The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Exposing the “Clean Break” Myth: Israel Was Not Behind the Iraq War - With Dr. David Wurmser

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Were the Jews Really Behind the Iraq War? David Wurmser Responds. Dr. David Wurmser, former senior advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and co-author of the infamous “Clean Break” memo, gives us a first-hand account. Wurmser addresses the persistent claim that Israel and “neocon Jews” manipulated the Bush administration into invading Iraq. The discussion expands to include Dick Cheney’s character, the psychology of 9/11, the myth of dual loyalty, and the new wave of anti-Semitism being mainstreamed by voices like Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and John Mearsheimer. 0:00 Intro – Who is David Wurmser? 1:18 Remembering Dick Cheney: The Real Man Behind the Myths 5:59 Israel, Iraq, and the Origins of the “Clean Break” Memo 8:21 Was the Iraq War Fought for Israel? 15:16 The Strategic Case for Israel as America’s Ally 17:19 Forgetting the Cold War: How the West Lost Context 22:05 Israel’s Strategic Genius and America’s Dependence 26:00 What the “Clean Break” Memo Actually Said 33:28 Sharon Warned Against the Iraq War—Why No One Listened 38:12 Were Jewish Advisors Too Influential? 43:25 9/11, Fear, and the Psychology of the Iraq War 50:05 WMDs and What the Bush Administration Really Believed 57:27 Why the Middle East Couldn’t Stay “Over There” 1:01:15 Dual Loyalty and American Jewish Patriotism 1:06:00 John Mearsheimer and the New Conspiracy Culture 1:14:00 The “Friendly Fire” Lie About October 7th 1:20:00 Israel’s Role in Protecting the West 1:26:00 Was Iraq a Mistake—or Just Done Wrong? 1:28:20 The Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism 1:35:00 Why Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism Are Converging 1:47:00 Closing Thoughts: Gratitude, Patriotism, and Reality

Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast for the world famous comedy seller. I'm the producer of the show, Periel, and I'm here, of course, with the host of the show, Noam Dwarman, the owner of the comedy seller. And we have a very special guest today, Dr. David Wormser, who's a senior analyst for Middle East Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign and Security Affairs. He also served as senior advisor to the national security advisor, John Bolton and Vice President Dick Cheney. Immediately following the 9-11 attacks, Dr. Wormser consulted for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the U.S. Department of Defense on a war-related classified project on understanding the nature and strategic significance of terrorist group networks and their interactions with states. Thank you very much for joining us. Yes, thank you, sir. Very pleased to meet you.

It's an honor to be here. We have with us a witness to history. And, you know, the chapters of history that you were intimately involved with have come around now to be kind of the backbone, the pillar of a new wave of anti-Semitism and revisionism. But I want to get into all that. I want to hear your take on the current scene. But Vice President Cheney died. few days ago. You knew him. So maybe you can start, was he Darth Vader? Was he a cynical Halliburton guy trying to rake it in by taking America to war? What was he like? No, I mean, he came from Wyoming,

and he was Wyoming. I mean, he was a guy from the West, pretty straightforward, pretty soft-spoken, had a dry sense of humor. Straight shooter. He just didn't like spin. He didn't like any of that. So he was pretty blunt. He was incredibly intelligent. You would say a fact, even something minute, like the name of a facility in Iran. And a year later, he chewed it back at you. It just stuck. So the portrayal of him by various things, whether it's movies or so forth, it really isn't who he was. He was a pretty straightforward guy, very American. Very American. But one of the theories that the neocons were able to pull the wool over the eyes of the non-Jewish people in power and get them to do Israel's bidding to take us into the war in Iraq

is that somehow people like Dick Cheney were not smart enough to realize that they were being manipulated. Was he the type of guy who would be easily manipulated by a fast-talking Jewish neocon? No, I mean, he wasn't rigid and never changed his mind. He could be convinced, but he wasn't manipulatable. It simply wasn't possible. He had too much knowledge, too skeptical of too. many things. Again, like many Americans, he just didn't like things that were too complex. He would try to get to the essence of them, all the noise around the essence of something. He had an

incredible ability to pull away. So if your argument didn't make sense, he wasn't going to buy it. Do you agree to a lot of the smartest people, actually, that's a common feature, that they really just do focus? They don't have a sense for the capillary. They go for the jugger. They look for the essence of things. I always call them the load-bearing arguments, the things which, in the heart of the matter. I noticed that in writing as well. You agree with that? Totally. You know, it's the essence of, you've got to appreciate complexity, but in the end, it's what's underneath it all. I mean, context matters in anything you do. And if you get the context right, context right. You don't need as much information. Data itself can overwhelm you, a lot of noise,

you can't discern it. That's where you really get lost in the trees, in the proverbial forest through the trees. If you've got context, you can see the themes, the connections, the patterns, and you can understand things much quicker and much more easily and more simply. But that takes, it's like when Mark Twain said, you know, I'm sorry, no, it was a Mark Twain? No, Churchill, said, I'm sorry I wrote you a short letter, a long writer letter. I didn't have time to write you a short one. The ability to reduce it to something like that takes an awful lot of knowledge and skill. You know, I enjoy sometimes these conflicting adages like the devil's in the details, you're missing the forest for the trees. Like, you know, sometimes you need the details,

sometimes you don't need the details. I don't want to get hung up on this, but just it reminds me when Charles Krauthammer, the great columnist died, I remember writing to a friend, because I don't if you liked him. I thought he was just... Oh, he was wonderful. Yeah. I remember saying he's so intelligent and yet most of what I appreciate most about his writing seems I could have just been written by a good common sense Jewish grandmother. Like it didn't sound like this genius stuff, but somehow he was able to see it where others weren't. Yeah. I mean, that's the nature of expertise. Take a professional skier when you watch the ski race. It looks so easy. Yeah. But it's not. And, uh, I think it's the same in any field.

Once you reach a certain level, a certain height, it looks really easy because it's reduced to its essence. We're in an age now of a new wave of the Jews in every aspect of society being under a microscope. For us Jewish people, it's unheard of in our lifetimes. We're experiencing something we've never seen before and feeling something we never felt before. And one of the go-toes in the Tucker Carlson, Dave Smith, and Nick Fuentes and all the people going around now, is that Israel took, the Jews, took America into war in Iraq.

Right. And you were there, and you are a main figure in that narrative because you wrote this clean break memo, which supposedly became the archetype, the template for it all. Right. Should we start by playing? I think I have a clip of Dave Smith like talking about this to Coleman. You know, Coleman News? Did you see that thing? Yeah, yeah. It was quite a debate. Yeah. You want to play that Dave Smith thing? I don't remember exactly what's on it, but if it's not good, I'll just cut it out. It was contested. There was contested in Congress. There were people who were against it. Is that how it starts? Military people who were against it. There were people at the State Department who were for it. And the neocons were the ones who really pushed it through.

And look, I mean, Coleman, you look at who the neocons were, okay, in their own words, they have deep loyalty to Israel. Every last one of them has said in their own words that they have a deep commitment toward Israel. They're writing all of their policy papers through the 1990s on how we have to overthrow the government in Iraq as part of this clean break strategy on behalf of Israel. And then they get, they are all of George W. Bush's men. And literally once the towers come down, George W. Bush is in the White House. It's a project for a New American Century, all down his staff, from his defense secretary, his vice president, and all of their men. They're at the State Department, the Defense Department. And so it is not going out on a limb to say, yet this war doesn't happen without the neoconservatives.

And I think John Mearsheimer very reasonably puts them as part of the Israel lobby. All right. If you had Dave Smith in front of you, after you collect the United States, it yourself. What would you say to him? First of all, read the clean break. I actually have some quote of it here. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, first of all, we're not unconditionally committed to Israel. We're unconditionally committed to advancing American interests, which we believe are advanced by a strong Israeli-American relationship. Israel represents values, so it's not another country. It's not like Zimbabwe or Thailand. It is the cradle of Western civilization. It is the cradle

of Western civilization. It matters to us that the cradle of Western civilization is part of Western civilization. Why? Why does it matter to us? Because ultimately the United States needs a grounding. It's a story what happened ever since the three pillars. There's Jerusalem, there's Athens, and there's Rome. And you can't uphold the foundations of that civilization that emerged from Plato to NATO or from Abraham to now, if you remove those pillars, then you become sort of without guardrails without anything. And then you go to certain areas that we've seen over the last century, bad places. It really grounds us. If you're within the structure of Western civilization, it does begin to bound you from some of the politics that we've

scene go off the rails and lead to mass death and terror and tyranny. So first of all, it matters. The second thing is our values are anchored ultimately to that. For example, where do we get, you know, we're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights? Those rights ultimately emerge at Mount Moriah with the near sacrifice of Isaac when it was established that the human life of Isaac, even, remember, you have to understand, in society of the Middle East at the time of Abraham, parents who didn't like their children, who didn't have a child that they wished, a girl if they wanted a boy, a boy, if they wanted a girl, they could kill them. It was very tribal, it was very dangerous in that sense. This established that human life is inalienable.

It's given by God, taken by God, and not by other men. And that is the foundation of Western society. Then you go to Mount Sinai. At Mount Sinai, it's when you took a tribal structure, 12 tribes, and through a constitution, the Torah, you forged the first modern nation. So both the concept of community and nation, individual rights, all emerge from the foundations of the Bible in that sense, from a cultural point of view, if not a religious point of view. By the way, it's something that keeps bubbling through up until this age. Dostoevsky, when he wrote a book called The Devils or Viesti, he wrote how he really described Lenin, except it was 50 years before Lenin. And in it, the main character of Erhlovansky talks about going to Mount Sinai.

He didn't say Mount Sinai, but he talked about 40 years in the desert and so forth. He takes the process of coming from Pharaoh to Mount Sinai, and he reverses it. to describe the nihilist to totalitarian mind. It is a carbon copy of what Lenin eventually became. Why? Because he saw people like that. Lenin is a very, very typical phenomenon among a certain group of people in Russia at the time or European intellectual life at the time. And he saw it. And he saw it as the reversal of the process of slavery to freedom in Mount Sinai, the opposite. So this is a pillar. There's, I mean, we could go on about Rome and Athens, there's major elements there too.

But if you remove these pillars, who are you? What's left? And then you can be anything. Suddenly you listen to the Nazis, who listen to Lenin. You have no grounding. So that's a cultural, it's sentimental in a way. I accept that these things matter in ways which we only realize when it's too late. But people also want to hear a strategic argument.

Okay. Strategically is Israel, I mean, again, I think that ultimately strategy begins with culture. But departing that for a moment, the United States is tired of the Middle East right now. It's tired of dedicating itself so much to wars. You see it with how many Americans really believe that Europe needs to step up to the plate and carry more of the water of the Western Alliance. You see it even in Asia, where people are saying, well, Taiwan doesn't spend enough on defense and so forth.

Well, here you have in the Middle East, a country that is grounded to our culture, our civilization, the West. It is democratic and free. It is strong, and it's doing the heavy lifting for the United States in a way that allows us not to have to do it. Take, for example, the recent war, or part of war in Iran, between Israel and Iran in June. Israel did 12 days of clearing the deck

so that we could get the job done with minimal effort. Imagine if Israel hadn't done that, we would have had a stark choice. Either we do what Israel did, and it would have been also for us a heavy lift, not only for the Israelis, it would have been a heavy lift. It could have cost us a lot more. with missiles flying all over our allies without the air defense structures that Israel had.

Lots of Saudis and others killed and maybe American servicemen all over the place in Iraq. And then in the end, hopefully we would have achieved what the Israelis achieved. And that then tells you right there that the Israelis essentially saved us an awful lot of work, an awful lot of risk, and potentially an awful lot of damage to ourselves. And that's a good example. The other thing is nobody's really looking at what Israel did. I mean, it did to Chizbala, it essentially, it wasn't just decapitation. Somehow they got into the command structure and took it over and paralyzed Chzbollah.

Then they did it again in Iran, and then they did it again in Yemen. It's a cut and paste. Well, imagine for a second, if you're an American defense plan, and all of China's strategy is to so overwhelmingly build an order of battle that the West sees it as futile to resist. And all of a sudden, the Israelis come with this new way of war where order of battle doesn't matter. It's a game-set match that if the United States can cut and paste what the Israelis did, this completely—I mean, these are the sorts of things that people don't discuss. So I have a few things say, and then I want to get—I want to

read a little bit of your your clean break memo because I think actually um when people read when people hear it they're going to be like that's what the clean break memo says it it's not what how it sounds with days says but two things I've been saying for a long time perils probably heard me say it 20 times that one of the things I noticed already 10 years ago was that history um for younger people now is like a black and white movie and it's like terrible things used to happen in the past, in black and white. Terrible things don't happen anymore. And this makes them unable to react to threats, which people reacted to in a second nature kind of way, on the left, on the right, when I was a kid. So, for instance, nuclear proliferation was the number one

worry of liberals in the 70s. I remember very well when I was a kid. And there was virtually nobody who thought that Kennedy or the United States was overreacting during the Cuban missile crisis. Everybody felt this was clearly on both sides. This was a threat. The United States had to worry about a nuclear missile in Cuba. And to me, and you correct me from wrong, a nuclear missile in Iran is more dangerous than any Soviet threat was at that time. The distance in miles does not matter, and the fact is that a responsible state like the Soviet Union, no matter what, is always going to be less threatening than a rogue, jihadi state either for intentional launching, dirty bombs, or accidental launching, because they have no fail safes there of any kind, right? And somehow we sense that the world has become kind of ready to, ah, a nuclear bomb there will be okay, a nuclear bomb there will be okay, a nuclear bomb there, will be okay. And if they don't feel that that's a threat, it becomes very hard for you to convince

them that Israel did our dirty work. They're like, what dirty work? We don't really care if. And I don't know how a civilization prevents the cycle of forgetting. Yeah, it's an excellent point. You know, even the Soviet Union with their nuclear weapons, we look at the Cold War as a non-war. We want a great ideological struggle, we didn't fight a war, but millions of people died in the Cold War. It was not a non-war. And it's dubious that if the Soviet Union had not developed nuclear weapons, that they could have stood toe-to-to-to-to-to with us for 50 years. I mean, you don't have to be a check or a poll to understand the cost of the Cold War. And they're still standing toe-to-to-to-now in Ukraine only because we're still facing, and I'd argue that part of the

consequences of this rise of anti-Semitism is residue from the Cold War when the Soviet Union tried to incite anti-Semitism as a strategic weapon in the West to divide the West and undermine Western alliances, especially the Israeli-American Alliance. This episode is brought to you by prize picks. You and I make decisions every day, but on prize picks, being right can get you paid. Don't miss any of the excitement of this sports season. on prize picks, whether you're a football fan, a basketball fan, or both, it always feels good to be right. Prize picks now offers stacks,

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in the West to divide the West and undermine Western alliances, especially the Israeli-American alliance. and it was inherent to their system after Stalin and the doctor's plot. So we're facing, and potentially some of the other things with universities, there's residue from the Cold War that we're still being plagued by. But that said, you're right. The problem with Iran is, no, they can't hit New York. So people, or L.A., so people think, okay, look, it's over there.

This is, by the way, where Cheney and the people who were in power in that period, which I was working for, they grew up in the shadow of World War II. They knew what that argument, oh, it's over there, it's not our problem. They knew where that leads. They wound up having to fight not one, but two great wars, the World War II and the Cold War, precisely because over there came over here, and over there mattered. Young Americans also don't fully appreciate how much the strategic architecture of the world is anchored to American power, and that their way of life is anchored to that strategic architecture. They will not have the sort of freedoms, the sort of wellness and well-being, wealth, all these things that we take for granted, the idea that you can just get on a plane and you can fly to Japan, these things are very much anchored to a world that American power built, fighting the Cold War and fighting World War II.

And that's what's threatened if America withdraws from the world. But right now we know the cost. The cost was very painful and obvious in a place like Iraq. But it's not obvious what it means not to do things like that. Now, I'm not saying that necessarily was the right thing to do, or not the right way to do it, maybe. But the idea that you can just ignore these threats, we will find how quickly our youth will have to pay the price of that.

So I want to read the Clean Break, and I want to get, you tell us whether Iraq was a mistake or not, but just one more observation about Israel we were talking before. Israel is what, like 7 million Jews, is that right? Yeah. Which is approximately the number of people who live in New York City, right? can you imagine if new york city alone had to field an army that could dominate its region develop the the highest per capita number of of tech companies i mean get rid of hasbola

with like like from these one group of small people what israel does could you just as a mental exercise to imagine okay we're on our own now new york city you know let's let's aspire to do what israel That's another issue. It's hilarious. That's another issue about strategic importance. After World War II, we sat down and we wrote a document called NSC-68, 1948, which outlined our strategy in the world. And it started with there are several critical industrial areas of the world that if they

fall to the Soviet Union, we can't defend ourselves properly, steel production, et cetera, industrial production. If you update that, high-tech centers are the new. war land, the new Japan industrial infrastructure, etc. And Israel is at the epicenter. I mean, it has as many patents as Europe. I mean, in other words, if you're out to construct a new NSE 68, the industrial capacity of Israel in terms of innovation and high-tech culture is a critical American value in and of itself. I just repeat myself, they have as many patents as Europe. At the same time, they have a standing army, or, you know, whatever the word to call, it's not standing actually, but they can stand overnight that is dominating the Middle East.

These two things simultaneously astound me and educate their people. And, I mean, you could go on and on. Great food. Yeah. All right. So the clean break memo. Stephen, you've heard of the clean break memo? just the dirty break

just a dirty break so Israel can shape this is written in 1996 is that correct okay so what was happening 1996 this is after Oslo but before the Clinton

negotiation after Oslo but you had pretty major conflict on the border of Lebanon and you had the first of really serious waves of terrorism and even kidnapping in 95-96 in

in Israel as a result of Oslo. And the close calls, the period of optimism with Clinton and Barack was not yet on the horizon. Yeah. Israel can shape a strategic environment in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria. This is just an excerpt. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. So the first thing that stands out to me is that this was about how Iraq could be instrumental in rolling back Syria.

Syria. Iraq was not that you obviously can tell me where I'm wrong. I'm just telling you as I took it in. An important Israeli's strategic objective in its own right. As a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions, Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashimites in Iraq. That's a big one. The Hashimites are the Jordanian regime. Correct. As opposed to putting the Shiites in charge of Iraq, which is what we did. I'm filling it in for Periel. Since Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites

in their efforts to redefine Iraq, including such measures as visiting Jordan as the first official state visit, even before visits the United States of the new Netanyahu government, supporting King Hussein by providing him with some tangible security measures to protect his regime against Syrian subversion, encouraging through influence in the U.S. business community, investment in Jordan to structurally shift Jordan's economy away from dependence on Iraq. Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for century to the Shia leadership in Najif, is that how you pronounce it?

Najif, Iraq, rather than Iran, where the Hashemites were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najif to help Israel wean the South Lebanese Shia away from Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria. Now, what you're describing there, a kind of a goal of putting the Hashemites in charge of Iraq through, you don't spell it out through some sort of military intervention. You have to tell me if that's what that meant. How does that resemble what it was that the Bush administration then set about to do? Right. It wasn't even through a military intervention by us. It was the idea that you would build an exile army. would do it itself, namely Iraqis would fight to liberate Iraq.

If you take the context of this, the first thing is, what can people in the region do to get things done for themselves that help our strategic interests? The clean break is the inversion of what it's portrayed. It's portrayed as a master plan to finagle the United States to fight everybody's wars in the region, whether it's Israel's wars. or Ahmed Chalabi, who was this Iraqi guy, who led an Iraqi opposition, the Iraqi National Congress, which was in northern Iraq. And he turned out to be a shady character?

Yeah, I mean, he's a complex character, but we can get into that. But the bottom line is the whole point of clean break was the opposite, which is how can we get people in the region finally to do things in order to relieve us of having to do it ourselves? Israel was a particular frustration for us because we knew that Israel, as an American, we understood Israel was beginning to enter a period where it was becoming a regional power. And the Israelis were still stuck in a sort of a diaspora mindset,

which is everything is just good enough. Everything is, you know, we just protect ourselves, we secure ourselves, et cetera. They weren't thinking in terms of what they had, had become. They were still thinking the way they thought in 1948, which is let's just plant ourselves, get ourselves set up, protect ourselves, and survive. They had moved from survival to a regional power, and they didn't realize it, and the whole point of this thing was to tell the Israelis, no, you're becoming a regional power. That makes you far more useful for the

United States than all these others. I mean, we talked about the cultural foundations, Israel always in the 80s said, I mean 70s and 80s, said, oh, we're the unsinkable aircraft carrier of the United States. You know, and all on, and that Israel is important for it. The truth is Israel could have disappeared in the 70s. It would have been a human tragedy, but it wouldn't have been a strategic disaster for the United States. It would have helped the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Very true. But in the 50s, and so it wasn't so clear. By the 80s, Israel had become such a strategic, powerhouse 90, such a powerhouse already, but it didn't realize it. And it had great assets that could contribute to the overall Western defense in the region and Western interests. So this letter to Prime Minister Nataniao had just been elected the week before. That was the purpose of writing this, is to say, look, you've lived in America. You're very American. You get us. Now think like us. Be an American. Don't, you know, think like, like part of the Western Alliance. This is

what you can do. Think about shaping, shape your universe. Shape your universe. Shape your environment that helps all of us. And then Iraq, the whole Hashemite thing you describe, remember, Shiites believe they descend, their leader, descends from the bloodline of the prophet. They don't have, in Sunni Islam, There's caliphs who, you know, goes this way, that way, all sorts of different directions. But they're not the bloodline of the prophet. Shiites were the bloodline of the prophet. They come from Ali, who was the nephew of the prophet, and direct sons, sons, a dynasty.

And then the last one sort of occult had disappeared, but we'll come back in their view. That means Shiites venerate any descendant of the prophet. The Hashemites are the family of the prophet. That's why the British and Lady Gertrude Bell was so intense. on helping the Hashemites take over Iraq in 1922 because she understood the Shiites, which were a headache already back then for the British, the Shiites would have to venerate him. They would have to accept him as their leader to some extent. At the same time, he was Sunni. He wasn't Shiite. So you really begin to weld together the parts of Iraq into some sort of at least

loose confederation. And so the Hashemites ruled Iraq from 22 to 1958. It wasn't It wasn't a pie-in-the-sky dream of doing something weird. It was resurrecting what happened before this wave of revolutionary, radical thought, possessed the Middle East and destroyed country after country, whether it was Egypt or whether it was Syria or Iraq. And so the idea was, let's go back to 58, let's start over. It wasn't pie in the sky. All right. So now, fast forward, five years later, you have 9-11. Yeah.

And you guys find yourself in the defense establishment. and the argument goes, you pull out your clean break. Now we have our opportunity to... By the way, in clean break, I also called for the cutting off of aid to Israel. People seem to forget that. Oh, no, I did see that. Because it's an independent country.

It had matured to the level of a real nation. They don't need a idea. They can see that. They could handle it themselves. It's consistent all the way through. By the way, I'll skip ahead for a second because I found it here. Do you know, just for people to understand, did I paste it? Yeah.

We've given Israel since 2005, $80 to $120 billion, which is real money. Ukraine, just in the last few years, we've given $180 to $190 billion. So, you know, it's two lessons there. first of all, it's just to put the small drip, drip, drip of aid to Israel in perspective in terms of what the real dollars are. Second of all, you think we're paying Israel a lot now? This is what it costs to help an ally when they're really in trouble. It's hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

So it's just, you know, maybe it's better to tend to their deterrence than to wait for this shit to hit the fan. But in any case, so you fast forward now, and it's very clear. I think I'm on strong ground here, that Ariel Sharon warned the Bush administration, no, if you take down Iraq, you're going to embolden Iran, that right now Iraq is a bulwark. They had a war. These were like, you know, countervailing forces in Middle East. And if Iraq were to go, that was more dangerous for Israel and for America. Now, that's the rational Jewish point of view, Israeli point of view. So what is the response? How are the Dave Smiths of the world, or in any way you want to handle the issue, how do they handle the fact that what they claim that the Israeli lobby wanted us to go,

was behind the war in Iraq? It was to bring about the very opposite outcome that the Israeli primary, minister was warning about. And I'm not trying to be easy on them. They bring one statement to Congress by Benjamin Nabi Netanyahu, who, by the way, was out of power at the time. He was a private citizen. It was a private citizen.

He wasn't the government of Israel. And that is precisely what was on his mind. He understood that his friends, his network of associates are the American, he was Mr. America in Israel. And here was the Bush administration telling Israel, you really ought to be behind us here on Iraq, and you're not. Bibi saw an opportunity to testify in front of Congress to show, look, I'm going to help you. I'm on your side. He didn't initiate it. He didn't advocate war. We didn't do it because he advocated war. I can't tell you the airful I got from Israeli officials at the time about all sorts of things in Iraq that it's a stupid idea. What are you doing?

Iran is your threat. It's a threat that's under control. Ahmet Chalabi is a clown. He's an Iranian agent. Why are you dealing with him? All the various pieces of the mythology of what the Israelis were behind, they were actually vehemently opposed to going to our going to war. Because They understood, and by the way, they were in contact under the table with the Saudis. The Saudis were ambivalent about the type of war we fought, but they were the ones. Kuwait was the ones who still feared Saddam. That was the primary concern at the time that if sanctions would break down and they were beginning to break down, what will happen? Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were back to 1991.

So Coleman Hughes, by the way, tracked down that the decision to go to war was made prior to Netanyahu's speech before Congress. Certainly the tendency there. I don't know. I mean, I think Bush had his mind on going to war, but he wasn't, he needed Saddam not to behave. He wasn't going to go to war without a reason. And the reasoning came. when Saddam didn't allow inspectors into critical facilities. And that was suspicious, and he seized on that. And then that became the litmus. If he's going to give in, then we can't really go to war. But if he does, it doesn't give in, then we have the reason to go to war. But I personally think that President Bush, he had a very negative view of Saddam.

and he had a very hostile view toward how the – not hostile view. He felt that 1991, the first Iraq war, wasn't finished. So let me try to give a better version of the Dave Smith-Mirschimer argument. Two things. You know, one of the things that always stays with me is – I've used it many times is the lessons of double-blind experiments in science, meaning that no matter how much you think you can control your own biases, you can't, and you'll never know that you can't.

We can prove it by the fact that you think of medicine works when you know who's had it and you don't know. And when you have a dominant group of advisors who hold Israel close to their heart as certainly all Wolfowitz and you do as your right to as Americans. We can talk about dual loyalty, but it's not dual loyalty. It's no different than any ethnic person would feel if their country and their people were threatened with existentially. But it could lead you in this double-blind way to supporting certain policies and

certain outcomes that you might not otherwise, if you were looking at it without those influences, and you'd never know. So could it be that there were not enough dissenting, too many Jews, like not enough dissenting voices in that crew? You know, if there was a Jewish angle to it, and again, I don't think that there was the influence that people think. Steve, his mic is going. Yeah, I don't think.

It's plugged it. Yeah. I don't... Oh, maybe it's my headphones. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. I don't think that the Jews, the various high-level Jews in the Bush administration

had quite the influence people thought. Rumsfeld is not a wilting violet. Cheney was no wilting violet. Bush was a much more tolerant guy, but he was also very stubborn, too. Condoleezza Rice is not one to trifle with either. The core people at the top, these are not the sort of people you can manipulate. And they, all of them, had been involved with the 91 war, with Iraq.

They all had been involved with the Cold War. They had their worldview that led them. to that point. They didn't need a lot of convincing. That's number one. Number two, if there was convincing, if it was this chorus from Israel, it would have been, do Iran, do Iran, don't do Iraq. And don't even do Iran. You need to, you know, because Iran's a big country, it wasn't so but more than that, if there was, let's give them the credit for a second. Let's say the Jews had an influence, those specific Jews, me and Wolfowitz and Pearl, Pearl, who was actually out of government, Harold wrote a few others. I think if there was, you know, these were

cold warriors. They were not Middle East experts. I was really one of the few who actually studied the Middle East among them. They were real cold warriors, and they saw what happened in the ideological defeat of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe. And they firmly believed in the universality of that sentiment. I remember having lunch with Gene Kirkpatrick ambassador, Jean Kirkpatrick, not Jewish, but definitely a neocon at the time. And I was talking to her about Iraq. And she said, you know, I'm not really for it. And I go, well, why aren't you for it? And she said, well, you see, Dave, I firmly believe in the universality of the aspiration for freedom of humans. But I got to tell you, the Middle East tries my confidence. And I just don't

know if they're capable, if they're going to do it. Because you can give them a shot, but I don't know if they're going to take it in Iraq. I don't know if the Arab world will take it. So you can go for freedom, not democracy per se, freedom. But she didn't think that they would pick up the ball. And she was probably right. But coming out of the Cold War, we had this fundamental belief that there were Watzlav Havels and so forth in the Arab world. Ahmad Chalabi being, he was not about some intelligence operation. He was supposed to be the Iraqi who was Charles de Gaul, right? The guy who would restore our faith that you could have a free Iraq. The second thing was, as Jews, precisely because we were constantly being accused of dual loyalty, we wanted to show that we wanted

to help Arabs, that we were going to bend over backwards to help the Arabs. One of the things the Israelis kept telling us is, why do you want Iraq strong and restored? They're going to come after us. I mean, if they become a dema, you know, a freer country, they're going to get all this Western technology, all these weapons and everything, and then, whoa, what a headache we Israelis will have. And I remember they felt that a powerful Iraq was a fundamental threat, and that that they saw that as as much a threat, a potential outcome, as a collapsed Iraq and chaotic Iraq. So we kind of, I think we put our Jewishness. was bending over backwards to pursue something

that most Jews saw as something not in their interests to show that we weren't operating under these, quote, tribal considerations. One of the ironies is that you guys were the ones who had the faith in the Muslim world. Correct. To rise to the occasion, to embrace freedom and fulfillment and turn in that direction. Correct.

And the people who supposedly are on their side, when you should have known, they were, no Arab country. She said, what are these guys thinking? So it's just a few comments. So this worldview thing, you know, yes, I fed you the question, but I actually agree with the answer that the same people who felt this way were the Churchill types in World War II, the types that today want to defend Ukraine,

the types today that are concerned about Taiwan. And it's a coherent worldview, and it's a correlation, not a causation. Similarly to people could not understand how Trump could want to make a deal with Putin after he'd taken Crimea, this is the first administration, unless he was a Russian spy, unless he was corrupt. And I'd make the argument, well, Pap Buchanan has that view.

Nobody thinks Pat Buchanan is corrupt. And Trump is obviously channeling a lot of Pap Buchanan's worldviews on foreign policy. So why do you need this extra element? It makes perfect sense. The worldview that you guys basically came from and your generation, it was elementary to you guys. And by the way, you were the same guys.

We had gone to war to throw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Kuwait was not Israel. Kuwait was not a Jewish interest. It was the idea of an aggressor. And then I want to also have that it's impossible for people who didn't live through it to understand, and then I'm going to come to my other point, what the psychology was like after 9-11. Correct.

The closest I could give a young person to help them understand it is to think about how much we went crazy after George Floyd was killed, the BLM reaction. Obviously, much of it was righteous, but the overreaction. We look back on and I say, oh, my God, we went into a crazy moral panic, here, you know, the entire world when this one guy was killed. One guy was killed without even a statistical basis of an actual phenomenon of a spike in police violence or any of it, right?

This was what 9-11 did to us. We were in a total panic. I remember my waitresses in the Cafe Wah afraid to come to work after we were allowed to open again after a week or so. And I would tease them, and I put on an Arabic voice. They said, World Trade Center, check, Café Wah, as if like the notion that the cafe wa could be second but this was a common fear. So

it's just, things happen in a psychology. And if there was an overreaction after 9-11, which I don't even know that there was necessarily because you can read long Wikipedia articles about all the

terrorist threats, which were foiled, We never had another attack after that, so I don't know. But you cannot, you need to try to understand the psychology. Go ahead. Do you want to respond? No, look, 9-11, you know, I think a lot of young people don't get this. America had never had its territory attacked since the Revolutionary War. Yes, it had Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor is like Puerto Rico today. It was a territory.

It wasn't the state. It wasn't sovereign American territory at the time. And then this came after we fought Korea over there. We fought Vietnam over there. We fought the Cold War everywhere but not here. We had had two, three generations of Americans born who felt a security, safety. It was, we understood our role in the world, but we didn't understand a threat to ourselves, exactly like going back to the beginning of our conversation.

And all of a sudden, it showed up in our heart. It showed up in our biggest city, in the center of our government. It showed up in America. And it terrified us. Right after then, we had the white powder, the anthrax attacks, which just, it was like sticking a sword with salt on it into an open wound and twisting it. And there was a real feeling of threat.

And in the Middle East, we saw these vast demonstrations of celebration and this orgy of hatred of the United States in Iraq, among the Palestinians, Egypt, etc. The only places where people were somber, had vigils and lit candles, ironically, were Israel in Iran, not because the government, the government was celebrating it, but Iranian people were not, which by the way also tells you something. But we were feeling the world caving in on us. And by the way, I still don't, like we were sure, we're so vulnerable here. We, like, we realized all of a sudden we always said, oh my God, we have no protections here. Anybody can take anything into our subways and just blow it up. Correct. We have no institution to prevent this. And to think

that we'd have to prevent it, who wants to live that way? And anybody could do it. It's not like Pearl Harbor or an army. Air Force has to come and bomb you. It's like every single citizen could potentially bring this war to us. I still don't know. I mean, I'm still shocked that it didn't happen. God bless George Bush in the way he wrapped himself around and protect Muslim citizens.

In a way, I didn't understand until I could imagine how President Trump might have handled it today in terms of making how our Muslim citizens might have felt, what might have come out of his mouth. But we didn't, although people like to say there was all this Islamophobia, there actually wasn't, I'm sure there was some. But anyway, so it was a very, very strange time. But I do want to talk about why we went into Iraq. I have an opportunity now to ask somebody,

it's kind of like in Annie Hall where you ask Marshall McLuhan, Because I've always felt this way. I felt this way at the time. I've never been able to ask somebody. I never dreamed I would have a guy here who actually knows the answer. But I'm going to ask you. I never felt that WMD was actually the reason we went into Iraq. I felt that was the most sellable reason.

I felt the reason as follows. And I believed this. I thought this was legitimate at the time. technology is marching head at a frightful pace. Nuclear is almost 100 years old. There's chemical. There's the notion that we're going to be able to keep these horrible technologies out of the hands of poor people,

terrorist groups, indefinitely, is crazy. Things are always trending one way or another, trending towards freedom, trending away from freedom. oil is in the Arab world. Oil is not oil. Oil is medicine, oil is food, oil is shelter. Oil is life. We need oil.

The major oil supplies are threatened from jihadists and from the secularists like Saddam Hussein. What kind of future are we rolling into here where we even have a chance? chance to hope for a good outcome, unless we reshape the Middle East and hope to turn it into something that Jean Carpatrick said was not possible in some sort of free and placid place that wants the same things as us as us, and save the world, and save the world. And that was an argument which I found very compelling. Now, how are you going to sell that to people? Well, it's not so easy to sell that. But if you can say that he has WMD, which I don't mean say like lie about it, I mean, but if he has WMD, that becomes like a vanilla reason. You don't have to get into

making this other case. But to me, that was the case for the war. And it would have been compelling without the WMD, even if you couldn't sell it. Well, the WMD was really born of Colin Powell in the sense that at first he was not for the war, and he thought that there needs to be a U.N. trigger for this, and that essentially absent Iraq's complete violation of its terms of agreement, he thought that that would stop President Bush from going to war. And indeed, I think President Bush, as I said, if there really had not been a hook, I'm not sure he would have. So in that sense, Colin Powell was right.

But then Colin Powell felt that he has to serve the president, ultimately. I mean, he serves at the pleasure of the president. The president serves at the pleasure of the American people. So he knew who his boss was. And he understood at a certain point that Saddam actually was becoming a problem and that Bush was going to go to war. So at that point came the need to prove that they are breaking out already. There was a sense that there were very few people who said that he had all these weapons of mass destruction. The real debate was, has he retained the breakout capability so that when the sanctions

fall apart, he can break out fairly rapidly. And by the way, the post-war analyses by various independent commissions of inquiry verify that. That he did. intent on breaking out once sanctions would collapse. And sanctions were beginning to fray. We were beginning to retreat on sanctions before the war. It was what concerned Colin Powell. It was what concerned... And he did have his sights on Saudi Arabia. And he had his sights on Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was for Colin Powell very important. And the Saudis were very worried about this. And they didn't like this whole idea of smart sanctions that were sort of pulling back and that Megan O'Sullivan came up with and so forth. It was really a

unstable circumstance in Colin Powell's world. And he saw the WMD as the touchstone that would make the decision. For the rest of us, there was an opportunity, first of all, going back to Clean Break, in that sense, yeah, there's some. But Clean Break was born in many ways. We watched very carefully the Israelis in Lebanon in 1982. And we understood that a massive, invasion and colonial, semi-colonial presence to administer the country is a prescription for a terrible headache. Even Israel, who lives right next to Lebanon, could not navigate the internal swirling politics of Lebanon and was eaten alive by it. How in the world would the United States do that? That's why our camp did not want to go in with American forces heavy and take

over the country. We wanted to find Iraqis to do it for us. So if Ahmed Chalabi didn't exist, we would have to invent him. We needed somebody in Iraqi who would take this effort and make it an Iraqi effort. And we don't go in that way. And we were terrified of this quasi-colonial presence. The problem was, as governments are, it's always a compromise. It's neither this nor that. Oh, you say, you know, I remember there was one meeting I had with John Bolton. This was when we were talking about the war, the shape of the war that was coming a few weeks before the war. And I told him, look, it's, I won't say the name, but it's, let's say the guy was Joe. So it's the J factor.

And he said, what's the J factor? And it said, well, it's like the Israelis in 1973 with the Syrians and Egyptians. The Egyptians wanted the war to start at six in the evening because the sun would be in Israel's eyes, and it would blind them as they crossed the canal. The Syrians wanted the war to start at six in the morning because it would blind the Israelis as they came over the heights and the Golan Heights.

They couldn't agree, so they started the war two in the afternoon. Nobody... Is that a true story? Yeah. That's amazing. It's a true story. Well, that's also the war planning for Iraq. It was like, take this, take this, mash it together,

and we got a mess. But is the vision, as I described here, in a panic of the psychology of 9-11, they're looking out at the future and saying, our goose is cooked unless the world pivots to a different direction.

Absolutely. Look, he was the last vestige of Arab nationalism. He was trying to resurrect it. We had faced 30 years, 40 years of a pro-Soviet Arab nationalist wave that claimed Lebanon, claimed Syria,

claimed Iraq, claimed Libya, claimed Algeria, claimed a whole bunch of countries. We were afraid that if you let this genie back out of the bottle, it undoes the Cold War in the Middle East. It undoes our victory. And we needed to challenge that and shut it down. Also, in terms of Israel, we wanted the, yes or our foot,

not to have the cavalry over the horizon in the form of Saddam to use whatever he was given in Oslo to wage war. So there were lots of reasons, but more than anything, it was this fundamental feeling that Foed Ajami had written an article in the New York Review of Books in the late 70s, where he said that the Arab world was reaching an explosion point,

and they were exporting the terrorism to relieve the internal pressure. So for us, the idea was Ben Laden was a symptom of an internal failure in the Middle East. We couldn't anymore live with this internal failure because it wasn't containable anymore. It was coming to haunt us. And by the way, we're not out of those woods yet.

No, I think now we're actually entering the woods even more thickly. I mean, Merckwood. By the way, I snuck back just to get the little paragraph from a clean break memo because I did see it. And for some reason, I just went in it out of my head. To reinforce this point, the prime minister can use his forthcoming visits to announce that Israel is now mature enough, 1996, to cut itself free immediately from at least U.S. economic aid and loan guarantees, at least, which prevent economic reform. So the Jewish lobby was lobbying for America to stop supporting Israel. By the way, let's take a little detour. Is APEC what they say?

No. There's two things about APEC. One is, I think APAC is strongest when it aligns with what the administration was going to do anyway. So, of course. Can I make your point? I don't mean to interrupt you, but I've said this for a, like, you think the NRA is powerful, the national, the gun rights people. Yeah, I know what the NRA is. The NRA has, cannot lobby any politician in New York City.

The NRA is effective when it's lobbying politicians who represent their people who want guns, right? Yes. It's when it's popular already with the politicians. So go ahead, go ahead. And they didn't really stack up very many victories where they really stood against the administration. A few years before, there was the famous F-15 sales to Saudi Arabia, the AWAC sales to Saudi Arabia, and the conformal fuel tanks for the F-15s in Saudi Arabia, all of which A-PAC bitterly opposed fought a real nuclear war against, and they lost on every one of them against a fairly friendly

administration to Israel. So it was the Ford administration and afterwards the Reagan administration and so forth. So, yeah, the second thing that's the fallacy here is APAC hated the neocons. They hated us. They lobbied vehemently to keep me from entering the government. Originally, the idea was that I would become the senior director in the NSC for the Middle East. But they put up such a fight that Steve Hadley and Condoleezza Rice didn't want to have me.

So John Bolton pulled me in the state and then the vice president over the White House. They hated the crowd of Jews that went in. They had no interactions with us. You can say a little bit longer? You have to go. Yeah, no, I'm fine. Okay. So it's all going to...

That's wrong. Just so you know that. Yeah. It's all going to dovetail because you know, just a couple of days ago, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, well, Nick Fuentes said it, and Tucker Carlson seemed to, I have the video, called us unassimilable Jews. So maybe just give you an opportunity here to express your and Jews of your generation, your attachment to America as America rather than as, you know, without regard to Israel. Well, we were the children of the golden age of American Judaism. America had been good for us. I mean, first of all, I have a personal attachment.

My mom originally was not Jewish. She converted to Judaism when she married my father. Cut. No, I mean, before I was born. Okay. Don't worry. Go ahead. I married a Yemenite Jew, so now my child is half, half, whatever.

Bottom line, though, She was in 1948 in Czechoslovakia. She was in the anti-Hitler underground, and then when the war ended, she went into the anti-Stalin underground. Wow. And in 48, they figured it out, and she ran. And it was right out of the movies,

chasing to the Austrian border. She got off her. It's a whole story in itself. When she left Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic, there was one place she was going to go. was America. And she hated Nazis and she hated communists. And that was her world. And that was the world I grew up in, which was America over, America is it. Yeah. The second thing is, as a

Jew, the Jews do well when freedom and the world thrives. We do horribly with tyranny. We do horribly in the dark ages and so forth. The rise of America and the global wave of freedom ever since 1776 is essential for the survival of the Jewish people. So there is no way you can be pro-Jewish really and pro-Israeli without being intensely pro-American. And as far as assimitable, I mean, you know, Christmas is coming. We're all going to see those wonderful little acclamation things that we see, the TV things, Jack Frost, remember, Burger Meister, Meister, Burger. The guy who did that was Jewish, and we can sing at the table, you know, God bless America. The guy was Jewish.

Well, I posted, I don't know if you saw. Yeah, I did. I saw Irving Berlin. And Yasha Haifitz, he used to raise a flag every day. Yeah, I saw that this morning. You posted it with Yash Haifitz. Yeah. I mean, we were always part of America.

We were always, and we had so assimilated. many Americans simply don't know Gary Grant was Jewish. People don't know these things because we assimilated. We're part of the fabric of America. We've assimilated so much that like 30% of us voted for Mamdani yesterday. And like 60% intermarry. I can't. But we also contribute to America.

We're good citizens. We've never, you know, I looked at the statistics at Normandy. Do you realize the per capita? death rate of Jews and the invasion of Normandy was slightly higher than the population as a whole. We bled just like everybody else. We fought like just everybody else. We invested in the culture like everybody else. We put our money up for America. I mean, as a Jew growing up, the absolute absence of any anti-American sentiment, talk, you, My father, who was born in Israel, all he loved was America. You know, he would get teary-eyed at the young Mr. Lincoln movie.

Israelis, too, by the way. They love America. No, but I'm saying, like, as a patriot, look at somebody like Alan Dershowitz. Alan Dershowitz would be like John Mearshermer's Five Minutes of Hate, you know, from 1984, like a Jewelie, like Goldman is up there. This guy carries around the Constitution. He treasures letters of George Washington and Jefferson. I mean, the most throwing their hearts into embracing America as their home.

What is unassimitable about the Jews? It's shocking to me. So, all right, so I, I, I, um... You know, I served in the Navy. Oh, you served in the Navy. I served in the Navy. I was Navy Reserve. It was after Selective Service.

was gone. I mean, I didn't have to serve. I just felt like I owe it to America. I wanted to ask properly the questions about the accusations of Jewish loyalty being behind the war in Iraq and the possible bias and all that. The flip side is, much of this comes from John Meersheimer, who is really showing his true colors now about his vile feelings about the Jews. I have some video. Can you bring up that video? In this video, he now talks about Israel killing most of the people on October 7th.

I was in Israel on October 7th. You can't. He talks about Israel. It's insane. Israel blackmailing Donald Trump, and that's why Trump participated in the Iran thing. I mean, baseless accusations. Go ahead. Go play. You can play the. What your thoughts on what we are, on what we know and what we don't know about what happened on October 7th.

I think we have a pretty good sense of what the general picture looks like. I think we don't know the number of Israelis who were killed by the Israeli forces. And you want to remember, it was not just the Hannibal doctrine. Just for the Hannibal doctrine, I asked Ami Ayelone, former head of the shinbet, the Hannibal doctrine, which is controversial, is a doctrine which says that essentially the IDF will shoot at the terrorists, even if it means risking the lives of the person being taken. It's a hot pursuit doctrine. It doesn't mean shooting the Israeli as a target, which is what, you know, they tried. But it wasn't evoked on October 7. It wasn't. Well, I've

heard both things. And, you know, it's, it's not self-evidently an outrageous thing. I mean, these are impossible trolley problem-like questions. Yeah, they are trolley problem like questions. But anyway, here on here, Mirschimer snake puts it. Is that the Israelis got, caught completely by surprise and they did not have a very good backup plan so what they did was they rushed in massive firepower and they used that firepower to attack Hamas and the other Palestinian forces that had moved into Israel proper and they killed a significant number of people not with the Hannibal doctrine but just with all that firepower that was brought to bear against Hamas and other Palestinians who were intermingled with all sorts of Israelis.

Then there's the whole issue of the Hannibal doctor. So just say there is some evidence of some friendly fire. There always is in a chaotic circumstance. But actually, on October 7th in the morning, as I said, I was there. I wasn't in the south. I was in Tel Aviv. And there's reasons why I know, because the hotel I was staying in. in. They were evacuating the surviving soldiers from that area to the hotel.

They didn't have anywhere to put them, the ones who were likely wounded or not wounded at all. So over the period of the next few days, we were having every hour an air raid or stuff like that, and they were very nice in the hotel. They put wine and cheese down in the air raid shelter. So I'd sit there and I'd talk to these girls who were on the front line, and they told me what really happened. The first real Israeli Air Force intervention was late, in the afternoon. There wasn't, this was fought by soldiers who showed up on their own, joining police units in the South, fighting hand-to-hand, street to street, to take back their cities in their towns, their kibbutzs, the fields, everything, and it was costly, it was deadly,

it was not, oh, the Israeli Air Force came in, they just bombed everything, the Smithereens, and, oh, there were 100 Israelis or 500 Israelis. The Air Force did not intervene until, later in the day. And by then, the invasion had already been stabilized and the main forces were already pushed back into Gaza. I mean, what kind of, I'm sure you're right, what kind of sick heart, even if there were, even if there is, and I think it was some level of friendly fire, doesn't understand that that is also blamable on Hamas. What is the alternative, like there's no perfect answer here. You're being invaded. You're not prepared.

You're shooting. You're chaos. And they have hostages. What would Mearsheimer have the Israeli zoo? Just say, okay, we can't risk friendly fire. So go ahead. Do what you want. I mean, you're being shied at by people who are holding your own citizens.

I mean, it's, and he. Were that they were only holding them. They were executing them, raping them. I saw the GoPro videos. There was an active murder going on. It wasn't that, well, okay, we'll just let him take a, take a, take them hostage. There was hundreds who were going to be killed every hour or two that they didn't stabilize the front. So this is the guy getting insight into where, and I want

people to try to, you know, look to get that insight into where is Mearsheimer coming from? You want to believe what he's saying about the Israel lobby and the neocons manipulating the country into war, he's betraying where he's coming from. Don't worry just about where the neocons are coming from. Worry about where Mearsheimer is coming from. Well, his book was, his book about APEC was highly inaccurate. He never interviewed anybody that I knew, who, and we were one of the primary ones being accused of working for Israel in APEC.

He never talked to any of us. I mean, any scholars should talk to the people he's been right about. He didn't care. And as a result, his book is as inaccurate as they come. He doesn't care about facts. And it's a pity. In the 70s, he actually contributed some good things to the debate over national security. Apparently, David Irving was a good historian at one time.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. Ted Bundy used to work at a suicide or a rape hotline center. Perry Al was a great waitress. Let me play some one. It's almost done, I think. Okay. As we know, the Palestinians were bent on taking many of their captured Israelis back to Gaza. And the Hannibal Doctrine calls for killing those people before they get there.

So some Israelis were killed as a result of the Hannibal Doctrine. It doesn't call for that. Go ahead. And then you want to remember, on top of all that, it's consistent with international law for Hamas to try to break out of the concentration camp. This is another one. This is a breakout. This is like a prison break. They want to break out into Israel and go where? They break out, break into Egypt, right? Yeah, when Israel withdrew in 2005 from Gaza, the border with Egypt was open. Trade flowed from Israel. At the end of the day, Gaza was a state. That was your Palestinian state. They had their own army, their own government,

their own police force, their own borders. Air force. I mean, airport, airport. Tax themselves or pillage themselves. I said airport. I meant airport. It was very important. They had an airport, which means they were not stranded there.

They could go wherever they wanted. They had their own foreign relations structure, you know, et cetera. They were a full state. There was also, you know, one thing very important to remember, in 1967, when Israel took over Gaza and the West Bank, or Judean Samaria, as this administration is beginning to call it. The GDP per capita in both of those areas were about half of the countries from which Israel took them. So Gaza was about half of Egypt, and the West Bank was about half of Jordan's. By the time Israel left those areas, it was about double to triple Jordans or Egypt. And even

at the end, just before, these were not unwealthy areas. Gaza was not poor. It had a, and now you're seeing the same people who talk about the concentration camp are saying, oh, the Gaza we knew, the paradise is law. You can't have it always. But the most important thing is if there were restrictions, the Israelis restricted nothing entering other than goods that could be used for military. They even let concrete go in. And we know what they did with the concrete. They built the tunnels. They let everything in except for weapons. And even that, they knew about the smuggling from Egypt, and they didn't do anything about it. The Israelis simply did not, this was not a siege.

This is what happened. And second of all, one of the reasons why the Israelis didn't think the war would happen is there were discussions about Hamas and its movements, and the understanding was the 40, 50,000 workers per day that go in from Gaza to Israel is not sufficient, and the Gaza economy could be beginning to show signs of recession. So maybe this whole instability and they're kind of rattling the cage a little bit in order to get more work permits. So the Israelis actually read this as a sign that the Hamas has reasonability and it has skin in the game of economic development. So the discussions in the week or two before the war on the top level of the Israeli military and government were increasing the number of workers that would be let in from Gaza,

into Israel. So the whole idea is upside down. By the way, the Hannibal doctor, just one real question for Mearsheimer. If Israel didn't care about the hostages, they could have won this war in a week. Of course. They basically accepted a strategic paralysis,

and in the end, maybe they'll pull this off as a victory, but it could also still wind up in an incomplete war and a strategic failure that has to be fixed with an ongoing war or a follow-on war. But for the moment, clearly the Israelis

were willing to paralyze themselves strategically in order not to hurt their own hostages. So this would be the same country that just willy-nilly kills its hostages

going into Gaza? That is such a good point. I kick myself for not having thought of it myself. It's a very, very good... No, I read your mind. No, it's exactly right.

You want to say that they're so bloodthirsty they'll kill their own people, but then they're, as you said, paralyzed for two years, afraid to bomb the wrong building, when no one would even know really that they were doing, right? So here we are. Mir Sharma says they were just breaking out of the concentration camp, and they chose to break out towards Israel, to be free.

They were trying to be free. And to engage Israeli military forces in combat, which means they're going to kill some of them. So the fact that they killed Israeli soldiers is not a case of murder. Now, there were clearly Israeli civilians who were murdered. I'd be willing to bet in the final analysis, however, that Hamas did not murder many of those Israelis civilians. Yeah. So that's, I mean, it's just a lie. I mean, you can't really frame it any other way, all the evidence, including the evidence.

Remember, these videos. Wait, I'm not finished yet, Steve. These videos that we see, they're not from Israel. They're not taken by Israelis. They're taken from Hamas, pro, what is it, GoPro cameras. They were proud of what they did. They posted it on the internet.

This is from them, that they were doing this with great pride of slaughtering people in the most cruel fashion. I saw those videos. I haven't been able to do. You know, it's just that he's, He's supposed to be a scholar. I'm a friggin, you know, comedy club owner.

I try to be so careful. Try and make sure, never say anything I can't back up. He, after he said that, I really, I scanned everything I could find. I did deep research. Like, what is the evidence? Yes, there's some indication here. This might have been friendly fire. Certainly there was some.

It's reckless for him to say these things as a citizen. Just as an intelligent person. Who says such things? He's John Mearsheimer. It's calculated to hurt. Yeah, this is the guy you want to trust. Can I continue from where I left off, Steve? It's calculated to humiliate Israel and the Jews.

Yeah. So I just want to continue. What your thoughts on what we are on what we... Trump and his behavior towards many of those Israeli civilians. Oh, yeah, that's it. Okay. So what are your thoughts on the role of Epstein and the Epstein files and Epstein's history in, potentially in the U.S.

his treatment of Israel. When you look at Trump and his behavior towards Israel and you look at his behavior before he became president, there's good reason to think that the Israelis have the goods on him and that they've made it clear to him that if he gets tough on Israel, they'll reveal certain things. All right, that's enough of this. So that's it. So the Jews are behind everything. They manipulates into Iraq war.

And if Trump, because Trump doesn't have neocons around him, there must be some other, another, some must have got to be some way the Jews did it. You know, you also see it with this, quote, $7,000 per tweet, myth that's out there, which is a lie. You know, but it actually reveals something really fascinating. They don't really have a case. They rest their case on a lot of lies and so forth. And they project onto the Israelis, namely, and Jews.

Namely, nobody really would support the Israelis. The Israelis are fake. The Israelis are this, that, colonial, whatever you want, Khazars, I don't know what. They always project onto the Israelis exactly what Nasrallah said. It's a spider web. You push the spider web, it'll collapse

because the Israelis are fake. And they keep not getting the fact that it's one of the most solid identities in the world. It's one of the most solid national identities there are. Israelis have an immense commitment to a feeling of being part

of a 4,000-year history. And on October 7th, believe me, the IDF failed. That was Israelis just picking up their guns, going to the south. Police who were manning these barricades saw guys coming. What are you? Infantry? Okay, there's a group of infantry over there. You go join them.

I mean, it was common Israeli citizens who were mobilizing themselves into the reserve structure, joining their unit, not their units, any unit that they could be useful in, whereas the Air Force, the top structure of the IDF, was paralyzed until the afternoon. And this is, but you can't do that if your identity of who you are is not solid. But because they think Israel's fake, because they buy this idea, it's a colonial entity, or it's Khazar converts or Europeans or whatever, they think that you can't possibly really support Israel, unless you have a material

payoff for it. You can't really believe, can you? So you need to be given $7,000 to write a positive tweet. Why would you do it otherwise? There has to be some reason for it. But they're the victims of their own propaganda. You brought to mind something that

at first time I went to Italy. You've been to Italy, I'm sure you've been to Italy. That was your first time? The first time I went to Italy. I said, oh, my God, everything is so. beautiful here. You can't go into a store and find an ugly garment. Everything is, and I remember saying to myself, how did, how was this the same culture that I grew up with like in Staten Island? Like, like, how did, like, because my, my whole experience, like, Italian culture was

a kid was kind of like, you know, chinty, vulgar, like, you know, grotesque, you know, you know, ostentatious stuff. It's like somehow, I don't know how this separated. And so you're describing the Jews here. I'm like, how did Woody Allen, like Jews in America like Nevis she, people like me, you know, like, and in Israel, they're like these brave Adonis, like soldiers, warriors, you know, with muscles and, and physical courage. And somehow it's the same, it's the same people. But I, you know, I, her husband, by the way, who's a dear friend of mine, he's the type, I believe, who would October 7th have picked up a gun and gone into the fight, correct? 100%. Yeah, yeah. But you know, American Jews fought hard in World War II, too. Yeah, yeah. And in the Bible, Jews, you know, I think it was Ezra Weitzman once said in 78 just before Operation Litani. There was a big terrorist attack on the coastal road. And I remember he was on CBS, faced the nation in the morning. And they said, how can you the people of the Bible now think about going into Lebanon? And he says, well, when you read the Bible, the Jews weren't such a meekish people.

So before we go, and the last two questions are going to be just about, was Iraq a mistake? And just whether or not the Israeli intelligence on WMD was any less accurate or more deceptive than any other world's intelligence. Before we go, I heard you speak on another podcast. And you spoke really beautifully about the current state of affairs with the anti-Semitism on the rise and the podcasters. I don't know if you had a chance to watch the Tucker Carlson and Nick Flintas thing at all. No, I didn't watch it. I can't not be exposed to it, though. Yeah, you should watch it.

What is your – where is this going? What are your feelings on it? What do you make of the people like Megan Kelly who are, you know, staying agnostic about this fight on the right? What are your thoughts on all that? Well, let me start with the Iraq question. I think given everything we knew then, and by the way, the Israelis, their intelligence did not, they did not believe there was major weapons of mass destruction programs. They had the same assessment we had more generally that if given the chance, Saddam broke out, then he would resurrect his weapons of mass destruction programs. he was a man who wasn't going to stay contained.

And he had a history of every four or five years launching major wars or killing a quarter million people if he couldn't launch a major war. And he did. He killed half a million people, quarter million in the north, or half a million in the north, quarter million in the south.

In the decade before, we went in. So there was a sense, we can't live with this guy. You turn your back on him. It's a wounded cobra, but a cobra will kill you, even if it's wounded. And so I still think to this day, it needed to be done, but it did not need to be done the way it was done. I still, as I thought back then,

this should be done by organizing a force of Iraqis. We had northern Iraq was free. You could have organized this force there. You could have trained an army. We could have given some assistance, But this really, Iraq should be liberated by Iraq. And it's the same thing with Iran. I think at the end of the day, the West Israel can give Iranians a chance with a weakened regime.

But Iranians have to liberate Iran, not Israelis, not Americans. And I still feel that. So I believe that- As the Ukrainians are fighting for their own crime. As the Ukrainians, and as the Israelis fought there for themselves back in 48 all the way to this day. And I think it's, by the way, quite remarkable that no American soldier has ever died defending Israel. Yes, there was that incident of the liberty, which is another big anti-Semitic kerfuffle right now. It was a big accident, friendly fire.

But they weren't defending Israel. No soldier, American soldier, has ever died defending Israel. You can't say that about any other country that American soldiers are deployed, whether it's Kuwait or Iraq or, or, or, or, or, you know, or even places like Japan. American soldiers have been killed in terrorism there and so forth. So it's a good thing. It's a good thing that that's the case.

So I would put that principle onto the Iraqis, the Iranians, and others. And so I still think this is a major strategic objective, as it is now in Iran. I'm not going to shy away from saying. I think that the world will be a better place without this regime. But at the end of the day, like

with Iraq, I think the way to do it is to find forces in those countries that'll do it. Now, Iran, could it understand freedom? Probably more than Iraq. Iran's a very sophisticated country. You see the Iranians in exile. A lot of them are more smarter than any people I know myself, far smarter. But, you know, I don't know. But you can give these people a chance.

And then if they screw it up, they screw it up. I can't do that. I can't save people despite themselves. America can't save nations despite themselves. But I think that strategically, there are dangers from these countries. We can't turn their back on them. And we have to still. So in retrospect, I still believe Iraq had to be done, just not the way it was done.

Now, anti-Semitism, I'm trying to remember how you phrased it. The podcasters, all that stuff. Yeah, look, I mean. The mainstreaming of it, the fact that, like, like when Obama was running for office, He had to make sure that a picture of him, you know, with Lewis Farrakhan was suppressed, and he had to talk a lot to try to talk his way out of his relationship with Reverend Wright. That seems quaint now compared to J.D. Vance's associations, right? Well, I think what's happening is you started seeing it in the 80s in Europe

where the, you know, the PLO would hold these conferences. Neo-Nazis would show up, too, not just the radical left, but the neo-Nazis. And you started seeing this red-green alliance submerging at that point. I would call it red-green and then black, but black is the color of Nazism. I don't mean Black Lives Matter, Negro-Americans. I'm just using a 1930s, 40s. You know, you had black were the Nazis, fascism, red was communism, and green is Islam, which is the PLO flag.

it's not what it means. I mean, that's not the symbolism behind it, believe me. But it does fit. But at any rate, bottom line is you started seeing the validation of anti-Semitism in those conferences. And the left, again, this was during the Cold War. The Soviet Union encouraged anti-Semitism, and it resurrected the demon. And it was on the margins, but it was growing. And I think over the last decade, you've seen anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism, anti-colonialism, anti-Europeanism, anti-white, which they now, after 2,000 years are being considered the outsider, the Jews now are the epic insider, whatever. Whatever the ideology, it validates hatred of Jews.

And now you start seeing on the right politics that are not classical conservative, not classical liberal, Just like the hardcore left is not really classical liberal. These are not really classical conservative. They're not the buckley types or so forth. It's validated. And we are facing something like in the 30s where one of the things I did not understand about the 30s. I'm quite shocked about is we all grew up

and we thought primitive people are anti-Semites because they don't know the world. They don't know how much Jews have contributed. The more you know, the more enlightened, you are, the less you're prone to such things. So we thought that there was, you know, as the world was becoming more progressive in its outlook, more enlightened,

anti-Semitism would become anathema. It's the eternal Jewish hope that this age will bring an end to anti-Semitism. And what we're finding is anti-Semitism wasn't a bottom-up phenomenon. It was a top-down phenomenon. It was encouraged by elites. It was validated by elites.

The best example was the Eurovision Song Contest the last two years. Israel basically walked away with the popular vote in the Eurovision Song Contest. But the elites of the European Broadcasting Authorities couldn't have that. So they sabotaged it, and Israel finished fifth, sixth, whatever place. That was an elite-driven anti-Semitism. And I think, and of course then that in our society today, where I feel a lot of youth haven't really...

I don't blame them because the validating structures of knowledge have collapsed, whether it's universities, mainstream media, and so forth. There really is a sense of we can't believe anybody. The elite structures

of validation of knowledge failed us. So they don't know... So they don't know where to turn to get information. And there's a lot of slick salesmen of these ideologies out there who can then tap into that.

Like Meersheimer. Like Meersheimer. like Tucker Carlson, like Ian Carroll, like even, you know, Sanders even, you know? I mean, it's easy. It's easy because you do not know what's right and what's wrong. You can't, all you can tell is you see on TV and you see Dave Smith, I think, is a perfect example of this. He sees what's going on in Gaza. He's like, how can I support this? This is terrible. Look at all these damaged, they're destroyed buildings, these crying Palestinians. I mean, maybe these are has had a terrible thing happened to them on October 7. How can you defend this? Because

the visual is the only reality they have. They don't know the whole context of it, the story, the backstory of it. It's as if somebody zapped in on August 5th, 1945, and said, oh, my God, look at Hiroshima. Look at Nagasaki. How in the world could a human do this? No, but I think that's a generous read, because two things can be true at the same time. It can be horrible and it can be devastating, and you can be extremely sympathetic to innocent lives lost as well. You should be. But you can also be critical of the other side. And the thing that really gets me is that none of these people are even remotely as vocal about any of the other atrocities in the world,

most of which are far worse than what's going on in Gaza and Israel. And they weren't vocal about October 7th either. No, of course not. They certainly aren't vocal about Sudan. They're not vocal about Nigeria, Syria, all the other places where things are happening. Then you have the Christianity issue, which is this idea that Jews are killing Christians. Well, this is tapping in, and by the way, I think Qatar is heavily involved with this. It's funding this idea that somehow Jews are killing Christians, which of course taps into some very dangerous anti-Semitic myths.

Right. And all they have is this one church in Gaza, which was hit by accident, three people were killed, the other church incident, West Bank, turned out not to be true. But you have actually, the Israelis are the only ones defending Christians in Syria right now. Of course. They defended the Marinites in Lebanon for the last 40 years. And Maronites know that, which is why a lot of Maronites are very pro-Israeli, because they know that is the only future. There are Maronites in the Israeli military who are.

trying to come up with for the Israeli military strategies to hook up with the regions Christians to save them. So the whole idea, Christianity in the Middle East is facing extinction, and the only force out there saving them and preventing it is Israel. But that doesn't seem to affect these guys. It's classic anti-Semitism at this point. Today I heard Megan Kelly, who's not an anti-Semite, saying stuff that just astounded me about this. First of all, She made the, you know, she made the typical accusation that people get called anti-Semitic just because they're critical of Israel. I'm sure that happens from time to time, but, and obviously it's always better just to counter an argument than to yell, how dare you. How dare you is not a very convincing argument, and we, you know, people tend to do that sometimes.

But if all we were dealing with was criticism of Israel, I could understand her point. But that's not what we're dealing with. We're dealing with the Jews killed Charlie Kirk. This is her friends. The Jews were behind 9-11. The Jews were behind JFK. This is all just coming up at the same time from the mouths of the people. I'm just criticizing Israel.

It is a foreign country. Yes, I mean, Megan, come on. And, you know, and, you know, as I've said before, they've always been, I mean, they have the new technology to broadcast, but there's always been the Tucker Carlson types and Nick Fuentes types. What's new in our lifetime is that they are now allowed on the respectable places. There used to be, I made the analogy yesterday, you know what a check valve is? You're building a house. A check valve is the plumbing valve that makes sure that the sewage doesn't seat back. into the clean water in a house or in a restaurant.

We had a check valve. The sewage didn't seep into our clean system. Now it does. And that's when it becomes dangerous. That's the five-a-long pie. And people like Megan Kelly and Joe Rogan, wittingly, unwittingly, they are the danger, I think. Right.

They're not being the check valve that they should be. They should want to be. And they would want to be because it's the credibility also of the conservative movement. Just like the left, it was the credibility of the left, should have had check valves, and people took the convenient road. They did talk against anti-Semitism, people on the left against the right, and the right against the left. But that's weaponizing anti-Semitism, not actually fighting it. Just exploiting it for a part of the end. I remember we've spent many years trying to come up with a good definition of anti-Semitism, but I still haven't

heard a better one than people who ate Jews more than they deserve. And at the end of the day, that's really kind of it. I mean, Israel may do bad things sometimes. Any nation does. There may be bad Israelis. You've got 7 million people. They're going to be bad eggs. Fine.

Criticize them, condemn them. Hopefully Israeli society, Israeli government. Jews in the Jewish community condemn them. And they tend to very vociferously. The track record is excellent on taking and exercising from in your midst, horrible people. But the idea that Jews do things, that there is no evidence that they do, hating them beyond proportion, obsessing about Jews being evil, holding all Jews accountable for the actions of one or two, denying Jews fundamental rights that every other people have, like to self-determination. I mean, even the statement, we defend Israel's right to defend itself. There's not a people on earth that doesn't have a right to defend itself.

itself. That's not giving the Jews anything. It's baseline. That's baseline. So at the end of the day, that is the real anti-Semitism. It's this Maersheimer obsession that the Jews do things that no evidence shows. You're obsessed about them. They're always evil. Anything that's wrong has to somehow find its path back to the Jews. And that's Tucker Carlson with his 9-11 now that some me and others did 9-11, even though I lost Barbara Olson, who was a good friend of mine, and I lost... That's Ted Olson's wife, Barbara Olson.

By the way, also, as I said, I was in the Navy, Navy Reserve. Well, my unit, we were in two parts of the Pentagon, about a third of my unit was killed. I knew some of these people. I mean, it's not, it's personal, but the idea that we did 9-11 to then get into Iraq, I mean, without any evidence. And that's the problem with anti-Semitism. Let's make news here. Dr. Wormser.

I only use doctor when people say, I'm doctor, so-and-so. But I want to make it like highfalutin. Okay, sure. Let's make news. Let's make new here. Dr. Wormser, were you behind 9-11? No. Okay.

Shit. Swinging to this. But you knew about it. You knew it was coming, didn't you? I knew about it at about 9 o'clock in the morning, yes. All right, just, we're going to go. I asked Chad, you be... There's a funny little thing.

Go ahead, go ahead. I was in transition to go into the government at the time waiting for my client. So I was at home, right, when it struck. And I remember, because I had just finished my Navy service, and I thought, I'm going to be called up. So my wife says, oh, my God, look at what's happening. I said, oh, my God, they're going to call me up. So I just go to the closet. I put on my uniform, and I start going toward the steps to go down.

downstairs to the car. And she screams and says, Dave, Dave, you can't go. You can't go. The Pentagon's just been hit. And I go, no, that's impossible. I'm heading there. Logic just fails you at that moment. I have to tell you. So I was in Washington, D.C., which is a whole other story on 9-11. And I'm not going to, she's laughing because she won't be told us the story too long. But anyway, so I was with a friend. And we, I figure which hotel we're staying at, but we went outside, and we walked by the White House, and there was nobody there. Right. And we began to walk towards the front door of the White House, and there, I mean, if, like, in those days,

you had no cell phone cameras, and there was nobody there, such that we could have walked right to the door and in. And I looked at, and I said, you know, we should, this is a bad idea. So we turned around and walked the other way. It was like an apocalypse movie. Everything was, and everybody was gone. And there were armored personnel carriers on street corners. Yeah. That was just bizarre.

And now I know, do you know why there was nobody there, Perry-O? Because they thought it was going to get hit. And I would have been the only American killed. I remember the conversation at the time, even inside the government was it. He did that. If he did that, it's got to be the. the prelude to something bigger. Nobody would do that because you bring the full weight of America on you

and you have no second answer to that, there was definitely a feeling this is only the first shoe to drop. Something else is going to drop. Anyway, I made a quick, I made just a quick list here of Israel's benefits to the United States, just so people, you know, like, if, the, if the anti-Semites, just in the sense of keeping your friends, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. They should

want to keep Israel close to America. As I was saying before about comparing it to Manhattan, like what Israel, 7 million people accomplish? Can you imagine having Israel outside the tent pissing in, maybe having to form an alliance with China and Putin and all this technology

and know-how going to the benefit of our enemies? This would be a crazy, and if Israel has to, they would, right? They're not going to go down. Anyway, Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran, targeting, helping us, Israel Intel helped us target Soleimani. We foiled the ISIS laptop bomb plat, elimination of Hezbollah, destruction of Syria's nuclear reactor, which we would have had to deal with, the Iron Dome technology and other technologies that we benefit from. Trophy in advanced U.S. Army, Israeli systems now protect U.S. tanks from missiles, joint military, military, X-Prikes, Kaspersky Cyberbreach discovery. I mean, it goes on and on and on of the various

ways that we have benefited from, and you could probably... Yeah, no, I mean, all those things are true. The F-35s, that the Israelis figured out a way to maintain them and put on their own avionics, that now we're backfitting on our aircraft. What it does is it allows them to function at twice the operational rate, which means if you have a thousand aircraft, you need a thousand aircraft to do X work, right? The Israelis can do 2x work with those thousand aircraft. So you literally, you can have smaller air force and get a lot more done.

Right there, how much does an F-35 cost? A lot, I don't know. But it costs a lot. And by the way, the Israelis have to spend the money 60% of it in the United States. It's a jobs program for our defense industries. But if you talk to Europeans about the intelligence, that Israel gives to stop terrorism in Europe and in America,

we would have seen a lot of 9-11s in Europe had it not been for Israeli intelligence. If you understand that the Israeli's activities in Iran, we would have had a nuclear Iran a decade or two ago. If one understands how the Israelis feed back into our defense industry's loop, we would be one generation back in our weapons against the Soviet, Soviet against the Russians, the Chinese, and so forth. And now, as I said, what the Israelis did in Iran is cut and pasteable to China. And the Chinese depend on this idea that it's overwhelming their power. You might as well give in. The Chinese can't depend on that. They strategically can't

act. And that, in an essence, the Israelis found something that can help the United States avoid a war, therefore, with China, or potentially invasion. I mean, it goes on and on and on, and we're not talking about everything else, like your cell phone, cherry tomatoes, whatever. So do they care? I mean, or are we just dirty Zionist pigs no matter what? Well, I think there's a lot of people in the military look with horror, the idea of Israel not being our ally because they depend so much on what we...

Even in Europe? I think there's a lot of Europeans. I think they, you know, it's easy not to be pro-Israeli. It's easy to bash the Israelis, because the Israelis aren't going to turn around and blow up Berlin. They're not going to turn and hijack a French plane. The Israelis are basically going to say, okay, you know, we don't like what you're doing, but we're still going to, Israelis will go there as tourists, we're still going to give you intelligence. Our defense industries will still share technology with you, et cetera, et cetera.

So basically, I remember the Swiss were, it was. one point I was in Switzerland when there was a when the Iraq war started and they were saying how we're defending you know we're not letting the Americans do whatever blah blah blah and I thought it's like the Swiss in the in the in the Cold War they kind of benefited of course from the Western NATO Allied defense even though they weren't part of it and that that way they could afford to be independent they could take votes against us they could vote again they could be nasty Why? It was a freebie. Well, it reminds me one of the things Tucker Carlson said with Nick Flint does, I know many.

You know, there's Israelis that are not Zionists, you know, and Jeffrey Sachs. I mean, he was just like, you have to watch it. He's just kind of like a word salad thing. Communist Jeffries. Yeah, and I think about this tiny population of anti-Zionist Israelis. They're like the Swiss. They benefit from Israel. They live in Israel.

Nothing against the Swiss. I don't have anything. I was born in Switzerland. It's like saying, it's like, why can't it be anti-American? Plenty of Amish who don't believe in America also. I guess we have Amish. Israel has a crazy... I think all the anti-Semite should be cut off from all the benefits.

I say that all the time. All the medicalists. They should do BDS. Yeah, they should. They should do BDF, but do it right. That's right. You know, give up your cell phone. Don't use a Xerox machine.

No stent for you. Internet has Israeli switching technology. Go all the way. Professor Wormser. I am, um, doctor. Dr. Wormser, I am, uh, 98% convinced you, uh, did not lie the country into, into war. No.

No, it was an intelligence, uh, uh, flub. I mean, it, it, it was. I, I remember one meeting quickly before the war, John Bolton, because I was at state still at the time, he said, he called in the heads of the intelligence, so we need a program here. for figuring out, discovering what there is on the ground when we go in. And I remember the DIA guy, the CIA guy, very senior. I don't remember if that was the head or their deputy, but it was very senior. They basically said, we don't need a plan.

We're going to trip over this stuff when we get in there. There was nobody pushed anybody. No, and of course, if it was a whole corrupt enterprise, somebody would have been charged with making sure that we found the WMD when we got there. Yeah, and that special classified private. project people say was really the 9-11 thing, trying to justify the war with Iraq, that thing had 140 slides, too, were on Iraq. 17 were on Iran. And the purpose of it was, what are these networks? Where are these networks and where they located, how they interact? Iraq was not, it wasn't,

we weren't trying to look for Iraq. And Saddam Hussein is an obnoxious enough guy. There were plenty reasons to go after him. Well, we're not, as we said before, we're not out of the woods yet. I have children. I'm worried for the future of the world and if something terrible happens, God forbid, it's most likely going to be from that

part of the world. And these people, and I don't mean Arabs, I mean jihadis. And the notion of flailing around trying to figure out a solution to this problem to save the world is not something shameful, even if terrible mistakes were made. That's my opinion.

Correct. All right, sir. Wonderful time. It was an honor. It was an honor for me. Well, you're welcome to come back again. Of course, you're a VIP now at the Comedy Seller for Life. And thank you very much, everybody. Good night.