Latest / Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs / Season 4, Episode 2: Dennis Fritz, Deadly Betrayal: The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq

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Season 4, Episode 2: Dennis Fritz, Deadly Betrayal: The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq · Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm Jeffrey Sachs.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Book Club, a monthly conversation with world-leading authors who have written scintillating, inspiring, and remarkably important books about history, social justices, and the challenges of building a decent world.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm absolutely thrilled to have with us today the author, Dennis Fritz, who has written an extraordinarily important book and very timely book called Deadly Betrayal.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's the story of why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's important history, but it's also current events because we have a war raging in the Middle East right now where there are so many echoes with what Dennis Fritz reports in Deadly Betrayal.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Dennis Fritz is uh command chief, retired of the U.S.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Air Force.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's had many commands, uh, an absolutely fascinating career.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, Commander, uh Chief uh uh Fritz, uh Dennis, if I may, as uh retired and author on uh on the book club, I'm so thrilled to be together with you, and it's it's an honor.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: You've uh served the United States uh magnificently, and you've written a very, very important book for all of us to understand some truths about our foreign policy and about our ways of war.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be grateful if you could introduce yourself to this worldwide uh audience uh explaining what roles you played in the U.S.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: uhce and uh how you came to write this book.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, Jeff, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the respect is is mutual.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've been following you for years, and so I'm just uh thrilled and honored uh to be a part of your your book club podcast.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for that.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you, I spent some 28 years in the United States Air Force.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I will say a fairytale career for an enlisted person.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: My last 10 years is probably what I would really focus on, where I was a senior advisor to four-star commanders in the Pacific, Pacific Air Force's uh Space Command, which had the nuclear arsenal at the time, and our satellites that are circling the world right now, uh, which created, you know, Space Command created now the Space Force because of all the you know weaponsry, unfortunately, that we have in space now.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And also, as an additional duty, I was a senior uh enlisted advisor to the commander of NORRED, our era space defense um command.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: You saw everything.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I had an opportunity to see everything, not only uh from an operational standpoint from being in the field at uh major headquarters, but also I spent a lot of my time in the Pentagon as well, you know, working within the Secretary of the Air Force's office and uh the chief of staff's one of the organizations there, what we call the air staff.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I've had a blessed career.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I cultivated my career as being the uh command chief of Andrews Air Force Base, home of Air Force One, where I had the honor to be able to fly on Air Force One.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you know, as we step back a little bit, I had an opportunity to fly with President Bush as we were going out to visit some troops just before they were deploying uh to Afghanistan.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: That is an amazing career.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And as an American, let me thank you for it, uh, first of all.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great service, uh, and a great service I I may say capped by this uh amazing story that you tell and your perspectives, which I think are unique in that you know the command in the field, all over the world, space, the Middle East, Asia, the United States, and U.S.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: foreign policy making from seeing it at the very top level of the U.S.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: government.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't get higher than what you've seen.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And with that said, I'll set the stage of how I came about of writing the book.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh, as you will probably see in the book, I was at Andrews Air Force Base at the time, at the 9-11 happened, and uh that was a scary moment, you know, especially for us being in Washington, D.C.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I know likewise for you all in New York, you know, really, you know, ground zero, and then being in Washington uh with the Pentagon being hit.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I had had a number of assignments at the Pentagon and uh friends there and family there, in fact, at the Pentagon.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when that hit, that really, you know, scared everyone, you know, throughout the world, and uh specifically in New York and Washington, D.C.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like everyone else, I was alarmed by that.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was mad about you know 9-11, not knowing you know what happened and who had attacked us.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And once we were told that was done by bin Laden, like everyone else, you know, I hate to say it, but I I wanted revenge at the time, you know.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the troops felt the same way.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I always had a reputation of having credibility, as we say, the troops in slain, you know, language for the military men and women.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: We were all geared up and said, hey, we have to go and quote quote defend our country.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so off we went to Afghanistan.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, that was happening in October of uh 2001.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: By December, we had allegedly defeated, you know, the Taliban and we had, you know, interim government in place.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then all of a sudden, we started hearing about deploying to Iraq, and none of us understood that Iraq.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: When did when did you hear that first, actually?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: We started hearing about that in early 2002.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the Taliban allegedly had only been defeated, you know.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: But now I'm gonna go back, Jeff.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let me share something with you, and I'll I'll get to that later what I found out, though, you know, about Iraq and the planet of Iraq.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, we, the troops in the field, we started hearing about it in 2002, started seeing contingency orders and so forth and plans for going to Iraq.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And none of us understood that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh my time at the time of you know, working with General Myers, both in Space Command and a couple other assignments, members who had worked with me in Space Command was on General Myers' staff, who at the time went from being the vice chairman to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during that time.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you were advisor to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, nope, I was not before he became the chairman.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I see, okay, but I was still a conflict of his.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we still communicated and had, you know, breakfast and lunch, and his staff were called me because two members who had worked with me on my staff in Space Command was working for him at the time when he was the chairman, and so that was my connection, you know, to him continuously.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I reached out to them and said, hey, okay, what's going on here?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why are we going to Iraq?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what until this was just out of the blue in a way.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it must have seemed absolutely strange to you, especially you had to implement suddenly another war.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you were going to be engaged.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Where was this coming from?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why Iraq?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was something that bothered me.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I had no answer.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, military men and women were coming to me, especially when they got the orders to deploy to Iraq.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as a senior leader, you know, myself and the commanders were always, you know, it's called the deployment line, you know, go out and see them off, you know, give them the rah-rah speech, you know.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it was bothering me because not knowing what was happening, I didn't believe, you know, what did Saddam, what did Iraq have to do with 9-11?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it bothered me.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I never thought I would ever know the reason why.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And as I started sending troops off to war, and um I didn't know why I was doing that, you know, on the enlisted side of the house, you can't resign, but if you're retirement eligible, you can retire.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided to retire because I just couldn't, just in my heart, send troops off to war to something I didn't truly believe in.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that bothered me.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that shows the depth of the lack of explanation and clarity about this.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And especially when I had people on the joint staff who couldn't tell me why we were going.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: That really bothered me.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, the top of the U.S.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: military could not explain what was going to be one of the uh major wars of uh the beginning of the 21st century, and uh they couldn't explain what was going on, and you were commanding troops at the time.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so that bothered me.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Jeff, I never thought I'll ever know the reason why.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I call it divine intervention.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to get away from the military so I can be an outspoken person, you know, a person that had, like as you mentioned earlier, had served many commands, had been a leader for over 100,000, you know, men and women throughout my last 10 years of service.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to get away so I can just freely speak out against my concerns about the Iraq war.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's being a military person for over 28 years.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I tried civilian life, it just didn't work out for me.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had a great job.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I thought uh sitting on the Potomac, had a plush office sitting on the Potomac to look out and see the Potomac River, but it just didn't work out.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't for that military environment I was used to.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think I lasted three months, to be honest with you.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so friends started saying, Fritz, you know, your life is the military.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I had an individual that was a good mentor of mine that lured me back to the Pentagon.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And little did I know that divine intervention was I will be working under a guy by the name of Doug Fife, you know, who was the Under Secretary of Defense of Policy at the time, the number three guy in the Pentagon.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, uh as we come to that, it's a name that I think almost nobody knows in America, you know, in in the general public.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh of course, people know him uh if uh they're involved in high foreign policy.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: But this is uh someone that, as you'll explain, played an enormous role in uh American policy and in the world, but basically uh almost unknown to the American public.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you're telling a story and talking about somebody who's just not known.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, I'm so glad you said that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I dedicated a chapter to him, because at the time, I hate to be so candid, but he was probably the most dangerous person in government at the time and at the Pentagon.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I call it divine intervention.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do I end up, you know, working, you know, under this individual?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, one of the first things when I arrived back to the Pentagon was hey, you know, folks behind the scenes, the apolitical military individuals were talking, man, this guy is dangerous.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some were saying he was a liar, he was a crook.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I started doing background.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, who is this guy I'm working for now?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, was that 2002 still?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: That would have been early 2005 then.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so the Iraq War, you know, we're in the middle of the Iraq War.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: The Iraq War came, we're uh occupying, we're fighting.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh soldiers are dying, they're being blown up by uh explosive devices.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: IED, exactly.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you're coming back now to the Pentagon and you're assigned to Doug Fight.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Very amazing.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, but that's why I call it divine intervention.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I now it's something I always wonder, you know, why did we go to war?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm stuck right in the middle of seeing these guys executing this.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like you say, we're right in the middle of it right now.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: But but at that time, and you'll see in the book, and hopefully we'll get into that as well.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: But let's jump back to Afghanistan.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're losing more troops in Afghanistan than we are in Iraq at the time.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bush administration was so focused on Iraq.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Jeff, I don't want to jump the gun on you and go into the other part of the story, but I just want to give you a couple of things.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: What made me write the book, and then, you know, how do we got to where we are now?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because it does ties in to what's happening in the world today.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, after being in OSD policy, which Doug Fife was running, I got selected to work on a team because of the fact, as you know, even back then, the controversy of the war at the time, you know, it was under the disguise that uh, listen, we need to get ahead of what we call the freedom of information request.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: That uh historians, scholars like yourself, and uh the press will probably be seeking information of okay, why did we go to war?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so a team was created of three of us in the beginning.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was in Doug Fife and then his special assistant, a guy by the name of Abe Scholsky, who a lot of folks never heard the name of.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, I never heard of him until I read him in in uh in the book, but I saw what an amazing role he played as well.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Abe was a very intelligent guy.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was so quiet, but uh he was Doug Fife's brain.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And basically uh a kind of PR for war.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, intelligence guy, PR guy for war.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: He knew how to write some of the greatest papers, informative papers that was very convincing to Bush.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, yeah, he was a great asset.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: A name, when you talk about Doug Feit, but Abe Sholsky is a name that you never you know hear about.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I would ask that, do it some of your time to go back and do some research on Gabe because Gabe was a very interesting individual.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: But as we created this team, I gotta tell you, I was exposed, as you saw in the book.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I call myself the cowardly Daniel Ellsberg.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm looking behind me on my bookshelf, Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg, because uh Dan Ellsberg uh well we'll we'll get into this.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I won't digress uh too long, but uh I found him to be a hero for letting the public know about the Vietnam War.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this remarkable fact that he had access to the uh background documents, the real documents that led us into the war and continued the uh U.S.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: engagement in what the insiders knew was an absolute disaster, but they just lied to the public during year after year after year.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And Ellsberg, of course, exposed that in the so-called Pentagon papers.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh I was a a kid in the 1960s, uh marching on the streets of Detroit as a high school student against the war.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when I got to Harvard College as a freshman in 1972, within the first couple of weeks I met Dan Ellsberg in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I revered the guy and continued to.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to digress, but here's Ellsberg, and here is uh Dennis Fritz.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you had an amazing perch suddenly.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Unbelievable.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us what this this project on declassification review.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I will tell you, and that's why I call myself a cowardly Daniel Ellsberg.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: A cowardly Daniel Ellsberg.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Cowardly?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, you are I mean, you're a truth teller, which is amazing and wonderful.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we're grateful for that.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you found yourself in a symmetrical situation, in a way.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was exposed and had access to every any document that was created in advance of that rack war, all the pre-planning documents, all the personal papers.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, how did that happen, Dennis Fritz?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one thing I would give Donald Rumsfeld, I was no fan of Donald Rumsfeld, as you saw in the book, but one thing about him, he believed in preserving uh official documents.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: He really truly believed in that in the National Archives.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I would give him that.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so any meetings they had, any discussions they had, he wanted it documented.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because if he forgot anything, or if anybody forgot it, he had documentation.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing, in case he wanted to rewrite something, he had the original documents.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so, you know, one of my colleagues said, hey, these guys, I'm not gonna repeat what they say.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's got to be one of the F the stupidest people in the world.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: They left everything, you know, a paper trail.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: But that was good for me, you know.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: But what an amazing thing, by the way.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I guess if you want to rewrite history, you have to write history first.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So uh there you go.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: They left the paper trail.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: They left the paper trail.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh little did they know, a Dennis Fritz would come along, you know, interested in that paper trail, you know.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: As I started seeing the lies, you know, that I saw and just the way they went out to change Intel, you know, to their liking to justify going to war.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I gotta tell you, Jeff, they never knew if Saddam had WMD, but they were hoping weapons of mass destruction for a while.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Weapons of mass destruction.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: They were hoping that he had weapons of mass destruction to justify them going to war.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so they were, as you heard the term cherry-picking intel, yeah, that's what they were doing.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were cherry-picking in to justify, even though you had CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA, the military arm of intelligence, telling them, uh, we don't have no proof of him having WMD.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if he does, we don't know where they are.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: But Dennis, uh, the way that you depict it is that they landed on WMD as their go-to explanation for why we should go to war.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: But even that that was concocted.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't that they knew or didn't know.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: They needed to find some way to tell the public why we wanted to go to war.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, Jeff, I tell you, boy, I wish we had more time.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to digress back to that.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get this one first.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was exposed to every document that existed.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had access to all the systems and everything.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I had to have some of the highest security clearances, and then from security clearances, we go to access.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had special access to all the documents.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why do I say that?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Coming in in January of 2001, you had people like Paul Wolfrich, Richard Pearl, who was part of what we call the Defense Policy Board.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a volunteer board that advised the Secretary of Defense, and Doug Fife.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: They were set on going after Saddam from day one of their Bush administration.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: The problem, though, they had no justification or excuse to go to war at the time.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: They had to launch an unprovoked war completely out of American supposed tradition and international law.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: They had to provoke a war, and they were determined to do so.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: They were determined to do so.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Even fabrications of, you know, we had what you call Northern Watch and Southern Watch.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: They came about after the first war with Saddam when we went in to remove them out of Kuwait.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so from that, we had two military operations, Southern Watch to protect the Shia community, and then the Northern Watch to support and then to defend the Turks in northern Iraq.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in order to try to provoke Saddam, we had overflight where we would not allow any of his helicopters to get up in the air.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: We were even going to fabricate a story where Saddam shot at one of our aircraft to provoke him to going to war.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: We were trying to come up with all kinds of excuses.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, how could we provoke him, as you stated?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: But they couldn't come up with anything.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I'm about to say is I tell folks, I can give you facts, I can give you assumptions, and I can give you opinions.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, there's all kinds of conspiracy theories.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was an inside job and all that.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I don't follow that.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I only go by what I know.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: But Jeff, unfortunately, this is a fact here.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you, after 9-11 happened, there were some in the Bush administration were happy.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And why were they happy?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because we made it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: We got it.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have our excuse to go to war with Saddam now.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: We created the war on terror because of the fact we knew we could scare the American people to death of another 9-11 happening.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why will not the American people support us now in going to war?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they picked Iraq first because under the old Clinton administration, they had what you call a regime policy change.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do we, Americans, how do we dictate we're going to change the regimes of other countries?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: But they had a regime and they talked Clinton into doing that, but he never executed that.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So they felt that gave them justification.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the reason they started with Iraq first was because he was paying the families of so-called terrorists, you know, with bombs and Israel.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So they felt they could justify by going after him and saying that he had WMD to scare the American people because after 9-11.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I see you have a question.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was just reminded by the book.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I ever really knew it, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Before all of this happens, there is signed into law.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Into law.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Into law.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: That was during the Clinton administration.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Calling for the overthrow of the Iraq government.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Regime change policy.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we were paying money to do that.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: But not even covert.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's in the law.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's in the law.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: But think about it, Jeff, a person like you didn't know that.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: So think about the average American person.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they can put in the law.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody knew about it.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know about it until I started reviewing all these documents.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you're in command of so many of the forces.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Incredible.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: So let's uh let's go on.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're reading this thing and you're seeing they're happy after 9-11 in the uh sense that now they can implement their plan.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: We can implement the plan.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's justification there.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: After 9-11, the American people will do not want to be hit on our homeland again.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we can justify it by saying that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the homeland.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily by him, but he can provide it to terrorists to ignite um WMD or in fact, even when it's far to say a nuclear weapon on our homeland.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, that's going to scare the American people, you know, especially it's up and after 9-11.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Scare the wits out of them.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's unfortunate.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what our government was doing at the time to justify.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's get to the meat of this when you talk about how it aligns what's going on in the world today.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, before we get there, uh, because it's so fascinating, the leaders of this effort, I assume Cheney, Rumsfeld, Fife, Wolfowitz was still around, uh, or had he gone to the World Bank by then?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: He had not gone to the World Bank at as of yet then.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was right in the middle of everything during that time.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Pearl, this is already, I'll use the term cabal, but this is this is a group that uh had an agenda coming into power in 2001.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: They were the leaders of the uh Project for the New American Century.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: PNAC.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: PNAC, yeah.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: If we could just back up for one moment, this is a group that's come into power with an agenda.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they actually they actually declared the agenda in uh rebuilding America's defenses uh in the year 2000.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: They said, this is what we're gonna do.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if you could just describe that a little bit, and then I want to get to you have a wonderful description of the claims of why we might have gone and what you think it is.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to get to that, but first I want to put this project.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: For a new American century before us.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit reversing the order of the book because you come to the neocons, but let's start with this.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is a cabal or a group that inserts themselves into U.S.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: policy.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the Pentagon.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: It is the Pentagon, but the political, not the military.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't driven by the military.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is a group that comes into power with Bush Jr.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And they have an agenda and they've described the agenda.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: The agenda is a little bit terrifying in my mind, but why don't you describe what they had in mind?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: But Jeff, I'm glad you mentioned that because of the fact you mentioned 1998.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, this goes back all the way to 1991 when Paul Wolfwich was under secretary of defense under Cheney at the time.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in the Pentagon, we have what's called a defense planning guidance.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul Wolfwich back in 1991 came up with defense planning guidance, and that was the start of what you call PENAC and the neocons playbook.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: He had proposed to Cheney.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Cheney was Secretary of Defense.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Colin Powell was the chairman at the time.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he had recommended to them the defense planning guidance should be that, hey, we should have imperialistic views of the world.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: That we should be able to have no rival.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: We can go into the Middle East, we can go into Europe and do as we please because we are the exceptional country.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: This was Wolfwitch planning at the time to be able to go into the Middle East at any time we wanted to go in.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Believe it or not, Cheney disregarded that and it never passed.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why do I say that?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: The neocons and the folks that was part of the Pen Act, which no longer exists now, it's a long-term strategy.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: It goes all the way back to 91.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about this.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you were planning something like that and propose it to your leadership at the time, Paul Wolfwich, think about when you become in charge, you know, the number two guy at the defense.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's still part of your strategy.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, unfortunately, you have a president that don't have that foreign policy experience at the time, resident George Bush, Jr.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you're able to implement that plan.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it goes all the way back to 1991.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, Wolfridge comes into play.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have the PNAC strategy, you have the defense planning guidance strategy that Paul Wolfrich had recommended, which was denied, believe it or not, by Cheney at the time, but long-term strategy.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you come into office, you have your agenda going all the way back to 1991 and 92.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Also, the connections there.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Doug Fife has always worked under Wolfridge and Wolfridge being a mentor to Doug Fife.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how Doug Fife became the number three guy with the same mission, same goals, and same agenda.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're the dominant country in the world, and uh to meet our so-called, not the defense of our country, the interests of our country.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't it amazing, by the way?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's not our security.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not our defense.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, it is the American interest.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Cold word for Benny, we can do everything we want to do in the interests.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Unbelievable.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if I could tell you just on a personal note, I had a weird experience in those years because I'm an economist and uh was a young, pretty good uh practitioner.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I was uh asked by Gorbachev or his team to help on the economic stabilization of what was, you know, a collapsing situation.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then when the Soviet Union ended, I was asked by Yeltsin's uh economic team as prime minister to help on the economics.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, wow, we have a chance for peace.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: The Cold War's over.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: We we have a chance for peace.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: We should help these people because I'm listening directly.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I sat face to face with President Yeltsin, and he said, we want peace, we want cooperation, we want openness, we want democracy, we want to be a normal country.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly how he put it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: And in the meantime, we're saying inside the bowels of the U.S.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: government, we will dominate the world and do as we want.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was an unbelievable difference.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know it at the time.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: I said, sure, the U.S.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: will help.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: This was one of my most naive ideas possible.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't want to help, we wanted to dominate.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I hate to force to digress because we want to say on the book and the business at hand right now.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: But going back to what you just said, when I said my unbelievable career, I was part of when the wall came down, I went on a congressional delegation, one led by Steady Hoyer at the time, and uh and then one by the late Lord Benson.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned, yeah, you heard me mention about Lord Benson in the book.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we went over, we were following Secretary Baker around, who was Secretary of the State at the time.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: We were East Germany, went to Germany, and talking to all those countries about, hey, we will not expand NATO.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: You were there.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I wasn't with Secretary Baker, but we were just circling.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have the you know you know, you have the administration, then you have the legislature.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was on two Codels, one was Denny Hoyer and one, as I mentioned earlier, Senator Benson.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um the Soviets wanted peace.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, part of the reason the reason we went to Germany, they agreed to give us East Germany.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: You follow what I'm saying?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: They agreed.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was around there in those days, and Baker said not one inch eastward to Gorbachev to his face on February 9th, 1990.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't ambiguous, it was as clear as could be.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And once again, well, and you were there.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we have so much to talk about.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: This could be ours.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just say this.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: We said I was there.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was even knocking down part of the wall.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm mad at myself right now because when I came back, I gave pieces of the wall away.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't keep none for myself.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy me.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but I didn't understand the historical significance at the time, you know, of the wall, though.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm just out there chilling and it was just a believer.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: But when you go back to that, think about what I just said.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that was meant for the Soviet Union, then Russians.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were gonna have unquestioned military superiority.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that was we were giving the Russians, you know, Soviet Union and Russia hints there that uh, hey, you know, we're still gonna be the dominant force around the world.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And as you stated, you know, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, they wanted peace.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I'm sure you know this too.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: They even talked about wanting to be a part of NATO.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, absolutely because we want a superiority.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I digress, but we can talk about that on a later date.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: But let me get back to what's at hand, please.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let's jump up to uh to 2003, because you know, you beautifully describe some people say it's oil, some people say it's WMD, some people say, you know, and then you lay out, I think, so convincingly, but of course, you you have the documents, the records, the statements, the purpose.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us why did we go to war?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when you say that, Jeff, what bothered me most, first of all, we're talking about senior people that didn't know most general officers, as I talk to them now, even I knew they didn't know why the true reason why we went to war.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: But what bothered me most is I went around to different military installations in the Washington, D.C.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: area.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in Fairville, North Carolina, home of at the time Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I would go around and ask the troops, why do you think we went to war?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: None of them knew.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I heard it was about all.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I heard it was about, you know, revenge for the president's father.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you go to war, you gotta have a mission.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: The troops are putting their lives on the line.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't know the true reason of why they went to war.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: But what really tore me up, Jeff, you'll see in the book as well, before we went to war, you know, I mentioned to General Myers and my boss at the time that if we go to war, and growing up around Fairville, North Carolina, I saw the results of the Vietnam War, you know, the folks coming back.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know what post-traumatic stress reward or PTSD was at the time.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: I saw many of that within my family who went off to war in Vietnam, but we didn't know what it was.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I told Myers and a couple, I said, if we go to war, we better take care of our troops.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Especially when I knew at the time that I had reservations about it, but I didn't know the true reason that WMD was a lie or fabricated.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: I left the Pentagon in 2008 at the request of an old boss of mine and said, hey, they had a Washington Post story back in 2007, the treatment of our war wounded at the old Wall to Reed in Washington, D.C.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they asked me the Air Force, because I had a lot of jobs at the senior-level position, to go over to Walter Reed and take care of our war wounded.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that must have been such a heartbreaking job, also.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: People ask me how did I do it?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Justin, I don't know.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: I saw some of the most severe wounds you could ever imagine.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I saw where they were using old treatment.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I walk into a room where I see leeches all over the stomach of an individual, and I'm wondering, what is going on there?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that was to help treat infections and all that.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: I saw triple amphites.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: I saw kids that only thing that the torso they had left was, you know, everything below the legs was gone.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that tore me up, Jeff, because of the fact, hey, they had no idea why they went to war.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Even to say so.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was more focused on the troops.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what drove me to write the book.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would ask them, you know, do you know why all that was above my pay grade?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's talk about why we went to war.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had an individual from the New York Journal, you know, I've only had two bad critiques about the book.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was going to get my critiques from people like yourself, Jeff.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, academia, you know, talking about citations and all that.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: I had no gold word about citations, I knew a lot of them would be redacted, as you saw in the book.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to look underneath the redaction.
• 31:37
  unknown: You know.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because some of it, and maybe I don't want to, I don't want to take you away, but I'm sure that this is not national security.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just embarrassing.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not right.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot declassify or classify something just for embarrassment.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just tell you this.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know what's declassified and what shouldn't be declassified.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wrote the book based on declassifications.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I am sure you did that utterly, and you must have looked at every one of these redactions and said, Are you kidding?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, are you kidding?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't tell this secret.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta be careful here.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you be careful, but I but I do want to know because I just, oh, it's I'm sure, because sometimes you could kind of tell from the next paragraph, but you know, look at that.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much truth in this book, but I could tell from reading that it's just embarrassing someone's name is mentioned, you know?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to tell you that.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it is.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like some of the meetings they had.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the folks, remember, I mentioned like Richard Pearl, you know, he's what you call an informer advisor, even Newt Gingrich.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these folks are running out of the Pentagon.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you ready for this?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to hit you on this one.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Some APAC members that was running in and out of the Pentagon.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, don't, don't tell me.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get to why did we go to war?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then I want to ask you uh, how can our government be organized this way?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: So please, let's let's get to what you learned because it it is the bottom line and it is amazing and so clearly put, Dennis, and we just owe you so much for the clarity.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I appreciate that.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I'm just happy, you know, just like I said, hearing that from a person like yourself.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: But let me just mention this everything starts with a doctrine, a genesis.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about the PENAC earlier on.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: So when they when I told you they first came into office about, you know, we're going to war with Iraq under the old Clinton administration, we had a regime change policy.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't implement it, execute it.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to do it.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're the leader of the world.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: We should be able to do as we please.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so what they're thinking when they first originally came in, I'm so glad you mentioned the Pen Act, it was from that Pen Act thinking, you know, that hey, we should have dominance.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if we say that, hey, we should have regime change in Iraq, then we should do it.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the first reason is they set up their strategy and their doctrine was that gives us justification to go into Iraq based on our doctrine of being the dominant country of the world.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get to the meat of thing, how it ties into before we get that.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Can I just ask you one question?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because I use the term and I want to know whether it's actually used, full spectrum dominance.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a true military doctrine that is used?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I'm told the Defense Department used the term full spectrum dominance, meaning in every sphere and every technology and every uh dimension of uh military and in every region of the world, we should be dominant.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's true.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's part of the doctrine.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: We should be it's indoctrination, too, of our military and all that of being dominant.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's part of, you've heard this term.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know the Chinese use it quite a bit.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: America's exceptionalism, you know?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: People really believe that.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd say there's so much we could talk about, but see, that was what Rumsfeld truly believed in.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: I will call that part of Rumsfeld's doctrine.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: But going back to the reason we had went to war, you know, I had one critic to say, hey, he gave a number of reasons why we went to war.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, we did.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: There were three primary reasons.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Each had their own agenda.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, Wolfwich, Pearl, and Fife.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I hate to say this, but it was primarily about Israel, okay?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yep.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was primarily about Israel.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, and going back to what you just say about dominance, that was Rumsfeld's philosophy.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: All of them had agendas.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so they put those agendas to get everyone's agenda.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we're going to do to reach everyone's agenda.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the primaries and how it ties into what's going on right now.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: BB Netanyahu has always wanted, unfortunately, to do what he's doing right now in Gaza and then now in Lebanon.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: But because of the fact you had so many neocons and so many Zionists, quite frank with you, in the Pentagon at the time, they decided to come up this plan to protect Israel by saying, Hey, we're going to go to war on your behalf.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot go in and fight an urban war because we would kill too many civilians.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can't allow you to do that, BB.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we can't do that.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because we couldn't take the pushback from the world if we go in and started killing innocent civilians.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what are we going to do?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to take out the leadership of the three primary countries that support Hamas and Hezbollah.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now, by the way, you know, Dennis, if I may say, just to interrupt you, when I was reading, and there you say fighting Hamas and Hezbollah, exactly what's happening this moment.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right now.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you're talking about 2003.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, this agenda has been around for more than 20 years, actually, more than 30 years.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Long-term strategy.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: You nailed it exactly.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this Hamas Hezbollah focus.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is how we're in the Iraq War of 2003, not today's headlines, which is exactly the same thing, but the Iraq war.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's all part of what's going on now, except it was felt that we could not do what BB is doing right now, killing the innocent women and children.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: BB wanted to do that back then, but we said, no, we got the plan.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: And believe it or not, BB's contact, I think he was the finance minister at the time, but he was still part of the Lakoup party, still in the decision making and so forth.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: His primary contact was none other than Doug Fife.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Doug bragged about that.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: He bragged about that.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: The relationship they had.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the two countries that do exactly what we were doing was Israel and the UK.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: They were in cahoots with us.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: They were the only two.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: France and Germany, believe it or not, was against the war in what we were trying to do.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll read part of that in the book, you know, how they kept a lot of stuff away from France and Germany.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Can I ask you a question about the UK?
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because you've probably seen this.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so mad at the UK government in general over the years because they're even more war-mongering than these neocons.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: They seem to love war, and it seems this imperial delusion of theirs.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know whether it is just that from a foreign policy point of view, they uh they'll do whatever the U.S.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: says, but it seems to be more than that.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: They want to provoke us into these horrible things even more, as if the British Empire now continues, but with the U.S.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: military enforcing it.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, you're on it again.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I would tell you.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about going back into history.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's in their DNA.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: We are part.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: The United States of America coming over here.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's in it's in DNA.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: You follow what I'm saying?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: It originated in the UK.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, look around the world.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: UK and France, the dominance of the world.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's almost like I tell folks, you know, those of us, I played basketball in life, we live our dream through our kids.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't make it to the NBA, but I hope my son made it to the NBA.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, UK, we lost that prestige, but our kids, the United States of America that came from us, they're part of family, the DNA.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: So 2003, we're gonna take out Iraq, we're gonna take out Iran, which uh has been a goal, even a bigger goal, which they can't quite land, but they want that war to this moment.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: To this moment.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Syria and Syria.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: What say that?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just share this with you now.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, I said when I mentioned about uh BB and the relationship between BB and Fife, Israel wanted us to go after Syria and Iran first because they felt that you know they provided the most support to Hamas and Hezbollah.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: But uh the Bush menstruate and the neocons within the Pentagon said, no, no, no, no, no.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go after Iraq first because we have a regime policy and we can justify it because we had law against the remember, law against a regime policy change.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: We had law on our side.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: You follow me?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I follow you, but it's uh it's surrealistic.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's beyond imagining that this was the legal way to do it.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Syria was going to be next, and uh they had already started, you know, embarking and talking about okay, we're coming after you next.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because Syria allegedly had chemical weapons, so we're gonna go after them.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what stopped that was the insurgency.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: They never counted on the insurgency, and that's what stopped them from going into Syria because you got tied down in Iraq with the insurgency.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the other part, and then later on, you'll know in this history, Russia came in in support of Assad, and that really put the blank, even though we have troops right now illegally in northern Syria.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, it's our dominance, but we can do as we please.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: Obama did sign Operation Timber Sycamore to overthrow the Syrian government.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: I am so mad at Obama in that regard.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: I like Obama, but his force of fact, if you look in the book, it's talk about credibility and strength.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can't be weak.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: He got soaked into that, you know, doing that.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, remember that red line he had mentioned about if they have chemical weapons, we would attack.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, what business if they use chemical weapons?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was a false flag anyway.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you think about what I'm saying.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm told by Ted Postal and MIT and others.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you about, I'll keep that, but yeah, false flag.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just remember that.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but anyway, that's why, yeah, Obama did that because he got caught up in the Washington, D.C.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: think tanks sponsored by the military industrial complex, like you said in some academia world.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just, hey, you know, we have to go in and take out Assad.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: But he never did because he came to his senses.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he never did.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me tell you about Iran.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: We are afraid of Iran, and that's why we were saving them for last.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: We thought that we could do it.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I say we, because I'm part of the United States of America.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't part of the decision making, but I'm talking about the United States of America.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I hear you.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: I hear you.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: We were scared of Iran because of the fact of their ballistic missile systems.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: They have some ballistic missiles.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was part of the Iran nuclear deal.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's why a lot of neocons and conservatives didn't like the Iran nuclear deal because, as part of the deal, we wanted Iran to give up their ballistic missile system.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's their lifeline.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they're very powerful.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're not rockets, they're ballistic missiles, okay.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were scared to attack them.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, how we were going to do Iran?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: We were going to try to do it with exiles and internally, you know, and try to bring them down.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Regime change.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Internal over exactly, exactly, exactly.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so now, how's that tie into today?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, before we get there, yes, sir.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you so much.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: You're clarifying so many, so many things.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: I want to understand one thing.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's true.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: You have the vice president on side, you have a defense secretary on side, you have really a cabal.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to use the phrase.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's Wolfowitz, it's Feith, it's Pearl.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: And knowing these people, I I don't know.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I know one of them uh rather well.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't turn my back to trust them for anything.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: Still, how can even this group mobilize the vast power of the United States for their illegal, illicit, misguided purposes?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's the joint chiefs of staff, there's the diplomats, there's the Congress.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're often asking, I'm often asking myself uh over my uh nearly 70 years of life and watching this, who runs the show in this?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: And how can a war be generated?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: Even these are yes, senior people, but how can they mobilize a war after all?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is trillions of dollars.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's trillions.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Why isn't there a break inside the system that says, wait a minute, come on, we're not playing a board game, we're playing real life.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: This doesn't make sense, Doug.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, listen, when I started studying this stuff, I was amazed at what I found out.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you, and you're going to be able to relate to this and understand this.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: I did a chapter on APAC.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: I did a chapter on I talked about APAC quite a bit.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: I recognized it.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I was surprised.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: First off, why are we going to war on behalf of another country?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, been the years in the military.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was always talking, we're defending our country.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: We defend our constitution.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying we're going to war.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: As you just ask, how does this happen?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I started doing a study about this.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking at the Israeli lobby.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at the military-industrial complex.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like, say, for instance, right now, we're talking about will it be Israel or Ukraine.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about the military-industrial complex, we brag about, hey, we gave Ukraine or we gave Israel billions of dollars, you know.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: We gave them just this week.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: But think about the next step they said.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: But part of that requirement, part of that law, they have to spend that money and buy their weapons from U.S.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: manufacturers.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: The military industrial complex are making money off from war.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then what do they do?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: They turn around along with the Israeli lobby, the military-industrial complex lobby.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: They provide money for the congressional campaigns, even the administration campaigns.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the American people don't understand.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I wrote this book.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm on podcast.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: My goal is now that I understand is to educate as many of the American people as I can to show how this happens.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: And where does Zelensky go when he arrives in the United States?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: He goes to a factory.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: He goes to a contractor.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a money game now.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, but then you have to put your people inside and you make a conspiracy.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: You get Abe Scholsky to tell you the narrative, and there you go, off to work.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now let me get to your bigger one.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I understand the administration to political side of it, the administration, those that want power so bad, they'll take the campaign funds from the military industrial complex and the lobbies and so forth.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: What breaks my heart are the senior uniformed general officers.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: That breaks my heart.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now your question, how do they get tied up in this?
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, from day one, as an officer, a career officer, they're taught about the civilian chain of command.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're indoctrinated, you know, that's why the president's the commander-in-chief.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: As long as they don't feel it's illegal or unethical, we can give our say and then go from there and say, okay, we don't think we can either resign or follow the orders.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but Jeff, how about when they retire?
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't they speak out?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: As part of my group, the Isah Media Network, I've been trying to recruit GOs to speak out.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: They won't do it.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why they won't do it?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: How did the military uniforms get caught up in it?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because they go on and be consultants to the military industrial complex.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: They have to wait a few years, but then they go on to be consultants, sit on the boards of the military.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking at it breaks my heart.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another reason, I asked a former chief of staff who didn't go to that duration, he went to the academia world, and I asked him, why do these GOs do it?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, our troops, troops that they led, why do they send them off the war and get on CNN and C-SPAN to talk about, you know, warfare and all that versus talk about how do we get out of these worlds, how do we promote peace and diplomacy?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said, they've been general officers all their lives.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: They want to remain relevant.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: So they do it for two things, for their own ego to remain relevant and then being a part of the military-industrial complex, sitting on these boards, being consultants and so forth.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Making their money as part of the military-industrial complex.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how it happens.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to say it, it's all about the dollar, whether it be the military-industrial complex, then it becomes politics, those in Congress, they want to stay in office, so they take that money.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: People don't give you money for nothing.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just like if you go to the store, you give money for a product.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: But when the military-industrial complex are giving money for your campaign, when the Israeli lobby is giving money to that campaign, they want something from that.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, I want everyone to hear this because uh we'll have$10 billion, perhaps changing hands in this election.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody gives money for nothing.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody gives money for nothing.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: Not the big money.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, that is absolutely for a trade, isn't it?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: But that's how this happened.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Going back to your original question, that's how it happened.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Even with the uniformed officers, it's corrupt.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to say that.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is corrupt, Jeff.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it breaks my heart.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so thrilled to be speaking with you and uh so uh impressed with your leadership and your knowledge and so many uh fascinating points that you're raising.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: Given where we are, can the American people come to understand what's happening?
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a way to put a break on what seems to be endless and even spiraling wars right now?
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Jeff, I have the answer.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna take this point.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: That don't mean it's gonna be successful.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I I I look back at South Africa, Mandela, I look back at the Vietnam War, I look back when we had a draft, you know, that some people avoided the draft because they had bone spurs or something like that, you know.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I look at the draft and how these certain things were defeated.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we're demonizing them right now.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: I tell young people they're gonna make the difference because my parents and people of my, I'm trying to convince right now, we've all been indoctrinated that America is the world superpower.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: I had a young man that used to work for me and said, Chief, I want the world to respect us again.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: I said, What do you mean by that?
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've fallen into the talking points.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Respect.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I said, think about what you just said.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: You want somebody to respect us, so we can just go over the dominant because you want respect, but it's gonna take people like you and me having these podcasts because of the fact the mainstream media is not gonna pick me up, you know, and and all that because I'm going against, you know, the thing.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not gonna pick me up, but it's gonna take, but going back to what I'm saying, the young people, you know, the peaceful protesting, you know, there's something that gets out of hand on the college campuses.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: They've always been the one to change things.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm supporting them.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've gone on podcasts, I'm supporting independent candidates who understand that, hey, listen, we got to break this two-party monopoly.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people don't understand it.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: You either in one corner, I'm either a Democrat, I'm either a Republican.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to educate the everyday people, and that is my goal.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I put myself out there.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: And surprisingly, when you asked me earlier on, hey, what do my colleagues, what do my peers who I served with, you know, when I look and look them in the eye and say, do you think it's right for 4,500 military members that we served with to have died, left their families?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, by the way, Jeff, we don't talk about the millions that have been wounded for life, who I worked with up until 22.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen it.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen it up and close, whether it be mentally or physically.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's right to let our government to lie like that?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, by the way, what's going on right now?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: I served in the military and I tell my military peers right now, I say, think about this.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: From the time of basic military training for enlisted and for officer training, whether it be the academies or ROTC, we are taught about the Geneva Conventions.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: You don't bomb hospitals, you don't bomb schoolhouses, and you don't bomb residences.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Israel is violating all that, and we're a part of that.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're providing the weapons.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's right before our eyes.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: We know it.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: And why can't I get a general officer to come out and speak out against that?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's against not only our laws, but it's against international law.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Chief uh Dennis Fritz, you are providing magnificent leadership.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing it in the civilian part now.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you did it in the Air Force.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: You have explained things to us with incredible clarity.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: The book we've been discussing, uh Deadly Betrayal.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Please, everybody, read the book.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's so eye-opening, extremely important, based on the documentary history of the Iraq War, but it gives you chills because it's exactly about our day-to-day reality right now.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: Same motivations, same lies, same violence taking place in exactly the same places that motivated uh the 2003 Iraq War.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, Command Chief uh Dennis Fritz, uh, let me thank you for your leadership.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be calling you for uh a lot of education from you on a lot of points.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you've you've seen it all.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh let me thank you so much for joining Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I thank you, Jeff.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's an honor to be with you, and uh I look forward to talking with you in the future.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining in the conversation.
• 52:39
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