabia.
the Saudi Arabian government have expressed strong approval of the strike in Syria.
Now, the Saudi Arabian government has been partially complicit in helping to spread more radical elements of Islam around the world, and they're very, very keen on what the administration just did.
Oh, all the wrong people love this.
I mean, I don't think John McCain even needed a Viagra last night.
Now, Rex Tillerson on April 6, 2017 said, Let
me just stop you there, Steph, and say, so these attacks that apparently occurred before there was talk of letting the Syrian people control the future of Syria regarding who's going to lead them, attacks apparently occurred before then that Assad was responsible for, according to Tillerson.
That's interesting.
Well, there were only two, but the third one tips him over, I think, from being a potentially decent leader to somebody who needs to be taken out.
So, you know, it's baseball, right?
Like three strikes.
So two, fine, three, and you're out, because that's what we call principles.
So Tillerson went on to say...
Oh yeah, that's right.
Not enough footage.
I'd like some more information on what apparently happened on March 25th and 30th.
I'd be really interested in seeing that, but it hasn't been provided.
It's a pretty good principle when you are looking at a volatile situation that the more emotional triggers you're provided, the less actual facts there are.
Don't you care about dead babies?
Well, of course we care about dead babies, but what does that have to do with anything?
I mean, there are dead babies all over the world because of horrible things that are doing.
If America cares so much about dead babies, why doesn't it stop destabilizing other countries?
Why doesn't it stop selling arms to dictatorships around the world if it cares so much about dead babies?
Ooh, Roe v.
Wade.
Oh, wait!
That's a whole other...
Don't go there!
No, no!
It's a whole other conversation.
I know, I know.
Sad photos are not an argument.
Sad photos are not an argument.
There's a photo of a dead Syrian boy on the beach.
Therefore, Europe has to take in all these migrants and give them lots of welfare and destabilize their countries.
That's not an argument!
Yeah, I wonder why the mainstream media hasn't interviewed a bunch of 26-year-old, quote, Syrian refugees who are actually not from Syria and passing themselves off as 15.
I wonder why they haven't interviewed, because that would be kind of comic, right?
I am 15 from Syria, right?
But they haven't done any of that because it doesn't serve their agenda.
Okay.
Tillerson went on to say, I think it's also clear that previous agreements that had been entered into, pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 2118, as well as Annex A agreements that the Syrian government themselves accepted back in 2013, whereby they would surrender their chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russian government.
Now, the US and the Russian government entered into agreements whereby Russia would locate these weapons, they would secure the weapons, they would destroy the weapons, and that they would act as the guarantor that these weapons would no longer be present in Syria.
Clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013.
So either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement.
So let's just take a moment to think about this.
So what Tillerson, who apparently is baying for war like a wolf at the moon, But apparently Tillerson believes that Assad would alienate his only clear ally in the region in order to destroy a completely non-military target.
Russia is really the only ally that he has, certainly in the region.
And so Russia made the commitment and was responsible for the non-existence and non-deployment and non-use of chemical weapons in Syria.
So in order to bomb a couple of babies and women and children and some men, although the men are never mentioned because of what?
Male privilege?
Who knows, right?
Patriarchy!
And so Assad is going to destroy or thoroughly harm his relationship with his only ally in the region, who is largely responsible for his continued success in the war, in order to bomb some women and children with chemical weapons.
Like, this doesn't even take that much thought to recognize how lunatic this is.
It's even worse than that, though, Steph, because the whole thing in here is, all right, let's assume, let's Let's take for granted, okay, Assad, he's just a madman.
Let's go with that argument that some people are making.
He, you know, he'll do something crazy.
Who knows?
Putin.
Is Putin a madman?
This illusion here is Putin had knowledge that this was happening.
Russia had knowledge that this was happening.
So Putin's just gotta be nuts.
If he's overseeing the use of chemical weapons, it's completely fine with it.
He knows how that would go.
So he's just nuts.
Well, Putin has had many opportunities to be rightfully pissed off and to possibly respond militarily.
You know, remember when the Russian plane was shot down?
Remember that?
Remember when the Russian ambassador was assassinated in Turkey?
Remember that?
There's a long number of things that have happened where Putin has been very measured in his response.
hey, remember when the United States kicked out all the Russian ambassadors around Christmas and completely freaked out regarding these claims of Russian hacking and all that stuff?
And Putin said, not only are we not going to kick out the U.S. ambassadors from Russia, we're going to throw a Christmas party.
I remember when Hillary Clinton said that Russia hacked the election, which if it was proven that she would consider it an act of war.
That's a direct threat against a nuclear power.
Did they freak out?
Did they impose sanctions?
Did they?
No.
They're just like, well, we'll just wait till the poodle stops yapping and then we'll get on with the adult conversation.
If you really want to stretch it, maybe I can get to the point where people like Assad just, you know, he did something really dangerous against his self-interest.
But the idea that Putin would be in that same camp, given the measured responses he's shown to some very serious escalations in the past, I don't think there's any evidence that suggests that could possibly be the case whatsoever.
So, he went on to say, Tillerson went on to say, I think the other thing that's important to recognize, that as Assad has continued to use chemical weapons in these attacks with no response, no response from the international community, that he in effect is normalizing the use of chemical weapons, which then may be adopted by others.
Hey Rex, like your allies in the region!
Sorry.
So it's important, he said, so it's important that some action be taken on behalf of the international community to make clear that these chemical weapons continue to be a violation of international norms.
Well, okay, let's say that the international community should do something, then why is America the only person or the only group doing something?
If the international community, why is it only America?
Alright, he goes on to say, I think it's also important to recognize, as I think everyone does, the chaotic circumstances that exist on the ground in Syria.
Oh, good!
Good!
He's recognizing that there's really chaotic and confusing fog-of-war circumstances, but we're 100% sure that Bashar Assad...
With the presence of a battle underway to defeat ISIS... Ah, so the important thing is to defeat ISIS, and apparently the best way to do that is to bomb the airfield of somebody who's trying to defeat ISIS. I think that's more than 4D chess.
I don't know what dimension chess that is, but it's...
Anyway, I'm going to start again, because, you know...
I think it's also important to recognize, as I think everyone does, the chaotic circumstances that exist on the ground in Syria with the presence of a battle underway to defeat ISIS, the presence of Al-Qaeda elements inside of Syria, and a civil war that is underway.
So clearly one of the existential threats we see on the ground in Syria is if there are weapons of this nature available in Syria.
The ability to secure those weapons and not have them fall into the hands of those who would bring those weapons to our shores to harm American citizens.
Ah, so we're back to Condoleezza Rice's statement regarding Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.
We don't want the smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud.
We gotta fight them there so we don't fight them here.
That kind of thing.
Apparently we'd all be speaking German anyway.
So, yeah, this is...
Yeah, because, you know, you can't possibly make any kind of chemical weapons inside of America.
You know, if you want to bring chemical weapons to America, if you want to have chemical weapons in America, best thing to do is make them in a war zone and then ship them untold thousands of miles through hostile territory, through a war zone.
And then bring it, what, through an airport into America?
Are you kidding me?
This is what people think.
This is how chemical weapons are supposed to end up in America.
It's being manufactured in Syria and then transported to America through a war zone, through security checks.
Seems legit to me.
Oh, good.
Okay.
It could just be me who's skeptical.
But if it's legit to Mike, that's good enough for me.
I like T-Rex now.
Tillerson goes on to say, so there are a number of elements that, in our view, called for this action and which we feel was appropriate.
We feel the strike itself was proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical weapons attack.
And in carrying this out, we coordinated very carefully with our international partners in terms of communicating with them around the world.
And I will tell you that the response from our allies in Europe, as well as the region in the Middle East, has been overwhelmingly supportive of the action we've taken.
All right, stop.
Stop here.
Why?
Let's just keep going.
I don't see any problems with what...
Hey, all these globalist warmongers, they love the action that was taken.
That was...
I mean, Angela Merkel was just applauding.
It was fantastic.
You do realize that Donald Trump was elected specifically because he wasn't like many of these other foreign leaders and the foreign leaders that had, well, the domestic leaders in the United States, which many, many people had grown very tired of, including those that were very keen on starting foreign wars.
So the fact that foreign leaders really liked it, not an argument.
Yeah, because I do remember that during the campaign, Trump was constantly praising the EU wisdom and excellent governance of the European leaders.
And he thought, well, you know, we really should be doing everything that they're doing.
So being praised by them is fully, complete opposite, right?
He said that the European...
Leaders were embarked on a course of cultural self-destruction and, you know, they really just know now that they like him.
And the fact that Middle Eastern leaders, yeah, hey, you got a bunch of dictators to approve of what you're doing.
Does that mean it's a good idea?
I think in this particular case, the use of prohibited chemical weapons which violates a number of international norms and violates existing agreements called for this type of response, which is a kinetic military response.
I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today.
There's been no change in that status.
But I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line, and cross the line on violating commitments they have made, and cross the line in the most heinous of ways.
I think it is clear that President Trump has made that statement to the world tonight.
I remember Harry Brown years ago, we're sending a message, we're sending a message, we're sending a message.
And I don't know what that...
I've never really understood what that means, sending a message.
Don't use chemical weapons.
Okay, that's fine.
Okay, then America should stop using all of this really destructive or debilitating stuff in wars.
And it should stop allying itself with groups that are using chemical weapons more than 50 times.
And if the idea that a child or a woman would be hurt, or a civilian would be hurt, an innocent would be hurt in a military conflict, I think the United States needs to suspend military operations, almost universally, if that's a new standard that we're going by.
But, Steph, it was bold and strong!
Those seem to be the buzzwords that people are throwing out here.
It was a bold move and a strong move.
Well, actually, folks, the idea that it was a strong move to do what all the warmongers are telling you to do, that's actually not the strong move.
The strong move is to take a measured response in that you wait for the facts to fully come in, have an investigation, and then go from there.
It's the weak move to cave to pressure.
If this had anything to do with the fact that the mainstream media was trumpeting that Trump was a A Russian puppet.
And it's like, well, I'll show them.
This will be a way that I can get rid of that narrative.
Oh, so you're saying that all you have to do is say Trump was X and you can get him to do stuff.
Yeah, that's something we really want to reinforce.
That's something we really want to encourage from the mainstream media because they're so responsible when given any shredder degree of power.
The mainstream media opposes everything that Trump does except potential escalation to regime change and war.
They just hate everything, hate that he draws breath, hate his haircut, hate his clothing, hate his wife, hate his policies, hate his ideas, hate his followers.
Oh wait, is he talking about potential regime change in the Middle East?
Now we love him.
They attacked his 10-year-old son for Pete's sakes.
I mean, these are the people we're talking about here.
You know, if you're getting approval from the fake news media, you might be doing something wrong.
So I also want to say, this Tillerson quote where he says, I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today.
There's been no change in that status.
I'm not sure what change he's referring to.
Is he referring to a week ago when it was, we will let the Syrian people decide the future of Syria?
I don't know.
Okay, that's one thing, but regime change is a whole other kettle of fish.
And I think that's why there has been this massive outcry from people that have been very pro-Donald Trump and pro his campaign from the start, in many cases, this idea of regime change.
I'd like a little more clarification.
This is the tip of the spear, everyone.
This is the thin edge of the wedge.
This is the deep state, the military-industrial complex, seeing if there's going to be pushback against this bombing.
And if there's not going to be pushback against this bombing, then they're going to escalate to the next thing, and they're going to escalate to the next thing, and they're going to escalate to the next thing.
And every single time they escalate, it becomes harder and harder to push back.
You want to stop things at the beginning.
If you can stop that first snowball rolling down, you don't end up with a city-destroying avalanche.
If you can stop things at the beginning, which is the job of philosophy, the job of philosophy is to stop things at the beginning.
The job of your nutritionist is to prevent you from getting fat and unhealthy and having a heart attack.
By the time you're having a heart attack...
The nutritionist has nothing left to say to you.
You've got to go to emergency.
This is at the very beginning of things.
There needs to be a strong pushback against this to prevent the escalation, which will inevitably occur if we don't push back right here and right now.
And those that are cheerleading this, if regime change happens in Syria in the future, the blood is on your hands, and I hope you can sleep at night.
Well, a lot of people take the drug called bloodthirsty patriotism in order to sleep.
So we'll finish up what Tillerson was saying.
He said, so it's to defeat ISIS.
It's to begin to stabilize areas of Syria.
Stabilize areas in the south of Syria.
Stabilize areas around Raqqa through ceasefire agreements between the Syrian regime forces and opposition forces.
Stabilize those areas.
Begin to restore some normalcy to them.
Restore them to local governance.
And there are local leaders who are ready to return, some who have left as refugees.
They're ready to return and govern these areas.
Use local police forces.
That will be part of the liberation effort to develop the local security forces, law enforcement, police force.
And then use other forces to create outer perimeters of security so that areas like Raqqa, areas to the south, can begin to provide a secure environment so refugees can begin to go home and begin the rebuilding processes.
This is all just a bunch of words.
Sounds a whole lot like nation building to me.
We aim to grow and, you know, it's just like a business plan.
We aim to grow and attract more customers and create more business and supply excellent goods and services and out-compete the competition.
Like, it's all just a bunch of descriptions.
These competing forces that have been engaged in a civil war for years, killing each other, they're just going to sign a ceasefire agreement because reasons.
Okay.
Here's a clue.
Here's a clue about the region, Rex.
There's an ideology that wants to build an entire caliphate in the region.
That's their goal.
That's what they want.
That's what ISIS wants.
Well, worldwide, I suppose, but, you know, starting local.
Think globally, act locally, right?
Okay.
So let's say that they sign some peace treaty or peace agreement.
Do you really think that the country is going to be stable?
Do you really think that there's not going to be any terrorist attacks or there's not going to be any self-detonating bomb squads people?
There's not going to be any of this kind of stuff?
It's all just going to be peaceful and nice and lovely.
No, the ideology is loose in the region.
And stability is going to be a significant challenge.
And this is not something that I think is being very well processed by this kind of talk that you just, well, step by step, we're going to, what does it mean?
What does it mean?
They're not fighting for a specific political objective.
They're fighting for a religious idealism, which can be extraordinarily dangerous.
And, you know, if these kinds of attacks are happening in Sweden, which is a hell of a lot further away, is it not going to happen in these particular areas?
And are they not going to just sign peace treaties in order to lull people into a false sense of security so they can attack them harder?
I don't know that people understand the challenges that they're up against in this region, because I think if they did, they'd take their bombs and go home.
Well put.
Well put.
All right, so he says, in the midst of that, through the Geneva process, we will start a political process to resolve Syria's future in terms of its governance structure, and that ultimately, in our view, will lead to a resolution of Bashar al-Assad's departure.
So it's nation-building.
Now, he's saying it's going to be nice nation-building.
It's going to be nation-building with some flowers and chocolates, but we're talking about here, they're talking about here's how we want to rebuild the country, here's the kind of government that we want, and we're going to Yeah, anyone that's cheerleading this, find me the historical example where this has worked.
Just one.
Just find me one.
If you can show me the one, maybe I'll listen.
But this has failed spectacularly every single time that it's been fried.
Right.
Weighing in was National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster, who said,"...our intelligence community, in cooperation with our friends and partners and allies around the world, collaborated to determine with a very high degree of confidence precisely where the location originated,
and then, of course, the sort of chemicals that were used in the attack." We're good to go.
And the one thing that I will tell you, though, there was an effort to minimize risk to third-country nationals at that airport.
I think you read Russians from that, and we took great pains to try to avoid that.
Of course, in any kind of military operation, there are no guarantees.
And then, there were also measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is a storage of sarin gas there, so that that would not be ignited and cause a hazard to civilians or anyone else.
Huh, wait a minute.
So is he saying that if there are chemical weapons stored at a facility...
And you bomb it.
That you might disperse and set off those chemical weapons?
Well, that's kind of Russia's story about what happened.
That the rebels, who again, can't say it often enough, we know have used chemical weapons at least 50 times in the past.
That the rebels had their chemical weapons and that the Syrians bombed it and that set it off.
So he's just kind of confirmed exactly what the Russians say happened as a potential threat.
I'm a little concerned that someone would actually say, you know, we couldn't be 100% sure that no Russians would get caught up in this.
When you think of what that means and how that would unwind, that's a terrifying, terrifying possibility.
That it's like, well, you know, we minimize the risk, but you know, oh man.
Escalate to World War III over this?
You kidding me?
And I like, too, the, in his quote, number of targets that were associated with the ability of the airport to operate.
Well, it's operating now.
So, if this airstrike, the goal was to limit the ability of the airport to operate, mission failed.
So, what are people saying in Syria?
Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Mualim said, I stress once again that the Syrian Arab army did not and will not use such weapons, even against the terrorists who are targeting our people.
Now that's interesting.
Because the terrorists, as he's calling them, we know have used chemical weapons over 50 times.
So, why has Syria not used chemical weapons against the terrorists?
If they have them, why on earth wouldn't they use them against military targets, but only against civilians?
That, again, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
So, yeah, they say, no, we would not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people.
Let me just drop in here as well that in December, Congress passed a defense bill that included language giving the incoming Trump administration the authority to send shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to rebel groups fighting in Syria.
The rebels in Syria, which the New York Times reports are using chemical weapons.
But again, we have to bomb Assad because he might have used chemical weapons.
What if there's a Russian plane that is shot down by an American-supplied missile?
Mike, what do you think?
That's not going to be good.
All the things that we've talked about and we're warning against regarding Hillary Clinton, her foreign policy, the no-fly zone, all the dangers of the actions she wanted to take in Syria and how they could bring us closer and closer and closer to war with Russia.
Well, anything of this nature, it's along the same path.
And I'm certainly not...
Not feeling as confident in Trump's decision-making ability to avoid that kind of collision course as I would have been a week ago.
Quick question.
Let's say that you wish to fight ISIS and ISIS is involved in the rebellion against Assad.
Let's say you wanted to fight ISIS. Now, I assume as an American, let's say you're American.
So I assume as an American you're going to do the standard American approach, which is to try never to pick on armies even remotely close to your own size and with your own level of technological expertise and abilities.
So if you're going to try and fight ISIS, you're going to try and fight ISIS using an air campaign.
Now, does it make an enormous amount of sense?
Again, I'm no military expert, but it doesn't seem to me to make an enormous amount of sense to contemplate a future air campaign against ISIS, but then to supply ISIS with rockets that can shoot down airplanes that you can fire from your shoulder.
But Steph, they're only going to give the rockets to the good rebels, you know, the good rebels that aren't Al-Qaeda or ISIS, because I'm sure they're in there somewhere.
And they're so able to vet them, and they know exactly who they're giving it to, their justification, their ability to control those weapons, so they won't possibly slip into the hands of people that want to do harm to, say, the Russian Air Force or American Air Force or anything of the sort.
Yeah, no, we learned that from the Fast and the Furious, that America, of course, can't control wherever the weaponry ends up.
And so, you're right.
So, because magic, they just know that it's never, they're never going to be taken over by ISIS. They're never going to be bribed or threatened or bullied or anything like that.
ISIS can never, they're going to ever sell those things to ISIS. Nothing of the sort could ever, ever happen.
Great.
Okay.
No, that actually, okay, I feel much better.
I'm glad to calm you down there, Stephen.
Yeah, yeah.
Happy to be of service.
Thank you.
So, Assad commented and said, This aggression has increased Syria's resolve to hit those terrorist agents and continue to crush them, and to raise the pace of action to end wherever they are.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the aforementioned Nikki Haley.
She had more to say.
Yay!
By the way, she was so fiercely anti-Trump during the campaign.
Just want to point that out.
We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary.
And then, she put out a statement that said, This morning, Bolivia requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting to discuss the events in Syria.
It asked for the discussion to be held in closed session.
The United States, as president of the council this month, decided that the session would be held in the open.
Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view for all the world to hear.
We already have the answer without a full investigation.
Countries that are like, hey, can we talk about this, are automatically on the side of defending chemical attacks against children.
This is not the type of rational discourse that I would like in any type of setting when World War III hangs in the balance.
Yeah, I mean, this dictatorship of the fields is going to get a lot of people killed.
And this is what happens when you make decisions based on emotion, on amygdala, on fight or flight, on very passionate reactions to very unpleasant photographs and videos.
You have to be able to detach yourself from your emotions and look at the reality and the geopolitical reality, the motives, And everything else that's going on in the region, you cannot start wars based on feels.
That is an absolutely terrible precedent.
I mean, you shouldn't be starting wars at all, but it's a terrible, terrible way to make these kinds of decisions.
Russia's Deputy UN Envoy Vladimir Sovkhanov said, quote, On the night of the 7th of April, the United States attacked the territory of sovereign Syria.
We describe that attack as a flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression.
We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the US. The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious.
The attack was a flagrant violation of the 2015 memorandum on preventing incidents and ensuring security during our operations in Syrian airspace, and the Ministry of Defense of Russia has stopped its cooperation with the Pentagon under that memorandum.
Well, I'm sorry, just to point out— That's a huge deal.
Yeah, it's a huge deal.
The act of aggression is just about the most serious international crime that there is.
Aggression is not really—you know, we always think of war crimes and so on, but aggression is extraordinarily serious because you are, according to international law, allowed to defend yourself as a country, allowed to use force, and you can even use preemptive force.
You don't have to wait for the troops to cross your borders.
Like, if troops are amassing— On your borders, or there are significant signs that another country is about to invade you, then you can do preemptive strikes and so on.
However, you are not in any way, shape, or form allowed to go and attack a country that is not threatening you in any imminent sense.
And this, without a doubt, Syria was not threatening America in any sense.
And this idea that you can get this giant dotted line of these Very bad chemical attacks.
I mean, a chemical attack in the past, when Saddam gassed his Kurds, there were like 10,000 dead, right?
70 is a very bad chemical attack.
But the idea that there's this dotted line that goes from some place in Syria where these very bad chemicals are...
And by the way, this is another reason why I think it's more likely to be the rebels than not, because that's an amateur, local, concocted amount of chemical weapons.
If you really, really want to use your chemical weapons, you get a much higher death count.
than 70 or 80.
And so there's some dotted line from this chemical weapons stuff in Syria to America itself.
I mean, you can say anything about anything as far as that goes, but it is one of the most egregious violations of international law to initiate a military attack on a country that is not aggressing against you or just about to do so.
And I still, I mean, I don't really get why it matters what weapons are used to kill someone in a war zone.
Those people are killed, whether it's by gunfire or bombs or worse.
What does it matter?
And it could only matter if you say, okay, these types of weapons, this is the next step.
This is terrible.
And I can understand that with nuclear arms.
We're not talking about nuclear arms here.
We're going to talk about stuff that causes more suffering, causes more pain.
Again, I go back to white phosphorus used by the United States and Iraq.
Want to talk about genetic damage or long-term health complications?
Well, depleted uranium used by the United States, still currently in Syria, nonetheless.
So what exactly is the principle that we're supposed to extract here?
If women and children are harmed in a gruesome manner, then that requires a foreign military response?
Okay, well, using that as the principle, then any country could bomb the United States because of some of the abortion stuff that occurs within its borders.
I mean, what is the principle here?
I'm still waiting for someone to spell that out.
70 dead is a bad weekend in Chicago.
Does that mean China gets to bomb America because America is getting people killed or allowing for people to die or unable to police its own cities?
And some of those people are children.
Where are those pictures?
And some of the U.S. airstrikes in Yemen that we've seen.
One that just happened in Iraq.
Apparently 200 civilians were caught up in the one in Iraq that just happened.
It needs to be investigated to see what the story is, but then...
If civilians were caught up, if children were caught up, if women were caught up, innocence, collateral damage, does that give anyone in the world the right to strike the United States?
What's the principle?
There isn't one.
The principle is the military-industrial complex is getting peckish.
All right, let's move on with what else Vladimir had to say.
Of recent times, the United States administration has often talked about combat international terrorism, and this justified American troops and their allies being present on Syrian territory.
Although they were there without the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria and without the approval of the Security Council of the United Nations, manipulating articles of the United Nations Charter beyond any criticism.
The aggression by the U.S. has only facilitated the strengthening of terrorism.
The attack came against Syrian armed forces, structure, and its air force.
That is against those who over all these years have been combating terrorism.
It's not difficult to imagine how much the spirits of those terrorists have been raised after the support from Washington.
And that's certainly the case.
There's been lots of stuff floating around online about praise for Donald Trump for this attack from ISIS and terrorist organizations.
So, And so the question as to what is the legal or moral legitimacy for American military presence, whether it's direct or indirect, in Syria?
Well, there's no invitation from the legitimate government of Syria, of course, because the US is allied with the rebels.
No approval of the Security Council of the United Nations.
They're just there arming and supporting and all that kind of stuff.
So for the United States to say, well, you know, this is a violation of international law, and it's like, well, you guys being there is a violation of international law, and if the U.S. presence has helped contribute to, and I think it has, a civil war that has claimed the deaths of well north of half a million people, getting all teary-eyed over these 70 seems just a bit precious to me.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, quote, Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the U.S. strikes against Syria an aggression against a sovereign country, violating the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that." So that's the response from the Kremlin.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said,"...this military action is a clear indication of the U.S. President's extreme dependency on the views of the Washington establishment." The one that the new president strongly criticized in his inauguration speech.
Soon after his victory, I noted that everything would depend on how soon Trump's election promises would be broken by the existing power machine.
It took only two and a half months.
The last remaining election fog has lifted.
Instead of an overworked statement about a joint fight against the biggest enemy, ISIS... The Trump administration proved that it will fiercely fight the legitimate Syrian government.
This is a very powerful The deep state, the permanent part of the government.
I said years ago that one could look at the government.
And again, this is pre-Trump.
But you could look at the government like a car, and the car has a head ornament.
And if you change the head ornament, it doesn't really change much about the car.
And that the public face, the politicians, they're sort of the head ornaments.
But there's this whole machinery that goes.
And this is what he's talking about.
The existing power machine.
And he's talking about the deep state.
He's talking about the permanent part of the state that controls a lot of what the state does.
And this combat between populism.
Populism is kind of derided by the left because they're unpopular these days.
So populism naturally is the enemy.
But populism, otherwise known as Listening to what the people want and doing that.
I don't know why is that considered the whole point of democracy, to listen to the people.
In a democracy, that's terrible.
Yeah, we can't have populism because that would be listening to the people and doing what they want.
That's terrible.
And so this challenge between the existing power structures, which are very much against what the people want, which is why you have to lie so much to the people.
It's why you have to make up weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and so on, because otherwise you can't get people to support these wars.
And right now, people in America are so unbelievably sick and tired of these endless wars in the Middle East with no endgame, no exit strategy, burns up trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, makes people sick and dead.
I mean, they're so sick and tired of this.
And this, of course, is what Trump was appealing to when he sang America First, the false song of globalism.
And the Russians were watching this, as of course were everyone else in the world, watching this and saying, okay, we've got a guy who's outside the entire structure, who's self-funded good chunks of his own campaign, who is responding.
Famous enough that they can't ignore him.
Right.
He actually gets on the platform.
All the things that we talked about as to why Donald Trump was different in ways that made it possible that he would actually hold to his campaign promises.
Right.
And I don't think he's lost the fight against the deep state as yet.
I mean, one loss does not a catastrophe make.
We just want to make sure that everyone is aware and that Trump is aware that this was a loss to the deep state.
Not necessarily this particular fight.
But the potential of regime change and staying involved and manipulating and controlling everything.
And imagine you're going to create some democracy out of this crater.
And remember, remember, this is so important to remember when it comes to Syria.
And this is one of the outcomes of the immigration policy in the West over the past 40 or 50 years or so.
Is that in this region, I mean, I'm going to say something very strong here.
And I'm aware, you know, there's exceptions to every tendency.
But in this region, all the smart people left decades ago.
All the smart, capable, educated people who had opportunity and resources and intelligence and could fill out the paperwork and be patient and go through the process, they've all fled decades ago.
So who's left?
Who's left?
Who's left on which you're going to build this wonderful Western-style separation of church and state, Jeffersonian-style democracy?
There's nobody left who can do it.
When Syria has an average IQ of 83, and that was before the Civil War, imagine what it is now.
Can you nation-build a sub-80 IQ population?
If you think you can, you're scientifically illiterate.
And you deny it.
Just because we're talking about this.
I looked up a study.
The overall frequency of cousin marriage slash inbreeding in Syria is 30.3% in urban areas and 39.8% in rural areas.
The total rate was found to be 35.4% in Syria.
Well, and just for those who don't know what this means, this cousin marriage has a huge effect on general health.
And tragically, perhaps even most tragically, it has a hugely depressing effect on IQ. Cousin marriage...
Over time, produces a 10 to 18 point drop in IQ in the general population.
And this is a fundamental biological factual reality that needs to be taken into account.
And we just wish to dispel the illusions that this is somehow...
America in the mid to late 18th century.
This is not the Founding Father situation.
This is not an Enlightenment situation.
This is not the American Revolution.
This is a very, very different population.
The West has scooped up the smart people from third world countries and then wonders why third world countries seem to be doing badly.
Well, they're doing badly, partly because America and Europe and other countries have scooped up the smart people to put them to work in their own economies, leaving the less smart people over there in the third world.
And we know that intelligence is 50-80% genetically heritable.
And so, sadly, the gene pool of the people remaining in many of these countries is low in terms of intelligence.
I don't mean this in any negative or critical sense.
It's just a basic fact.
If you look at something else like height that is also heritable, if you regularly take away all the tall people in a particular village and people within that village only breed with each other, you're going to end up with a pretty short population.
This is not a blame.
This is not a castigation.
This is not a condemnation or a criticism.
It is simply an identification of empirical fact that hugely, hugely impacts how we should think about the region and what is possible.
Well, on that note, things are going to get far more interesting this coming week because apparently Tillerson is scheduled to fly to Moscow for quote, "high level meetings with Russian officials on a trip originally intended to turn a new page in the U.S.-Russian relationship." End quote.
Oh, it's going to be turning a page in the U.S.-Russian relationship, that's for sure.
The question is, what book are they going to be reading?
I'm just going to knock out that T and put in a B. Intended to burn a new page in the U.S.-Russian relationship.
Well, we'll see.
I think the Russians have been fairly patient with this kind of stuff, so we'll see.
It's in no interest for World War III to happen, unless you are a military defense contractor or a suicidal warmonger.
So I don't think Trump or Putin fit either of those categories.
So fingers crossed.
Hopefully negotiations will go well.
So Hillary Clinton, this is what she had to say about the bombing.
The action taken last night needs to be followed by a broader strategy to end Syria's civil war and to eliminate ISIS strongholds on both sides of the border.
So I hope this administration will move forward in a way that is both strategic and consistent with our values.
I also hope that they will recognize we cannot in one breath speak of protecting Syrian babies and in the next close America's door to them.
There it is.
There it is.
There's the motivation from the left.
The more we destroy Syria, the more we can get leftist voting Syrian refugees to come into America.
And that has been, I know that Trump has been trying to control some of this refugee stuff, but ever since the very liberal judge in Hawaii appointed by Obama has put a block on that, has put a kibosh on any of that kind of stuff.
I mean, George W. Bush loved himself, some refugees and migrants, and under Trump, even more pouring into America than under George W. Bush.
And that's the motivation.
That's the motivation.
Blow up the Middle East, bring the people over here under the context of the refugee program, pay the churches and other organizations millions and millions of dollars to house and take care of these people, and get yourself a stable base of nice lefty voting people who you can rely on for future power maintenance.
You most definitely can speak in one breath of protecting Syrian babies and in the next about closing America's door to them.
You absolutely can.
Called safe zones.
Yep, which is something Trump has spoke about quite frequently.
And there was even a conversation he had with Saudi Arabia regarding possibly funding those safe zones, which I certainly saw to be a very encouraging thing.
hey, countries in the Middle East that have lots of resources doing something to stabilize what is going on with the displacement in Syria.
Yeah, that seems to make a lot of sense to me.
And the other thing I wanted to mention as well, this is for all of the people who are struggling through this moral challenge of what's occurring in Syria or what could potentially occur.
Just all you have to do to get back in touch with your principles, my friends, is perform the following very, very short thought experiment.
Imagine that...
Okay, brace yourself.
Imagine that Hillary Clinton had won the election.
And imagine that Hillary Clinton was launching airstrikes into Syria based on very incomplete information about a very confused situation on the ground.
What would you say?
How would you react?
That's the principle of it.
Would you describe it as a bold and strong action if Hillary Clinton was doing it?
I'm guessing not.
Well, Ivanka Trump said,"...heartbroken and outraged by the images coming out of Syria following the atrocious chemical attack today." That was before the bombing occurred.
Then after the bombing, she posted,"...the times we are living in call for difficult decisions.
Proud of my father for refusing to accept these horrendous crimes against humanity." No comment.
I don't know about that Ivanka thing.
I mean, because she was the one who was very keen on what extended maternity benefits and maybe she was behind some of the stuff that Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada were signing together this, let's help women entrepreneurs and women in business and so on.
I don't know, she might have a tad of the social justice warrior thing going on there because, you know, heartbreaking and outraged by the images coming out of Syria.
That's a lot of feelings there.
Now, you know, of course she's going to call her dad and so on.
And, you know, I have a daughter.
Your daughter's really outraged and upset.
It can kind of get you pumped to do something about it.
But you can't base geopolitical decisions that have multi-decade ramifications based on your daughter being upset.
Well said.
Rand Paul said...
While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked.
The president needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate.
End quote.
Ron Paul!
Ron Paul's son, Rand Paul, again the voice of reason.
In the United States government.
And you can do a lot worse than listen to Ron Paul talk about foreign policy.
He's always been, to me at least, excellent on that topic.
He's really, really great at that.
So you might want to check out what Ron Paul has to say about these kinds of conflicts.
And Ron Paul, of course, has a great grasp of this stuff as well.
Turkish foreign minister.
I'm not even going to try to pronounce this name.
Mevlut Cavusolo.
Thank you.
Now I just want a glass of wine.
He said, quote, if this intervention is limited only to an airbase, if it does not continue and we don't remove the regime from heading Syria, then this would remain a cosmetic intervention, end quote.
And I think that was framed in, that would be bad from the Turkish foreign minister.
Cosmetic intervention.
Cosmetic intervention.
Yeah, so there aren't a lot of really hard and fast rules in life.
There aren't a lot of absolutes in life.
But in general, one of the ones which is UBB compliant is whatever the Turkish foreign minister is suggesting, do the opposite and you'll be fine.
Nigel Farage said, quote, I'm very surprised by this.
I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying, where will it all end?
As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but I'm surprised.
Whatever Assad sins, he is secular.
Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better, end quote.
It's pretty hard to argue with that.
He is so diplomatic.
And Coulter, not normally as diplomatic as Nigel Farage, said, quote, Those who wanted us meddling in the Middle East voted for other candidates.
Trump campaigned on not getting involved in the Mideast, said it always helps our enemies and creates more refugees.
Then he saw a picture on TV, end quote.
You know, I just wanted to mention, and this is not to create any kind of sympathy for Trump, because, you know, he's a tough guy who can make his own mind up, obviously, and has for decades.
But just imagine, if you will, the kind of pressure that you get put under for military action.
As a president, we know this from what happened in 1962 in the Cuban Missile Crisis, that they were screaming it was going to be the end of the world if JFK didn't act, didn't do this, didn't do that.
You know, there are salespeople that we see.
Like, you know, Trump, very, very good salesman.
There are salespeople that we see, and then there are salespeople that we don't see.
And the death merchants, the people who sell war, the people who sell violence, the people who sell nation-building, are very, very persuasive of what they do.
And not exactly overburdened with ethics.
Let's mention that as well.
No, and trillions of dollars at stake.
You know, you go buy a car, or you want to go and buy a car, I mean, the car salesman's going to make a couple of grand on the commission, man.
He's going to be grabbing you by the lapels and hanging onto your leg as you try to get out, because it's a couple of thousand bucks.
We're talking trillions of dollars here that can flow to the military-industrial complex if they can sell war to the president.
So just imagine you're surrounded by all of this brass.
You've got the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
You've got everyone there.
And these guys have risen to the top because they're very good at convincing both the public and civilian politicians and the mainstream media on the virtues of war.
This is their job.
Their job is not to wage war.
Their job is to sell war.
And they're very, very good at pushing the buttons.
And Trump, you know, I mean, look at his gold toilet seats and stuff.
The man has some testosterone.
He has some masculine pride, which has its strengths, but also it has its weakness.
The weaknesses are the white knighting.
Well, you know, kids are dying, women are dying, and you want to go in and white knight and save, and that's a natural response.
Are they going to use that?
And they know how to sell war.
Oh, you know, you can't let this stand.
This is the job.
This is exactly why you became president.
You have the largest and most powerful military in the world.
No one else is going to act.
You're the only person who can do it.
This is exactly why you pursued this job.
This is the job.
You have to stop this.
We cannot let this continue.
We cannot let this escalate.
We tried to get Obama to do stuff, but he wasn't manly enough.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They are going to be all over you, and they are going to be incredibly persuasive.
And, of course, we've all been programmed to view the military, particularly the top brass, with a certain amount of respect.
I mean, just watch Kenneth Branagh giving a speech about invading Iraq.
You can find it on YouTube.
And it's powerful stuff.
And when you are presented with these pictures of these atrocities and you're the only man, just say the word, Mr. Persauds.
President, just say the word, and we can solve all of this.
We can stop him in his tracks.
We can send a clear message that this never happens again, not on your watch.
Boom, boom, boom.
Are you really going to say, hey, guys, you know, we've really got to wait for the facts to come in, blah, blah, blah.
That'll be too late!
It's already escalating.
Events are already happening.
We either get out ahead of this or we stay dragging behind it.
Mr.
President, you must do.
We are the experts.
You're new to this job.
You've been here for two months.
I've been doing this for 40 years.
Listen to me.
You take advice.
You're the guy to say it.
You're the guy to do it.
Just give me the word and we can make it all better.
I bet you these guys are smoking good at selling death.
Well, throw in the tangible benefit and drawback of, okay, if he does do this, this really drives a stake through the heart of He's a Russian puppet narrative.
Despite the fact that it was pretty much dying at death anyway, it was still something that was holding him up in many cases.
Now, the other side is if he didn't take action, people would paint it as, oh, he didn't take action because he's a Russian puppet.
So it would have added more fuel to that fire.
So throw on the great sales pitch with that pro and con regarding what the mainstream media and the political establishment specifically on the liberal side has cooked up.
And you create circumstances that make something like this far more likely to happen.
Politically speaking, Mike, I mean, I may hate myself next week for saying this, but from a pure amoral political standpoint, I can completely understand this strike.
Doesn't get many people killed.
He was hoping it would get nobody killed.
It gets the mainstream media on his side.
It gets world leaders on his side.
It gets the Democrat narrative about him being a Russian agent to fade away.
And of course, the left desperately wants some kind of escalation in this way, because then it gets the whole Susan Rice thing swept under the rug, which apparently is even worse now than we thought in the past.
So from a political calculation standpoint, you have to appeal to the population that is.
And the population that is, in America and around the world, is not all composed of listeners to free domain radio.
Unfortunately, you know, despite the fact that we're trying, we're expanding, we're growing.
I don't mean to shock you folks, but no.
So you have to deal with the population that is, and I can understand from a political calculation standpoint why you do this.
I can also understand why you wouldn't want to say, no regime change, because then it is.
People would just say, well, this was sort of pointless.
You pounded sand, you killed a few people, but if there's not going to be any follow-up, what the hell was the point?
So he's got to...
Fogg, where it's going to go from here, and I can completely understand from a political standpoint why he did what he did.
And my hope is that it just kind of fades into the ether and he focuses on domestic problems.
We'll save some more of this sort of conclusion stuff and ways to look at this positively towards the end, but I just wanted to mention that now.
No, it's true.
And he certainly could have done this without mentioning the regime change.
I would have felt far more comfortable, and I don't think this would have had nearly the negative reaction that it has had.
Without the mumblings of regime change floated in there.
You have to do regime change.
At least you have to talk about it.
Otherwise, you're just going to be criticized for a useless...
What the Turkish guy said is a useless cosmetic thing.
So you have to make murmurings of it, even if you don't have any plan on actually doing it.
I hate that that's the logic of the planet, but that's the logic of the planet.
Politics is the art of the possible.
And this is why previously we weren't so interested in politics, because good God, is it a mess?
House Speaker Paul Ryan called the action, quote, appropriate and just, end quote.
And then continued and said, quote, earlier this week, the Assad regime murdered dozens of innocent men, women, and children in a barbaric chemical weapons attack.
Tonight, the United States responded.
These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inactions as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people, end quote.
Of course, this is hearkening back to Obama, who received lots of criticism for doing nothing, despite laying down red line after red line after red line.
You know, if you're going to say red line and then not back up when you've laid down a red line and someone crosses it, you just look like a total ineffective pussy.
That's fact.
So don't put down the red line if you're not willing to back it up.
Otherwise, no one will take you seriously.
Trump bombing people in the Middle East.
What is he, trying to get a peace prize?
Anyway.
LAUGHTER Oh, we shouldn't make jokes.
We're going to hell.
We are going to hell for making jokes about this.
Well, I'll just say, it's very bizarre to see the people that have been going, Donald Trump is Hitler!
Donald Trump is mentally unstable!
Donald Trump, this, that, every negative imaginable, that are just like, yeah, bomb him!
Come on, bomb him!
And it's like, oh my god, you're very enthusiastic for the person that you previously were saying is mentally ill, is a sociopath, is the next Hitler.
You're very excited when he actually does use violence.
I think the Hitlers are calling from inside the house.
Inside the house.
Is that a Paul Ryan quip?
Never mind.
All right.
Moving on to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Quote, making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities, he will pay a price as the right thing to do.
It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it.
I salute the professionalism and skill of our armed forces who took action today.
End quote.
Yeah, no, they program some missiles and push a button.
Brian Williams.
Oh, Brian Williams.
You can find this video, folks.
This is one of those.
Stop the podcast.
Go find the video of Brian Williams talking about the missiles being launched.
I mean, he was having a sexual experience while describing the beautiful pictures at night.
Yes.
If the toy company were to make an evil Ken doll...
Dot, dot, dot.
Go ahead.
He referred to video of the missiles launching as, quote, And then he went on to call the images, quote, beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments, end quote.
Was his elbow shaking with his hand under the table as he was watching all this stuff?
That's just my question.
Because this warnography where people, they almost seem to get turned on.
You know, there are studies that show that female fish get turned on when their mates win a physical battle.
I think there's a, I don't know if it's sadistic, I'm not putting him in this category, but I think there's a particular category of people who are literally turned on by death.
It's a kind of remote control, ugh, you know, like, it's sort of a remote control one and a half sex with dead people kind of thing.
It is a pretty sinister aspect of humanity, but I think that there is, there are a lot of people who are turned on by violence and excited by violence, and it is pretty repulsive.
It's shocking to me that someone that's been in the limelight and very prominent positions for such a long period of time as a journalist, and yeah, he's had his Had his problems.
So it's not like he's got a spotless record.
We'll put it that way.
That's right.
Necrophiliac boners is not exactly how we want stuff to be put across to the public.
Exactly.
So Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister Trudeau originally urged an investigation before any action was taken.
But then once Trump's bombs fell, he issued a statement expressing full support!
Directly contradicting his earlier statements, quote, President Assad's use of chemical weapons and the crimes the Syrian regime has committed against its own people cannot be ignored, end quote.
So quite the turnaround in a couple days there from Justin Trudeau.
He's just glad they didn't bomb Cuba.
Well, here's an interesting question, right?
So, let's say there was a country that had a native population and ripped the children from the arms of that native population's parents and locked them up in these semi-internment camps where those children were raped, assaulted, beaten, tortured,
and as they tried to perform a sort of cultural genocide on the historical experiences of that native population— Would we consider that something egregious and some sort of horrible crime that the world would need to come and invade and bomb a country if it was in the process of doing that?
Well, of course, it's not a wildly exaggerated description of Canada's program that occurred many decades ago, where they attempted to assimilate the natives by taking the children and putting them in these homes where they were regularly raped and beaten and tortured and abused in wide varieties of other ways.
It's a very, very shaky, glass-house-stone situation for most governments.
It doesn't usually require that you go that far back or look that far afield for horrible atrocities committed against domestic populations.
Try getting an actual definition of terrorism from a government.
That's a bit tricky.
Oh, they can't do it.
They keep trying to do it, but then, sorry, that just perfectly describes their foreign policy.
Oops, we did that on Tuesday.
Well, yeah, no, I did this years ago.
I talked about this in a presentation, so, yeah.
All right.
Well, former CIA director James Wolsey called for war with Iran as well.
He said, quote, Assad does not care what we do.
Russia is not going to change its support.
End quote.
End quote.
This is what we're talking about when we talk about the deep state and the push for war.
It's like, something in Syria, let's bomb Iran!
We're over there, we're doing something, we're pushing buttons, why not take out Iran too?
Well, this is what we talk about in terms of trial balloons.
How malevolence operates is tentatively at first, to see if it can get away.
It's called the trial balloon, right?
And the trial balloon comes from, I don't know, I'm guessing it comes from sort of First World War or something like that.
You'd put a balloon up and see if it got shot, and then you'd know whether there was anyone around who had the capacity to blow out your dirigibles or something like that.
And so this guy is like, very important to plan.
Well, whether they carry it out or not as their mother, let's just get into the planning of it.
We don't actually have to do it.
Just plan for it.
Just boom, boom, boom.
Step by step by step.
Corruption doesn't happen from A to Z.
It's every single letter of the alphabet is tested.
Can we go from A to B?
Can we go from B to C?
Hey, look, we got to Z.
Look at that.
And this is why we're pushing back at the beginning here.
So, hey, let's put this into action.
Yeah, this is why it's very important for the people that are very concerned about any idea of regime building or regime change in Syria or any other Middle Eastern country.
This is why the pushback is incredibly important right now.
Because if this goes without pushback, and it hasn't, then the next step will be that much easier.
And as Steph mentioned, there's very convincing salespeople and incentives in place for this type of stuff to just continue as it's continued for years and years and years.
So, CNN... Fareed Zakhar?
I think that's how you pronounce the gentleman's name.
He said, quote, I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night, end quote.
Not really president until you blow up another country.
Yay, CNN. And of course, as we mentioned before, ISIS and Al-Qaeda really praised Yeah, I see.
The funny thing is that he became president because he was not into this kind of interventionism, or at least he said verbally.
So, on what planet are you on where he becomes president, at least in one moment, by doing the opposite of what people really, really were desperate for him to do, which is to not Bomb the Middle East and not talk about regime change and so on.
So again, it's just, well, he became president of the United States because I believe he was convinced by agents of ill intent and possibly his own daughter and his own sympathy.
You know, Trump has a soft spot for kids and, of course, a lot of people do, which is why they tend to be used in these kinds of propaganda operations.
And it is hard to avoid that kind of sympathy.
I mean, God, look at those pictures and I'd want to move heaven and earth to stop this from happening again.
But how you actually stop things from happening again is It's a little bit more complicated than raining death from above.
Middle Eastern intervention, the only way to win is not to play.
Marco Rubio said, quote, I know POTUS was deeply moved by the images and stories emerging from hashtag Syria chemical attack.
By acting decisively against the very facility from which Assad launched his murderous chemical weapons attack, President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over, end quote.
Shouldn't we really get in a conversation about war crimes?
Wouldn't that be nice if the days of committing war crimes with impunity were over?
Wouldn't that be nice?
So we're going to bring up the previous people in the United States that committed war crimes on charges now?
Is that the plan?
I could get behind that if that's what we're going to do, but I don't think that's what Rubio is talking about.
Funnily enough, the only people who commit war crimes are unverified information from small, low-IQ countries that have no nuclear weapons.
Interesting.
That's where all of the war crimes seem to concentrate.
I thought it was very clear what the strike was about.
You don't use chemical weapons without consequences, end quote.
Meanwhile, we're arming the rebels that use chemical weapons without consequences.
Well, the consequence is that we arm them, or America arms them.
The consequence is that you can then perhaps stage false flag attacks to get America to attack your enemy.
So there are consequences, just not the negative ones that he's mentioning.
Then he doesn't know why anyone's confused.
Okay, thank you very much.
Son of a bitch!
Sorry, go on.
Hey, I'm just happy that the Republicans showed some balls regarding the Supreme Court pick this go-around and the nuclear option and getting him through when the Democrats did exactly.
Gorsuch has landed.
There's good news as well.
That's very good news.
For the people that, some people said, oh, are you ashamed that you supported Trump now that he did this?
Well, no.
Not even close.
I mean, the fact that We would probably have Ruth Bader Ginsburg number two on the Supreme Court.
And now we have Neil Gorsuch, who is as close to Scalia as you're probably going to get for being a constitutional originalist.
Hey, someone that actually wants to follow the law as it was written and interpret it as it was intended.
Crazy talk.
Not an activist judge.
Crazy talk.
I mean, that in and of itself is such a massive win.
And there's lots of positive stuff that Trump has been able to accomplish.
It's just...
The big stuff, which is immigration, that everyone is – I mean, everyone is focused on immigration.
We've said all along that this – most of these elections that are happening in the West, they're all about immigration.
And just the roadblocks he's faced on that, it's been really tough.
And I think people have been demotivated from that with the judicial activism that we've seen.
But now that Gorsuch is on the Supreme Court, those cases can proceed to the Supreme Court if necessary.
And the decision – well, I'm assuming Gorsuch, the constitutional – The originalist is going to read the law that's plainly written and understand that Trump has some power to control immigration into the United States.
I'm just going to go out on a limb there.
So that should be interesting to watch in the near future.
All right.
Now, U.S. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham put out a joint statement.
They were probably cuddling when they prepared it.
They're so thrilled about this.
We agree with the president that Assad has crossed a line with his latest use of chemical weapons.
The message from the United States must be that this will not stand.
We must show that no foreign power can or will protect Assad now.
He must pay a punitive cost for this horrific attack.
In addition to other measures, the United States should lead an international coalition to ground Assad's air force.
This capability provides Assad a strategic advantage in his brutal slaughter of innocent civilians, both through the use of chemical weapons as well as barrel bombs, which will kill far more men, women, and children on a daily basis.
The US military, together with our allies and partners, has the capability to achieve this objective quickly, precisely, decisively, and in ways that control escalation.
Ultimately, the grounding of Assad's air force can and should be part of a new comprehensive strategy to end the conflict in Syria.
This is a test of the new administration, but also for our entire country.
Assad is trying to see what he can get away with.
The rest of the region and the world is watching to see how our country will respond and what that means for them.
There is plenty that Democrats and Republicans in Washington disagree on.
But in this instance, we must show the world that we are still capable of putting aside our differences and doing the right thing.
If the president is willing to take the necessary action, he deserves broad by port...
Can't even say it.
He deserves broad bipartisan support, and we will help build it.
End quote.
If you betray everyone that got you elected, the people that vociferously opposed your every step and hate you, they'll like you now.
Yay!
I guess we have found what the Never Trumpers find acceptable and positive, which is this kind of stuff, which is precisely why nobody took them seriously who was pro-Trump beforehand.
Mike Cernovich had the best way to describe John McCain that I've ever heard.
He called him a raging ball of Alzheimer's.
Well, and he had a secret trip to Syria ahead of time, too.
And as I pointed out in the last video, wherever that man treads foot off outside of America, graves are sure to follow like flowers growing in his wake.
All right.
Up next is Nancy Pelosi.
She said, quote, This week's unspeakable chemical weapons attack is only the latest in a long series of horrors perpetrated by Bashir al-Assad on innocent men, women, and children.
Tonight's strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the regime's use of chemical weapons.
If the president intends to escalate the US military's involvement in Syria, he must come to Congress for an authorization for use of military force which is tailored to meet the threat You know, when Nancy Pelosi is the voice of reason, I'm done.
I don't know what to say if Nancy Pelosi is the voice of reason regarding, hey, let's actually have a debate about this.
Let's come to Congress for authorization for any future military action.
That's a little disturbing when Nancy Pelosi is on the right side of history here, so...
Well, you may not know, there's actually, just check this out, there's been a follow-up statement from her just this morning.
She said, I'm melting!
And this is one of these things that is important to reflect on.
The reason why Congress is supposed to declare war is that war usually has some precursors.
It doesn't usually come completely out of nowhere, completely out of the blue, especially in America, right?
Relatively friendly neighbors to the north and south, giant oceans to the east and west.
You can see the ships coming over if somebody wants.
You've got time to debate.
And so one of the reasons why the declaration of war was reserved was to prevent a president from just pushing a button and making something happen.
And this happens when there is no imminent threat.
When there's imminent threat, it usually has come about because of a long series of diplomatic problems, of escalations, of rhetoric, of back and forth, the troops are gathering, you've got time to have a debate.
If you don't have time to have a debate, it's probably not a defensive war after all.
So this idea, you know, well, you've got to come to Congress for an authorization for use of military force.
Right after, you didn't come to Congress for an authorization for use of military force because you used military force already.
Anyway.
Maybe you need to pass the authorization for the use of military force to find out what is in the authorization for the use of military force.
Right.
Maybe.
I don't know.
So the Associated Press reported, Pentagon officials say Russian has failed to control the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons.
They say a drone belonging to either Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened.
The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Shortly afterward, officials say the hospital was bombed.
The officials say that they believe the hospital attack may have been an effort to cover up evidence of the attack.
The officials weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity.
They still say they're reviewing evidence, end quote.
So take that with the grain of salt that all unnamed sources, and considering there's been so much nonsense in the media these days, take it with all the grains of salt in the world, but that's something that's being discussed.
According to CNN, the Pentagon is particularly interested in whether a Russian warplane actually conducted the bombing run on the Khan Hospital where the victims were receiving treatment within hours of the attack, quote, with the aim of destroying evidence, end quote.
There have been conflicting reports about whether any Russian personnel or aircraft, particularly helicopters, were present at the airbase that was bombed.
And videos can be found online purporting to show Russian helicopters at the base as recently as February.
But Fox News is quoting the Pentagon briefer saying that no Russian aircraft were at the airfield at the time of the attack.
However, the Fox News report also quotes U.S. officials who said, quote, between 12 and 100 Russian military personnel, end quote, were present at the base, complete with their own barracks, which the U.S., quote, took pains, end quote, to avoid blowing up.
If a chemical weapons attack was indeed conducted from the base, it would be very difficult for the Russians to argue they were unaware a war crime was in progress under their noses.
So since there's lots of Russians at this base, if.
they have chemical weapons and they're doing stuff, the argument is the Russians would have to know about it.
And then that escalates from there.
I don't quite understand how they would have to.
Do they check every ordinance that's loaded on every plane in Syria?
Well, I guess the presence.
Would they be aware of the presence of chemical weapons on the base?
But the Syrian government would be hiding it enormously because they know, as we talked about earlier, that the Russians were the guarantors that no chemical weapons were available to or being used by the Syrian government.
So they would do everything in their conceivable power to hide it.
Well, I guess at least until it blew up, in which case it would be evident to everyone in the world and all the shitstorm that followed would follow.
And given the patience that Putin has shown with the stuff that we mentioned earlier, the idea that he would know about chemical weapons at a base where his soldiers are and would be fine with that when, again, the Syrian government has been winning the fight against ISIS. I can imagine, yeah, I can imagine saying, okay, Assad, you can have chemical weapons as long as you only use them for no military purpose whatsoever.
Yeah, there's a lot of limbs you got to jump on assuming people are really incredibly stupid.
To believe this thesis.
And hey, maybe there'll be some truth in it.
I don't know.
I'm going to wait for the investigation.
I'm curious what happens.
But at the same time, I don't believe Vladimir Putin is dumb.
And he would have to be incredibly dumb for this to be the case.
And again, after this, Russia announced it was pulling out of the pact with Washington to share information about warplane missions over Syria.
And this is a big deal.
This agreement that they had to...
Coordinate to make sure that there weren't any friendly fire, that there wasn't any kind of friendly fire between US and Russians as they fight terrorism.
Now, this either means that the United States needs to stop conducting any type of raids in Syria against the Islamic State, or ISIS, or that now every raid becomes incredibly dangerous, because what if you hit Russian forces?
If after what has happened in the last week, The United States bombs and kills any amount of Russian forces in Syria.
You can see how quickly this escalation is going to go.
It's not going to be pretty if that happens.
Is the United States going to slow down its bombing currently until this is worked out?
Tillerson goes to Russia next week.
Hopefully they can sort it out, get that agreement back on the table.
Those are the questions I would like to see people in the media asking.
Spicer, asking Tillerson, asking any person from the administration that's in front of a camera because This agreement being pulled, if military strategy doesn't change in the interim, that could be disastrous.
Not just for Syria, but the future of Western civilization as a whole.
Is it worth it?
I mean, to bomb one largely empty airfield and put it out of commission for less than 24 hours?
Is it really worth it?
There's no way that Americans can take on ISIS without Russia's help.
I mean, Russia's local.
Russia knows the region, has boots on the ground, has airplanes in the sky.
Without Russia's at least acceptance, if not cooperation, America can't do squat about ISIS. Everybody just kind of needs to understand that.
Because there's no way that...
Russia over ISIS.
I mean, that would be truly mental, right?
So now they've alienated an ally, the ally they desperately need, in fact, require in the region to take on ISIS.
And now they're basically flying blind, and they've already bombed people by accident, So now they're flying blind in the Middle East with no information sharing about warplane missions over Syria.
They've alienated and insulted, insulted Russia.
Listen, the face-saving thing is really, really important.
They said Russia was either completely incompetent in allowing Assad to have chemical weapons when the Russians had promised that they were going to stop that, or they knew about it and were complicit in this war crime.
That is not the way you treat Assad.
Someone whose help you desperately need to fulfill a major campaign promise to defeat ISIS. Was it worth it for one bombing of one airport?
On April 7th, Sean Spicer was asked, quote, How does this fit with America First foreign policy?
Is that still his stated position?
End quote.
Obviously referring to Trump, Spicer said, quote, Absolutely.
I think that his actions were very clear under Article 2 in Our Nation's National Security.
There's very important national security interests in the region, stability, and obviously there's a huge humanitarian component to this, end quote.
Well, to hell with that, Sean Spicer, because you tell me what action would not be allowable under that pretext.
In what world, in what planet, in what part of this Earth...
Could you not say, well, you see, there's instability in the region.
We have national security interests in the region.
Unless there's a direct threat to the homeland, an imminent threat to the homeland, stay home.
So, any region that's unstable, any region where anything negative could happen, any region where people are suffering and being hurt and being starved and being bombed, that's where America should go?
Well, pretty much, that's everywhere.
Everywhere.
Everywhere.
So you tell me how that is any kind of indication of a non-interventionist foreign policy.
And there's oh so many times where a war or a military intervention is sold with the sad pictures or the humanitarian component, and it winds up being nonsense in the end.
It winds up being propaganda just to get people to go, well, okay, we gotta go save the kids, or okay, this was too far, this is bad.
And then it winds up being nonsense.
So...
Yeah, I think it's okay to ask for an investigation.
Yeah, I think it's important to ask for the information that went into making this decision, what they know, when they knew it.
And I think it's very important that anyone that supports Donald Trump and supports his domestic agenda and supported his previous stated foreign policy, no nation building and all that, makes their voices heard, not just This week.
But continually, whenever this subject comes up, this nation-building stuff is something that we cannot bend on.
It is a boondoggle of all boondoggles.
And there are incentives in place to just keep going as usual, go to the Middle East, drop some bombs, nation-build, people get rich.
Those back home continue to be unemployed, taxed out the wazoo to pay for this nonsense, much of which is going to be on the back of their children, which some of them aren't having, so therefore we need to import more immigrants from the third world to pay for our...
You see how this goes, folks.
You see how this goes.
So this is the time to speak up and make your voice heard regarding this foreign policy.
And if nation-building happens...
People have talked about the, are you on the Trump train?
Are you off the Trump train?
And, you know, I live in the United States.
I would like to see the United States not go to hell further than it is.
There's a lot of challenges in the United States.
Economic collapse is certainly foreseeable in the near future unless some significant steps are taken.
Dramatic reduction in taxes, dramatic reduction in regulations, Let's free up the United States to the point where maybe, maybe it's a long shot, I know, maybe it's possible to grow our way through economic freedom out of this massive mountain of debt.
It's unlikely, I know, but maybe, maybe.
Let's hope that that kind of stuff happens, and it's not going to happen, and there will be no chance of it happening if more money is poured into the Middle East.
And as Trump said, for the amount of money that the United States has spent, In the Middle East, we could have rebuilt all the infrastructure in the United States.
You know, the crumbling infrastructure.
The infrastructure that Trump wants to spend a trillion dollars on to fix.
The infrastructure that is leading to towns being evacuated in California when dams give way.
The type of infrastructure that leads to Katrina.
You know, bridges collapsing.
All that kind of stuff.
Necessary stuff for a country.
So, where do you want your money to go?
Where do you want your children's future money to go?
Yeah, I mean, you can support interventionism and regime change in the Middle East, or you can support Trump's domestic policies.
You can't have both.
If he's going to get the US entangled in another multi-trillion dollar boondoggle mass destruction wasteland adventure in the Middle East, well, say bye-bye to your tax cuts.
And say bye-bye to economic growth.
And say bye-bye to sustainable jobs.
And say bye-bye to cheap healthcare.
And say bye-bye to all of it.
All of it.
And so it is because the idea is to make America great again, you can make America great again, or you can make the Middle East burn again.
You can't have both.
So please let us know what you think.
We're both happy to hear criticisms and feedback and what you like and what you don't like about this new format.
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