Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/5/25 Dave DeCamp on the Boat Strikes, Somalia and Trump’s Al Qaeda Friend

Episode Date: December 7, 2025

Scott brings Dave DeCamp back on the show to talk about the legality of the Venezuelan boat strikes, America’s aggressive air campaign in Somalia and Trump buddying up with the Al Qaeda faction that now runs Syria. Discussed on the show: news.antiwar.com “Report: Hegseth Ousted Head of US Southern Command Who Raised Concerns About Boat Strikes” (Antiwar.com) Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com and the host of Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp. Follow him on Twitter @decampdave Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app:  https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott’s work: Check out The Libertarian Institute:  https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott’s other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott’s books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.comor https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

now, end this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys, welcoming back to the show, the great Dave DeCamp. He is, of course, our news editor at anti-war.com, and he hosts

anti-war news, which reminds me I got to get a new radio show and call it anti-war radio again before somebody else steals the title of my radio show. Now that I'm not on KPFK anymore. Anyway, host of anti-war news every night with your morning headlines from anti-war.com, which you write up at news.com. So you go to the front page, you get everything.

You go to original, you get all our columns, but you go to news. Dot anti-war.com. You get everything Dave writes plus Jason Ditz and some Kyle Anzloon, too, although mostly we just linked to Kyle Anzloon and his great news stuff that he does for the Institute. That's how that works. But anyway, Dave, there's so much goal. going on. I don't know where to begin. It's a, that I'm going to consult my notes because I think I wrote my notes in order of

where I want to begin and what I want to talk about. Now, the problem with that is, I'm old and I can't see. Oh, yes. You had a story about the resignation of this Admiral Halsey back a few weeks ago. I believe, correct me from wrong about a week after they started. started doing the strikes on the boats. And the new story is that you say he was actually forced out. He did not resign in protest. He was forced out, but why over his protest?

Yeah, well, this is according, this is the new report now from the Wall Street Journal. So he, it was October, mid-October that he announced he was stepping down and Pete Higgseth put out the thing saying, oh, you know, praising him and everything. And at that time, there were reports that said he raised concerns about this boat, these boat strikes, this bombing campaign against these alleged drug boats. So I kind of, a lot of people, I think, assumed that he was, he was resigning because he was uncomfortable with the whole thing. But according to this report from the Wall Street Journal, he resigned because Hegeseth pushed him out, basically, essentially pressured him to. And just for people to understand, you know,

what position he was in, this is a four-star admiral one year into his command of U.S. Southern Command, which is usually a three-year post. For this guy, a career, you know, to cut his career short like that is very, very unusual. So, but that's what the reporting says now. And apparently, you know, they clashed over some other things. If you remember, I forgot all about this. They were talking about securing, you know, taking back the Panama Canal, you know, hinting at taking military action, even though it's completely unnecessary.

But apparently, Hegset asked him to draw up plans to do that. And he kind of hesitated a bit or didn't do it fast enough. Seth was mad at him about that. And then they started bombing these boats. And he, you know, had concerns both about the legality of it and the fact that he was not in total control because they had, I think, because they had Jay Sock involved and, you know, special operations. So he was kind of out of the loop a little bit.

And, you know, it was those things. And then Hegg Seth said, you know, all right, get out of here, basically. So he was complaining. Is that right? that they said that he was complaining that Joint Special Operations Command was doing these targeted raids in his area,

but not under his chain of command? Yeah, that's according to that report. He had a problem with that. He complained about that specifically, and they said, all right, well, then beat it if you don't like it. Yeah, and also the legality. The wording from the report was the murky legality about the whole thing.

And I think murky is an understatement here because I think it's pretty clear this whole thing is very illegal what they're doing. Well, let's talk about that in a second. I'm worried that maybe it is a little murky. But, now I forgot what I was going to ask you. Oh, is it certain that it's J-Soc and not just so calm,

but it's Navy SEAL, Team 6, like the top tier special operations forces, are the ones committing these strikes? We know that about the first strike That's the only one that we have Like a lot of details on now Because of this whole controversy over the fact That they bombed survivors

And that it was SEAL Team 6 and J-Soc The commander at the time Admiral Bradley was the head of J-Soc At the time And now they're in the middle of moving him to Socom Yeah he got moved up Yeah he's he's been moved up to Socom I think in October

but at the time and that strike he was J-Soc. Yeah, I'm not sure I think that's moved down but maybe that's just the rotation I don't know that that's necessarily a demotion to Socom but J-Socke is the top tier so, but anyway

I don't know I guess before we get to the war potentially on the boats and the legality of the boat's strikes. Now, I had read that they're invoking the authorization to use military force from after 2001, which was the same excuse that Obama used for all of his wars. They added the implied associated forces, which is actually not in the language of the AUMF at all. I

believe at one point, they attempted to amend the AUMF to add the phrase and associated forces, and that failed, and then they just went on pretending that that phrase was in there anyway, and then they go on to pretend that Associated Forces means anybody in the world that they want to kill and that they can sort of declare like these pseudo active war zones without actually declaring an active war zone, but treat people within these whatever zones, whatever they call them, it's all very ad hoc as enemy combatants and killed them. They call them terrorists, they call them combatants. they said that the two guys trying to climb back in the or hang on to the flotsam of the boat

I saw Tom Cotton anyway used the phrase that they were trying to get back into the fight and so I mean that's all very deliberate they phrase it like that so that they can treat them as enemies rather than as criminals in the same way that after September 11th they stopped indicting al-Qaeda guys with grand juries and started just targeting them and killing them and or you know hiring them to take over Syria but you know what I mean. So, in all your readings on this, though, are you seeing much debate about the legality?

Because I think some, here's my problem, Dave, is I see people say, and I agree with this, that this is illegal, that you can't just murder people. If these people are suspected criminals, then you just arrest them and give them a trial and it ain't a war zone, right? But when I see people argue that, I see them not even take into account

the other side of the argument. They just like declare that as fact, as though their opinion is the supreme law of how everyone should interpret this. And they're not acknowledging that, well, they are claiming the AUMF. And the AUMF is an endless general writ for George Bush or any of his successors

to do whatever they want and has been interpreted so broadly over the last 25 years. So, no, I could join the critics in ridiculing that position, but legally speaking, I haven't seen much of the argument back and forth. It seems to be people just kind of take one side of the other and ignore the other side of the argument. Does that make sense? Yeah, but I don't really know how they're using the AMF here. Because as far as I'm aware, the claim is that they're saying that they're

in an open conflict. This is what Trump has told Congress, that they're in an open conflict with cartels. And they claim that this is self-defense. Like, they're citing Article 2 of the Constitution and claiming that the U.S. is under attack by these drugboats, you know, which to me is just completely absurd. That's why I think it is very clearly illegal. And they're relying on an opinion from the Department of Justice that has remained classified. And I know they're calling them terrorist, you know, narco-terrorists, and they've declared these organizations as terrorist organizations, so they're probably leaning on the AUMF in some way, but this is, the claim is that this is self-defense. And you saw the White House say that, that they, you know, when they were

asked about the second strike, they said, oh, you know, these are narco-terrorists or whatever, and this is this, that was a self-defense strike. And this is a boat that they bombed off the coast of Venezuela. And so the whole argument is just, I think, completely absurd. I think you're muted there. Oh, dang it. I always do that. I'm sorry. I wish I had the thing in front of me that I was reading the other day that said that they were invoking the AUMF.

This is, well, let's see what this is. Sorry, I'm doing this live. Um Nah, sorry this is off topic Um Okay, maybe I just have that wrong that they're invoking it I'm sorry I read something about this yesterday I just don't know what the hell it is

The thing is that the DOJ like opinion is classified So there might have been some reporting that they use the AMF in there But as far as I'm aware, it's this like self-defense claim And that's why you see Trump say, oh, for every boat we bomb, we save 25,000 lives in the U.S. or whatever. And, you know, so they started targeting boats in the eastern Pacific, but they started this thing, like targeting these boats going from Venezuela to Trinidad, like, very close to the coast of Venezuela. And this is not like a route. Apparently, this is a transit route for cocaine that goes to, like, Europe or West Africa or potentially marijuana. sold in Trinidad and Tobago.

So this idea also that these boats are on their way to the U.S. is at least the ones, you know, that they're bombing near Venezuela is just, I mean, it's just absurd. They're just lying in, you know, a few different ways here. But that's why I'm going to go ahead. I was just going to say, I found a BBC article where they quote an expert saying that they're relying on it, but it is not really specific enough. Yeah, well, it's the rule of men anyway, but the, I mean, look, the only law that really applies to him is if the house is willing to impeach him, you know, like if they ordered him to stop and he kept going or something, but they're never going to do that anyway.

So, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, if this turns into anything like that. One of the things I saw, Dave, they said, this isn't a war crime. It's just a crime. It's just murder because it's not a war. This is totally outside of any legitimate type of a war. And so to even call it a war crime is, in a sense, begging the question or accepting their false premise, kind of, you know? Yeah.

No, I agree with that. And that's why the whole conversation has become about this, like, second strike when really Kelly Vlahos has a good piece about it in the American conservative today, when really the question should be about the whole thing. that they're doing here, this whole bombing campaign. But the unfortunate thing is that it seems like it has a lot of support. You know, not so much war with Venezuela or regime change, but when it comes to bomb these boats, like among, you know, MAGA types, they seem to be pretty on board with the whole thing. It depends, but yeah, too many.

Yeah. And it's the same thing that happens, you know, partisanship is the mind. killer it's just what do you prefer the democrats oh you whatever you know you prefer the foreign enemy and that's just the way people take it yeah and one thing you i see a lot too is like oh you know you didn't care when obama was doing double tap strikes in the middle east or whatever and you know yeah like obviously we cared but when you see some of these democrats these senators like chuck schumer talking about this it it does make me kind of roll my eyes it's like dude all the things that the U.S. military that they've done from Obama to Biden to Trump, you know, just this year,

the recent bombing campaign in Yemen was so brutal. There was a report of a double-tap strike and just massacred dozens of civilians bombing this fuel port. Nobody even like that in an eye about that. Yeah. How about the conservative constitutional Republicans invoking the lawlessness of the Democrats for their own standard of behavior, that anything that the Democrats do is permissible. that really right, huh? Yeah. What happened to all their criticism of Democrats abusing power? Never mind, that's stuff.

Yeah. All right. Well, I guess I screw that up because I certainly can't find whatever it was I was reading. I don't remember what it was I was reading. And when I Google the Venezuela thing and the boats and the AUMF, I'm not getting that they invoked that. Other than that one BBC article where the guy. was saying that, but it didn't seem to be very specific. So, I don't know.

Anyway, screw me. I don't know. Dang old, oh, but see, here's another important part of it, right? Was that Maduro said he had a very nice phone call with Trump, or a cordial one, at least. And, you know, I was talking with Brad Pierce earlier, and he noted that at least one of these sort of little press conference things, Marco Rubio looked kind of deflated like he'd been told that, no, we're actually not going to go after all. I mean, after all, it is completely nuts.

And the American people are opposed to it. They have, what are they going to do? Come up with a whole new weapons of mass destruction propaganda campaign here. That ain't going to work. So, like, for a real pretext for war, they're selling cocaine to American Republican Party members. You know what I mean? And I don't mean the rank and file.

I mean the leadership of the party. That's who snorts all the cocaine. Everybody knows that. Regular people can't afford cocaine. You know, it's like, Wall Street is half the demand for that stuff in the country. And so we're supposed to go to war with their suppliers of their, you know, fun time drug there.

Yeah, so they can stay up late. I don't, yeah, I don't think that's really a cost of spell. I think there. I don't speak Latin, but, you know, I was talking about Brad about this. He was saying, you know, comparing it to Iraq, there was no good. reason to attack Iraq, but there were really big, not necessarily good enough, but really big pretend reasons to attack Iraq. Whereas here, we just, they got nothing, right?

Like, what are we going to do? We're going to do a regime change in Venezuela just because Marco Rubio wants to, just because they're dirty commies and we don't like dirty commies. They've got to have a better pretext to do a real attempted regime change, right? Am I crazy? Is this really going to happen, Dave? I mean, it is hard to believe that it's going to happen, but like we seem to just be,

we keep moving in this direction. You know, a lot of this is a sci-up. Like there's a lot of psychological operations going on here, aimed at Maduro, aimed at Venezuela, trying to scare him, trying to get people in his inner circle to turn on him. That's why we've seen all these leaks about, oh, you know, Trump's, you know,

going to start airstrikes any day or they've leaked it twice now that Trump approved CIA covert operations inside Venezuela, which is kind of strange that they would do that, leak that twice because, of course, that's just an excuse for Maduro to crack down on any opposition. But, you know, what we're seeing, because we have the military buildup, now there's an aircraft carrier strike group in the Caribbean,

and they're flying bombers near the coast of Venezuela, and, you know, the military is very active, very close to Venezuela right now. And there is also, like, kinetic military action happening because they are bombing these boats. So, you know, they're giving every sign that they're planning to start a war here with Venezuela. But at the same time, as you said, like the propaganda is just not even like there. Like I saw this woman Maria Salazar.

She's a Republican House representative from Miami. I saw that, yeah. I mean, she goes on the news and just spits out like whatever she can think of. You know, the first thing she said is, oh, it's the oil, you know, American companies, oil companies are going to have a field day. That was her language. There's so much oil. And then she starts going off about, oh, Iran's there, Hezbo is there, Hamas is there, Nicaragua, North Korea, China, Russia. And then she says, oh, Maduro selling uranium to Hamas and Hezbollah and, like, literally just throwing everything out. And you see this woman that won the Nobel Peace Prize,

Machado, she's doing interviews and saying, like, I think you sent me the link the other day, that it's a $1.7 trillion investment opportunity for American companies. She's talking about the oil, saying, oh, you know, take out Maduro, we're going to walk right in. It's all going to be great. And it's kind of strange because,

and then the other thing is the narco thing. They designated this cartel, the Cartel de Los Soles or Cartel of the Sons as a terrorist organization. But it doesn't, it's not an actual cartel. Like, it literally doesn't exist. This is a term that they used first, starting in the 1990s,

to describe some Venezuelan generals who were accused of drug trafficking because they have sun insignias on their uniforms. And I saw Max Blumenthal dug this up. These guys at the time were actually working with the CIA. And actually the CIA was allowing them to transport cocaine into the U.S. so they can use them for some other case.

And then this term was kind of revived under Chavez. And again, it's kind of today, like the real allegation from like U.S. funded think tanks And like the serious allegation against Maduro, not kind of the cartoonish one that we're being fed, is that, you know, there's like this network of Venezuelan military officials who are responsible for certain territories

and they allow drugs to ship through and they kind of protect certain people so they get a cut. And the allegation against Maduro is that he kind of lets this happen to keep his people happy because his government's broke and he can't pay him.

That's like the real allegation here. This idea that he's like a narco, Kingpin, like sitting on a throne and directing, you know, laughing and saying, all right, send all the cocaine to the U.S. Like, it's just not, it's just a fantasy. It's completely a fake narrative that we're being fed here. But this is what they're going with. And I mean, it seems like Trump has said, Heggseth has said that this Cartel de Los Solis designation gives them the authority to attack Maduro and his government if they want. Hey, guys, Scott here.

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the first to know if you sign up and subscribe at my substack where i am publishing this audio in pieces until i get the whole thing ready together for audible uh eventually so uh sign up at scott horton show dot com that's my substack scott horton show dot com hey you guys should buy my books you know my first one was called fools air and time to end the war and after Afghanistan. It was really good and it all came true too. Watch me predict the end right there in the preface of the thing. Also, enough already time to end the war on terrorism. That's all the wars from Jimmy Carter all the way through the first Donald Trump administration. And then my latest is provoked how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe

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You got a website, you need it fixed up, you need a new one, setting up a business, working on any kind of online project like that. Check out expanddesigns.com. All right, so now this AI, Gemini AI thing says that they did invoke it, but one of their sources is the BBC thing, where they're just invoking this expert guy says. But then there was something at just security.

I'm obsessed with this now. There was something at just security where this wasn't it. It was the other one that mentioned it and said, yeah, when they called Tranda Aragua a terrorist organization, that that is meant to invoke the AUMF of 2001. Even that's kind of vague. I don't know. I'm sorry to belabor this point.

It all seems so unresolved. Hey, wait a minute. Why don't you ask the State Department? You ask the State Department for comment about stuff like that all the time. Could you get some clarification on that on whether they're trying to claim the AUMF or not? Yeah, yeah, sure. Give them any bad ideas.

Yeah, right. Hey, we didn't think of that. Yeah, I mean, they don't really have their act together. It's not like David Addington. It's up there running the show. It's a clown show completely with that Pam Bondi and all these cooks. All right. Anyway, Somalia.

We have always been at war with Somalia. Well, since you were a kid anyway. And I don't mean since 93 because America wasn't that involved. I don't really think between 93 and 2001. But we've been bombing them since 2001. Speaking of the Joint Special Operations Command, them when they took Delta Team A out of Torobora and replaced them with Team B. Instead of sending Team B in to reinforce them, they took Team A out and sent them to Somalia, I think.

I'm pretty sure about that. Or was it Seals? I'm pretty sure it was Delta. So, you know, they wanted to make sure that the guys at Torabora didn't have what they needed to kill Bin Laden and Zawahari, the Butchers of New York City, because after all, then the war would be over and the American people would be satisfied, and that would be no good. Anyway, so then they've been killing Somalis ever since then, so that's going on 24 years now, this month. And they accomplished nothing, really, other than one, creating the Islamic Courts Union in reaction to their intervention,

and then creating al-Shabaab in reaction to their intervention against the Islamic Court's Union. And they've been fighting al-Shabaab ever since then, and in favor of this sock puppet transitional theft. federal government that they've created that never seems to transition to anything. And you have done the best job in the world reporting this year on the Trump administration's ongoing drone war. Actually, before I turn it over to you, I want to invoke one more dang anecdote from history here, which is in a story in the Washington Post that was clearly sourced to James Mattis himself, former Marine Corps general James Mattis, who had been Secretary of Defense

under Donald Trump and Trump One. Trump said to him, he's like supposedly mocking Trump's, you know, ignoramusness when he tells this story. Trump said, why do we have to be in Somalia? Who cares about Somalia? And Mattis said to him, you have no choice. We're trying to prevent, and our presence there is helping to prevent another Times Square attack. Because, you know, Trump's heard of that because he's from New York City.

know. The meanwhile, as you and I know, the Times Square attack, luckily failed of 2010, was direct retribution by the Tariqi Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban that had never attacked us before for a drone strike in Pakistan. And this American Pakistani or Pakistani American went and volunteered to try to blow up Americans in revenge for that. So it's the kind of thing we're doing in Somalia and Pakistan is the kind of thing that cause the Times Square attack and and similar attacks. But anyway, that was what Mattis told Trump, and he told him, according to him,

you have no choice. And this would be back in 2020. And Trump said, okay, well, fine. And when we already know, because it was our buddy, Colonel Douglas McGregor, temporarily had a job advising the Secretary of Defense and wrote up a memo, let's get out of Somalia,

and Trump ordered it done. and then countermanded himself, just like on getting out of Syria was in there too, and contradicted himself for that third time on Syria and canceled his order to get out of Somalia. So then Biden keeps bombing him for four years straight, picking up where Trump left off, and now Trump picks up right where Biden left off

and has now bombed them more than Obama, more than Biden, more than Trump won in just one year. Is that right? Yeah, that's about right. So actually, Trump did pull a few hundred troops out of Somalia at the end of his first term, but he did leave, he left some in there. And the drone strikes continued. And then Biden came in and he sent them right back. But when we get into the numbers here, I mean, it's really unprecedented, the level that we're bombing that the U.S. is bombing Somalia this year. And so these are numbers from Africom, the airstrikes that they confirm. So based on my count, they announced a few more today. We're up to 100. and six this year. And that's, the U.S. launched 10 in 2024. So it's more than 10 times what was launched last year.

It's more than Biden and Obama ever launched in Somalia, according to Afriqom numbers combined. And it broke the previous annual record for airstrikes was 63, which Trump set back in 2019. Throughout his first term, he did increase the airstrikes in that term as well. launched over 200 over the four years, and now in the first year, we're at 106. I mean, this is, again, just a really unprecedented level. And you mentioned that story, that anecdote about him

and Mattis. I don't know if you've noticed what Trump has been saying about Somalia lately, but it hasn't been very nice things. And he said last week, he said, oh, Somalia doesn't even have a government. They can't even control their country. It's just people killing each other all over the place over there. And another time a few months ago, he said, oh, no longer are we policing the far reaches of the world like Kenya and Somalia. You know, we're not policing the world and he cites Somalia as an example of a country that we're not involved in, apparently. So I really think what happened at the beginning of this administration was, you know, this is kind of the talking point we see from Heggseth. We see it from J.D. Vance as well. Like the Trump doctrine, you know, is if we're

going to use military force, it's going to be overwhelming and, you know, quick. We're going to be in and out. So I think he, you know, another thing that happened, this happened during the first Trump term, too, is that he loosened the rules of engagement, gave more authority to the lower level officers to launch airstrikes and not have to get approval from the White House. So I think he kind of just signed off on the escalation and hasn't been paying attention to it. One reason why is because there's been no media coverage in the U.S. I mean, literally, none. There was a couple stories.

Fox News and Stars and Stripes had a story when we hit 100 airstrikes. Of course, the Fox News story made it sound all great. But most of the time, it's literally just me. When it comes to an American media outlet that has a website with news stories,

most of the time, it's literally just us covering it. Not on any network shows. Matt Gates had me on to talk about it. I guess he's on a network. He's on OAN. But besides that, literally no coverage. and what is it accomplishing? I mean, they've really ramped up.

So you mentioned al-Shabaab, obviously, the U.S. has been fighting them. And there's no sign that they're going to defeat al-Shabaab. I mean, they're like gaining some territory now in some areas since they launched this counter-offensive, but they're losing some and others. You know, there's no military defeat of al-Shabaab on the horizon. But then there's also this ISIS affiliate.

No, no, go ahead. Oh, sorry. So then there's also the ISIS affiliate, and they popped up in 2015. You know, an offshoot of al-Shabaab, one of their leaders went to start this ISIS group. And they're based in Puntland in the Northeast. And I mean, according to the estimates,

they have a few hundred, the max estimate of their number of fighters is like 1,500, but I don't think it's really that high. And they're based in these caves and these, like, remote mountains. And the U.S. has just been, like, bombing the hell out of this, these mountains, and I don't know what it's, what is it accomplishing?

And, you know, they say they're going to intensify. The Afrika commander went up to Puntland last month and he said, you know, we're doing great, we're going to intensify things and keep ramping it up. You know, could they eliminate those ISIS guys in those mountains? Yeah, maybe. But again, when it comes to al-Shabaab, I mean, there's just no, this is just, you know, you talk about endless war. It's very similar to Afghanistan.

and you're propping up this very weak central government that without foreign support would collapse. And so another thing, which I think this is kind of how this got started in this administration, similar kind of to the Mattis story, although I don't know if Trump was involved in this conversation. There was a report in the New York Times in the beginning of the year that they had a meeting,

you know, within the administration, state department officials were actually suggesting evacuating the embassy in Mogadishu because they were worried it could fall to al-Shabaab. But on the other side was Sebastian Gorka, who's Trump's top counterterrorism official on the National Security Council, arguing, no, no, we can't leave. Let's just double down, ramp up the airstrikes and keep supporting this very weak government.

That was what I was going to say when I really interrupted you a minute ago, was what's the role Sebastian Gorka in this? Because I remember reading that he was going to take some counterterrorism role and with a special focus on Somalia, but that was many months ago. yeah i think he's the brains behind this you know i think he's the one that's that you know within the white house that this was his idea and push for it um and now it just goes on um all right and yeah you already concluded it doesn't accomplish anything al shababab in going anywhere they're just helping recruit more people plain old insurgent math um so where

are we at here? Man, we're already at time, but let me get, um, you know what, I'm, I don't want to hear about Gaza and the West Bank today. Tell me about Donald Trump's letter that he wrote to Abu Mohammed al-Jalani. Well, yeah, so Tom Barrack. This is almost as depressing as the Gaza Strip, honestly. Yeah, Tom Barrack, who is Trump's ambassador to Turkey. I don't know if you've been following him, but he is kind of comical to follow the things that he says. You know, he's kind of like Trump. He says things that they're not supposed to say, but is like kind of the truth of what, like he says they're arming the Lebanese military so they can fight their own people. But so he's a big fan of Shara or Jalani, the al-Qaeda commander who took over Syria. And he

met with him last week or earlier this week and gave him a letter. They took a nice picture together and it's a Trump, you know, in his big handwriting and he says, I forget exactly what he said, but he said, oh, Ahmed, you'll be a great leader and the U.S. is going to help exclamation point and his big signature and then a picture of them in the Oval Office. So, you know, it's not just like Trump is lifting the sanctions and saying, you know, good luck, Syria. He's actually forming a military alliance with this guy. You know, they've officially joined the anti-ISIS coalition. And there's reports, I haven't seen anything since the initial Reuters report that they're going to build a bait.

a base in Damascus, but there's been that report, and they're going to sign some kind of formal deal giving the U.S., like a formal military presence in Syria. But just another thing, just about one more thing about just kind of the insanity of this. So CENTCOM, U.S. Central Command, you know, they put out press releases once in a while and say they've done this amount of raids against ISIS,

killed this many guys, and they put one out saying that they did it with their Syrian partners, you know, in the government, which is literally, literally Hyatt Therail al-Sham. And in one of these raids, they captured a guy, and then they learned, it's kind of conflicting reports on this.

But something happened where they captured this guy who was known as an ISIS commander or a former ISIS guy, at least. And they capture him. And according to one of the reports, then they learned, oh, actually, he's HTS. He's an HDS guy. So they let him go.

But apparently he got injured in the raid, so he ended up dying of his wounds. But, I mean, there's a lot of fluidity between HDS and ISIS and the idea. I mean, that, yes, is ISIS, you know, West chapter. Jeez, any of U.S. troops fight alongside these guys. It's just crazy. Yeah, no, look, man, I earlier today, unfortunately, his internet crapped out halfway through, so I'll have to follow up.

But I got a half of interview out of William Van Wackenon, author of Chris. creative chaos, who wrote a piece for the cradle. In fact, we should probably just run this as a new story. It could be a viewpoint too, but you should track this down, maybe send it to Kyle. At the cradle about how the jihadi army, such as it is, they're going around kidnapping all of we women and quote unquote marrying them, in other words, enslaving them. these bin Ladenites and they've been you know of course in in the recent past there were these terrible maskers and all the rest of this and unfortunately he had internet problems

so we were unable to finish the interview but he's got a great write-up at the cradle today about how hey guess what Dave the bin Ladenites are bin Ladenites and behave as such what did you think that they were going to do man not you the anyone um Well, look at this. And Donald Trump, he can't just say, okay, we can do business. He has to say, wow, you're so handsome and tall and powerful. And your past is so strong. What a strong past you have with your musky smell.

And it's just like, dude, just stop, stop. You don't have to commit such treason. Did you see him spray cologne on him? He gave him some Trump cologne and gave him a little spray on his neck. Yeah, and he's like flirting with them. Oh, your wife will like this. How many wives do you have? And we're like, they're hitting it off, man.

And to Trump's credit, he's never heard of Americans dying in Mosul and Ramadi. He didn't know the first thing about that. Somebody must have told him, well, look, this guy used to be our enemy, but they must not have told him, like, he claims he fought American soldiers. So I think we can conclude, we can presume him guilty of, like, getting a shot off, which whatever. They shouldn't have been in Mosul, but neither should he have. He wouldn't Iraqi.

And still, regardless, the United States of America should not be backing him now. You know, there was a time in 2016 where Mertaza, Al-Qaeda, now Ryan Grimm's partner, and a bunch of others, Al Jazeera, and a bunch of others, interviewed Jalani so that he could supposedly pretend to back away from his association with Al-Qaeda. But he didn't really. He just said, like, look, we're not going to be, he didn't say like, oh, we renounce them and their works, and we're not like that at all anymore or whatever.

He just said, listen, we have to distance ourselves from the original organization because it looks bad. And it would be better for us if we did that. And that was it. And I don't think in the Al Jazeera interview, and I know that Murtaza Hussein did not say, hey, man, you swore blood oath loyalty to the butchers of New York City. So why should Americans do anything?

thing but kill you, pal, and didn't ask him anything like that. The whole thing, just like with Martin Smith at Frontline, the whole thing was obviously a whatever CIA, Turkish, Israeli op to launder this guy, dress him up in a monkey suit. We used to joke, maybe they used to listen to my show. Because I would always say, you see how this guy's wearing a turban and a robe and he's dressed like Osama bin Laden and Obi-1 Canobi as compared to Bashar al-Assad who shaves his chin and wears not just a two-piece, but a three-piece suit every day? and then they dressed him up in a three-piece suit.

Shaved his beard a little shorter. They didn't shave it off, but they trimmed his beard, dressed him up in a suit, just like Scott Horton suggested. Look, everybody, Bin Laden in a suit, and now it's cool. And they did it. They've gotten away with it. I mean, we're having this conversation a year after he sacked Damascus, and America's making him an ally.

He's going to be like a major non-NATO ally, like Bahrain or Qatar, you know, Saudi Arabia. It's unbelievable. I know it's believable, but it's also unbelievable. You have to admit it. It is, yeah. I mean, even like you think about 10 years ago or when the height of the war in Syria,

if somebody would have told you that, Jalani wins and actually becomes the president of Syria and the U.S. openly makes him an ally. Like, you would sound like some kind of conspiracy theorist or something. As long as he hates, Aspala and Iran, that's all it matters. I remember when he took over a year ago, Liz Wolfe at Reason Magazine announced that Damascus is liberated

Now Syria is free And she says Well, boy, America and Israel Better get in there Make allies with this guy Before Iran gets in there Yeah, thanks a lot, Liz I remember Ben Shapiro

Saying, oh, is it You know, it's going to get worse in Syria Are they going to kill Christians And other minorities? Yeah, but it's going to be better Because they're not allied With Hezbollah and Iran It's like, okay.

Yeah, all right, Ben, threatens Israel. Yeah. Yep, exactly right. Just wear it right on their sleeves where their true loyalties lie. Pretty sick. Okay, with that, I'm going to let you go because I don't want to hear about Israel Palestine today. I was already reading a bunch about it, and it made me sick. But I will tell all the people to just go and look at news.

Dot anti-war.com virtually every day, day in, day out on every subject under the sun regarding foreign policy, especially American foreign policy over there. It's the great Dave DeCamp and subscribe to his great podcast. It's on YouTube and all the great podcatcher's anti-war news. Thanks again, bud. Thanks, Scott.

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