Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tim Dillon show.

We have two great reporters here that I'm really excited to have on.

We have Ryan Grimm, who's returning from DropSight News, and Jeremy Scahill, who's the author

of Dirty Wars, also a great documentary.

Jeremy, first to you, you've looked at a lot of different conflicts that the United States has been involved in.

What makes this unique as a challenge?

Forget the morality of being there.

We're going to get to that in a moment.

But do you think we're winning this war?

And if not, why not?

And why didn't George W. Bush do this?

I mean, why has no other president done this?

I mean, this is a seemingly a unique set of challenges.

I think generals told Trump that before we went in, yet he went in anyway.

In your estimation, why is this so incredibly difficult?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, Tim, like you mentioned the Bush era, and I think one of the, one of the factors here that is kind of extraordinary is that Dick Cheney and the Bush team,

they also were sort of lawless gangsters when it came to like respect for the Constitution

and basic civil liberties and congressional procedures regarding war. But they look like,

you know, sort of constitutional law scholars compared to what the Trump administration is doing on issues of war powers, et cetera. And, you know, sort of constitutional law scholars compared to what the Trump administration is doing

on issues of war powers, et cetera. And, you know, one factor here that I think really has to be

emphasized is that the leadership of the Democratic Party, they completely sat on their hands

in the whole buildup to this. Trump was telegraphing that it was going to happen.

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