Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/8/24 Joe Kent on the American Troop Deployed in Iraq and Syria

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Joe Kent returns to the show to talk about the American mission in Iraq and Syria. Before three Americans were killed by a drone on the border of Syria two weeks ago, the troops stationed there were said to be on an anti-ISIS mission. But now US forces are fighting the very Shia militias that Washington has been funding. Kent has a lot of personal experience in the region and a deep knowledge of the factional dynamics at play. He and Scott talk about how ridiculous and dangerous the American deployments are. Discussed on the show: JoeKentForCongress.com Joe Kent is a retired Army Special Forces soldier who is running for Congress in Washington State. Follow him on Twitter @joekent16jan19 This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys joining me on the line now is joe kent you might remember he ran for congress in washington state i'm sure to work next time and um he made himself famous as uh former special

forces officer who is now a harsh critic of American Middle East policy, and he's been saying a lot of stuff that I think is smart on the Twitter lately. So I'm happy to welcome him back to this show. How you doing, Joe? Oh, great. Thanks for having me back on. Do I say, Joe Kent? Yeah. Happy to have you here. Great to have you here. I got a chip on my shoulder, and that is that even during a Rock War II, especially during a Rock War II, but ever since then, too, they never say who's on whose side. They never say who's the shirts and who's the skins.

It's just America and the people of Iraq versus the terrorists. They won't even tell you whether they're Sunni or Shia, much less whether they belong to Sotter's faction or Hakeem's faction or whatever the hell or why it should matter. And so I find look at the news and I see

that, hey, we're bombing the same guys we put in power and fought two civil wars for and nobody seems to realize that or recognize that or think that it matters. It's just, well, it's Iraq, so we bomb it. That's the American way or something.

And I just wonder, like, how you're coming at that. And is, do you think, is that really the point we should be trying to make here? Is just who the hell is on whose side over there? And why is it that America's fighting against our own interests when, you don't have to love the Ayatollah, but his enemy is the bin Ladenites, right? Yeah, look, I mean, I think a good way to first. frame it for folks who don't follow foreign policy as closely as we do is just to really point out that the exact same militias that just killed our troops over there, they're the same militias that were funding because like you said, there's never really been a clear definition

of who's on whose side over there. And that's because Washington, D.C. doesn't want you to scratch the surface. They don't want us to see that, hey, we all realize and recognize that like the Ayatollahs are basically at war at the United States of America, but all the bumbling we did in Iraq, mistakes that we made, put the Ayatollahs, guys, the botters, the hakeems, the soderists in charge and gave them power. And then when we had to go back in and defeat ISIS, we basically acted as the Air Force for these same Iranian-backed militias that then turn around when they don't need us anymore and start attacking it and killing our troops. So I think we lay that out for the American people and we just say, look, this is just really American taxpayer dollars,

bombing American taxpayer dollars. And there's no real reason. There's no vital national security interest from us leaving our troops in this location. or funding to the tune of billions of dollars. I don't think most people realize our biggest embassy in the world is in Baghdad and probably about to be under siege because of what took place in the last 24 hours. But it's really hard to defend just how preposterous the situation is when you explain it in those very simple terms. Yeah, it's really a tough thing.

And, you know, I wanted to check my date. I knew I was right, but I wanted to see. And you can read all about it at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. which is a spinoff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where they say, yes, it's true, we are literally flying air cover for the Iranian IRGC leading the Shiite militias and the Iraqi army in their effort against ISIS in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

In the summer of 2015, and he's saying, stay the course, though, and he leaves out, we built this caliphate, we got to help the Shiites destroy, it again now, but he's talking about literally flying, literally flying air cover for Iran's guys on the ground in real time. I mean, I don't think they threw them laser designators, but close enough. Yeah, I was there in that time frame. I spent a good deal of time in Iraq during the Iraq War proper, went back for the counter ISIS fight, and we were literally sharing foxholes or the forward line of troops, as it was called, around Mosul of Kirkuk, with the, um,

popular mobilization forces, which is part of the Iraqi government. However, that's a fig leaf because I think people forget that the first Iraqi military that we built once we fired all the bathies and basically created ISIS, they were not a real thing. They were a product of a lot of American dollars. And the second that ISIS posed a real threat to them, they threw their weapons on the ground and ran. We had to stand up a new military. And the only people ready to step into that breach were these Iranian-backed Shia militias. So we kind of did the nominous, dominoous thing and made them the official Iraqi government. And so then that put us sharing foxholes with the same guys who were trying to EFPS to death in Sadr City and throughout

all the southern Iraq during the Iraq war proper. And not to mention, they're Iranian counterparts. So we were sharing foxholes at one point in time with Kudsforce officers because we had this common enemy of ISIS who the Kudsports officers and the Shia militias were very quick to remind us that we had basically helped create either through bumbling or through some other kind of machinations. So really, I just like to say, look, we've never gotten it right in this region. And when you really boil down and try and figure out what our vital national security interests are, it's not clear. And really, at the end of the day, it all kind of works against our desired in-state, I think, anyways, unless you're a defense contractor in Washington, D.C., then this very muddled status quo

always great for business. Man, so I just got to clarify with you here, Joe, that what you say as far as what could be considered possibly a figure of speech or hyperbole or what you literally mean as far as actual details,

you were in foxholes with IRGC officers in Iraq in what month of what year in what place exactly, sir, please. So 2016, in particular around the Kirkuk area, that was where I served. We also had guys down there in Mosul as well. And it was a mismatch because there was members of, in particular, Saunders faction, who immediately became part of the PMF.

And so they had like traditional type of Iraqi uniforms. They still had the Hezbollah looking emblem. That just kind of got some traction when they published the identification card of the guy that we killed yesterday in the drone strike and he had the same identification card. But then there was also like formal Catawbal Hezbo-Husbalah militants that were out there. Now, we limited our contact with the guys that were flying Catabal-Husbola flags or Asabal-Hawk flags or some of these more blatant militants. But the PMF is where a lot of it bled through.

And we learned just by being out there and in that time frame, that 2016 time frame specifically was when I was out there. You know, we learned that a lot of these guys, they had multiple uniforms. They were getting a salary and they had an, at a, identification card from the government of Iraq. And then, you know, a day later, they'd be wearing a Katabal Hezbollah uniform or really they'd just switch out the Velcro patches. But the Iranian officers, the Iranian Kudspers officers, they were kind of intermixed. They were sometimes advising the PMF and sometimes they're advising the Katabal Hezbollah guys.

They were giving some degree of weapons and support to them. However, we were the ones that were really coming in with the large aid package of weaponry. But then really the reason why they tolerated our presence out there, small groups of special operators, is because we brought the air cover with them. And so we literally were sharing foxels with these guys. We were occupying the forward line of troops, which was essentially a big berm that we would build, kind of World War I style. This was obviously still under the Obama administration. So our operations weren't as aggressive as they got the next year once President Trump came on the scene. But yeah, I mean, we were out there. And look, this for Iraq war vets, this wasn't our first.

rodeo. I had very similar experiences during the surge or the Anbar Awakening, you know, where I was talking with guys who were part of the Sawa Iraq, the Anbar Awakening type of guys who, two years before they had been fighting on the opposite side of the Euphrates River of Fallujah that I was fighting on, you know, and we had those, you know, awkward moments together where we had some exchange some gallows humor, but we had a common enemy at that time. So it was the same thing. And again, it just goes back to just how muddled and convoluted our policy is over there. How we're always putting out a fire that we seem to create. Yeah, man, that's really something.

So, and just to clarify there, when you mentioned the Quds Force, that's a smaller, more elite subsection of the IRGC. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. I mean, I like to describe the Goods Force, really, as kind of the counterparts to the Green Berets. I mean, they go forward. They don't do a lot of action themselves. But they serve as trainers. And so they'll be the ones that will go over and create and advise insurgent groups,

militias, those types of things. But when you think of Hezbollah, when you think of the Iraqi militias, when you think of the Houthis, these guys have all had, you know, a lot of counterparts and a lot of advisors and assistance from Quds Force officers. Okay. Now, I mean, it is important here to stipulate, I think, isn't it, that Iran and Hezbollah and Khatib Hezbollah, they ain't the ones that knocked our towers down. So the irony here is that the U.S. government fought a couple of wars for the Shiites and wish they hadn't.

It's not really the case that they fought the wars for America's enemies, just for America's rivals for dominance in the Middle East, where we ain't from, right? I mean, it's hard to see it any other way. I mean, look, the Iranian revolution, and, you know, you know, the back history around the Iranian revolution. Iran, that government has essentially been at war with the U.S. since 1979. I think Reagan got it right after our Marines got hit in Beirut. He said, we serve no purpose here, but to bleed more and he got our troops out of there. And then we were sort of able to economically isolate Iran. But then when we inserted ourselves back into the region, you're right. I mean, obviously 9-11 was a catalyst. We went immediately. into Afghanistan and we started going after the Taliban. And prior to our intervention in our occupation of Afghanistan, one of the biggest rivals of the Taliban was the Iranian, was the Iranians, was the IRGC. Cuts Force officers were actually working there in the Panshear with the Northern Alliance. The Iranians actually got on scene to give aid to the, the Northern Alliance faster than we did. It wasn't until we decided that we were going to stop pursuing bin Laden and Zawahiri into Pakistan and that we were going to turn around and try and build a Jeffersonian democracy

in Afghanistan that I think the Iranians and, you know, I'm no supporter of the Iranians, but they said, hey, you know, what, we're actually not good of America making bases at Afghanistan and then very, very much in short order after that, we said, we're going in and we're going to go take out Saddam, we're going into Iraq and we're going to occupy it. And there was a little bit of a pregnant pause there in Iraq because we had essentially just done the Ayatollah's dirty work for them. We got rid of Saddam, who was a major threat to the Iranians, I think had we just gotten out of there right after that and maybe, you know, put in a more pro-Western type of government and left, I don't think there would have been as much friction, but we stayed. And then a year

later, in 2004, the Iranians, they were all over the dissident networks and they really infiltrated a lot of the thinking in Washington, D.C. And we basically installed, as you pointed out before, Hakeem family, Bader, you know, Alawi, all these types that were very much in Iran's pocket. So really, I mean, we just bumbled our way into mistake after mistake that we just really can't seem to extract ourselves from no matter how much we try. And I think a lot of the fact that we continue to double and triple down in the region, there's obviously the financial incentives of the military industrial complex. But a lot of it is you just have people in D.C.

that they basically have made their entire career off of this Middle Eastern project, but in particular Iraq. And for us to leave would be actually to have to level with the American people and be like, man, we really screwed this thing up from the invasion onward. We screwed up. And that's almost impossible, I think, for governments to do. Now, correct me if I'm wrong with the official excuse for America's continued presence in Iraq now, call it Iraq War three and a half, is to still help these Shiite forces hunt down and kill the last of the bin Ladenites. now. It's the same group, Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq, right? And so this guy that they just assassinated in Baghdad, who was the head of Khadib Hezbollah, and I guess was the head of the

combined PMF, he was one of the main leaders in the anti-ISIS fight there. So it's a two-part question, right? Like on one hand, on the face of it, it's treason. It's fighting on Al-Qaeda's side of the war, again, flip-flopping back and forth. Again, al-Qaeda who knocked the towers down, taking their side against Iran, who just won't do as they're told, which is a whole lower level of sin here. You know what I mean? And then on the other hand, though, I want to be fair, is it really the case that there's much of an ISIS threat left in Iraq at all now? Because after Iraq War III, America and you're saying you were there and Iran help really blow those. guys to hell mostly right or not we took away all the ground the the the Islamic caliphate controls i think to answer your question dc uses whichever answer is convenient for them at the time so anytime anyone questions like hey guys what are we still doing in iraq and syria and like most people didn't even know we had a base on the tri-border region there in jordan until we

tragically had three soldiers killed there the second that someone says what are we doing there they always do the fear-mongering of like well do you remember isis and when you I mean, you say ISIS, people automatically flashed to the graphic YouTube videos or the beheadings and all that. And they're like, oh, my gosh, well, thank God, we still have people there. And they're running down all these ISIS folks. Well, number one, the data just doesn't support that. We took away all the ground, the territorial caliphate controlled. We killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with deliberated targeting.

I don't think that really relies on us having these random outposts in the middle of nowhere. We've been able to conduct limited strikes against ISIS. ISIS has bigger problems right now than trying to project power. into, you know, Europe and into the west. They're fighting for their survival. The Assad regime is hunting them. So if you question that narrative and you push back a little bit, then DC immediately pivots to, well, but Iran. There's this land bridge that Iran's now built between Tehran through Baghdad, you know, going into Damascus and this critical ground out there in the deserts of, in the western desert of Iraq and eastern deserts of Syria. That's critical to countering Iran. And then every now and

again, if they're really being honest, they'll say, yes, and Russia, too, because you know Russia and Assad or buddies. And so it's like, wait a second. So the idea is we have these random scattered outposts over there that our enemies are well aware of that are supposed to counter Iran, but that doesn't make any sense because we got attacked 160 times by these militias before we did anything about it. We've gotten into some scrapes with the Russians. And it's again, for what? We're going to get into a shooting war with Russia over like the worthless deserts of eastern Syria. Like, none of it makes sense when it's challenged, but they do use this fearmongering. And they say the entire reason why we're sending billions of dollars every year to the government of Iraq is,

you know, because ISIS. And it's just, it's just Washington, D.C. double speak. I think the fact that you have the entire apparatus of the military industrial complex geared towards counterinsurgency and geared towards counterterrorism, we already lost Afghanistan. That's gone and done. If this Middle East thing dries up, where does all that money and where does all that go? And then there's also the fact that, again, people don't want to admit that we screwed the entire thing up. with the Iraq war based on lies. Yeah. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years,

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at scott horton.org what did your ancestors really do all day beyond names what were their lives like with ancestry's global historical records you can discover incredible stories about how your ancestors lived and worked and for a limited time you can explore select occupation records for free

imagine finding your great-grandfather's RCMP records or discovering your Ancestor's name in the UK and Ireland Nursing Register. Don't miss out. Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. And look, I mean, I know this is personal for you too, but it gets back to the question of the troops still in Syria, right? When Trump tried three different times, 2017, 18, and 20 to order the troops out of Syria, He was just countermanded, essentially, by the Pentagon. And to hear from the media, yes, they made a big deal about the Syrian Kurds.

But if you look closely, what they really said was you'll be stabbing Israel in the back and leaving them high and dry because, as we've stipulated here, America removed secular Sunni Saddam, the giant roadblock. And America completed the Shiite, what they call land bridge. between Tehran and Beirut by doing Iraq War II and since they failed in all their backing of the al-Qaeda guys in Syria didn't result in a regime change against Assad. Instead, they went east and conquered Western Iraq. Oops. So then we had to have Iraq War III that we were just talking about there, right? But that means Assad, in his alliance with Iran, still stands in Damascus, which means that's why we got guys at the Al-Tomf base. And then, This tower 22 is the same little complex just across the line there, which brings up the entire question of force protection for them and for the, I mean, I don't think Assad would ever attack them out there, but I don't know who might. They clearly got, you know, three Georgia National Guard soldiers were killed here by a drone. And as you mentioned, there'd been more than 100 attacks, more than 150 attacks in Syria and Iraq leading up to that just since October, since Israel started, well, Hamas kicked off the latest round of fighting and Israel's response to that.

And but then we also have a few thousand guys in Irbul, I understand, right, or in Kirakuk in northern Iraq. I don't know what all bases they still have in Iraq or exactly how many thousands. of guys there, but it seems like, you know, as people say, these troops are left there just as a trip wire. Once they get killed, then we'll be able to escalate. Is that really the thinking in the Pentagon? Or they're just so lazy that they don't care? Look, I mean, I think at the end of the day, when you look at all the facts and you take a step back, there's no other justification in leaving our troops in these locations. If your troops you're under fire 160 plus times from the guys that you're funding, I would think that if you cared

about your troops or you cared about the success of the United States of America, you would cut off the funding for one and you'd get our troops out of there because there's this whole thing that commanders are supposed to do when you're in charge. It's risk versus gain. And I can understand where some commanders are saying, hey, if you want me to monitor ISIS, if you want me to monitor Iran, you want to monitor what the Russians are doing, then, okay, being in these locations, kind of sort of, yeah, it makes some sense, okay, that's the gain, what's the risk? Then when you outline what the risk is, it's like, look, our enemies have all known we're in these locations.

They're very lightly defended. And even if we have some advanced, you know, anti-drone, anti-missile type of technology in these bases, it comes down to a matter of the enemy only has to be lucky once. We have to be lucky always. And we also have to take a look at what we gave the enemy, because we've been training Iraqis on how to use drones and ISR now for well over a decade. So the fact that they, like, just sort of figured out how to follow one of our drones back to bases, I don't think that that's like the, you know, miraculous development of a new technique.

I mean, the enemy studies you and they exploit your weaknesses. So when you outlie what the actual risks are, to me, I think that that gets justified at very senior levels. I'm not talking about ground level commanders. I'm talking about very senior levels. I think then they say, well, you know, worst case scenario, some of our guys get killed. And then we're going to be able to justify a. broader conflict. That's really going to show the American people, Congress, etc., that we need more troops, we need more authorities to really get tough on these guys and start really kicking

some butt. So I just see there being a massive void of responsible leadership because we're letting the people who benefit from these wars call all the shots and just really dictate the narrative. So I personally don't see it any other way. I'd love to come on here and defend it and say, no, you know, there's a justification for it. I spent so much time in the region. I would love to be able to defend some of the neoconservative ideology, but none of it makes any sense. And it just simply hasn't worked. You know, I was just interviewing a reporter from Sana'i Yemen. And he's saying, listen, you're just making Iran more and more powerful all this time, increasing their influence for nine years running now, bombing them just because they're friends with Iran, and bombing them

right in, bombing them right into the Ayatollah's arms, you know? Yeah. They're closer than ever before. Especially in Yemen. I mean, because Yemen, the Iraqis and the Iranian share of order, the share of culture, the Houthis, I mean, a lot of that has been dictated by our policy and Iran being very smart at capitalizing how foolish we are at times. It's just unreal. And I'm sorry to switch back to Iraq. You mentioned the threat at the embassy. I mean, I already saw on Twitter a massive protest in the green zone. So, and I know you know I remember from the news, you may remember from personal experience.

about just how nasty attacks on the American Embassy can get there when they're besieged. It has come to a head numerous times in the past already. Yeah, I'd encourage everybody, if you don't know where the American Embassy in Baghdad is, just to Google where it is. You don't have to have any background in the military to see how tactically have a horrible place that is. And if you know Baghdad a little bit, they're surrounded essentially by Shia enclaves. And the green zone, the international zone, that's an absolute kind of myth. that is not a secure area. That area is controlled by the governor of Iraq. Katab al-Hesbla has

buildings and actual facilities that are just basically right next door right across the street from the U.S. Embassy and a couple of the American military installations there. So it's extremely volatile. I know there's, you know, we have a lot of defenses there. There's the might of the U.S. military, but it's very hard to defend. It's about five miles away from the airfield where the majority of our forces would actually have to land to go reinforce that embassy. So it is a tactical nightmare And the thing is, it always has been from the time that embassy was built, actually even before that, when they broke ground on it, like an 06, 07, I mean, we were eating rockets and mortars and IEDs there consistently. I can't tell you how many Americans have lost their lives in that small, tiny, maybe, I don't know, five mile radius from rockets, from mortars or from IEDs just outside the gate. And we've known this for a very long time. And again, it's like, what are we doing? And if you go to that embassy, it looks like a college campus. It's the most expensive embassy that we have. It's fantasy land of manicured lawns on the inside, and there's a bunch of guys running around in suits, meeting of Iraqis that are just really there to shake down Uncle Sam. And we play along with it because, again, we don't want to admit the entire thing was a massive mistake based on lies.

Yeah. Well, and, you know, and still the lie is where you saw what happened, Joe. We left and then ISIS, but they leave out the part where Obama and Netanyahu and Erdogan and I guess Al-Thani. and whatever these other princes gave the bin Ladenites billions and billions and billions of dollars from 2011 through 2016-17

and built that damn caliphate forum mostly because Israel and I guess Saudi hate the Shiites more and it doesn't matter who knocked the towers down what matters is they hate the Shiites more and they really regret that they fought a rock war two for them so they're the ones who turned

al-Nusra which was just al-Qa al-Qaeda in Iraq in Syria into ISIS, you know, ISIS split off, was just the Iraqi-dominated faction of al-Qaeda in Iraq in Syria. They took over the east of the country in 13 and then the west of Iraq in 14. But it was the Americans who did that. It wasn't just that the Americans weren't in Iraq. It was that Obama and Petraeus and Panetta and Clinton and them were guilty of the highest treason in all of American history. That's what it was that built that caliphate. In time. I mean, there was the fantasy that like we were going to use these Sunni militants to take down Assad. I mean, and I, and I, maybe the calculus there is that Assad was going to support Hezbollah and that was going to be a problem for Israel. And we kind of owed Israel because like you said, we screwed up and took out Saddam. But I mean, the entire thing was just disaster after disaster. There never was any moderate Syrian rebels. I mean, that whole thing was a complete and total lie. We knew these guys were were essentially jihad. or we had manufactured them into be jihadis, a lot of that goes back to the firing of the entire bath party, the debathification, because a lot of the military talent from al-Qaeda and Iraq and ISIS was Ba'ath Party military officers who fought a brutal, bloody war against the Iranians for 10 years and had a lot of military experience, but we decided to be a good idea to fire those guys.

So again, this just goes back to just mistake after mistake. We always seem to kind of back both sides, and there's always blowback. It always blows up in our face. Yeah, you know, when I wrote my book about the Terror Wars, I gave it to a friend of mine to read, to kind of proofread. And she said to me, you know, I lost track of how many times we switched sides. I was at 11 or 12, and I forgot which it was, so I stopped trying to count. But that's the whole history of the Terror Wars going back to Jimmy Carter, is we back the Shiites, and then we go, oops, and then we back to Sunnis, then we go, oops, and then we back to Shiites, and then we go, oops, and then it's all it is. It's just making it worse and worse back. Here we are.

I can't believe we're talking. I can believe we're talking about this right now in 2024, dropping bombs on the government that Bush put in power 20 years ago. Yeah. I was talking about a friend of mine, a fellow Iraq war veteran, and he was like, dude, can you believe that, you know, this is year 21 for our generation anyways, of us having our guys under fire in Iraq,

because we both have friends that are serving over there right now. It was a tense night last night at the embassy. I think there's going to be more tense nights. The Iraqi government's not trying to kick us out. And I was just like, I can't believe that we're sitting here in our mid-40s after guys you spent our 20s and 30s over there. And this is still going on. And there's probably kids over there who were, I don't know, in elementary school when

the Iraq War kicked off that are now standing watch in a tower, probably getting shot at by kids who were, you know, we were throwing candy at during the Iraq War proper. I mean, the whole thing is just absolutely absurd. If there was ever a time for us just to say, hey, we're going to cut our losses. We're going to be realistic about what we got wrong and ensure that it never happens again. I mean, that time is right now. And that's the big reason why I'm running for Congress. I think it's essential to have veterans really, really speak truth to power and actually

just be honest with the American people about how much we've gotten wrong over there and how little we've gotten in return. Okay. So, oh, you know what? I do have a minute. I thought I had to go, but I have a little softer break than I thought. Talk about that for a minute. It was a squeaker last time, you're running for Congress again in which district and where and how are you doing in the polls? Who's your challenger? And how are things? Oh, you're challenging in the primaries here, right? Actually, last time I did. I beat an incumbent Republican last time fell just about less than a percentage short in the general election. We had a divided Republican party because I took out the incumbent and all that. But right now we've got a lot more Republican unity. My opponent that I ran

against ran as a moderate, but she's basically the same as Pelosi and AOC. She's voting for all the She voted to leave our troops in Iraq and Syria. So she voted for all this carnage that we're seeing right now. She has no idea about foreign policy. She's just voting how the system tells her to vote. And there's, you know, obviously the military industrial complex will line her coffers from that. So that's we're really just working on exposing her voting record to the people. The polling's looking good.

I'm endorsed by the state party and all the county parties. So feeling strong, it's going to be a fight. She's got a lot of cash like Democrats tend to have. But yeah, so far so good. We're just going to keep plugging away at it. And hopefully exposing her record will bring more people over to our side. I think it will, especially in terms of the border, the economy. And I do think this issue of the wars and the fact that we can keep losing people in the Middle East and we're getting sucked back in.

I think that's starting to resonate a lot more of everyday Americans than it has before. Yeah, absolutely. And especially when it's coming from Republicans, because people go, huh? Oh, that's interesting. They think that it's supposed to be liberals and leftists who think that. And then they go, oh, you're a Republican and you're a veteran of Iraq. were two and three, and you've got what to say now? It should be interesting to people to hear what's this guy's case against our foreign policy now. And after all, they spent years telling

me, I got to shut up because only you are allowed to comment about this stuff because only you've been over there, not me. And so, okay, now it's your turn. You have the floor, right? Let's hear from Joe Kent. That's what I say. That's good. I appreciate that, man. I think there's a lot of value in outsiders. I think this was some of the beauty of Donald Trump. He wasn't invested one way or another. And he looked at it objectively. And I think that's just been so good for our country, but also for our party. So I think people who has bias towards like, you can't talk about it unless you've been there. I think that only applies if you're advocating for war every single time. Like all these people that their default answer is, we should send in the troops and

go to war. I do feel like they need to go put boots on the ground. But being a skeptic, I think, is always good. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thanks for that. And thanks a lot for the time on the show today. It's been great. Thank you so much, Scott. All right, you guys. That's Joe Kent. He's running for Congress in Washington. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.