And So, Welcome to the show,

Youssef Baker, Dr. Youssef Baker.

He's a lager, but it's okay.

Sorry.

It's spelled like, it's spelled like Baker, so that that's the problem. It's, it was a, yeah, my mom spelled it strategically when we were getting

quote-unquote naturalized. So, yeah, at everybody's protest and but she did it anyway. So now I'm stuck with

Bocker spelt like Baker. That's quite a story and actually they just gave they just had us pick Christian names out of a book you know you literally just pointed to a name and that became your name so

But I was I was named after Santa Claus my mom Christian. So she was like you're born in December. You get it you're getting named after Saint Nick. So that was actually that's how I got my my illustrious title.

And yet your favorite holiday is Halloween and not Christmas.

Yeah, I know.

There's no patron saint of Halloween except for Michael Myers, Dr. Bocar, thanks for joining us. And we have a lot to discuss and you know, we have a sort of cold light-hearted intro to talk about a really heavy

subject something that's actually quite devastating in many ways but before we

get into that can you just introduce yourself who you are and how you came to this particular project of the Iraq War and the invasion of Iraq?

Yeah, thank you again.

Thank you for having me here.

I'm a big fan of the podcast and I'm humbled to be given the space to talk to you all and be in conversation with you.

So my name is Youssef Bachr again.

I'm a professor in international studies of all things

at Cal State or California State University of Long Beach.

That's my profession.

But in terms of the topic of the war in Iraq

or the war on terror more broadly I feel like I have you know I was reminiscent I was thinking

...