I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to The Contrary Podcast. It's another day that ends with why,

which means the markets are roiled. We appear to be slouching towards a ground war in the

Mideast. Donald Trump, who declared the war completely won and then declared that the negotiations

were ongoing, is back to making threats attacking the infrastructure of Iran. Where are we going?

Does anyone have any idea? Well, we'll try to find out.

Joining me is our good friend, Lieutenant General retired, Mark Hurtling, who's out with a new book.

If I Don't Return, a Father's Wartime

Journal. Good to talk with you again, General. It's great to be with you, Charlie. Thanks for

having me on today to talk about these important things that are happening back and forth.

So, General, let's just start off with where we are and with all the caveats that this is the

foggiest of foggy wars. By the time people listen to this,

who knows where we might be in the news cycle, just talk about the growing drumbeat for

boots on the ground, an actual ground invasion in Iran. Your thoughts?

I'm concerned about it, Charlie.

I've heard the reports from various news outlets this weekend.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, even Defense One,

had some interesting articles about what they had heard from various administration officials as to the president leaning toward

using military forces inside of Iran, potentially. And everywhere you turn, there was a different

course of action option, what we in the military call a course of action. Where are we putting

people? What are their missions expected to be? How are they

going to get there? And this follows up a couple of weeks of some deployments of a couple of

marine expeditionary units, units that come on board smaller than an aircraft carrier carriers.

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