Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with Trump flaying about doubling down on threats of obliteration upon more

obliteration as the Iranians refuse to yield and the region and the world is poised for more

death and destruction and global economic damage.

We'll discuss the strategic and moral danger of having a commander-in-chief and a secretary of so-called war,

who are adolescent bullies issuing bloodthirsty threats accompanied by macho movie memes and video game clips and montages of blowing stuff up.

Joining us is Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University,

director of the International Security Policy Concentration, and a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

His books include military power explaining victory and defeat

in modern battle and non-state warfare, the military methods of guerrillas, warlords and militias.

He has an article at Foreign Affairs we will discuss the price of strategic incoherence in Iran.

Then we'll assess the damage being done to the U.S. and global economy from Trump's

war of choice he apparently did not anticipate would have adverse economic repercussions.

Joining us is Dean Baker, Senior Economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research,

a progressive economic think

tank based in Washington, D.C. He's the author of Rigged, How Globalization and the Rules of the

Modern Economy was structured to make the rich richer, and writes the popular economics blog,

Beats the Press, where he has an article, Donald Trump's Big We tax, and another, a bat-bleep crazy Trump

complains about allies not being grateful for his attack on Iran.

Then finally, we'll speak with Garrett Epps, the Legal Affairs Editor at the Washington Monthly,

who taught constitutional law at the University of Baltimore Law School and Oregon University's Law School,

...