Behind the Minab Massacre (interview with Murtaza Hussein) | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

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Good morning. I guess I cut off the intro a little
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early there. This is DeProgram with Ted Rall
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and Jamarl Thomas. And if you're wondering why
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we're here, even though it's a Saturday morning
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and we don't normally do this on weekends, it's
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because we have a very special interview coming
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up with Murtaza Hussain of Drop Site News. That's
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coming up in about 29 minutes, so stay tuned
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for that. He has co-authored for Drop Site News
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a comprehensive account of the Minab massacre
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that happened in the very early stages of the
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U.S. and Israeli war against Iran that killed
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over 150 students and teachers and other people
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in Iran. And we will get into exactly sort
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of what we know so far and what we still don't
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know. There's no one better to talk to about
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this than Murtaza, I think, and I'm looking
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forward to touching base with him about that.
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If you're just tuning in, thank you very much
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for watching, sharing, liking, and following the
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show. Your support means a lot to us, and it's
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what makes all this possible. So if you have
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the ability to subscribe to the show or make
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a Rumble rant or a Super Chat, we especially
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appreciate you. But seriously, the best thing
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you can really do also is to share the show
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on your social media platform and everywhere
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else. Just get the word out so people know we're
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here. Generally, people tend to like
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it when they know it's here, but that's true about
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a lot of stuff. Good morning, Jamarl. How are
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you doing? I'm doing okay. I'm doing okay. I can't
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complain. It's early Saturday, but it is early.
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It is early. Yeah, yeah, it's a quiet time.
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It's night. Oh my God, today is the most
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beautiful day. It's just stunning. It's
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going to be 70 degrees and just partly
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sunny, partly cloudy, just beautiful. I always wonder
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how they determine the difference between
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partly cloudy and partly sunny. Aren't they kind
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of the same thing? I assume they just mean
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a sunny day with not many clouds in the sky, but
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who knows? As long as the day is gorgeous,
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that's what matters. Yeah, that's all
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good today. And then, going into the
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winter or going into the fall, fall is going to
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be gorgeous here in the States, and I'd imagine
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upstate New York is also gorgeous. Oh, it's great.
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Really great. Really great. Okay, so what we've
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got for you this morning, guys, is basically
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we're following a couple of continuing stories
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that we've been covering over the last
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part of the work week. The scandal
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over the botched execution of Krista Pike
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continues to grow, and I think so far I'm feeling
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confident about my feeling that this is really
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truly the beginning of the end for the death
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penalty in the United States. Krista
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Pike is currently in critical condition at the
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hospital. As doctors are... she's on a ventilator.
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Her doctors are desperately trying to
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save her life after the prison system was desperately
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trying to take her life. And we now know more
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details about how she was choking and struggling
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for over an hour after receiving her first injection.
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Then they tried pentobarbital again a second
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time. But wait, there's more. So the prison chief
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of the state of Tennessee is a guy named Frank
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Strada. Well, apparently he has a habit of
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presiding over botched executions. By the count
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of The Guardian, this Krista Pike thing is the
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number five screwed-up execution that he's
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presided over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we will get into
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that. Number five. Number five. Yeah, he brought
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Arizona's loss was Tennessee's gain.
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And the riots over the high school, between high
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school students and the riot police in France,
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continue to spread. The teachers are about to
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walk off the job. They probably are not going
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to show up on Monday. The French school system
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has adjusted. They've gone back to the COVID
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days. It's going to be just online instruction
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only. I always say online instruction is just
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an oxymoron. So basically they're rioting over
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lack of education funding, poor classroom conditions,
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overcrowding, and lack of equity between the
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various schools throughout the country. It's
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a national school system. In Strasbourg, which
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is on the German border, beautiful city, tear
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gas and riot police are running rampant. In Marseille,
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the cops were shot at, and fireworks were aimed
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in their direction. The rubbish bins were set
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ablaze in Rennes. Meanwhile, even though the protesters
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are minors, right? These are children. The riot
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cops are going in with batons, tear gas, and
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non-lethal flash-ball guns. Although the thing
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is, that's an oxymoron because they have killed
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people in the past. At least one young girl who
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was 15 or 16 years old lost her eye to one of
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these things yesterday. So France
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is in full spice mode as we go into
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day four of this. And of course, at the bottom
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of the hour, we'll have Murtaza Hussain, senior
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national security and foreign affairs journalist
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at Drop Site News. I would urge you to read, not
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now, because you have to listen to DeProgram,
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but after the show, you should go and check out
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the story that he co-authored with Jeremy Scahill
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and someone else to discuss the latest reporting
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on the U.S. massacre of schoolchildren and
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educators at Minab during the very early days
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of the Israeli-U.S. war against Iran. Okay,
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so that's what we've got. Where shall we start
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with the 23 minutes that we've got before Murtaza
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comes on? I don't think this is going to be the
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end of the death penalty in the United States.
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I don't. I just think you're looking
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at it as a lefty and think to yourself, this
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is so disastrous that they have to do something
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about this, that they can't keep this up. They
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can't keep doing this. But as you pointed out,
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this is this guy's fifth time doing this. He's
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presided over five other of these type of botched
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executions that they are now trying to save
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the woman's life so they can kill her again.
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Think of how dumb this is. Okay, well,
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we don't want her to die a horrific death. We
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want her to die the death that we want her to
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die. So let's save her to do this again.
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It's so dumb. I agree with you that I can't.
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The idea that they would do this to this woman
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again is outrageous. It's like, well, they're
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not going to execute her. They won't execute
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her now. They just won't. First of all,
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my friend Ron Kuby, the great civil rights attorney
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who was an heir, sort of the... he was
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the protege of the great William Kunstler, the
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Chicago Seven attorney. And Ron Kuby, he
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said on Facebook. We're Facebook
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friends as well as real friends. He said
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that probably she suffered
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brain cancer, and under the federal...
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brain damage, and under federal law, the U.S. Code,
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if that happens as a result of something that
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they did, basically they can't execute her. Her
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brain is mush. That basically they screwed
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up, and now they have to commute her sentence
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to life in prison, just sort of as a matter of
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law. So pretty much, whatever life she has
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has now been spared effectively. The state
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of Tennessee, which had a previous botched execution
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earlier this year, has suspended, once again,
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it's the second time this governor has suspended
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the executions. At a certain point,
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look, Florida and Texas will be the last
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to go, right? But at a certain point,
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we have to admit that we just don't, as
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a country, we don't know how to execute people
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properly, right? Do you want to hear about these
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other cases, by the way? The same guy, right?
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He came from Arizona, where he had a similar job.
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He was the head of the executions department
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of the corrections department. Listen to that
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a little bit, the execution department of
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the corrections department. You got to
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love that. Anyway, he created the teams that
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carried out the procedures. He monitored the
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practices, and he obtained the lethal drugs. Right.
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So in May 2022, there's a guy named Clarence
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Dixon. The execution team couldn't find where
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to put the IVs. Ultimately, they kept poking
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him, and they finally made an incision to his
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groin in order to insert the IV. That took about
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40 minutes. In June 2022, Frank Atwood, another
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death row inmate, had to help the executioners
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find his vein after the officials just couldn't
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find his vein. He was 66 years old. The guy had
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a degenerative spinal condition, so he had blood
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flow issues. And then in November of the same
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year, the Arizona idiots couldn't find a vein
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in Murray Hooper, forcing them to insert a catheter
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into his groin. So even though this happened
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back in 2022 three times, they sent him to Tennessee.
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In 2023, the governor appointed him, so that's
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totally on him. And basically, once he went,
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he brought all of the wisdom that he had from
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Tennessee over to... that he had from Arizona
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over to Tennessee. So this is just
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outlandish. It's a freak show. And
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I would just think that from an
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embarrassment point of view, this would just
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come to an end. If you're going to kill people,
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kill people. Sure. Just don't be fancy, which
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is what they're trying to do. It's like if somebody,
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have you ever seen a football player catch
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the ball and the guy's showboating on his way
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to the thing and they strip the ball from him?
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Yep. And it's like, okay, well, you could have
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just run the ball into this. Just run fast. Just
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run fast, right? You don't have to showboat.
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You don't have to do this other stuff. But the
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problem is running fast is a guillotine,
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running fast is a firing squad, right? And we don't want
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people to see people get
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shot. That's impolite. We don't like that. It's
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like, but you're doing the killing anyway. I feel
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like honestly this feels like the trans thing.
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It's like, yes, this is really a man, but we don't
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want to say that's a man because that's impolite.
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And so we as a society will put ourselves in
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the pretzels of what bathroom is used, what
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should they be able to play sports in this way,
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et cetera, et cetera. Meaning it goes beyond
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just, okay, people want to live
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their lives as women or want to live their lives
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as men, and we can accept them doing that, into,
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but now we have to pretend that they're actually
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women, where even on the left, they will be like,
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well, there's no difference. And it's like, are
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you serious? You've gone from this idea
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of placation into completely pretending like
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little Tommy is an astronaut. And I feel like
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it's that same energy. It's like, well, we don't
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want to really kill people, but we want to kill
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people. Right. We want to kill people, but we
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don't want it to look bad. We don't want it to
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look bad. It's impolite. Well, we don't even
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really hardly want anyone to see it. Just a few
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people, just the media, a few reporters,
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and the victim's family, and I guess presumably
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also the murderer's family too,
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right? I just don't see what good it does anyone,
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right? One aspect to this that
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we don't think about very often, but
00:12:51.840 --> 00:12:53.940
it's worth, it would be worth looking into. Maybe
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there's someone who can talk to us about this,
00:12:55.639 --> 00:13:00.440
is the effect that it has on the executioners.
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A lot of times these guards get to know
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these inmates over the course of decades, and
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they befriend them and they start to like them.
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And I've read accounts where the guards
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really were grief-stricken when the
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execution, when capital punishment is carried
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out. In some cases, they have to help participate
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in killing their friend or this person that they've
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gotten to know. And obviously
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they don't have a personal beef with this person.
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They didn't take away their loved one.
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So this is getting back
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to what we were talking about yesterday. At least
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with a system like Sharia law or vigilantism,
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the person who's angry and has a reason
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to be angry carries it out. This is outsourced
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to a low-paid state civil,
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a civil servant assassin, to do basically,
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hey, honey, I'm going to be a little late. I'll
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pick up a chicken on the way home. I've got to
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kill this guy first, and then I'll see you later.
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That can't be good for them. Yeah, but
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it can't be good for the family either. No.
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And to be honest, they're paid.
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It's not like they're being forced to do the
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job. They're paid to do a job. They decide. They
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choose. They decide, I want to work for the prison
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system. You have an executioner who says, hey,
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I like killing people. That's what I want to
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do for a living. And so much so moves from one
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state to another in order to continue to do it.
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It's like in Saudi Arabia, right, where
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they have ads in the paper: head chopper
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required, good vacations. By the
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way, those guys know what they're doing. Yeah.
00:14:46.059 --> 00:14:48.639
The heads usually come off, right?
00:14:48.639 --> 00:14:51.080
That big sword comes down. That person
00:14:51.080 --> 00:14:53.799
is not going home with her head. And by
00:14:53.799 --> 00:14:56.909
the way, that goes back to the guillotine.
00:14:56.909 --> 00:15:02.570
It may be medieval,
00:15:02.570 --> 00:15:06.620
they may come across prehistoric, but it works. Yeah.
00:15:07.059 --> 00:15:10.360
I got to be honest with you. I don't want vigilantes.
00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:14.600
I don't have an issue with the state doing the
00:15:14.600 --> 00:15:16.700
job. They just need to be good, effective at
00:15:16.700 --> 00:15:18.940
the job. Under normal circumstances, we have
00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:21.830
no issue killing people abroad. So why is it
00:15:21.830 --> 00:15:26.269
so dicey here? Get an ICE agent. They do it all
00:15:26.269 --> 00:15:30.639
the time. Yeah. It's strange because
00:15:30.639 --> 00:15:34.960
our history books teach us that when people gathered,
00:15:35.100 --> 00:15:36.940
I'm not even talking about lynchings, but when
00:15:36.940 --> 00:15:40.179
people gathered to watch legal hangings carried
00:15:40.179 --> 00:15:45.860
out in a legal way, we see those photos and we're
00:15:45.860 --> 00:15:47.559
like, oh, that's savage. People brought their
00:15:47.559 --> 00:15:51.049
kids to watch and all that. I don't know. It
00:15:51.049 --> 00:15:52.850
seems less savage than what we're doing now.
00:15:54.570 --> 00:15:58.549
I don't think so. Do it in public. Do
00:15:58.549 --> 00:16:01.669
it in public. If you're going to do it, do it.
00:16:01.669 --> 00:16:05.860
But it's sanitized murder. All I'm saying
00:16:05.860 --> 00:16:08.299
is it should also be carried out in public.
00:16:08.299 --> 00:16:10.139
I think all government functions
00:16:10.139 --> 00:16:13.159
that can be should be carried out, not in private,
00:16:13.240 --> 00:16:15.700
right? I think every meeting between a
00:16:15.700 --> 00:16:17.860
lobbyist and a congressman should be recorded
00:16:17.860 --> 00:16:22.019
and live-cast, live-streamed on the congressman's
00:16:22.019 --> 00:16:24.799
website. I think every meeting of the cabinet
00:16:24.799 --> 00:16:26.879
or the National Security Council should be live-
00:16:26.879 --> 00:16:28.960
streamed. And the only things that should be
00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:31.360
removed are things that directly involve national
00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:35.360
security. But every government document that
00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:37.539
doesn't involve national security should be up
00:16:37.539 --> 00:16:40.019
on a website where reporters and citizens can
00:16:40.019 --> 00:16:42.759
look at them. We pay for all this. It's
00:16:42.759 --> 00:16:46.559
our taxpayer dollars. Why are we being
00:16:46.559 --> 00:16:49.399
kept from seeing what we pay for? Well, I thought
00:16:49.399 --> 00:16:53.330
that was the case, though. It's not. 99.999
00:16:53.330 --> 00:16:55.690
percent of government documents will never be available
00:16:55.690 --> 00:17:01.169
to the public. Yeah, I agree with you on that
00:17:01.169 --> 00:17:05.849
part. Public executions, I get your point. Your
00:17:05.849 --> 00:17:12.009
thing is, it's kind of like cows. There are some
00:17:12.009 --> 00:17:15.089
states where it's illegal to publicize what they
00:17:15.089 --> 00:17:18.579
do in the farms. Right. And it's kind of like
00:17:18.579 --> 00:17:21.940
executions. It's all secret. Well, because,
00:17:21.940 --> 00:17:24.079
the thing is, it's kind of like killing
00:17:24.079 --> 00:17:25.920
kings and queens. The moment that you kill a
00:17:25.920 --> 00:17:27.880
king and queen, you legitimize the fact that
00:17:27.880 --> 00:17:30.519
you can kill a king and queen. It's not appointed
00:17:30.519 --> 00:17:32.559
by God. If it was appointed by God, how are these
00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:35.259
people being killed? And if you say, well, murder
00:17:35.259 --> 00:17:38.619
is bad. We don't like people being killed. Okay,
00:17:38.660 --> 00:17:42.329
well, the state is just committing an open murder.
00:17:43.140 --> 00:17:45.240
And the state doesn't want you to know that it's
00:17:45.240 --> 00:17:47.019
committing an open murder. So the state tries
00:17:47.019 --> 00:17:50.299
to find ways to avoid doing that. Hence, we're
00:17:50.299 --> 00:17:52.279
going to put it behind the wall. We're just going
00:17:52.279 --> 00:17:53.839
to give people a heads-up that, hey, by the way,
00:17:53.900 --> 00:17:58.390
we killed this guy. But the issue is they're
00:17:58.390 --> 00:18:01.700
not doing it cleanly. And I know that sounds
00:18:01.700 --> 00:18:08.029
horrible, but it's true. It is true. Again, the
00:18:08.029 --> 00:18:11.130
issue for me is not necessarily the fact that
00:18:11.130 --> 00:18:13.329
they're killing somebody who's a monster. It's
00:18:13.329 --> 00:18:15.789
that we don't know if it's a flat fact that the
00:18:15.789 --> 00:18:20.109
person is a monster. Well, that's true.
00:18:20.130 --> 00:18:22.589
We know that roughly one out of eight is innocent.
00:18:23.230 --> 00:18:26.369
But also, as for the other seven, and
00:18:26.369 --> 00:18:29.430
this is the real question for me, honestly. Well,
00:18:29.470 --> 00:18:31.250
it's not the question. My real question is what
00:18:31.250 --> 00:18:33.250
you said. I don't think the state can be trusted
00:18:33.250 --> 00:18:35.329
to do this. And I think the state shouldn't be
00:18:35.329 --> 00:18:37.190
in the business of killing anyone, just
00:18:37.190 --> 00:18:42.549
as a matter of philosophy. But I also kind
00:18:42.549 --> 00:18:45.549
of don't really see that we should be judged
00:18:45.549 --> 00:18:49.009
by the one worst thing we've ever done, and that's
00:18:49.009 --> 00:18:51.369
the only thing that should define us.
00:18:51.369 --> 00:18:54.490
If you kill, this woman, Krista Pike,
00:18:54.509 --> 00:18:57.970
she horribly murdered an innocent girl when she
00:18:57.970 --> 00:19:00.869
was 18 years old. And the question is now, at
00:19:00.869 --> 00:19:06.700
the age of 48-ish, should that thing that
00:19:06.700 --> 00:19:09.940
she did on her worst moment, on her worst day,
00:19:10.039 --> 00:19:13.119
should that be the only thing we think about
00:19:13.119 --> 00:19:15.380
when we think about Krista Pike? I don't think
00:19:15.380 --> 00:19:19.039
that's fair. And the death penalty
00:19:19.039 --> 00:19:21.700
implies that it is the only thing we should think
00:19:21.700 --> 00:19:29.920
about. Well, I guess the question is, is
00:19:29.920 --> 00:19:31.799
there a redemption, and what does that look like?
00:19:31.799 --> 00:19:34.680
Right? I'm pro-redemption. I think most people
00:19:34.680 --> 00:19:38.460
who kill, first of all, murder has the lowest recidivism
00:19:38.460 --> 00:19:42.490
rate of any major crime. This isn't like
00:19:42.490 --> 00:19:45.890
pedophiles. Pedophiles,
00:19:45.890 --> 00:19:47.650
they can't help. They usually can't help
00:19:47.650 --> 00:19:49.349
themselves. They usually come back for more.
00:19:50.230 --> 00:19:53.150
The vast majority of people who kill once
00:19:53.150 --> 00:19:56.190
never kill again, never would kill again. So
00:19:56.190 --> 00:19:58.329
it's not really about protecting society. But
00:19:58.329 --> 00:20:00.509
if you're talking about redemption, this
00:20:00.509 --> 00:20:03.109
is someone, it's horrible, obviously,
00:20:03.109 --> 00:20:07.069
but you're not... obviously, redemption
00:20:07.069 --> 00:20:10.329
is possible if, by definition, you catch a person
00:20:10.329 --> 00:20:12.930
who kills one person and then they're not likely
00:20:12.930 --> 00:20:15.809
to ever do anything like that again. By definition,
00:20:15.809 --> 00:20:19.029
redemption is possible. Wait a minute. Is the recidivism
00:20:19.029 --> 00:20:20.849
rate low because they've been in prison for God
00:20:20.849 --> 00:20:22.970
knows how long? If you kill somebody, you
00:20:22.970 --> 00:20:28.029
go to prison for 20 years. Okay, you can kill people
00:20:28.029 --> 00:20:32.029
in prison, right? People do. Yeah-ish.
00:20:32.029 --> 00:20:36.099
That's different. If you're around other
00:20:36.099 --> 00:20:38.160
monsters, it might be harder to kill other monsters.
00:20:38.839 --> 00:20:41.319
But from the standpoint of a civilian population
00:20:41.319 --> 00:20:43.980
that is not interested in killing or not interested
00:20:43.980 --> 00:20:47.000
in violence, you are a predator to those groups
00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:50.819
of people. Most murderers aren't predators. Very
00:20:50.819 --> 00:20:55.539
few murderers are predators, right? Predators
00:20:55.539 --> 00:20:58.740
are very specific. Yeah, are predators. Most
00:20:58.740 --> 00:21:01.119
people who are murderers are in, it's a crime
00:21:01.119 --> 00:21:04.960
of passion, or it's committed in the conduct of
00:21:04.960 --> 00:21:07.420
some other crime. I went to rob the liquor store,
00:21:07.500 --> 00:21:10.640
the guy pulled a gun, I killed him. Right, but
00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:12.559
you were robbing a liquor store and he kills
00:21:12.559 --> 00:21:14.039
somebody in the process of robbing a liquor store.
00:21:14.039 --> 00:21:15.839
Sure, but that's not the kind of thing that you're
00:21:15.839 --> 00:21:17.460
going to... it's not a predator. He's not like,
00:21:17.519 --> 00:21:20.420
he didn't go out to kill someone, right? He went
00:21:20.420 --> 00:21:22.720
out to rob a liquor store. Right. You don't think
00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:24.579
that's predation? Who do you think was going
00:21:24.579 --> 00:21:26.400
to be in the store? Okay, that's fair. Do you
00:21:26.400 --> 00:21:27.400
think they were going to use a gun when they
00:21:27.400 --> 00:21:29.039
were going into the store to rob a liquor store?
00:21:29.039 --> 00:21:31.400
But they're not a predator in that they're looking
00:21:31.400 --> 00:21:33.640
forward to shooting. They're not looking
00:21:33.640 --> 00:21:35.799
to shoot a man in Reno to watch him die, right?
00:21:35.880 --> 00:21:39.019
It's not just for fun. Is that the only
00:21:39.019 --> 00:21:40.700
measure of a predator? They needed money, maybe.
00:21:42.549 --> 00:21:45.329
He robbed a liquor store and killed somebody.
00:21:45.450 --> 00:21:48.069
I'm saying that's predation. It's not like
00:21:48.420 --> 00:21:51.940
just because. That's true. I'm not
00:21:51.940 --> 00:21:54.180
saying he's a psychopath where he just shoots
00:21:54.180 --> 00:21:56.750
a guy and just watches him and enjoys it, and
00:21:56.750 --> 00:21:58.410
that's the only thing predator. That's what I
00:21:58.410 --> 00:22:01.130
was thinking of. Yeah, yeah. But that's, come
00:22:01.130 --> 00:22:03.589
on, that's a cartoonish view of predator.
00:22:03.589 --> 00:22:06.190
I'm saying somebody who would take advantage
00:22:06.190 --> 00:22:08.569
of somebody else. And if you're robbing a liquor
00:22:08.569 --> 00:22:10.450
store, even if you needed the money, fair enough.
00:22:10.450 --> 00:22:12.549
Silence of the Lambs, I was thinking of that.
00:22:12.549 --> 00:22:14.630
Yeah. See, I wasn't thinking of that. I
00:22:14.630 --> 00:22:16.390
was thinking of somebody who just preys on somebody
00:22:16.390 --> 00:22:19.170
else, and robbing a liquor store, it's conceivable
00:22:19.170 --> 00:22:22.049
he would rob another store if he wasn't. Utterly
00:22:22.049 --> 00:22:26.200
conceivable. Yeah, yeah. So I guess the point is
00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:28.599
that that person is still, even if they never
00:22:28.599 --> 00:22:30.299
kill anyone and they just rob liquor stores,
00:22:30.519 --> 00:22:33.039
it's still, you're saying it's still
00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:35.059
predatory behavior. I'm saying the fact that
00:22:35.059 --> 00:22:36.859
they kill somebody in the first liquor store,
00:22:36.940 --> 00:22:38.819
it's very conceivable that they can kill somebody
00:22:38.819 --> 00:22:40.819
in another robbery, even if they're not intending
00:22:40.819 --> 00:22:44.640
to. I'm saying that statistics show that that's
00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:47.319
unusual. That's all I'm saying. Isn't it unusual
00:22:47.319 --> 00:22:49.680
because they are in a cage for 20 years? When
00:22:49.680 --> 00:22:51.539
they get out there, and what is it? A lot of people
00:22:51.539 --> 00:22:54.819
have... a lot of people are... roughly 50 percent
00:22:54.819 --> 00:22:59.500
of murders go unsolved. So it's like, yes, so
00:22:59.880 --> 00:23:01.900
it seems like a lot of those people are still
00:23:01.900 --> 00:23:04.079
out and about. There's a lot of people.
00:23:04.079 --> 00:23:07.119
I remember doing this mental
00:23:07.119 --> 00:23:09.680
brain experiment on the subway one time during
00:23:09.680 --> 00:23:12.359
rush hour and thinking, okay, so based on all the
00:23:12.359 --> 00:23:14.799
number, the average lifespan and all that, in
00:23:14.799 --> 00:23:16.859
the number of unsolved murders and the murders
00:23:16.859 --> 00:23:19.359
that are committed, I was like, there's probably
00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:22.160
someone in this train who killed someone and
00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:25.440
got away with it, right? And that's kind
00:23:25.440 --> 00:23:29.940
of amazing. And they walk among us.
00:23:29.940 --> 00:23:32.640
We know them, right? And they may
00:23:32.640 --> 00:23:36.359
be working with them. But they don't commit another
00:23:36.359 --> 00:23:39.269
murder. Maybe it's someone who,
00:23:39.289 --> 00:23:41.210
I don't know. There's a million circumstances.
00:23:41.470 --> 00:23:44.470
There's a lot of people who kill each other because
00:23:44.470 --> 00:23:47.970
of jealousy, romantic stuff. That happens
00:23:47.970 --> 00:23:51.609
a lot, right? Right. And they should be prosecuted
00:23:51.609 --> 00:23:53.329
to the fullest extent of the law for doing so.
00:23:53.369 --> 00:23:55.250
They're eliminated. Well, I'm saying they shouldn't
00:23:55.250 --> 00:23:58.390
be executed because it's something
00:23:58.390 --> 00:24:02.170
that you did when you were 20 and stupid and
00:24:02.170 --> 00:24:04.710
inexperienced, and now you're in prison for 30
00:24:04.710 --> 00:24:08.079
years. And would you, if you were freed, ever
00:24:08.079 --> 00:24:10.059
do anything like that again? And the answer is
00:24:10.059 --> 00:24:13.539
no. But it's not about whether you do it again.
00:24:13.539 --> 00:24:17.180
It's about what you did. I don't think it's
00:24:17.180 --> 00:24:19.079
fair to say that that's the only thing that matters
00:24:19.079 --> 00:24:22.359
about you as a human being, this one. Should we
00:24:22.359 --> 00:24:25.500
all be judged by the shittiest thing we've ever
00:24:25.500 --> 00:24:27.640
done in our lives, and that's how we should be
00:24:27.640 --> 00:24:30.359
assessed? Well, I understand you don't think that,
00:24:30.359 --> 00:24:33.599
but the fact of the matter is, as a family that
00:24:33.599 --> 00:24:36.440
has just lost somebody, there's a parent that might have
00:24:36.440 --> 00:24:38.579
just lost somebody, or a brother, or et cetera,
00:24:38.700 --> 00:24:42.500
that loss matters. And yeah, there should be
00:24:42.500 --> 00:24:47.160
a cost for that loss. And the question of what
00:24:47.160 --> 00:24:50.220
that cost is will vary. There's some people who
00:24:50.220 --> 00:24:51.539
will say, well, it's not that big of a deal.
00:24:51.559 --> 00:24:54.019
You can make it up later. No, that's the question,
00:24:54.059 --> 00:24:56.720
right? What is that cost? I think nobody thinks
00:24:56.720 --> 00:24:59.390
there should be no cost. The question is, what
00:24:59.390 --> 00:25:01.789
should that cost be? Right. Unfortunately, we're
00:25:01.789 --> 00:25:03.069
going to have more time. Not unfortunately.
00:25:03.069 --> 00:25:05.069
I'm looking forward to it. We have Murtaza on
00:25:05.069 --> 00:25:07.589
in a few minutes. But we also want to
00:25:07.589 --> 00:25:11.750
talk about France. So, obviously,
00:25:11.750 --> 00:25:14.549
these student protests don't seem like they're
00:25:14.549 --> 00:25:17.250
going away anytime soon. They seem like they're
00:25:17.250 --> 00:25:19.910
expanding. This seems like a bigger-than-average
00:25:19.910 --> 00:25:24.250
crisis. And I'm like, I love the French kids.
00:25:24.250 --> 00:25:28.769
Yeah, I was watching the school burn, and
00:25:28.769 --> 00:25:34.130
I was like, holy hell. Holy hell. They are getting
00:25:34.130 --> 00:25:36.230
vigorous. Yeah, they're getting very vigorous.
00:25:38.900 --> 00:25:43.079
Yeah, God bless them. God bless them.
00:25:43.079 --> 00:25:50.220
This also represents a major political crisis
00:25:50.220 --> 00:25:54.839
for the government of Emmanuel Macron. The presidential
00:25:54.839 --> 00:25:58.890
election is next year. This year is
00:25:58.890 --> 00:26:01.210
over in two months. It's coming right
00:26:01.210 --> 00:26:04.849
up. Three months. It's
00:26:04.849 --> 00:26:08.150
really just... obviously, Macron
00:26:08.150 --> 00:26:11.710
is a lame duck. He's not running again, can't
00:26:11.710 --> 00:26:14.690
run again, wouldn't run again even if he could.
00:26:14.809 --> 00:26:17.630
He's got an approval rating that,
00:26:17.630 --> 00:26:19.450
he's jealous of Donald Trump's approval
00:26:19.450 --> 00:26:22.289
ratings. Right. He's like 12 percent,
00:26:22.470 --> 00:26:26.650
14 percent. It's catastrophic. Trump is lapping
00:26:26.650 --> 00:26:29.140
him. Trump is what, 31 percent? He's beaten him by
00:26:29.140 --> 00:26:32.660
like three. I'm hesitant to say what I'm about
00:26:32.660 --> 00:26:34.700
to say, because this is the kind of thing where
00:26:34.700 --> 00:26:37.640
you can definitely walk, you can get
00:26:37.640 --> 00:26:40.980
way over your skis or too far out on a limb easily.
00:26:42.019 --> 00:26:44.799
But it's conceivable. I don't want to say it
00:26:44.799 --> 00:26:47.500
will, but it's conceivable. This is one of those
00:26:47.500 --> 00:26:52.519
May 1968 moments in France where it can bring
00:26:52.519 --> 00:26:54.900
down a government, not just this president,
00:26:55.460 --> 00:26:59.079
but the type of government. In May
00:26:59.079 --> 00:27:02.819
1968, France almost became a communist country.
00:27:03.220 --> 00:27:07.440
It came this close. There was
00:27:07.440 --> 00:27:10.099
an incident where President de Gaulle was on
00:27:10.099 --> 00:27:12.579
the roof of a French government building in Paris,
00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:16.180
and he had a chopper ready to spirit him off
00:27:16.180 --> 00:27:19.759
to exile in West Germany. He was ready to flee
00:27:19.779 --> 00:27:23.900
with his wife. And they were looking off
00:27:23.900 --> 00:27:26.460
the roof, and they saw a riot, a mob of people
00:27:26.460 --> 00:27:28.880
coming down one of those little narrow Parisian
00:27:28.880 --> 00:27:31.420
streets. And they were waiting to see which way
00:27:31.420 --> 00:27:33.259
they would turn. And if they came toward them,
00:27:33.339 --> 00:27:35.039
they were going to fly off. And if they kept
00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:40.400
going straight, they didn't. And they kept going
00:27:40.400 --> 00:27:43.980
straight. And de Gaulle managed to ultimately
00:27:43.980 --> 00:27:47.440
send in the troops and massacre a bunch of them
00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:51.960
and crushed the rebellion. But it was that close.
00:27:51.960 --> 00:27:57.420
And this could get to that.
00:27:57.420 --> 00:27:59.640
This is like the Yellow Vests were a
00:27:59.640 --> 00:28:03.700
prequel to this. And by the way, if
00:28:03.700 --> 00:28:06.880
the Yellow Vest movement or its heirs were
00:28:06.880 --> 00:28:10.519
to join up with this, you would have a national
00:28:10.519 --> 00:28:13.259
uprising that was bigger than May '68. May '68 was
00:28:13.259 --> 00:28:15.980
an urban phenomenon from the left and from the
00:28:15.980 --> 00:28:19.099
trade unions and from the students. Here you would
00:28:19.099 --> 00:28:24.450
have a rural slash urban phenomenon.
00:28:25.029 --> 00:28:26.990
There's never been anything like that.
00:28:27.009 --> 00:28:29.809
That just doesn't happen in revolutionary moments
00:28:29.809 --> 00:28:32.789
where you get populist left meets populist right.
00:28:33.029 --> 00:28:37.029
That could happen. Yeah. Have they said anything
00:28:37.029 --> 00:28:39.289
about the Yellow Vests? Or have the Yellow Vests,
00:28:39.569 --> 00:28:41.950
for one, is the entity even, does it
00:28:41.950 --> 00:28:46.950
still exist? It seems like right now they're
00:28:46.950 --> 00:28:50.650
sort of in wait-and-see mode. The French government
00:28:50.650 --> 00:28:53.230
negotiated with the Yellow Vest people and gave
00:28:53.230 --> 00:28:56.109
them a lot of concessions and promised to pour,
00:28:56.109 --> 00:28:59.529
and started to pour, some resources. That's part
00:28:59.529 --> 00:29:01.789
of what's going on, is that concessions to the
00:29:01.789 --> 00:29:04.569
Yellow Vest movement ended up taking money out
00:29:04.569 --> 00:29:06.970
of other parts of the budget, including education.
00:29:07.950 --> 00:29:11.509
So interesting. So it's kind of like, although I would...
00:29:11.529 --> 00:29:15.069
the first place I would go
00:29:15.069 --> 00:29:18.289
if I were French, and I am French, but
00:29:18.289 --> 00:29:20.730
if I were living in France, I'd be blaming the
00:29:20.730 --> 00:29:23.490
government for pouring money into stupid military
00:29:23.490 --> 00:29:27.509
spending and blowing money on NATO and sending
00:29:27.509 --> 00:29:30.210
money to Ukraine and all this nonsense.
00:29:30.309 --> 00:29:33.910
It's a lot. It can do both. It's one of the most
00:29:33.910 --> 00:29:37.269
bloated countries in the European Union, if I
00:29:37.269 --> 00:29:40.589
remember correctly. In fact, if I remember correctly,
00:29:40.710 --> 00:29:43.880
during the Yellow Vest movement, Germany or the
00:29:43.880 --> 00:29:47.700
European Union had to give them a kind of a dispensation
00:29:47.700 --> 00:29:50.799
to run a higher budget deficit in order to give
00:29:50.799 --> 00:29:52.680
money to the Yellow Vests, in order to bring
00:29:52.680 --> 00:29:55.960
down the level of protests. Because if I remember
00:29:55.960 --> 00:29:57.680
correctly, there were protests going on in
00:29:57.680 --> 00:29:59.980
Iran or something that the U.S. government was
00:29:59.980 --> 00:30:02.519
fully behind, but wasn't behind the French one.
00:30:02.599 --> 00:30:03.900
In fact, they were trying to pretend like the
00:30:03.900 --> 00:30:06.640
French one wasn't existing. It was very strange.
00:30:06.819 --> 00:30:09.460
They were trying to act as if, pay no attention
00:30:09.460 --> 00:30:11.500
to the fact that the Yellow Vest movement is
00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:15.400
paralyzing France for a year. But hey, let's
00:30:15.400 --> 00:30:17.039
pay attention to Iran and hope that they can
00:30:17.039 --> 00:30:19.339
take down the Iranian government. Now, I remember
00:30:19.339 --> 00:30:21.519
that the European Union ended up giving a waiver
00:30:21.519 --> 00:30:23.519
to France to spend more money as a budget deficit
00:30:23.519 --> 00:30:25.859
over the course of that year that the Yellow
00:30:25.859 --> 00:30:27.740
Vests were taking place, to try to bring down the
00:30:27.740 --> 00:30:33.349
protests in France. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way,
00:30:33.349 --> 00:30:36.720
it's impossible to overstate the hostility between
00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:40.420
protesters and the CRS and the other
00:30:40.420 --> 00:30:43.019
French national security forces. The United States
00:30:43.019 --> 00:30:46.039
doesn't have, at least up until now, doesn't have
00:30:46.039 --> 00:30:49.900
a national police. The closest,
00:30:49.900 --> 00:30:53.480
ICE might morph into that, but we're not.
00:30:53.480 --> 00:30:57.460
Well, the FBI is a federal bureau of investigations.
00:30:57.460 --> 00:31:00.180
Yeah, but it's not a police force, right? They're
00:31:00.180 --> 00:31:01.920
not... they don't have
00:31:01.920 --> 00:31:06.640
batons and tear gas. Yeah. So but these
00:31:06.640 --> 00:31:09.539
guys are hated. And I think the antipathy
00:31:09.539 --> 00:31:12.359
is partly born from the fact that
00:31:12.359 --> 00:31:14.299
they're not from the community. Right. So they
00:31:14.299 --> 00:31:16.819
come in. These guys come in from somewhere else.
00:31:16.920 --> 00:31:20.079
So if there's an uprising in Marseille,
00:31:20.079 --> 00:31:22.680
these guys might come in from Brittany and do
00:31:22.680 --> 00:31:25.599
this. They don't have any connection whatsoever
00:31:25.599 --> 00:31:28.420
to the community. To them, these are just brats
00:31:28.420 --> 00:31:31.259
who are causing trouble and need to be put down.
00:31:31.259 --> 00:31:35.000
They're recruited to be goons.
00:31:35.079 --> 00:31:37.680
It's like ICE. They're the worst of
00:31:37.680 --> 00:31:39.799
the worst, except they're kind of
00:31:39.799 --> 00:31:42.339
scarier because they're smarter and better educated
00:31:42.339 --> 00:31:47.019
than ICE. But because they're French,
00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:50.180
they're better at what they do. All right. Well,
00:31:50.339 --> 00:31:53.500
I think with that, I see Murtaza waiting in the
00:31:53.500 --> 00:31:55.680
background. Murtaza, thanks for joining us. If
00:31:55.680 --> 00:32:00.009
you could turn on your camera and your mic. There
00:32:00.009 --> 00:32:02.430
you are. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and bring
00:32:02.430 --> 00:32:06.789
him in. Good morning. How are you? Morning, guys.
00:32:06.789 --> 00:32:09.549
Good. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to
00:32:09.549 --> 00:32:14.650
see you too. So Murtaza.
00:32:14.650 --> 00:32:18.910
Murtaza is the senior national security and foreign
00:32:18.910 --> 00:32:22.569
affairs journalist at Drop Site News, and we're
00:32:22.569 --> 00:32:24.650
very excited to have you this morning, and thanks
00:32:24.650 --> 00:32:28.690
for coming back, just to talk about this big
00:32:28.690 --> 00:32:32.970
blockbuster report that Drop Site put out that
00:32:32.970 --> 00:32:37.009
you co-authored about the Minab massacre in
00:32:37.009 --> 00:32:41.369
the very early days of the war. Basically, this
00:32:41.369 --> 00:32:43.630
was kind of the first major strike, right?
00:32:44.309 --> 00:32:48.930
The United States, it now turns out, we do know,
00:32:49.089 --> 00:32:53.109
although they denied it, launched a missile attack
00:32:53.109 --> 00:32:57.529
that blew up this school, killed about 158, correct
00:32:57.529 --> 00:33:01.910
me if I'm wrong, students, teachers, maybe some
00:33:01.910 --> 00:33:07.190
parents, other staff at the school.
00:33:07.210 --> 00:33:11.650
They blow up a school. And so you basically now
00:33:11.650 --> 00:33:15.849
have sort of a comprehensive report about how
00:33:15.849 --> 00:33:18.970
it went down, how it happened, and what the effects
00:33:18.970 --> 00:33:20.750
were. And I was wondering if you could just sort
00:33:20.750 --> 00:33:24.289
of tell us the highlights of what you learned.
00:33:24.289 --> 00:33:27.569
Sure, yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for having
00:33:27.569 --> 00:33:29.369
me, and good morning to you guys and everyone
00:33:29.369 --> 00:33:32.470
watching and listening. Yeah, so we did this
00:33:32.470 --> 00:33:35.269
report, which was published on Wednesday, about
00:33:35.269 --> 00:33:38.289
the Minab massacre, and then subsequently a video
00:33:38.289 --> 00:33:40.869
which is based on some of the interviews we did
00:33:40.869 --> 00:33:44.069
with the parents of children who were killed
00:33:44.069 --> 00:33:47.369
in the massacre, or first responders, and so forth.
00:33:48.019 --> 00:33:50.380
And I think there's been quite a bit
00:33:50.380 --> 00:33:53.099
of reporting about the actual event itself. But
00:33:53.099 --> 00:33:55.519
our story was a bit unique in the sense that
00:33:55.519 --> 00:33:59.640
it really dug down with the community that was
00:33:59.640 --> 00:34:02.880
affected, and the families and the staff and the
00:34:02.880 --> 00:34:05.980
first responders and other people in the Minab
00:34:05.980 --> 00:34:10.099
community who were affected by this, to give their
00:34:10.099 --> 00:34:12.280
assessment of what they actually saw that day
00:34:12.280 --> 00:34:14.579
and reconstruct the events from their perspective.
00:34:15.260 --> 00:34:17.300
And then also the impacts it had on the community.
00:34:17.480 --> 00:34:19.559
It's really, as you can imagine, it's had a devastating
00:34:19.559 --> 00:34:22.639
impact on the community, psychological impact,
00:34:23.019 --> 00:34:25.059
emotional impact, especially on the children
00:34:25.059 --> 00:34:28.280
who survived as well, too. And just the description
00:34:28.280 --> 00:34:31.239
of the actual event from the people who were
00:34:31.239 --> 00:34:34.559
there is very harrowing. So I do think that a
00:34:34.559 --> 00:34:36.739
lot of, not all the coverage, but a lot of it
00:34:36.739 --> 00:34:40.340
has been kind of antiseptic, I would say,
00:34:40.380 --> 00:34:43.400
maybe. It's a lot of focus on the technical errors
00:34:43.400 --> 00:34:46.460
that led to the attack, or what the administration
00:34:46.460 --> 00:34:49.139
is saying or not saying. And they did lie about
00:34:49.139 --> 00:34:51.800
it numerous times initially. They haven't come
00:34:51.800 --> 00:34:54.860
clean in general. But this story is very different.
00:34:55.019 --> 00:34:57.239
It's a very, I'd say, kind of emotional story,
00:34:57.239 --> 00:35:00.400
because it's very hard to be unaffected when
00:35:00.400 --> 00:35:02.460
you read the people's descriptions of their kids
00:35:02.460 --> 00:35:04.119
or what they saw when they arrived at school.
00:35:04.940 --> 00:35:09.579
So that's our contribution to it. And yeah, it
00:35:09.579 --> 00:35:13.920
also leads to questions about intentionality
00:35:13.920 --> 00:35:17.400
or lack thereof in the attack, because one thing
00:35:17.400 --> 00:35:20.000
that became clear from reconstructing it is that
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:22.300
this wasn't one missile that hit the school.
00:35:22.440 --> 00:35:24.019
This was nine missiles that hit the school
00:35:24.019 --> 00:35:26.639
in total over the course of three hours, or the
00:35:26.639 --> 00:35:29.869
school or the vicinity of the school. So
00:35:29.869 --> 00:35:32.170
whatever they were striking there, they
00:35:32.170 --> 00:35:34.590
knew they were striking something at those coordinates.
00:35:36.030 --> 00:35:38.550
And the experience of people who were there was
00:35:38.550 --> 00:35:40.869
not that it was just a stray missile.
00:35:40.949 --> 00:35:44.389
It was that this school area was being pounded
00:35:44.389 --> 00:35:46.929
by Tomahawk missiles in and around the area
00:35:47.579 --> 00:35:50.039
for hours, including after first responders arrived
00:35:50.039 --> 00:35:53.760
and so forth. So it raises very serious
00:35:53.760 --> 00:35:56.239
questions. And one thing I always tell
00:35:56.239 --> 00:35:58.480
people is that it's not necessarily intentionality
00:35:58.480 --> 00:36:00.960
would be that somebody specifically ordered a
00:36:00.960 --> 00:36:02.880
school and signed off a school being hit during
00:36:02.880 --> 00:36:05.619
school hours. But if you look at the chronology
00:36:05.619 --> 00:36:09.639
of events before the war, Pete Hegseth, the
00:36:09.639 --> 00:36:11.239
head of the Department of Defense, the Department
00:36:11.239 --> 00:36:15.340
of War, he eliminated the already quite meager
00:36:15.340 --> 00:36:18.460
civilian protection agencies inside the Pentagon
00:36:18.460 --> 00:36:20.500
to prevent things from just like this happening.
00:36:20.659 --> 00:36:23.340
And all throughout the chain of command, and his
00:36:23.340 --> 00:36:26.119
administrative decisions were all kind of pushing
00:36:26.119 --> 00:36:29.639
towards emphasizing lethality, as
00:36:29.639 --> 00:36:31.500
he puts it, and reducing civilian protections.
00:36:31.699 --> 00:36:34.139
So then things like this would inevitably happen
00:36:34.139 --> 00:36:37.050
more. In that sense, I always analogize it to
00:36:37.050 --> 00:36:39.230
saying if I cut someone's brakes in their car
00:36:39.230 --> 00:36:41.889
and then they drove to work that day, maybe they
00:36:41.889 --> 00:36:43.150
drove to work a couple of days and they were
00:36:43.150 --> 00:36:45.090
okay. But then maybe on the third day they hit
00:36:45.090 --> 00:36:47.369
a tree. Maybe I didn't make them hit the tree,
00:36:47.429 --> 00:36:49.389
but I created a situation where it would be very
00:36:49.389 --> 00:36:51.090
foreseeable that that would happen. I think that's
00:36:51.090 --> 00:36:53.849
exactly what happened in the case of this school.
00:36:54.590 --> 00:36:58.230
You're speaking my language. That was the exact
00:36:58.230 --> 00:37:00.409
same thought. My thought was either it's intentional
00:37:00.409 --> 00:37:04.059
or they set up conditions to make this particular
00:37:04.059 --> 00:37:06.340
situation happen. It was infinitely foreseeable,
00:37:06.340 --> 00:37:09.500
right? And as you point out, he's screaming
00:37:09.500 --> 00:37:12.619
about lethality, even to the point of trying
00:37:12.619 --> 00:37:15.139
to give people testosterone injections because
00:37:15.139 --> 00:37:17.679
he wants to be that much more lethal warfighters.
00:37:17.679 --> 00:37:20.079
Okay, now you've murdered a bunch of children,
00:37:20.079 --> 00:37:24.019
and the response from the state for the longest
00:37:24.019 --> 00:37:26.079
point, as you point out, was kind of, well,
00:37:26.079 --> 00:37:28.260
we don't know if we did that. We're going to do
00:37:28.260 --> 00:37:30.500
investigations. We're going to do blah, blah. And
00:37:30.500 --> 00:37:33.820
then they came out and blamed AI for the error,
00:37:33.960 --> 00:37:37.599
which is... and old maps, right? Yeah, right,
00:37:37.679 --> 00:37:40.900
and Google Maps. They hit this, correct
00:37:40.900 --> 00:37:45.219
me if I'm wrong, with nine missiles. Yeah, not
00:37:45.219 --> 00:37:47.820
all nine directly hit the school, but there's
00:37:47.820 --> 00:37:49.900
a little community around the school with
00:37:49.960 --> 00:37:52.059
a car wash and clinic and things like this.
00:37:52.199 --> 00:37:56.039
And they're all sort of surrounding... so that
00:37:56.039 --> 00:38:00.019
area in total was hit nine times. And the school
00:38:00.019 --> 00:38:01.739
was also hit multiple times, including after
00:38:01.739 --> 00:38:05.000
the first responders arrived. So, yeah, it was
00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:07.179
a triple-tap strike, at least on the school
00:38:07.179 --> 00:38:11.800
itself. And, yeah, that's exactly what they did.
00:38:12.059 --> 00:38:14.800
And we said in the story, it's probably
00:38:14.800 --> 00:38:18.539
the worst single incident of mass killing of
00:38:18.539 --> 00:38:20.760
civilians, specifically children, that we can
00:38:20.760 --> 00:38:22.599
remember in any conflict. Even going back to
00:38:22.599 --> 00:38:26.449
Vietnam, it's hard to remember one particular
00:38:26.449 --> 00:38:28.610
incident where this many children specifically
00:38:28.610 --> 00:38:33.269
were killed. Maybe My Lai, right? Yeah, maybe
00:38:33.269 --> 00:38:35.530
the My Lai massacre, exactly. It's the only thing
00:38:35.530 --> 00:38:37.530
that may come to mind. I'm not sure how many
00:38:37.530 --> 00:38:39.809
children per se were killed, but even if it's
00:38:39.809 --> 00:38:41.349
not children, it's still a huge number of civilians.
00:38:43.050 --> 00:38:47.329
So yeah, that's an unbelievable, just absolutely
00:38:47.329 --> 00:38:52.469
shocking event. There hasn't really...
00:38:52.469 --> 00:38:54.730
One interesting thing that came across in our
00:38:54.730 --> 00:38:56.889
story, we interviewed a lot of former U.S. military
00:38:56.889 --> 00:38:59.090
officials. They told us that if they
00:38:59.090 --> 00:39:01.869
hit these coordinates, CENTCOM would be able
00:39:01.869 --> 00:39:04.389
to tell you literally an hour later after they
00:39:04.389 --> 00:39:06.309
did it. There's no ambiguity about whether they
00:39:06.309 --> 00:39:08.630
did it. But first, they lied about it. They said
00:39:08.630 --> 00:39:11.050
maybe it was an Iranian missile. Then the footage
00:39:11.050 --> 00:39:13.250
came out. We just saw the Tomahawk missiles, which
00:39:13.250 --> 00:39:15.210
Iran doesn't have, hitting the school repeatedly.
00:39:15.869 --> 00:39:18.070
And then they've just been saying constantly
00:39:18.070 --> 00:39:20.800
since then that they're investigating it. CENTCOM
00:39:20.800 --> 00:39:23.059
chief Brad Cooper, he told a reporter there was
00:39:23.059 --> 00:39:26.539
an active IRGC missile base that they were firing
00:39:26.539 --> 00:39:29.119
at. That's not true. There's no missile base
00:39:29.119 --> 00:39:34.420
at that school compound. But
00:39:34.420 --> 00:39:36.219
the thing is, and going back to the point
00:39:36.219 --> 00:39:38.119
of how this happened, we talked to
00:39:38.119 --> 00:39:40.400
the Iranian government. There was at one point
00:39:40.400 --> 00:39:43.739
an IRGC naval office located in this compound,
00:39:43.900 --> 00:39:45.900
and they had showed us the title deeds of the
00:39:45.900 --> 00:39:48.820
buildings in the area. There was one there at
00:39:48.820 --> 00:39:51.639
some point, but they moved it because they didn't
00:39:51.639 --> 00:39:54.280
want it to become a target in the case of a war,
00:39:54.340 --> 00:39:57.119
such that it would hit the school. And the school's
00:39:57.119 --> 00:39:58.679
location had been known for at least a decade
00:39:58.719 --> 00:40:02.119
that it was there. So it seems that what happened,
00:40:02.219 --> 00:40:04.380
most likely in this case as well, too, is that
00:40:04.380 --> 00:40:06.800
at the start of the war, they wanted to do a
00:40:06.800 --> 00:40:09.619
big shock-and-awe campaign and generate lots
00:40:09.619 --> 00:40:12.639
of targets to hit immediately. So Hegseth and
00:40:12.639 --> 00:40:16.099
whoever else, Cooper, they demanded that their
00:40:16.099 --> 00:40:19.059
analysts provide them thousands of targets that
00:40:19.059 --> 00:40:21.000
they could hit in the first couple of hours so
00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:24.920
they could really shock the Iranian system immediately.
00:40:26.869 --> 00:40:28.570
We don't know how much time frame they had to
00:40:28.570 --> 00:40:30.670
revet these targets, but it seems probably
00:40:30.670 --> 00:40:33.929
not that much. So normally what you do before
00:40:33.929 --> 00:40:35.650
you hit these targets, you go through them, you
00:40:35.650 --> 00:40:38.409
make sure they're still valid, because buildings
00:40:38.409 --> 00:40:41.909
can change, locations can change, things like
00:40:41.909 --> 00:40:44.349
that. It seems they probably didn't vet
00:40:44.349 --> 00:40:46.269
these targets. They probably didn't vet the school
00:40:46.269 --> 00:40:47.969
again, because it's very obviously a school. You
00:40:47.969 --> 00:40:49.389
can actually find the school on Google Maps,
00:40:49.469 --> 00:40:53.039
too. It was not even a
00:40:53.039 --> 00:40:55.559
very deep-cover thing or anything. You look on
00:40:55.559 --> 00:40:57.139
Google Maps in Iran, it would show up on those coordinates.
00:40:57.820 --> 00:41:01.000
So I guess they didn't vet that again
00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:02.760
because they didn't have time and they didn't
00:41:02.760 --> 00:41:05.500
prioritize it. And as I said, they also eliminated
00:41:05.500 --> 00:41:07.820
some of the civilian protection agencies in the
00:41:07.820 --> 00:41:09.400
Pentagon that may have done something like that.
00:41:09.980 --> 00:41:12.920
So, yeah. So then they just hit all the targets
00:41:12.920 --> 00:41:14.820
that they had. And then guess what? One of them
00:41:14.820 --> 00:41:20.230
was an elementary school. One thing that
00:41:20.230 --> 00:41:22.469
I have a lot of questions about this,
00:41:22.530 --> 00:41:25.610
but the big one to me is that we have
00:41:25.610 --> 00:41:27.690
all these drones. The U.S. military does. And
00:41:27.690 --> 00:41:31.170
normally, my understanding is that before a target
00:41:31.170 --> 00:41:34.769
like this is struck, the drones spend days, maybe
00:41:34.769 --> 00:41:39.210
even weeks, before a launch of a strike like this.
00:41:39.289 --> 00:41:41.449
And then they're feeding constant
00:41:41.449 --> 00:41:46.460
24-7 high-quality
00:41:46.460 --> 00:41:49.360
camera footage back to a trailer in Nevada or whatever.
00:41:49.360 --> 00:41:53.300
So they're observing what it is, and
00:41:53.300 --> 00:41:56.460
it's hard for me to believe that anybody
00:41:56.460 --> 00:41:59.480
observing this, even if they're not really particularly
00:41:59.480 --> 00:42:03.599
well trained, wouldn't be able to identify things
00:42:03.599 --> 00:42:06.480
like teachers arriving early in the morning to
00:42:06.480 --> 00:42:09.559
school, parents dropping their kids
00:42:09.559 --> 00:42:11.940
off to school, kids walking in and out of school
00:42:12.809 --> 00:42:15.090
at certain hours, leaving for lunch.
00:42:15.110 --> 00:42:19.769
Okay, so the maps are old. I get that. It's inexcusable.
00:42:20.329 --> 00:42:24.789
But I get it. I don't get, didn't they observe
00:42:24.789 --> 00:42:27.309
the target beforehand? That's a two-part question.
00:42:27.469 --> 00:42:29.949
And the other thing is, Iran has a major problem
00:42:29.949 --> 00:42:34.150
with Mossad and Israeli agents, right? They constantly
00:42:34.150 --> 00:42:37.329
are fighting this issue. They could have had,
00:42:37.449 --> 00:42:39.889
why didn't they have one of their Israeli
00:42:39.889 --> 00:42:44.579
traitors, basically, go and case the joint
00:42:44.579 --> 00:42:49.380
before they bombed it? Well, the Iranian
00:42:49.380 --> 00:42:51.960
interpretation is that it was done intentionally
00:42:51.960 --> 00:42:53.980
for all the reasons that you mentioned, that
00:42:53.980 --> 00:42:56.519
if they have such good intelligence, they could
00:42:56.519 --> 00:42:59.980
locate specific individuals inside the country
00:42:59.980 --> 00:43:03.559
and kill them. How could you possibly hit a school
00:43:03.559 --> 00:43:07.219
full of kids and teachers and so forth in the
00:43:07.219 --> 00:43:10.440
middle of a school day? So that's the way many
00:43:10.440 --> 00:43:14.260
of them feel about it. The way that these targeting
00:43:14.260 --> 00:43:16.980
practices work, my understanding is that there
00:43:16.980 --> 00:43:19.019
are some targets that are heavily surveilled
00:43:19.019 --> 00:43:22.260
and tracked in these ways, or they use signals
00:43:22.260 --> 00:43:25.599
intelligence and so forth to identify certain
00:43:25.599 --> 00:43:27.800
individuals or certain targets. But it's not
00:43:27.800 --> 00:43:30.099
necessarily how they always do it. A lot of it
00:43:30.099 --> 00:43:33.099
is done by satellite imagery. So the satellite
00:43:33.099 --> 00:43:35.920
imagery probably generates the bulk of the targets
00:43:35.920 --> 00:43:38.159
that are hit in a country, and these are big
00:43:38.159 --> 00:43:39.980
stationary targets that they think they're hitting,
00:43:39.980 --> 00:43:42.179
at least on paper, naval bases and military
00:43:42.179 --> 00:43:44.360
bases. So you don't necessarily need to be over
00:43:44.360 --> 00:43:46.880
them all the time to see what's going on. You
00:43:46.880 --> 00:43:49.300
do probably need to update your imagery and so
00:43:49.300 --> 00:43:52.320
forth periodically, because as I said, the use
00:43:52.320 --> 00:43:55.880
of the building changes over time.
00:43:55.880 --> 00:43:58.380
Most buildings, they may turn over their purpose
00:43:58.380 --> 00:44:00.699
or the ownership and so forth. So it seems
00:44:00.699 --> 00:44:03.400
in this case it was likely. Who we spoke to indicated
00:44:03.400 --> 00:44:05.889
that it was likely that satellite imagery was
00:44:05.889 --> 00:44:08.409
used. But even, there's been other
00:44:08.409 --> 00:44:11.469
reconstruction of the attack, I think by UK
00:44:11.469 --> 00:44:15.150
Channel 4 as well, too. There was imagery of
00:44:15.150 --> 00:44:17.150
this site that actually showed for many, many
00:44:17.150 --> 00:44:20.590
years it was a school, including shadows of the
00:44:20.590 --> 00:44:22.969
children standing in the courtyard of the school,
00:44:22.969 --> 00:44:26.510
very clear granular information like that.
00:44:26.510 --> 00:44:30.329
Also, if you were to Google, again, the school had
00:44:30.329 --> 00:44:32.130
a pretty big online presence, so you could see
00:44:32.130 --> 00:44:36.059
the kids at that location doing activities,
00:44:36.380 --> 00:44:39.780
doing sports, painting, drawing, normal things
00:44:39.780 --> 00:44:42.159
kids would do. There must have been a playground.
00:44:42.820 --> 00:44:44.760
There was a playground, which is very visible,
00:44:44.880 --> 00:44:47.960
including on the satellite imagery. So
00:44:48.019 --> 00:44:51.170
I would say that it's very hard to imagine how
00:44:51.170 --> 00:44:53.750
it happened other than either people didn't care
00:44:53.750 --> 00:44:56.170
or some people think they did it intentionally
00:44:56.170 --> 00:44:59.389
or something like that. And I think that the
00:44:59.389 --> 00:45:02.090
major issue also is that if you look at the
00:45:02.090 --> 00:45:04.389
command climate, which has been created by the
00:45:04.389 --> 00:45:07.590
leaders of the Pentagon and so forth, as you
00:45:07.590 --> 00:45:09.130
mentioned, they are talking about lethality all
00:45:09.130 --> 00:45:11.530
the time, and they're saying that they abolished
00:45:11.530 --> 00:45:13.889
some of the civilian protection agencies, indicating
00:45:13.889 --> 00:45:18.530
the laws of war are irrelevant and woke or something.
00:45:18.969 --> 00:45:21.530
That's the message clearly being given by the
00:45:21.530 --> 00:45:23.670
leadership. And even if not everyone in the military
00:45:23.670 --> 00:45:27.329
agrees with that, it inevitably influences
00:45:27.329 --> 00:45:29.610
people and their behavior and conduct further
00:45:29.610 --> 00:45:31.190
down the chain, because that's your leadership,
00:45:31.190 --> 00:45:34.510
and you take your cue from your leadership. And
00:45:34.510 --> 00:45:37.889
even if you don't want to kill civilians or children
00:45:37.889 --> 00:45:40.309
in the school, it's been clearly indicated that
00:45:40.309 --> 00:45:42.849
you won't be punished for that, at minimum, if
00:45:42.849 --> 00:45:44.289
it happens. It's not like they're looking
00:45:44.289 --> 00:45:46.590
for people to punish for things like that. So
00:45:46.590 --> 00:45:49.750
you would take less care to avoid it in any case,
00:45:49.750 --> 00:45:52.659
inevitably, or some people will do that. So I think
00:45:52.659 --> 00:45:54.659
that these things are all contributing to creating
00:45:54.659 --> 00:45:57.739
circumstances where this would happen. And even
00:45:57.739 --> 00:45:59.699
still, we're all upset about it. People will
00:45:59.699 --> 00:46:01.519
write these stories. We've got tremendous response.
00:46:01.699 --> 00:46:03.579
We're having this interview. The Pentagon doesn't
00:46:03.579 --> 00:46:06.179
care. The military doesn't care. The U.S. government
00:46:06.179 --> 00:46:10.500
doesn't care. So for what they view it, and their
00:46:10.500 --> 00:46:13.119
perception of it, is it's just an embarrassing
00:46:13.119 --> 00:46:14.920
incident that they're going to deal with by not
00:46:14.920 --> 00:46:17.159
acknowledging it. Maybe at some point they'll
00:46:17.159 --> 00:46:20.420
issue some perfunctory terse statement saying
00:46:20.420 --> 00:46:22.639
X, Y, and Z happened, or there was some glitch.
00:46:22.780 --> 00:46:25.980
Blaming AI, blaming some extraneous factor. I
00:46:25.980 --> 00:46:27.500
really think blaming AI is completely ridiculous
00:46:27.500 --> 00:46:31.099
in this case. AI is a tool used to gather information.
00:46:31.360 --> 00:46:33.579
There's still a human being signing off on all these
00:46:33.579 --> 00:46:36.980
strikes. So, yeah, I think that that's the case.
00:46:37.099 --> 00:46:38.360
And so I don't think people should
00:46:38.360 --> 00:46:40.719
have any other expectation about it. And I do
00:46:40.719 --> 00:46:42.159
hope that people around the world, or people
00:46:42.159 --> 00:46:45.260
in Iran, too, who maybe had a different perception
00:46:45.260 --> 00:46:47.219
of what the intentions of the U.S. government
00:46:47.219 --> 00:46:50.000
were in the war, may look at this as kind of
00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:52.579
a wake-up call that actually there's not
00:46:52.579 --> 00:46:54.639
really this high degree of standard of care for
00:46:54.639 --> 00:46:57.219
civilians, or in this case, Iranian civilians. Yeah,
00:46:57.219 --> 00:46:59.960
whatever liberals that are there in the government,
00:46:59.960 --> 00:47:02.239
or that are there in general, that still
00:47:02.239 --> 00:47:04.619
have this idea that America is coming to save
00:47:04.619 --> 00:47:07.579
us, the Yanks are coming to save us. Nonsense. Nonsense.
00:47:07.579 --> 00:47:10.400
I think they did it on purpose, and I think the
00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:12.500
people who are in Iran who look at it as if
00:47:12.500 --> 00:47:15.119
they did it on purpose should accept it as that.
00:47:15.949 --> 00:47:18.510
You murdered a bunch of kids, for God's sake.
00:47:18.869 --> 00:47:21.630
What is the government going to do in regards
00:47:21.630 --> 00:47:25.719
to dealing with the deaths of all of these people?
00:47:26.019 --> 00:47:28.780
Or does the government get involved in situations
00:47:28.780 --> 00:47:30.480
like this, meaning dealing with the outcome,
00:47:30.579 --> 00:47:33.739
the repercussions of the deaths of all of these
00:47:33.739 --> 00:47:36.619
kids and the damage done to all of the parents?
00:47:36.800 --> 00:47:38.599
Or is that just something that the parents have
00:47:38.599 --> 00:47:43.989
to accept? Does the government get involved in
00:47:43.989 --> 00:47:46.650
helping after, while they're fighting a war,
00:47:46.829 --> 00:47:49.599
right? Yeah, well, we spoke to some
00:47:49.599 --> 00:47:51.420
local authorities there, and they're doing
00:47:51.420 --> 00:47:53.820
the things that you might expect after a school
00:47:53.820 --> 00:47:55.699
shooting in America. They're giving psychologists
00:47:55.699 --> 00:47:59.780
and so forth to the kids and to the parents.
00:47:59.960 --> 00:48:01.519
But after something like this
00:48:01.519 --> 00:48:04.440
happens, what can you... what psychologists,
00:48:04.760 --> 00:48:06.460
in my opinion, what can they even say at
00:48:06.460 --> 00:48:08.559
this point? But they're trying to
00:48:08.559 --> 00:48:12.260
have a rally around it as a cultural issue and
00:48:12.360 --> 00:48:13.860
giving this type of support. And we
00:48:13.860 --> 00:48:16.159
did speak to some psychologists. The things they
00:48:16.159 --> 00:48:19.559
told us were really harrowing, because a lot of
00:48:19.559 --> 00:48:21.340
the kids... first of all, a lot of the parents,
00:48:21.500 --> 00:48:23.179
they never got the full bodies of their kids
00:48:23.179 --> 00:48:24.639
back because they were basically ripped apart
00:48:24.639 --> 00:48:28.440
by the bombs. So all they got was a foot with
00:48:28.440 --> 00:48:30.920
a sock on it that had the SpongeBob sock, and
00:48:30.920 --> 00:48:32.500
they knew they put the SpongeBob sock on their
00:48:32.500 --> 00:48:35.980
kid that day. Or they got a backpack, and the
00:48:35.980 --> 00:48:38.360
backpack had a sandwich in it that was uneaten,
00:48:38.360 --> 00:48:40.340
and the mom knew that she made that sandwich
00:48:40.340 --> 00:48:42.360
for that backpack that day, and that's kind of
00:48:42.360 --> 00:48:44.400
all they have. So that's... and there's
00:48:44.400 --> 00:48:46.300
even one or two kids nothing has been found yet,
00:48:46.300 --> 00:48:48.119
so they're still looking and trying to give the
00:48:48.119 --> 00:48:51.280
parents something to hold on to. A lot of kids'
00:48:51.280 --> 00:48:53.480
parents have been talking to the inanimate objects
00:48:53.480 --> 00:48:56.920
of the kid and just talking to them
00:48:56.920 --> 00:48:58.639
as though the kid was there, that type of
00:48:58.639 --> 00:49:00.800
thing. And a lot of the kids who survived, they
00:49:00.800 --> 00:49:02.519
feel survivors' guilt. These are
00:49:02.519 --> 00:49:04.949
seven-year-old kids. Some of them have been
00:49:04.949 --> 00:49:07.010
burning themselves with a lighter so they can feel
00:49:07.010 --> 00:49:09.030
the burning that their friends felt before they
00:49:09.030 --> 00:49:12.889
died. Some of them are still afraid
00:49:12.889 --> 00:49:14.090
that the American government is going to come
00:49:14.090 --> 00:49:16.449
back and kill them again. And some of them actually
00:49:16.449 --> 00:49:19.269
told the psychologists that they believe that
00:49:19.269 --> 00:49:20.989
not only was the attack intentional, but the
00:49:20.989 --> 00:49:23.170
goal of the war was to kill all the kids in that
00:49:23.170 --> 00:49:25.969
school, and the war will not end until the U.S.
00:49:25.969 --> 00:49:28.110
military comes and kills every kid who was
00:49:28.110 --> 00:49:31.239
at Shajareh Tayyebeh that day, and then that's the
00:49:31.239 --> 00:49:32.780
purpose of the conflict. That's the way the kids
00:49:32.780 --> 00:49:35.059
are interpreting it, because it's an unbelievably
00:49:35.059 --> 00:49:38.099
traumatic incident. And also, some of the parents
00:49:38.099 --> 00:49:42.260
whose kids were killed, they're
00:49:42.260 --> 00:49:44.159
telling the teachers, why didn't you
00:49:44.159 --> 00:49:46.760
save my kid? I thought you said that
00:49:46.760 --> 00:49:48.719
my kid was just like your kid, and then why is
00:49:48.719 --> 00:49:50.969
my kid dead? Obviously, the teacher, what can
00:49:50.969 --> 00:49:52.989
you even say to that? They didn't know what to
00:49:52.989 --> 00:49:54.429
do, or that a missile was going to hit the school
00:49:54.429 --> 00:49:56.570
that day. So all those types of psychological
00:49:56.570 --> 00:49:58.889
impacts have been very, very pronounced. And
00:49:58.889 --> 00:50:01.210
all the first responders, too, because we interviewed
00:50:01.210 --> 00:50:03.409
a lot of them. What they told us was very harrowing.
00:50:03.469 --> 00:50:05.969
They arrived right after the bombs hit. They
00:50:05.969 --> 00:50:07.449
just said they came to the school, which they
00:50:07.449 --> 00:50:09.769
were very familiar with, and then just the yard
00:50:09.769 --> 00:50:12.090
was full of the body parts of the kids who they
00:50:12.090 --> 00:50:14.210
knew. And then their hands, they were digging
00:50:14.210 --> 00:50:17.119
through them. Nails were filled with the brains
00:50:17.119 --> 00:50:18.900
of the kids, and they wouldn't come out with the
00:50:18.900 --> 00:50:21.820
showering and things like that. So
00:50:21.840 --> 00:50:23.699
it's just a psychological impact in the town,
00:50:23.780 --> 00:50:25.199
which is a pretty small town, to be honest, has
00:50:25.199 --> 00:50:28.420
been devastating. And the government is trying
00:50:28.420 --> 00:50:31.139
to pursue legal action, international courts,
00:50:31.159 --> 00:50:33.440
international law. I think they're realistic,
00:50:33.579 --> 00:50:35.340
though, in the sense that there's not really
00:50:35.340 --> 00:50:37.400
much that these institutions can really do to
00:50:37.400 --> 00:50:39.300
the U.S. government. And the U.S. has been
00:50:39.300 --> 00:50:42.429
dismantling the ICC right now because
00:50:42.429 --> 00:50:44.150
they tried to prosecute Netanyahu. It seems to be the
00:50:44.150 --> 00:50:46.849
motivation. So even whatever meager protections
00:50:46.849 --> 00:50:49.409
did exist, they're trying to undermine them.
00:50:49.409 --> 00:50:53.170
So I think there's more that
00:50:53.170 --> 00:50:55.329
they're just going to have to accept that this happened,
00:50:55.329 --> 00:50:57.130
and there's not much accountability that's likely
00:50:57.130 --> 00:51:00.010
to be forthcoming. And I do think at some point,
00:51:00.010 --> 00:51:02.510
maybe years on the line or whatever, the U.S. will issue
00:51:02.510 --> 00:51:04.690
some statement about it, but it's just going to
00:51:04.690 --> 00:51:07.449
be perfunctory, and it's just going to be another
00:51:07.449 --> 00:51:10.579
unhappy understanding, this episode
00:51:10.579 --> 00:51:13.940
in the relationship between Iran and the U.S.
00:51:13.940 --> 00:51:16.079
that maybe they'll try to take revenge for one
00:51:16.079 --> 00:51:18.400
day. Maybe that'll be... little military operations
00:51:18.400 --> 00:51:21.559
have been waged in the name of the kids at the
00:51:21.559 --> 00:51:23.179
school and things like that. Maybe that'll be
00:51:23.179 --> 00:51:25.219
the way they frame it. But when you're
00:51:25.219 --> 00:51:27.320
a weaker country against a more powerful country,
00:51:27.320 --> 00:51:31.559
your avenues for redress have always
00:51:31.559 --> 00:51:34.159
been limited throughout history, unfortunately.
00:51:35.739 --> 00:51:38.880
Is it fair to assume that the U.S. government
00:51:38.880 --> 00:51:43.659
knew within, let's just say, hours exactly what
00:51:43.659 --> 00:51:45.980
happened and how it went down, and that there
00:51:45.980 --> 00:51:48.460
was no mystery here whatsoever, and that there
00:51:48.460 --> 00:51:51.039
is not really a real investigation, and that
00:51:51.039 --> 00:51:53.599
everything that's right now, they're just dragging
00:51:53.599 --> 00:51:57.599
their feet and stalling for time and
00:51:57.599 --> 00:52:01.670
hoping that everybody forgets about this?
00:52:01.670 --> 00:52:04.250
I always have to say absolutely, because
00:52:04.250 --> 00:52:07.170
look, the first thing they did when the report
00:52:07.170 --> 00:52:09.690
of the school came out being hit was lie about
00:52:09.690 --> 00:52:12.230
it. They said that the Iranians hit it. It wasn't
00:52:12.230 --> 00:52:14.769
another government which revealed that wasn't
00:52:14.769 --> 00:52:16.949
the case. It was just ordinary reporters and
00:52:16.949 --> 00:52:21.070
open-source researchers who viewed the video
00:52:21.070 --> 00:52:24.730
footage that was recovered from the town that
00:52:24.730 --> 00:52:27.070
identified the munitions as being American munitions.
00:52:27.090 --> 00:52:30.070
So the Tomahawk missile is a very exquisite
00:52:30.070 --> 00:52:33.130
system that you could describe as expensive and
00:52:33.130 --> 00:52:36.329
unique. The Iranians don't operate it.
00:52:36.329 --> 00:52:38.570
Only the U.S. and U.S. allies operate it. So that
00:52:38.570 --> 00:52:40.630
was the first response, which is completely wrong.
00:52:40.630 --> 00:52:43.630
Secondly, as we mentioned, we spoke to some former
00:52:43.630 --> 00:52:48.349
people in the DOD, told us that, look, they could
00:52:48.349 --> 00:52:50.329
tell you immediately if they hit those coordinates.
00:52:50.329 --> 00:52:54.210
So that's not a mystery. As soon as it happens,
00:52:54.210 --> 00:52:56.570
they can tell you if someone punched in
00:52:56.570 --> 00:52:59.320
those coordinates, if they were struck. They never
00:52:59.320 --> 00:53:01.579
really followed up about that. They could do
00:53:01.579 --> 00:53:03.199
it within an hour. It's been eight months. They
00:53:03.199 --> 00:53:06.099
haven't done that. So that's another data point.
00:53:06.300 --> 00:53:08.000
And then they've continued lying about it since
00:53:08.000 --> 00:53:10.739
then. After they revealed that, they said, well,
00:53:10.820 --> 00:53:13.559
that's not what was there, or we're looking into
00:53:13.559 --> 00:53:16.500
it. Or Trump, the commander in chief, has said
00:53:16.500 --> 00:53:19.320
repeatedly he doesn't care. He said that. Why
00:53:19.320 --> 00:53:22.360
are you still asking me about this? He's indicated
00:53:22.360 --> 00:53:24.280
it's not a priority. It's not something that
00:53:24.619 --> 00:53:27.579
is there, something that they give any consideration
00:53:27.579 --> 00:53:30.000
to. So that's another aspect of it. So these
00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:32.079
things all kind of accumulate a little bit. So
00:53:32.079 --> 00:53:35.000
I will say also that everyone who's found out
00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:37.019
about what happened there has been reporters.
00:53:37.340 --> 00:53:39.860
And The New York Times maybe has some resources.
00:53:40.099 --> 00:53:42.460
Drop Site, I tell you, has way less budget than
00:53:42.460 --> 00:53:44.320
the Department of Defense. I think they're asking
00:53:44.320 --> 00:53:47.579
for a $1.5 trillion budget. Our budget is, suffice
00:53:47.579 --> 00:53:51.260
to say, infinitely less than that. We were able
00:53:51.260 --> 00:53:55.179
to reconstruct all this. It shows that
00:53:55.179 --> 00:53:56.599
they're obviously not devoting their tremendous
00:53:56.599 --> 00:53:58.820
resources to doing it, because it's not something
00:53:58.820 --> 00:54:01.059
which they care about. It's an embarrassment,
00:54:01.059 --> 00:54:03.320
and it's embarrassment to their narrative of
00:54:03.320 --> 00:54:05.159
the situation. And they're dealing with embarrassment
00:54:05.159 --> 00:54:08.280
by trying to be silent and hoping it goes away,
00:54:08.460 --> 00:54:11.139
trying to think of some sort of mitigating PR
00:54:11.139 --> 00:54:14.179
narrative, maybe blaming AI and so forth, diffusing
00:54:14.179 --> 00:54:17.340
the conversation entirely to that subject. That's
00:54:17.340 --> 00:54:18.739
how they're going to deal with it. But
00:54:18.760 --> 00:54:21.000
I would say this is a stain which will stay on
00:54:21.000 --> 00:54:23.679
CENTCOM indefinitely. It's just like the My Lai
00:54:23.679 --> 00:54:25.800
massacre we still talk about. Yeah, the Minab
00:54:25.800 --> 00:54:29.800
massacre is of that scale, undoubtedly. And
00:54:29.860 --> 00:54:32.440
that's exactly what's going to happen.
00:54:32.539 --> 00:54:34.280
And there are also other massacres
00:54:34.280 --> 00:54:36.860
that took place on the same day in southern Iran.
00:54:37.079 --> 00:54:38.860
We might do some stories about that, too. There
00:54:38.860 --> 00:54:41.639
was a girls' volleyball practice not far from
00:54:41.639 --> 00:54:43.360
there in a town called Lamerd, which was
00:54:43.599 --> 00:54:46.260
hit by another Tomahawk. No, it wasn't by Tomahawk.
00:54:46.300 --> 00:54:49.079
It was hit by a PrSM missile, which is an experimental
00:54:49.079 --> 00:54:51.719
missile which explodes above the target and then
00:54:51.719 --> 00:54:56.380
dislodges tens of thousands of pieces
00:54:56.380 --> 00:54:59.360
of tungsten or shrapnel. And they totally ripped
00:54:59.360 --> 00:55:01.440
apart the girls at this volleyball practice.
00:55:01.639 --> 00:55:03.960
And some of the survivors, I think about 18 people
00:55:03.960 --> 00:55:05.760
were killed, but some of the survivors were blinded.
00:55:06.719 --> 00:55:09.840
Their innards were ripped out by the
00:55:09.840 --> 00:55:11.739
missile. So that also happened on the same day.
00:55:11.800 --> 00:55:13.780
And they lied about that, too. They said it was
00:55:13.780 --> 00:55:15.619
an Iranian missile again, even though we have
00:55:15.619 --> 00:55:18.219
the footage and the aftermath of that bombing
00:55:18.219 --> 00:55:22.300
as well. So there's lying in the sense that anyone
00:55:22.300 --> 00:55:24.480
you would expect any quote-unquote
00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:26.860
authoritarian government to lie. Yeah, that's
00:55:26.860 --> 00:55:28.619
what they're doing about all this. And we're
00:55:28.619 --> 00:55:30.579
piecing together with minimal resources what
00:55:30.579 --> 00:55:32.659
happened as journalists and other outlets there
00:55:32.659 --> 00:55:35.559
as well. But they have all the data
00:55:35.559 --> 00:55:36.920
because they know what they did, and they're not
00:55:36.920 --> 00:55:39.320
putting it out. So that kind of speaks, kind
00:55:39.320 --> 00:55:42.980
of tells you what it is in and of itself. They
00:55:42.980 --> 00:55:46.460
clearly knew that they did it.
00:55:46.460 --> 00:55:51.059
Come on. This wasn't even... the U.S.
00:55:51.059 --> 00:55:53.539
was attacking Iran. A bunch of people died
00:55:53.539 --> 00:55:56.380
in the school. Why would Iran hit its own school,
00:55:56.519 --> 00:55:58.539
right? Iran is going to be firing missiles at
00:55:58.539 --> 00:56:01.940
bases that are in other countries, not at its
00:56:01.940 --> 00:56:05.329
own. It made no sense from the very beginning.
00:56:05.409 --> 00:56:07.429
It's like Russia blew up its own pipeline. It
00:56:07.429 --> 00:56:11.070
was always nonsense. You think they're embarrassed.
00:56:11.449 --> 00:56:13.289
I don't think they're embarrassed. I don't think
00:56:13.289 --> 00:56:16.780
they care one way or the other. Yeah, well,
00:56:16.780 --> 00:56:18.880
I don't think they care a percent. And
00:56:18.880 --> 00:56:20.960
that's the inference I get from their actions
00:56:20.960 --> 00:56:24.400
and words. But also, there's
00:56:24.400 --> 00:56:28.449
a desire to put forward a pristine narrative
00:56:28.449 --> 00:56:31.110
of their motivations and their actions in these
00:56:31.110 --> 00:56:35.190
conflicts to the public, the global public, also
00:56:35.190 --> 00:56:38.550
to the people inside the institution. Nobody
00:56:38.550 --> 00:56:41.929
likes to be, Brad Cooper at one
00:56:41.929 --> 00:56:44.090
of these testimonies, a reporter for Channel
00:56:44.090 --> 00:56:46.769
4 who was reporting on the Minab massacre, as
00:56:46.769 --> 00:56:48.550
she was yelling at him and calling out to him,
00:56:48.550 --> 00:56:50.730
and he just kind of darted off. I think they prefer
00:56:50.730 --> 00:56:53.369
to be just lauded as heroes and have a pristine
00:56:53.369 --> 00:56:55.630
record of what they did in the conflict. This
00:56:55.630 --> 00:56:57.949
war is very unpopular among Americans. It's probably
00:56:57.949 --> 00:57:01.809
the most unpopular war that's been
00:57:01.809 --> 00:57:05.050
recorded in the last century. The Vietnam War
00:57:05.050 --> 00:57:07.650
took years to reach this level of unpopularity
00:57:07.650 --> 00:57:10.369
that the Iran war hit almost immediately. And
00:57:10.489 --> 00:57:13.309
I don't think most Americans really
00:57:13.309 --> 00:57:16.250
want their tax dollars to be used to kill children
00:57:16.250 --> 00:57:19.150
in a girls' elementary school around the world
00:57:19.150 --> 00:57:20.929
in a conflict that has nothing to do with them
00:57:20.929 --> 00:57:23.190
and that's been harming their interests,
00:57:23.190 --> 00:57:25.989
on that anyways. So I think these
00:57:25.989 --> 00:57:27.989
things all add up, and I do think it's upon
00:57:27.989 --> 00:57:30.849
the American public to a degree also. We're
00:57:30.849 --> 00:57:32.530
giving the information about what's going on
00:57:32.530 --> 00:57:34.489
here, and then they can do something with that
00:57:34.489 --> 00:57:38.449
when they protest or vote or so forth. But
00:57:38.449 --> 00:57:40.130
it should be entered in the historical
00:57:40.130 --> 00:57:41.789
record, and people can do what they want with
00:57:41.789 --> 00:57:43.929
it. And the historical record of this war, I think,
00:57:43.929 --> 00:57:46.960
will be unfavorable. It will show it was an unpopular
00:57:46.960 --> 00:57:50.360
war of aggression that was fought, didn't achieve
00:57:50.360 --> 00:57:52.079
its goals, killed a huge number of civilians,
00:57:52.519 --> 00:57:56.280
and committed, as I said, the single worst individual
00:57:56.280 --> 00:57:59.920
incident of a U.S. war crime in many, many decades.
00:58:02.210 --> 00:58:05.070
So I'm glad you brought it up, and I feel like
00:58:05.070 --> 00:58:07.150
that is a good place to sort of end it. But,
00:58:07.150 --> 00:58:09.349
as a last question, Murtaza,
00:58:09.449 --> 00:58:12.510
I was five years old when the My Lai massacre
00:58:12.510 --> 00:58:16.789
happened. And nevertheless, I remember its aftermath
00:58:16.789 --> 00:58:19.530
because it was in the newspaper and on national
00:58:19.530 --> 00:58:23.469
television for years. There were congressional
00:58:23.469 --> 00:58:26.409
hearings. The media, which was, of course, a
00:58:26.409 --> 00:58:30.170
lot more robust at the time, kept after this
00:58:30.170 --> 00:58:33.530
story. There were dissidents within the Army
00:58:33.530 --> 00:58:37.929
who kept stepping forward. It was a slow,
00:58:38.219 --> 00:58:42.280
constant burn. And until Lieutenant Calley was
00:58:42.280 --> 00:58:45.539
held responsible, and we can... it's
00:58:45.539 --> 00:58:47.519
a different story as to whether that was enough
00:58:47.519 --> 00:58:50.360
or not. But anyway, until his trial,
00:58:50.519 --> 00:58:54.719
basically the story just didn't go away. I wonder
00:58:54.820 --> 00:58:59.039
how many Americans even know that the
00:58:59.039 --> 00:59:02.300
Minab massacre even happened. And if you walked
00:59:02.300 --> 00:59:06.019
into a mall in Paramus, New Jersey, and asked
00:59:06.019 --> 00:59:09.030
a thousand people, what was the Minab
00:59:09.030 --> 00:59:11.489
massacre? How many would be able to answer that
00:59:11.489 --> 00:59:15.590
question? Yeah, Ted, this is something.
00:59:15.710 --> 00:59:18.130
It's kind of a disturbing sort of development,
00:59:18.130 --> 00:59:20.469
because I remember the Iraq War in
00:59:20.469 --> 00:59:23.789
2003, and I was probably a teenager at that time,
00:59:23.809 --> 00:59:26.050
but there was a tremendous public
00:59:26.050 --> 00:59:29.369
debate prior to the launching of the Iraq War.
00:59:29.449 --> 00:59:31.969
And obviously it's remembered rightly as a complete...
00:59:32.170 --> 00:59:37.389
there was lying, and it was sophistry,
00:59:37.670 --> 00:59:40.650
and there was just fabrications. It was seen
00:59:40.650 --> 00:59:43.630
as a very shameful episode, the fact that the
00:59:43.630 --> 00:59:46.329
war started on false pretenses. But there was
00:59:46.329 --> 00:59:48.050
at least a discussion about it, and there were
00:59:48.050 --> 00:59:51.010
huge protests about it. People were talking about
00:59:51.010 --> 00:59:53.750
it, pro and against. The government felt it had
00:59:53.750 --> 00:59:56.210
to make a case about the war one way or another,
00:59:56.309 --> 00:59:58.650
even if it was a false case. In this case, the
00:59:58.650 --> 01:00:01.550
war was just started without any discussion,
01:00:01.789 --> 01:00:04.480
without any public debate, without much public
01:00:04.480 --> 01:00:06.260
response for the most part. There weren't really
01:00:06.260 --> 01:00:08.599
huge anti-war protests. There weren't pro-war
01:00:08.599 --> 01:00:11.199
protests. It just was an elite-driven exercise
01:00:11.199 --> 01:00:14.219
entirely. And it's continued as an elite-driven
01:00:14.219 --> 01:00:16.739
exercise entirely. If it wasn't for inflation
01:00:16.739 --> 01:00:18.820
and gas prices, I don't think people would notice
01:00:18.820 --> 01:00:21.119
the war's going on at all for the most part. I
01:00:21.119 --> 01:00:23.280
think that speaks to a shift in the American
01:00:23.280 --> 01:00:26.519
public, which has somehow been sterilized or
01:00:26.519 --> 01:00:29.039
something in the course of the past few decades.
01:00:29.280 --> 01:00:32.119
There's not the raucous public response to...
01:00:32.500 --> 01:00:34.980
maybe there's this exhaustion, or maybe people,
01:00:34.980 --> 01:00:37.679
after the Gaza protests were kind of suppressed.
01:00:37.980 --> 01:00:39.639
The people who would protest have
01:00:39.639 --> 01:00:42.860
been kind of chastened now, maybe. And
01:00:42.880 --> 01:00:45.119
the discussion of the course of the war, or how
01:00:45.119 --> 01:00:47.880
it came about, or the justifications for what's
01:00:47.880 --> 01:00:50.480
happened during it, incidents like Minab. Yeah,
01:00:50.480 --> 01:00:52.500
as you said, there's not been a public sphere
01:00:52.500 --> 01:00:55.059
that is seemingly very activated to talk about
01:00:55.059 --> 01:00:57.500
these things. I think it may... it could be
01:00:57.500 --> 01:00:59.639
broader than the conversation of this show, but
01:00:59.639 --> 01:01:01.940
maybe these changes in the technological environment,
01:01:01.940 --> 01:01:05.840
atomization, the fragmentation of attention, and
01:01:05.840 --> 01:01:09.019
so forth, have all corresponded to sort of
01:01:09.590 --> 01:01:12.210
dissolve the shared public sphere that maybe
01:01:12.210 --> 01:01:14.750
we had inhabited to a greater degree before, such
01:01:14.750 --> 01:01:17.250
that some people in society are very aware of
01:01:17.250 --> 01:01:19.849
the Minab incident, or among other incidents, and
01:01:19.849 --> 01:01:21.750
some people could not even tell you in a million
01:01:21.750 --> 01:01:24.369
years even that the war is going on, for the most
01:01:24.369 --> 01:01:27.989
part. That's very possible. I think so.
01:01:27.989 --> 01:01:30.409
I don't know. I thought about the same thing.
01:01:30.409 --> 01:01:33.159
There's a lot of reasons that could be. I think
01:01:33.159 --> 01:01:35.420
that if most people knew about it, I think their
01:01:35.420 --> 01:01:37.679
natural human inclination would be to recoil
01:01:37.679 --> 01:01:39.940
from it and demand accountability. But as you
01:01:39.940 --> 01:01:41.300
said, I think most people don't know about it.
01:01:41.820 --> 01:01:45.679
The establishment media, so to speak, I can't
01:01:45.679 --> 01:01:47.199
say that they haven't covered it at all. They
01:01:47.199 --> 01:01:49.320
have covered it a little bit. They probably haven't
01:01:49.320 --> 01:01:51.119
given it the level of coverage that the My Lai
01:01:51.119 --> 01:01:53.320
massacre had, which was covered every single
01:01:53.320 --> 01:01:58.639
day. I don't know. They had reporters
01:01:58.639 --> 01:02:01.559
in Vietnam, embedded reporters, right? Right.
01:02:01.559 --> 01:02:03.940
Yeah. And nothing happened like these publications,
01:02:03.940 --> 01:02:05.880
which, for the most part, are commanding
01:02:05.880 --> 01:02:08.139
a decreasing share of public attention. So this
01:02:08.139 --> 01:02:10.739
fragmentation is happening a lot. But
01:02:10.739 --> 01:02:12.820
the foreign bureaus don't really exist anymore,
01:02:12.820 --> 01:02:15.340
for the most part. They've been dissolved or scaled
01:02:15.340 --> 01:02:17.599
down tremendously. So that's another aspect of
01:02:17.599 --> 01:02:20.719
it. So yeah, it's unfortunate. And I think it speaks
01:02:20.719 --> 01:02:23.590
to foreign policy in general just becoming a
01:02:23.590 --> 01:02:26.949
function of the executive branch, and the public
01:02:26.949 --> 01:02:31.190
is decreasingly involved in it, absent a draft
01:02:31.190 --> 01:02:33.429
or something like that, which doesn't seem likely
01:02:33.429 --> 01:02:36.829
in the near future. Yeah. Murtaza, thank you so
01:02:36.829 --> 01:02:39.250
much for joining us. Murtaza Hussain is the
01:02:39.250 --> 01:02:41.010
senior national security and foreign affairs
01:02:41.010 --> 01:02:43.849
journalist at Drop Site News. He's a co-author
01:02:43.849 --> 01:02:47.590
of a major reporting piece called Behind
01:02:47.590 --> 01:02:51.730
the Minab Massacre. So go to Drop Site News,
01:02:52.280 --> 01:02:56.119
check that out. It's a long, painful read, but I
01:02:56.119 --> 01:02:58.460
think we all have a responsibility to know what
01:02:58.460 --> 01:03:01.280
happened. And thank you very much, and look
01:03:01.280 --> 01:03:04.599
forward to speaking to you again soon. Thank you,
01:03:04.599 --> 01:03:08.539
guys. Thanks, man. So we should, let's see, go
01:03:08.539 --> 01:03:10.800
through and see if we have any comments to talk
01:03:10.800 --> 01:03:14.119
about here. Thanks very much to Ray for
01:03:14.119 --> 01:03:17.559
the five dollars. O'Brien37, to beam up, we need
01:03:17.559 --> 01:03:20.579
to get off this rock. Have a good day, everyone.
01:03:20.579 --> 01:03:24.449
Thank you very much for that. And there was
01:03:24.449 --> 01:03:28.230
a previous comment that was a little more lighthearted
01:03:28.230 --> 01:03:30.469
than what we just spent the last half hour talking
01:03:30.469 --> 01:03:35.389
about. But if you saw... irrelevant question. I
01:03:35.389 --> 01:03:37.210
have a leaky toilet. Does anyone know of a good
01:03:37.210 --> 01:03:39.510
plumber? Huge bonus if he could fly a commercial
01:03:39.510 --> 01:03:43.190
plane, too. I don't know if you saw the latest
01:03:43.190 --> 01:03:48.489
Iranian Lego video lampooning the narrative about
01:03:48.489 --> 01:03:53.880
the flydubai incident. flydubai, by the way,
01:03:53.940 --> 01:03:57.119
it's being reported that it wasn't a knife. It
01:03:57.119 --> 01:04:00.380
was apparently an axe that the co-pilot brought
01:04:00.380 --> 01:04:04.320
on board. Because who doesn't bring their axe
01:04:04.320 --> 01:04:09.880
on board? And my first question was, well,
01:04:09.989 --> 01:04:13.260
how did they get a knife on board? Well, a knife
01:04:13.260 --> 01:04:15.719
is hard, but an axe, everybody brings their axe.
01:04:16.519 --> 01:04:18.639
Right. That seems even weirder. But I think they
01:04:18.639 --> 01:04:20.579
took the axe from the plane. I don't think they
01:04:20.579 --> 01:04:23.269
brought it on board. I think they're saying basically,
01:04:23.269 --> 01:04:26.210
people were asked, well, how did he get a knife
01:04:26.210 --> 01:04:27.610
on board? And it was, well, wait, it wasn't
01:04:27.610 --> 01:04:29.170
a knife. It was an axe. There was an axe on the
01:04:29.170 --> 01:04:33.309
plane. So it's used in case of emergencies
01:04:33.309 --> 01:04:36.889
or whatever. Yeah. As emergency equipment. And
01:04:36.889 --> 01:04:40.309
they took the axe and used the axe. Gotcha. Which
01:04:40.309 --> 01:04:42.329
is even weirder. It's like, how is he swinging
01:04:42.329 --> 01:04:45.769
an axe in a cockpit? Yeah. There's not a lot
01:04:45.769 --> 01:04:47.250
of room in there if you've ever been in there.
01:04:47.409 --> 01:04:49.550
Or you can just look. You can look inside and
01:04:49.550 --> 01:04:51.150
see there's not a lot of room to swing around.
01:04:53.230 --> 01:04:57.110
Of course, yeah, the idea that, by the
01:04:57.110 --> 01:05:00.829
way, did you hear this? The hero Israeli plumber
01:05:00.829 --> 01:05:05.949
who supposedly leveled the plane out. So he claimed
01:05:05.949 --> 01:05:09.150
that he... you're laughing already because you
01:05:09.150 --> 01:05:11.949
know what I'm going to say. He claimed he was
01:05:11.949 --> 01:05:15.710
watching some TV. He was a fan of some TV show
01:05:15.710 --> 01:05:18.960
about air disasters, and that from watching this
01:05:18.960 --> 01:05:22.800
TV show, he knew what to do, that basically after
01:05:22.800 --> 01:05:29.940
the plane plunged from 34 to 17,000 feet in
01:05:29.940 --> 01:05:34.280
29 seconds. And by the way, there was an expert
01:05:34.280 --> 01:05:37.639
on CNN who said that if that were true, that
01:05:37.639 --> 01:05:39.300
the plane had dropped that quickly, it would
01:05:39.300 --> 01:05:45.460
have disintegrated. And also, there's just so
01:05:45.460 --> 01:05:47.809
many things here that just don't make
01:05:47.809 --> 01:05:51.929
a lot of sense. Also, the rudders were shorn
01:05:51.929 --> 01:05:54.730
off. So how were they able to stabilize the plane
01:05:54.730 --> 01:05:57.590
in order to bring it in for a landing? But anyway,
01:05:57.710 --> 01:06:00.070
the point is some Israeli guy bursts in. So the
01:06:00.070 --> 01:06:03.070
one thing that's being doubted, I kind of don't
01:06:03.070 --> 01:06:07.389
doubt, which is the Iranian guy, the Indian pilot,
01:06:07.389 --> 01:06:10.989
after the attack was able to open the door. I
01:06:10.989 --> 01:06:14.019
believe that. I'm like, sure. People have...
01:06:14.019 --> 01:06:16.519
they're not just dead instantaneously. They have
01:06:16.519 --> 01:06:19.079
energy, and probably he was highly motivated to
01:06:19.079 --> 01:06:23.380
open that door. Okay, I get that. So then the Israeli
01:06:23.380 --> 01:06:27.360
dude, the plumber, comes in and pulls the
01:06:27.360 --> 01:06:30.570
thing up. Now, apparently it takes tremendous steady
01:06:30.570 --> 01:06:33.250
pressure to do that in a situation like that,
01:06:33.250 --> 01:06:36.210
to level the plane out. And then I guess then
01:06:36.210 --> 01:06:38.889
we have the Kumbaya Russian-Ukrainian co-pilots
01:06:38.889 --> 01:06:41.289
who come in and finish the job and bring the
01:06:41.289 --> 01:06:46.840
plane in for a landing. I don't know.
01:06:46.840 --> 01:06:49.059
I don't know. I don't know if I believe the plumber
01:06:49.059 --> 01:06:52.380
who watched it all on a YouTube
01:06:52.380 --> 01:06:56.800
how-to video, how to land a commercial
01:06:56.800 --> 01:07:00.420
plane. Every Israeli can land a plane.
01:07:00.599 --> 01:07:04.380
Every Israeli can land a plane, right? He's the everyman that
01:07:04.380 --> 01:07:07.460
can just go in and just pull. I knew a guy who
01:07:07.460 --> 01:07:11.039
was an air traffic controller in Ohio, civil
01:07:11.039 --> 01:07:15.559
aviation, right? And he told me this terrible
01:07:15.559 --> 01:07:18.360
story about this guy who was... they got
01:07:18.360 --> 01:07:21.000
a call, and he's like, I'm in a Cessna,
01:07:21.000 --> 01:07:25.139
and the pilot, he just had a heart attack, and
01:07:25.139 --> 01:07:27.659
he's out, he's gone, and I don't know how to
01:07:27.659 --> 01:07:30.369
fly the plane. And he's not the co-
01:07:30.369 --> 01:07:32.309
pilot. He's a passenger. He's just sitting next
01:07:32.309 --> 01:07:37.570
to the guy. And so he tried to keep
01:07:37.570 --> 01:07:40.190
the guy calm and say, I'm going to teach you
01:07:40.190 --> 01:07:42.929
how to land the plane. He couldn't land the plane.
01:07:43.050 --> 01:07:46.030
The dude crashed. And that's a really simple
01:07:46.030 --> 01:07:50.309
plane, right? I have flown one of those
01:07:50.309 --> 01:07:53.550
planes a little bit, and it's simple.
01:07:53.670 --> 01:07:58.179
There's not a lot to it, really. This is far
01:07:58.179 --> 01:08:00.840
more complex. And
01:08:00.840 --> 01:08:02.940
there was no word that an air traffic controller
01:08:02.940 --> 01:08:05.980
would say, look for the orange dial, look for,
01:08:06.039 --> 01:08:08.099
that's your altimeter, or
01:08:08.099 --> 01:08:10.260
what I mean? He did it all on his
01:08:10.260 --> 01:08:12.960
own. I'm like, just from having watched the TV
01:08:12.960 --> 01:08:14.780
show. He's an Israeli plumber, Ted, of
01:08:14.780 --> 01:08:19.359
course he could land it. And by the way, if
01:08:19.359 --> 01:08:21.020
he was an Israeli plumber in charge of the national
01:08:21.020 --> 01:08:24.399
debt, we'd be okay. And keep in mind, the fighting
01:08:24.399 --> 01:08:25.960
apparently is taking place as they're falling.
01:08:27.279 --> 01:08:30.930
So they're fighting in zero-G. Yeah. So
01:08:30.930 --> 01:08:33.189
apparently it was a full, at least one full G.
01:08:33.329 --> 01:08:36.050
Right. And that... oh, so that's the thing, too.
01:08:36.210 --> 01:08:38.869
Right. So while they're supposedly moving toward
01:08:38.869 --> 01:08:42.130
the cockpit, by all accounts, you would be, yeah,
01:08:42.250 --> 01:08:44.770
effectively zero-G. Your feet are off the ground.
01:08:44.989 --> 01:08:48.220
You're literally... you're fighting in zero-G. I
01:08:48.220 --> 01:08:50.960
was in an incident when I was 16 years old. I
01:08:50.960 --> 01:08:53.619
was flying to Reykjavik, Iceland, with my mom.
01:08:54.039 --> 01:09:00.279
And the plane lost about 7,000
01:09:00.279 --> 01:09:04.039
feet of altitude all of a sudden. And let me
01:09:04.039 --> 01:09:08.000
just say it was a hot mess. Okay. Everybody who
01:09:08.000 --> 01:09:10.680
wasn't buckled in went straight to the ceiling.
01:09:10.680 --> 01:09:14.560
People were covered with blood. People lost
01:09:14.560 --> 01:09:17.500
teeth. They broke their noses. People had their
01:09:17.500 --> 01:09:20.060
glasses break out into their eyes. They lost their
01:09:20.060 --> 01:09:25.159
sight. I'd say probably a third to
01:09:25.159 --> 01:09:28.590
a quarter of the passengers had significant
01:09:28.590 --> 01:09:30.550
injuries that required them being hospitalized.
01:09:31.369 --> 01:09:34.069
And then the rest of us were all
01:09:34.069 --> 01:09:37.810
bruised and beaten up, right? We all
01:09:37.810 --> 01:09:39.630
thought we were going to die. If you saw the
01:09:39.630 --> 01:09:42.890
plane afterwards, right, there's shit all over
01:09:42.890 --> 01:09:45.090
the... literally there's shit and piss
01:09:45.090 --> 01:09:47.989
all over the place from people losing,
01:09:47.989 --> 01:09:51.569
evacuating their bowels. There's blood smears
01:09:51.569 --> 01:09:54.449
all over the place. The oxygen masks have all
01:09:54.449 --> 01:09:57.329
been deployed. All the luggage fell out from
01:09:57.329 --> 01:10:01.029
the overheads on top of people. The drink cart's
01:10:01.029 --> 01:10:03.090
been banging around on the ceiling.
01:10:03.229 --> 01:10:06.229
It's basically like God took the plane
01:10:06.229 --> 01:10:11.949
and went like that, right? That's what happened in
01:10:11.949 --> 01:10:16.779
this flydubai incident was a lot worse. A lot.
01:10:16.779 --> 01:10:19.340
By the way, and they were fighting as this was
01:10:19.340 --> 01:10:23.439
supposedly taking place. Yeah. It's like
01:10:23.439 --> 01:10:25.340
an action movie, like Air Force
01:10:25.340 --> 01:10:27.539
One, where Harrison Ford is hanging off the back
01:10:27.539 --> 01:10:30.899
of the plane. Come on. Yeah. It just sounds
01:10:30.899 --> 01:10:34.470
a bit much. It just sounds a bit much. And then
01:10:34.470 --> 01:10:36.170
you get the Kumbaya scene at the end with the
01:10:36.170 --> 01:10:38.569
Ukrainian and Russian joining hands and
01:10:38.569 --> 01:10:42.449
landing the plane. Okay. Okay. We're all... all
01:10:42.449 --> 01:10:46.229
of us Jews have to stick together. Yeah. And
01:10:46.229 --> 01:10:50.949
then Bibi's like, come here, big guy. Yeah. Oh,
01:10:50.949 --> 01:10:53.970
it's crazy. Yeah, I don't know what really
01:10:53.970 --> 01:10:56.909
happened, but I know that it's not exactly the
01:10:56.909 --> 01:11:01.079
tale we've been told. Okay, I'm in wait-and-see
01:11:01.079 --> 01:11:03.960
mode. Anyway, thanks, Jamarl, for doing this this
01:11:03.960 --> 01:11:06.260
morning. Thank you to Murtaza Hussain for joining
01:11:06.260 --> 01:11:08.800
us from Drop Site News. Thank you all for your
01:11:08.800 --> 01:11:11.520
support. Please have a great weekend. We'll be
01:11:11.520 --> 01:11:13.819
back Monday for the regular two-hour show on
01:11:13.819 --> 01:11:18.060
Monday, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Eastern time. Thank
01:11:18.060 --> 01:11:20.079
you to producer Robby West. We'll see you then.
01:11:20.220 --> 01:11:24.039
Thank you to Trent for arranging this interview.
01:11:24.039 --> 01:11:27.539
And anyway, enjoy a beautiful fall day wherever
01:11:27.539 --> 01:11:29.539
you are. Or if you're in the Southern Hemisphere,
01:11:29.539 --> 01:11:33.060
I guess it's a spring day. All right. Bye, all. Have
01:11:33.060 --> 01:11:34.100
a good one, guys. Ciao.