Speaker 1: As a helicopter force ingress towards the objective at low level.
Speaker 1: We arrived at Maduro's compound at one one am Eastern
Speaker 1: Standard time or two to one am Caracas local time,
Speaker 1: and the apprehension force descended into Maduro's compound and moved
Speaker 1: with speed, precision, and discipline towards their objective and isolated
Speaker 1: the area to ensure the safety and security of the
Speaker 1: ground force while apprehending the indicted persons.
Speaker 2: So how old is Maduro? I gotta think he get
Speaker 2: woken up from a sound sleep, and there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of you know, us super secret special Forces special Forces
Speaker 2: dudes with guns and flashlights and stuff in your face.
Speaker 2: Takes a while to.
Speaker 3: Get your bearings. You got to have at least one
Speaker 3: thought that, wow, this is a weird dream.
Speaker 2: He's sixty three. Yeah, it take me a little while
Speaker 2: to yah sec I had some price of food last night.
Speaker 2: What's going on here?
Speaker 3: Right right? Well? General Cain there describing the critical kind
Speaker 3: of you know, the climactic moments of the raid and
Speaker 3: coming across Maduro. We skipped past where he helps us
Speaker 3: understand the incredible complexity and sophistication of the operation and
Speaker 3: for that analysis. What a pleasure it is for the
Speaker 3: first time the year to talk to military analyst Mike
Speaker 3: Lyons about this awesome, awesome demonstration of American capability. Mike,
Speaker 3: how are you, sir? Do you have a good holiday season? Good?
Speaker 4: What you guys? Happy New Year? Yes, had a great
Speaker 4: holiday season and what a way to start the year
Speaker 4: for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was really digging your Twitter feed in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night the other night following your analysis of
Speaker 2: it is what's happened? So thanks?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, just watching this, you know, here's to
Speaker 4: me is the biggest issue. For months, I've been talking
Speaker 4: to former special operators and other people in the military
Speaker 4: trying to figure out what are we doing in the
Speaker 4: Caribbean right Obviously we're projecting power blown up drug boats
Speaker 4: and the like there, and we all thought that this
Speaker 4: mission was going to be impossible. I mean, for us
Speaker 4: to go in kinetically take out Maduro, it would mean
Speaker 4: an invasion for US. I kept saying, well, nothing's going
Speaker 4: to happen because the Army's not in the game yet.
Speaker 4: And the only I can think of it's like you're
Speaker 4: sitting on a desert island. You got a can without
Speaker 4: a can opener and you're not going to eat, and
Speaker 4: then all of a sudden the next day the cans
Speaker 4: open and now you're gonna be able to eat. I mean,
Speaker 4: the level of from an operational perspective was so complex
Speaker 4: and just just incredible, and from a competency perspective, And
Speaker 4: I still have the scars from the nineteen eighties with
Speaker 4: you know, Desert one and what happened there and the
Speaker 4: ashes that that took place there. So I can't reiterate
Speaker 4: just how incredibly amazing this mission was and the complexity
Speaker 4: of it. One hundred and fifty aircraft, no casualties in
Speaker 4: and out two and a half hours. It's you couldn't
Speaker 4: write a script that said it would go as.
Speaker 3: Easy as a one hundred and fifty aircraft. Yeah, help
Speaker 3: us understand what kind of aircraft and what were they
Speaker 3: doing for we layman. Just give us the broad outlines
Speaker 3: of the complexity of the operation.
Speaker 4: All the levers of forces that we have in power,
Speaker 4: we're applied here. Aircraft that took out their air defense systems,
Speaker 4: drones monitoring surveillance, helicopters shuttling in the seventy fifth rangers.
Speaker 4: You know, this was if you had to give a visual.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like Blackhawk down back from the nineties,
Speaker 4: that failure of a mission, unfortunately. But you know the
Speaker 4: fact that we had the Rangers in there protecting the
Speaker 4: strike force, which is the Delta guys that go in
Speaker 4: and extract people like this, this is their mission. And
Speaker 4: we know that they ended up practicing this for months
Speaker 4: before they had a set up and they had done this.
Speaker 4: I'm still surprised that Maduro didn't have thirty thousand troops
Speaker 4: surrounding him. I mean, given the fact that you know,
Speaker 4: he knew the United States was going after him. So
Speaker 4: it still is just incredible about those those soldiers getting in.
Speaker 4: But every single one of those aircraft had a mission
Speaker 4: either bringing troops in, gathering surveillance, taking out targets, just
Speaker 4: a real high combination. And you noticed General King kept
Speaker 4: talking about the joint force. The joint force. That is
Speaker 4: the difference between US and every other military out there.
Speaker 4: This is why the Russians are wallowing a novacane in Ukraine, right.
Speaker 4: They can't jointly bring all their forces together to make
Speaker 4: to attack something and move forward with They don't combine
Speaker 4: air power with ground power and ISR. They just go
Speaker 4: one at a time. But in this case, the United
Speaker 4: States is able to take with interagency, take all of
Speaker 4: these levers of power and bring them together and create
Speaker 4: this incredible fist that can take anybody out that we choose.
Speaker 2: To give me an idea of how risky this would
Speaker 2: have been, like if you do it ten times, are
Speaker 2: you successful eight times? Or do you have any guests
Speaker 2: on that?
Speaker 4: Well, that's why we all sat around and said, this
Speaker 4: just wasn't going to happen, wasn't even a kind of
Speaker 4: a course of action. And I was talking to guys
Speaker 4: that at the highest levels of Jaysak and you know
Speaker 4: that that had been in that spot. They just thought
Speaker 4: it was going to be just too difficult. The element
Speaker 4: of surprise, just maintaining that that alone was a factor
Speaker 4: that just was incredible. And then the weather played, I mean,
Speaker 4: the D Day type invasion is what we all thought.
Speaker 4: We thought that, yeah, if they thought they would move
Speaker 4: twenty to twenty five thousand troops or so, and because
Speaker 4: we thought they'd had to get an egress point in,
Speaker 4: but they were able to take out any of the
Speaker 4: air defense systems. So the other thing this does, too
Speaker 4: is that it shows that once again the total crap
Speaker 4: of Russian military equipment, because that's what's been surrounding Venezuela
Speaker 4: when it comes to their air defense system. So the
Speaker 4: essay three hundred, you might as well put it in
Speaker 4: a museum right now, because anybody who has it is
Speaker 4: never going to use it again, because the United States
Speaker 4: just blew right by it. So we take out the
Speaker 4: air defense platforms, we take out their systems, and then
Speaker 4: we've shut the power off in the country. I mean again,
Speaker 4: there's no other country in the world that can do this.
Speaker 4: But to say that you wouldn't expect a casualty, or
Speaker 4: you wouldn't expect something to go wrong, very unlikely. In
Speaker 4: this case, eight out of ten times something else would
Speaker 4: go wrong. You have the expectation, commanders expect losses, you'd
Speaker 4: have an expectation you lose something.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, miraculous success. I was struck by General Kine
Speaker 3: saying we rehearse this over and over and over again,
Speaker 3: not so that we could get it right, but so
Speaker 3: that it couldn't go wrong. Now, obviously fate and God intervened,
Speaker 3: but that that's that's a philosophy that we civilians don't
Speaker 3: I hadn't heard articulated in that way before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is that's a result of Desert one and
Speaker 4: the fact that you have to plan. When when I
Speaker 4: was on active duty, we said, with the planning gets slimed, right,
Speaker 4: what's going to happen to us along the way, And
Speaker 4: you have to plan for every one of those contingencies,
Speaker 4: rehearse them so their second nature, so you know exactly
Speaker 4: what to do. It's that your playbook, checklist mentality that
Speaker 4: the military has military trains for that. That that within
Speaker 4: our military because of this thing called commander's intents. Right,
Speaker 4: I'm watching people try to say, oh, the soldiers are
Speaker 4: the sailors, they don't know where are going. You know,
Speaker 4: we're invading Venezuela. None of that. Everybody got the mission.
Speaker 4: Everybody knew what the mission was. Get in, get out,
Speaker 4: extra extra, extra, strate the guy, get him in and out.
Speaker 4: Everybody knows commanders intent. And that's what's another thing that
Speaker 4: makes our military work better than everybody else's.
Speaker 2: Well, as you're talking to some of your friends who've
Speaker 2: been there, done that with regime change and nation building
Speaker 2: and everything, is there some concern that we're going to
Speaker 2: have boots on the ground trying to keep Venezuela a
Speaker 2: stable place for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 4: I don't think so. This is not a rock. We
Speaker 4: don't have one hundred thousand troops there. This was not
Speaker 4: an invasion and it's also not regime change. Their constitution
Speaker 4: has put their vice president, Kelsea Rodriguez now in charge,
Speaker 4: and we've given her the message you're either going to
Speaker 4: play ball or not. And if you're not going to
Speaker 4: play ball, you might find yourself in a pair of
Speaker 4: white tennis shoes and a Nike jumpsuits sitting in the
Speaker 4: back of a Special Forces helicopter here if you don't
Speaker 4: play ball. And the thing about it is, this is
Speaker 4: what we want to do. We're taking control, taking control
Speaker 4: of three hundred billion barrels of reserve crude oil in
Speaker 4: our hemisphere, not allowing the Chinese, by the way, the
Speaker 4: Ranians that had already built a drone facility manufacturing drones
Speaker 4: in Venezuela. The Chinese are taking their oil. The Russians
Speaker 4: and the military this is long overdue to take care
Speaker 4: of this situation right now. I mean, this is this
Speaker 4: has been so, this will be so pivotabal for our
Speaker 4: country and from from a generational perspective and how we've
Speaker 4: reset the world and reset the economy and any energy
Speaker 4: market in particular. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: I'm we're talking to military analyst Mike Leons. Mike I
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier in the show that you almost have to
Speaker 3: compartmentalize each part of this because you always want to
Speaker 3: leap to the next part, and you kind of did,
Speaker 3: which is a great discussion, and I'm a little mystified
Speaker 3: by this. The operation was amazing, and as a demonstration
Speaker 3: of American power, I think it will echo around the
Speaker 3: globe and it should. Uh, But going forward, can we
Speaker 3: exercise Lever's power effectively enough to get what we need
Speaker 3: out of the Venezuelan regime given the fact that they
Speaker 3: are still what they were and this this Gallow's in
Speaker 3: charge now is a hardcore Maduroite socialist.
Speaker 4: Well, we're going to find out. And she controls the
Speaker 4: military right now, and he's basically said we'd back in
Speaker 4: if we had to. So we're gonna let this thing
Speaker 4: ste for a little bit. Again, It's not been regime
Speaker 4: changed right now, it's just different person running the country
Speaker 4: right now. I've got confidence that we'll put enough pressure
Speaker 4: on them we will then start to take over the
Speaker 4: petroleum assets and where they actually pump oil from. And
Speaker 4: we'll do all we'll do all those kinds of things,
Speaker 4: which is what we're trying to do here, which we're
Speaker 4: trying to get to. I think. So for example, this
Speaker 4: this administration that Trump's was not keen about restoring Machado.
Speaker 4: That was the individual won the Nobel Peace Prize from
Speaker 4: UH this last year and was.
Speaker 3: And we already won the left election right.
Speaker 4: Right, But this but real politic on the ground. She
Speaker 4: doesn't control anything, you know, it's right now, this is
Speaker 4: hardcore human nature. Who controls the military. This is for
Speaker 4: you know, grown ups. This is not for you know,
Speaker 4: theoretical people that are running the government. She's got no legitimacy. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: I hate to say it like that, but she doesn't
Speaker 4: to run the government. So we're gonna give this person, Rodrigae,
Speaker 4: the chance because she does control the military and the oil.
Speaker 4: We're gonna cut a deal with her. I'm sure, and
Speaker 4: we'll move this. We'll move this down the road. And
Speaker 4: if we do it, this is again trumped with leverage.
Speaker 4: He is the leverage meister, getting leverage of oil. Right now.
Speaker 4: The fact that we have this control now over there
Speaker 4: oil puts Canada on notice, China onnoticed. China might not
Speaker 4: be able to invent inde Taiwan now they only have
Speaker 4: twenty five billion barrels in reserve. They might not have
Speaker 4: the energy to do it now. So there's so much
Speaker 4: leverage that was gained by this operation that without even
Speaker 4: a casualty being gone, I just can't talk about it
Speaker 4: so much.
Speaker 3: So if this gal doesn't come around, we snatch her up,
Speaker 3: and then the person after her, and before long it's
Speaker 3: like being the head of isis you know the first
Speaker 3: thing you do when you get the job is you're
Speaker 3: write your will.
Speaker 2: Yeah right.
Speaker 4: You know what's funny was they got asked the question
Speaker 4: like Marco Ruby got asked question over the weekend about
Speaker 4: why did you just take him? Why didn't you take
Speaker 4: all his other henchmen. It's like, do you not get
Speaker 4: do you not hear yourself? I mean that was the
Speaker 4: mission of getting that one person, which is the person.
Speaker 4: So again it's all done legally too, which is really
Speaker 4: why we go in there in the first place, under
Speaker 4: this guise of you know, getting him from legally from
Speaker 4: a drug perspective. No, you can't argue against it. Again,
Speaker 4: you know the Democrats wanted him out five years ago.
Speaker 4: They just didn't have the nerve to do what.
Speaker 3: We did military analysts. Mike Lines, Yeah, Marco gave a
Speaker 3: fine spank into Margaret Brendon. We enjoyed that.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you this before we let you go.
Speaker 2: I purposely went to New Orleans over vacation just to
Speaker 2: go to the World War II Museum. I assume you've
Speaker 2: been there before.
Speaker 4: I have amazing just you know, the stories you know,
Speaker 4: starts in the that real car and you walk through.
Speaker 2: That's the most amazing museum I've ever been to anywhere
Speaker 2: in the world. Absolutely incredible.
Speaker 4: A lot of presents there and just the sacrifices made
Speaker 4: and we just should never forget. And we're getting further
Speaker 4: from that generation, but it's just incredible. I advise everybody
Speaker 4: to go there. My classmate actually is one of the
Speaker 4: directors there, works down there and they held nice events there,
Speaker 4: but just the his historical what they've captured there is
Speaker 4: just amazing.
Speaker 2: We'll tell them I'm impressed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I want to hear more about that from you,
Speaker 3: Jack as well. Mike Lines, Mike, thanks so much for
Speaker 3: the time. Great to talk to you.
Speaker 4: Great guys. Thanks for having me all right
Speaker 1: Our pleasure, Armstrong and Getty