The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Brute Force vs Strategy — Iraq War Veteran Phil Klay on America’s War Thinking

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Philip Klay is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He is an author, a journalist and winner of the National Book Award. He currently teaches fiction at Fairfield University and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and other esteemed publications. We discuss his recent piece in The New York Times, “Trump Has Made a Fundamental Miscalculation about Iran.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/opinion/trump-iran-war-memes.html

I just want to apologize to fill in advance for the introduction you're about to hear. Periel is, you know, not that... You know what? I'm going to let you do it if you just want to talk. It's not a report table. Go ahead. Talk shit endlessly. Go ahead.

Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast for the world famous comedy seller. I'm here with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the comedy seller. I'm Periel, the producer of the show. is off somewhere, I think getting a ketamine treatment. That's true? Maybe. I'm sure you won't mind anybody knowing that. Go ahead.

Did I just violate some hip-a law? Okay, we have a very special guest today. Phil Clay is a veteran. Cly. Yeah. What? Cly. Yeah.

Really? Yeah, we do that just to screw with people. Phil Clyde is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He's an author and a journalist, and the winner of the National book award. It's also the author of the recent piece in the New York Times. Trump has made a fundamental miscalculation about Iran and a professor at Fairfield University. Welcome to the show. And I think minus the mispronunciation of your game. I did a very good job. That was great. Thank you. Last time he was on, we said Clay and he corrected us. Well, your memory is better than mine. You know, it's funny what we remember,

because I do remember being things that sting me. Like that's like that was like, oh, God, I should have done. Like that had bothered me. Anyway, so yeah. But what kind of things do you remember for you? All right. I remember when we had that guy on the live stream and he was correcting you incessantly about the difference between Khomeini and Khomeini.

Komeni and Khomeini. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember that. Okay. So, welcome back. Good to be back. Last time you were on, we had a, you know, back and forth. Last time I showed up, I had no idea what I was going to get,

and you had all these papers out of, like, the research you'd done to attack my article. Yeah. And I sort of walked into the room as like, oh, man. I got it all right here this time. No, that was about like 2,000-pound bombs and stuff like that. In any case, you wrote a very, I was telling you when you got here, but I was repeated. So you wrote a column in New York Times about Iran. Yep.

What was it called again? Trump has made a fundamental miscalculation. They name that for you, right? Yeah, I never know what they're going to call it until it shows up. Many journalists of controversies were the headline. I didn't write the headline. And Stephen Pinker tweeted out and excerpted it. And he leans to the right on these issues usually.

So I don't know where he is on the war. but I thought to myself, I was really happy for you. I said, oh, my God, if Stephen Pinker is tweeting out your writing, this is like one of the highest praises you can have as a writer, just as a writer, because, and you've written novels, and you write poetry. So obviously you care about... Not poetry. I read poetry.

Oh, you read poetry. I don't read poetry. Anyway, limericks. I like a good limerring. I was reading Caroline Davis's new songbird in the park before showing up, so, you know. There once was a man... but uh my i just discussed well i didn't just as have my favorite poet um was apparently a raging anti-semi t s t s elliot and esra pound esra pound yeah the esra pound's not my favorite though like t s elliott

changed my life i mean incredible yeah he he he anyway anyway anyways i want to say that i'm very so someone who cares about writing like aside from all your political points of view it must feel very good to have objective praise just on the art of writing I always greatly appreciate that. Yeah. The sentences matter to me a lot. Yeah. Who are some writers that you most admire, by the way?

We're going to get right to Iran, but just... Well, I mean, it's funny. I actually loved TSLA as well. When I was in the Marine Corps, I used to pass the time in training because training's super boring by memorizing poetry. Did they call you the F word when you were reading TSLEA in basic training? No. So I was... I actually memorized the wasteland.

Oh, really? Yeah. Is that your favorite, the wasteland? I mean, I memorized it, so I must like it a bunch. The four quartets for me. Four quartets is incredible. I think I probably, as I've gotten older, that means more to me. But, yeah, I was like sitting, waiting for the helicopter that was going to take us to the training exercise and everybody's kind of like, you know, doing whatever.

And I had these little cards and this captain, you know, he was like this tough, battle-hardened guy. He's responsible for training us to war. He's like, what are you doing? I was like, oh, I'm memorizing poetry. What is your major malfunction? Clay? It's Clyde, I said clay. And he goes, you like memorizing stuff?

Like it takes him a wild like process. And he goes, you like memorizing stuff? What are the elements of a nine line? Have you memorized that? And a nine line is how you call for like a casualty evacuation, right? It's got nine elements, no zero, you know? And he goes, and he goes, when one of your Marines is dying, what are you going to do? Recite poetry, Adam.

That's why I was saying. So I had a sense for it. Is that when you turned against the U.S. military? I am a huge pro-U.S. military. I will always have been the honor of my life to have been a moment. So let's talk about Iran. I want to give you a chance to give the synopsis of your point of view, and then I'll suck you into my questions about this whole issue that I feel are just go.

I just feel that the debate is untethered from normal step-by-step-by-step rigorous analysis. It's polluted by feelings about Trump, whatever. But first, give your analysis. Steve, can you just take this iPad for me and make it so it doesn't time out, you know, the screen while I'm... Because I had it set for a very short time for some reason. Go ahead. Okay. So it starts with the kind of general incoherence of the explanations for why we've gone to war, right? So we've been told everything from peace in the Middle East and regime, change to narrow military objectives of degrading their ballistic capabilities and kind of everything in between. Maybe it's because Israel was going to attack, maybe whatever. You know, they throw out

different things every day and then sometimes it's a, it's an excursion or it's not really a war, it's a little incursion or what have you. And exposure was Trump's malapropes or whatever we call it. He meant incursion, right? Right, yes. And maybe we've won it or we've pretty much won it or, you know, I forget how many times we've wanted at this point. And so there's a kind of general incoherence in the public messaging around, like, what are we trying to achieve? What are we fighting for? And which is, you know, bad.

And then I talk about how there is kind of a through line through this administration of a kind of delight in displays of violence and domination, right? And you see that in the juvenile kind of public messaging from the White House where they'll put out images of combat footage mixed with video games or cartoon or animated, AI animated things. You see it in Pete Heggseth's sort of very bombastic style

where he sounds less really like... He sounds like less like any of the actual hard guys that I knew in the military. He sounds more like a 13-year-old who just watched Conan the Barbarian for the first time. you know, and we negotiate with bombs, and it's always this kind of over the top. I mean, it's of a piece,

but even more offensive in the context of something so serious, of just the vulgarity, which is a through line of Trump and even before he's president. Right. And so there's a kind of, there's a surface level on which that's disturbing, right? And it doesn't speak to somebody who is thinking through the most morally serious thing you can do as a nation,

which is go to war. It does not give you confidence that they're actually, thinking it through with the degree of moral seriousness that is required. Not just moral seriousness. Is that the only? Moral and strategic seriousness. But also there's something that I think is kind of also a through line where there's an attitude towards brute force in this administration that for me is both a failure when you're thinking about how the world operates, but also kind of violation of deep-seated American principles.

There is a reason that from the founding, America's greatest military leaders have not talking about war like this. In fact, they talk about war in opposite ways. You know, Washington, and Washington was somebody who knew war and actually knew war's charms, right? You know, as a young man, he says, I've heard the bullets whistle and there was a charming sound to it. But when he spoke about war as a commander of troops during the revolution, it was always, you know, the horrors of war is something to be defended against. War is a plague on mankind. And he also, when news of British atrocities reached him, talked about how, you know, like, this will actually injure their cause and help ours because, like, we need to fight in a way that secures the attachment of all just men. And there's

this idea from the founding, it's argued in the federal's papers, that all governments rest on opinion. So there's kind of founding principles of the nation. One is the equality of all men, right? So you can't actually talk about killing with the degree of sort of bombastic callousness of like an Assyrian emperor, right? But also that power resides in people, right? And this is both a moral claim. It's a reason what we have a democracy. But it's also a sort of more hard-nosed look at where power lies, right? When the federal say all governments rest on opinion, they mean all governments. Most governments are not democracies at that time. And they have a very acute understanding of how the British monarchs exercise of aggressive military power actually,

weakened their hold on the people. And so when you're thinking through the ways that American presidents have talked about war, it's not just that there's a kind of moral register, but Washington wants us to fight in a particular way and with a particular rhetoric because he ultimately wants to form a nation that secures the attachments of all just men. When Lincoln, and it's really apparent with Lincoln's rhetoric, you know, he accepts Northern responsibility for the war, right, and complicity in the sin of slavery and wants us to fight famously with malice towards not, right, because he wants to heal the nation. And there's this very different view of what force can do. You see it most clearly articulated once a guy like Stephen Miller says,

you know, we live in a world that's governed by brute force, right, which he says to Jake Topper. It's very like, I'm the realist guy who thinks it's just brute force. And this is a, you know, you can see this both in foreign policy where they have kind of displays of brute force, but also the kind of show of force in Minneapolis. He heard that on the super friends, by the way, let's lose. Yeah. I mean, this is, it's a really juvenile thing. And of course, you know, their show of force in Minneapolis ended up in disgrace and the

death of American citizens. It didn't end up with Americans going, oh, you're really tough. I guess we'll support Trump now. So it's a deeply simplistic way of looking at the world. Would you agree? Would you agree with the following? Because, you know, of course, if the outcomes were good from people who spoke badly, we would take the good outcomes, right? That it's an insight into a mental process of a person, like arrogance, lack of deep thought, hiding behind, you know, bombastic statements, and truism. you know, rules of thumb, fortune cookies, really, you know. This leads to disaster because it's an insight into how they operate in every aspect of what they do.

Yeah. And you can infer with a high degree of probability that someone who's speaking that way, as opposed to Lincoln, is not really weighing everything at the table to make sure he doesn't screw up. which is why a lot of the dictators could be, why a lot of the dictators and bad guys in history who did speak that way all wound up on the ash heap. Yeah, they tend to overestimate what they can achieve, right? And also, like, look, tyrannies ultimately weaken themselves because they have to devote more and more of their energies

towards coercing their own population, right? Which was the situation that Iran was in, right? Now, when you look at the strikes on Iran, there's something kind of almost incomprehensible about the lack of planning, right? For things that everybody anticipated. They did not think that the war would be escalated in this way. They didn't think that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed. How do you know those things? Trump said so.

And certainly, look, the idea that this was, if maybe there was a discussion before the war was launched where they're like, we're going to start the war, then the rate's going to get closed and will respond by removing sanctions from Iranian oil. Like, I don't picture that as anything other than a post hoc decision. I find that hard to believe. So there's also a lot of reporting, right? Can I tell you why it's hard to believe? First of all, the generals and all these people around. All of them knew.

Everybody knew. Who are implementing a plan. They have to come up with a plan. Yes. Whether Trump tells them or not, they've been wargaming this for 30 years. I remember as a kid reading articles, what if they close the straight? So whatever Trump says or doesn't say, first of all, I have two points. There's no way they weren't discussing it and taking it as a, you know, and having some sort of plan B for it. Even though Trump says, don't worry about it, they're not going to do that. But also, that's number one. Number two is the Israeli. The military most certainly did. Well, and let me just get both points out there. Let you respond. Whatever we think about Trump, we know it's the opposite for the Israelis. They think things through. And if anybody does, the Israelis do.

And they have Iran wired for sound. They certainly knew very, very well that the straits could be closed. Well, I think the calculations are very different for Israel. I mean, Iran is a direct threat to Israel in a way that it's not for the United States. Right, but they still want to prevail, which means they still want to have a idea of what they will do if Iran closes the straits for Israel to go into this war. They're not Trump, for Israel to go into this war, and they have an adversarial system. So all I can say is— That makes it very hard me to believe all that.

We didn't have all the assets in the region that we've been slowly moving in. We didn't have any kind of alliance structure lined up. Certainly, we didn't seem to have done much of anything to plan for an oil shop. Right? So there's a lot of political decisions, like at the highest level, that clearly were not made. What can we do? Well, I think if we had actually thought this through, we wouldn't have done it in the first place. All right now, the prices of oil are – and again, this is not an argument for the war.

I'm just saying the prices of gas and oil, they're not even, I think, in the top 10 of all-time highs, right? We've had, if you control for inflation, this is not all-time high, high gas. You know, countries really don't, if they think it's in their interest and necessary to go to war, you know, people have sacrificed so much for wars in the past. Higher prices at the pump, I mean, if you can't tolerate that, you can never tolerate a war. Sure. and, you know, it just, it just, you know, and like this is my snarky point is that liberal people have been clambering for higher gas prices forever. This is the way, this is what they want. They want a gas tax.

They want high prices so we'll get more alternative energy sources. Like, they've never cared about high gas prices. And all of a sudden they say, you raised the price of gas. I'm like, yes, this is exactly what you've wanted gas prices to be unstable. You wanted people. So, like, I'm like, is this, are you really concerned about the price? I'm not, I mean, I mean, you. There is a whole segment of people who are just picking this up, like the kitchen sink and throwing it at Trump.

And actually, they don't really care about higher gas prices. They know it's, they know it's a useful knock. I don't know that many people have been clamoring for higher oil prices in my life. I just have to say. Of course. That's the whole principle behind gas taxes. And carbon, what are carbon taxes for? That, I would say that's different from having, like, a massive oil shock, right?

I don't think anybody's... I mean, either way, that's sort of a side discussion. Either way, both the Secretary of Defense and the President admitted that they had not anticipated some of these actions, right? Despite the fact that Iran's basically done what people have expected them to do for decades. There's such liars, though.

You don't know what they... This is another problem. It's a bizarre situation where we can't trust our own commander-in-chief when he tells us what we're doing and why and also what the planning has been. It's also a problem that we have to, as Trump critics, and I'll put on the head of Trump, have to control ourselves with. And as an example, that Israel reminds me of, is that we don't believe him ever,

except when it's convenient for us to believe him, in which case we say what Trump said. Trump said they obliterated, you know. And it's like, what's the theory of Trump? It can't just be to use what he said as evidence against him when it suits us and disregard what he says, well, he doesn't suit us. The analogy that's been bothering me lately is that many, many pro-Israel types have been saying, Iran killed 35,000 protesters. I'm like, well, that's the high estimate, but you just spent three years complaining about the fact that people were taking the high estimate of people killed in Gaza,

and now you're just quickly embracing the highest, the useful high estimate. It's like, this is human nature. When they both say that they hadn't planned for certain things, and it does seem that we're actually scrambling in response to it, it's reasonable to think that they didn't adequately plan for it. But, you know, we can sort of leave that as a... That's why I asked you, what could they do? Because if there was something they could have done, I thought, yeah, it looks like they didn't... But there's no way you're going to have a war in Iran and not have higher gas prices.

This is just, come on. That's, you know, and they can let out the petroleum reserves. They can... Didn't happen once in the last, like, 20 years. They wrote everybody a check as a stimulus or something. They could write everybody a check. They could, you know, they could take emergency actions. but I think they think this is pretty transient.

Anyway, go ahead. Okay. So, yeah. So it, I mean, we're basically now in this situation where instead of, look, it seems like, and time will tell, because I don't want to speak with, you know, absolute authority, right? Fog of War being the fog of war. And, you know, when you roll the iron dice of war, you unleash a certain amount of chaos, it's difficult to predict. It seems like we have a more hardline regime, right?

We have, I'm sorry, what? More hardline regime. More hardline regime, right? It doesn't seem as though they're wanting to talk as badly as Trump has repeatedly promised us. And it does not seem as though the, we negotiate with bomb strategy of Pete's Hexath has led to, you know, any kind of concessions. And that is a far cry from the sort of maximalist goals of, you know, what you would hope to see from this, be it, you know, a positive regime change, a destruction of their, you know, removal of their nuclear material, all sorts of other things. So I feel as though we kind of, it seems as though we went into this with this big show of force, very impressed with what we can do in terms of tactically and proficiently in the military is incredible. And there is not a clear strategic or moral purpose, and I don't necessarily see how we achieve any of the sort of positive ends. I have a lot of questions for you. The entire debate has been bothering me because in a sense, it's as if somebody says, oh my god we just went headlong into this chemotherapy and it's it's making me sick and you know

I'm having some organ failure and and and like yes but obviously the chemotherapy is not the heart of the matter here the heart of the matter here is you have cancer do we think this cancer is fatal do we feel like like it's all about the cancer and then once we finish and get through through a very, very intense consideration of the cancer and its risks, then we decide whether the chemotherapy is necessary or not. And if it's necessary, then who cares if you're sick, right? So that's an analogy that stacks the deck, right? No. So it could be, so, keep with there.

I'm not going to fill a bus, I'll say. I know I lost my thought. Sorry, go ahead. Okay, so. Oh, I remember. And so that end, I also want to say that I don't imagine there's any war in history where the analyses 14 or 20 days into it that are proclaiming, you know, conclusory out. I don't think there's a single other war ever where anybody would take seriously in retrospect what people were thinking 20 days into it. There's such hubris here in these sweeping criticisms of a war this early on.

Anyway, so those are my thing. I never claimed to know exactly how this was, I think I said as much, like, five minutes ago, that I don't know how this is going to end up, right? But you can absolutely, but you absolutely can and should criticize how we went into it. How much did Lincoln fail to prepare for and think about in civil war? How many generals did he fire, right? So, but let's get back. The question is, you know, the chemotherapy. So chemotherapy would be, here's a treatment that has been rigorously tested and has worked on precisely this kind of cancer in the future.

Now, how many air campaigns without ground troops in history if it led to a positive regime change? I'll take, I was trying to make a jeopardy joke. How many campaigns? So Robert Pape would say zero. What about Hiroshima? So without ground troops, right? We have a decades long... I've talked about that in the war.

Did we invite... I don't even know my history. Did we invade Japan? After... So we have a decades long military commitment to... Like, give them new constitution. We have troops on the island for... I mean, still to this day.

No, but that was after... And that's a part of a... Part of a... A campaign, large campaign with ground troops. Right. Wasn't the bomb justified as a way to avoid... To avoid having to have the huge invasion of... I think the Russians are fighting into Japanese somewhere.

So, yeah, we had not invaded the island yet. Yeah. So I would say... I mean, you know, it's not a point either way, but you ask me the question, so that's what came to my mind. But I would say that you're dealing with very small sample sizes. So normally, right, one of the criticisms,

and this is something that, like, somebody like Pape would say, but I don't think that purely bombing can radicalize regime can actually fuse the populace in the regime when there's a sort of division between a regime and its population, it can actually

strengthen support, create a rally around the flag fact there's all sorts of negative things that can happen. But you're still talking about the chemo and I want to get to the case. Yeah, yeah. So this is not like a strategy that has a long history of succeeding, right? And the question is like, Is this chemotherapy, which is like a very rigorously tested thing that will work for this problem, or is this a drunkard with a rusty spoon saying, I'm going to get that brain cancer out?

And right now, between those two poles, we have highly competent military men, right, who can execute extremely impressive tactical objectives, and then somebody who's a lot more like the drunkard with the rusty spoon in charge of the strategic and moral. I think I can dispose of that argument. I really do. I feel like, you know, a thousand times more about military history and all this stuff. But I shouldn't say disposable. I'll just give you, like, my common sense. My common sense answer to it is that, vis-à-vis those historical examples, we've never had a situation. obviously where, and it's Israel, and maybe the CIA,

we have the entire place wired for sound. There was this famous story where Akh Mdinajad told, I can't believe it was Ahmadinejad, where they had a special Iranian division set up to root out the Mossad, and the guy in charge of it turned out to be Mossad, right? So obviously there's a, I mean, it's unbelievable to even think that, right, as if the guy in America in charge of Iran turned out to be Iranians.

So we have, that's A, like we have no idea what we don't know, but we have reason to imagine that there's very, very deep penetration there of perhaps people who are on our side. That's number one. Number two, this is coming on the heels of a mini attempt at a revolution or a coup with these, all the high number of people were just killed. It's the guardian that said 30,000, which makes, it's kind of an admission. against interest because it's such a left-wing paper. So the 30,000 number doesn't sound as ridiculous as if it was in, you know, the Wall Street

Journal or Wall Street Journal editorial page. But we know it was a bloodbath over there. And it was a bloodbath of people who certainly knew they were going to get killed. And I don't know what the multiple is of people who were killed to people who were also protesting. It had to be like 10 to 1, 20 to 1. They didn't kill 100% of the protests. and then what the ratio of the 20 to 1 is to the people who were sympathetic but didn't have that kind of courage to go out and protest. So it's at a time when we had every reason to think that the regime could be teetering.

So you add these together and you say, let's give it a shot. And if it doesn't fall, maybe the cracks will begin to form. Maybe they'll rally around the flag. But six months from now, a year from now, like of anybody, Thomas Friedman, it might. us about Gaza. If you just stop now, when the Palestinians come out of their tunnels, they will take care of Hamas. Remember he said that? He says, they'll look at, you got us into this. So maybe the Thomas Friedman logic here should be used against the people who are abandoning it now, who once embrace it, which is, okay, but the cracks are going to form. And once the Iranian people

emerge, they will handle this. But worst case scenario, you'll set them back 15, 20 years, maybe forever, maybe scare them forever from this march towards a nuclear bomb, which the most elementary game theory tells us, whatever the debate was about whether they intended on getting a bomb pre-October 7th, after Israel humiliated them, after they took incoming, there's no way they're not getting a bomb first chance they get. They would be insane right now. After all, they say, you know what, we don't think we need a bomb. They're going to look at what's happened to them and said, this would not have happened if we had a bomb. I'm sure they're thinking that.

Yeah. Well, and so, and this is where I wanted to start. Unless we are prepared for Iran to have a bomb, that's the cancer. We might not have any choice now. We can't wait until it's imminent, whatever that means. So the question is, and do you think... And do you think that makes this less likely? I think that, yes, it makes it less likely.

Why? It makes it less likely because... If the Iranian regime survives, okay, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to think might happen, right? I mean, the people rising up is a long-shot hope. Obviously, I hope that happens. Everybody hopes that happens. Well, they did rise up a few weeks ago, right? No, no, no.

Successfully rising up. Right, no, no, but the fact is that it's not like regime, these examples, these pap examples, you know, it's a little bit... So the, you know, the big factor in terms of whether a regime can hold on in the face of mass protest is whether they're willing to slaughter their own people, right? And right now, the regime, you know, either they hold on or they're all going to get strung up. So why doesn't it make it less likely for them to get a bomb? If we drop all this, call it ordinance, all this ordinance, is that the right term?

Sure. Yeah. Sure or yes? Yes. Yeah. I hear it just, it seemed to me. I never knew that term. before. They dropped all this ordinance on these sites that took them 20, 30 years to build. You kick the can down the road and maybe also scare them. Like, you know what? Maybe we don't want to do this again. Well, so we did that earlier. That's the initial, the Farta Strikes, right? Well, to some extent, and Trump may have exaggerated or, but. He may have exaggerated that it was

completely, I think it's fair to say that he did it exaggerate. Okay. I'm not, I'm not, no, I'm saying, I don't know. Like, yeah. We did not completely obliterate. But this is a hell of a lot more. or obliterated. And even then, I think there was one site we knew we might not have taken care of. They're going to go in now on the ground in one way or not. And they're going to take that stuff out, aren't they? I mean, it's crazy if they don't with special forces. I mean, they're not going to, no, I very much doubt there. I mean, what that would require, there's an interesting interview with Vodal, where he talked about what it would require. He estimated that you need to put a brigade on the ground. Like, I mean, this is not like something where you go in overnight and

take it out. This is, you know, lots and lots of radioactive material. It's a, he estimated you need to sort of have specialized teams that you can put in and then a brigade to secure the area and the logistical tail. And of course, they're going to be vulnerable to the buy. Would you support that? That seems like madness, honestly. Against the alternative of them, but you seem to think that this is not going to have been getting a bomb. That would. Are you okay with them getting a bomb? Let's start there. No. But, I also don't think that I'm able to control everything. I think that we've actually made the situation worse.

But let's step back. Let's step back. With the United States, we can stop them if we want to. Of course we can stop it. Can we stop it? Of course we can. I think if we committed large-scale ground troops, yeah, we could stop it. Why large-scale?

I mean, a brigade? This is just what this is, you know, I'm relying on votal giving like this is what this would require. And you'd need to be there for an extended amount of time, right? I mean, I think it's this is not even in peacetime. This is not an operation that you do in a couple days. So. Not a couple days, but a couple months? Yeah. So I.

Not huge risk. But let's not happening. Right. There's no, there's no willingness to do this. there would be it would be a very vulnerable thing for U.S. forces. It would be a lot of death to be a huge cost.

Why would there be a lot of death? And because you would have... We didn't even have a lot of death of Americans in Iraq, right? This would be, this is a much weaker country right now and we're not going in to fight the regime, just going into the nuclear sites and pulling it all out. Why would there be a lot of death? This would be a large number of troops and also their logistics, you know, exposed to drone warfare.

I mean... But wait, not much. This is a lot. It's a big ask. I mean, what I'm backing into it at some point we say, yeah, Iran shouldn't get a bomb. What are we willing to do to prevent it? Nothing. And I...

So this is the thing. if that's what it would be required. Maybe you think that's a good idea, and we should, you know, insert a large number of troops into Iran for several months to do this very delicate operation and hope that it goes well. I...

If you tell me that's... Frankly don't see that happen. No, if you tell me that's the only way to do it. I'm not... I don't... I feel like... So here's... But let's take a step back. Like, this is actually a sort of famous...

Famous story about war. King Crease's ghost to the Oracle of Delphi about 2,500 years ago. This is, you know, what will happen if I attack Persia and the Oracle cells, you know, if you cross the Halle's River, a great empire will fall. And all excited, he goes over and attacks Persia, and then his empire falls, right? His kingdom falls. And the problem with war is it's nice that you have the intention, right?

My intention is we're going to set back the nuclear program. We're going to make sure Iran doesn't have a bomb. And then the inherent chaos and unpredictability of war comes into play. all sorts of things can happen. Things that I can anticipate right now. These are, you know, Donald Rumsfelds. Known, unknown. Yeah.

Yeah, things you can anticipate, things you can't anticipate. And also things can boomerang, right? You can attack a regime and make it more hardline and more committed to getting a bomb and more willing to accept pain than before.

That was my point. I think that Rubicon has already been crossed. They are already at the point now where they're at 11 in terms of they will get a bomb next chance they get. That had already happened. Even in the first strike that Israel had and then the 12-day war, at that point, I believe you're not getting any closer to a regime that says, we need a bomb. Enough pussy footing around. If we can get up off the mat, we're going to make sure we're not going to get back on the mat. And so I think you're right, but I think that ship has sailed.

We have to deal with situation today. We can't undo that. You follow me. I mean, I follow you. And I don't know. I don't know whether the Iranian regime, as it was right then, was full-on committed to- Well, the intelligence was that they were reconstituting already. Yeah.

So why would they? so while Trump is president, why would they immediately start to reconstitute? Israel's having an election in a few months. Trump will only be there for a short while. J.D. Vance is an isolationist. The Democrats are

pussies. So, if you're Iran, why in the world? Even if you want the bomb, it was stupid to reconstitute right away. This is clear indication. I mean, you're never getting yet clearer. He's not going to come on and say, we are going to get, like this is, you have to

act based on, but let's go, let's rewind. Why do you think we should be worried about Iran getting a bomb? It would, I mean, it would make them a more dangerous and powerful state. So, and I think it's a, it's a wicked regime. Do you think that it would lead to a, and this is, you know, this is something that's not getting enough attention. All the Gulf states are everybody's worried or more worried than Israel is about Iran getting a bomb. Do you think you... Well, I think that one of the likely outcomes of this, I mean, sort of in general, there's been a kind of slide in terms of having a more stable international order, right? And certainly the kind of Trump administration's fully unrestrained view of foreign policy and the use of military power makes that substantially worse. So it's not just Iran. I think that a lot

of countries are probably looking at the new world order that we're creating and thinking, like, we better get a bomb, right? And so I think that nuclear proliferation more generally is one of the logical, like, just kind of rational consequences of this style of foreign policy. And I think that makes the world a much more dangerous place. I mean, we know, we think we know, that the Abraham Accords were not because the Arab states and the Saudis who were on the precipice of joining them except for October 7th, were not because they had a huge change of heart about how they feel about Israel.

It was because they wanted to be part of the kind of allied structure against Iran. They all fear Iran. So, yeah, so if Iran goes nuclear, we presume UAE, Saudi Arabia, you know, Qatar, all, everybody wants a bomb. And now I think everybody's sort of, in the wake of this,

there'll be a lot of rethinking of the old. sort of security order. Depending on what happens and how this war plays out. So my first issue, and I've talked about this a few weeks already, is that just like, if we presume it was lab leak in COVID, just like the accident became much more dangerous than what we spent all our time worrying about, biological warfare, the accident, the nuclear accident, and there's many, many, you probably know a lot about this, there's many, many academic scholars.

Something wrong? Many, many academic scholars who worry about this all the time. A bunch of tin pan, despot, madmen dictatorships with atom bombs, with no institutions to prevent accidents, no inspections. Literally, the terrorists have the bombs and are deciding when not to launch. one guy who we're going to have on later gave us analogy. He said, remember a few years ago we had this kind of nuclear warning of incoming in Hawaii? Yeah. And we went through our checklist and we determined that it wasn't true. What happens when Iran gets a false alarm? You know, so just aside from

everything else. Oh, when you have a sort of array of nations with this, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's one of the reasons that this style of foreign policy, I think, creates a much more unstable and dangerous world. So I think it makes it much more likely that we have one of those incidents that you're worried about if we pursue this style of foreign policy. Well, what I'm saying is that to me, to me, this scenario alone is enough to convince me, we can't let, we can't, we can't, we cannot allow them to have a bomb. We cannot allow the, the, the human race forever. What if it's not in your power? I mean, so this is one of the things, I mean, a lot of bad, it's not a power, it's not a will. There can be consequences to us preventing Iran from getting

a bomb, but we can prevent Iran getting a bomb. Every war has started with the nation thinking that they're going to achieve their political objectives, right? I mean, and one of the prime ways that you make disastrous military decisions is you're like, you know, you just convince yourself of the importance of the problem without fully thinking through, you know, how you get there, right, to the achievement of that. I don't yet see this administration, I mean, first off, if the only thing that you're concerned about is nuclear bombs, right? And that overrides all the other dangers and chaos of this policy that still doesn't really justify the war that we're actually talking about right now. How would you stop them getting a bomb?

I don't know. If you don't know, you have to say, I don't know. And I'm not sure if I don't know, I can't really pass on the war either because I don't know if it's the only way. I think that there is a reason that you don't do things that cause mass. of death and suffering, which also might make the situation worse, just because you don't have a good answer, there are a lot of terrible problems in international affairs that they're not great answers for because we're not omnipot and we don't control the world and we can't dictate to other people at the barrel of a gun, what they should do and how they should structure their societies.

And a lot of grievous military errors that have been disastrous for our country have come from just that style of thing. Okay, fair enough. I guess you would call the Iraq a grievous error. Rock, I mean, Vietnam. But... Look, look, when the communists took over in South Vietnam, it wasn't awesome, you know? Right. That doesn't make, like, the Vietnam War a smashing success or a just policy. Yeah, so I would say two things. First of all, just to touch on Iraq for a second, because Iraq, you served in Iraq. I did. As they, it's a cliche. So I'm not going to say thank you for your service, because I could, but, but, uh, I always do get this little. thing, the voice of the head says,

shut up, Dorman. This guy actually risked his life for his country. You know, like, it's very, it's very impressive. I didn't do anything impressive. I was a staff officer, but yeah. Yeah, but, but you didn't know that when you went. You were prepared to. You're a big, you're a burly six-five guy. They might have said, you know, I'm six-one. Fly, we need strong, like, I can go there.

I appreciate the extra four inches, but I can't. That would be stolen tall valor. My wife would, too. Anyway. So in Iraq, and then I'll analogize to World War II. In Iraq, for many, many years, the big rap on Iraq was that they say Bush lied. The more reasonable thing was Bush was mistaken. But either way, there were no WMD.

He didn't have any interactions with Al-Qaeda. basically, but very few people said, it didn't matter whether Bush lied, it didn't matter whether they were in bed with al-Qaeda, we would still be against the war, meaning to say that if we had gone to Iraq and found exactly what we know exists in Iran now, a very advanced nuclear program,

huge terrorist networks being funded with billions and billions of dollars that are destabilizing a whole section of the world, we would not be saying what we'd go into Iraq for we'd be saying some people died this and that but we had no choice Saddam Hussein was about to get a nuclear bomb

Saddam Hussein was funding al-Qaeda that is Iran now and this is the analogy to World War II is that the cost of inaction can very often be far worse than the cost of action World War I'll analogize to Iraq

we were so freaked out by World War I. We were paralyzed to react to what was the clear version, Hitler. We are so paralyzed by Iraq now. We are paralyzed to react to everything about Iraq that we said was the reason Iraq was a mistake. And we're just like pretending like, well, this will be a mistake too. But wait, but this isn't Iraq. All the things that you complained about Iraq, you know are true. here, doesn't matter. And then we have the cost of inaction. And we've had the cost of inaction

in World War II. We had the cost of inaction in October 7th. Israel had the cost of an action. We have the cost of an action in 9-11. All these threats were very, very clearly on our radar. And we found reasons along the lines of the arguments that you're making not to do anything about them. And this is why, and I'll finish now, this is why I think that there's too much, both sides of this debate are too sure. Either side can absolutely be right here. And there's not enough like really teasing of the layer after layer after layer to try to get to the bottom of it. Is this an inaction risk time or is this an action risk time?

And obviously nobody can even be sure, right? Like if the regime fell in Iran tomorrow, you wouldn't say, holy shit, where did that come from? you're like, oh, yeah, I guess... I would be, no, I would be very surprised. Didn't, like, Hanar, Wrent or somebody say, like, you know, every fall of regime is unpredictable beforehand and it was totally obvious in retrospect, right? Well, something like that.

This is actually one of the questions, right? And I'll note, look, throughout this, you spent most of your time arguing that Iran is a problem. I'm a veteran of Iraq. Iran killed a lot of people, a lot of Americans in Iraq. They've slaughtered their own citizens. You'll find no disagreement from me that Iran is a problem. sort of that the regime is awful.

It's more than just retribution, you know, it's like future risk too. Right. But once again, to successfully argue that Iran is a problem, right, or that there is a problem, does not mean we do any solution, right, or anything that anybody floats as a solution, and certainly not when it comes to the use of military force because it is so chaotic, because it can be so unpredictable, because you can create a worse situation. And the only thing certain is the immediate death and suffering that will be caused by the initiation of hostilities. So I haven't heard from you a really good articulation of how this is going to achieve this effects

other than like, I mean, maybe we should go all in and invade Iran, which certainly there's no support for. And I think would probably be a bad idea. And, I mean, Iran is what population is twice the size of Iraq. I mean... I'll answer, but I'll let you feel. Yeah, yeah. So I think there's a real danger of saying, like, there's a problem, and therefore, you know, let's hit the do-something button, and that do-something button is military strikes. Look, one of the things about...

And this was a problem that we faced with the Soviet Union, right? It's like, what do you do with the Soviet Union? which is a much bigger problem than Iran could ever be. And it has sort of satellite states all over. And the basic understanding that, you know, if you go back to like George Keenan and the long telegram that the Americans worked out is like, look, the system itself is its own weakness.

Right. And to actually directly confront it, risk cessation, risk, huge swaths of dangers that we're not willing to, that we're not willing to risk, but that if you contain it, which does, you know, would include some military components of points.

If you contain it, the inherent weaknesses of a system like that will ultimately lead to its own destruction, right? And a much more cautious approach actually prevailed. It didn't prevail immediately, right? But that was essentially what happened, that a totalitarian system is, and again, this goes back to like the sort of founding insights

of American democracy, like it ends up either needed to expand more and more of its coercive power on its own people, which further weakens it, and also further alienates its own people for them because suppressing your own people does not win you allies, or it needs to gradually accommodate itself to the population that hates it, which moderates the regime. And the thing about direct military confrontation is that it, that process, it scrambles that whole process, right?

And probably moves us back, right? So if you're, you know, if you're the, if you're the parent or the brother or the son of an Iranian conscript, who maybe doesn't like the regime, but was, you know, in a, in a boat that was sunk. And then you see, you know, the Iranians show you propaganda where the president of the United States. is saying that we sink the boats for fun, even though we could have captured them, right? That probably warms you to the regime, or at least makes you think that the things that they were saying

about America really were true, right? That it really is the great state. Absolutely. And that is, you know, that is a, halting and actually reversing some of the sort of more productive things that you would hope would be going on in that country that might actually change things

because the other option is really endless bombing of this country and trying to just sort of through brute force cow them. And that is a very chaotic, dangerous, possibly at times counterproductive thing that will, where there's like immediate pain, immediate suffering, immediate chaos that is not just limited to the region, but the whole world that will also impact how other nations see us in the global order. There are other people who are going to be looking at this and saying, wow, we really got to get a nuclear bomb. Like there are obvious costs and huge risks.

And I just think that, you know, being like, well, it's a really big problem. Therefore, this is a good idea. That doesn't work. So it just doesn't work when it comes to work. Let me answer both points you made. So the first point, and, you know, it's sort of an answer, which is this may sound simplistic,

and it may be simplistic. But there is a simplistic part of me, which feels like the various evil ideas, of the world, Nazism, slavery, they had to be fought. They're viral, they have virality, they seek to spread. Did Soviet communism have to be fought? Yes, the Cold War, communism. Yeah, I was on my list. I forgot to say a lot. Communism. Do you think the containment strategy was a good idea? Yeah, hold on. Yeah, yeah. So, and that there's always reason, not to fight them

and certainly victory in the Cold War victory in the Civil War victory in World War II none of these were far gone conclusions and they could have made things worse and people say well Hitler would have never had cared about us if we hadn't done this

and Hitler would have you know Darrell Cooper Hitler was never going to bother England who the fuck knows but I'm I'm just cautious about it's just simple reflexive argument that these are the real deal, and if America is not ready to fight them, they're going to

just spread and spread, and then the cost of fighting them in the future is going to be much, much worse. That's just, going back to your previous point about me, look, this is a kind of convoluted argument I have. There's a lot of anti-Semites out there, but they all, one thing they agree on is that the Israelis are very smart. I don't think Marco Rubio's comments, man, that was a disaster. When he said that thing about Israel, my first thing, that's not going to make things better. If you read the whole, if you hear the whole thing, it was obvious, that's not what he was saying.

But whether he said or is one of the reasons you've got to be careful with public messaging around this stuff. Yes, but I just, that's, you know, frosting on a cake. The cake is well. So anyway, the Israelis are, they're haters, the haters of the Jews, part of the reason they hate them. is because they're so fucking smart. Everybody agrees the Jews is smart. Number one. Number two, I'm going to wrap it all so how they all relate to each other.

As opposed to America, as opposed to me, there are no armchair warriors in Israel. In our country, one after another, we have presidents who evaded the draft sending the kids of the deplorables off to die. In Israel, even in the Gaza War, the guy in the war cabin, it loses his own son. Every one of those guys risked their lives.

Netanyahu was injured. So they're sending people to die. They're sending their own sons, their nephews, their neighbors. This is not a dynamic in any way similar to America. They have Iran wired for video and sound. They believe it is worth the blood of their children right now. to do this. I don't know what they know. You don't know what they know. We didn't know about the Pagers and Hezbollah. There's all kinds of things we don't know. But I'm going to infer and give the

benefit of the doubt to say that if these people are ready to risk their lives who have every inch of that country who probably are listening to meetings of the leadership, they know exactly where they meet, if these people have decided this is worth the lives of their own children, I am not going to paint them with the Trump brush. I'm going to say, you know what, this needs to be respected. They probably do have very, very, if you could speak with full security clearance to one of these Israelis, I guarantee you they're going to tell you 20 things you have no fucking idea about. And just the final thing I'm going to say is that in the end, Iran is right now 1% of the threat it will ever be in the future.

They are on their back on the mat. We've taken out all their air defense, all their missiles, all their early warning systems. We've taken out the uranium, like ICBFs, like everything. They have pop guns and things which can kill people, but they are not a military threat right now. We are not going to get this chance again. We are just not going to get this chance again. And I'm actually very sympathetic to every single thing that's come out of your mouth. That's different than in the government.

I literally am. There's not a thing that's ridiculous. I'm just saying like, but you have to decide to take a leap here, I believe. It's like, we're never going to get this chance again. This is dangerous. If we don't do this, we know what the future holds. And, you know, best case, the regime will fall.

Next case is the regime won't fall now, but it'll start the dominoes affected region. And worst cases, we'll set them back on their program until our next opportunity, because five years or now, 10 years to know, and I was saying this, I believe I was the first one, right after Operation Spider-Web, you remember me saying this, as soon as the Ukraine's managed to overwhelm the Russian Air Force with these drones, I said, that's it.

Israel cannot defend against this. The future is, these countries are, each drone was less than $1,000, each drone will be $75, 10 years from now, and they're going to have 10,000 of them, and they're going to send them over, also you're talking about Israel. They're going to send them over to Israel. And if we think, even if you're in isolation, you think America, you're worried about the price of oil, you think America is going to be able to sit out the destruction of Israel? I know many people

would be happy to do that. That's not going to happen. We couldn't sit out the destruction of Europe in World War I. We couldn't sit out World War II. That's when the world was very disconnected. A connected world, America is not going to sit out the destruction of Israel in a regional war in the Middle East. It's going to come home to roost. This is is our best chance to take a stab at it. And you're right, it might not work. But boy, like, we had a chance to get bin Laden, remember? And Clinton said, no, no, I'm not going to do it.

Bad call, Bill Clinton. We sat out, you know, there's all sorts of examples here. So it's like, I just say give the benefit of the doubt of fighting the evil. That's how I feel about it. I don't know what's right. I'll never be able to prove it's right. Just so just as a sort of general rule. Not crazy talk, is it?

Anytime, it's like, maybe there's secret information that makes this make sense. I just wholly reject that as a way of... But you can infer it from their behavior. I do not need to trust that they have a great plan. That's different. And they're like, sure, the Israelis... Sometimes it makes smart moves. Sometimes don't.

Right? And I am just looking at the campaign as it is. And also, even if the Israelis have the secret information that makes them as smart as you say, the dominant partner in this is the United States, and they're led by who they're led by. And I have absolutely no faith in. What turned out to be the single worst decision Israel ever made? Was it a war? Oh, by the way, 1973 was another time of inaction. Was it a war or was it the unilateral war? withdrawal from Gaza, which I supported. I'm not going to speak on Israeli mistakes. You know, I think, like, I think of this from an American lens. No, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, like, I don't feel, and you get this all the time. I mean, as a historical example. This is not just for Israel, but also, like, you know, if you knew what our security officials knew, you would agree with X policy that you disagree with. And it's like, no, I don't, I'm not going to take anything on faith that's happening behind the curtain that somehow will make something that doesn't make sense to me and looks like it's heading to disaster somehow makes sense because, you know, like, yeah, look, I hope there's some secret thing that I'm not seeing that will make this all okay and all turn out great.

But everything that I'm seeing is really worrying. Okay, fair enough. You don't have to assume there's something you don't know, but you will acknowledge that quite often there turns out. to be things that we didn't know. For instance, Stuxnet, for instance, the Pager's, for instance, a secret nuclear site, which all the Mossad knows about. But the amazing tactical proficiency of both the Americans and the Israelis is not in dispute. Look, we, uh, it's the strategic vision in where this is heading in the long term. Well, but I'm just saying it, I infer from the fact that Israel is ready to take these huge risks, that they have good knowledge of the risks are necessary and worth it. Look, you,

The North Koreans got a bomb right under our nose, right? Like this, like we F that up and there's no going back. Like we think we're going to be able to prevent, we're going to monitor Iran. You cannot, we cannot control everything that happens in the world. And there's a strong case that when we, that there are many instances where he have tried to and has led to disaster or it has led to a worse outcome in the long term. And that's my fear for this. Obviously, I hope that I hope I'm wrong.

Look, I hope I'm wrong. What is the last, final question, I guess. How, if you turn out to be wrong, I'll come on the show. No, no, no, no, that's, of course you will. And I will sing Celine Dion hits to you. No, you'll read us the wasteland. You'll recite the wasteland for you. As a more, as a more introspective question.

That's what the live from the table listeners really want. As a more introspective question. if it turns out that you're wrong. There are an unfortunate number of great writers who are like horrible anti-Semite. So I've done to have a discussion with my buddy, Jake, who's like a, yeah, he's like a, he lives in Israel. And he's like, it's just something is a Jew that you have to like, you know. It's like, Dostoevsky. Yeah.

And he hated Catholics, too, so, you know. Oh, yeah, but not, but not, and he hated their beliefs. Dosteuski hated the Jews. Is well back in anti-Semite? He's just not a great person. I mean, I like Wellbeck, you know. He's a great writer. Yeah, yeah.

Nick Flentes. No. How will, what, Celine. You know, let me look at Bill Crystal's reeling from a change in his worldview. But will you integrate it into a modified worldview or will you just say, if you turn on to be wrong, or we just say, well, you know, I don't think I was, you know, that was the best, I advocated for the best decision based on what I knew at the time.

Nothing's 100%. This is an outlier event. they turned out to be, they got lucky this time, but I still have fundamentally the same worldview, or were you said, maybe next time I'll. I mean, look, it would probably, um,

I would have to incorporate into my worldview in some way, right? I think that, you know, and this is the thing, right? Like, this type of campaign, it's track record in creating stable regime change, incredibly bad, right? And the response to that is like,

this time it's different. We have better technology, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I don't think that is going to be a difference, right? That we have, it's different this time. We have better technology is something that has also been said before. But yeah, if it works, obviously I would incorporate that into my worldview, right? And, you know, the Israelis are certainly trying to strike the, you know, not just military targets,

but at an instrument of regime control. And so, you know, obviously your sense of how effective this kind of thing can be would have to change. But there's – but given the track record of the past, you have to say it's incredibly risky. Yeah, but anyways, I'm going to defend you. Anyone's worldview can tolerate things that don't turn out within your general feeling about how they should be approached because everything's might have odd. You wouldn't say there's zero chance regime could fall. But this is why I've said – you don't know what – like war unleashes chaos. And the thing is whenever there's a terrible regime, you're like, well, the status quo is pretty bad.

I mean, this is actually, this was why I supported Iraq, because I thought Saddam Hussein's awful, right? Suffering in the, you know, Iraqi people, like, what's the worst that can happen, right? And like the worst that can happen was metastasizing terrorism around the region, strengthening of Iran, genocide, mass. genocide of who the Yazidis and i was in december 2019 i was talking with the yzidi woman in in singar talking about how her family was murdered and she was taken as a slave and kept in a hul and then eventually this like izzi smuggling operation got her out but her sister was still there i mean it was something you know like as an american where you're aware that like one of the reasons this happened is because of the war and the port planning and and the hubris

it's a real gut check in terms of, you know, like talking to somebody who's been through that is, is, and, you know, her story is just one of many. So, you know, when you, when you roll the iron dice of war, there is actually no bottom to how bad it can get. And that is, that doesn't mean you never do it. But it should be a real caution. If we had found a nuclear program, in Iraq and he was, this is my second, last question, and he was involved with al-Qaeda, would you still think the Iraq war was a mistake? It's a tough question.

You don't have to answer, just the fact that you gave a thought. It might have been. It might, I mean, I think it, and certainly the way that we went about it still would have been because there's, because there's two components of that, right? So, like, there's the ideal case where we, you know, where there's some actual direct action against America that provokes a sort of justified war that, you know, is sort of fits more within the kind of structure of international law. So you're not

kind of degrading the sort of rules the international order in a way, you know, that I'm concerned about and all sorts of other things. And then more planning a greater, commitment to stability in the aftermath of Iraq. I mean, there's like, there's all sorts of, I mean, the number of problems with Iraq is so great that it's, it's hard to say. I think that, I think it probably would still have been better to be more cautious, but obviously there'd be a much stronger argument for war in that case. And you can never sort of assume the ideal case, right that only happens

in hypotheticals I forgot my last question anything else you want to say and maybe it'll jog my memory but what else? No, it's been a pleasure talking talking about this.

Periel, anything else? There was something about Iraq I wanted to ask so it's... I feel like an American was just released

from having been held hostage from like the Taliban that like just sort of like this was like something that was like gliding through the news that nobody

was really paying attention to. It seems like a huge deal. Did you not see this? He was held for like 500 or 400 days or something. Nobody. Okay. Did you see that on Instagram? I always make fun of her because she gets all her knees, but memes.

I think I saw it on TikTok. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Fuck, I can't remember that last question. Yeah. No, no. I was just going to look him up. And come on.

All right. I guess we're going to have to end here. All right, Phil Clyde. Thank you very, very much. This was more pleasant than the last time, right? I, you know, I enjoy a good debate. Yeah, maybe this is more. Can I just say this?

Yeah. The Taliban released American researcher Dennis Coyle in March 2026 after a year in captivity following intense U.S. pressure and mediation by the UAE. It was detained in January 2025 in Afghanistan. It's like a huge deal, isn't it? I don't know. Oh, God. Why do I even bother?

It's good that he's released. Yeah. All right. What were you trying to think of? And it was, it was, I saved it for last. Well, you. But I, I can't remember it. All right.

If I remember it, I'll email you. All right. That's it. Thank you very much, everybody. Good night. Bye. All right.