Speaker 1: Johnson was taking cover in a bunker designed to protect
Speaker 1: troops against much smaller warheads weighing only sixty pounds. Knocked
Speaker 1: the wind out of me, followed by the most putrid
Speaker 1: tasting ammonia, uh tasting dust that swept through the bunker
Speaker 1: coated your teeth. After the blast wave and debris came
Speaker 1: the flames. The fire was just rolling over the bunkers,
Speaker 1: you know, like seventy ft in the air. Johnson's bunker
Speaker 1: provided no protection from that. We're gonna burn to death.
Speaker 1: We start heading down and make it about a third
Speaker 1: of the way there, the big voice we call it
Speaker 1: clicks in. Incoming, incoming, Take cover, Take cover, Take cover.
Speaker 1: I've got another football field to run. I don't know
Speaker 1: when this next missile is gonna hit. Can you hear
Speaker 1: the incoming like a freight train going by you? So
Speaker 1: as from Sunday night sixty minutes. The second story, which
Speaker 1: I highly recommend if you haven't seen it, You remember
Speaker 1: when Trump killed that Iranian general, their top general obliterated
Speaker 1: in with a drone strike. Well, Iran's response to that
Speaker 1: was firing some missiles at our base in Iraq. And
Speaker 1: the story at the time, as I remember it was
Speaker 1: it looks like they gave us a heads up. We
Speaker 1: got everybody out of there. They kind of fired something
Speaker 1: to save face, and that was about it. Well Sunday night,
Speaker 1: at least, it was the first time I'd heard the
Speaker 1: real story. It was a serious attempt. It certainly appears
Speaker 1: to take out a whole bunch of planes and equipment
Speaker 1: and a bunch of people. And it's a miracle that
Speaker 1: we didn't have a bunch of Americans die. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the attack, the spin, the could have beens with
Speaker 1: military analyst Mike Lyons served with the United States Army
Speaker 1: very capacity various capacities in the US and Europe Ron
Speaker 1: Star winner for his actions in combat. Mike, how are you, sir?
Speaker 1: Great to be back. Anything you want to straighten out
Speaker 1: about our setup? If where we get into our questions now?
Speaker 1: Spot on. I I'm still trying to get my head
Speaker 1: around what what we were thinking. And um, you know
Speaker 1: that was surely not a recruiting video for the U. S. Military.
Speaker 1: How do we allow ourselves to get pounded like that? Um?
Speaker 1: From the Uranians? And the same thing I had heard
Speaker 1: back at the time was they had targeted empty buildings
Speaker 1: and my sources told me that was what happened. Now,
Speaker 1: so when that major told that, so a little bit
Speaker 1: concerning too, when he begins that with a goodbye to
Speaker 1: his son. I'm always concerned about people like that in combat,
Speaker 1: only because you know, self fulfilling prophecy has come true.
Speaker 1: I could tell you when I was in combat, I
Speaker 1: a lot of my soldiers wrote good bye letters to
Speaker 1: their wives and things like that. And my wife was
Speaker 1: asked me why I never did that, And it's because
Speaker 1: I just think self fulfilling prophecies come through. I didn't
Speaker 1: come eight time zones to die in that desert anyway.
Speaker 1: That's that's really interesting stuff right there. I realized that's
Speaker 1: kind of a side. But that's that's a fascinating psychological thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I And and the fact that your soldier you can't
Speaker 1: think that way. And um so the way that whole
Speaker 1: sixty minute story began, and then as I started, you know,
Speaker 1: getting into more into it, I'm just looking at this
Speaker 1: going we've gotta be kidding here. And but I I
Speaker 1: actually think after talking to folks in the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: it's all about how they communicated with the president. So
Speaker 1: what I've been trying to figure out since I watched that,
Speaker 1: why did our Pentagon or government whoever made the decision
Speaker 1: want to keep it a secret that Iran came out
Speaker 1: of so hard. I think it had to do with
Speaker 1: kind of what we're doing as normal business right now
Speaker 1: and the fact that presidents and I think the last
Speaker 1: drone strike that President Biden just did is another example
Speaker 1: of our presidents are getting out of touch with what
Speaker 1: the commander in chief is supposed to do, because he
Speaker 1: should have been Trump should have been briefed on all
Speaker 1: the aspects at this top to bottom. When that mission
Speaker 1: was over, should have been briefed, and this should have
Speaker 1: been told the extent of the damage that was there.
Speaker 1: But it seems as though what was only communicated to
Speaker 1: him was nobody died, and so that was the bar
Speaker 1: that was the most Almost nobody died. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: do anything. We're not gonna retaliate. I just don't get
Speaker 1: why we didn't retaliate, And it just goes to show
Speaker 1: that we don't have any strategic vision, We don't have
Speaker 1: a strategic deterrence. For example, you do that to the Israelis,
Speaker 1: the strategic deterrence is you get you got one X
Speaker 1: comes to us. You're getting ten times coming back to you.
Speaker 1: And I don't understand why we didn't have Patriot missiles there.
Speaker 1: We had airplanes there, and what was it a politically
Speaker 1: not expedient to put them there or the signal that
Speaker 1: would send. I mean, all those mistakes we've made in
Speaker 1: the past in the nineties and Mogan issue so so
Speaker 1: again time after time. These people are so close to
Speaker 1: the situation and the President just isn't didn't ask the
Speaker 1: right questions. And the fact of the matter is, no,
Speaker 1: the bar wasn't casualties. The bar was they destroyed equipment,
Speaker 1: They destroyed a lot of different things, and we got
Speaker 1: to retaliate right. Well, they also caused a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of traumatic brain injury. Just real quickly, Mike, we got
Speaker 1: a note from somebody in intelligence who knows of somebody
Speaker 1: who knows of somebody who was in the situation room
Speaker 1: in the attack was happening, and says that President Trump
Speaker 1: wanted to strike back immediately and was talked down by
Speaker 1: Mike Pompeo, who knows if that's true. Um, I'm a
Speaker 1: little surprised that you're assuming that the President didn't know
Speaker 1: the full extent of the attack and the damage done well,
Speaker 1: so so the right so communication. Let's gets back to
Speaker 1: what I've talked to people that have been around the
Speaker 1: president say, you've got to speak his language. So usually
Speaker 1: a guy like Donald Trump has not talked out of
Speaker 1: something like that. But if that was the case, that
Speaker 1: that that happened, if Pompeo talks not, he would be
Speaker 1: the guy that could do it because he speaks the
Speaker 1: president's language, and in most cases that means getting in
Speaker 1: the word no casualties in the first five seconds of
Speaker 1: the conversation. Uh. And that's you know, really what I
Speaker 1: think is happening here. And I think that the President
Speaker 1: didn't rely on his instincts well enough, didn't have that
Speaker 1: didn't even seem there was a plan for it, like
Speaker 1: for example, the second those rockets left Iranian territory, we
Speaker 1: have targeted on them. We could respond it immediately to them.
Speaker 1: But I also think again that question gets back to
Speaker 1: where are your defense capable? Reason why if we were
Speaker 1: going to have all these airplanes sitting in the middle
Speaker 1: of the desert in a in a rock we don't
Speaker 1: have any way to protect him? What were we thinking?
Speaker 1: We've seen them use those rockets before if three or
Speaker 1: seventy Americans had died in that attack, which could have
Speaker 1: very easily happened, right, I feel like if we were
Speaker 1: told about it, I don't think you could keep that secret. Uh,
Speaker 1: there would have been pretty big public pressure for a
Speaker 1: world pressure to to to strike back, wouldn't there have been? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And and that's why that shouldn't have been the bar.
Speaker 1: And I think you know how the story even comes
Speaker 1: out right now, ob obviously fell through the cracks between
Speaker 1: these two administrations because it just doesn't make us look good. Now,
Speaker 1: even in the Biden administration, it it comes out, and
Speaker 1: if he wants to make things better in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: the story doesn't do that either. So um so again,
Speaker 1: I'm just surprised on how graphic and how much detail
Speaker 1: came out. You know, four star general there's speaking about
Speaker 1: how we're basically running away from these Iranian incoming missiles.
Speaker 1: I'm just shaking my head, saying, you had the job
Speaker 1: job to defend that place, not not to be not
Speaker 1: to take a pounding like that, but be ready to
Speaker 1: deliver one back. So I don't know. Mil Concerned Military
Speaker 1: analyst Major Mike Leons is on the line. The other
Speaker 1: thing my friend in military intelligence said was that if
Speaker 1: we had retaliated, that could have been a big step
Speaker 1: toward an eventual war with China. He said, I don't
Speaker 1: have time to explain right now. I wonder if you
Speaker 1: have any idea what was on his mind? Geo politically speaking,
Speaker 1: how did how did those steps take place? Okay, so
Speaker 1: here's nobody wants to fight the United States conventionally. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure you know if that means that China would
Speaker 1: have done something in the South China seat, maybe that
Speaker 1: would be the case. Um, but no one wants to
Speaker 1: fight the US conventionally, and so we've got to play
Speaker 1: to our strength, and this would have been our strength.
Speaker 1: Our strength would have been responding to this one particular attack.
Speaker 1: Now again we're he's making a presumption, or he's making
Speaker 1: a presumption that China is going to start anything with us.
Speaker 1: I just don't think that's going to be the case. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: deterrence what keeps these other countries from doing this In
Speaker 1: the very beginning, we know what's China is because China
Speaker 1: knows that doesn't want to get into a conventional war
Speaker 1: with US. So what you know again, you look at
Speaker 1: all these excuses that come out about why we attack it,
Speaker 1: we don't attack again. Go back to the Syrian the
Speaker 1: recent one with the Biden administration thought it was okay
Speaker 1: now to attack Iranians or Iraqi's inside of Syria for
Speaker 1: a retaliation for a drone strike, you know, two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: My head is just just shaking because where is the
Speaker 1: strategic deterrence. But the person who comes up with the
Speaker 1: next mutually short destruction, the next strategic deterrence to keep
Speaker 1: these countries from attacking us, wins the next Nobel Peace price. Interesting,
Speaker 1: um so on the timing of this story coming out,
Speaker 1: Iran has been in the news a lot. The Biden
Speaker 1: administration and UH leadership in Iran have been going back
Speaker 1: and forth, have you got to do this? Well, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna do this, you know, negotiating and they said
Speaker 1: they won't even sit down with us, and they said
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to have surprise inspections anymore. And we're
Speaker 1: going to keep enriching uranium, all these things. In any
Speaker 1: chance that we wanted this story to come out to
Speaker 1: help move public opinion towards these are bad guys who
Speaker 1: might have to attack. Well, I don't see attacking them
Speaker 1: again either because we don't have any real resources there.
Speaker 1: We have to deploy. You know, everyone's gone. I mean
Speaker 1: those days are over of trying to deduce anything on
Speaker 1: the ground there. We can fight them from the air
Speaker 1: and drone strikes and things, but that those days are over.
Speaker 1: If anything, we're leaving out of a rock faster than
Speaker 1: we are before and we've got off ramp to Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: But again, those troops are nowhere in the neighborhood either.
Speaker 1: So um no, I don't know what's going on. The
Speaker 1: administration is trying to resuscitate this relationship with Iran just
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump of what he did. So it's it's dumb,
Speaker 1: it's full hardy. The bottom line is we need to
Speaker 1: be all out of the Middle East unless we have
Speaker 1: unless we come back with a clear strategy as to
Speaker 1: how we want to deal with it. It's it's a
Speaker 1: tinder box that will blow up. But the bottom line is, uh,
Speaker 1: unless we're gonna come up with some other strategy. From
Speaker 1: the military perspective, I just we're just wasting our time.
Speaker 1: Great stuff. Military analyst Major Mike Lions. Mike, it's always enlightening.
Speaker 1: We sure appreciate at the time. So tinder box, it's
Speaker 1: going to blow up, he says, Yeah. You know what
Speaker 1: it reminds me of a little bit is the first
Speaker 1: attack on the World Trade Center in I think it was,
Speaker 1: and we didn't really respond and we didn't pay much
Speaker 1: attention to it and kind of acted like and then
Speaker 1: years later you get a more significant attack. I feel
Speaker 1: like this is kind of one of those. I mean,
Speaker 1: we sent the message to another group of bad guys
Speaker 1: of you can come at us pretty hard, and we
Speaker 1: don't really pay attention, we don't respond, and we don't
Speaker 1: really do much. I like Mike's rule of ten to one.
Speaker 1: You hit us with one, we're gonna hit you with ten.
Speaker 1: You want to hit us with two, we got twenty
Speaker 1: for you. How long you want to keep this going?
Speaker 1: I mean, that is deterrence. And but Pompeo Trump the
Speaker 1: idea that they were you know, lily livered or or
Speaker 1: unwilling to deliver a response that doesn't ring true to me.
Speaker 1: So so so Mike Lines doesn't think Trump got the
Speaker 1: full story or grasp what was going on. That's what
Speaker 1: he was suggesting. Yeah, Now, Sean Sean says, the the
Speaker 1: anti Trump version of this is that the Pentagon did
Speaker 1: not want Trump involved in something that could lead to
Speaker 1: a war with him as president, so they didn't tell
Speaker 1: him what happened because they were afraid of how it react.
Speaker 1: Mike seemed to be suggesting, Yeah, that was perhaps part
Speaker 1: of it. Um although Trump, you know, his whole thing
Speaker 1: was not getting involved in these Middle Eastern countries. That
Speaker 1: was his whole thing. I mean, that's what he ran on,
Speaker 1: That's what he talked about all the time. So his
Speaker 1: his default setting is to not get involved in these things. Well,
Speaker 1: and with all due respect to the anti Trump media,
Speaker 1: which is everywhere all the time, it's also possible. They said, look,
Speaker 1: we have a couple of choices. Number One, we could
Speaker 1: retaliate with means we are going to be fighting Iran
Speaker 1: on and off in various ways for a very very
Speaker 1: long time. You will be the war president in the
Speaker 1: Middle East. And he said, and it's possibly. He said,
Speaker 1: all right, let's see what happens next. We'll hold back
Speaker 1: for now to wrap this up now, unless you want
Speaker 1: to talk about it more later. Do you see Tucker
Speaker 1: last night? So his whole first segment was about how
Speaker 1: he's he just thinks it's awful that Biden sending the
Speaker 1: missiles into um, you know, against Iranian militias fought back
Speaker 1: at all. He just thinks that's terrible, that we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be involved in the Middle East at all. China is
Speaker 1: the only threat in the world. I couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: where he was going until he got to this, but
Speaker 1: I kind of see this, you know, the the Obama administration.
Speaker 1: Now we're going back. Three presidents wanted to pivot away
Speaker 1: from the Middle East to China. Why why are we
Speaker 1: Why are we getting sucked into a rack and Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and Syrian these various places. None of those are going
Speaker 1: to change our way of life or or in America.
Speaker 1: China actually could, and that's their goal, and they could,
Speaker 1: they could actually pull it off. So why isn't that
Speaker 1: are so focused? I just think we're still operating under
Speaker 1: the assumption that we broke irack, so we bought it.
Speaker 1: We've got to help defend I think we say sorry
Speaker 1: about that, are bad, and move on. Take full responsibility.
Speaker 1: I take full responsibility. Okay, I don't know. I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: The most interesting thing is Mikelines seems to be as
Speaker 1: confused about this as anybody else, and he's got a
Speaker 1: lot of connections and a lot of history of understanding
Speaker 1: the way the world works. Well, anyone a bronze star
Speaker 1: right there, so you know, is the area fascinating? Text
Speaker 1: line four two nine five k f TC