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I'm All right, it's my enormous pleasure to have on Bad Faith podcast for the first time, Scott Ritter.

He is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and former UN Special Commission's weapons inspector.

Welcome to Bad Faith.

Thank you very much for having me.

Before we get started, I want to spend today updating the audience on what's been going on in Ukraine, particularly since the Putin-Trump meeting about two weeks ago in Alaska. But for

folks who aren't as familiar with their background, I wanted to just offer an

opportunity for you to give a sort of a gloss as to why you have particular expertise in Russia

and the mindset of the Russian people and Russian politics and why it's so important, you think,

for your perspective to be heard in contrast to what we typically get in the mainstream.

Sure. I'm of a certain age, a boomer. I was raised during the Cold War. My father was a career

Air Force officer. Therefore, my childhood was heavily influenced by the Cold War. He was a Vietnam veteran.

He was deployed to Vietnam several times. But I went to high school in three different places. One was

in Hawaii. We were there when the Vietnam War ended when South Vietnam fell. We took in Vietnamese

refugees into our home, boat people. That deeply impacted us. We then moved to Turkey. And I went to

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