The Team House - Baltimore Bridge: Accident or Foul Play? | EYES ON | Ep. 15

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseToday the guys are talking about the Francis Scott Key bridge and whether the accident wasn't really. We also talk about the ongoing Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Israel gearing up for an offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza and how Israel is quickly alienating itself from the international community.Find Andy here:Twitterhttps://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substackhttps://amilburn.substack.com/Andy's bookhttps://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. and when you sign up you get access to all of our episodes ad-free. That's the big bonus for that.

I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers, but this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to, and we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the teamhouse. Hello, good morning, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Aizan. I'm Andy Milburn. I'm Jason Lyons.

I'm Dimitri Tacos. Very excited for this today's show. Okay. Dee, we're going to talk about a couple of things. First of all, the new format. We're keeping this when we don't have a guest fairly sharp on time to 30, 40 minutes. A number of things happening in the news today. The number one, okay, is.

the Baltimore Bridge and investigating this particular incident has been our own Jason Lyons. Over to you, Jason. That sounded pretty professional, right? That sounds good. Live on scene. So good morning, everyone. For those who don't know, on Monday, the 25th of March at about 0.130 in the morning, a Singapore registered ship called the Dolly.

it's approximately 1,000-foot container ship, ran into the lost power and ran into part of the Francis Key, Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland. And as soon as it hit, the bridge, that portion of the bridge collapsed. Reports are all over the place. But as far as I know, three folks were pulled from the water, six, between six to eight are still missing. or I'm sorry, through, yeah, six are still missing, six to eight, depending on the reports.

But the reason why we're talking about this now, some people may say, you know, why are we talking about this? This is not necessarily national security. But it's a matter of misinformation as far as I'm concerned. So immediately reports were going across X former Twitter and other social media platforms that this was a terror attack, that it was a cyber attack, that it was everything from that all the way to I saw someone, a well-known reporter saying that this, blaming this on the current administration's open border policies.

What? Not sure where the hell that thread came from. But, okay. Oh, also mask mandates. That had something to do with it as well, too. So, yeah. I can see that link. Yeah, exactly.

So misinformation is. Andy, let's focus your beautiful face. You want to put your palm over your camera and reach it out because you're out of focus. You're out of focus. Yeah. So I turn my, I'd never look at my own camera when I'm doing this.

Oh shit. Hey, just keep talking. No one gives about my face. So misinformation is inaccurate reporting or inaccurate reporting or inaccurate. information, whereas disinformation is a purpose, is purposely putting out incorrect information or false or misleading information. So the whole reason we're talking, I want to talk about this is because that is a part

of intelligence, of the intelligence community and apparatus. At the end of the day, you want to get accurate information to the consumer. The consumer has a question. they want to know in this case what happened with this boat with this ship and why did it happen so all go ahead yeah quick question for you i mean where do these stories begin right i mean where where do all these and and how do they gain traction you know these aren't these aren't just kind of scuttle what they are but they they've been given the undeserved attention of mainstream media, right?

Yeah. You know, all of these. And yet there isn't a shred of evidence to suggest that, am I right? Absolutely. Yeah, so far. Now, of course, I never say never, especially working in the intelligence world. You never say never.

It could come out six months from now, two years from now, whatever. It really was a hack. It really was a terrorist attack. But right now, the evidence does not point that way. And I think to answer your question, And the reason why and how it gains traction and gets life is the internet, social media. People are able to take a theory that they have or that someone who supports their theory has and just either spin it or throw it out their wholesale and nothing happens in a vacuum.

So your theory, you know, as crazy as it might sound, may resonate with someone who has the same type of thoughts. and boom, it just grows from there. Like, I knew this is going to happen, and I purposely looked for it on, I'm not on Twitter, but I was able to see some things. And I said, I'm guaranteeing you that if anyone's seen the video of the collapse, you'll see flashes as it's going down.

And I knew it was going to happen. And I found the video. I think I sent it to you guys last night. Someone is looking at the video, and they're using their finger at a point, look, here and here, you can see the explosions of dynamite charges. They literally said dynamite charges,

like we're in an 1860s coal mine or something somewhere, a gold mine, you know, showing, oh, this was deliberate. And of course, someone came back on and said, they're an engineer and said, that thing is full of electrical wiring that bridge. So when it's going down and those wires snap, that's what you're seeing, but they weren't hearing that. So I reached out to a friend of mine. He is a- Which, by the way, is how we do open source intelligence, right? Exactly.

It's amazing how much now can be learned from the Internet. And we've talked about open source intelligence and the fact that the most prolific and effective analysts never leave the open source information. Absolutely. And it can be used for disinformation too, right? Yeah, because the average person only has open source. So it's easy to get to them. And less than a year or so from now, what would probably follow a case like this are YouTube real, realistic looking YouTube videos that really make it look as though Baltimore Bridge was destroyed by sea drones or a mask wearing stranger or something.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's the shit side of social media and technology, period. So I reached out to a friend of mine. and hopefully he's already offered to come on the show if this, you know, um, gets legs and it becomes more than what it, you know,

appears to be at first. And so he pointed me to, first of all, I asked a question, um, could this have been a cyber attack, which is what a lot of people are saying. And his answer,

uh, is I suppose, but I can think of 10 other scenarios that are more likely to have happened before you get to cyber attack. Uh, we just don't know what we don't know. And that last part is the most important. part. It just happened. We don't know what we don't know yet. So let's give it a little time. And then I was,

I saw someone called the salty engineer. I'm not an expert on on this stuff, maritime, uh, subjects, but he says when a ship loses power like that, the rudder will be locked in and whatever position it is at the time of the power loss. What you're seeing with the power loss is most likely an initial power failure, as well as a secondary power failure. The ball, but was also involved in an incident in a foreign port recently, which ports points to an ongoing issue most likely due to either failure of management or severe lack of proper training. Again, I can't speak that. Ship drivers, ship drivers who cannot drive. Exactly. Yes. So the most simple explanation, but it's normally not good enough for the Joe public, right? Absolutely. So just before I step off my soapbox and

and hurt my old back here. I'm just going to say it's, we just don't know what we don't know. So let's think about the lives that were lost. Let's think about how we can prevent this from happening again. And until we have the facts, let's just keep it as, you know, it's all speculation. So over to you.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, no, that's, I, I just couldn't bring myself to read that story because I knew what was going to, what was going to start churning up. But thanks for that, Jason. And on the maritime theme here, switch to the Red Sea.

And the reason why we're banging this drum a little bit, you know, isn't because we're a one-trick Red Sea pony, but because the severity of what is happening there, we believe is perhaps not fully appreciated. So, you know, on one hand, you have this incident, domestic incident, which gets blown up. And meanwhile, okay, over the weekend of the Red Sea, well, really Friday and Saturday,

because it's, you know, we count Friday is, I mean, it's, it's that part of the world is part of the weekend, right? The fighter, you know, the drone battle and the Red Sea goes on. And what I want to emphasize again is just the sheer amount of money and assets and resources that the U.S. is spending on this. And I'm not saying that from the perspective of we shouldn't be doing it. You know, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the effect on global trade of having this route blocked off. But, you know, so just an example, I mean, on the 23rd, which happens to be my son's birthday, so I wasn't paying attention to this. Hey, get this. You know, this is a nice twist.

The Houthis hit a Chinese, you know, a Panamanian flag, but it was a Chinese own ship called the Hung Pooh. Okay. No, D. I know you had fun with that name, not the flunk poop. The hung poo, all right? And it was they so the hoofy threw four anti-ship ballistic missiles at it. And fortunately those all missed and then a fifth one hit it suffered minimal damage. So you know, that's not bad. At least now we're seeing some asymmetry and the fact that hooties are spending a lot of money to hit some aging Chinese ship.

But anyway, the interesting to see the Chinese reaction to that, ironically, US were, you know, U.S. is there to provide top cover for all of these ships to include those of China. And, you know, the day before on Friday, there was this another strike into Yemen. I've lost track between the UK and the U.S. of how many of these are. But when you look at the BDA, it's, again, it's very modest, you know, four UAVs destroyed on the ground. Well, all of us who've dealt with BDA know that that's, I mean, it's. that's extraordinarily hard to prove, but for UAVs, it's not a huge amount of money if you're going to send a bunch of F-35s, you know, on a huge strike ignition.

And for any, sorry, for anyone that asked, the BDA is the bomb damage assessment. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So I'll pause there. See, uh, see, any questions from you guys on, on the red sea? I got a question. The biggest question I have is like, where's the rest of the international community? Because this is an international waterway that, brings billions and billions of dollars a year or more of product or whatever. Where's China? Where's India? Where's Egypt?

You bring up a great point here. Dee, D is our, you know, we don't have political opinions, but D is here very firmly rooted in Maga Land from time to time and brings up. And that is a great point. You know,

and I'm not making fun of it. It's like we've got the same thing with, NATO why the hell are we now originally we are the one of three countries and now one of 11 who are even meeting NATO minimum requirements and not just the Red Sea but all the maritime global maritime commons it is the United States that that the world depends on to facilitate global trade to include as we've seen here with China our adversaries and it is what it is the you know that's and I will say we do it because it's in our national And because in case you haven't noticed, while the global economy is going through some rough times right now with, you know, Europe and China pondering whether they are indeed on the verge of a recession, the United States economy is booming.

Okay. But it's booming because of the way we interact with global trades. So for those who are adding up their pennies going, I don't understand why we're defending it. It's because we made it. We, we, the United States, our GDP profits disproportionately, some might argue, from global trade. That is why we defend it. Okay. This is so, you know, foreign policy 101, but I find myself in these arguments all the time.

Why do we have troops in the Middle East? You know, do you know how much that cost it? Money is one measure of, one means of measuring. and it's perhaps the least the least accurate, the least telling means of measuring effort or return of investment because money quite literally when it comes to this stuff

is relatively worthless when compared to the continuity of global trade or the effect of disruption of global trade. So my whole point wasn't really like for us not to be doing it. Obviously we should take the lead because we have more hardware than... Yeah, who else is contributing? Besides the UK, I mean, like, listen,

there are countries that it directly affects Egypt being on, you know, I'm sure a ton of the Middle East countries because they send all their oil. Egypt, most of all. Right. Egypt more than any other country that's brilliant. That's my biggest thing. I'm not saying that for like the, for us not to be there,

I think we need to be there for sure. It's a question of capacity, not intent. It's a question of capability. ability. You know, the Egyptian Navy, yes, they do indeed have a Navy, but it's, you know, it's not, and they, you know, I have to check to see if they're contributing. I'm pretty sure to the Red Sea, you know, there's a coalition escorting ships there. But the bottom line is this, that there is really only one or two countries, UK, US. Actually, there are several countries, but the countries with the most proficient anti-ballistic missile defense seaborne launched the United States and the UK.

No other country involved in that region has that. Italy, France, don't? Not to the same extent. No one has the SM, you know, I mean, people, yeah, other countries have the SN2, but not in the same quantity. I mean, I'll just give you an example. I mean, so, you know, the Navy releases, I mean, the Navy's so proud of this. And, of course, you know, I mean, they've,

at last at last you know the thousands hundreds of thousands of rust chippers and guys who've never even seen the fucking ocean feel that they are really at war and the Navy releases like a scorecard

every day of you know drones and missiles shot down USS Carney always always leads okay 12 drones shot down in the last two days drones all missiles and then you know it's USS Lahom 10 USS Mason 8

the gravely and in last place the Thomas Hudner too. Okay. New skipper, kind of a lax crew. A lot of guys from, a lot of guys from New York. Heavy drinking. All right. Hey, so I know we're keeping this tight.

Quick question. And you may not know the answer to this, but I'm wondering if, you know, the fact that the Houthi shot the shot at that's Chinese vessel. I'm wondering, do they know who they're shooting at? Like, is it just, hey, we see something out there? Let's shoot at it.

Yeah, great question. So here was speculation for a while near the beginning that, I mean, no, what we do know in the past, all right, in the past is that they have received intelligence from the Iranians. You know, so it isn't just that the Iranians, you know this, Jason. I'm going to explore and D knows it. But, you know, this isn't just about providing missiles and weapons systems to the Houthis. It's also about on the ground mentoring, not necessarily always in Yemen, but also back in Iran. Okay. And this applies to Hamas.

Iranians, as you know, run schools in country. And it's very easy to bring people back, train them, and then get them back out there. So they were relying on Iranian intelligence. Who knows now? It does seem that there's very little rhyme and reason. They claim that every ship is supplying Israel in some way. But they've only hit one ship with any Israeli connections out of the 40 they've hit. And that had like an Israeli first officer, poor bastard.

And there's no way they could have known that ship had an Israeli first officer. So they don't have great intel. But they're doing pretty damn well anyway, spotting these ships and whacking them. You know, as I said, U.S. Marine Corps would be very proud of this. performance if it was against China in the Pacific. Gotcha. Cool. Thank you. All right. So moving on from the Red Sea, okay, on, but still in the Middle East. Some things are happening vis-vis the pending invasion of Rafa and just for benefit of our listeners.

So Rafa is kind of the major conurbation in the south of the Gaza Strip near to the Egyptian border. And as the Israelis have moved from north to south, and we'll talk about this in some other podcasts. Some other podcasts. They've done a very deliberate kind of move to save, you know, really to save their own casualties. but it was a very kind of predictable move. And now the boys around Rafa estimates vary, but probably one and a half million people crammed in very tiny space. United States is saying, you know, to Israel, to Netanyahu,

you need to have a good plan to move the civilian population to beach the safety area. Now, that's not as grandiose as it sounds. Anyone who's seen the beach at Gaza knows it's not the codizor. But anyway, move them out of the conurbation, to the beach. The Israelis are saying, you know, this will happen.

It'll be easy. They can walk. It's only 10 kilometers. They've already walked 40 kilometers. And, and, you know, the U.S. is,

is remaining adamant. And, you know, there's a number of questions that I cannot answer right now, how far this, you know, the administration is willing to go to put the squeeze

on the Netanyahu administration. But meanwhile, within Israel, I think it's fair to say that although the country is very much united behind the war, they just wish Netanyahu wasn't leading it. And there's some very interesting stuff happening in the IDF that I will write about culturally, okay? Some of which led to, frankly, the, you know, the 7 October disaster, and some of which now are contributing to problems within Gaza, okay?

And I paused before talking about this until it started appearing in Israeli papers. And it has done as of today. So two things have happened today. Well, one thing in particular, the general of a 98th division, 98th division commander. I'm sorry, 36th division commander, a guy named Brigadier General David Barr Khalifa. And these names, general's names in Israel, they're kind of like rock star. You know, it's like Jack Murphy, you know, type adulation. And it's because the country, I mean, it's a everyone, everyone serves in the IDF and true to end,

although they, you know, they have very volatile political governments, but the IDF remains a constant, a trusted, a trusted constant. And so one of the downsides, it is argued now is that IDF commanders, some are letting things go with the heads and making decisions or comments that are political. So the head of the 36th Armored Division, it's the only, you know, the IDF's only armored division, main Armored Division in the active duty forces, and they've borne a lot of the brunt of the fighting.

Before the attack on Rafa, imminent attack to Raffa, he issues a handwritten battle directive to all of his troops that calls on them to take revenge on Palestinians. not on Hamas on Palestinians. Can you imagine a U.S. commander before going into flu just saying, hey, I want you to take revenge on Iraqis? Or, you know, you just can't imagine it, right? So what's happened is all his, the general staff have ordered him to pull his troops out of Gaza.

So now, you know, now they're down one division until they find out. And the only reason why that happened is someone leaked this letter to the press to herettes. And then... Andy, why not fire him? Exactly. Exactly. You know how many IDF commanders have been fired so far on the wall? Zero?

Not even subordinate commanders. There is... So I'm not making any comment on this. But can you imagine how many people, you know, I mean, it's just natural in Fallujah. We guys got fired because combat is the ultimate stressor, right? And you may have done very well as a junior officer, but now you're a captain leading a company in a slog fest fighting house by house. Not everyone, you know, a lot of guys can do very well in the military. But when they're put in that situation, they don't do well.

They fall apart because it is very well to do. to do a super job in the U.S. military and retire as a colonel, I know this, or even a general officer while being a PEPA tiger, not being a warrior at all. Jason, you've met many of these guys. Absolutely. Perhaps the majority of U.S. military officers are not warriors. Absolutely. Just about the case. Anyway, my point is, I digress.

But combat is a cruise, but they have not relieved a single officer, and there have been some serious mistakes. Okay. This one last one was one, but you had a guy, a brigadier general, Barack Haram, of the, the,

oh, I just don't remember which division he has, doesn't matter. But anyway, he's a division commander. He, no, I'm sorry, he's a battalion commander. In a fight for a kibbutz, it doesn't matter the name, it may be Nahalas,

but the Hamas, 20 Hamas terrorist, bottom line, took 12 hostages, no 14 hostages into a building, women children, the IDF surrounded them. This guy ordered the IDF supposedly, allegedly, to open fire on the house with a tank, main gun. Okay, everyone killed inside. The soldiers are saying that he invoked what's called the Hannibal Directive, which is kind of a code red within the IDF military. and when a commander orders that Hannibal directive,

it just means kill everything in front of you, even if there are, well, this is how it's interpreted. The IDF denies that. The IDF says the Hannibal directive simply means that you can heighten the risk to hostages in order to free them. But IDF commanders interpreted on the ground as meaning it's better to kill a soldier or a civilian than allow him to be taken hostage, which is again, you know.

So this is, so that's what this, that's what the word is on the street, that the Hannibal directive has been invoked several times to include on 7 October to allow Israeli gunships to engage vehicles which had Israeli hostages returning to Gaza. All I'm saying is that this is what is within the public debate. It's not making it in the U.S. news, right? But it is a very serious debate. Okay, so after doing that, the same commander, the guy who leveled the house, He blew up Gaza University, right, which ironically was built by the Israelis, funded by the Israelis. He blew it up without asking permission. You may say that's great, mission command, but come on, but come on, we all know, in a highly charged, sensitive situation,

you're going to make a decision that's going to have clear stratcom effects, and blowing up the university was one. Then you need to tell you a command this, because it was an appalling blunder when it comes. to perceptions, trackcom, you know, all of these things. And that's not all, okay? There is a social media outlet that the Israeli papers had been in Jerusalem posts and Heretz had been highlighting for a while. It's called 72 virgins. So run from within the IDF at first, I thought it was something like, you know,

remember the Marines one. But it's pretty sick stuff. It's on telegram. I've seen it. You know, it's rejoicing in the death of, of people. You know, it's not, you know, the people that they're, they're abusing bodies, they're running over bodies with the vehicle,

everyone's standing around laughing. These are soldiers. And then they post them. Okay, so that was bad enough. People complained to the Israeli army saying, hey, this is really fucking bad. This makes this look awful. And it just, the Israeli army was like, yeah, we'll talk to the boys.

But there's this ethos right now. you cannot discipline anyone within the army because they are fighting for our country and they are taking you know so so no one did shit and now turns out the i.ef is admitted they were running the site can you i mean can you believe that the u.s army running a site like that no plus other influence operations um on on the Israeli public um and the idea's like hey we just want to make people feel good you know it's like holy i mean i get influence operations but i don't know about like war No, no, I mean, but if you take a picture of a dead body or a prisoner in the U.S. military and try and publish it, you can forget about your career, everything.

You may even go to jail. In most cases. Yeah. It's already been proven that some people get in. So it just shows a huge lack of, you know, I mean, well, from a military perspective, lack of discipline, you know, that is not all. So another thing is various, I mean, you know how tech savvy the Israelis are, startup nation.

So a lot of Israeli citizens are saying, we're tracking the movement of individual units within Gaza based on social media posts. Now, the IDF is supposed to collect up all their phones, but evidently, and the good units did, as I check, but a lot of units did not. And so, by the way, that website's called 72 Virgins Uncensored. it up, you can Google it, and you'll see the IDF admitted responsibility. It's still there, even though the IDF admitted? I don't know.

I didn't check, I didn't check to morning. But anyway, so the, the Heretz newspaper finally got involved again and said, you know, the IDF hates Horat's, you know, and said, look, they published the routes, you know, they said, or rather they showed the IDF, they said, we could publish this. It shows all the routes. It shows the positions of your units right now in Gaza. How do you think we got this? You know, and the IDF did what the US militia was, oh, someone leaked this shit.

No, it's all open source. All open source. Okay. And that news broke again this morning that after two months of reporting to the IDF that they have this leaked, they still haven't fixed it. And you can pinpoint units as they're staged around Gaza. Meanwhile, you know, the Israelis recalled their negotiation, not the negotiation, their team for discussions of a potential ceasefire, the team that was going to come to the U.S., all right? They recalled them mid-flight, pulled them back to Israel because Netanyahu was angry at the United States over its overall comments about, you know, Gaza and Rafa.

Yeah, but didn't we abstain, too, from the U.N. security? We did, yeah, but that's, you know, yeah, that too. And what's bad is they left, Netanyahu left his defense minister, Yov Gallant, right? He's on an early plane. This is why you should never be early. So he arrives. And he gets the call going, hey, no one else is coming.

Yeah, we turned around. Yeah, you explained to American friends why no one else is going, you know. I've been in this situation many times. Oh, man, I can't even imagine what goes on. with the staff and stuff like what do we do now where do we go did they do a didn't they do a meeting with austin defense secretary yeah yeah yeah yeah they did just to save you know salvage it like oh we're asking for f15s we're asking for f35s which will probably give up well you know you know i mean galant gallant however you pronounce his name is um he's pretty

right wing himself he's a you know settler um or you know let me let me backtrack he he certainly sides with all of that side, ultra-Orthodox, alt-religious. He's one of the ones who's made particularly inflammatory statements. So it's ironic, he's the one stuck here. Now, we did read him the Riot Act, though, in the subsequent meeting.

We told him, get this, civilian casualties in Gaza, this is a quote, are far too high, and aid deliveries far too low. That's what we told him. We cleaned his flock. Yeah, we did.

Yeah. Right. So what happens, though, when they go into Rafa? I mean, humanitarian aid is going to be even lower. Well, here's what I think is going to happen. All right. I think that there is a lot of posture. I mean, not a lot.

The dynamic is a dangerous one because 90-something percent, I'm guessing, the Israeli population does indeed want to go in the military, in their words, to finish the job. Finishing the job is part of the IDS campaign plan going into Rafa. Netanyahu claims to report. battalions there. Western intelligence thinks there are more, by the way. They think that the Israelis have overstated attrition rates of Hamas. And in fact, if you look up, if you look up the number of people killed in Gaza, 32,000, I believe, now, but you look at, and yes, I get it.

This is the health authority within Gaza that's harm its Hamas control. But if you look how many of those but but UN and the UK are coming up i mean sorry UN and other aid agencies and the US are coming up with similar estimates all right so 31,000 of those approximately how many do you think are military age males third less than that less than a third less than a third so the rest of women children are old people all right um so nine so roughly nine thousand nine thousand nine thousand men of military age. The Israelis claim they've killed way more than that. Right.

The Israelis claim, yeah, the Israelis claim they, you know, it varies, but 14, 15, up to 20,000. Okay. So even if, what I'm saying is even if every single military age male killed in Gaza was a member of Hamas, it still doesn't meet the numbers that the Israelis are saying that they kill. Does that make sense? Yeah. And then you factor in as Jason knows.

the just the difficulty in gathering intelligence, especially in an urban environment and fluid environment. We have small units, meaning back and forth and subterranean. You know, I mean, it's impossible to estimate. It's very likely the best army in the world with its numbers for the adversary killed are going to be aspirational. I know ours were in Fallujah. You know, we had no idea. We still can only make an estimate of how many of the enemy we killed. too many escaped. But yes, so a lot going on. Dee, I know I brought us to, I mean, not,

it's not with my boring monologue, but I know we're coming to an end. So, um, I got a question. Any, any last thing? Yeah, yeah. At what point does the US like, instead of like giving them like a stern talking to, actually cut off military funding,

actually do things that'll make them stop being this, belligerent. Yeah. That's a really good question. I don't think with this administration. I don't think I don't think the president can answer that right now. I think every day he's being taken down, not taken down the path. This isn't, you know, but I don't think he does understand.

Now, by the way, everyone, you know, to preempt, I know some of the complaints we're going to get that now, you know, before we're accused of being two proes really now. No, we're just stating facts. Right. I'm stating facts. I'm stating what is in the news. And it's typically when you have problems, cultural pride, I've talked about the U.S. military in much harsher terms.

And we, you know, that's the way we do things here. It's not pro or con anything. No, it's just the truth. We tell the story, yeah. Also, like, at one point. Unspun world. At what point does Israel become like an international community? Like, pariah might, yeah.

A prior? Yeah, that's a great point. But that is, what is concerning D. And I, you know, I've been to Israel many times. I'm not, you know, not that this matters. I'm not Jewish, but I just happen to have been there a lot backpacking around as a kid all the way through to, you know, now. And one thing that troubles me is that the atmosphere there is like nothing

that I have experienced before, nothing. The people, you know, I mean, Israeli's normally super intelligent, super argumentative. You get different political views, five different political views in a family, and they will argue and yell at each other, but then walk away and that's the way it is. You know, politics is not a life wire there. Everyone talks about it, but no longer. It is really a very, they are all backing the war. They are the ones who are queasy or are. or and there are many who don't like seeing it you know hearing about all these Palestinian deaths but they all think that it is a necessary evil in order to get to security and bear in mind they aren't seeing what we're seeing is not showing the footage from Gaza right seeing you know their own soldiers they um and so they there's no discord they don't understand why the world is up in arms um and and they're getting getting increasingly resent for and increasingly isolated.

And it makes me, it makes me sad. Yeah. I think from the world perspective, and this is not me speaking from the world, but it seems at least from my perspective is what is the end game? What is the objective? The objective is to, you know, ostensibly wipe out Hamas, but who and at one point says, okay, we hit that objective, we're done.

Because this is a situation that is able to be kicked down the road in perpetual. them. It just can keep going. Oh, we didn't get it done yet. We didn't get it done yet. So where does it end? I think is the world perspective. So I think to answer your question, but not answer it, when do they become a pariah? I think to some in the world, they already have. And that's going to continue until and even after they say, okay, mission accomplished, we're done. Because what does mission accomplished look like? And what's the aftermath of that? Right. That is, that is the $10 million dollar question. And that that is going to already probably is causing rifts with, you know, in that nexus between political and the military. There are many who within Israel who are saying,

hey, these, you know, official goals of the war in Gaza Strip are dismantling Hamas's military government capabilities, bringing hostages home, restoring peace security communities and the Western Nagaf, right? But it's hard to see that. Israel has progressed anywhere along those lines. Okay, dismantling Hamas's military. Think about the long-term effects. Think about all the kids who are going to grow up. I mean, having seen what they've seen,

do you think you've really dismantled Hamas? I mean, it just shows a total lack of understanding of how insurgencies operate. you know, the physical destruction. He'd go, yeah, we'd just destroy them. Now, there are those, there are those who say, hey, in order to destroy Hamas, you have to, you have to destroy the roots

and the roots are firmly embedded in the Palestinian people. That is the dog whisper comments that everyone is concerned about because that is the acceptable justification, right, the acceptable for wiping out Palestinians. I'm not saying that's the plan. I'm saying that there are people on the far right who are saying that stuff within Israel. And what is concerning is the jump from that feeling

of normal just being concerned about security to, yeah, well, if it's my family or that family, and that's the way the choice is being presented. Very simply. Hamas is the Palestinian people. we wish it were otherwise. This isn't me talking. Hamas is the Palestinian people. You can't separate them. You know, it's very, I'm sorry, but a lot of civilians are going to have to die to protect our civilians here. And that, I think you really have to understand is that the survival or the Jewish state, the Jewish people is core, obviously, to, you know, to the state of Israel. I mean, that's what Zionism is about. And, again that's you have to understand that to understand almost this the ends justifies the means mentality it's people it's people who like you and me think they are being absolutely logical

and ethical um with horrific results and now you can think back to the okay here i'm better not make this comparison i'm not making comparison 30s in germany you could understand that humiliation of this First World War, but not really feeling they were defeated, right? They were never really invaded. You know, the homesteads were signed while German troops were still on French soil. Huge unemployment where it was felt that the Jewish bankers were taking, were getting rich while the majority of Germans were struggling to survive. And then you get this charismatic war hero who doesn't represent the Hitler, by the way.

Yeah, he was. He was a charismatic. war hero, good speaker, and he rises up. And in still democratic society, people pissed off with the Weimar Republic, which they see is corrupt and venal. And he offers a new future. And is, you know, yeah, I mean, you can hang around about whether he's democratically elected or not, but at least the trappings of democratic election were there. And so, you know, these para, and everyone said at the time, I don't believe this is the German people. don't believe this is the country of Beethoven and, you know, I'm not searching for German culture here.

I'm just saying that. It just seemed so, so it can happen, you know, confronted with the right circumstances as society that is deeply cultured and intelligent and sophisticated can do barbaric things. And just to, you know, just to balance that out, but you can look at the other side of that, the far left side of that, those who support, you know, know Gaza slash Hamas, they're looking at everything Andy just said as justification for another October 7th or why October 7th happened in the first place. So it's just a perpetual cycle. That's just going to go round and round. That's right. And you've got to understand from the Palestinian perspective, and we have to look at it from both perspectives. Can you imagine growing up

and every time you want to get somewhere, you've got to go through an Israeli checkpoint and they're searching your shit. They're making comments about your sister. You know, I mean, you know how soldiers are. And occasionally you get beaten up. It's not unheard of for Israelis simply to shoot people, you know, thinking, because as long as they say, and if they say they're under threat or they feel under threat, that is kind of the benchmark. Now, I'm saying that not as an anti-Israeli thing. We've done the same thing in our own military. Hey, hey, Marine, if you feel under threat, you know, best to pull the trigger. And then we started realizing we were killing a lot of civilians every day. And one estimate in Mosul, five civilians killed every day at checkpoints by soldiers. Five civilians every day by U.S.

soldiers. All right? And, and of course, that seems to counter-counter insurgency. Not a single, not a single one was brought up on charges. You know why? Because their commanders that told them, hey, man, you did the right things, better safe than sorry. No, it's not fucking better safe than sorry in a counterinsurgency. They're pragmatic as well as ethical reasons, but most of all, and I'll return to the fact, and I've said this to Israelis, to Americans, we fight with the values that we represent. We don't bring the, adopt those of our enemy. If we do, it will be tremendously weak and we need to suffer the consequences. And we don't belong in the U.S. military. Again, I've always said that. If you, if you can't be a leader and lead in the right way,

get the fuck out of the military. If you want to, if you want to beat your chest, and fulfill all your ridiculous backwards deliverance fantasies, then do that. Join a militia and do it. But don't join our military. Absolutely. And I think the idea is having some cultural issues too. Yeah. And you made it when you mentioned like, you know, you're a Palestinian and you're walking

through Israeli checkpoints every day. Your friends gotten shot. They hit on your sister. Yeah. I mean, I could see if I live there, I'd be in. fucking hummus too. Would you kill? Of course. I feel. Of course. And any human being who thinks that they can't reach that level of anger is fooling themselves. Absolutely. And that same goes for that is that IDF soldier. And no, I'm not justifying terrorism. I'm talking about human nature.

Right. Absolutely. Human nature. Yeah. Me too. One complaints. Same thing on the military. Exactly. Jason. If you grew up. That kid who's walking through. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. If you're growing up and you've and you've seen and they, the Israelis became addicted to the telegram videos of the massacres. So can you imagine reeling through that, reeling through that in a way that no previous war did it? I mean, yes, there was anti-German propaganda, but there weren't spooling videos of Germans crucifying kittens on church doorways, you know. So it's very dangerous. And that is why leadership is all important. And when you have a division. commander issuing a handwritten note on top of all that shit saying, hey, your mission is to exact revenge. Not, not, hey, it's okay to that. Your mission is to exact revenge on the Palestinians. That reminds me of Captain Medina's order to his company, of which Lieutenant Calle's second platoon was part, which led to Mili Massacre. Captain Medina said, you know, when you go in there, you think anything's wrong, you just fucking destroy it.

Words of that effect. Kelly repeated them afterwards. Words fucking do matter in an order. Right. But yes, very strange. They took him into soldiers out of Gaza instead of saying, okay, dude, fuck off, you know, go to the idea of retirement home. So they moved an entire division outside of Gaza.

Isn't that like a... Listen, I don't want to misspeak. It's just reported. I'm going off what's reported in Heretz, Jerusalem Post. The exact terms are his truth. Oh, shit. Hold it. I don't know.

It said his troops, yeah. It doesn't matter. It wasn't him alone. It probably is division headquarters. I would guess that's probably what they mean. You know how civilians report stuff. They're not going to remove an entire division out just because. Right.

That's what I was going to. One idiot. That sounds insane. Probably his headquarters, yeah, because they're all tainted. But a division headquarters. is a big deal. That's a big deal. Israelis can only feel free at any given time.

So if you're removing one, you know, and they have to have one standing by for the north. Right. And usually they've had one to two headquarters, division headquarters operating within Gaza. It's difficult to assess numbers, but at the height of the campaign, they had around 30,000 guys. But you can't simply say, oh, that's, you know, two divisions or three divisions because of the way they put units together. They'll have a division headquarters above two. brigades here and then above four brigades there. But roughly 30k troops, which puts their casualty figures below ours in Fulja when you factor in per capita, when you factor in all the

other things. Of course, we had tremendously less supporting arms, ironically, in Fulia than they do. But we lost more people. Because that's what, you know, the US made that decision. I mean, yes, we destroyed what we had to. But we certainly didn't prep buildings before we went in. We couldn't. And I don't regret that. I've got nothing on my conscience. Yeah, it was a hard slog, but I didn't, you know,

I never went into a house and found dead civilians. And I'm good with that. Awesome. All right. That's the show. I love it. It's spicy. It's very spicy, man.

We're not that. We're not getting that great. Is he? Like, we're just calling it down the line. Like, it's what it is. No one's taking their shirt off. That's true. No one's drinking and attacking, say, the Ukrainian government.

So it'll be okay. Or making comments, yeah. And if, if Max, what is that guy's name? Blumenthal? Yeah, Blumenthal. Yeah, if he's watching, yeah, good luck to me. Good luck, right. Repost this, Max.

It's fine. We're happy with you. Yeah. Thank you for all you've done for Russia. Okay. He is, man. I mean, okay.

All right. On that note, bye, bye, see a couple of days. No, though. Oh,

yeah. Andy's fired up. Like and subscribe. If you're listening to us on audio, rating review with five stars, it's very, very important.

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