Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Bashar al Assad: The Eye Doctor Who Murdered a Nation

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

In Part Two on Bashar al Assad, Robert is joined again by Anna Hossnieh to continue discussing how he murdered his nation. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's bombing my neighborhoods filled with women in? This is not an intro. I should continue. I don't know. How do you open part two of the episode on Bashar al-Assad, the greatest mass murderer of the 21st century? Not that way. That was clearly wrong.

Wildly, wildly wrong. Never should have been attempted. Sophie is shaking her head at me. What's barrel bombing? Oh, damn. I thought you were going to be ashamed too, but you just doubled down. I appreciate that. It's a true friend who sees you digging your own grave and grabs a shovel and is like, Yeah, let's fucking make this hole bigger. That's a mark of friendship. Now, Anna, we had a lot of fun. No, we didn't. You're the co-host of the ethnically ambiguous podcast.

Yes, I am. We're talking about Bashar al-Assad. My favorite, probably, micro penis holder. Oh my god. If you added six inches to his dick, you'd still need tweezers to find it. It's probably non-existent, which is why he's so angry. That's why he wanted to fix everyone's eyes so they could see his penis, because he's being like, no one can see him, so maybe I'll become an optometrist. Maybe someone will fucking see my penis, but I won't have to murder everybody.

I was going to go on this thing about how we shouldn't demonize micro penises, but then you made a really fucking good joke. We shouldn't demonize micro penises, because if you have one, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. The fact that you can still come, and that's all that matters. That is all that matters. And if you can't come, that's fine too. I'll only demonize it. We're getting way off the subject of Bashar al-Assad here.

Well, I feel like I'll only demonize it if you are someone like Bashar al-Assad who takes it out on other people by murdering women and children, like innocent civilians. I wouldn't ever make fun of anyone for having a squeaky voice, but if you're like a little fascist media personality who argues about how all Muslims are monsters, and you have a voice that sounds like you've been inhaling helium for the last 30 years, and your name's Ben Shapiro, I might make fun of that.

Hey, I'm popular, okay? I'm popular. So, Ana, do you know the name Mohammed Boise? No. Well, he was a 25-year-old man in the year 2010. He worked as a street vendor in Tunisia. His father had died when he was young, and Mohammed wound up supporting his family through a very rough economy, even managing to pay for one of his sisters to attend university.

He seems to have been a real stand-up guy. Dropped out of school, put his own dreams on hold in order to take care of several brothers and sisters and a couple of elderly relatives. Now, for some reason, local police officers took a dislike to Mohammed. They regularly confiscated his wares, likely because he could not afford to bribe them not to do so. One day, in mid-December 2010, this happened again,

and Mohammed tried to seek redress through the organs of his local government. But Tunisia was a state ruled by an autocratic dictator and an ossified bureaucracy that existed primarily to let people with family connections make money by fucking over poor folks like Mohammed Boisees. His quest ended at the governor, who refused to talk to him, even after Mohammed said, If you don't see me, I'll burn myself.

Mohammed immediately left to do just that. He acquired a can of gasoline from a nearby station and lit himself on fire in front of the governor's office. He died on January 4, 2011, after days of unspeakable agony. But in death, the governor and the dictatorial president of Tunisia could not ignore Mohammed Boisees. His death is generally seen as having ignited the Arab Spring, which overthrew the president of Tunisia,

as well as the dictators of Egypt and Libya. For a time, Bashar al-Assad thought he would be safe from the fires of revolution sweeping through the Arab world. David Lesh is the writer who spent a lot of time with Bashar. We heard about him in the last episode. He wrote a book called The Fall of the House of Assad. It cites several articles that the regime published during this time, both in its own magazine, Forward,

and in a Wall Street Journal interview with Assad. Both articles in the February issue reflected the president's and the regime's sense of immunity from the virus of protest spreading elsewhere in the Arab world. The editor-in-chief of the magazine, Dr. Samim Mubayyad, is a professor of international relations in the country and one of its foremost commentators. He has access to high places in Syria,

and therefore his essays often reflect regime's sentiments. For this issue, he wrote a piece entitled, Lesson from Egypt, West is not Best. In it, Mubayyad repeatedly hammers home the point that the dictators in the Arab world who had either fallen by then, President bin Ali in Tunisia, or were on their way out, President Husnu Mubarak of Egypt and President Abdullah Saleh in Yemen,

were being run out of office by widespread popular protest primarily because over the years they had been the lackeys of the west, particularly of the United States. So Assad and his cronies at first thought they would be safe from the Arab Spring because, of course, Assad hadn't been an American lackey. Mubayyad's article ends ironically by accurately describing the forces then sweeping the Arab world,

which they just didn't think were going to come for them. Quote, What is so beautiful about the Tunisian and Egyptian stories is that this time it wasn't flamboyant and inexperienced young officers toppling the young king. Norma was at turban clerics toppling an autocratic and aging royal, like Iran, 1979. It was also not U.S. tanks rumbling into Tunisia,

as was the case with Baghdad in 2003. It was the people of Tunisia, the young and the old, the intellectual and the unemployed. It was the glorious people of Egypt who said, Enough is enough. What Mubayyad and other Assadists did not see is that the exact same forces that had made Tunisia right for revolution and Demet crushing corruption that robbed young people of paths

towards a decent life and left them hopeless, underemployed and enraged, that was present in Syria as well. While Assad had opened up the economy somewhat, every reform was calculated in one way or another to benefit his core supporters or gain him new supporters, because every dictatorship in every country is just a gigantic gangster enterprise

when you get right down to it. Wait, so he thought that his people hadn't noticed what he was up to, basically. He thought his people loved him and that they would not revolt because he hadn't been a lackey of the U.S. He thought the Arab Spring was people being angry at dictators in their region

doing what the U.S. wanted, and he was like, well, I don't like the U.S., so people will back me. Obviously, they're going to keep loving Bashar. God, these dudes. That's what's crazy. They have no sense of what's going on around them, like, at all?

No, that's what happens when you have the macabre arresting and torturing everybody who is like, maybe things could be less corrupt. I guess you don't pay people to tell you anything negative. You pay people to tell you we have arrested X number of dissidents and they are in a dark hole. Instead of being like, just FYI,

so we took a survey and it looks like people think you're shady. Yeah, people don't like that we throw so many people in the dark holes. Actually, the dark hole approval rating is like 8%. No one's looking this. Yeah, almost no one's. We like the dark holes.

That's the 8% is the macabre rat vote. They vote for dark holes, but everyone else really against the dark holes that we throw dissidents into. Yeah, it looks like we're not getting the numbers we were hoping for dark holes. We're thinking of rebranding the dark hole that we throw dissidents into. What about this?

Rainbow circle. I love it. I forget which one of us now is the branding advice. In February 2011, Mouya Syazna, a 14 year old kid, was hanging out with his friends in the Syrian town of Dara. Tunisia's dictator had just been forced out of power and these kids were ornery,

so they scared up some red paint and dogged your turn, doctor, on the walls of their school. Now, Dara is a fairly small rural town near the border with Jordan. At that point, Syria was in the grip of an intense drought, which had reduced crop yields and crippled the already stumbling economy. Youth unemployment was particularly bad

and Mouya and his friends had little hope of growing up in a world with many options for them if things continued on the way they were going. So they painted a threat against their dictator on the wall of their school. And soon after that, all hell broke loose. Assad's men quickly arrested the 10th graders and sent them back to Damascus to be brutally tortured

by a bunch of Nazi trained torture experts. This was a pretty normal move from the Makhabarat, but unknown to Bashar, though in those secret policemen, the winds of the world had just changed. The people of Dara were quite suddenly unwilling to accept this kind of bullshit. On March of 2011, they took to the streets. Hundreds of people, many of them relatives

of the arrested boys, protested the regime. The crowd grew to thousands. Bashar's police opened fire, killing four and dispersing the crowd. But the next day, 20,000 furious Syrians took to the streets and the days that followed, things grew more violent. And Makhabarat offices were vandalized. More protesters were murdered in larger numbers.

Funerals of the dead became protests and so the regime banned funerals. Yeah. When you're banning funerals, you might be a monstrous, totalitarian dictator. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy that these kids had no idea what they were about to literally, like, domino effect into, but like...

How could they have possibly known? That's so... I mean, you're banning funerals. It's like, then stop fucking killing everybody. Maybe, like, take it as a goddamn hint if people are this upset. Maybe you should just mass murder. Real easy way to reduce the funerals. Yeah.

Stop killing people. I guess common sense isn't a thing within regimes. So I don't know what I'm even saying. Yeah, I mean, it's a type of common sense within the logic of murdering people. Within regime logic? Yeah, within regime logic. Common sense says that we, you know,

have to murder everyone who stands up to us. Yeah, if you're a regime, it makes sense. Yeah. None of this worked to stop the growing unrest. A single act of childish graffiti and Dara wound up being the spark that started the Syrian civil war, which is, so far, the deadliest civil war

of the 21st century. According to David Lesh, quote, it is almost certain that Bashar al-Assad was absolutely shocked when the uprisings of Bashar world started to seep into his country in March 2011. I believe he truly thought he was safe and secure and popular in the country

and was beyond condemnation. But this was not the case in the Middle East of 2011, where the stream of information via the internet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and mobile phones could not be controlled as it once had been. On March 24th, 2011, Bashar al-Assad addressed his nation over the continuing unrest. He promised vague reforms, which, of course,

he could not actually deliver upon. Any reforms to reduce corruption would be taking money out of the pockets of his supporters, which, of course, he could not afford to do at the moment. Any actual political openness would be seized upon as weakness and lead to his fall from power. So he promised nothing

and ended his speech with, quote, I shall remain the faithful brother and comrade who will walk with his people and lead them to build the Syria we love, the Syria we are proud of, the Syria which is invincible to its enemies. You know, I do wonder if he, like, he just was in over his head and started,

I mean, not that I'm in any way defending Bashar al-Assad, but I wonder if he was in over his head and then just started to panic, like, just being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, kill him all, kill him all, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then now he's like, shit, well, now that I've, like, in my panic, have started acting like a full psycho,

I guess I just have to, like, keep it going? Yeah, you know, there's a version of this where that is what goes on, where he's kind of like a czar nigga this figure and, like, the initial bloodletting is more accidental because of how the regime's set up, that's how the security forces respond,

you the leader are left grappling with it, but then things hit a certain point and it's like, well, they're gonna kill me or I can kill all of them. Yeah, there is kind of like a vibe, like a really dumb vibe where he's like, I guess I'm a dictator now? Like, it's like you fucking idiot.

Like, you trashbag. But he had been before, like, you operated Nazi torture dungeons, then let the CIA use them. Right. Bashar wasn't, yeah. It's, there's definitely an aspect of this that is a guy,

like, obviously he didn't want this. Nobody, none of these people want there to be a civil war because there's a chance that, like, you get thrown out of power. Right. I don't know, you know, we'll talk about that more by the end. We'll see what conclusion you come to about

how his journey on this. All right. For most of the world, Friday, April 1st was April Fool's Day. In Syria, in 2011, it was the Friday of martyrs. This was the name given to a day of furious protests across the country, conducted in the name

of the dozens who'd been shot dead by security forces, and the hundreds who were currently being tortured. This time, Bashar al-Assad ordered snipers up on the roofs of cities around the country. They fired randomly into crowds of activists and shot anyone who broke curfew. Next, according to Lesh's book,

quote, In the May and June 2011, the regime continued to engage in a schizophrenic response to the risk protests. While continuing to make some concessions and announce reform measures, the military and security forces intensified their crackdown in cities across Syria that were hit by demonstrations.

To the outside observer, this approach may seem contradictory and indicative of fissures within the ruling elite on how to respond to the crisis. From the perspective of Bashar and his inner circle, it could be seen as two sides of the same coin. In a way that came to be expected of the Assad regime's old and new,

it was something of an axiom of power politics that one offers concessions only from a position of strength, never from a position of weakness. Therefore, while there was also a practical side to the Assad approach in terms of repressing the unrest, it also clearly indicated that the regime wanted to portray itself

as only making concessions and offering reform measures from a position of strength. Hmm. So, he just... Okay, sorry. He wants to... He's willing to give people concessions but only if he stays in control

and the only way to stay in control is to kill people. Right, but he didn't really... What were these concessions? Did anything come of that? Yeah, no, not really. It was the same as the concessions he offered at the start of his reign where it's like, I'll open things up but you already did that and then close them down again

and it was bad for you. Like, why would you trust Bashar al-Assad at this point? Yeah. One of the people who died so Bashar could offer reform from a position of strength was Hamza al-Qatib. He was 13 years old when he went missing on the 29th of April.

His battered and abused corpse was returned to his family a month later. His family shared pictures of their boys torn up body on social media and rage at his murder spread virally. Assad's government, of course, denied torturing the child. They had a doctor who worked for the government examined the body.

He concluded that all of the scars and holes and injuries were not consistent with torture. Bashar al-Assad made a big show of visiting the family to share his sadness at this tragic and inexplicable death that he and his security apparatus had no role in. They're like, yeah, yeah, it looks like...

No, no torture here. So sorry about your boy. What a mystery. Yeah, you know, based on, you know, my work as an optometrist, I can see there is no torture. Yeah, his eyes look great.

Lookin' good. Like you fucking piece of shit. Yeah, real piece of shit. This photo op with the grieving family of a murdered boy did not, shockingly, reduce opposition to the Assad regime. A Facebook page was created in his name garnering 67,000 supporters.

One commenter wrote, there is no place left here for a regime after what they did to Hamza. On July 29th, 2011, seven Syrian Arab Army officers defected from the military, forming the core of the Free Syrian Army. By November, the FSA was strong enough

to launch armed attacks on the regime itself. In this way, in stops and starts, the protests and street activism and violent state repression gradually escalated to full-fledged warfare. In January of 2012, Nusrah Front and Islamist rebel group declared their arms

and his Islamist rebel group declared their opposition to the regime. Whole cities wound up an open rebellion to the state. In February, 2012, Bashar had his army assault homes, the third largest city in Syria. 400 people, virtually all of them civilians,

were killed on the first day. You see, Assad's army crumbled fairly quickly in the face of the rebellion. It had never been a particularly potent force, and many of its men had deserted for the other side once the fighting started. At that point, he had less than 5,000 soldiers in the whole country.

So, Assad relied heavily on random artillery strikes and equally random bombings by his air force, which was the one thing he had that the rebels did not. The Syrian air force was, from the beginning, Assad's greatest weapon against his own people. In August, 2012, the regime was filmed dropping its very first

barrel bomb on the city of Homs. You know what a barrel bomb is. Yeah, unfortunately. I'm going to guess most people have heard the term. Yeah. It's probably the iconic weapon of the Syrian Civil War, and it's essentially a huge metal barrel packed full of high explosives and shrapnel.

Nails, metal bits, whatever. It all functions the same with a few dozen pounds of RDX behind it. A barrel bomb is the kind of weapon you deploy when you don't care who you kill. Right. Yeah, it's... There's a video on YouTube

that I would recommend listeners watch. If you just type in Assad barrels, you'll find it. It's horrific. One of the worst things I've ever seen. The wake of these bombings is

almost indescribable. It's worse than what I've seen in the wake of US airstrikes, which is pretty horrific in and of itself. But an explosive like this, it's just a particularly awful way to wage war. Even worse

than a Hellfire missile. I don't understand. He's like, oh, you know... That's what's crazy. He says, okay, I'm gonna give concessions. I'm gonna work with you guys so you don't keep protesting me.

And then he just goes and kills a town. What's the issue with the regime? What's everybody's problem? I'm gonna drop just barrels of death on you guys. Why is nobody like me? Yeah, it's like, dude, fucking read the room.

Yeah, read the room, Bashar. What are we doing here anymore? I don't even... It's so crazy. It's so hard to wrap your mind around someone who... In a way, when you first think about it, he didn't want to become the leader.

He had so much potential to just be a good human being in an office, running a country, and his point of view of being like, I don't really want to run a country. I just want to be this regular doctor. Blah, blah, blah.

I could just be an easygoing guy who's one of the people. I mean, honestly, it goes back to bad parenting. But this is insane. It's so insane that he was like, all right, let's just turn this around and kill everybody. Yep, guess I'm murdering.

Yeah, and he got right to murdering. I'd like to quote from a Doctors Without Borders article about the use of barrel bombs primarily in the city of Aleppo during the fighting there. Quote, Barrel bombings in eastern Aleppo were so unpredictable and widespread that they have sown fear throughout the city.

It is extremely difficult for someone to take measures to protect their families and improve their safety, which contributes to higher levels of psychological stress. You never know when a bomb can happen. This is the problem. You could be at home having dinner. You could be sleeping. You could be walking to the shop. At any time it might happen, especially coming to Turkey for those who have to go to Turkey

to work or to unite family members. It is a very scary route, as you don't know who you might meet and what might happen. You don't know if you will return home safe or see your family again. That's a quote from Tariq, a health worker in Alsalama, Aleppo. So Bashar al-Assad

punished Aleppo and other cities for their disobedience by leveling the vast majority of the buildings there with endless rains of barrel bombs. During the four-year battle for Aleppo, residents would celebrate whenever the weather was cloudy because it meant that they would at least get a few hours break before the next bombs fell. One staff member told Doctors Without Borders,

quote, One day when we were working at the hospital in eastern Aleppo, it was the day of a high number of barrel bombings. It was like the city was in chaos and lots of people were being brought to us, dead and alive. I remember when two bodies were brought in, an old man and his small grandson, they both had the same name.

They must have been together when the bomb hit. The family was searching for them in all the hospitals of Aleppo but couldn't find them. Their neighbors had also been bombed, and they had no idea whereabouts of these two. Finally, they came and the bodies were identified. It was just one instance, but still, we all felt so sad.

God. Yeah. There's just no one... That's so sad. You just don't know. You don't know what's going to happen at any point, at any time. You just live in fucking fear

that the man who runs your country just may casualty decide to bomb and you're just like, one of those days, oh, thank God for the clouds, so we don't get barrel bombed. Oh, good clouds! The president can't murder us today

unless the clouds go away. Yeah. Chris Kozak, a Syria research analyst for the Institute of the Study of War, explains that the regime's strategy with barrel bombs is to quote, inflict mass punishment against opposition-supported populations

that were perceived to be supportive of the opposition in order to prevent the formation of a viable alternative to the regime. And it really seems to have worked. The Free Syrian Army at the start was a really secular force run by a lot of really brave men and it sort of degraded into

kind of a lot of bandits and extremists at this point just because everybody at the start of the Civil War who was providing a viable alternative to Bashar's government and was a hope of civil society, like he killed them all. Like, that was a big part of his strategy.

He's like, oh, they want to run Syria without me? Well, I'll just murder everybody who can run Syria without me. Right. Everyone's gone. Yeah, everybody's gone and all the survivors are too shell-shocked and terrified to do anything

but hide. That's his strategy. Do we know how many people are left in his army? No, I mean, at this point he's conscripted a lot more and it's up to a higher level but there was one point where there were essentially militias and gangs

that were allied with the regime were way larger than the actual Syrian Arab army. Wow. Especially if you're talking like 2013-14, yeah. He's got like help from Iran and other places. Yeah, a lot of, yeah. Yeah, help from Iran, help from Hezbollah,

help from Russia. Yeah. Bashar's favorite target for his barrel bombs outside of the crowded apartment buildings is hospitals. On one day, he struck a left post M-10 hospital with two barrel bombs, two cluster bombs and one rocket.

Now, striking hospitals is a war crime but Assad figures, what's the harm in committing war crimes when you know nobody is ever going to punish you? They're not really crimes then, are they? He also loves bombing elementary schools. In one 2014 attack, he killed 25 small children with a single bomb.

When interviewed by the BBC, Bashar al-Assad denies his regime has ever deployed barrel bombs, saying it's a childish story that keeps repeating in the west. If someone who is against his people and against regional powers and the great powers in the west, how did they survive? If you kill the Syrian people, do they support you

or do they turn against you? As long as you have the public support, it means you are defending the people. If you kill the people, they turn against you. It's common sense. You can watch people drop barrels out of Syrian Air Force planes on the buildings.

I don't even know. He's bombing hospitals because they're treating people who aren't for him? That's his logic? Yeah, because they're in rebel-controlled chunks of the city.

So they kill them all? Yeah, a big part of it is just completely destroying any kind of resistance to the regime. That's the kind of war he's waging. You know, I was not against when the US went and bombed what they thought were his

chemical weapon factories. Everyone was so offended by it, being like, we're going to war. I was like, no, we're fucking doing something. Fuck this guy. It's one of those things. I'm against it because it was completely useless and accomplished nothing. I'm not against

attacking the Syrian regime and trying to destroy their chemical weapons stockpiles. But if you're talking about the Trump administration's cruise missile attack, it just didn't fucking do anything. I like that it was something to be like, we fucking see you, bro. Yeah, at least

it's not nothing. So I'll give it that. It's better than nothing, but I will say it didn't accomplish anything other than maybe scaring him a little bit, but I don't even know how much it scared him.

Yeah, because the next day he fucking released that photo of himself walking through with a briefcase, which is like, motherfucker, why are you even carrying a briefcase? What are you keeping that briefcase for, Shar? You fucking asshole.

You fucking bishu, you baby, you got nothing going on. You know who's not an asshole walking with a briefcase through the ruins of his destroyed airfield? The advertisers who support this show. Nice. Yes, that's

the behind the bastards guarantee. None of our advertisers are Bashar al-Assad and watch the fucking next ad that gets randomly slaughtered in. Yeah, it's gonna be like megaphone being like, yeah. Damascus airport, now open for business again. See the wonderful beaches. Jesus Christ.

I would love to see Damascus if there was a way to do it without putting well, no, I mean, it's pretty safe for travelers. It's just you'd be putting money into the regime and I don't want to do that. But Damascus is a city I've always wanted to see.

Oldest city in the world. Yeah, it's incredible. My Arabic teacher was a Syrian and he was from Aleppo and this was back in 2006. I just remember how much he would talk about how beautiful his city was and how proud he was of his country

about how we created the alphabet. That's a real thing that the Syrians have is like a claim of fame. Fucking made math, yeah. Horrible tragedy, what's happened. Not a horrible tragedy are products and services. Was that a good ad break, Sophie?

Did we do it right? No. Well, it's done. Products! During the summer of 2020 some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what?

They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season we'll take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse

was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today

is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman.

Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize

that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev,

is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy

story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back.

We're back after what I have to assume is the best ad break anyone has ever done. It's going to be like, do you like regimes? You're going to love Bashar al-Assad. And you're like, wait, what? Just literally an ad for Bashar al-Assad.

He's like, hey guys, I get a lot of heat, but what you don't know is I'm actually quite self-deprecating and a real fun guy, and people love my giggle. He's hosting a new podcast about Phil Collins. That would be so wild.

I love Phil Collins, and my first guests are Brad and Angelina. Check it out on Diazodcast. Diazodcast. I hate to say it, but Diazodcast is a solid name. Should we make that podcast?

No, under no circumstances. Should we make that podcast? Cool, cool, cool. That's not okay. Yeah, let's not make that podcast. So yeah, you can watch dozens of videos of Assad's regime

dropping barrel bombs if you want to see that yourself for some reason. At least 181,557 civilians have been killed in battle by the Syrian regime, which is 95.7% of the total combat death toll in the Syrian Civil War.

These are just confirmed dead. With total expected fatalities over half a million, the real number is much likely higher. The regime has killed at least 18,456 children. 93.6% of the children who are known to have died in the Syrian Civil War.

Now, that number leaves out 128,000 people who have been missing, in many cases for years, inside the secret prisons run by the Bashar al-Assad government. According to the New York Times, quote, government memos smuggled out of the country

show that officials who reported directly to Mr. al-Assad ordered the crackdowns on civilians in lieu of atrocities. They ordered harsh treatment of specific detainees and complained of increasing detainee deaths as corpses piled up and decomposed. One government memo urged personnel to complete paperwork

for officials from future prosecution. Detainees are regularly beaten, hung by their wrists, beaten while crammed inside tires, shocked with electricity, and sexually assaulted. More baroque forms of torture include forcing detainees to act like animals, beat or kill one another, and dousing them with fuel and burning them.

It's possible that more than 100,000 people have died that way. Oh, God. Yeah. Which is, for reference, in Libya since 2011,

if you include all of the deaths in the fighting to overthrow Qaddafi and all of the deaths in the violence since Qaddafi's overthrow, 2011-2019, 50,000 people have died from the violence in Libya. Bashar al-Assad has tortured twice that many people to death, not counting the barrel bombs,

not counting the chemical weapons, not counting gunfire, not counting mortars, not counting rockets, not counting Russian airplanes, not torturing people to death, twice as many people as have died in Libya since 2011 fighting. God bless all damn people.

Yeah. Because fighting for what you believe in in the Middle East is suicide. Yeah, it's always, for the most part, not going to go the way you would like. Has not in a while.

Now, after all of this horrifying brutality, all these senseless deaths, you're wondering, Anna, how has this war been for Bashar and his lovely wife, Osma? Well, your face, you do nothing. I know she has skin cancer.

Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, cancer, get your boys. Yeah. This, these are the people to happen to. But they'll probably both live to 103. But I know you're

curious as to what their daily life has been. Yeah. The good news is that thousands of their emails were leaked to the Guardian. So we actually have a pretty good idea of what they got up to in between all the barrel bombs and such. First off. Wait, so how did their emails get leaked? I don't know.

It's just something that happens. They confirmed it. The Guardian confirmed it with a number of different people, including recipients of the emails that they were legitimate and stuff. You know, it's one of those things, how did they, you know, shitloads of people's emails get leaked out these days. It's just the,

how, what happens. Got the hackers out there. Them hackers. Now, first off, you're going to guess what the Assad's favorite TV show has been during the Civil War? Oh no, like what, like friends on Netflix? America's Got Talent.

Oh my God. Yeah. They are such trash. Basic bitches. I feel comfortable saying that. Also big fans of the Harry Potter movies. There was some worry at one point that they wouldn't be able to get their hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 because of the war, but they did

get a copy. So. I'm actually not surprised by that because I bet Bashar's is a lot of himself in like Voldemort. He's probably like, you know, this guy makes a lot of good points. This guy's making a lot of, he's saying all the right things. He's like, I don't get why everyone's been so far

and he's death eaters. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck, Bashar. Yeah. Here's the Guardian quote. In one email, Al-Assad laughs at Democratic reforms. When his wife tells him she'll come home early one day, he quips, this is the best reform any country

can have that you told me where you will be. We are going to adopt it instead of the rubbish laws of parties, elections, media. Isn't that funny? How the fuck? You don't like his dictator? His humor is funny. Women, am I right? It's like, get the fuck out of here.

You're killing people. Al-Assad joked with Haldil Al-Ali, one of his media consultants, while Arab League monitors were in Syria seeking to bring it into the carnage. Al-Assad ridiculed the mission, sending Al-Ali a YouTube parody of the violence that uses children's toys.

Check out this video, he wrote. She responded with, ha ha ha ha ha, OMG, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. What? This bitch. Al-Assad fucking looking up YouTube videos while his forces are

bombing hospitals? Yeah. The only vague suggestion one gets that Bashar might have something that approaches a conscience comes from an email he sent on February 5th, 2012, on the day after his artillery had killed 400 civilians in the city of Homs, pulping flesh

and bone and concrete into a powdered slurry of broken lives. He sent his wife an iTunes download of a country song by Blake Shelton. He wrote out some of the lyrics in the email. I've been a walkin' heartache. I've made a mess of me. The person that I've been lately

ain't who I wanna be. Are you? I am fucking serious. If that is not a reason to fucking blow his brains out. I know. Look, what are you even talking about? There's nothing relatable about you, fool.

Nothing. And fucking Blake Shelton, I'd say listen to Chris Christofferson, but Chris Christofferson's music would destroy itself before it let itself into a dictatorship. Honestly, I'm actually not surprised because he probably agrees with Blake Shelton's

skittles are for gay people tweets or something that he had. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Fucking Blake Shelton. You should be ashamed too. Blake Shelton, you're a part of the problem. You're a part of the problem. I would be so bummed out

if it turned out a dictator was a fan of any of my work. That would be such a fucking bummer. Oh my god. Oh my god. Yeah, I'd be bummed out if I was JK Rowling to know that they were watching movies based off my books, even though

you didn't do anything wrong there, but still, bummer. Do you imagine being the producers of America's Got Talent Oh no, they've been playing to the Assad demographic for years. That's a critical part of America's Got Talent.

Do you think he's ever tried to make a serious Got Talent? I bet that's coming once the war ends. And everyone's performing at gunpoint. Or it's just him trying out his hobbies. Him doing a tight five. Guess who wins? Bashar, every single time.

Every year. It's you again, Bashar. He's the judge. He's the talent. And it's him versus the memory of his dead brother. Yeah. He just looks like he can win because he's dead.

Oh, looks who's better at computers now, Basil. They're like, oh boy. What a sad, sad, sad experience. In July of 2011, when tens of thousands of Syrians were taking to the streets to protest the hopelessness of life under the rule of the Assad's and the brutality of the state security apparatus,

Osma al-Assad ordered, through her cousin, bespoke jewelry from a small jeweler in Paris. She ordered four necklaces, quote, one turquoise with yellow gold diamonds and a small puff on the side, one full black onyx and amethyst in white gold diamonds.

She stated that she hoped it would be ready in September, but she said that she understood if it took longer, telling her cousin, I am absolutely clueless when it comes to find jewelry. She ended the letter by saying, kisses to you both and don't worry, we're well. See, someone needs to like, take it upon themselves

to fill that jewelry with like poison gas that comes out when they put them on. That'd be nice. I assume they have the jewelry by now, but if you can poison the Assad's jewelry, clearly she's gonna buy more.

I would say do it, yeah. Yeah, she's gonna buy, if you're a French jeweler just poison all your jewelry. That probably, we shouldn't be urging that. I assume other people buy French jewelry. Only jewelry that's going to the Assad regime. Only jewelry that's going to the Assad regime.

Another email sent in December of 2011 as the protest campaign broke out into a full-fledged civil war, Osma messaged her husband quote, if we are strong together, we will overcome this together. I love you. Shortly thereafter, she ordered a $3,000 vase from Haritz.

Cool, yeah. Look how much she shops while this is all going around. She shops a ton. And reading all this, I'm reminded of a quote I came across in a CNN article from former Bush administration officer, Flint Leverett. He said of Bashar al-Assad quote, I think who a man

marries says a good deal about him. I think he was actually correct. The fact that he's married to Marie Antoinette here really, really fits. I'm looking at photos of them together right now, and they kind of look like their siblings. They do a little bit, right?

Yeah, they have like the same face. Yeah, yeah, the same little ratty face. Now, you'll notice that we've made it through 19 or 20 pages of Bashar al-Assad history without talking about chemical weapons. There's a couple of good reasons for this. One of them is that for the last couple of years

a pernicious series of myths and lies has cropped up, helped along by incompetent, senile, or outright ethically compromised journalists claiming that the chemical weapons attacks by Bashar al-Assad on his own people were false flags. These rumors have spread on the far right because actual fascists love Bashar al-Assad

since he is a fascist and he's doing what they'd like to do to all of their political opponents. The same rumors have spread on the far left because it allows leftists to have an easy justification for why they don't think any action should be taken to stop Bashar from carrying out the greatest mass killing of the 21st century. There is no truth to this nonsense.

However, I wanted to make it super clear that even if Bashar had never ordered a single chemical weapon strike, he is still the single greatest monster of the 21st century. Even if he had never launched any Sarah, never dropped any chlorine, like that shit is fucking

icing on the piece of shit dictator cake. Sophie is putting two fingers in front of the camera, which means that this is clearly a great time for an ad break. Nothing gets advertisers excited like talking about chemical weapons attacks.

Now she's flipping me over. And I don't understand why. Anna, you look very uncomfortable. You know, I will not get involved in your guys' business. You don't want to get involved with mommy and daddy fighting. I have no comment on what just happened.

No comment on what just happened. Well, what's about to happen is products and services. I'm happier about the services and the products. Are we on break? I mean, no. We don't have any products yet.

The voice that I say. Are you ready for us to be on break, Anna? Are you bored? No, but I was going to tell you something during our break. Oh, okay. Well, products! During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected

that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, from the Fox News series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes,

you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story

is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. He's got a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then,

for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and there's no science in CSI.

How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on Trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space.

And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down.

It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit and down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left

defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

and Apple Podcasts. We're back! And the thing that Anna was going to tell me is that Asma Al-Assad does have cancer now. She has breast cancer. So sometimes, cancer gets it right. Yeah, it's fascinating.

It's kind of funny that we said that and then all of a sudden she got cancer. I hope it spreads to her husband. I'm sure it's aggressive karma because apparently I was just looking to get out of there and she said no. And then she came out against the airstrikes,

being so irresponsible for you guys to strike our chemical weapon factories. It's like, what? Dude, lady. Fuck off. I have an idea. Suck a dick, dude. It's one of those things where I did look into it

to make sure she had so many opportunities to get the fuck out. And in fact, there's even suggestions for going more against the regime they actually tried to flee the country. But she still stood by her man, so to speak. At no point where she was like,

Bashar, maybe we shouldn't be mass murdering people. Maybe we could just take our ill-gotten money and go live in France or something. They could have worked that deal out. Right, and also I just saw a thing, part of the emails that leaked that she was saying that she's the real dictator.

Yeah, she's joked about that a number of times. What the fuck, dude? You're such a bitch. She's a monster. You can't trust beautiful people in power. No, no, no, no. It's always bad. It's always bad.

Yeah. They're just too damn sexy, which is why I did not support Barack Obama's election. No. But it did worry me how good-looking he was. Thankfully, now that we have an ugly man as president, everything's on the up and up.

Yeah. It was the same problem with George W. Bush, too much raw sexual power. I know, I know. We all did, we all did. Everyone at the press pool was just tweaking their nipples during his briefings. It was a problem.

Now, the deadliest of Bashar's chemical weapons attacks occurred in 2013 when he launched a barrage of rockets containing sarin nerve gas on Gouda, a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus. 1,400 people were killed. The UN confirmed overwhelming

and indisputable evidence of sarin used at the massacre. Gary Quinlan, the Australian UN ambassador and president of the UN Security Council, said in the report on the attack, quote, confirms in our view that there is no remaining doubt it was the regime that used chemical weapons. Mm-hmm.

A more recent 2017 chemical weapon attack on Khan Shakun killed 86 people. Doctors Without Borders independently confirmed the use of chemical weapons in this attack. This attack prompted the Trump administration to fire cruise missiles at a mostly empty air base. Uh, like,

there's a lot, like, you can go in a rabbit hole and read a bunch of people putting out like, oh, look at this detail. This picture means that these attacks were fake or that there wasn't a chemical weapon or that it was the rebels that did it. It's the same if you have spent a lot of time looking at 9-11 conspiracies.

It's the same bullshit. Journalists like Seymour Hirsch have gotten caught up in it because in his case, he's fucking old and doesn't know anything about chemical weapons and, uh, is one of those people who is reflexively going to be like, whatever America says isn't the truth.

It's like, fucking, I've seen the US commit war crimes. I've reported on them, like, fuck everything. Yeah. But fuck pretending these chemical attacks aren't real. There's been like 330 documented chemical weapons attacks. 80% of them have been the Syrian regime.

There have been a couple by, like, ISIS and whatnot who have, like, made, like, chlorine gas bombs and shit. But it is very well documented. You can do, like, go to the Bellingcat articles documenting some of the more recent attacks where they've dropped gas canisters through roofs and, like, go through every picture of it

and look at the documentation and trace back the research for yourself if you really fucking want to. But doctors without borders and the fucking UN observers who have tested, like, the fucking soil and people's bodies and done thousands of hours

of research into this are all on the same page. And it's that the Assad regime has repeatedly deployed chemical weapons against its people. Fuck. I get angry about this. It's very fucked up. It shows how weak they really are.

Yeah, yeah. And this is, I think, one of the reasons there's a conspiracy around this is because a lot of people understand why Bashar al-Assad would deploy chemical weapons on his own people and risk foreign intervention. There's this idea that, like, oh, it's just so risky. Why would he do it?

And I think the answer is that he took the measure of the United States during the Bush years. And for eight years, he balanced helping the U.S. with hindering it, and he watched our occupation of Iraq turn into a quagmire. And he came to a very clear and very accurate conclusion that the United States no longer had

the guts to intervene seriously in a situation where intervention might cost American lives. And he gambled on that gut feeling, and he won. As simple as that. It's like Hitler gambling on fucking annexing the Sudetenland.

It was a gamble. It could have fucked up. He had, by some accounts, more to lose than to win, but everybody else was a fucking coward, so he won. That's how it works with dictators. I know. You know, I have no problem with us.

I mean, I don't even know. Let's send in fucking... At this point, there's... Honeypotters and get... At this point, I mean, the Syrian regime and the Russian Air Force is pounding a province called Idlib, which has like 3 million people in it.

The vast, vast majority of whom are civilians. I support trying to enforce some sort of no-fly zone to stop those people from being massacred because the same fucking bombings, saturation bombing is happening there. But like, there's no good... In 2011, 2012, a good thing could have been worked out.

There's no possibility now. There's too many fucking people are dead. Like, everything's fucked now. We didn't do enough. Yeah. So, the other reason he deployed chemical weapons is a little bit canier. At the very start of the uprising

against his rule, Assad had claimed that the forces behind the rebels were not Syrians, but foreigners trying to undermine his country. Lesh, who's probably the Westerner who knows Bashar's mind best, says that once Assad was able to convince himself of this, any kind of violence was justified, especially since his forces didn't have the manpower

to fight street to street to take back the country. Quote, So they need to use the asymmetric methods like chemical weapons to brutalize them. There's a good Quartz article tracking out Assad's decision-making on this. It quotes a couple of Syrian dissidents who suggest that Assad was, quote,

invoking something akin to medieval and right of kings. Like his father, he always believed that he had the right to do whatever he wants to his own people, to kill them, torture them, disappear them. They are my own people and that's the sovereignty I have, explains the other. Assad, he says, sees himself as the father punishing his errant sons.

The father is allowed to do whatever when the sons make mistakes. He doesn't understand that there's a social contract between the Syrians and elected officials. Yeah. There is a social contract. Don't kill innocent people. Don't massacre women and children and old people

with poison from the sky or fire from the sky. Dude, anyone could have told you that. That's a hard lesson. Well, I mean, a lot of countries do that. It's not as obvious a lesson. Not that I'm defending them, but like,

we could stand to use that lesson too. Yeah, that's true. Whatever the truth of Assad's thinking, time has proven him right on the bet that the U.S. and the international community would never be willing to take a stand against him. No. In 2018, Ben Rhodes, President Obama's

deputy national security advisor and host of POTSafe America, uh, right, he's one of the hosts of that. I have no idea. Wrote an article for The Atlantic titled Inside the White House During the Syrian Red Line Crisis. He traces out how the Obama White House

went from shock and rage and an impulse to do something at the Syrian chemical weapons attacks to gradually conferring with other world leaders and backing down. There were a number of reasons for this. Fear of being drawn into a disaster like Iraq, fear of having the Republicans use intervention against them as they had in Libya,

concerns about Assad's chemical weapons winding up in the hands of terrorists. In the picture Ben paints, by the end of the decision-making process, the ideologues in the administration had been beaten down by realpolitik. They'd all been inspired by writings Obama had put out prior in his presidency,

arguing that the U.S. could have saved lives by genocide. But after weeks of debate over whether or not to enforce the Red Line in Syria, Ben and the President had this conversation. Quote, Maybe we never would have done Rwanda, Obama said. The comment was jarring.

Obama had written about how we should have intervened in Rwanda, and people like me had been deeply influenced by that in action. But he also frequently pointed out that the people urging intervention in Syria had been silent when millions of people were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also pointed out that in Congress.

You could have done things short of war, I said. Like what? Like jamming the radio signals they were using to incite people. He waved his hand at me dismissively. That's wishful thinking. You can't stop people from killing each other like that. He let the thought hang in the air. I'm just saying, maybe there's never a time

when the American people are going to support this kind of thing. In Libya, everything went right. We saved thousands of lives, we didn't have a single casualty, and we took out a dictator who killed hundreds of people. I saw what he had been doing, testing Congress, testing public opinion to see what the real maneuvering room was

for his office when it came to intervention in Syria. It was the same thing he'd done in situation room meetings on Syria, and in his mind, testing whether anything we did could make things better there, or whether it would turn out to be like Afghanistan and Iraq, if not worse. It wasn't just politics he was wrestling with.

It was something more fundamental about America, our willingness to take on another war, a war whose primary justification would be humanitarian, a war likely to end badly. People always say never again, he said, but they never want to do anything. You know,

there's a real darkness to all that, obviously, because politics is all dark, but the idea that we were so damaged by what happened with the Iraq war and the Bush administration

and Dick Cheney that now, like, any sort of step of, like, we're going to another country, it doesn't matter if we're helping or what we're doing, sending troops, no matter what, there's such a negative reaction to it that we can't do anything

to help these people because the American public loses their minds. Like, we can't see beyond what Dick Cheney and Bush did, and so now all these people are basically just going to die and we can't we're just, like, literally, like,

tiptoeing around being like, should we? Can we? It's actually very insane how, literally, I mean, it all goes back to fucking pieces shit-ass, the Bush dynasty and Dick Cheney and the fucking

devils they were have ruined anyone's chance of wanting to go into Syria and being like, wait, let's go stop this. And it's a lot of that playing on a bit of racism too, even among people on the left to where it's this idea of, like, well, but look at Iraq, and it's like, they're two different countries

in two completely different groups of people. They're not the same country. They're not the same place. And it's also not the same, like, why did Iraq go so badly? Well, you can kind of trace it back to the fact that the day after we conquered it, we fired the entire army and put half a million men out of work with their guns, and

they made an insurgency. Like, a lot of it, you can tie back to that. Like, it's number one, the fact that, like, nobody in America has a very nuanced understanding of these places or these struggles. And, like, one of the things I tried to do in this

episode is really trace out how the Civil War evolved out of protest into fighting, because one of the things I hear a lot when I argue with people who are on the left is, like, well, you know, the U.S. was funding the rebels the whole time. And it's like, no, dude, like, we eventually started

giving them some aid, and it was too little too late, and it was mostly shitty in small arms. And it was like, like, yeah, we funded some of the rebel groups, like, but the people started the Civil War by wanting to not

have a dictator murdered them. And they were active in the streets for months fighting and building connections between one another and building a revolution. Like, and it's fucking racist to say that the Civil War only happened because the U.S. came in

and gave them money. No, people are able to rise up against their dictators without us. They did it in Libya. We just helped them not get massacred by Gaddafi's planes. They've done it everywhere. That's it's normal for people to get upset and be like, no more of this shit. It has nothing to do with us. It's the thing

where, like, you know, the white helmets are just, like, American plants because they've received international funding. And it's like, any given person who has done that job is braver than anyone who has made that complaint will ever be. Like, you fucking cowards

can, like, accusing them of faking attacks when they're running out every day and pulling. I've seen people do that job pulling corpses from rubble. It's the worst fucking thing I can imagine. And fuck you for accusing them of being anything but heroes. Like, it's so

I get really heated when I talk about this. What type of person goes and does that, you know? It's like, it's not someone who's here. It's incredibly frustrating to be like, you don't know what these people do every day. You can't conceive of it. You don't know what they see every

day. Especially since most of you, I mean, I guess the only dead body you've seen is maybe at a funeral. You can't imagine what these people are going through. Like, you just can't. And I am so angry at everyone all the time because

of Syria. It's ugh. So, shout out to my Syrian homies. Sorry. Like, the real bastard at the end

of this episode is everybody. And I guess that's one of the things that is really telling to me. It's like you look at, Barack Obama is a man who I have intense disagreements with, but I believe has always wanted to do the right thing. But he's also a really, really smart guy

and a fundamentally scholar. And he thinks through everything too much. And Bashar al-Assad did not. He gambled. He's willing to gamble. Dictators usually are because it's the only way they can prosper.

And Barack Obama was not willing to gamble. And as a result, half a million Syrians died. That's what it comes down to. And you can say Obama was right or wrong. That's your opinion. But this is the reason, this is the same

basic logic that led Hitler to get as far as he did. Dictators being willing to do the reckless thing and gamble. And brave, or not brave, but conscientious, decent smart men not being willing to gamble and letting them get away with murder. Right.

Which is... Neville fucking Chamberlain. How do you even reconcile any of that? It's like, wow, he really didn't step up because he was fucking thinking it out. Like thinking of all

the ways it could go wrong and what would happen. And it's like you can't do anything. There's nothing, you know, there's nothing to say. No, it's incredibly tough. And like it's one of those things where I do, like I would say his failure to respond

adequately in Syria is the single worst thing that Obama did. But if I'm tracing it back which American I blame most for Syria, it's still going to be George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney. Like, you know, they're a team. They're a team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am one of those people that will push

back a little bit in giving too much credit to Cheney and not enough to Bush because I think he was a more active partner than he, a lot of people give him credit for, but fuck both of them. I mean, he was a fool, but he got to where he was somehow. Yeah. And I ironically having

a little bit more of that shoot from the hip gut attitude that Bush had might have been helpful in Syria if like their positions had been reversed. But if we'd never invaded Iraq. Yeah. If only we'd picked the right country to

invade and not fucked it up. I don't know. Like that's even dumb to say, like all of it's dumb, everything's fucked up. I hope you all enjoyed this episode of my upbeat and fun podcast. I know, it's another reason why I say, uh, currently because we're in such high tensions with Iran.

Uh, guess who's in bed with Iran? Syria, a psychopath. So don't go after Iran unless you want, you know, some ally heat from like Syria and Russia. It's not great. We're not in a great place. Let's not fuck with the evils, you know.

This is part of the thing where it's like, it makes it so hard with like picking a president as like you want to say, pick not a crazy person, but then we get the sanest man who's ever been president. I think that probably is Barack Obama. Right. And he's

sometimes too careful and people pay the price for it. And now we've got a fuck. I mean, it's certainly having a lunatic in charge is not the right thing because who knows what the fuck Trump's going to do. Right. Um, but maybe presidents are a bad idea. I don't know.

Should we have like a parliament like so European? Yeah, that'll work. I don't know. Maybe so European they don't have dinner to like 11 PM like so European. That'll fix our problems. Or we just make a dog president. That'd be funny.

No war. Couldn't be worse. Buddy, buddy, you're so great. You're such a good boy. Such a good president. Such a good president. The dog still has not appointed a Supreme Court judge or if the dog just makes everyone on the Supreme Court be

dogs. And then you just trained Supreme Court dog. He peed on the lawyer. I think that means the case is thrown out. Classic move by spot. Chief Justice spot.

Yeah. Really groundbreaking legal precedent. Yeah. Not in his kennel. You know what I mean? Literally groundbreaking because he dug a lot of holes in the yard of the court.

Well, did you enjoy this very fun episode of Behind the Bastards, Anna? Look honestly like, you know me. I love me episodes about Syria. Oh boy. A lot of this starting from how it started. We talked

about on our show a lot of the background I did not know which is very interesting. Of course the Angelina hanging out with them is probably the most shocking thing I've ever learned in my life. Yeah. And you know what? For a second I felt bad saying I hope Asma Al-Assad gets

cancer. But then it's like now that she has it. It's like, oh wait, no, that's just how karma works. Like if you're a horrible person, we might not be able to get to you. But here's praying that some sort of natural disease or cause comes for you because you don't seem to

care about human life. So why should we care about your human life? You're not, you, compared to the millions of innocents of babies, children, mothers, fathers, grandparents who've died who the fuck are you? You don't deserve shit.

Yeah that cancer diagnosis is the most uplifting thing about this episode. Yeah. Good for you honey. Have a good luck with that. Good for you cancer. Stupid bitch. You know, I'm the real dictator. It's like honey,

that's not funny. Millions of people are dead. Like fuck you. That's not the joke to make when your husband is literally a dictator. Like but I don't like these people. Trash ass bitch.

Anyway, you want to plug some plugables? Drop down into P-Zone. Podcast dictator here, Anna. I have a podcast, Ethnically Ambiguous, which Shereen Younes, check it out if you like news in the Middle East. We have an episode called

We Are Syria. It was right after the airstrikes happened that we kind of break down our feelings and what happened if you want to go check that out. And then of course all the other episodes. Currently we are talking about the Iran US tensions situation if you want to listen to that.

Yeah you can follow me on Twitter at AnnaHosniae and IEH. You know I'm constantly talking politics and other good stuff and you know The Bachelor because that's where my interests lie Middle Eastern politics and The Bachelor and something interesting I noticed recently

Robert does not follow me on Twitter so I will burn this guy's place to the ground. Alright, alright. I will correct that. I'm bad at social meds and I mostly just shitpost and argue with tankies about Syria. Podcast dictator.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I am a podcast viceroy? I've always wanted to be a viceroy. You could be general, podcast general. No, I want to be a viceroy. That seems like more fun. Less responsibility and more the

Parliament will consider it. We'll let you know what we decided on. Thank you. Well, podcast viceroy Robert Evans signing off. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at find this podcast on the web at

I have another podcast called it could happen here about everything that happened to Syria if it happened in America which actually part of why I made the show was just a backdoor way of trying to make people empathize with the horrible things happening in Syria. And also you can find

t-shirts on t-public some of them are ours, others are not you can buy whichever ones you would like. Sophie, do I have to say anything else? You love about 40% of us. I do love about 40% of you and I love 100%

of the poison room that's sitting behind Anna right now. Oh my gosh, Red. I love poison. We all, we're all big poison stands. All right. Listeners, chill out, enjoy some poison of your own and or don't

because that might be me inciting you to do horrible things. Don't do horrible things. Do good things or at least neutral things. But sometimes being neutral is, you know what the episode's done. It's over. Go do something else.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse were like a lot of guns.

But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian

trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know. Because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my

crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to CSI on Trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.