Scott Ritter Extra: Ask the Inspector

Ask the Inspector Ep. 174

Scott Ritter answers questions from the audience with host Jeff Norman most Friday nights at 5 PM PT/8 PM ET/1 AM GMT and most Tuesdays at noon PT/3PM ET/8PM GMT.

Submit your question in advance and donate to Waging Peace, Scott's campaign for nuclear disarmament, at https://ScottRitter.com.

Opening music by Ed Kliman https://texasmusicforge.com/, Brian Pothier https://www.facebook.com/pothierproductions and ShortBusMusic https://hearthis.at/shortbusmusic-6e/.

Duration:: 1h 54m
Broadcast on:: 06 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] To all units proceed to your post assignment, all units proceed to your post assignment. Yeah, baby, it's episode 174 of Ask the Inspector on July 5th, 2024, July 5th, of course, one day after Independence Day, the birth of America. I noticed that some podcasters took last night off and today as well, but not us, Scott. I don't know about you, but it never even crossed my mind. And I think we should pat ourselves on the back for that kind of commitment. What do you think? There you go. >> Well, I mean, I think we deserve all the credit in the world for having such a wonderful work ethic. >> Yes, that's my point. And it's really your work ethic that came first. And I mean this sincerely, you really inspired me to work hard, to always be ready for late breaking news, whether and to deal with uploading content, whether it's a video or a new substak post. >> Come on, Jeff, tell the truth. You had to place a phone call to me at 803 to ask where the hell I was. >> True, that's true, but I'm not sure that relates to my point. I didn't say, my point is not that you're flawless. My point is not that you're always on time. My point is that you're a very hard worker. >> Well, I do work hard, so maybe it's time I start working smarter, not harder, but mostly. Maybe so. Anyway, some of my, I don't want to name any names, San Pongino, Glen Greenwell, took two days off, but here we are, because we love you, our beloved audience. We are here for you. Also I want to tell our beloved audience who may be making travel plans last week or maybe it was in the episode before we were talking about Alina and her family who came specifically because of an event that she was planning to attend. For those who are planning to attend the event at Farmers and Shuffs on July 20th, I think it was don't go then because there's a new date and that date is August 10th, right? >> It turns out that and our logo is right over the date. >> I know. >> I know. >> I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I got another way to do it. I got another way to do it. There it is. I'm madhouse so um John lakes at the the owner and the man who's putting this together called up and he said hey uh you got any flexibility I said man I'm the most flexible dude you ever met in your life I got no travel plans this summer it's amazing that way I mean you know um you know he's like oh well then we're gonna move it so uh August. It's not because Kevin Hart's audience is the same as yours it's because Poughkeepsie is a relatively small. town and when there's any big event that creates havoc. Yeah it's just it's probably best not eat if you're gonna be in Poughkeepsie on July 20th it's probably best to be going to the Kevin Hart show. Um otherwise the Kevin Hart show will probably inconvenience you. So what day of the week is August 10th I haven't even looked at the calendar. Saturday we've we've decided that this will be a Saturday night. Oh it's not having a school night that should make it a success that's when people love to go out. I've noticed. Alright well let's get to the questions. Uh we call this the loquacious version of Ask the Inspector. The reason we do that is we have another version on Tuesdays called the lightning round that's one hour long Scott answers every question in three minutes or less. On Friday nights it's about two hours we don't stick to that strictly and there's no time limit whatsoever on his answers. And it was very painful. I don't know if you could feel that last episode Scott when I cut you off when you went past the three minute mark and people hate me for that. I normally I got one eye on the on the clock and I'm like and I'm pretty good at it. This one I was actually totally focused on answering the question. And I was right in the middle of making probably the most important point I've ever made in my entire life. That's why it's so painful. It's painful to interrupt. But I need you Scott I need you to tell the audience that this is with your consent it's not me being a mini independent of you. No this is this is a mutually look we made a decision that in order to just. Everybody knows I only wanted to do one night a week, Friday night, and two hours and I'm like, that's it. And Jeff, the consummate professional of the is, was noticing that there were some questions that I wasn't getting to and we were getting questions from the people submit and he said, you know, we really do have to take care of the audience. He really does care about you guys. And I like the way you're putting this and I'm like, I don't give a damn. And Jeff's like, please, you got to do it for the team. I'm like, okay, but then the question was, how do we make it different? Because I did say that I really can only give an hour. I mean, that's true. So then the question was, well, this is just going to be an hour of Friday or do we do something to make Tuesday different and the compromise was that in order to get in all the quickest. Also, the other thing is, you know, we're getting like two hours worth of questions and we only have an hour to deal with them. And I'm like, well, let's put it on the clock. Let's go. Three minutes, and Jeff fully signed up to it. And I think he's enjoyed cutting me off ever since. Well, that's debatable. Anyway, I would say that I am a terrible person for many reasons, but cutting you off is not one of them. I know, but please, just be honest with the team, you really do enjoy doing it. You know what, let's just go to the questions. SW and Oregon, the self appointed contrarian who lately has not been all that contrary. One of the biggest supporters for an overhaul of the US military with Russia now spending over 30% of their GDP on military and the US below 3.5%. How much do you think the US needs to counter Russia. I'm sorry, time's up. No, just kidding. Chase, I support your decision. No, I'll answer the question. I think the question is framed improperly. Why does the US need to counter Russia? I mean, let's just think about it. What came first, the chicken or the egg? You know, the last time I checked history, it was the Soviet Union that collapsed. It was the Warsaw Pact that went away. It was Russia that effectively demilitarized. And it was the United States that made decision to maintain NATO and expand NATO. So given the cause and effect relationship there, it's always sort of seemed to be that Russia was countering NATO in the United States, but Russia really wasn't in on doing that. But it was Russia reacting to, I mean, why did the expanded or modified CFE that was signed in 1999, CFE being the conventional forces in Europe treaty, which was supposed to significantly reduce the conventional forces of both NATO and Warsaw Pact? Why did the effort that was painstakingly negotiated in 1999 fail? Because the United States wasn't willing to tell three Chihuahuas, that's the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, that your tiny, pathetic militaries have to be counted as part of the CFE. They said, "No, no, no, no, we weren't part of that. We're outside of the CFE. But we're going to be NATO, but we're going to be outside the CFE." And the Russians are like, "It doesn't work that way, guys." And it doesn't. So it's not that we have to counter Russia. Are you implying that somehow because we provoked a fight in Ukraine, that we armed a Ukrainian military and turned into a proxy of NATO for the sole purpose of provoking a fight that was designed to weaken Russia so that the United States and NATO could achieve a strategic victory, that Russia's efforts to respond to that, to adapt to that? I mean that this is Russia's fault, so let's stop talking about countering Russia. The best way to counter Russia is to stop provoking Russia. You know, Russia is not the aggressor here. Russia is defending Russia, plain and simple. And if you don't understand that, then I really can't help you. If you're one of these people that continue to believe that Ukraine is the victim here, then you don't know your history, you don't know what you're talking about. And frankly speaking, therefore you've nullified your ability to participate in this conversation. This is a war that was provoked by NATO, by the United States. And the fact that Russia has adapted to these provocations to build a military capable of defeating the NATO proxy called Ukraine and whatever forces NATO is able to align against it. You know, now you say that we have to counter that. The best way to counter that would be to maybe embrace the negotiated processes put forward by Russia in December of 2021, where they talked about creating a new European security framework. Best way to counter Russia is to remove the impetus for Russia to continue to arm, to build its forces, to stop posturing NATO as a threat to Russia. Stop embracing a policy that seeks to use a proxy conflict to achieve the strategic defeat of Russia. Maybe reembrace arms control. I know because the next thing the United States and Europe are going to be worried about is, oh no, Russia's rebuilding its short intermediate range missiles. Oh my God, oh no, they've deployed them in Western Russia and in Belarus and they can now reach all of the cities of Europe. Oh no, those shameful Russians, we have to counter them. We need these weapons go away. So I just think it's stupid to talk about that. We shouldn't be spending any more money on the military than we already are. We should look for ways to reduce our military spending, not expand our military spending. That's what a responsible leader would do, seek peaceful outcomes, not promote war. John from Michigan has a question and that question is what is the likelihood of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah? Is it inevitable for Israel to shift the focus towards the North, considering escalating responses? Well, I mean, here's again the problem with the framing of that question. Why is there a problem on the Northern border with Israel? Could it be that Israel is committing genocide against the citizens of Hamas and that Hezbollah has said that as long as that happens, they will maintain pressure on Israel. The best way to make Hezbollah pressure go away is for Israel to stop committing genocide, to buy into a ceasefire, to get the hostages exchanged, to start working towards a non-military solution to the problem. That's the best way to do it. It's sort of amazing. Naftali Bennett, who I'm not a big fan of, former Prime Minister of Israel, former Israeli commando, the man who's perhaps most infamously known for his role in calling in artillery strikes on refugees. They were hunkered down in a UN base, killing scores of them. Naftali Bennett's come out and said the truth that there's no need to be going to war against Lebanon against Hezbollah. This is stupidity beyond belief. This is purely done to promote Benjamin Netanyahu as a wartime leader to secure his war cabinet and to keep Benjamin Netanyahu in power. He also says it's stupid to talk about militarily defeating Hamas. It can't happen. The best way is to try and deal with the reality of Hamas as it is by bringing about a ceasefire and beginning negotiations that hopefully in doing so will allow Israel to rebuild some of the tattered relationships it has around the world. Maybe by rebuilding these relationships, they can seek to contain Hamas, isolate Hamas, and maybe compel Hamas to start seeking compromised solutions that don't require Israel to bleed to death in Gaza. The conflict is not inevitable because the conflict doesn't need to take place. This is the dumbest war in the world. It's only inevitable if Israel buys off on Benjamin Netanyahu's inevitability. So if Netanyahu is going to continue to be the prime minister, then you will probably have a war with a full-scale war with Hezbollah, but that will be the end of Israel. Israel can't win that war. Moreover, that's a war that will likely result in the destruction of Israel, especially if Iran joins in, although given the recent election right now, it appears that the moderate Pazeskian, I'm sure I'm butchering that name, is the winner. And he has talked about improving relations with the West, et cetera, so maybe he will alter Iran's deterrent posture that was put in place by his predecessor, him Raisi, where it said if Israel crosses red lines, the counter will be immediate and massive attack. We have to see. Everybody calls him a moderate and all that stuff, but remember, he has links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command. He's not some peacenik. He's just moderate when compared to say, Jelili, the former nuclear negotiator, who was a very hardliner. But we'll see. I mean, the regions in turmoil. But the bottom line is, Israel has no, Israel gains nothing. Israel has a nation state gains nothing by going to war against Hezbollah. And increasingly, all Israelis recognize this except for the fanatic followers of Benjamin Netanyahu who need a war in the expansion of war in order to keep him in place as a war leader. All right, some good comments being inserted tonight. The very muscular yet strangely effeminate Ryan Milton handling backstage duties. In addition to that he's your wardrobe mistress. The shirt that you weren't tonight was selected and given to you by the strangely effeminate Ryan. Very nice. Well, it's got femininity written all over it. I mean, look at the flowers, you know, it's some areas. And oh wait, what's that Eagle Globe and Anchor? That's United States Marine Corps. That's the opposite of femininity. We got the American flag down here someplace. It says Ritter. My name and then we got the American flag. I mean, this shirt just exudes patriotism, which is why I'm wearing it tonight. The day after the end of Thursday. I went to the doctors the other day. I think I once sent you a picture when I went to a different doctor. Ritter apparently is a big manufacturer of medical equipment. I'm sitting there. I'm like, I got to take a break. Hope Scott understands. I need to go to the doctor. I hope he understands. And then I go to the doctors. I can't get rid of Scott. Ritter everywhere I go. Ritter. Ritter. Well, it's the reason why I'm able to live this ostentatious lifestyle because now you've exposed my secret identity. I am the inventor of medical torture devices. When you sit down, especially in the dentist office, you sit down. And the guys get ready to drill your teeth. Look at the name. And if it says Ritter, know somewhere, a man who watched marathon man is smiling. You aren't likewise haunted by me like you don't go places and see the name Norman staring you in the face. And we have a golf course nearby called Norman's skill. And so I avoided like the plague, especially after Tuesday and on Saturdays when I just had it here. Jeff's going to interrupt me. Jeff's going to interrupt me. Norman's going, no, I need to hurt. No, we're good. Can we get a shirt like that in the merch? Sure, why not? How much will you pay for it? How much will you pay for it? We'll put the riot mill in the surcharge on it, baby. This shirt can't just be given away. You're going to have to be paid for the shirt for the rest of your life. That's our policy. If you'll buy it, we'll sell it. We'll sell it. Hold on. I know. I think there's something wrong with on my end here. Okay, I see it now. A travase from the Czech Republic. If Trump wins the election, if. Well, all right. That's how he wrote it. So I'll play along. If Trump wins the election, what kind of people will be able to get through the Senate? He won't get any support from Democrats. So will he have to make deals with neocons? Well, one of the, is that just second, was that Iceman? Can you pick him up and give him to me? I just want to take a slight break from the Czech question, which was a very important question. But somebody asked earlier, what did I name the new puppy? Oh, of course. What is the man? And this puppy's name is Iceman, because Iceman is the wingman of Maverick. And of course, Maverick is world famous as the head of security. But the head of security was filling alone and isolated when we would leave him. And he needed somebody to fly with. And so, like idiots, we went to the mall and walked into a puppy store and looked at this puppy. And I mean, who could, who could refuse this? Not us, right? That is an adorable dog. So that is an Iceman is our new puppy. And by the way, to those of you who've been clamoring for a Maverick T-shirt, it is so close to happening that I can taste it. All right. That's scary. What does a Maverick T-shirt taste like? You're right. But see, I'm a very literal person. All right. Let's go back to the Czech Republic and Trump. If Trump wins the election, well, one of the reasons why the Democrats are so concerned about Biden's collapse, cognitive collapse, which is evident every day. You can jack the guy up on whatever he's jacked up on, but even then he doesn't perform well, is that they've tied everything to the Biden bandwagon. And you remove Biden and the down races, the Senate races, the house. They don't look so good anymore. So the reason why I bring that up is that if this is going to be a Trump landslide, as it could be, if the Democrats don't find a way to salvage this sinking ship, he'll probably have Republicans take control of the Senate and retain control of the house. And then become sort of a moot question because the Republicans that will come in will support Trump. The real question is, who can he put on his cabinet? There is no independent body of experts out there. The Republicans have, just like the liberals have sold themselves to the Hillary Clinton. I mean, who do you think Tony Blinken is? You think he's Biden's man? Lincoln's Hillary's man. Who do you think Jake Sullivan is? He's Hillary's man. The entire Biden team is Hillary Clinton's team with a sprinkling of Obama. But that's the bottom line. And all of these people then have links to academia, have links to boards, think tanks. And then all of those think tanks, everything control the minds of those people working their way up. You want to apply to a think tank. You have to conform with Blinken, Sullivan, people of this nature. You want to get your master's degree in Foreign Service at the Foreign Service Institute at Georgetown. You've got to conform, baby. They have the Madeleine Albright building named after Madeleine Albright, who was teaching there. And all of the professors there are all liberal hacks or conservative hacks from previous administrations. Where is Trump going to get an independent thinker? Who can be second? He tried that. He tried going to Rex Tillerson. Oil guy. Didn't work out. He then had to pick up Mike Pompeo. Establish me guy. He went to Mike Flynn, outsider. Mike Flynn got flushed by the system. He had to go to the bald headed general. Last name again with an M. But he had to cashier him too, because independent thinkers can't survive in Washington DC. They'll be snagged at. Nobody will listen to him. He would death 5,000 cuts. So then he had to bring in John Bolton. And suddenly John Bolton came in and Washington DC went, "Man, we got one of ours in there." Mike Pompeo became Secretary of State. "Oh, thank God. We got one of ours in there." So who is Trump going to put in? And this is the fatal flaw of a Trump administration. For all the people out there thinking, "This will be great. It won't be great. It won't be great." Because he won't have a great administration. His administration will accomplish nothing. Literally nothing. Whatever new ideas he may come up with, we sabotage by the people he has to put in his cabinets who don't work for him. They work for the establishment. And they will do the establishment spitting, just like they did before. This is the fatal flaw of a Trump presidency. One might have thought to say-- Could you say a little bit more about-- I take your word for it when you say Rex Tillerson didn't work out. But could you explain a little further why it wouldn't work out in general? Like why it wouldn't be the lesser of evils? Let's put it that way. To pick people who aren't part of the deep state and just run with that. And you say they won't-- nobody will listen to them. But it's still the president's cabinet. Isn't that better than picking deep state characters? Well, you want to pick loyal people. You want to pick people that are going to execute your program. Rex Tillerson, first of all, wasn't Trump's guy either. He was an independent thinker. But he got in the State Department and the State Department refused to work for him. There's the problem because he's not one of them. And so every time he tried to push back against Trump, wasn't getting the back up in the State Department needed. He tried to come up with new policy, wasn't getting the back up. Tried to promote Trump policy, wasn't getting the back up. Totally ineffective, Secretary of State. Smart man, the CEO of a major oil company clearly knows he's not stupid. Couldn't function in the State Department. And unless Trump picks somebody from the State Department crowd, it's not. And now if you pick somebody from the State Department crowd, understand this. They don't work for Trump. Never will because they're part of the establishment. Joe Biden came in and said, "I tell this story all the time. I'll tell it again." Joe Biden ran. Joe Biden. He's like Mr. Establishment. He ran on a program, on a platform, of promoting, moving away from preemptive nuclear strike as American nuclear posture, and promoting purely the sole purpose theory, meaning that the sole purpose of American nuclear weapons was to deter other nations from using nuclear weapons against us, and that we would only use nuclear weapons if we were first attacked with nuclear weapons. Makes sense, called mutually assured destruction. Makes sense. I mean, President. And a year and a half later, they published a nuclear posture that not only retained nuclear preemption, but expanded upon it. And when a senior Biden administration, arms control officials, spoke at the INF reunion two years ago, they were asked a question, how did this come about? A man who ran saying he wanted to do this, why didn't it happen? The answer was, the interagency wasn't ready. Now, Biden's an insider. He's one of them. And the interagency wasn't ready. Couldn't get it done. Couldn't get it done. He's the president of the United States. The ultimate insider knows how the system worked. Couldn't get it done. Donald Trump doesn't know how the system works. He's an outsider in Washington, D.C. Hasn't a clue how things work there. He will not get anything done because nobody supports him. Now, he thinks he can come in and clean house. I mean, one of his theories is I'm going to fire everybody. Okay, but then who are you going to replace them with? There is no Trump University out there. I mean, there was, but there is no Trump University that grows Trumpites. People go, Oh, Donald Trump is the best thing to slice bread. And I'm ready to support him because I've been studying Trump's philosophy on foreign policy. I'm ready to follow Donald Trump to the gates of hell. You don't have anybody like that. There's literally nobody out there. He's out there right now. I'll show you how pathetic Donald Trump is because he is pathetic because he's so isolated. When Marco Rubio is one of your top three contenders, the vice president, it means you have no bench. When Marco little hands Rubio, who hates Donald Trump and Donald Trump hates him in a short list of vice president, he's got no bench. And that's vice president. Now imagine trying to fill the other billots. This is going to be, I'm not allowed to use the word, but it'll be the proverbial poop show. Is that a PG 13 version of it? Your Trump University agrees useless? No, save it. It might be worth something someday. But, um, you know, this is, this is the problem with Donald Trump is even if he's a man, look, you saw it. One of his good ideas. I mean, I will forever praise Donald Trump for his outreach to North Korea. I thought it was a stroke of genius. Couldn't get it done. He needed a secretary of state and a national security adviser who would run, you know, honcho this through their respective bureaucracies. And said he got stabbed in the back by Mike Pompeo, who committed treason, active treason, active treason, Mike Pompeo should be shot, literally what he did to Donald Trump and sabotaging this. And John Bolton was no better. The mustachioed one and the fat one, conspired to undermine a sitting president of the United States, basically refusing to obey orders and in conspiring against his back. But that's all he's going to get. He's going to get people. Roger, I can't say it because I made a pledge. There we go. It came from, but it's perfectly time. But that's the problem. I mean, even even if I were Donald Trump's biggest fan, and I'm not. But let's say I was hypothetically right now put on. I mean, I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt. I might as well be. You know, I'm Donald Trump's biggest fan. I think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. He's going to be the utter failure as a president because there's no one that he can rely on. He hasn't spent the last four years building depth. He spent the last four years, you know, holding rallies and, you know, being a narcissist and perfecting his non-existing golf game and all this other stuff. But instead, instead of holding court, I mean, I hate Madeleine Albrecht with a passion. But, you know, God bless her. She at least was in Georgetown and had a parlor where she brought in experts and they began to discuss things like foreign policy. If I were Donald Trump and I said I'm going to run for president, I would have had a Wednesday night gathering where I'd bring in foreign policy people and just start brainstorming, just start meeting people, talking to people, grooming people, saying, "Hey, I like what you're saying. Come back next week." I mean, he's that way. You're fired. You're hired. Whatever. Make it the apprentice. But start bringing people in who will deal with various issues. He's clueless right now. He's got nobody. He hasn't built a team. And he can't build a team because he's not a team player. Anyways, there's my answer to the question. Also, if you, I think people are afraid to join his team because they may be subjected to lawfare. They're not, they're going after not just him, but people who are associated with him. Scared. Yeah, I mean, I'm not discounting that too. I mean, this is the way that thing at least Trump now has immunity. We found out that he can order still team six to assassinate his political opponents according to the idiot liberals in the Supreme Court. But look, I'm angry about this because he's probably going to be president of the United States. And I want him to succeed if he's going to be president. I mean, I want all presidents to succeed. I want Joe Biden to succeed. You know, but I don't want, I don't want any president of the United States to fail because he's my commander in chief. He's my president, whether I voted for him or not. Donald Trump is likely to be my president and I want him to succeed. And it just frustrates me that he hasn't prepared for victory. I mean, Jared is not your, your, your go to guy and yet he will be. Oh, you think he'll be back in the administration? I thought he had enough. How do you, how do you reject power? How do you reject being in the inner circle of the most powerful man on the planet? Yeah, I think you have a point there. Is this John in South Carolina? No worries, Jeff. Well, feel free to call every episode, John. We can't get enough of you. What's on your mind? Well, start. Good evening. Good evening, everybody. Scott, you talked about General Ryan. And I saw your program this week on Wednesday with the Brazilian fellow. And I was wondering if, if, if General Ryan was not fan bagged and was left to remain in the administration, do you think that some of these problems that we encountered later down the line would have, you know, not happened. And then number two, regarding the nuclear football, who, who right now is controlling the nuclear football? It certainly can't be Biden. Who do you think is carrying this thing around? Thank you. Where you go? Where you go? I need to get General who? Yeah. What's the General's name? General Michael Flynn. Yeah, yeah. You said Ryan before, General Ryan. No, that's okay. I make the same mistake all the time. I, I call Jeff George and I call Ryan Mike. But, so Mike Flynn. Yeah, all those Irishmen are the same. Our favorite Irishmen is on hold, so I'll warn the audience, but that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. You're welcome. You know, if, if, if, you know, Mike Flynn came in and I think his first move is a national security advisor was to give a press conference where he put Iran on notice. I'm like, well, wait a minute. You're, you're the national security advisor. Your job is to advise the president. You usually do that in consultation with the interagency, not, not, not the blob, but an interagency process. You're the national security advisor. You share what's known as the principles meeting. The principles meeting is where the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, all the principles come together and you do big picture policy. And then so you might say, we want to warn Iran off. And, and then the secretary of state will say, well, I don't think that's a good idea because of that begins this process of data that we're not prepared. And then the secretary of defense goes, well, before we do that, we want to make sure we have a military force division in the region to carry out the secretary of treasury says, well, you know, maybe instead of warning them, or do you want to bring in a treasury factor? Do you want to begin sanctions? That's what happened. It's called coordinated policy. Flynn just got up there and spoke. Why? Because he's a madman. Okay, Mike Flynn is a madman. He may have been a good, you know, general officer. I didn't serve under him. So I don't know. But, you know, this is a guy who once he got rid of the uniform and started delving into, you know, national security policy shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near decision making process because he is a man who doesn't understand the system. And that was evident on day one, when he came up unilaterally and issued a warning to Iran. That's not how policies done, Mike. I think he was sandbag. I think the evidence is that the FBI went in there and deliberately, you know, provoked a scenario that led to, you know, his being falsely charged. I'm not, again, I'm not a fan of his, but I'm never in favor of people, you know, being the victims of politicized law enforcement, especially from the FBI. I mean, I'm sorry FBI. You guys, you're just, you don't deserve to exist. There's really no reason for you to exist. You do nothing good. There's nothing you do that can't be done by another agency better because they haven't shown a proclivity to be politicized to the extent that you have. And you know what I'm talking about. Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Again, not the biggest Donald Trump fan here, but what you did to him was a crime. And what they did to Mike Flynn was a crime, but I don't think him staying in would have done it. He would have been a failure. The system would not have functioned. He would have eventually had to have been replaced because Donald Trump. The one thing he does know is when he sees something that's inefficient, something that's not working, he's able to say this ain't working the way it should. And with Mike Flynn, the National Security Council was never going to work the way it should have. And so they, they, he was gone. So I don't, I don't think the Trump administration would have been saved. If Flynn stayed on, I just think that it would have had a different kind of, you know, negative impact. Yeah, they are Roger. Yeah, they are. Now, the second part of your question dealt with, let me see if I can remember this right. We dealt with Mike Flynn being sandbag and we went to Jeff, help me. Well, how about if I ask my own follow up question, do you think there's any chance that Flynn will be in the next Trump administration? Probably not. I think he showed poor judgment. I mean, no matter what you think of him being sandbagged, I think he showed poor judgment. And if, if I were close to Donald Trump, I'd say, no, you, you don't want that that's bringing in baggage you don't need, you need to, you know, And of course, my understanding is far less sophisticated than yours, but what I'm thinking of in my stupid, unsophisticated way is that he's willing to take on the deep state. And that's the sort of thing that I crave. Well, I mean, taking on the deep state, that's like me taking on a tidal wave with a surfboard. Yeah, I'm going to die. I'm not qualified to surf the big waves. That's like me going out to Portugal and saying, I'm doing the big wave, baby. No, you're just going to die. Mike Flynn is being willing to do something and being able to do it is totally different. And I don't think Flynn is able to take on it. I think the deep state has proven that they can take him down any time they want. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, there's a number of reasons why I'm not a fan of Mike Flynn and one of those is the QAnon conspiracy. But again, he's not a bad person. I mean, he served his nation with honor. He was part of McChrystal's team in Iraq that transformed the hunt for Zuahiri. I think it wasn't killed him. So he's not incompetent. If he was operating within the four corners of an environment that like the army that could protect him because understand when you're a general, you're protected by a whole bunch of kernels, lieutenant kernels and majors. You have a team that's protecting you. You're up there doing general stuff and they're sort of sifting through the crap that makes it up stuff that makes it up to you. And when you make a mistake, they have a way of deflecting the mistake and absorbing the impact and good staff to make a bad general look good. I'm not saying that Flynn was a bad general. I'm saying that Flynn was a man who had a tendency to make bad decisions on occasion and good staff to take a bad decision and make a good decision. So Flynn was protected by quality military staffs. When he got to the National Security Council, he didn't have a staff backing up because if he did, a good deputy national security advisor said, you ain't going out there and speaking to the crowd. Today, boss, ain't going to happen. That's the dumbest thing in the world. We're going to sit down. We're going to talk about this. Why don't I convene an expert group over here and we'll begin to discuss what you want. Why don't you tell us what outcome you want. We'll tell you how we're going to get to that outcome, but you going out there reading what you're going to read right now. It's the worst thing in the world you can do for the National Security United States and frankly speaking, you're not going to do it. That's what a good deputy would have done. No, Flynn could have fired him, but that would have been foolish because Flynn should have thanked him and said, okay, convene the experts meeting and let's have a process here. Flynn fired off his mouth without a process. That's stupidity. All right, apologies to John because we didn't remember the second question, but if you send it to us on one of the social media channels. I sometimes like it caught up. I really should do it, but maybe we can get me. Look after that, Ryan. If John wants to submit, we'll get it to it in text form. Sim from Australia, everyone knows about the official US government, and we think we know about the deep state. But are you able to talk about the lesser known deep black state? I haven't heard about that. Well, when you use the term black, you're talking about off the books. You're talking about covert something that doesn't exist. So the implication in that question is that there is a shadow government or shadow institutions that nobody knows about. They're just out there doing their thing. It's not what the deep state is, but it's the really, really deep deep state. What's the difference? Well, the deep state is the establishment, is the institutions. I mean, and you can quantify that. The deep black state would be, I'll give you an example. By Congress, they do actually have a mandate. They can create something called the special activity staff, whose job is covert operations and deniable covert operations. And Congress says they can lie about it to anyone, including Congress. It's there right there. And so if you want to do this now, you might have to create, you know, front companies. Deniable front companies means nobody knows about them. They're just there. I remember when I back when I was doing the weapons inspector stuff, I mean, I was just a dumb old, first lieutenant. And I was running counter intelligence, just because nobody else did. I inherited. I don't know anything about counter intelligence. The phone starts ringing and I have to go to these meetings. And so I end up going to this meeting and there's people around the table and they start handing me their, their business cards. And I've been been meetings before and I got, you know, I got Lieutenant Colonel Joe Schumapatelli, you know, head of counter intelligence division ABCD EFG national security. Oh, thank you. Lieutenant Colonel Eric Lemonhead. He is the head of counter intelligence division 36 with inscom army inscom intelligence. God, thank you. You know, Jeffrey P. Riley, CEO, you know, Tennessee import export company. Why are you here for the CEO of an export import company? Don't ask questions, Scott. Oh, okay. We still don't understand. And I suddenly I have all these business cards from export import companies. And I'm like, what the hell is it? It's the deep black state. It's the part of the world that doesn't exist. They don't exist. And they're unaccountable. They're there everywhere. So is that what you're talking about? I wouldn't know a damn thing about it. And if I did, I wouldn't talk about it. Next question, please. All right, that was a good answer. Let's take another phone call from our friend in Cooperstown, where the baseball hall of fame is located. Hello, Tom. Hey, good evening, Jeff. Good evening, Scott. How you guys doing? I got a lot of personal problems. Got to go with a better answer. I'm sorry to hear that Jeff. Hope you're feeling better. Thank you. Guys, I got just a few quick things. First of all, I like the Marine shirt, but I do want to pass along condolences to the family of major general, William Mullen III. But he just died recently after coming back from Ukraine. Also a suggestion with regards to September 28th event. I know Julian Assange is back home in Australia. Thank God. I know he'll never come to the U.S. But an idea that I have is if possibly with the time zones, if it isn't allowable, a camber is about 15 hours ahead. If that's not allowable live, maybe he could do it like a video, you know, just, you know, in appreciation of what you guys are doing for the Peace Rally. And then my question is with regards to Russia, with regards to the negotiations, also President Orban and President Putin met in Moscow. Do you think the Russians should and could and will advance towards Odessa to try to get more leverage and make Ukraine landlocked? I'm sorry. It's a few things, but the address support is my main question. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you, Tom. You're writing them down now. There's the sheet. They get multiple questions in. I'm learning. You can, you know, old dog, new tricks, pen, paper, questions, write it down. I don't forget. You know, first of all, with General Mullen, yeah, I mean, you know, I don't agree with America's Ukraine policy. And I don't agree with the mission that General Mullen was on, but he was an honorable man. He was a cool dude. In his 50s, he took the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test, and there's a famous picture of him. One part of is where you have to pick up a Marine, your, your, your, your buddy and fireman carry and run with him. And here's a 50-year-old, 55-year-old dude picking up a full-sized Marine on his shoulders, and he's running ahead, charging, and he, you know, didn't have to do it, but he did it because leaders lead from the front. And so, you know, he was, he was known as a, as a good leader, a good Marine, and his death is a tragedy. So he, he was at 29 poms, and he, they found him dead in the, in, in his quarters. Still don't know any more about that. So we'll find out about a son, Joe. You know, the September 28th event is singularly focused on no nukes. It's not anti-war. It's not peace. This is 100% about no nuclear war, pro-nuclear disarmament, pro-arms control. And it has to be that way because that's the only way, if I, if I, if I start spreading it out, people's votes are going to get spread out with it. The idea is to make this a single issue event and trying to convince as many people possible to attach their vote to that single issue to create a center of gravity that is sufficient to make the major candidates. Come to us and promulgate policy options that are in keeping with what we're trying to accomplish. So we have to keep it simple. I think, you know, in a son's presence, maybe should be for another event, another time. And I think it's too soon for me to try and pull whatever strings I have to gain access to him and see if that can be done. If I'm going to, if I'm going to pull that trigger, you know, expend that round ammunition. It's going to be for something that has real impact with a son's presence. I think this would be sort of wasted effort because it wouldn't exactly support what we're trying to do. And it's, it would be a waste effort. Maybe too soon for him too. I mean, you know, I'm giving them a huge amount of space. And, you know, I have the ability to interact with his inner circle, but it's no. I actually my philosophy on that one is, if they feel that I can be of use to them, they'll come to me and will work something out rather than me imposing on them. I've let it be known that I'm available to them. But it's a decision they have to make. I'm not going to be the one trying to initiate that. It's just wrong. He's spent so much time away from his family. Let Joy Assange be in peace right now. We don't even know if he's up to being any kind of a public figure at all. We don't. We don't know anything. We don't know anything except that he's not in Belmarsh right now and that's a good thing. Russia or Ban Putin make a move on Odessa. Vladimir Putin has made it clear, his most recent peace plan, that the limits of Russia's territorial interests are Crimea. The reason why I say it in their totality is because territory in the United States is still under occupation by the Ukrainian forces. And so Russia won't stop until all the territory has been freed of Ukrainian presence and the Russians control. He hasn't said, "No, we're going to Odessa. We're taking Karkov. We're going to take Nippur Patrosk, sue me," et cetera. He did say, though, if Ukraine rejected this peace offer, that the next one won't be a negotiation. It'll be Russia dictating the terms of unconditional surrender and the terms will be very harsh. And one can use their imagination and think that maybe that means Odessa now is Russia, Karkov's Russia, et cetera. We're not there yet. So it'd be sort of premature for Putin to put pressure on Odessa when putting pressure on Odessa is part of his current peace plan. So I don't think it makes sense for him to move on Odessa at this point in time. If you're going to move on to Odessa, it's not going to be about putting pressure. It's going to be about taking it. And before you can do that, you really need to get the Ukrainians down as close to zero as possible in terms of combat capability because large-scale offensive operations, and this would be a large-scale offensive operation can be very expensive in terms of manpower and equipment. And Putin also made it clear that while his military has put forward plans that would allow for a much more rapid advance on the battlefield, he has denied them because he doesn't want to lose the man. He thinks they're winning this war. He thinks that the victory is theirs. There's no need to rush this. In fact, the more you continue this, the weaker NATO appears to get the weaker Ukrainian military. It gets the stronger Russia gets. So Putin's in no hurry. There's no need for Putin to disrupt the military algorithms that are playing right now in this war of attrition, which is decisively working out in favor of Russia. Next question is from Owen in Ireland, and we keep getting more and more questions from our friends in Ireland. That's great. What are the facts around the 1932/33 famine as you understand them? My understanding is that the 1932/33 famine was a famine that hit the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, meaning that it wasn't just Ukraine, but it also hit southern Russia, it hit Kazakhstan. That it was related to poor, just a bad crop of poor agricultural practices, a need to supply, because when you have a bad crop, you need to make sure that urban areas, the cities, have food, so a diversion of food away from the territories that grew them. It's also part of the ongoing social warfare that was taking place between the trend on the part of the Soviets to collectivize agriculture and the coup lock, or the independent farmers that there was class war still taking place. So when you put all this together, you end up with a catastrophe. The catastrophe struck everybody, not just Ukrainians, struck Russians, struck Kazakhs. And there's a reason why it wasn't called the "holodomor" back then. That's a made-up word. That's a word that was invented later in the 1980s, I believe, to describe something that had become politicized by Western Ukrainians that are trying to create the myth of the Russians seeking to annihilate the Ukrainian race. Nothing can be further from the truth. Alright, the next question is from Reid Davis in Eugene, Oregon. I have been wondering why Iran and Hezbollah haven't got better security to prevent their top people from being assassinated. Both are using some of the most sophisticated technology when it comes to weaponry, and yet they cannot prevent the Zionists from mowing their leadership grass. Well, first of all, rather than let's focus on the so-called incompetence of Iran and Hezbollah, why don't we acknowledge that the Israelis are pretty good at doing certain things and assassinations appears to be something that they have become quite skilled at. You know, the Israelis had a major presence in southern Lebanon. I just want to remind people where Hezbollah is from, southern Lebanon. And the Israelis were there from, what, 1982 up until 2000, 18 years. And if you don't think that the Shin Bet and Mossad and other Israeli security agencies didn't groom long-term stay-behind assets, then you know nothing about how Israel works. So, there are a lot of Israeli resources in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has some success in rooting them out, as well as lesser success in rooting others out. And there are resources there that are solely tasked with identifying, tracking, and reporting the location of senior Hezbollah leadership. And as a result, no matter what Hezbollah does, eventually, some of them are going to be detected, and that's going to be communicated back in the Israelis are right there across the border, able to use dedicated resources, drones, artillery shells, et cetera, to take these guys out. The same thing with Iran. Iran has, you know, any number of societal fractures. You know, when I was doing the Iraq thing as a weapons inspector, what I found out is that the favorite resource of almost every foreign intelligence service in the world in Iraq were the Kurds, because the Kurds were everywhere. They were in Baghdad, they were the taxi drivers, shop owners, you know, they were there. But the Kurds also were in the north in a zone that was outside of the control of Iraq. And so the CIA, MI6, Mossad were all up north, creating relationships with Kurdish families that had relatives in Baghdad and were able to extend their tentacles into Baghdad. And as a result, information could be collected. And if that information was actionable, then decisions could be made. And the Kurds could be used then to spin off, you know, other networks amongst Christians or amongst Shia or amongst Sunni tribes who have been somehow alienated by Saddam. But the Kurds became the conduit to make these other things happen. Iran is the same way that you have Kurds, you have Arabs, you have Azeris, you have Baloch, you have Arabs, all of whom are Iranian, all of whom have a presence in Tehran, all of whom have a presence throughout Iran. They own their shop owners, their taxi drivers, their businessmen, their low-level functionaries, they're all over the place. And the CIA and foreign intelligence services and the Mossad all work with them. There's a reason why the Mossad is still in northern Iraq because they're working with the Kurds of Iran who come over and coordinate closely with the Kurds of Iraq. And they're able to insinuate themselves there. They also work with the Mujahideen al-Kulk, which is a very powerful anti-theocratic group that's been around since the 1970s. And they use them to say the MEK is very good and insinuated itself into Iraqi society. They do so in a way that makes it virtually impossible for them to be detected. And so when you have these people there scouting things out inside institutions, they locate, they identify somebody, his position, and they find out where he lives. They do the pattern of life evaluation. They find out the weakness. They identify a window of opportunity. And in the Israelis put together a plan of action that has the guy being taken out. It's just the reality of life. This is a contest. The Iranians are rolling up Israeli networks. The Israelis seek to reconstitute these networks. Hezbollah rolls up Israeli networks. They reconstitute. But what we can say is, despite the fact that these assassinations are taking place, Israel's not winning. So the implication that either Hezbollah or Iran has been fatally injured by any of this assassination is absurd. The programs that they have are continued. It's just the way the world works. It's a dirty business. Israel's good at it, but not that good because killing somebody is easy. Killing the right guy in a way that stops a program. That's a more difficult thing. And Israel has never stopped any Iranian program in any Hezbollah program. So it sort of failed in their ultimate objective. Alright, let's take a phone call from the Newman of Ireland. Hello, Newman. Hello, Mark. Hi, Jeff. Hello, you like a dose of salt? How are you? Fantastic. How are you? It's good. Thank you for taking my call. We'll take your time getting to the question. We have nothing but time. It is to our version. It's supposed to refer to you, Scott, though, not Mark, but all right. Mark, you think you might be ready? Let's get down to the brass tacks. Please. The fact that is a couple of slight suggestions. And the first one I got to start off with, Scott, you and Anya, your show today. You're on was a really good show. And Anya pointed out to yourself that her goal is to go and make herself live in Russia. And your goal is to bring her over to America. So I taught the idea that maybe those in America who have the ability and the funds. To buy a second book and donate those books to the libraries, the high schools, the colleges or the universities where they actually studied. As a means to actually not only help that situation, but actually educate their fellow Americans in the situation that's going on at the moment. Do you think that's not a bad idea? I think it's a great idea. I wrote it down and we're going to find a way to implement that and we'll call it Mark's program. I know I don't want that. Now, the second one is. The second and final. The second and final question. Well, I have a t-shirt and a game for suggesting for yourselves. Okay, so you can cut me up anytime you want to, Jeff. You're, you are the. How should I say the QR code inspector. The clock is taken there in 131. I will. I think we claim it time to start with this. The three minutes. Just fine. She's running for presidency and nobody's got to listen to her because every portion of Trump and Biden, blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah, she has no mantra, whatever. How about they lied to get into wars and now they want to create war to protect the lives as the t-shirt and the mantra behind that. Because that's what they're doing. Now, the key thing is, and this is where Jeff, I'm going to pick on you personally as in the QR code, as in to put on the lies that were created. And Jeff, you create the QR codes where everybody actually sees the lies with the weapons of mass destruction, the. They are talking with all that kind of stuff. That's the first part. The second part is then. Why do you want to go to war? Because they want to stop the fact that inflation, the destruction of farming, the destruction of the economy, the. You know, email was invented for people like you, and yeah, and ideas. Just just just just just just remember that Scott admits that he just can't even control the emails because he hasn't got the ability to because he had met a lovely lady and he said it himself. He can't actually do that. He doesn't have the staff. All right. I'll read your email. Thank you, Mark. Okay. That's enough. Should we move on to the next question or do you want to? Let's follow through on that Jill stock. I think she has a lot to say. And such would you think bring her on a show on a Tuesday and talking to her be worthwhile and never. Sure, why not? But why Tuesday as opposed to Friday, just out of curiosity, what's the thinking behind that? There's no thinking. Can I quote you on that? That's going to be an audio clip later. There's no thinking. I think, you know, whenever we can get somebody good is fine, but in general, I kind of prefer Fridays for guests because we have more time. I meant I'm dyslexic. I'm mentally dyslexic. So what I meant to say was Friday, but I said Tuesday because my brain. Yeah, sure. Well, I will reach out to Jill and see if she'd be willing to come on the show. All right. Don't tell her how I grill Dennis Kucinich about we should blame the ordinary people, not just the media. I think we should give Jill Stein ample opportunity to tell us about her policies and we should be as the least amount of disruptive as possible. By the way, I heard you on Cynthia Pueller's podcast that I loved how you were amplifying that point about the ordinary people deserve a little bit more blame. See, I listen, I listen, don't think I don't think I'm not monitoring your activities. I am afraid you are. That's the problem. Next question is from Meda Kolokov in Malma, Sweden. Is it true that Russia has developed and deployed into service a nuclear powered and nuclear armed torpedo capable of delivering a 100 megaton nuclear bomb? What do you know about this doomsday weapon? Well, I think it's called Poseidon. I mean, that's the name that I'm familiar with it. You know, President Putin, I think announced the concept of this weapon back in 2018. I think the weapon has entered into operational service. The idea is that it can be fired from submarine and because it's nuclear powered, it can sort of go off and hide off the coast, go down low and just sit. And at the appropriate time, whether on its own or through a signal, it can go off the coast of the United States or off of Europe and initiate an underground massive underground nuclear explosion, whether it's 100 megatons. I don't know. It's a lot. And that would generate a tidal wave that would basically take out the seaboard. So that's the theory of the weapon. That's what I know. I don't know anymore. Me neither. Mico and Serbia, in which way is Hezbollah's military wing, if at all, incorporated into the regular Lebanese defense structures? It's not as well as a standalone capability. The justification for its continued existence is that Israel continues to occupy Lebanese soil. That's one of the reasons why when they did this, the UN resolution calling for the disarmament of the various militias that existed in Lebanon was passed. Hezbollah got the waiver because Hezbollah is a resistance movement that exists to resist Israeli occupation. And the Sheba farms section of Lebanon, Israel has a different interpretation. They say it's part of actually Syria, and therefore Hezbollah doesn't matter. Hezbollah says Sheba farms is Lebanon, as long as Israel has Sheba farms, Hezbollah has a right to exist, and that has been accepted by everybody but the United States and Israel. So that's where we stand on that. All right, let's take another phone call. This might be a first time caller. I'm not sure. Hey there, you're on with our favorite weapons inspector. What's on your mind? Hi, Scott and Jeff. This is Matt from Pennsylvania came down the mountain, not with the tablets, but with a cell phone. And I talked to, I mentioned to Scott last week, the notion of using existing infrastructure, like shipping ships and shipping containers and putting things like hypersonic missiles in there. Scott, you know this because you were a war planner. There are multiple scenarios where China and Russia joined at the hip now, had capabilities. I mean, I can't talk about them, I'd have to be. We'd have to be like in the corner silence with get smart because it's chaos related. But there's all kinds of mayhem they could create. I looked, I read some of the stuff in the Pentagon and I'm not too impressed and there are people like Mark or Rubio. They seem like the brightest people. So my question to you is, are you confident that America is on top of their vulnerabilities relative to existing infrastructure at home and abroad. Thanks so much. Thank you, sir. Thanks. My competent that America is competent. No, I'm not confident. I'm not confident at all. You know, it's, first of all, when you speak of containerized weapons system, you know, the United States has what's known as the Mark 70. I can't remember if I mentioned this last week or not, but it's literally called the containerized missile launch system. It's designed to fit in an ISO size container and it can, the ability to raise the pod and fire. Tomahawks and SM six typhoon missiles is there and we ship it as an ISO container. We, you know, the CVs, maybe construction battalions, you know, they train on moving this around. You know, the army has the units. The CVs work with the army to move these around. So we've already done the containerized thing. And, you know, I mean, you can read stories about. Seal team six, when they deployed to Yugoslavia to go after high value targets, how they deployed in ISO containers. So as they're moving around, nobody knows that inside there is a seal team six unit. And that's one of the ways they allegedly covertly moved around. That's from the media. I can't say that I know anything about that. But the point is, we know that, you know, container ISO containers. It's one of the great weak spots. How do you, I mean, we just move these things around. They're on ships all over the place. Drug smugglers have been using them for years to move drugs. They use it to move people. And we have no control over this. So, you know, the expenses that would have to go into place to monitor all port facilities. You know, in all ISO containers, it's a huge expense. And it would disrupt the flow of trade. So I don't think we have a plan at all on how to do this. And I am concerned that, you know, a smart hostile actor, whether it be state or non state, could find a way to use containers to inflict harm on the United States. I'm very, very concerned about that. I would like to see us shut down a couple carrier battle groups, which we don't need. And take that money and apply it to, you know, coming up with a rapid screening process at all the major points of entry so that we can, you know, handle this. I would suggest that we do something that actually gets them from their port of debarkation. You know, embarkation. Where are they leave from? Shame on me using big words. Where are the ship leaves from when they put the container on the ship? And then it goes across the ocean. That there should be a way to inspect these containers while it's en route. So that if there's any suspicious activity found, it can be stopped before it gets into our territory or water. Because, frankly speaking, by the time it arrives in an American port and, you know, it gets in a position where it can be offload, it's too late. So, you know, how do we do that? I don't know. I hire a bunch of people. You know, we want a jobs program that will hold a bunch of inspectors whose job it is to get on the ship and as the ship goes across, they painstakingly inspect each ISO container coming up with a protocol that does that. Something like that. I'm sure there's technology. There's x-rays, installing x-rays. You know, we had this thing called cargo scan that we put into the Soviet Union. The x-ray, the rail cars as they came out to look at the missiles inside the launch container. So, you know, geez. Imagine if we built cargo scans at every major facility. And as an ISO container is going on a ship, it gets scanned and you have trained inspectors sitting there going, uh, re-inspect, let it go, let it go. But still, even after that, you have follow-on inspectors walking around with, you know, radiation detection devices, uh, doing random, um, opening of containers to inspect inside. I'd like to spend money on that. I really would. I think that would be a fantastic expenditure of taxpayer money because it safeguards America. And I'm all about safeguarding America. Yeah, we check under 3% containers for the last 25 years. That ain't enough. That's just not enough. Um, I'm a big fan of 100% inspection of containers to some degree and, um, uh, maybe a 30% inspection of containers, um, you know, with a more detailed inspection. And we can do this in a way. Had to jump in there today. They probably did. Probably annoying the seals. They probably had air conditioning. They probably had TVs and video games too. Uh, maybe a microwave and some popcorn. But, um, the point is the, um, there, you know, it comes down to money. Um, we should do it. We should spend the money on that. I'd rather spend the money on that, you know, than hiring. You know, right now we, we are hiring, uh, an ungodly number of quote unquote intelligence analysts for these, uh, these projects. They just sit at a computer and they don't do analysis at all. They, they just, they're looking at very narrow segments of data. It's a total waste of money. Total waste of time. I could do more with one well trained Marine Corps intelligence officer than I could with a building of DHS intelligence analysts. Um, let's take those bodies and let's put them to work. You know, doing old fashioned inspections. Cause that's what's needed. It's not just about the technology. It's about getting a body, a trained body with trained eyeballs attached to a train brain. And, um, doing the physical inspection. All right. Speaking of spending money, I see somebody has spent a few bucks to ask you a question. An international caller is on hold. The country code is four four. What country is that? Do you know? That is great. Great Britain. This is George Galloway, the George Galloway. Are you calling for Great Britain? Hello there. Of course I am. Yes. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning. My name is Tommy Glasgow. Very quick question. Uh, newly elected. tier Stama British Prime Minister. Uh, friend of Jimmy Savo, protector of him and now friend of the King. Do you think that the Britain will be the new Zionist colony of Western Europe, i.e. that he's bought and paid for by the Israeli Zionist government? Will they be more proactive than any other country in Western Europe now? And how bad will it get in Europe and Britain and Scotland? Should I emigrate and where should I go to? I'll leave this creation. I'll go and listen to them on wait. And it's beautiful lessons to use jobs. Take care. Peace out. Thank you. Love you. Scott, he actually sounded a little like George Galloway, didn't he? Per minute there, I was getting scared. I'm sorry. I'm good, George. I know. Um, but the, uh, you know, first of all, where to emigrate to, um, I'm not a big fan of that. I mean, I'd welcome you to New York. I'd welcome you to the United States. We allowed Craig Ferguson to come over, so why not you? Um, you know, we, we, we know how to deal with those strong Glasgow accents. I don't know where yours is from, but, uh, you know, he's probably like, Glasgow. I'm not from Glasgow. I'm from Edinburgh or, or something. But the point is you're welcome to come. I'm a big fan of staying at home trying to fix the problems, but, uh, your starmer might be too big of a problem to fix. I think you're just dead on in terms of, um, his loyalty to Israel. I mean, he, he might as well be an Israeli citizen. Um, and I think England's going to pay a heavy price because Israel is increasingly isolated in the world today. Um, and England is going to become even more isolated than it already is by, uh, blind. It's blind support for Israel. So this is going to be a very bad move, uh, for your starmer. Um, in addition to the other things, I mean, you know, this is a man who, you know, continues to articulate strongly for. Um, yeah, I'm very upset that George lost, but you know what? Well, he lost by 1500 votes. But the workers party gained 200,000 votes and, um, that shows that, uh, there's a movement. And again, starmer was, you know, brought in by a tidal wave of anti-tory votes. Give England a couple of years, and I think you're going to see a tidal wave of anti-starmer votes. And, uh, people are going to begin to appreciate George Galloway and, uh, bring him and like-minded people into power. Um, yeah, Brooklyn Knight, uh, that's a, that's a code word, right? You meant something else, but, uh, the, um, I think he's a disaster. He's an embarrassment. Um, you know, we'll see. Well, we'll see. I, I don't see England doing well under his leadership and I don't see his leadership blasting. Um, much longer. I think he will be yet another name and a long string of bail politicians who tried to lead a dysfunctional nation. We have a voicemail message from a gentleman in Bangladesh named Moscatim. Let's say, as things escalate between Israel and Hezbollah, at what point would Hezbollah be forced to or would make the decision to target various strategic assets of Israel? For example, the airport, power plant, nuclear command center, warships, etc. And Hezbollah does chose to do so. What is the likelihood or at what point would Israel use a small-scale tactical nuclear missile on Lebanon? And if Israel does, what would be the consequences? And what would be, what could be the most likely reaction of the leaders of the Arab state, who have mostly been subservient to Israel for various reasons? Very good question. Um, Hezbollah has already indicated that if Israel is serious about going to war, um, and initiating a large-scale strike against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, that Hezbollah may very well preempt that Israeli action. So Hezbollah is monitoring things. I don't think Hezbollah is going to sit there and let Israel knock its fist and throw the first punch. I think when they see Israel do this, Hezbollah is going to hit them and the fight begins. This is a fight that will be unlike any fight that we've seen ever between Arabs and Israelis. First of all, the technology that's going to be brought to bear by both sides is devastating in terms of its lethality. And in the case of both sides, it's accuracy. So you're able to deliver precision strikes with extraordinarily powerful and large quantities over a very small, relatively small area. So the way this fight's going to look like is that it's basically massive violence on both sides. And what one side is trying to do is get what's called fire suppression over the enemy. So you're, if I'm firing everything I have at you, you're firing everything at you have at me, what you're hoping is at some point in time as I'm firing, I'm going to hear the bullets going to buy my head or I'm going to take one of my head and go down. But either way, I stop firing, I duck down, you keep firing. Now, it's going to be much more difficult for me than I'm down here to raise back up in fire. Because even if I raise back up and you don't shoot me, my fire's not going to be well-aimed fire. Meanwhile, you who've stayed up putting well-aimed fire down, that's how you get fire superiority, then fire supremacy. And then you suppress the enemy and then you maneuver and you kill the enemy. They're going to be doing this at a operational and strategic level. Hezbollah is going to be trying to take out Israeli air bases because Israel's big strike capabilities through the Air Force. And Israel is going to be moving its air assets back further into Israel. In the past, they believe that they could preserve their air assets because Hezbollah lacked the capacity to strike deep. Today, Hezbollah has that capacity. And so, Israel is going to be bombing Hezbollah, hoping that they can a trip. Hezbollah's long-range strike weapons, before those long-range strike weapons, are able to take out the totality of Israel's air fields. So, it's a race against time, both sides trying to blow each other up. The side that strikes first is going to have an advantage. And so, Hezbollah, I don't believe, is going to let Israel get in that first blow. As soon as they detect Israel preparing for that, they will initiate this. Meanwhile, while they're doing this great strategy of blowing the hell out of each other, Israel's going to launch a massive invasion of Southern Lebanon. The goal of which is to drive push Hezbollah out of the border area past the Latani River, which is a river that's about 18-20 kilometers to the north. Hezbollah is not going to do that fight. First of all, Hezbollah is dug in, so it's going to be impossible for the Israelis to get them out. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has said, "If you do that, we're taking the fight to you." Which means the tens of thousands of Hezbollah's highly trained forces are going to show up in northern Israel. Hezbollah has said, "We can take the Galilee. They can isolate the Golan Heights." The number of Israeli dead are going to be mind boggling because, again, this is going to be the kind of war that Israel just hasn't prepared for. They're not working on it. And I agree with Magus. Look, Hezbollah has been studying the Israelis for a long time. They have a whole bunch of weapons that Israel doesn't know anything about. And some of these weapons include anti-air weapons, so I think Israel is going to lose some aircraft as they press home their attack. And I think Israel is going to lose some ships. And if the United States wants to get involved, the United States may lose some ships. I think Hezbollah has advanced anti-ship weaponry that can reach out and strike well above the capabilities that the Houthi have displayed to date. I don't see Israel winning this thing. I don't see Israel walking away from this one. They're exhausted because of Gaza. Israeli generals have said already that the Israeli Defense Force cannot logistically sustain itself. They're out of spare parts. Their troops are exhausted. If they do go to Oregon's Hezbollah, I just think that you're going to see Hezbollah win a war of attrition. And also win a qualitative fight that Hezbollah is actually better at fighting on the ground than Israel is. And that's that. Now the question is what will Israel do? Israel has, or at least is alleged to have what they call the Samson option. The Samson option is if Israel's facing imminent physical destruction, that Israel will take out all of its Arab neighbors. I mean, Israel knows that if they do that, that's the end of Israel. One of two things will happen. One, it'll be abandoned by the United States and the West. And trust me, if Israel uses a nuclear weapon against the Arab states, we're done with Israel. But the other thing is that the Muslim world will not rest until a Muslim atomic weapon hits Israel and destroys Israel. So it's the end of Israel that they use nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons, they've only been used twice. We don't, you know, we don't know what the impact of tactical nuclear weapons are. We, you know, back in the Cold War, we used to have something called a Sadams, something atomic demolition munitions. I forget what the S stands for. But basically, their backpack nukes and our Special Forces teams had them. And their job was to get into the rear area of the Warsaw Pact and put these in a culvert or near a bridge or some defining territory to a piece of train and blow them up, creating a giant crater or destroying bridges or whatever. But one of the things that they found when they were doing the modeling is that, you know, special attack, thanks, doing the modeling of the of these weapons is that, you know, hills and things like that sort of complicated things that you just because you had a nuclear weapon just went off. It didn't mean that it was going to achieve the physical destruction you wanted it to achieve. Israel using tactical nuclear weapons, they, they haven't used them. Israel doesn't have a nuclear testing program. They can theorize about what yield they're going to get, but they don't know. And, you know, so Israel may not achieve what they want. If they just start with tactical nukes against southern Lebanon. So it's a, it's a full heart, hardy move. Again, this is why you see such pushback by the Israeli defense force against attacking, because they have fought through all this. They know what their nuclear plans are. They know what can trigger it. And they know that once they initiate, there's a good chance that things are going to deteriorate to the point that Israel's nuclear deterrence plan becomes a option for a prime minister to consider. And that's the end of Israel. And I don't think the Israeli generals want that. So I see a lot of pushback against Netanyahu's plans to launch a military strike against Hezbollah. If he does, it'll be the end of Israel. That's, that's my assessment. You know, I'm not familiar with Israeli law. In the United States, you know, we would implement in times of war something called stopgap. Basically, if your enlistment was coming up or your, you know, your commission was expiring. No, it isn't. You've been stopgap. You're staying in until the duration, until the conflict is over. I can imagine Israel might have similar legislation, but maybe they don't. You know, the Israelis are a nation where they have to pay attention to the will of the people. And I don't know Mark if they have nuclear howitzer shells. You know, that's a very specialized, a munition that might be, again, without a testing program. They may not, they may not have those. I think their nukes are primarily confined to being on the warheads of Jericho missiles. They might have someone cruise missiles that are on board submarines and then airdrop munitions. But I don't know if they have the, the artillery shells, but, um. Dammit. Is that your Joe Biden impression? That's my Joe Biden impression. Where was I before I got diverted by the nuclear bomb I was talking about. Oh, stopgap. You know, the Israelis are sensitive to, to their reservists. I would imagine that in Israel, if your enlistments up, unless they call, unless you've joined a, a reserve unit and have been called up, you're done. You get to leave. Um, and I would imagine that if your reservist has been called up, remember that this war has been going on for some time now and, uh, you know, reservists, you know, get called up for a specific in the United States. They get called up for, you know, 180 days. Um, then it takes an act of Congress to go beyond that. So I would imagine these people's, you know, terms of service expire that they can leave and that many Israeli officers are opting to. They may have served in Gaza. And now their, the reserve time is done and they're just getting the hell out of Dodge. Um, but the one thing we know about the Israelis is that, you know, they are assigned to reserve units and that they get called up. Uh, what we saw, you know, love them or hate them, it doesn't matter. But when, uh, when the call out went for Israel's reserves to be mobilized, there were thousands of Israelis in Europe on vacation around the world on vacation. Um, and instead of just running from an unpopular war, they all got on airplanes and came back to Israel to fulfill their, their duty. So, you know, even though an officer may leave, I, I don't know if they're at the point now where there's widespread, um, this tension and, um, thousands of people are saying, I refuse to serve. I don't know if they're there yet. So we'll see. A question from Bill in the nation known as the USA. Why don't Russia and China simply make a deal with North Korea and Afghanistan to give them food, wealth, and supplies in exchange for letting them mine their minerals. The estimated worth of North Korean Afghanistan minerals is more than $10 trillion. Well, I mean, Afghanistan, I know has, has, has cut a deal with the Chinese to come in and do lithium mining and also do what's the term they use for. For the, uh, the metals that, um, I mean, like there's Ryan, your cell phone is made up of metals. Um, there's a specific term rare earth. Pardon. Rare earth minerals are rare earth metals rare earth something rare earth. You know, so they have these, these are exotic, um, you know, minerals that are used in, you know, high tech, like cell phones, et cetera. Afghanistan has that China has that North Korea has that. Um, the, um, you don't want to become a colony. You want to be a nation in control of your, um, of your economic future. So a simple trade like that isn't sufficient. North Korean and Afghanistan don't want it to be just mining enterprises where all they do is mine. And then the minerals go out to industrial places North Korea in particular is going to ensure that whatever mining's done in North Korea. Um, there it is, lantern is incredible electronic properties for microchips. These are why we have great. We have a great audience smart people. The barks great too. Come on. I just love. But, you know, so they're going to want some, like North Korea is going to want to develop its own industry. Um, look, look at Africa. I mean, one of the reasons why the French are hated in Africa. Is because they came in and they took, but they didn't leave anything behind. Um, and Burkina Faso in Niger in Mali. They're talking about now building plants inside these, these respective nations that take the minerals and process them and begin doing the transformation from just basic. You know, or into a finished product and this requires, you know, technological advancement, better paying jobs, better trained workforce, etc. When you, when you do lithium mining. Um, you know, one of the big things is that rather than just have the lithium go off to China, where China then turns it into, you know, the batteries and they have the high tech plants and it gets plugged in. Um, they want to build the plants right there and they want to do that work right there. Again, better paying jobs, high tech, etc. So I don't think it's in North Korea or Afghanistan's interest just to become, you know, a, you know, a source of mineral wealth. I think they want to turn the desire, the need for this mineral wealth into something that becomes sustainable in terms of their own economy to industrialize to help modernize. So, um, that simple quid pro quo relationships, not going to work in, nor does Russia and China want to have that kind of relationship, I believe. I think they're looking at having, you know, more mature relationships that are mutually beneficial, not something that's, you know, beneficial for one party, but less so for the other. The next question is from Lars and Sweden. I wonder how the Russian forces didn't foresee that the Minsk agreement was a setup. Didn't Putin have that kind of information before the special operation, or did it catch him by surprise. Well, I don't know. You know, the Russian intelligence service I'm sure is very capable and who knows what they briefed Vladimir Putin on. But at the end of the day, it comes down to not the information that the leader is given, but what the leader chooses to do with that information. I know in the United States, there's many times the presidents get briefed on, you know, the best intelligence that there is, and they make a completely different decision because their gut tells them to do something different. That's why they're putting John F Kennedy didn't didn't nuke Cuba because his gut told him that wasn't the thing to do. And intelligence isn't perfect. I think we've seen that with the CIA. So, you know, Vladimir Putin trusted Angela Merkel, and he trusted Francois Holland. And later on when Emmanuel Macron became the president of France, he trusted him as well. He didn't trust the Ukrainians, but he trusted the European as European partners in the Normandy process. He has since then said that that's one of the great mistakes that he's made. It was being naive and believing that the Europeans were really wanting to do. Now, to the extent that his intelligence service was telling him, don't trust him, don't trust him. We have a intercept here. We have this there. And the other thing, they're lying to trying to build. I mean, it was obvious that NATO was rebuilding the Ukrainian army. No, even the US government was putting out slides in 2015 that were bragging about how, you know, we're training, you know, Ukrainians over here so that the admin is a big line showing them going to the dumbbells so they can kill Russians over here. And that was the eternal talking point of the Pentagon as early as 2015. So, you know, I think Putin has chastised himself saying that he was naive that he believed in the sincerity of the West and that he'll never make that mistake again. Pierre in Paris asks this question, why hasn't the Russian Air Force taken control of the whole Ukrainian airspace and bombed the Ukrainian army like the US Air Force did during the Gulf War? Well, Pierre, it's not as easy as you think it is, first of all. You know, the Iraqis were shooting down American aircraft up until the last days of the war. And we say Gulf War, I assume you're talking about 1991 Operation Desert Storm. You know, we, I was heavily involved in what we call the counter scud effort, where we poured thousands of combat sorties into Western Iraq to look for Iraqi scud missiles to interdict them, to stop them from firing against both Israel and Saudi Arabia. While we were able to flush the Iraqi Air Force from the skies, for the most part, you know, their air defense was always there. It had an impact on what we were doing. We lost aircraft throughout the war and we didn't destroy a single scudlocker. So the idea of the US Air Force going in and just saying, well, we can do anything. It never happened. We, you know, over Baghdad, we were never able to, you know, have complete control over the Baghdad airspace, you know, up until the end of the war. When we needed to do a high, you know, a high value target, we had to bring in F 117s, which didn't have the greatest success rate in terms of hitting the targets they were going after, or, you know, F B 111s. You know, but, you know, we did a big raid with F 16s and it wasn't, it was decided we're not going to do that again. You know, the Iraqis had effective air defense. The Ukrainians have air defense. The Russians, you know, I don't think they, you know, they don't have as big air forces we do. They can't, they can't suffer major losses. And they don't want to suffer major losses going up against Ukraine because they have to preserve as much of the air force as possible in case of a large-scale conflict with NATO. And so they've adapted. They've, they, they use different techniques. This is why Russia entered into the partnership with Iran for the geranium to variants of the drone, the combat drone, the kamikaze drone. It gives Russia the ability to strike deep targets, but without paying the price. You know, this is why they use the MiG-31 with the Kenzong missile to take out targets. This is why they are doing deep strikes with the Skondur missiles. They just have a different strike. A different set of strike capabilities that they, that they employ rather than using the American model of, you know, seeking air superiority or supremacy, et cetera. And I would say take a look at how they've succeeded. They are interdicting shipments. They're able to strike anywhere in Ukraine they want to. And they've, they've done a good job of, of, you know, weakening the Ukrainian forces. So I, I don't think you can sit here and say America succeeded to go for. And Russia's failed in the Special Military Operations. It's two completely different systems, you know, that are, that are seeking to do slightly different outcomes. Remember, we were seeking to destroy Iraq strategically. We had, you know, this was a strategic air campaign. Well, Russia ran a strategic air campaign too. They've, they've done it to take out two kinds of targets, the air defense umbrella, which they've been very effective at doing. And then to take out Ukraine's energy infrastructure with it, which they've been very effective at doing. So I think the Russians are doing okay. You know, we in the West, we just have a different way of fighting wars. We use different technologies. You know, we have different expectations, but I'm here to tell you that in all of our air campaigns, the air force has never lived up to the expectations that we wanted. They certainly didn't do so during Gulf, during the desert storm. The Kosovo air campaign was, was not, you know, as wonderful as everybody does. And go read up. We've, you know, we published the histories of it. We had met ourselves. It just wasn't as effective as it wanted it to be. So, I think, I think you're going to see the Russians are very effective in accomplishing what they want to accomplish. All right, let's take a phone call, except that it looks like it was disconnected. So we have, hang on a second. There it is. Hey, you're on with our favorite weapons inspector. What's on your mind? Hello, Jeff. Hello, Scott. Thank you very much for all your work, what you're doing and big fan of control. My name is Dmitry. I'm Russian. I live in San Diego, California. Hi, Dmitry. I have a question about. Orban, Victor Orban visited Moscow today. And, yeah, I want to ask. What, what does you think about it? And, yeah, maybe some exploration about. Thank you. Thank you. My understanding is that Orban, that Hungary took over the presidency of the, of what, of the EU or EC. Tom Linus Hungary has a leadership position right now in Europe. And so in his role as the leader, he undertook an initiative that has as much to do about Europe as it does about Hungary. Hungary's made it clear that they don't seek a broader conflict with Ukraine, that Hungary is not going to allow Hungary to become the next Ukraine. But Hungary is part of the EU. It's part of NATO. And so I think what Orban wanted to do is try to promote a piece solution as opposed to jump on board. And trade and alternative to the rush towards expansion of conflict that's taking place in NATO and the EU. And so he did this by engaging with Zelensky to talk to rumors. Zelensky did a fake failed peace summit on June 15 or something like that in Switzerland. And now Zelensky's been scrambling to try and salvage what he can from that process. Orban came in and said, "Hey, what would it take for you to have peace?" And he got Zelensky to pretty much say there won't be negotiation unless XYZ happens. Then he went to Russia to pass that on. I think it's a process that's designed to create the potential for peace. But I think more importantly, it's about disrupting the potential for war, about creating alternatives to war that otherwise wouldn't exist. And so it's an effort to show Europe that Hungary is engaged in European processes, but not the ones that Europe wants it to be engaged in, rather than trying to facilitate the armament of Ukraine. And using Ukraine as a tool to defeat Russia, Orban has decided to emphasize instead, using Hungary as a tool to bring about an equitable, peaceful end of this conflict. So hats off to Viktor Orban. It's a very ambitious program that he's undertaken here, but we'll see how it plays out. All right, that will do it for this week's edition of Ask the Inspector. We'd like to remind you nice people that the Farmers and Chefs event in Pecipse, New York, has been rescheduled for August 10th, and there it is. You can get more information at farmersandchefs.com. Scott will be signing his new book that night, and you'll also be treated to a fabulous dinner and to talk from the Weapons Inspector himself. If you're not close enough to Pecipse to attend that event, you might want to buy an autographed copy of the book at our website, scottmitter.com. And there it is. We have plenty of good merchandise there. In addition to the book, there is some of it. And I would like to thank Ryan Milton for his great work backstage and for providing our favorite weapons inspector with such a tractive shirt. And I would like to thank Alina. I received in the mail today a gift, a Jeff Norman cap. But you're not wearing it. No, I'm not wearing it, but I will wear it. And I don't know if Alina watches all the time, but I hope she's watching. Certainly she does. I mean, according to her husband, I'm the voice she wakes up to at the morning and goes to bed tonight. And I'm waiting for him to shoot. All right. Well, maybe you can give me her email address or something so I can give her a thank you in case she's not watching. She will be back on Tuesday for the lightning round of asking the inspector that's at 3 p.m. for one hour. And thanks to our beloved audience. I hope you had a happy Independence Day Scott got to hang out with not only your wife but your daughters. Did you see fireworks? I heard fireworks. I was, I was working last night during the fireworks. So I'm writing an article, a sub stack article of some substance and controversy. And so I was working on this article. But I heard the fireworks and I heard the cats outside nervous about the fireworks. And I heard the dogs inside nervous about the fireworks. Yeah, yeah, that's not good for the dogs. So I'm not in favor of this amateur fireworks stuff. It just freaks people out and freaks. So this was the big, this was the big Albany show. Oh, it was an amateur. It was the official. Okay. Right. If I actually, if I got on top of my roof, I could actually see the show, but I was busy trying to get this article. I was on the roof of the hotel where you stayed and where we traded. Did you put on you and you posted a beautiful video of the finale? Yeah, that was a really surprisingly good fireworks display and a great place. It makes me, it makes me want to go back to Wilmington. Well, we'd love to have you back, but don't expect fireworks unless it's unless you wait, unless you wait until July 4th. Well, all right. Anyway, I thought of you and I shot that video and I'm glad you saw it. All right. We'll see you. All right. We'll see you guys on Tuesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Thanks for tuning in as always. We'd love you. [MUSIC PLAYING] [ Silence ]