German Market Attack & Jolani Meets with U.S. Delegation w/ Marc Polymeropoulos | EYES ON PODCAST

Today we’re joined by Marc Polymeropoulos to talk about the German Christmas market attack, whether it’s the work of Isis or a far right winger. We also talk about Jolani the leader of HTS meeting with a U. S. delegation and how Turkey can shape Syria. We also touch on Ukraine at the very end. Subscribe to the new EYES ON YouTube channel.⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJytcQbSOEKLGyhNwkqpd3A Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Find Marc Polymer here: ⬇️ https://x.com/Mpolymer?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://bsky.app/profile/mpolymer1.bsky.social Find Andy Milburn here: ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 https://amilburn.substack.com/ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.social https://open.substack.com/pub/amilburn/p/journal-of-a-plague-year?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=emo6q&utm_medium=ios Find Mick Mulroy here: ⬇️ https://fogbow.com/ https://www.loboinstitute.org/ https://x.com/MickMulroy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/ https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.social Find Jason Lyons here: ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social #germanmarket #syria Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of eyes on. We have a very special guest and this is our Christmas special. So happy holidays, Merry Christmas to everybody. Mark Polymeropoulos. Of course, former senior CIA officer and friend Andy Milburn, former Marine Colonel. Mick Mulroy, former Marine and senior CIA officer. So today is two versus two, two Greeks versus two Marines.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I noticed the only one you introduced as a friend was Mark. That's right, noted up front. It's right. It would look like an interesting Venn diagram. I mean, two Marines, two Greeks, and then two CIA guys.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  So mixing the shaded area.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Concentric circle. But he still didn't get called a friend.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  No, everyone's a friend in there. I appreciate all you guys. It's a very fun show to do and be a part of. So. What's happening today? I mean, the big news out of Germany was the guy that railed down. Last time I saw was like 12 people dead and like 60 injured. I'm sure that's probably risen since then. And the initial like snap reaction was that he was like a jihadist ISIS or whatever. And things have since changed in terms of what's going on with that. So I'll give it to Mark as our special guest today and my friend. Mark, what do you think about what's going on with in Germany?

• 1:55Speaker 03

  A fellow Greek, this is good. Let me just also say is, I think, do we have any video for this as well for folks? We do, no, it's So I'm wearing a hat from when I served as a base chief in Afghanistan. I took over that base from Mick Mulroy, who of course is on the other side of this today. He was a much more mature and responsible leader. And I will say, as I was talking to everyone before, and whatever you call the virtual green room, is that this is the hat I had in 2011. I've never washed it and I'm still wearing it right now. So that's my intro to you all. No, Dee, in terms of the attack in Germany, obviously tragic, you know, during the holiday season.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Mick and I were talking before, when, you know, when one is asked and we do some commentary in the media to come on breaking news, you got to be careful because a lot of the first impressions are often wrong. And it, while it looked like a typical ISIS inspired, you know, attack, which we call, you know, vehicle as a weapon or, you know, vehicle ramming attack, which is the MO of ISIS and other groups as well. Over the years, even, you know, the Palestinian terrorist groups have used it. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, I mean, Anwar al-Awlaki would talk about this in Inspire Magazine 15 years ago. Because it's effective, because it doesn't take training, doesn't take, you know, an infill of a cell structure, explosives, anything. But it turns out this guy, who is a Saudi, might actually have been, had some kind of strange turn of ideology.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  And he espoused the far right of the German political spectrum. And so, you know, motive is still a question now, but still a tragedy. And I think probably a good point of discussion here is, you know, for the group is, you know, how do you prevent such things with vehicle barriers and stuff? Like if you know Europe, these Christmas markets are everywhere. And so I would think that in a time of heightened tensions now, probably security services are thinking about how to protect against this.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Mick?

• 3:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I too have some show and tell. What would one get if if one went to a Christmas party with the Secret Santa in Montana? I got these two things. First, of course, is a hatchet.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  Right? The second, I'm really proud of, it's like a two gallon bottle of bourbon.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Oh, Jesus.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Travels.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Merry Christmas.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  That's just for one part.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  What's the opposite of travel size?

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know, man. I mean, this, I mean, I don't know exactly two gallons, but.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Can I be, can I be honest? Go ahead, sorry.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Meller.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna say you got an AR-15 for your Secret Santa in Montana.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  That's it. Yeah, that really makes sense. Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  I don't think it was actually, I think it was parts to it. It was the accoutrement to an air. Anyway, so to to your question, like Mark, he referenced it, you know, you go on these breaking news and you're doing your best not to get too far down the rabbit hole before you have the information because, I mean, if you look at yesterday, it was easy to, right? This is a Saudi immigrant deliberately rides a drives a car through a Christmas market. So I think you can give people some much of a break considering the circumstances and, you know, how that could equate to a far right person killing a bunch of people at

• 5:26Speaker 04

  a Christmas market. I just, I don't, I mean, I guess you can't really understand somebody that is that mentally twisted to kill children like that. So, um, but what does it lead to, I guess is the question. I think, I think that we are seeing whether you control guns and that's all another discussion, but people can find other means to kill people. And cars are obviously ubiquitous everywhere and you can't really can, you can restrict it as far as people having them, but you can restrict where they can go. And that's probably going to be the way the future. Future goes when there's somebody is doing a planned community.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Uh, that's going to be taken. It's a sad commentary on the future of, uh, you know, mankind, but they're gonna, they're gonna try to mitigate as much as they can. Anything that one human can do to kill another. And that's going to be the case and it's going to be expensive. The problem is it's very difficult to retrofit areas. And although they should, a lot of the big targets like Washington DC, New York City, et cetera. Um, they're very hard targets, but it's they have resources and. Other, other places around the country don't. So it's tough. It's going to be what, uh, people are willing to spend to protect themselves. Uh, and some, some places will spend a lot.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seems to be a theme in Europe, doesn't it? I mean, there was the Islamic State attack in 2016. I think it was in, in South of France that killed 13 people, wounded a bunch of others. Um, there was a UK attack, the, uh, attack on. Uh, the bridge, uh, I want to say, I mean, there was a knife man involved, but I want to say there was one attack there that involved a vehicle too. That was, uh. Uh, Islamic.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  There's one in Berlin too.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  And one Berlin, yeah, in, yeah. Um, yeah, a few years ago. So certainly, uh. Certainly a trend.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so as of right now, they don't believe it's an, uh, ISIS guy. They think it's just a guy who got radicalized. He was more of a like a right wing kind of dude. Uh. Sorry, everybody who's right wing. I mean, obviously you guys aren't all lunatics. Uh. So. Is that confirmed? Like from what we're hearing or no, that's still.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  No, I think the, the governors, the local government, uh, or a governor said something, um, uh, uh, about it. But yeah, this is all preliminary. This is all. And they have him in custody. He's alive. So they're gonna, I mean, they're gonna get the motive. Um, not particularly difficult.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Another interesting trend. He said, we know, do know about him. He's a psychiatrist. Right? So not, not the first time that a, that a shrink has, uh, gone. Crazy and, and killed a bunch of people.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Yes, usually really stable people are really unstable people, right? I'm probably gonna get some hate for that, but um yeah, and I there was a lot of talk, well, he's a doctor, so he couldn't be a terrorist, and I finally had to point out, you know, our buddy Hyman, that's how he regarded uh there's doesn't there's no there's no socioeconomic group that constrains you for being a terrorist. I think we should all accept that by now.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you can be an ophthalmologist, ophthalmologist and and be a a raving one of the most tyrants.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Mass murdering war criminal.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Just write a political case.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, so we'll keep an eye.

• 8:59Speaker 05

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• 9:29Speaker 06

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• 9:59Speaker 01

  And that's see what what comes out. Uh, it's gonna be interesting. It is kind of wild to see, you know, somebody who's a psychiatrist, who like understands psychology, kind of lose the thread. Um, talking about Syria, uh, State Department's reached out and gone, I think, believe I think they've met with Jolani, right? Uh,

• 10:21Speaker 01

  To the bounty's gone, the $10 million bounty that we had on his head.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  It looks like he's saying all the right things. Sorry, sorry, Mix, cut you off.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  And he got a new name too. He went from Jolani to back to his.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Back to his original name, Mr. Al Sharar.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Doesn't quite have the rebrand. Yeah, it was.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Nothing like a rebrand.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Barbara Leaf, right? She used to be an ambassador to, was it Jordan or somewhere? I can't forget now. She's ASD. Near East and then. Ruben Stein, who's the hostage negotiator and Karstens, right? Those three. Went out.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  Carson's hostage negotiator.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  All right.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Rogers, yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's right. Ruben Stein's the special advisor or something on Syria has got one of those titles. But anyway, those three and Leaf commented. That, you know, when she was being thrilled about lifting the bounty, you know, she commented that, that, you know, otherwise it would make the meeting very awkward. They, you know, they'd have to bring in the FBI, which is a, you know, fair point for a kind of a dumb question. But guys, you know more than about this than me. The, you know, the question of, of taking HTS off the, shut up, Richie. Off, off, he's so tired of Syria. Taking HTS off the Syria list is, I mean, it's easier said than done, right? It's not like a, it doesn't happen overnight.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Well, let me, let me say a couple of things on this. So, you know, I, many moons ago, I served there in Damascus. You know, the agency doesn't really like when you say this, but it's pretty stupid when I'm on the dip list. And so it's a, it's a place that is near and dear to my heart. I was there before the civil war. You know, I saw firsthand, just, there's two things that the Syrian people, it was my favorite posting, my favorite tour. Syrian people were extraordinary. Even though the bilateral relationship was terrible at the time, you know, they were, they were, they were educated, they were relatively secular, they were pro-American in terms of their outlook on life. And so I think my first reaction to everything that happened is there's we should have some joy that someone like Bashar al-Assad who killed half a million of his citizens.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  It turns out to have run this secret prison network where there's over a hundred thousand, you know, they're finding a hundred, maybe a hundred thousand plus bodies and bones and all sorts of horrific crap. I mean, this is a truly historic, you know, criminal who is who has now been deposed. That's a very good thing. Um, but I think that, you know, one of the things that and and, you know, you all might have a be surprised at my thought. I think it's a really good thing to engage with them. This is not the Taliban. Um, HTS in Jolani, it's a group that has, you know, renounced ties to Al Qaeda a while ago, and you have some people kind of hysterical about this, you know, particularly on on the kind of the, I'm going to get in trouble for this now, the pro-Israel right. Um, uh, who are who are saying, you know, oh, here we are again, you know, now we're going to be negotiating with terrorists. Well,

• 13:15Speaker 03

  you know, we have to engage in Syria. It's too important a country and it should be, you know, based on incentives. And so, you know, the idea that the $10 million reward is ludicrous. We've had him in our sights. We could have killed him with a drone strike 1500 times. So that's just stupid. Um, uh, it's good. We dropped that designation because we have to deal with them and there should be kind of an incentivized measure of steps if they write a constitution, if they respect the rights of all Syrians, if the school curriculum is going to be inclusive. Um, the opposite of doing that, I think, would be pretty, uh, uh, pretty damaging because we have very strong interest there, not only for the stability of the region, but because of the the presence of ISIS.

• 13:54Jack Murphy?

  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. 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. Uh, that's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. Uh, but this is the the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House channel and podcast. Uh, if you'd like to, and we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the Team House.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  And so I actually like what the I actually like what the Biden administration is doing. I think the Barbara Leaf level that this, you know, Assistant Secretary is the right one, you know, we didn't rush our foreign ministers out there like others are, but it should be an incentivized structure to bring them along. And I what I hope, of course, the danger now is where I think we're going down the right path. I don't know what the next administration is going to do. But just this reflexive thing that this guy Jolani and HTS is Al Qaeda and terrorists, that's just fucking bullshit. And it annoys the crap out of me when people say that because they don't know shit about the region. And it's, you know, if we want to, if we want to turn him into that, that's what we do.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can agree more. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing how real politic is waved in people's faces by people, you know, again, taking a centrist approach by people on the far right or on the right. And yet, when a, when any administration takes a pragmatic view of a stance like this, we have to be pragmatic. I mean, everything about that region, all the actors are pragmatic, otherwise they die. You know, there's the shifting back and forth of alliances. We look at it as being un-American. And then, you know, we, we talk about, hey, if they're connected with shedding American blood. I mean, no alliance, no ceasefire in history would have been arrived at if both

• 15:53Speaker 02

  sides took that stance. You know, sometimes you have to make peace with your former enemies. But, you know, I think everything Leaf said was right. It's show me rather than, rather than say, let's see, let's see how this pans out.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  And, you know, there are, there are positive signs coming out of what HTS did in Idlib, as well as some concerns. And the concerns have already been voiced about, you know, Sharia law and making women wear the veil.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  But yeah, I couldn't agree more, Mark. And let's see how this pans out. I mean, the interim, the current government is supposed to be in place until March. And then we'll see how inclusive the next government is and how minorities are treated under.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  This is not the Taliban. This is not 1977 Iran. It just is not. You know, my friends in Damascus who are calling me, you know, bars are open there. Um, you know, uh, and so, you know, the, the.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  That's, that's a key indicator. I'm in. I mean, that's.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Right. There's that too. He can drink his bottle of bourbon that he just got.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  That's right. This could go for all bar.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  But it is, it drives me, there's, there's a whole class of folks. I'm going to, again, it's, you know, I'm as pro-Israel as you get, but there's a, there's a class of kind of the academic intellectuals in DC. Who are now hysterical about this. Um, and they're from kind of a lot of the, the more kind of right wing pro-Israel think tanks. I'm going to get in so much trouble here now. Uh, but, and they're, they're howling about this stuff. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post just sent Israeli journalists into Syria to meet with HTS. Like, the Israelis are sober about this. Um, but nonetheless, this kind of this notion that somehow Al Qaeda is back and, and we're discussing stuff, we're, we're, we're working with them. I mean, I just, that drives me nuts. Anyway, I'll shut up before I get canceled.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, to make it a equal criticism to both sides is probably on the left to get upset when we talk to other countries. Yeah. As if we can just not talk to Saudi Arabia, you know?

• 17:51Speaker 04

  That's which would be really not in our interest. I, you know, I guess we're going to have a, a, a three-way agreement session here, but,

• 18:00Speaker 04

  because I just got called out. A lot of times when I do foreign media, I'm just an American guy. So I'm like, represent, I'm sure you got, you've had a similar experience, both of these.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  But they were like, hey, you know, US talks all this, uh, you know, human rights and all that. But you, you know, you talk to all these tyrants and all. It's like, I do think we should have it as part of our foreign policy to promote human rights and democracy. I mean, maybe I'm a bit antiquated, but I think that's what we actually are. And when we say that we're the leader of the free world, we should do that. But the idea that we would just talk to, you know, Sweden is insane. You know, I mean, it's, it's insane, right? And I looked up quickly as they were going between, you know, people who were talking. And it's like 90 out of 193 countries are really even democracies at all. So. So it just, it doesn't make any sense in that. And I'm including, you know, former or current jihadist

• 18:52Speaker 04

  in, in, in, in other armed groups, quite frankly, if they're, especially if they're about takeover country. So, I mean, it's, it's a must. And I do think it's going to be a wait and see, you know, Barbara was right. She's, by the way, the Assistant Secretary for Near East and a very experienced former ambassador to UAE, American ambassador to UAE. So I think she's taken the right approach. They, they have to talk. They have to be part of the outcome here. That's how we influence an outcome, right? We promote our beliefs in the process to the extent we can. So that what comes out the other side is a, you know, a government that is selected by the people representing

• 19:37Speaker 04

  the people and inclusive to all, or it's just going to be a partition in Syria forever. Right? If it doesn't actually work, they're not going to change, right? Germany can call for disarming of Kurds. It'll never happen. Right? They're not just going to put their weapons down, for example, and just become, you know, lambs to the slaughter. And Germany obviously isn't going to depend on it. I bring that up because they just said the Kurds should be disarmed, which is ridiculous. If this is not an inclusive government, then it's going to stay the way it is. It's going to be a rump state. There's going to be multiple armed factions and it's going to be continuous fight. So if, if the US can affect that, and I think we can, we should be part of the diplomatic process. If it's really tricky diplomatic, then, you know, me

• 20:21Speaker 04

  and Mark told organization can step in there from time to time. But there has to be some dialogue and discussion, even with, you know, the worst.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  You know what I want to do? I want to go back there and, and, and go through Syrian intelligence files and see what they had on the embassy. This is like the most, the most meaningless thing of so many different really important issues, but I would be fascinated to see the, the kind of the Syrian intelligence surveillance of the embassy, everyone we're talking to. I mean, it really was a police state. The problem is that for some unknown reason, the Israelis keep bombing all the Syrian intel sites.

• 20:53Speaker 04

  I know.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Which is driving, I, I, that's a little weird, but it's a, it's a, it's certainly, I, I think that is, it is important to have some kind of accountability on what happened, just with the Syrians overall, because of just the horrific nature of the regime.

• 21:08Speaker 04

  You know what came up, Mark? A mutual friend of ours pinged me the other day and said he wondered if there was any records of any weapons transfers from Iraq to Syria back in the day. You know, chemical weapons, I'm not saying that

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Oh, you and me.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  That's where they all went. But, I mean, that's what some thought, and we know he had chemical weapons, so they apparently, like a lot of despotic regimes, they kept really good records.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Right? So I would like to see what happened between the two at the time.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  Maybe I had surveillance the whole time and I missed it, and I look like a total jackass. I better be careful what I'm saying. They're like, "Boo, this is the worst person who's ever served. We have him." Very likely, by the way.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  You know, it'd also be interesting to see, I mean, those intelligence files, I'd be disappointed if we haven't asked for them. It'd be interesting to see the, what they've said about US, their engagement with US politicians.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Last few years, right?

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Who were their targets and how successful they thought they were. Hey, Ona.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  Are you talking about someone who might be designated for a senior level?

• 22:18Speaker 02

  I'm not mentioning names, yeah. But, um.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  I think they should show her, I think they should show her pictures of the Syrian prisons.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  But, uh, but moving on nicely, Mark, to your point about criticism, some of the, um, you know, we, 99% of our audience are super intellectual, but we always take abuse, you know, on every single episode. And when we talk about Syria in particular, um, we have one listener in particular who, who is very upset with us. Kind of making excuses as he points it for HTS and, uh, his comment the other week was, uh, you know, "I'm watching you all sit in your," he's writing from Israel, "I'm watching you all, you know, sitting in your comfortable peaceful lives, um, talking about this as though you know anything."

• 23:07Speaker 02

  And it's just a question of know your audience, you know, it's like, dude, we haven't always sat in these comfortable peaceful lives. And, uh, we all have had a little more direct experience of the Islamic State probably than you have. Um, and so we are, our cautious optimism isn't born from naive ignorance, I hope.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Andy, I got called.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  I just got back from South Sudan, man. I just got back.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right, yeah, you were, that's where you took your vacation.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I've been to Israel too, and I'm telling you, he's not, he's, he's talking about comfort. There's a lot of places in the world that are not as comfortable as Israel. I love Israel. I go there all the time.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  And I do understand the conflict, obviously.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  By the way, I was called once online. I wish, you know, often I get, I get so much hate mail. But I was called an Islamist communist.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Just try to unpack.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Well, well, that, that does, the acronym for that is IC.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, you had a Saudi right wing zealot that ran through a Christmas.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  There you go. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  You know? I guess if you get too far on either side, you start looking like each other.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Just fucking crazy. Right?

• 24:17Speaker 03

  That's what we try and drive down.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  It's like, instead of being here, you somehow get back to here.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  The, you know, before we get on Syria and, and again, I think to Mark's point about Assad in this, you know, as the search continues for, for Austin Tice and I, I, you know, I don't know how hopeful they are. But actually we were looking for two Americans, right? There was another one. Syrian American who was a, also a psychiatrist, but went out there to, to kind of treat people who were traumatized. Maji something rather, and I can't remember his name, but he disappeared. And the State Department has said, so they, they must have conclusive evidence that, you know, that, that he's presumed dead. But Tice is not. But my point is, as I'm looking, I think it was,

• 25:04Speaker 02

  I can't remember which of the three delegates, I think it was Karsten saying that, that, you know, as they uncover all these, they had no idea how many secret prisons Assad has, and they've already tracked Tice has been taken through six of them. And, you know, so he probably had a very rough time, I'm sure. I, I would guess, you know, I don't want to comment on, I speculate on the chances of him still being alive. But in the same sentence, Karsten's went on to say, we've heard there are as many as forty or forty or more of these facilities. You know, each of which were, were massacring thousands to tens of thousands of people in most horrific ways.

• 25:51Speaker 05

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• 26:20Speaker 06

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• 26:51Speaker 02

  You know, just another note for the Assad apologists who, because we have those two in our audience who are like, well, you know, at least he was keeping shit under control.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  Right, right. That's the, that's the double, you know? Such a bullshit argument, again, and I say this having lived there. This is, this is a horrific regime. I mean, I was surprised by Roger's comments because it wasn't a surprise to me that there were 40-plus detention facilities. I mean, I like Roger Carson's, you know, obviously does, you know, God's work in trying to recover Americans. But that, that statement was a little bit naive because Syria is a horrendous, repressive police state. People are disappeared there all the time. There was this kind of, you know, incredible pervasive fear amongst the population. And so, I mean, and I do, I do think it's important to uncover all of this and to publicize it because there are a lot of people, and there's a lot of revisionism now and people

• 27:44Speaker 03

  scrubbing their Twitter accounts, but a lot of people were not only sympathetic towards Assad, but also disputed the whole chemical weapons claims in the past. Again, this is on kind of the hard right and the hard left weird bedfellows Tucker Carlson was just howling the other day. Why should I hate Assad? Well, how about, you know, half a million people being killed? They should show this, by the way, during Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation hearings. I'm sorry, that's not being political. And she's got to, I mean, maybe she gets confirmed. She's got to explain herself. Um, why she chose to take a trip uh uh to Syria. Um, that was not sanctioned by the US government. And so, um, you know, uh, you know, there people have long memories and there are a lot of people who defended Assad and they should be held accountable. Sorry.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  He was no friend of the United States. That's what drives me up the wall. So even if you don't care about all those lives lost, even if you don't give a shit about human rights, the fact that he was funneling people into fighters in Anbar province and across Iraq for a number of years. I mean, that was, that was no secret. He absolutely supported the insurgency in Iraq.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  There was bustle. When I was there, they were busing people. Yeah. The Damascus bus station, the central bus station, getting on buses and going to fight against US forces.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't understand why, I mean, within a week before Aleppo fell, there was Western diplomats saying, hey, we gotta, we gotta just move on.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  I mean, they were throwing in the towel big time, right?

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Guess who else was? The State Department was, was along with that.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Whoops.

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Yep. Yep.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Was he agency?

• 29:20Speaker 04

  Probably gonna point out. Well, somebody's probably gonna point out, we started off talking about how you should talk to everybody and all that stuff. So somebody might point out that we're being, we're shifting a little bit. Um, but we, there is a time to isolate a regime. Right? I still think you should talk to her personally, but you have to isolate people that killed 500,000 citizens.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  We were talking to the Syrians about Tice only. That was it. That was, that was the point.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  And was Assad ever even indicted by the ICC? I don't think so.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Good question. I think so. Not that it seems to matter, but yes, I think so.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  It seems to matter, yeah. Unless, unless you're an African warlord.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Or a, or a outer luck Serbian. Who's pissed off his drinking buddies.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  Anyhow, it's a

• 30:05Speaker 04

  The other question is gonna be when to remove sanctions, right? Like the Caesar sanctions.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:11Speaker 04

  That was, that was a good question I got this week. You know, Caesar, I met Caesar, actually. You know, his name to gore for the individual smoke that smuggled out all those photos, right? And came to see me cutting on and we went to them with them to testify. But those are about the Assyrian, right? So that, I mean, you have to come up with a way to start removing sanctions to a new government so that they're not crippled by the sins of the past, right? So that's another part of, it's not just about removing the $10 million bounty. And I get that, obviously Barbara was right about that. But we got to actually move expeditionary, you know, expediently to try to remove these

• 30:55Speaker 04

  sanctions that are very damaging. That's the intent with the government that they were installed for is no longer there, right? That's, that's another.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  No, Mick, you're dead on because 90% Assyrians are living in poverty. The sanctions, you know, don't allow for any kind of money flows. And so if there's going to be any kind of massive aid and reconstruction, they have to be lifted. The US has, the good thing is the US has leverage. So go to Jolani and say, hey, you know, you're right. The correct constitution has to be written, you know, girls in schools, the school curriculum, all these things. No kind of spate of revenge killing. Let us fight ISIS. You do all these things and we will then incentivize you and drop the sanctions and we'll do it quickly. And I think you'll have countries, certainly in the Gulf, certainly the Turks, who seem to be the big winners in this, they'll, their construction companies will be rushing in there to rebuild. So there we have leverage.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  So he's not indicted? Just to update, I'm reading this, they're, they're talking about how he should be indicted.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  Like this civil war has been going on for 13 years.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  Okay. That, um, I think that shows a pretty significant bias if you want to talk about the bias of the I C C, right?

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  They still have another.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  That's.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  It's Turkey. Uh, yeah, I mean, we talked about this before, right? The, you know, we talked about the Germans asking, saying, hey, all the Kurds should be disarmed. It's not that the Germans think they have tremendous leverage with the Kurds. They're just trying to sidle up to Erdogan because Erdogan is again, front and center, right? He's the man of the moment and, and wields power and how we engage with him. Again, it may be, you know, regardless of our feelings about Erdogan, I know he, I mean, I, I know Mick knows very, for your firsthand and I do too, having served in northern Iraq with Turkish troops. Um, how much of a pain he is to the U. S. Is not necessarily, uh,

• 32:56Speaker 02

  you know.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Mick, Mick, tell us, Mick's got to tell the story of the drunk Turkish S F guy at our base.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  Which one?

• 33:03Speaker 03

  We kicked him out.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  That's a lot. We kicked him out.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  What we did is what we, we, we basically gave them Nintendo, was it Nintendo or Xbox or something? And then they didn't want to go out with this anymore. They were like spies at first, but then we, we, we gave them our, it was Xbox, I guess. And they started playing that. They didn't want to go anymore. That's how we, that's how we dissed them.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  There's a lot of Turkish porn that we could get. I remember. On satellite.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, Turkish porn.

• 33:31Speaker 04

  We had to keep them, keep them off our open before the headquarters.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I don't even want to ask. I don't even want to go there. This is the value of Al Arab, Lawrence of Arabia.

• 33:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  But anyway.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  Turkey's great, but those guys weren't.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, Turkey is great. Wonderful people. Um.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Okay, easy. D and I are here. Easy, easy. D and I are here.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  It's difficult. I, I can.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  I do side with the Greeks.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  There you go. Come on, dude. That's where it's.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  I know. I'm still trying to get honorary.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  Still honorary Greek.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I'll give you that.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Actually, that's, that's.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Didn't Tom Hanks get one? Didn't Tom?

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Citizenship.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  He's married to the right woman.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  I was just at his, I just drove by his house in, in Tiparos this summer. He's got a nice little house in a Greek island.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure it's very cozy and quaint. Yeah.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  But I'm not, but the Turk.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Back to Erdogan, modern day Turkey. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, uh, in, and the Armenians, of course, have good reason not to love the Turks, as do the Kurds and, but, um, Erdogan has positioned himself well and, uh, and as, as, uh, potentially has Qatar with, uh, and, you know, Qatar's proposal, he proposal for a pipeline from Qatar into Europe, now crossing Syria would be good news for everyone, actually, because it, it makes, you would, yeah, I mean, to Bulgaria, I think is the plan, but it would make European countries that much less reliant on, on Russian gas, which is, which is a good thing, but.

• 35:05Speaker 04

  But, but let's, let's raise. Awesome if that came out of this.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  But the, the, one thing on Turkey, and this, this is important, if you look at kind of geo strategically, they are the massive winners here. You know, they, they certainly supported HTS. I think HTS almost had catastrophic success. Um, uh, but you know, you saw, you know, uh, Turkish Foreign Minister Fadhan, who's their former intel chief, you know, he was, he was in Damascus being driven around by Jolani. I mean, it was hilarious. So the, the Turks are a massive winner in this, uh, and, and really a whole kind of geo strategic shakeup. Um, and I think that one of the really interesting stories is, is, you know, uh, is how is Israel going to view this? Um, Israel did see Bashar as the devil you, you, they knew. Um, uh, you know, I think one of the things that, one of the reasons Israel did not support Ukraine early on is because of, they had this tacit agreement with Russia.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  So Israeli Air Force could do what they wanted in Syria. But the Israeli Turkish relationship in the region is something that's really going to be interesting to, to see because the, the very strained ties, sometimes they cooperate. Um, Erdogan is, you know, openly supports Hamas, um, but there is intelligence cooperation, but, but just, you know, uh, how Israel and Turkey deal with each other. I think that's going to be the 2025 story.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Question about Turkey, are you guys at all, is the US at all worried about them kind of going after and spinning up to go after the SDF?

• 36:28Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Because there was like a ceasefire, right? Like they were spinning up and they had a bit of like a hold.

• 36:36Speaker 04

  Kobani is the, might be a really big flashpoint. And I think there's some movement in the Senate to

• 36:44Speaker 04

  sanctions. I mean, it has to do with protecting our Kurdish partners out there. The SDF that has, of course, the YPG is its core leadership component. I hope the US protects it, protects our relationship with them, period. You know, there's really nothing to say past that. I understand balancing the relationship. Believe me, I had to do it for two years. When it came to the same issue with the Turks, I believe the US presence with the SDF actually helps, should help ensure that there's not going to be any conflict. I mean, it's the opposite of what they're saying. Like if the US wasn't there,

• 37:26Speaker 04

  how would that actually help mitigate any kind of threat that they either have or perceive to have?

• 37:33Speaker 04

  I think we have solid information that people that we deal with are not involved in actions against them. And I think they know that we have that, we can prove it. And, you know, quite frankly, we would still have ISIS if it wasn't for our relationship with them and them doing 99% of the fighting. So we do really have to be good partners in the long run, or people are going to really be challenged to partner with us.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Here's the question though, is what's President Trump going to do? Because remember, in a phone call with Erdogan during the Trump administration, he just decided to say, hey, fuck it, let's just pull out all of our forces from Syria. Because Erdogan somehow convinced him in a 20 minute phone call to do so. Mick probably remembers this with PTS.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  And so, so the Trump administration's view towards our, the soft presence, 900 now up to 2000, we just learned the other day. And in that, in that pocket of Syria, you know, what are they going to do about that? And there's, one is the counter ISIS fight, but the second, and everyone here understands this, and this is something that's kind of traumatized me in my career. You know, our near incredible, almost, you know, perfect ability to betray our allies at the end of the day. And so that's, you know, we the SDF helped us in the counter ISIS campaign tremendously. Are we going to abandon them at the end? That to me is a is a big concern.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Andy?

• 38:56Speaker 02

  And yeah, an interesting thing though about, and I remember that that decision and that and actually I wrote about it at the time, having, you know, just come out of Iraq, I was horrified to hear we're coming out of Syria. But in but in practice, I don't know whether, you know, in practice, we didn't really, we didn't.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Madison didn't do it.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  So, you know, so so we said we would and we didn't, which was, you know, I thought was good. And I mean, to just follow up on Mick's point, absolutely, we're restraining influence on both sides, our partnership with the SDF. I mean, anyone who has worked with them understands the hatred of the Turks. I mean, it works both ways, but we have, you know, we've we've consistently been the ones who, you know, have whispered in their ear and said, no, you can't, you can't go after them and and even tone down their their desire to annihilate the SNA, who are, you know, another Turkish protege in in the region.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  It's disappointing that Masloun, Masloun is the head of the SDF for for the audience, I know, not for, you know, not explaining it to you guys. But it's disappointing that he came out publicly and said that the US had betrayed him again in, you know, in getting him to move out of Manbij, because actually that was all that was the agreement with the Turks from Mick, I can remember, I think, 2016 or 2017, that we would stay, we would keep the SDF east of the Euphrates there. We weren't supposed, they weren't supposed to be in Manbij technically, but they are. You're right about Kobani, you know, Kobani was always, and we've never suggested that that should go back to the Turks, and yet now the Turks are talking about taking it.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  And I think it's going to be a real test of our of our loyalty and our policy to to walk that fine line, keep the Turks from expanding further east of the Euphrates, and at the same time, keep Erdogan on board, which we need to do probably to some extent if we're going to have influence in Syria. I mean, it's it's going to take some tough diplomacy.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  Absolutely true. And then the next phase, and what the German Foreign Minister was really talking about, the disarming part was, you shouldn't have started with that. The other part is, how are they going to integrate the militaries into Syrian military, right? Which should happen, but it has to be done in a way that doesn't make any particular group completely vulnerable during the transition, right? Like disarming and then rearming, which would never work. And then the other question, of course, is, and to Mark brought it up. In the discussion with President Trump in Erdogan, one of the things he promises that Turkey was going to fight ISIS. And that never happens in in large amounts. So we're going to need a force out there that's armed and equipped and ready to fight

• 41:48Speaker 04

  to make sure ISIS doesn't come back, because I think most people would would say this, they're looking at this as an opportunity right now.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  So.

• 41:56Speaker 03

  Can we go back? Oh, go back, Mick, one more thing. I'm going to turn it to D now. I'm asking the questions. Sorry, D.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  No, it's fine.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Uh, no, but go back to that notion of of our, you know, the the weird jobs that we had where you in under, if you want to call it, you know, UW or whatever it is, um, where you, you know, we have these incredible alliances you spent a long time with. You have these personal relationships and then we end up at times betraying them. I mean, what was that like for you and Andy too? What was that like for you guys? Because I know that to me, I have a lot of regrets about that over the years. We made a lot of promises we don't keep.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  Yes. And this has been going on for a while, unfortunately, right? If you go to, if you go to Arlington, there's a memorial to the mom.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  Right. And it was because the guys that that felt that we betrayed them when when we decided our war fund was over with.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Wanted that and pushed it and and it finally got approved. Here in Montana, there's a whole bunch of mom, especially down in Missoula, right? And it all came from a lot of them, agency folks who didn't want to leave them behind. And so they they literally, I talked, we talked to one of them because we've done a, we haven't put the documentary out, but we've done a documentary on it. And he got brought by one individual, the guy paid for a trailer, uh, put him and his wife up in the trailer, got him a job and eventually now, if you go to the farmer's market, not to keep going on about this, but it's to Mark's point. They're all mom. If you go to the farmer's market and it's

• 43:32Speaker 03

  They didn't show that Yellowstone. I just want to tell you, I was watching Yellowstone.

• 43:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, they should have.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  They did not show it in that.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  They're great, great farmers. I mean, anyway, but unfortunately, that was, that was a collective effort by a lot of people that served in Vietnam and Laos that we now see again with Afghanistan specifically, and of course now in Syria. I mean, it's, it is an emotional attachment from, especially on the military side of the, the policy equation when it comes to the Kurds and of course the CIA. We just have strong interpersonal relationships and it would, it would really damage not just the relationship going forward between any partner that we could have in the US, but internally that we are really people that keep our word and that the next time, the

• 44:23Speaker 04

  next generation who says, yes, if you do this, you're with us and we'll take care of you and knowing that we haven't done it in the past, there's going to be a lot of internal.

• 44:32Speaker 03

  Andy, did you have experiences like that too?

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, um, the only, this was a big decision for me and I was right off to retiring and um, the, when the decision was made to pull out of Syria, I, I went on NBC to, you know, to say why it was not a good idea when, and I, and, and it, and I got a lot of, you know, I got, I heard from a lot of guys in SOF saying, hey, thanks for doing that, the guys who worked with the SDF and um, you know, who were still active duty and couldn't say anything. But I got lambasted too by, to include a lot of military guys, not SOF, you know, conventional guys accused of being overly emotional over and over again. So,

• 45:17Speaker 02

  you know, I wasn't like I was breaking down in tears. I was saying, hey, this is a bad idea and here's why. And I think, you know, it really opened my eyes to what a huge difficulty there is certainly between SOF forces and conventional forces and perhaps mainstream America and how we view this, you know. For us in SOF and the agency, we understand, yes, there's an emotional attachment. You don't serve Side by side and risk your life with someone depend on them for your life. And you know, there's a point where nationality ceases to be important at that time, right? It it and but you feel that loyalty and it is important. But you can extrapolate that to a national level, too. You don't, you know, you, you, you can't. I mean, I've talked spoken about real politic.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Real politic doesn't mean betraying people, or it shouldn't mean betraying people. And if you consistently do that, you've used up all your credit of trust. And and we've, you, you know, that that was my point. It was from a pragmatic point of view. For me, yes, it was hugely emotional to do that and I felt. But it was nothing that I felt to when Afghanistan fell. Um, as I'm sure both of you. Uh, understand the, I, I don't think. That I'm going to use the term mainstream America. I don't think they understand the sense of betrayal among Afghan veterans. And particularly amongst soft guys, I say particularly amongst soft guys. Because it was soft who fought the war from twenty fourteen onwards. And it was soft who were truly embedded with the Afghans.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  And and just a note of explanation, you know, when we talk about.

• 46:49Speaker 05

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• 47:19Speaker 00

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• 47:49Speaker 02

  Tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. And don't worry, this isn't going to be a criticism of pogs and fobbits. But it is true that you can be a conventional, certainly army guy. And, you know, I've spoken to an army guy who deployed, you know, he keeps telling me five times to Iraq. And my response is always, and how many Iraqis did you actually know? You know, the interaction with the locals was minimal. But if you're with SOF or the agency, that is your security. That is your bread and butter. You know, it isn't the weight of forces behind you or the ability for the QRF to reach you. It is that trust, that bond you build with them. And sometimes that trust is betrayed by them. A lot of times, most times it's betrayed by us. And that undercuts everything that we stand for.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  It undercuts not just our values, but it undercuts our ability to do our job in the future. And that is, that should be important to everyone.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  Amen.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Great question, Mark. Do you want to host the show?

• 48:47Speaker 03

  I'm good. You go back.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  No, man.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  And, and, and by the way, you know, it, it does seem, I've got to say this, although I'm, I'm kind of falling into this fobbit versus everyone else. It does seem that the guys who are most bellicose about topics like this were the ones who were not in combat arms MOSs. Or even if they were, were in units that didn't tend to stray outside the wire that much. But, uh, but, you know, even among conventional marine units who work hand in hand with Iraqi police in Ambar province, you get the same kind of feeling. It's, it's just the nature. And as we go ahead, that's, that's how we're going to conduct operations by with and through. And the guys who can't do that, don't belong in the military.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  The guys who lack that emotional intelligence and that understanding are, are really just useless to us.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  I, I would say the same thing applies in Ukraine, by the way.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Obviously, you know, Andy, a lot of, a lot of experience there, but for the, it's, and, and not to, I, I will refer to Washington Post reporting and New York Times reporting, but the robust agency presence there, certainly what, what's kind of been born out of that, or some very strong feelings towards supporting our Ukrainian partners by individuals, my friends, our friends who've been there for years. And there is concern now what we're going to do. Uh, uh, because as you sit there, you know, wherever you are in Ukraine. Um, uh, you know, essentially, as you noted, side by side, you hear policy discussions of us kind of withdrawing our support. That's tough. It just is. And that's, to me, that's, that's as righteous as cause as you can find, which I think why a lot of people

• 50:26Speaker 03

  involved in the Afghan campaigns kind of were such drawn into the whole Ukraine situation because of that, to me, there was a much more kind of, you know, good versus evil um, component to this, uh, but it's the same thing. I mean, you know, abandoning our Ukrainian allies, that's going to be tough. I hope we don't do that.

• 50:43Speaker 04

  We better not. And, you know, I, I was asked this on a, like a vet podcast this week. Um, why I thought we should get a lot of veterans involved in policymaking and, and in some cases, politics, I don't want to have anything to politics, but somebody's got to do it, right? Um, because yes, I mean, yes, there are emotional connections, uh, like Andy said, and for the good, good reasons, but we still make the argument, right? We still have the facts behind us of why it's important not to do this. It's not just, you know, honor, although that should be something even in geopolitics. It's also consequences to not honoring agreements. I mean, it's just, think about it from business, just a flat out business perspective. I mean, do you want to business somebody that just doesn't keep their word? So that's part of it.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  And having that knowledge that you, you all, for example, clearly, uh, do is important when people are making decisions in Washington, because if it's just isolated, Washington DC, like everybody says, they don't really know the consequences of these really substantial policy decisions. Right? And, and a lot of them, you know, don't think about the next turn. All right. So they're not even thinking about the damage that they could do to the reputation of the US when we have to do this again or something. So I do think, uh, not that everybody should, there should be a former, you know, soldier or CIA person.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  But having people that from our tribes in there, I think is really helpful. And hopefully we'll see more people willing to do that, even politics, right? And politics obviously have a plays a part in this and the hill. But I think we'd be all better off if we got.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  Let me ask you a question, Dee, I'm gonna ask one more question.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Blanche, bro.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Here's what I don't understand, and I've talked about this with with your compatriot, Jack Murphy, who I love. But I've talked about this with him like on just numerous kind of signal chats. I don't understand this weird kind of world of kind of the vet bros and the fascination towards the Russian military. I just don't get it.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  And it's something that, you know, I was not in the military. Obviously, I was in the CIA, worked very closely. But but but, you know, to me, just this kind of this nonstop notion of this, you know, the Russian military is, you know, is not woke. And Ukraine is not necessarily the right fight. I don't get it. Someone something with you all between you guys here, explain this to me.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I scratched my head with that. I mean, I was, I ran into considerable problems after the Team House interview in which I did criticize Ukraine. But the guys who criticized me were all pro Russian. You know, look, and they were like, look, this guy who they called a mercenary, by the way, incorrectly. Even even a mercenary has turned against the Ukrainians. And and I've come across again and again, Russians are not our real enemy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, how, who, in whose world are they not our real enemy? I mean, where had they shown us to promote US interests around the globe, you know, number one? Number two, I don't understand the argument about Ukraine being a big money sum for the United States.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Sure, it's a money sum, but it's a it's a drop in the bucket in the defense budget, number one. Number two, we haven't lost a single active duty soldier there, not a single one. And Russia is on the ropes economically. They've lost, you know, by the most conservative estimates, a hundred thousand guys, you know, and and half a million badly wounded. They've had, who knows what the percentage? Their equipment destroyed, they are isolated, they're a pariah, NATO has been reinforced beyond anyone's previous imagination and we've got Finland and Sweden finally to join the alliance which we we tried diplomatically to do for decades and were unable to, Russia did that for us.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  All of these have been accomplished at the cost of several billion dollars and and I can't understand either people and members of the US public or politicians who think that is a high price.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  I couldn't agree more, man, I couldn't agree more. I mean, strength is relative, right? So, you know, we talk about needing a strong national defense and I am 100% on board with that, but it's relative to our adversaries, right? So, everything Andy just said, they have, they have, how many casualties have they taken a week? Andy, I think you said it one of those shows.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Well, the, the Mo, British MoD estimates 1,200 a day, right? 1,200 casualties, that's not dead, and that has been consistent between, I mean, think about it, that is higher than the allied forces were taking in the, well, no, actually, it's not higher. It is, it's roughly the same as the British and the, and the, the British 21st Army Group and the, and all US forces in Normandy in June of 1944 were taking roughly around 1,000 casualties a day. So, with a smaller military, I mean.

• 55:48Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  But, but here's, why is it, why is it that the, the, you know, kind of the hard right and, and including a lot of, a lot of the kind of the Vetro culture sympathizes with the Russian military? I, I don't, you know, maybe they're sucked up into the whole MAGA world of Ted Cruz like sending out tweets with, you know, the, the non-woke Russian military, that's Tucker Carlson and others. But I, I just, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to me.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Shit, the Waffen SS was non-woke. I mean, does that mean that they were good guys?

• 56:18Speaker 03

  You guys help me. I don't know. I need help.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  I don't get it.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Actually, they weren't on work. They they brought in all kinds of people into that.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  This is kind of where like the lefty tanky people and the alt right like hardcore right people kind of meet up.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  They meet in the.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like an anti-American kind of whatever it is that's anti-American. We're for that.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  That's kind of what.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  In some of the places.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  That is true because on the left, you've got the gray zone. You've got the intercept.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, right, right.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Doing the same things. I was a victim of them too. Not a victim, but I was a target of theirs too.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Also, let's not act like the sixty billion dollars that we're sending or whether it's equipment or whatever it is to Ukraine is going to come into the American people's pockets anyway. It's not going to be earmarked for like healthcare or things that we.

• 57:05Speaker 03

  By the way, it's made in America. This is helping the US economy.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're it's all our stuff.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  It it actually woke us in a good way. It woke us to the fact that we're not producing enough ammunition.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  It woke us to the fact that despite our high end defense industry, we're totally, totally unprepared for a major conventional war when it comes to manufacturing something as simple as one five five millimeter artillery rounds. So.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  And that's the problem too.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  We we've learned a lot from this.

• 57:35Speaker 04

  Ammunition is usually made in countries that could potentially be at war with us, right? It's they have cheap labor. They don't have any labor standards and a lot of the material is already there. That you're right. If anything, we need to address that. If there's an issue that we need to address with national security, it's just what Andy said. We need to re- rebuild the manufacturing capability when it comes to arming ourselves. Should we get into a, you know, worldwide kind of point because we are not there right now, nor are able.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  We could do a whole episode on the, you know, the defense industrial complex and how broke it is. The, you know, the flash to bang on acquisition to fielding is hopelessly inadequate for this time in the twenty first century. And and yet we cling to it because we're very platform centric because you know, I mean, and things are changing. I understand. And I left the military a few years ago, but most of our senior officers became senior officers based on platforms. They are pilots or they are submariners or they are, you know, whatever the Navy has. Ships, ship drivers.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  You can tell it's part of the Department of the Navy, right?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Andy, did you want to mention what was going on in that Ukrainian town with the drones?

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I know we're coming to a close, but Pokrovsk, who I previously, who I spent a lot of time in, and so I do feel entitled in calling the place a shithole. But it's a, if you, if you look, it's kind of, it's the next stop in Russian invasion of Donbass. If you look at the map, they've got to take Pokrovsk. And the next stop is Krematorsk, and then they've essentially rolled up Donbass. And they want to do that before the ceasefire talks. And so they're investing Pokrovsk, they're closing in on it. The Ukrainians are preparing for a siege. And they have saturated the town with drones. So it's a town of about 60,000 people.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  I don't know how many are left now, but listening to news reports, most of them are left because they're unable to leave. The streets are no-go areas because there are just drones everywhere. And it's kind of, you know, we hear about this. The Russians can't do this all across the line, but it's interesting that they have picked certain areas before this, there was a place called Severesk or Seversk, also in Donbass. And, and literally, if you pop your head out of a door, you're likely to get whacked. I mean, it's with these FPV drones are everywhere. And you can see a little bit of this on YouTube. I mean, they're hovering above bus stations.

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• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  Outside grocery stores. I mean, it's like a dystopian nightmare. And so when we talk about things that we're learning from the Ukraine conflict, FPVs, yes, I get it. They that they use in the Pacific is it's unlikely that any any force can smash them in in a Pacific campaign. But but in a European campaign or a land campaign, they are playing a it's a highly effective role and a terrifying role. You know, you talk to anyone, I mean, previously, I think most infantrymen will tell you that being in an artillery barrage is is most frightening thing because it's more far more frightening than being shot at. But there's a randomness about that, right?

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  You know, you you you don't get the feeling someone personally tried to kill you, although it feels like it. But here someone is personally trying to kill you. And and with a certainty that is, you know, above certainly above anything other than than a sniper. So it is truly a psychologically terrifying weapon. And it'd be interesting to see what happens to Pokrovsk in the days, weeks to come.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Mark, you got anything?

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  Uh, two, two last things. One is a great we're speaking about drones and FPV drones. Fascinating report. I don't know if it's true. It seems that it likely is that Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, had sent not only drone operators, but these these FPV drones to HTS in Syria that were then used by HTS against the Syrian regime. This is just kind of Ukrainian SOF with an expanded footprint. We've seen them in Africa now in in Syria. I thought that's that's pretty wild. And this is this is probably against my interests and Mick's interests since it's not MSNBC or ABC. But but 60 Minutes tomorrow night has interviews with some of the Mossad officers who were involved in that Pedro op.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  I mean, how Mossad gave them approval to do this, I don't know. But I'm certainly going to be watching because that was one of, in my view, I think I might have talked about it before with you guys. That's one of the kind of a historic intelligence operations of our generation. So I'm definitely going to be watching that.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  That's probably why they're giving the okay.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  But generally, they don't. That's not really a intelligence MO, but that was an operation for the ages, which had an incredible effect on the campaign. So I'll be I'll be tuning in.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Mick, got anything?

• 1:03:38Speaker 04

  Me too. Me too. Yeah, I guess if I have one last thing to say, and partly because we're involved in it, but the humanitarian situation in Sudan, you know, it is, it is as catastrophic as it could be. It's it's literally Ethiopia, 1984. It's not getting the attention I think it should by the international community. There's still countries, I think, that are doing things that exacerbate the problem. And either way, you know, conflict or not, they shouldn't restrict the flow of humanitarian aid into needy populations. It's it's it's something that needs to be addressed immediately. And if not, we could see tens of thousands,

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  if not 100,000, or more die of starvation. So.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, to help out, Mick's doing a great job with Fogbo. Check it out. The links will be in the description. Mark, of course, Polymeropoulos, Above Average Intelligence Podcast. You can find him, the links will be in the description for Mark. Andy Milburn, our fearless leader, former Marine. His book, When the Tempest Gathers, link is in the description, his Substack, Everything You Need to Know. If you guys want to communicate with these guys in some way, shape, or form, or follow them, the links are in the description. Stop asking me where the links are, please. And the best way.

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• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  To support the show is patreon.com/the team house. Thank you very much and happy holidays to everybody.

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  Merry Christmas. I'll cut it right there. Thanks, guys. This is awesome.

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