Pod Save the World - Who is winning the war in Ukraine?

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Tommy and Ben talk about reports that Ukraine launched a new offensive against Russian troop and ask the question, who is winning the war? They also cover the impending European energy crisis, the death of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, reports that Trump brags about having intelligence on the French President’s sex life, floods in Pakistan, new pentagon rules to prevent civilian casualties and more. Then Ben talks with Associated Press reporter Samya Kullab about the political crisis in Iraq. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. You're feeling pretty cocky about your Mets, New York Mets. It's a baseball team. I actually, I am. They look, they're not just like good. They have that extra thing where like they're kind of a scary team. Yeah.

Yeah, you're nasty. Yeah. Red Sox suck. We're in the last place. We have to get to the Dodgers. So I'm hoping that we get a National League Championship series here in L.A. Where I can go and be like the drunk Mets fan. Oh, that'd be really fun.

Yeah. Maybe you get a fight. Maybe, yeah. And then you look, either way, you don't have to talk about the Jets for another 12 days, I think. So that's always a good for you. The wheels have popped off that bus already. Usually it's not to like week three of the season, the wheels are already off. You know, there's a lot of like trouble in Patriots Camp Paradise because we lost some coaching staff and there's questions about who's calling plays and this and that.

I don't know. I can't really care about it until it starts. Yeah, I think your problem is the AFC is just super stacked. Sorry out of a non-football fan world those. Yeah. AFC quarterbacks. You know, Mac Jones is good, but like, you know, there's a lot ahead of them.

Okay, back to our regular and nerdy business here. We're going to start, Ben, with the question, who is winning the war in Ukraine? I think it's an important one, and one we'll try to answer, honestly. We'll also talk through some of the updates about what's happening on the ground. We'll talk about the impact on European energy supplies.

Some reports about what was in Trump's basement intelligence stash about French president, Emmanuel Macron. Stay tuned for those. A resignation at the Secret Service, floods in Pakistan, lower, a new set of Pentagon rules designed to prevent civilian casualties. The Iran deal, we're trying to figure out, based on other events in the world, how it's looking there,

feisty French pilots and why it's hard to be a weatherman in an autocracy, weatherman-like meteorologist, not like making things go boom. And then, Ben, some scary stuff happening right now in Iraq. You did our interview today. What are folks going to hear? Yeah, I talked to a great reporter, Samia Kulab, who's the Associated Press reporter in Baghdad. So I don't know if you guys saw yesterday, but the most prominent Shia cleric, McTad al-Sadr, who's obviously been big force in Iraqi politics over the years, announced his resignation, which was a bit of a gambit, given that his party won the most votes in the lost Iraqi election, which was many, many months ago and has not been able to form of government. His supporters who'd already been

kind of protesting in the green zone were activated. There were clashes, dozens of people were killed until Sotter essentially called off his supporters. So she walks us through what happened exactly, why it happened, what the nature of Iraq's political stalemate is, where things might go from here, and just kind of how ordinary Iraqis are thinking about all this, which is, as you imagine, they're pretty frustrated. I bet. I bet they're frustrated. I mean, man, Sotter, talk about any of the never, won't go away.

I interviewed Pat Ryan, the new congressman from New York, who was a army intent. officer in Iraq from like 04 to 07 and we kicked off the interview and we were just chatting to noi Favro before we actually started recording. I was like, you want to just do this on like intra-Shiah politics? Honestly, I'd love to. You're the only person who will talk to you about this stuff. Well, the truth is, and Samia tells me about this is like Satter, those of us old enough to remember, you know, he really fought the U.S. forces there. Yeah. And his, you know, his supporters were among the most lethal part of the insurgency for time now because he's anti-Iranian like he's against Iranian influence because he's about like the Iraqi Shia nationalism he kind of weird bedfell is

with the U.S. like we we kind of like is a strong word but Samia talks us through kind of how U.S. officials are in a strange place of sharing some interest with McTadal-Sutter which is a huge shift from you know a decade ago all right I'm sold in this interview that sounds fascinating then before we get to the rest of our news, we have a long way to go until the midterms, as you know. If you want to get involved, as you know, go to Votesaveamerica.com. We'll take care of you.

We'll get you volunteer opportunities. If you need help staying caffeinated during all that volunteer work or while you're doom scrolling, go to Krika.com slash coffee. We'll take care of you. Dark roast, medium roast, cold brew. The best part is that a portion of the proceeds

from every order. Go to register her an organization that's helping register women voters across the country and get them ready to vote. So check it out. Cricket.com slash coffee. Okay, let's go to Ukraine because it does look like Ukraine is about to start or is in the early stages of launching this counteroffensive against Russian troops in southern Ukraine that's been sort of hinted at for a while. There's been a lot of reporting about their desire to push Russian forces back before fall arrives and it becomes basically impossible to move heavy equipment across muddy fields.

And before Russian forces can fully dig in during the winter to the positions they're currently in. I heard a lot of military experts argue this will be a major challenge for the Ukrainian military because they're not really. really trained or equipped for this kind of fighting. It's mostly sort of defensive operations that they've worked on so far. And I guess a big question is whether these weeks of high Mars attacks, the U.S. long-range rocket systems that we gave the Ukrainians have sufficiently weakened Russian logistics and their ability to resupply their troops. But both sides are sort of in a propaganda war as well. I don't know if you saw this been. The Russians are saying they took out like almost all the high mars systems, a bunch of tanks and a bunch of troops. And then the Ukrainians,

I think they did an interview with the Washington Post where they said, aha, actually, we're making fake Haimar systems out of wood and just putting them in fields and making them waste of missiles. I hope that's true. So it's like hard to know what the truth is, but it does raise the question that I started with, like, who is winning this war? Because we should try to answer that question. So Ben, last night, you flagged this incredibly insightful take from a deep foreign policy thinker

that I think sort of kickstarted this conversation piece. Let's play that clip. By any actual reality-based measure, Vladimir Putin is not losing the war in Ukraine. He is winning the war in Ukraine. And Joe Biden looks at that and says, we won't stop until you proffer an unconditional surrender. This isn't bad policy. This is nuts.

It makes no sense. In fact, it only makes sense if the goal is to completely destroy the West in order to make way for Chinese global dominance. What would be the other explanation for this behavior? That ending is obviously what makes it a Tucker clip. Yeah, yeah. I've seen like thoughtful emoji. response to that one.

Completely. What other possible theory could have been. He's going along and like there's like there's some points that are worth debating. And then at the end it's like Joe Biden is intentionally trying to allow Chinese will dumb. It's just incredible. So I don't know. What do you think, Ben? I mean, maybe we just sort of make the case for and against.

Like how would you argue that Ukraine is is winning the war right now if you had to? Yeah. It's like, you know, Tucker in his clip that I'm sure will play on Russian propaganda, it is an interesting question. to raise at this point. I guess it depends on what you define the Russian war objectives as, and the case for Ukraine winning the war is that clearly the initial Russian war objective was to decapitate the Ukrainian government, kind of take, conquer Keev, and install one of their goons to run Ukraine and essentially eliminate Ukrainian sovereignty. And what's kind of weird is Russia's already lost that war in a way. Like they lost against that objective.

in those initial weeks and months, when they kind of gave up on Kiev and pull back to the east. And so I think the case for Ukraine, before we get into the Russian side of the things, is that they successfully defended Kiev, they successfully defended their sovereignty, their government is still standing,

they're being resupplied by the West, principally the United States. And you could also argue that Russia's losing geopolitically in some ways because NATO is stronger, Finland and Sweden, have joined. Yeah, yeah, good point. There's more presence in Eastern Europe and along Russia's border than before the war. And obviously, Russia is dealing with the sanctions, although I think you can argue sanctions either way. So that's the kind of macro case for Ukraine, although it doesn't

one thing I'd add is that I think Russia's had an estimated 80,000 casualties, which is just astounding. And that's killed and injured troops. That's an enormous number. And I saw Putin signed a decree that's going to, that would increase the size of the Russian military. some 137,000 troops sometime next year. So you could argue that's him playing the long game, or you could argue that the Russians are looking at, you know, sort of the status quo and thinking, we need some more folks to be able to fight.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, they clearly do, and they're reports of them really, you know, pushing to get in, they recruit a lot among, like, ethnic minorities in Russia or impoverished communities, but there have been even reports of them going to, like, prisons and stuff, right? Wagner group going to prison.

That's kind of what you do when you, You really need people but don't want to do a full conscription draft. We get like Syrians to come over. So the Russia winning argument. I mean, I think you could point to the fact that they've taken most of the Donbass and southern Ukraine. And, you know, if they were able to cement their positions in southern Ukraine and cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea, I think that would be an enormous strategic victory for Russia. Yeah, I think what's really interesting about this is before the war, we kind of talked about two scenarios, one where they tried to kind of take over their conquer the war. whole country. And another where they tried to create a land bridge to Crimea. People may remember

that term. Right. But essentially means that they would consolidate, control of the whole Dombas and then take over basically southern Ukraine along the coast to give them a bridge to Crimea. And if they went all the way around the south, right, through not just like Moribo, which they have already taken, but through Odessa, which they have not yet taken or even really attacked, they could cut Ukraine off from the sea and kind of, as we've seen with the food crisis, you know, control what kind of can go in and out of the Ukrainian economy, which would give them enormous leverage. So I think the kind of case for, you know, Russia doing better than, you know, Russia winning, I guess, although I hate even saying that. Yeah, it's a little reductive.

Yeah, it's a little reductive. But is it they may have failed against their maximal's objective, but if the objective is scale back to the kind of cut Ukraine off, you know, create a language to Crimea, they are holding that territory right now. And they're holding a big chunk of the Dombos, obviously Mario Bull. And if they can kind of incrementally consolidate that territory and at the same time run their play of weakening Western Resolve by squeezing energy supplies, creating a horrific winter for Europe in terms of the price of gas and inflation and people being cold, which could lead to diminish political support for Ukraine. And they've also kind of weathered sanctions that's taken a

hit, but it doesn't seem to in any way kind of cripple their economy. There's a case that after the initial defeat, that they actually recovered their footing in some ways, both militarily and with a political and economic strategy that could try to squeeze both Ukraine and the resolve of the West. And I do think that there was that outpouring of triumphalism in the early months, and that was great

that it marshaled support for Ukraine, but I think there was a bit of a premature declaration of victory. Yeah. Which, by the way, is not good for the Ukrainians either. I agree. I remember being on MSNBC, you know, where I do it. And I was on with someone who I won't name them, but this came up and he's like,

well, Russia's lost the war. Like Russia, it's over. they, you know, they can't win the, I was like, really, it doesn't, it's not over for the, you know, on the front line and eastern Ukraine, you know. And, and so I think that's where we have to be cautious that our triumphalism and our support for Ukraine doesn't overstate that they're not really still in a very dire circumstance. Yeah, and look, I mean, Ukraine is facing massive, potentially unsustainable casualties as well. I do think this, this European energy piece is the part that's really going to start to bite. The Tucker was focused on. The Tucker was focused on. And look,

you know, I want Ukraine to win resoundingly for the, to be over. I think wishcasting. There's a lot of wishcasting of the results we want on Twitter, and I think that's sort of what you and I respond to. But I mean, on this growing energy crisis in Europe, I mean, last week, Britain's energy regulator announced that gas and electricity bills will nearly double in October, literally like making heat and lighting your home on affordable for millions of people. That's the United Kingdom. The Bank of England thinks inflation is going to hit 13 percent in October. There's in the UK, there's other higher estimates. In France, they had to cap gas and electricity rates, which is going to cost the government $45 billion.

Germany is that to intervene in its energy markets. That's because, again, these European countries are totally reliant on natural gas from Russia. Oil is more fungible. You can make up for lost Russian supply with gas from other places. But in the long term, like, this is the war Putin is fighting. Is this natural gas war? And, you know, I'm just worried about politicians kind of squealing and hearing their constituents are saying these energy prices are too high.

Yeah, I think that this offensive by the Ukrainians is in part because of that. I do too. So I think that Zelensky realizes that come, you know, six months from now, he could be having European politicians trying to negotiate with Putin, being less willing to kind of poor arms in Ukraine, wanting to relax sanctions. And I think he wants to show progress and hopefully, you know, take back. the most vital piece of new territory that Russia has claimed is in the south there. And so I think that's fed into his timeline. And I think his argument is a good one to the European leaders in

the U.S., like, give me these weapons now. Yeah. You know, while there's still political will and before Putin's energy plays really bit into politics, you know. Yeah. And again, like a lot of people are united, a lot of countries and leaders are united behind Ukraine. Some are not. I mean, again, Yeah. Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the rest of OPEC are talking about cutting oil production, right? Higher gas prices helps Russia pay for the war. Yeah. They're doing this in the face of a global recession. This is such a middle finger to the United States and every other person that wants to see the Ukrainians win this war. It's just like it's unbelievable. I don't think it's getting talked about enough because we all kind of know Mohammed bin Salman's terrible. But the UAE is very much going along with us.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, you know, we talked a lot of about how it's, It's like a pretty big FU after the whole fist bump thing. But I think it also plays into another part of the Ukraine coverage that I think got overtort, which is, I don't know how many times you heard like that the world has rallied to Ukraine support. Right. It did not. The West did, you know, the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia, whatever. But like, you know, the Saudis are taking steps that help the Russians.

Like you said, anything that dries up the price of oil, like other countries are just fence sitting on this thing. India and China are both helping to backfill sanctions by buying more Russian oil. So this is a complicated picture, and we should just be level set about it. Yeah, and honest. Look, as long as we're terrifying ourselves about energy issues in the region, we should note that the UN sent a team to the Zeparizian nuclear plant on Monday. This is the plant that houses six of Ukraine's 15 functional nuclear reactors, and it's literally been stuck in the middle of a war zone for six months.

Russia, I think, occupies the area around the plant. The Ukrainian staff are working it. They're working nonstop. So the international community, and this is an interesting place where China has actually said something finally. I think the Chinese came out and said, hey, you guys need to do something to, like, reduce the risk of a Chernobyl-like accident. Hopefully, this UN team can work something out.

But I don't have a lot of confidence because, again, Russia views energy as a weapon in war. And this plant before the war was providing one-fifth of Ukraine's electricity. So I'm not sure why they would give that up in any way. Yeah, I think it probably had something to do with, you know, their approach to this planet's something to do with, like, trying to take that electricity offline. But the reality is like you need that team in there to just figure out, okay, are there vulnerabilities, are there, are there, you know, potential leaks that, you know, could cause a risk. But then they have to kind of work out a plan for how they're going to kind of staff this

and secure this plan going forward. right because it sounded like the Ukrainian staff was on other reports are being tortured and you know it did not seem like how you'd want a nuclear plant to be you know and so I hope that part of what comes out of this is not just like a one-off visit but some kind of game plan here because you know the last thing you need is a nuclear leak yeah in all town yeah sounds right last thing on Russia right as we're walking in we learned that Mikhail Gorbachev the last president of the Soviet Union died in Moscow. Speaking of Chernobyl.

Yeah. So rest in peace. I don't know. It is like an astonishing journey from Gorbachev to Putin. You know, like you had this guy. I mean, the quick piece I'd say about Mikhail Gorbachev is it like by choosing to peacefully end the Cold War without doing, I mean, I think Putin proves just how miraculous Gorbachev was, right?

Because if a Putin-like figure had been sitting in that job in the late 80s, they would have tried to crush a dissent in other Soviet republics in Eastern Europe and potentially thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people could have died. Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to open up the Soviet Union and to peacefully allow the Iron Curtain to fall and Soviet republics to be independent was a very historical anomaly. And I think we in the U.S., particularly on the right, kind of make this mistake of mythologizing know, Ronald Reagan. Fetishizing Reagan.

Yeah, Ronald Reagan gave a speech and said, tear it on this wall and up the defense budget. And everybody came out with their hands up. Well, you know what? If Putin had been president of the Soviet Union at that time, that wouldn't have happened, you know? And it's just very rare in human history that someone is governing a collapsing empire

and chooses to just let it collapse. So for that reason, whatever you think about Mikhail Gorbachev, like I think he should go down as an absolutely historic figure who probably saved untold lives, you know? That's a really good point. Switching gears here, a quick story about the Mar-Lago raid. We've, I think, covered in some detail all the highly classified stuff that was there,

but then if there's anything new out of the affidavit you want to touch on, please do. I'd fun nerding out on all the absurd acronyms on Monday on PSA. I hadn't said or Khan in a long time. Yeah, yeah. Or like no foreign or anything. But anyway, here's the new angle. We know that there was a folder recovered by the FBI marked, quote, info re-re president of France.

Rolling Stone reported that for years, Trump has been bragging that he knew some sort of illicit sexual details about the love life of French president and Emmanuel Macron and had learned about it through intelligence. So again, the former president of the United States is sitting around his little golf club talking to his creepy golf buddies who are not in government, never were necessarily, about the French president's sex life and telling them that this is derived from intelligence collection while his basement is filled with these documents. It's tempting to laugh at the absurdity. I may have. Yeah. But also like, I don't know, imagine your Macron and his wife, knowing the shit is out there. I'm sure the French press is going nuts on this story.

I'm sure the Biden team now has to like mop up this mess and deal with some really pissed off French allies. So it's a real problem. Yeah, I guess the problem, the thing we haven't talked enough about, you know, because we've kind of talked about scenarios where, you know, a foreign adversary literally, you know, acquired these documents and endangered sources and methods. or where Trump was like selling it or whatever. But what we didn't focus on enough is two pieces, just what the international fallout is already, like without even, you know, knowing the reason for why he took these documents

and what they were. And there are two things that jumped out to me. One is the French thing. You know, as you probably talked about, like, the human source. Yeah, the H-C-S. There's information derived from human intelligence. How would you like to be a human source

for the U.S. intelligence community? anywhere in the world right now because you're thinking like you know people it can sound like kind of blobby and scoldish when people are like we need to protect sources and methods but that's not just about like whether or not someone's going to figure out who it sources and kill them it's whether about in the future will people trust the United States to like give us information and if you think that the information that you might have fed into is like sitting in a basement of morilago you probably feel less confident being a U.S. human intelligence service. Yeah, probably do.

So that's one fallout that's already happening, right? Like every human source out there is thinking like, wait a second, what was in Marlago and am I compromised? But then the Macron stuff is like, you know, we went, you know, you were leaving right around the, you know, the Snowden stuff happened. We, when it came out that the U.S. was collecting intelligence on, you know, Angela Merkel and other European leaders, it was like the biggest crisis in our foreign relations that happened in the Obama administration. I mean, in terms of just like having to repair allied relationships and send teams over and reassure people. And we had to make these reforms to U.S. intelligence. So we could say we're not collecting intelligence on the leaders of these allies.

She must have been so pissed. She was super pissed. And they were friends. She's like friends with Obama. Friends with Obama. Like Obama didn't even know. They worked together super well. Yeah.

And Obama didn't even know that, you know, because like what people don't realize is we just kind of pick all this stuff up. And that doesn't mean Barack Obama's saying they're reading. Yeah, yeah. Right. But like the point is, though, that one story like this, right, every, not just Macron, I mean, every European leader or foreign leader for that matter, doesn't be European. I just point to that because those are the allies, has to be sitting there thinking, like,

well, wait a second, like, is Trump walking around with like whatever the U.S. intelligence community had on me? And can we trust these people? And this is what we don't like about the Americans. And so, yes, you know, right in front of you, there's a statement. huge problem with the French, who were pretty central. I mean, we were just talking about Ukraine, like, there's not a more important country to the Ukraine policy of the United States than France. There's just not, you know, France, Germany, the UK. And to basically have like the president

of France sitting there thinking, like, did some, some, you know, semi-fascist, is that what it is? Sure. Biden called them, yeah. To, you know, take this secret information about me. It's already, I'm sure caused problems for U.S. foreign policy. I'm sure it has too. Also, there was another big report saying another foreign national managed to gain access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, some 33-year-old woman, strolled into the country club, said she was a member of the Rothschild family. And everyone was like, oh, open your checkbook, come hang with us, come play golf with Lindsey Graham, come, like, take a photo with Trump. So, I mean, it seems like this woman might be a Russian spy, but like reason number 10 million

why you probably shouldn't keep classified documents at your country club. Yeah, I mean, and this isn't even exactly like the Americans, like showing up and being like, I'm a Rothschild. I mean, it should be really easy to Google, like one of those famous families in history. Yeah, I mean, there are people, I assure you there are people with better tradecraft than that who are trying to get into Marlago. You really do wonder, you know what, this could be a good television show. Like the Rothschilds? No, well, that too, but like the foreign intelligence efforts at the, you know, like a fictional Mar-a-Lago. We do it as a VEP.

Chinese and Russian spies. Yeah, yeah. And they're just hilariously stupid, bumping into each other. Like, get out of my way, man. But can you imagine in the last five years how much foreign intelligence penetration there's been to Marlago? I can't even fathom how much. It's constant.

You know, like, speaking of, like, Secret Service and the folks who sort of ostensibly would vet the people coming in out of Marlago or the White House, I saw that Tony Ornado, who's the assistant director of the United States Secret Service, left the agency on Monday. Remember that former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6th committee in that primetime hearing that Ornato told her Trump was demanding to be driven to the Capitol in the day of the insurrection, that he lunged at the steering wheel and maybe choked out an agent, but like lurid scene, right? So according to a piece by Ken Clippenstein and the Intercept, the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General has been trying to line up an interview with Tony Ornato for months. He was pushing them off being like, I got a vacation coming up, whatever. presumably about like the insurrection and then all the texts they got magically deleted by the Secret Service because they were I don't know upgrading their software or some ridiculous lie. Ornado had

an interview scheduled for August 31st but quit just two days before it so now they won't be able to compel his testimony interesting timing Ben. Yeah I noticed Tony Ornato saying that he you know was always planning to retire this time. Sure yeah. Tony Ornato does not strike me as a good faith actor. And you will call, like, after the Cassie Hedchinson testimony, there were these kind of background quotes from, like, oh, you know, this is BS and Trump didn't choke this person in the car. But that never led to Tony Ornado testifying, Tony Ornado meeting with the January 6th committee. That's the one thing I'm not sure about. He might have met with that committee, but not the inspector. I was, like, confused by the way they talked about this. I don't know.

We never really saw, let me just say, we never saw a kind of public on the record. statement from Tony Donato disavowing what a bunch of background people said in trash and Cassettes. I think it's worth reprising that this guy was the career Secret Service guy, but he was the White House deputy chief of staff, which is insane. That is like the Secret Service, like when you meet these agents, they're like great people to a person. The sacrifice is incredibly honorable, like literally putting your life on the line.

The institution has massive problems. Yeah. And massive, massive problems they need to work on. It is honestly shocking to let someone. leave the agency, become a deputy chief of staff, which is a political job. This isn't like someone at the Pentagon going to the NSC and getting detailed back. Like, it's a very political job. That should never have happened.

Yeah. It's shocking. I mean, it makes you, it, what worries me, you know, and this connects to the DHS and the deleted text, it feels like there might have been a significant like magaification of the secret service, right? that like Trump kind of likes having guys around him with guns. They, they do kind of work, you know, part of the problem in Secret Service is like they're under DHS, but it kind of their own thing, which led to, you know, some problems, right? Like we had prostitution scandals and just kind of bad behavior scandals. But like the sense of them as this kind of freestanding entity that could do what it wanted to do if they had a guy in the White House who was a deputy chief of staff.

Like, they must have felt like, particularly because people should know that secret service is sprawling and it's not all just presidential detail. There's secret service agents doing all kinds of things. But that White House and Trump detail feels like it must have gotten pretty dark, you know. And this guy was right in the middle of this. He should never have been the White House deputy chief staff. That makes no sense. I don't think that's ever happened before. Shouldn't happen again.

That's an incredibly political job. and it's politicizing the Secret Service and it's breaking down, you know, guardrails that should be there for a reason. And that's why you have things like deleted text on January 6th, right? So this guy, by all body language, seems to have chosen, like, loyalty to the crime boss, Trump, over, you know, anything else.

Yeah, I mean, look, I just think where there's smoke, there's fire. And, like, all the texts from January 6th and the days around it got magically deleted, come on. Yeah. This guy was always planning to resign two days before his conversation with the Inspector General. Come on. Yeah. I don't buy it.

I'm curious what he goes on to do. Like, does he become head of security of Mar-a-Lago? Probably. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you got to pay off the right people. Okay. We have talked recently about the political situation in Pakistan and the back and forth between the current government and the former prime minister.

But Pakistan is now also dealing with a horrific massive floods that have killed at least 1,100 people and basically risk shutting down their entire economy. many, many more people are missing or injured. So Prime Minister Shabh Shahirif said this is the worst flooding in Pakistan's history, something like 15% of the population lives in districts that are currently flooded. I've seen estimates of 33 million people being affected. And by some estimates, well over a million homes have been destroyed or damaged. The IMF had just finalized an economic bailout for Pakistan in July to deal with economic problems

that happened before the flood. And now it's estimated that the flood response will cause. at least $10 billion probably way more. So it's a super dire situation for a country that's reeling from, you know, a pandemic, political dysfunction, food and energy prices spiking because of the war in Ukraine. And now this, Pakistan is clearly going to need some like acute short-term aid. But it's also notable then that Pakistani officials are directly tying these floods to climate change. And they're like, hey, Western countries, like you grew on the back of these emissions.

And now look what's happening to us. And by the way, this is going to get to everybody if we're not careful and cut emissions faster. So that's exactly where I was going to go because, I mean, in the short term, it's just an absolute human catastrophe. You hope that we can get assistance in. You also worry about Pakistan, like, this is of a scale on top of all their dysfunction of like just parts of the state fail, you know. But I think going forward, what's so terrifying about this is like, why wouldn't this happen again and again and again? you know and constantly if you read about climate forecasting like south asia that the subcontinent is in for some of the worst effects and the middle east you know in terms of

extreme weather events uninhabitable areas like mass migration and it just makes you just watching this it makes you think like well how is a country like pakistan going to deal with this if it just keeps happening again and again and again and are people just going to start to leave like and also to your point about them blaming the West, is there going to be a push as the effects of climate change build and, you know, the biggest effects are going to be felt, I think, in the global South, like, for kind of climate reparations beyond even just the kind of mitigation green climate fund stuff that's already on the table. I think so. Like, why, you know, if these countries are taking this scale of hit periodically, I think you might see blocks of countries coming together and be like, what the hell, guys? Like, you know, So I think this may be a bit of a foreshadowing of like what the next, you know, foreseeable future is like. Yeah. And it's also worth just pointing out that like Europe's in historic drought, you know. I mean, there's literally World War II battleships suddenly visible in the bottom of rivers that have been sunk there for decades. Oh, man.

In like the Danube and stuff, you can see like Nazi ships. Yeah, it's crazy. So, yeah, it's pretty dire stuff. And like, you know, it's like a constant like slow bore issue in the background that it's sometimes hard to cover. That's getting worse, though. You can see the data points of it getting worse. Stick in in in the region. Quick note about India, Pakistan's neighbor. So listeners might have seen some of the reports about allegations made by the former Twitter

head of security, a guy named Peter Mudge Zach. Oh, yeah, so a cool nickname like Mudge if you're a hacker, I think. So he talked about lax security and privacy standards at Twitter, filed a whistleblower report, I think with Congress or the SEC or like some agency. One nugget from that report and reporting Kameai, which is that the Indian government forced Twitter to put a government agent on their payroll. And this happened during major protests across India. And this agent would have had access to private user data. So I don't know, like, I guess this shouldn't surprise us, given conversations we've had with Ranaib and other activists and journalists in India about the threats they face and the ability for the government to target them at all times.

but man, what a terrible realization that all of your communications on Twitter were not actually private if you were one of these people. Even including like DMs and stuff. Yeah, I think it speaks to like it does seem like the Modi government has taken a particular interest in social media.

That's where they and a lot of their supporters and frankly trolls go after his opponents and create this cult of personality around Modi. And increasingly they've used it to try to target journalists, including trying to cue. accuse them of crimes for certain tweets. I think there's another issue that's interesting,

which is we've talked a fair amount on this show about like China and how, you know, businesses that want to be in China have to make odious compromises. And the NBA, obviously, it's the most prominent of that. You know, India is not China. It is not anywhere near as autocratic and there's not, you know, like a genocide taking place. So I'm not drawing an apples to Apple's comparison. India is a country, though, that is becoming more authoritarian, and it's manifesting itself in certain sectors, and yet it's this enormous market. Massive market. And if you're a tech company, if you're a streamer, whatever you are, you want into that market. And I think you're probably going to see, you know, some challenges around that. As with China, again, not apples to

Apples, India, don't at me that India is obviously more democratic than China, but it does feel like what Twitter is dealing with is they're probably not the only company that's being kind of squeezed in strange ways. Yeah, I bet you're right. Totally different issue, Ben, which is civilian casualties. Last week, the Department of Defense released a plan to overhaul the military's operations in an effort to prevent civilian casualties. These changes are designed to apply to counterterrorism efforts and drone strikes and some

the things we've talked about on the show a lot, as well as, you know, a broader war fighting efforts and tactics. So if we were to get in a big war with Russia, these, you know, plans to limit civilian casualties would apply there too. There's a 36-page report outlining the entire plan that's public. I think you could sort of summarize the gist as creating dedicated positions tasked with protecting civilians and then putting them in parts of the military that actually have real power. They also talk about more and better systemic training across DOD focused on protecting innocent people, creating systems that vet intelligence and targeting data better so you don't have confirmation bias, which is sort of like people seeing, you know, like, oh, finding all the

data points that suggests someone's a bad guy versus, you know, and not ignoring all the things that might counter that view. And then doing a better job of communicating with the families of victims when civilian casualties do happen. This plan comes about a year after that horrible drone strike in Kabul that killed a bunch of innocent people. There's been lots of reporting and all of news outlets about civilian casualties after two decades of war. I don't really know how to judge the efficacy of the proposal. I think maybe only time will tell. But it is good to see, I mean, there's also just been, I think, a total lack of accountability within DOD and other parts of the government. And, you know, so it's good to see them like lean into this, Lloyd Austin, release this

report. I guess the risk is the next president could unwind these changes like Trump did to Obama's changes. But curious, if you had any takeaways on just like the policy changes or the, I don't know, years we spent around these issues? No, I think it's, look, it's welcome. It's a very good step. You're right that some of these types of protections and protocols were in place at the end of the administration, Trump kind of, you know, you got to free up the generals and love everything. And the idea of kind of building in, you know, what's good about this approach is kind of embedding within the way that you do business, the concern for civilian casualties. Like, and when, you know, in the Obama years, I remember when that was done, when systems kind of work in at every juncture, a concern

about civilian casualties that did have an effect. I think what remains to be seen, to your point, is the accountability piece. And there are kind of like two examples that have jumped out that we talked about that I think will be where the rubber hits the road on this policy. You know, One was the drone strike where, you know, somehow you could get to an investigation of a strike that killed this entire family and decide that nobody did anything wrong. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Didn't make any sense, you know. And similarly, that investigation into the strike in Syria that the New York Times did, where they found that like a horrific number of civilians were killed in the strike that was meant to target ISIS fighters. And the kind of special forces unit that was driving that train seemed like that impunity.

And they just shortcutted all the rules that were in place to protect people. So it seems like these changes might get at that dynamic a little bit where like a unit in the field can't just kind of ram through like a massive airstrike without somebody asking some questions. But the accountability piece, you know, you got to show at some point that there's accountability. And so that's where you can't really do anything about the fact that if the next president's Trump, the nature of the military chain of command is you're, you are just changing protocols. And, you know, to legislate this would be, I mean, I don't think that's possible. Yeah, it seems unlikely. Speaking of military strike, so we are waiting to see if the U.S. and Iran will get back into the JCPOA or the Iran nuclear deal. You can tell that conservatives are starting to get a little worried because they're dusting off all their old talking points from like 2015.

It also looks like maybe hardline forces in Iran are getting worried that this might happen because they're doing what they kind of blow up talks. In mid-August, Iranian-backed militia groups attacked U.S. forces in Syria. The U.S. responded last week in what seemed like a pretty significant military response, like 8 F-14 and F-16s bombed a bunch of targets in Syria that I guess were linked to militia groups that get support from the IRGC. I don't know. But obviously, like, Iran's support for these groups is,

terrible and their ham-handed assassination attempts against John Bolton and others or why they're not our friends. But I wonder if there's a way to read this sort of increased activity as maybe a sign that the JCPOA is closer to getting done than we thought since, you know, you're seeing these hardline factions in Iran maybe start ramping up their malign shit knowing it might blow up the talks. I don't know. I'm looking for hope here. It does feel like the JCPOA is getting closer at hand that the reporting out of the talks is like they're literally exchanging text here. You know, and so that means that they're not just kind of proposals with people walking out of the room, and they're negotiating text of an agreement, right? And that's really good news. And you're right, like, you can tell they're getting close because all the same old people are coming out of the woodwork. Same argument. My favorite one was Bibi Nanyahu came out and said that

this is the fault of Lapid and Gantz because when he was there he stood up to Obama and they didn't send it to Biden what Bibi left out is that even though he stood up to Obama like we did the deal

like his argument and was like I actually went and I spoke to Congress and these guys didn't I'm like yeah you came and you went spoke to Congress and you know we did the deal anyway like I could say one quick

so I'd throw a little shade of Nanyahu like this would be my request to journalists are covering, you know, critiques for Israel from Israeli officials or anybody else. Like, just take some time to look at the number of senior Israeli military and intelligence officials who, when they were in government and had to do with politics, opposed the JCPOA. And then when they left, said actually getting out of it was a huge mistake. I think the guy who ran anti-Counter Iran intelligence for the Mossad has said it was a huge mistake pulling out. And it also

empowered hardline factions at a time when more moderate forces were ascended in something that everyone knew, but you weren't allowed to say on, you know, on Twitter and any arguments about the issue because, you know, right-wing commentators in the U.S. refused to believe that there can be shades of gray when it comes to Iranian politics. Yeah. Well, I think that, like, I actually don't think there's going to be the same level of battle royale about this if the J. Speer gets done, in part for the reason that you cite, which is that what do we have today that we didn't have in 2015? Well, we saw what happened when we pulled

out of the deal. The evidence, yeah. The evidence of here was life with the deal and here was life without. And it's so clearly preferable to be in the deal, right? But then even beyond that, we have, yeah, like all these Israeli security types on the record saying it was a catastrophe for the U.S. to pull out. And you don't have a Netanyahu. You don't have Republican Congress. The stars, all the same actors are going to light themselves on fire. And, you know, Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo will, like, fight each other to be, like, the biggest hawk. And I hope reporters, like, realize that this story is not starting from zero. Like, there's a record of a decade.

There are people who are right and there are people who are wrong. There are people who are clearly disingenuous. There are people who are habitual liars. There are people who have grifted off of this. And, you know, frankly, like, even the first time around, I think there was a lot of, as you pointing out like, like, how many stories do you read the quote, like, Mark Dubovitz, as if he's like an independent analyst and not like a paid operative. Golf funded.

Trying to destroy the GIFCPOA, you know, like, I hope people like don't repeat some of the same credulousness in the approach to some of these critics, you know. That would be nice. Two quick things before Ben's interview. So one, if you had a rocky flight recently from Geneva to Paris, we might know why. two Air France pilots reportedly were suspended for physically fighting in the cockpit during a flight right after it had taken off. This came on to a broader investigation into Air France operations.

These guys started beating the shit out of each other, I guess, around takeoff. But it didn't impact the rest of the trip so they landed safely. Just trying to imagine being on a flight and you just see one like, K-Oed pilot like getting dragged back, like the movie airplane. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we don't think this is anything new with Macron information. Probably not. Probably not, but, you know, causation correlation.

I will say that like every flying is so buttoned up post-9-11, you know, for understandable reasons, but like there was like a looser era of air travel, you know, where this is probably a little more common. Fights? Yeah, fights, people drinking too much. Like, did you see the movie Flight with Denzel Washington? No, absolutely, no. Coked out pilot trying to line a plane. But yeah. Didn't want to see that.

You know, if you were going to tell me that. if you were going to like give me four or five options of which nationality this might have taken place in the the idea that that French is not that surprising like somebody's honor was upset and yeah it went from there yeah well hopefully we'll learn more uh also ben apparently it's uh dangerous to be a meteorologist in hungry because uh there the countries two top weather officials were fired after inaccurate forecast led to the government postponing a fireworks display this is a very Trumpian. They predicted extreme weather. It turned out to be calm. This was some like national holiday about the founding of Hungary. Days later, these guys just got the boot. So I guess,

you know, Orban should have just drawn on the weather map kind of Trump style. It does feel like another barometer, to use a word, of like the creepiness of Orban. Late stage autocracy. Yeah, yeah. Like we're getting down to the weather. You know, we started, he started with the judges, then the media and now we're down to like the weathermen. It's crazy. I mean, look, sometimes you make a call. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes that weather app, you know. Listen, my weather app on my iPhone sucks.

Yeah. There's better ones. Even dark sky, like sometimes can be a little wrong. Yeah, look, they did their best. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, you'll hear Ben's interview with Samia Kulab about what's going on in Iraq. Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined by Samya Kulab, who is the AP Associated Press reporter in Baghdad, where there's obviously been a lot going on.

Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. So let's just kind of start. I think people may have seen a range of, you know, dramatic and even confusing images yesterday with protests in the green zone in Baghdad from the supporters of McDade al-Sadar, Shia cleric, you know, dramatic images of people facing live fire, also more joyful images, I guess, of people in swimming pools. What happened? How did this come about? Why were these protests? taking place and why were they, you know, a little bit more intense in what we've seen recently in Iraq? These protests were the product of a very long political crisis that stemmed from the federal elections in October 2021.

So it's been over 10 months now that Iraqi political parties, Shia parties primarily, have been engaged in a power struggle over who gets to form the next government. There have been various episodes in the last few months where it seemed like Al Suther's camp would have the upper hand. Then it went over to the Iran-friendly parties, may have the upper hand. Things came to a head in June when Al-Sother decided that he had enough. He was frustrated by the fact that even with his Kurdish and Sunni allies, he could not get enough lawmakers in the parliament to reach the quorum needed in order to move ahead with the political process to form the government.

So he, in one of many surprise moves to come, decided that he would withdraw his lawmakers from the parliament. And they did. They resigned. after that he grew increasingly frustrated when his rivals then proceeded to appoint their lawmakers in their place and make plans to form a government without him. And then we came to a point where in July his followers, tens of thousands of them stormed the green zone, occupied the parliament. After that, they basically came to the point of yesterday, as this has been going on for a while, they're still a stalemate. Souther suddenly decided that he would resign from politics. This sent a message, or rather his supporters interpreted this as him giving them a free hand to act as they pleased.

In the past, Sutter's power is derived in two ways. First, he is able to tell his supporters to go out on the streets, destabilize Baghdad, bring everything to a standstill, and at the same time control them and tell them to go home. With his resignation, that latter aspect was taken out. So suddenly, you have all of his supporters and novel, out on the streets, storming the government palace, and then no leader, no voice to then tell them, to restrain them, to restrain their aggressive impulses, which spawned from decades of

marginalization, disenfranchisement, and general impoverishment. So they stormed the government palace. This prompted the Iraqi forces to react. They saw that, this as a dangerous escalation. There were several attempts to contain the protesters. At this point, the protesters, Sutter supporters were not armed. Tear gas was fired. There was physical altercations with riot police, security forces, and there was at one point gunfire, which we have learned through our sources, killed at least 30 people and wounded a lot more. This prompted narration from Seder's armed supporters. He has a militia group that is aligned with him.

And also a lot of his supporters have guns. I mean, that's just a reality in Iraq. They, to avenge these deaths, then went into the green zone with arms and clashed with security forces. We could hear gunfire mortars throughout the night until the early hours of this morning. And there was quite a lot of panic,

quite a lot of concern that this would then escalate into protracted street violence. But then, Suther being Sutter, suddenly in a speech, declared or called on his supporters to stop. He said this was not the peaceful protest that he had envisioned. He didn't, he said no matter who is responsible for the violence. Essentially, this is wrong.

Withdraw. I want all of you to withdraw from the green zone. And within minutes, literally, that's exactly what they did. So what next? I mean, you've got, you've got Sotter, his party, his faction does the best in the election. As you said, for many months, can't form a government. he's kind of, you know, he's a Shia cleric who is not friendly with Iran. Some of the more Iranian-friendly Shia parties are obviously blocking him.

He can't get that majority with the Sunnis and Kurds. He resorts to these protests. Then he gets frustrated and announces this resignation, yet still has obviously this very intense following, and we still have this political stalemate. I guess to break it into pieces, first solder and then some of the other parties, do you have any sense of what his next? move is? Is he really retired from politics? Or is that just kind of a play that he's making in order to try to shake things up? What are you hearing about what his and his supporters

next move may be? That's the question on everyone's lips in Iraq at the moment. What will happen next? It's not the first time that Al Souther has resigned. But what comes next is unclear to everyone at this stage. I think the dust is still settling from what happened last night. However, what Al-Sahar has done today is basically shown the Iraqi political elite, his Iran-backed rivals and the rest of Iraq, the power that he wields over the Iraqi street. Because right in the moment when we all expected more chaos, violence, and bloodshed, he came in and completely reversed the situation on the ground. And that's very powerful. And so he is indirectly showing everyone what he's capable of. And it's a very dangerous message as well to his rivals of what could come next

if things don't go in a way that he, that he, that aligns with his interests. Yeah. And that's sort of the pattern. that he has adopted ever since the election. Every, there has always been a point where there is a certain escalation that has come totally out of the blue and surprised everyone. And every time the escalation is, you know, more serious. So the first was him resigning his lawmakers from Parliament.

And that took everyone by surprise. So there's a shock value in the decisions he, make and in that sense it's very theatrical. Second is he sends his his followers to the parliament and those were shocking images. Again, very theatrical of these young kids, these young unemployed kids who have historically been marginalized from the political process now sitting at the seat of the speaker in parliament. And then he told him to leave the building after a while. And then we saw actual bloodshed. And now suddenly everyone is gone.

So this is the power that he wields. Now, the seeds of the political crisis that took shape, basically, after the election, have not been resolved. And those are the questions that we are asking ourselves. Sutter has called for early elections. He's called for the disillusion of parliament. His rivals in the Iran back camp don't necessarily disagree with him on that point right now in terms of the early elections bit.

But they disagree over the mechanism at this stage. Seder was calling for the judiciary to dissolve the parliament. The judiciary has said that it doesn't have the constitutional right to do that. So it's a question of how will his rivals react? Will they hold a parliament session? They still technically have the majority of lawmakers in the parliament.

They haven't dissolved it. Will they hold a session? Will they try to press ahead with government formation? How can they appease someone like El Suther who has been very firm and has resolved that there is no place for Iran-backed parties in his government in the past? And now is saying, now we have to start from scratch with new elections. So those are very difficult questions. And that's why there's been a stalemate for 10.

months. Yeah. They can't survive. So there may be need to be either some new election to shake things up and reset the deck or, um, or the rest of the parties can just try to muscle their way through in this kind of caretaker governance that they have, right? Um, what is the, what is the, you know, what is the role of the U.S. here? Um, I mean, Iran obviously has its parties that its backing that are currently, you know, in the parliament, as you described. Um, What are you hearing from American officials about what their current focus is? On the background, and it's such a strange reversal of history. Yeah, Sadr was our enemy back in the day, and now he's against the Iranians.

Yeah, and that's exactly how it's been. One diplomat told me, American diplomat told me that they consider him. the lesser evil in all of this. And that's, that's his words. Yeah. The way they see the region often through the prism, prism of, of, you know, Iranian influence. I feel like that's a very, that's a very kind of,

that's something I've come across quite a lot from American officials in Iraq. And so in that sense, they, they do support his ideas for a majority government, for a government where Iran's influence is not as strong. Those are points that the Americans support. So in Suther, they see, you know, they do see eye to eye in certain ways. However, it should also be said that this is all happening at a time when the U.S. is sort of taken, or U.S. policy in Iraq at least has shifted a bit. it used to be very focused on, and it still is to a certain extent, on the presence of the coalition, on the anti-ISISC drive.

ISIS is still very much present. The coalition sort of is providing an advisory role to Iraqi forces in its continued fight against ISIS or ISIS elements. But at the same time, I see that the Americans are also shifting their policy priorities, Iraq. Less on the security side, more on the development side, especially in the environment, especially as climate change has had, you know, is starting to have a very dire, a very dire impact in Iraq, especially on the waterfront. So there isn't the kind, maybe the kind of involvement behind the scenes, as you would probably have had several years ago. That's not really happening. Yeah, yeah. Like I remember in, you know, 2015, the U.S. being intensively involved in breaking an impasse. But that's, was at the height of ISIS and the kind of the emergency circumstance.

One last question I wanted to ask you is, what about ordinary Iraqis? When you get out and you're just talking to Iraqis who've lived through, oh, my gosh, I mean, I, like if you were, you know, a 30-year-old in Iraq, the events that you've lived through just in your life, the violence and political twists and turns and occupation and competing foreign powers and and meanwhile your life, you know, is just constantly disrupted by these things? What is the mood out there when you talk to people that maybe aren't like deep into one faction or another,

but just one thing's to work better? I'm so glad you asked me that question because I don't feel like anyone is really asking that and I think that's very important because it, We need to understand that al-a-sadr's followers don't represent the majority of Iraq's views. In reality, his supporters stormed parliament. They were maybe in the tens of thousands. And there's over 40 million people who live in Iraq. And most of them are young.

And most of them, I mean, look at the election. Less than half the country voted. Less than half the eligible voters voted. And Al Souther may have won the election in terms of garnering the largest number of seats in the parliament. But when you break those numbers down, he actually won with less than one million votes, which is, and that's partially because he was very strategic

and how he played the new electoral law in a way that his rivals perhaps weren't. But what that tells you is there's, and now a vast part of Iraqi society that is very disillusioned with the whole political process. And these decisions over government formation are being made completely without their say and completely without their involvement.

And that's how they feel about it. A lot of Iraqis, while these clashes were going on, were very angry, were at home and very fearful of what would happen because they knew that it was completely, completely outside of their control. They see politics as a realm where certain elites fight for power and resources from the state budget. And that's why government formation is so important because it's basically about cutting the state pot and,

you know, you get this much and you get this much. Well, I want this much. Well, then, you know, we're going to have a stalemate for 10 months. That's what it is. And they know that. Iraqis know their country very, very well. And they are very, they are very, they're completely divorced from this process. And they have no choice but to watch.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I must just, I can't imagine how much it must just look like a bunch of power brokers in Baghdad, you know, horse trading with each other backed by different farm powers. It must be immensely frustrating. But thank you so much for shedding some light on this. people should follow your reporting. People should follow you on Twitter. We'll make a note of how they can do that.

And I really appreciate and hope we can keep in touch. Oh, me as well. Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure. Thank you, Ganda Samu Kulab for joining the show. Apologies to all French people. Yeah. They had a tough run on this show today.

They did. The pilots and the Macron thing. And I, yeah, I just feel like actually even like August, like, I love the French. I feel like. Yeah. Frankophile. Yeah, you're a Francophile. I mean, I, I, I,

So we apologize. Our bad. We'll get better leaders. And information already president of France is not something you want to see in the list of documents. Anywhere. Anywhere. So thanks to the French. No thanks to Tony Ornado for his service, I guess.

No, Tony. Tony. Enjoy. Maybe speak to the Inspector General. Yeah, call the IG and enjoy your private sector job. Thanks to the Mets and Jacob de Grom and Max Scherzer for the. their high quality pitching. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, fine, you can get that one. Moogie Betts? Oh, sorry about that. That's probably tough. Tough. Talk to you next week. Talk to you next week. POTSade the World is a Crooked Media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com

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