This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Behind you for people watching is your Ranger tab, the 75th Ranger Regiment patch, your airborne wings, your combat infantryments badge.

You're a veteran of the Iraq War, of the Afghanistan War.

You enlisted in the Army as a private in the National Guard to help pay through college.

You were commissioned.

You led men in combat as a captain, as a company commander.

There's a second aircraft carrier being deployed to the vicinity of Iran in the Arabian Sea.

How worried are you that we are on the edge of a massive military strike against Iran with really no debate whatsoever?

No strategy known to anyone but Donald Trump and Pete

Hagseth, no discussion whatsoever about what comes next after the first bombs drop.

And what likelihood do you think that two weeks from now that Epstein's off the front pages and war with Iran is

the leading Kairon on all the cable news Trump shows?

Well, I'm deeply troubled by the prospect of Donald Trump using our military or engaging in conflict to try to distract us or to coalesce power, right? I mean, the man,

the man will do that. And if you don't think he will, then you're fooling yourselves. And this is

one of the reasons. I mean, the fact that I did three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan,

at least one of those, was to enrich oil executives in the private industry, right? And we spent

20 years at war, trillions of dollars,

thousands of American lives lost, tens of thousands wounded, our credibility throughout the world

damaged. And for what? By most definitions, we can't say that those conflicts ended well.

So what I learned when I was a younger man was that when the elites in Washington

bang the war drums and pound their chests and talk tough about what they're going to do.

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