War on Terror Truth: What We Were Told vs What Actually Happened | Scott Horton | 4/23/26

Keith Malinak (00:00.344)

Hey, hey, hey, welcome to this edition of At the Mic. I am your host, Keith Malinak, and this is the Thursday deep dive edition today. I think it's a very important conversation. We need to have this talk for sure. And many times when we're living through history, which when there are big things happening, it's hard to see everything.

And we miss a lot of what is happening at the time. And for any number of reasons. And I'm just speaking for myself, but that applies to the war on terror. I have been involved in broadcasting conservative talk radio for my entire career, basically. mean, we're talking, goodness, 30 years now, I'm old.

And I will be the first to admit that when it comes to the war on terror, I absolutely fell for the government lies at the time. I've talked multiple times on this program how my initial gut specifically when it came to Iraq was, maybe that's not such a good thing. But ultimately, and I've admitted to such, if I were in the Senate or if I were voting,

I would have voted to go into Iraq based on the information that we were receiving. Now, again, speaking for myself, I'm much smarter now when dealing with the government. And I understand the game a lot more than I did a quarter of a century ago. And whether it's Democrats or Republicans in power, we're going to be lied to. And that is the truth.

For example, many of us, we saw through all of the lies of the COVID era, many on this program, we've talked about that. And many people who did fall for those government lies, they have since said, you know what, I was wrong. I perpetuated the lies that were being spoonfed to us. And that was me with the war on terror and specifically with Iraq.

Keith Malinak (02:22.328)

The post 9-11 world, and that's not an excuse. It's not. We could make excuses all day, but we didn't ask the important questions. Well, okay, I didn't ask the important questions. Some people did. My guest today is one of them, Scott Horton. Gonna bring him on here in just a moment, but I wanna let you know how I was introduced to him. I really just stumbled upon him.

It's shame on me but it wasn't until a few years ago. I was I Don't even remember what show it was I really don't but I was on a drive from Texas to Florida and He was a guest on a podcast and he was talking he was laying out lie after lie that we were told after 9-eleven and the war on terror and all of the all of this it was just it was sickening quite frankly

And it really opened my eyes. And I remember scribbling down a bunch of stuff on Post-it Notes. I'm to do my own homework. I'm going do my own research. And I did. And I read a couple of books. And in fact, one of those books that I read was his. And it's titled Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I read that book cover to cover. And it's very enlightening. And I would encourage you after today's show to go out and purchase this thing.

and open your own. It's never too late to explore the truth. It's never too late to ask questions and maybe get uncomfortable answers. And so if you got there before I did, congratulations. It took me 20 years, unfortunately. But I'm here now, and I want to make sure that we are asking the right questions. And we'll probably get into a rant today to make sure that we don't make the same mistakes that we've made in the past. And I don't know where Scott wants to pick up the show.

the conversation. Does he want to talk about the lies our government's been telling us since the 1970s in the Middle East or actually beyond before that? Or maybe we pick it up in Afghanistan just in the essence of time because there's so much that we can cover. But I want to bring him on here. He's an excellent author, as I said. He runs antiwar.com. That's a great resource. The director of the Libertarian Institute hosts his own podcast, The Scott Horton Show.

Keith Malinak (04:45.72)

Without further ado, Scott Horton, hey man, thanks so much for making time. It's such an honor to talk with you, sir.

Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me.

Yeah, well, where do you want to pick up this conversation today? Because you could start way back. But I think for the purposes of at least someone speaking for myself in the world of conservative media with an audience that has consumed conservative media as well for the most part, can we start with Afghanistan? Because that is one of the facts that I learned from you.

Can we?

Keith Malinak (05:22.034)

stunned me that I just don't remember hearing at the time. And that was Afghanistan, the Taliban, right? They offered to hand over Osama bin Laden after 9-11, correct?

Yeah. Now I think you probably do remember that Bush said no negotiations, which meant no conditions whatsoever. Just do exactly as I say in a way that just, you know, precluded the resolution of the problem. they didn't want the Taliban to just hand bin Laden over it. It wanted a war. And in fact, they didn't even want to kill Osama bin Laden.

They wanted to overthrow the government in Kabul and launch a permanent type of occupation, low level war in Afghanistan and pretended ongoing missions against mythical Al Qaeda fighters who were all long gone by new years in order to just keep the war going long enough that they can lie you into Iraq. And we have this from the firsthand accounts of the National Security Council meetings.

after September 11th, republished in Bob Woodward's book, Bush at War, where W. Bush told his staff, we like Bob, just give him everything. And they gave him the minutes of the National Security Council meetings. We have the direct quotations in there where Rumsfeld especially is saying, listen, if we get Osama Bin Laden, that's not victory. And if we don't get Osama Bin Laden, that's not failure.

We have to make sure that we define the terms of this war broadly enough that the American people understand that regardless of what happens in Afghanistan, this war on terrorism is going to take place over an extended geographical area and over an extended period of time. And they were concerned that if they went ahead and killed bin Laden men,

Scott Horton (07:29.634)

that the American people would say, all right, that's right. That's what you get from messing with us. Boy, drop a bomb right on your head and that's done. And our guys are the toughest guys in the world and they're home by Christmas and the whole thing is over. And USA, USA, we don't want that. We want the American people to still be afraid of Bin Laden for as long as possible to keep him out there. Like Emmanuel Goldstein, the permanent enemy in 1984, the dangerous saboteur, the dangerous wrecker who at any time could

take chemical weapons and imagine a suicide hijacking with chemical weapons this time, W. Bush would say. Really, he would say that. And these kinds of things, and the point being that they wanted to go to Baghdad more than any other thing. And in fact, I believe that one of the reasons that September 11 happened was because every time the CIA, and I know a lot of people just think it was a CIA job.

And there is compartmentalization, but still like we know their counterterrorism guys were really afraid that there was an impending attack and they were trying to get the White House's attention that we're really worried about this bin Laden guy out there hiding in Afghanistan. then the neoconservatives and especially, you know, Donald Rumsfeld, who was not one, was, you know, Wolfowitz, this guy, the secretary of defense would say, and, in the vice president's office would say, no, Bush, don't listen to the CIA, those idiots.

They want to get you all bogged down on some snipe hunt in Afghanistan. If we do that, we're never going to get to Baghdad. So it was the new government was the new regime, right? The Bush and the appointees essentially were steering away from what the permanent government was saying, which was that, geez, these terrorists that we've been backing in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Xinjiang province for these last 20 years, they're really coming back to bite us now. And

The USS Cole was one thing, but we think there's another worse one coming and the government didn't want to hear that because they were more concerned about going to Baghdad. And if you go back and remember, even if you were wrong at the time, just go back and think about how they debuted the war. And especially compared to what you now know, right? That Al Qaeda was made, the leadership of Al Qaeda were all Saudis and Egyptians, right? They were Arabs.

Scott Horton (09:51.16)

from 700 miles west of the Nangarhar province. They were not Pashtuns, they were not Taliban, they were not illiterate farmers from the town of Bedrock over there in no man's land on the Pakistan border. Bin Laden was the son of the CEO of the Saudi haliburton, right? Bin Laden company is the major.

contractor construction firm for the national government in Saudi Arabia. That's why the father was a billionaire and that's why the son inherited hundreds of millions of dollars. His partner running Al Qaeda, Iman al-Zawahiri, was a surgeon in Cairo. Bin Laden himself was an engineer. These guys had advanced degrees, right? They were not illiterate, redneck, hillbilly Taliban from Nangarhar. They were hiding there.

And they were hosted by the Taliban there. But the Taliban hated Bin Laden. The Bin Ladenites treated the Taliban like they were poor white trash compared to the sophisticated, you know, globalist types and whatever. So they would essentially tell the Taliban what they needed to hear to leave us alone for another little while and then go ahead and do what they wanted anyway. And Mullah Omar had demanded that Bin Laden swear to him he would no longer attack the United States from Afghan soil. And then he just kept doing it anyway.

Just two months before the attack, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, told Arnaud de Borgrave, who is a reporter for the Washington Times, which as your audience may be very familiar, is the Republican paper in Washington. It was very close to the Reaganites, the UPI news syndicate. And Arnaud de Borgrave, as a Reaganite-type reporter, had been close with the Mujahideen fighting against the Soviet communists in the 1980s. So he knew these guys. He had contacts within them.

And he literally went and met with Mullah Omar in Pakistan and interviewed him in the summer of 2001, where Mullah Omar says, you got to understand the position I'm in. This guy Bin Laden, he's like a chicken bone stuck in my throat. I can neither swallow him nor spit him out. And then he goes on to say that like, look, I'd like to get rid of them if you guys would make it easy for me. And we know, mean, shoot, I'm sorry, I got so much information here. Tell me when you want me to change the subject. But on this,

Scott Horton (12:13.014)

You know, I know that from interviewing the former chief of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, that they had given Bill Clinton at least 10 chances to kill Bin Laden before that were scrubbed for various reasons. There was one Senate report that said 13, although I don't know if I could find that footnote for you anymore, but I know from, I definitely have firsthand from the former chief of the CIA's Bin Laden unit himself that they gave him 10 chances to kill Bin Laden. And including there were times, and this came out later in the Washington Post, you can read where Milton Bearden,

who ran the CIA's operation in the 1980s and was very close to these guys. He explained to the Washington Post, we've been in negotiations with the Taliban over turning over Bin Laden to us since the Africa embassy bombings of 1998. That was when Unical pulled out of their pipeline deal that they wanted to do. And that was when Mullah Omar decided that, okay, this is too much heat and I don't wanna deal with this anymore.

and started negotiating with the United States over giving up in London. And you got to understand, I'm not making excuses for these guys at all here, dude. This is descriptive, okay? This is the history of how it is. In posthum culture, it's like the wild west out there. It is badlands. And so in place of harsh and controlling state law, instead you have a harsh honor code. You have severely forced customs, such as protecting guests.

And including like the story goes, you'd turn over your own wife or your own daughter before turning over a stranger who sought refuge in your house because of the honor code there. It's called the posthum wally code. It's equivalent, not in every detail, but it's as harsh as like the Japanese honor code. And so just turning somebody over is not an easy thing to do. And especially politically, they were working on it. And Milton Bearden told the story of

the Taliban telling the CIA or the state department or whoever, listen, Bin Laden is out falconing and we can't find him. In other words, he's outside of our protection right now. So go ahead and zap him. And we'll be able to say it's not our fault. Cause he was out falconing out in the countryside when we told them to stay home at his farm, on the outskirts of Canada, our city where we can tell them what to do and protect him. And so.

Scott Horton (14:39.372)

That was like their deniable excuse. Hey, we're not looking, go ahead and get him. And then according to Milton Theoden, the Americans said, we said hand him over. And they're saying, that's what we're doing. We're handing him over. We're telling you, you're right. And the Americans basically refused to accept what was being handed to them on a silver platter. One more thing about this. There are a couple more things. September 10th, 2001.

Bill Clinton gave a speech in Australia where he said that his worst failure as president, or his worst regret as president was that he did not kill Osama Bin Laden and that he was obsessed with the danger of this guy. And he really wished that he had killed that guy. And then he said, you know, I had one chance to kill him, but I would have had to carpet bomb a small town called Kandahar. And so in order to get him and we judged that the civilian

price was not worth it. So we couldn't do it. Well, the thing about that is first of all, Kandahar is a city. It's a giant city of like a million people or more, whatever. I forgot the exact population, but it's a giant city. It's not a small town. It's a giant city. And bin Laden's farm was called the Tarnak farm and it was way out on the outskirts of town. There's no reason in the world why anyone would have had to carpet bomb anything.

All they would have had to do was put one or two Tomahawk cruise missiles on one house or one small compound on this farm is all they would have had to do or fly a B-52 over and drop one 2,000 pound bomb on their head, whatever. And yes, there was like a swing set which showed that there were little kids that lived there and stuff. But we're talking about four million people killed in America's terror wars since then. So.

It ain't like the DOD was just so upset about if they had killed one little girl. And this is a very thin excuse for withholding those strikes. But then after September 11 hits, the Taliban said to W. Bush, first, they said, provide us some evidence and, or the evidence and we'll try him here. And if he's found guilty, we'll turn him over to you. And Bush said, yeah, right. And we can sympathize with that.

Scott Horton (17:03.126)

Yeah, right. Hand him over. Not good enough. They said, okay, I'll tell you what you give us the evidence that he did it. And then we will turn him over to any Muslim country, which you understand that could mean Jordan or Malaysia or, know, any number Egypt, any number of sock puppet American client dictatorships that would have the plane would have landed on the, on the runway and then taken right back off again to Virginia. Right. They had been extradited immediate.

Right, with no hold up. So that was again, just barely saving faces. Might as well teleport him straight to Virginia from there, as far as that goes. No difference. Bush says, not good enough. No negotiations. I said, no negotiations. So they said, okay, well, we'll turn them over to the Pakistanis. And I believe at this point, they dropped their demand for evidence. That might've been the next step. They said, we'll turn them over to the Pakistanis. And the Pakistanis said, no, because we can't promise we can protect him, which.

I have no evidence of the Americans told them to say that. I don't know exactly what happened there, but was the Pakistanis obstructed that one probably because the Americans told them to, guess. then, their last offer after W. Bush started bombing on October the eighth, they said, okay, listen, forget the evidence and we'll turn them over to any third country in the world other than any and other than the United States.

and presumably Israel, although they didn't mention that. But in other words, we'll send them to Canada without evidence. Okay, we'll do whatever you say. We'll send them to England. Just stop this. Bush said too little, too late. And the point was clearly to extend the war to keep it going. And by the way, we also know from the minutes of the meetings that Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor,

who is horrible in many, many ways, but was not a member of the neoconservative set and did not have her own obsession with Iraq, for example, like they did. She and some of the leaders of the CIA, they said, well, listen, what we ought to do is we ought to do, we ought to take great care to only kill Arabs. And we should not be warring against the Taliban at all. We should be showing them.

Scott Horton (19:22.86)

by our actions that we really aren't interested in fighting with you right now. And we really wish you would just cooperate with us so that we can separate the Taliban from the Arabs so that the Taliban will sacrifice the Arabs. Again, the Posh tunes from East of Persia, they have nothing to do with these people. They don't want to. So give them the opportunity to separate themselves and sacrifice these people. And man, I'll tell you, we know that this happened.

For example, in the book Jawbreaker by Gary Berntson, who was the second CIA commander on scene there, he tells the story of how the Air Force bombed some Taliban positions and then the Taliban got him on the radio and said, we surrender, we surrender. And he goes, not good enough. No, I don't accept your surrender. He said, do you have any Arabs in your group? Because they had been in the middle of a civil war against the Northern Alliance at that time. there was a group called

the zero five five brigade that fought with, I believe it was called, that were basically Bin Ladenites that were fighting on loan to the Taliban. So the CIA guy says to the Taliban commander, do you have any Arabs with you? And he said, yeah, I do have a few. And he says, kill them. And the commander says, all right then. And then you can hear in the background rat tat tat tat tat as the

the local Taliban forces line up the Arabs and massacre them. And then he gets back on the line and he says, now we surrender. Will you accept our surrender now? And Gary Bernsen says, yes, now we'll accept your surrender. So they already had in practice at the start of the war, what is it like to convince a poshtune to forsake an Arab? It ain't that hard, you know?

And yet then what are Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and the neoconservative set under, you know, beneath them do? They said, no, no, no, we've got to expand the definition of the war so that we can expand the length of the war so that we can go to Baghdad in a year and a half that it's going to take to build up our forces in Kuwait.

Scott Horton (21:38.888)

and to run this through the United Nations and all the crap we have to do before we can launch this war. And we have to, we don't want the American people to feel like we had this small group of enemies, 400 men, hiding out in no man's land on the far side of the world and we cooked their asses good and now we're done. We can't have that, we have to keep it going. That was clearly the motive and that was why they focused then on regime change in Kabul.

And then why they appointed a new government and swore to protect it and swore to go to war against all of its enemies. And as I show in both books, especially in Fool's errand, my first book, which actually started as chapter two of enough already, but then I just got carried away. And I do I do show in there that Mola Omar authorized his men to surrender. He didn't say, this will be the mother of all battles, blah, blah, blah. He didn't do that.

do you?

Scott Horton (22:32.46)

He authorized them to surrender. because America, when they picked their new sock puppet government, they picked a poshtoon from the Kandahar province to come and be the new president, Hamid Karzai. And so even though he was an American sock puppet, that was good enough. He was from the Popolzai tribe, which was, you know, there were like variations within the poshtoon factions of Kandahar or whatever, but he was close enough for Mullah Omar's liking.

And so Mullah Omar authorized his men to surrender to the new government and to cooperate with it. And then the Americans controlling the new government refused to accept their surrender and refused to accept their acceptance of the new regime and drove them into insurgency in the meantime, an insurgency that the more we pushed on it and the harder we hit it, the more

It grew and the stronger it got. It's. the coin technicians. My buddy William Buehper, he says they're an anti fragile force. The harder you hit them, the stronger they get.

20 years.

Keith Malinak (23:45.292)

Right. Yeah. mean, clearly that was the case. Right. I mean, you know, and what's so

It was often excused to go to Baghdad is what it's really all about.

So, and, and at least from my perspective, you know, that was the good war. mean, that was the war that made sense. have to go and take care of who perpetrated 9-11, but there was so much happening that you enlighten us with through your books and through conversations.

I'm sorry, just real quick that it's very important in that book, Jawbreaker by Gary Berntson that I mentioned, and there's another one called Kill Bin Laden by Dalton Fury, which the guy's name was Thomas Greer. That was his pseudonym. He was the commander of Delta Force Team B on the ground there. And what happened was that it's so clear that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld essentially allowed and ordered these men to allow Bin Laden to escape.

They had, they had them cornered on three sides and the fourth side was Pakistan. And they requested over and over and over and over for reinforcements Delta and CIA did. And we know that they had Rangers at in, at the Bagram air base, there were green beret, eight teams fighting up in, Mazar-i-Sharif and all that in the North. had the 75th, Rangers in, Canada Harb province.

Scott Horton (25:12.854)

And then according to General Mattis, had 4,000 marching Marines who were ready to go. And they were all begging to get into the fight, or at least they were being begged to get into the fight. And they were declined over and over and over again. Reinforcements they needed. So whatever progress they made in the mountains against Al Qaeda in the daytime, at night they would turn around and go home again. So they were never able to hold the line or do anything. They had a few local poshtoon.

W this is the hunt for Bin Laden. And they're like, no, no, no, we don't, we don't want to risk the life of a single, even top tier special operator here in the most crucial fight of our generation. We're just going to rely on local forces to, to do the fighting for money for us. And we're not going to give them any of the reinforcements they need. And then think about this too. And I got to wonder, cause I mean, I'm a huge talk radio junkie too, man. This is my background as well.

And I remember just all the dissonance at the time and the way they would always just cut to commercial instead of having to explain why we can't follow the terrorists into Pakistan. Pakistan is a friendly state. we know at the time, I know you remember at the time it was in the news from the beginning that Dick Armitage, who was Secretary State Colin Powell's right-hand man and Deputy Secretary State, told Pervez Musharraf, the dictator of Pakistan, we will bomb you back into the stone age.

You work for us. You're going to help us overthrow your own sock puppets in Afghanistan right now or you're going to die. And we, sheriff said, absolutely. Of course I'm at your service, whatever you want. And we know there's a book called 88 days to Kandahar. This is right there. I don't know if it's within the view here. and, and in that book it's Robert Grenier, the, the former, CIA station chief in Islamabad. He explains how they had already come up with a deconfliction process.

for the Pakistani army and the frontier core because they assumed that the Delta Force would be chasing Al Qaeda across the border. And they wanted to make sure that if we start blasting Al Qaeda from our side that we don't accidentally hit our own guys. So they had set up all their own deconfliction already. They were expecting them to come across. And yet how did the narrative go? Remember? It was like they just crossed the semi-permeable membrane that somehow everyone knows but never articulates in English ever.

Scott Horton (27:35.48)

But we all somehow know is an iron law of the universe that only terrorists can walk across this invisible line in the forest in the Nangarhar province into Pakistan. But that Delta Force, top tier special operators in the history of all of mankind, can not, somehow may not, can not follow them.

It's like the Millennium Falcon jumped into hyperspace and ah, geez, they'd be on the other side of the galaxy by now, my Lord. There's no way to find them now. Even though that's just not true. They're right goddamn there. And Thomas Clear explained on 60 Minutes how they had all these plans to fly Chinooks to Pakistan and then come across from the other direction and attack them from the east. There were only three valleys out of there. Let's drop and fill them with landmines.

We'll at least pull a couple of guys legs off and slow them down and we'll be able to find them. And then their excuse was like, no, because we were afraid that some local tribesmen would get in the way and we'd have to shoot them. really? You killed four million people. Got four million people killed since then. And I don't believe that that is the good excuse for why they let them go. And in fact, even me, the you know, then nobody at anti war.com, but a fan. like, whatever, I'm speaking for anti war.com now and I'm speaking for Justin, who is the boss of anti war.com then that.

If the idea was we have actual Al Qaeda in Delta Force gun sites and ready to pull the trigger and some tribesman jumps out and tries to get in the way, that's his fault and his problem. Like, I'm sorry, dude. We got, we have 400 men to kill. We already killed 200 of them. Now another 200 are escaping. They die now. Go ahead and do that. But no.

They must be protected so that everybody else can get killed instead.

Keith Malinak (29:27.934)

This man, Scott Horton, has so much information. I want to point out that the catalyst for today's conversation was originally Iraq. it's frustrating, but it's very enlightening of how much information there is just on Afghanistan.

Well thanks for asking this because I haven't had a chance to talk about this in a long time. Well and so... different clump of neurons in my head.

just imagine if I had you go back to the 50s or before that back after World War one we could have started this

Well, anybody can go look at my Clucker interview or my Lex Freedman interview for that if you want. I got a few like that.

That's so good. right, so let's, you've cleared up any misconception. I want to go to Iraq because it often comes up in conversation that, well, look, we just had bad information. Uh-oh, got frozen up there. Scott, if you can hear me, back out and come back in here. And I see you. I got you. I got you. All here we go.

Scott Horton (30:16.622)

What do you want to go now? Iraq?

Scott Horton (30:36.43)

My idiot VPN was choking the signal here.

It's all good. So it's often explained away from my side that look, you know what? Iraq happened. We weren't lied to. We just got bad intel. we thought one thing, turned out to be another. Can we, and look, and I know you're pressed for time here, but I want to at least go through some of the red flags in the intel and have you kind of

break them down for us to say, was it just bad Intel? Did our own government knowingly lie to us to get us into Iraq? And can we take these one by one? Would you mind doing that with us?

Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Okay, so

Saddam Hussein had huge weapons of mass destruction stockpiles. Yes or no? OK. All right. So because we were told at the time that we got mustard gas to worry about, we got VX, sarin, anthrax, we got active programs in Iraq where they're going to be making more. I want you to answer that. But I think what I learned from you was any kind of remnants they

Scott Horton (31:30.165)

No.

Keith Malinak (31:54.254)

they found after they went in and said, ha ha, weapons of mass destruction. Those were correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was in your book that said those were given to Iraq from Europe when they were fighting against Iran. And it was just kind of remnants from that. Do I remember that correctly?

Yes, sir. there's an in your audience being like a right leaning AM type audience here. They may be familiar with this story. It went around and on their all the right wing email lists for a long time that they did to find weapons of mass destruction. And even better, the New York Times admitted it right, like against interest. They admitted that Bush was right all along. But then if you read that actual article and not just the headline or the email about it.

What you'll see is that, yes, there were chemical weapons in Iraq and that the local insurgents made IEDs out of them in some cases. And in some cases, American soldiers got hit and even severely wounded like lung damage or whatever, know, I believe that would be the primary danger. And some of them were sickened and then it was sort of covered up too. So then people would say, well, why God.

That George Bush just has so much honor that he just won't admit how right he was and how wrong everyone was for calling him a liar. Come on. Are you sure? You want to look a little closer there and you see that what happened was when Saddam Hussein was a loyal American client in the 1980s working for Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan, America helped him fight the war with Iran. In fact, Jimmy Carter gave him the green light to invade Iran. It was Iraq that started that war.

And Ronald Reagan continued that policy. And as we know, it was in aberration when Ronald Reagan did Iran Contra and sold missiles to Iran in the middle of the war. He was actually switching sides for a short time. When mostly America was backing Iran while our allies, Israel, pardon me, was backing Iraq, while our allies, the Israelis were backing the Iranians through that war. And yes, America financed Iraq's purchase of chemical weapons from Europe and also.

Scott Horton (34:06.712)

precursors of chemicals to make chemical weapons of his own. And he even gave him the stocks to begin his program to make anthrax. Although I don't think he ever successfully weaponized it. And they also gave him the intelligence that he needed to target Iranians with sarin, tabin and VX nerve gas. And, and in fact, there's a bunch of really great books and articles about this and whatever, but if anyone wants a real deep dive on

how America armed Saddam Hussein with his weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, there's a really great thing. Just search this, search FFF.org, and then that's the Future Freedom Foundation, FFF.org, and then where did Saddam get his WMD? And I actually helped the guy that runs that place update those links and made sure that all of those links are current as of the Lex Friedman podcast, at least, last summer.

Every one of those links is good. I had to go track down alternative sources of the articles and so updated them. But anyway, so it's all there. There's so much there about, yeah, they gave him the satellite info that he needed, the intel that he needed to target Iran with the chemical weapons and all that. even when, know, when Colin Powell go, oh, when the Halabja massacre, when Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds. Yeah, he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Ronald Reagan at the time, advising for that policy at the time.

and that's how cynical these guys were now after the first Iraq war America and that is operation desert storm operation.

Or that didn't need the start, I learned from you.

Scott Horton (35:46.503)

Well, let's get that for time now and focus on the weapon.

Because Adam was trying to give up before it started. That's true.

They could have negotiated their work their way out of that one too, but in aftermath of the war Part of the demands of Iraq's surrender was that they had to give up all their weapons This is the spring of 91 we're talking now beginning of 91 he had to give up all their weapons Well, they lied and they tried to keep some of their mustard gas But they got caught and they destroyed all of it by the end of 1991 There was no active program of any kind

And in fact, Hussein after getting caught again, that same first year of the war, after getting caught, told his men, give them everything. Don't hold back. I don't want to get caught another time. Give them everything and did. And so they dragged ass a little bit with the weapons inspectors about who's allowed to go where, when and what, but the weapons inspectors led by Americans were convinced and, and confirmed that

there were no weapons of mass destruction or active programs anywhere in Iraq by 1995. And they were ready to, the UN was ready to certify Iraq as weapons of mass destruction free until Madeleine Albright then came in as the new Secretary State and immediately declared that the sanctions will never be lifted as long as Saddam Hussein is in power and

Scott Horton (37:12.66)

He then kicked the inspectors out of the country and that short sir or at least temporarily there was a controversy over him and that short circuited the declaration by the un chief ralph ralph equius, who was about to make the declaration that they were absolutely Wmd free and then you might remember this that in 1996 saddam hussein's son-in-law hussein camel defected to jordan and with his wife and kids and with suitcases full whatever cases

full of paperwork and documents. And he was debriefed by the CIA, MI6 and CNN and the IAEA and the international, you know, UNSCOM, international weapons group. They always renamed it a bunch of different times, but the United Nations inspectors and the CIA. And I saw him in 1996. I saw Hussein Kamel interviewed on CNN with my own eyeballs and sat there and watched him say, listen, I am telling you there are no

more weapons. I was in charge of destroying them. And that's what I did. And I bet you could still find that on CNN somewhere, like on the way back machine or something. Somebody should still be able to find that. used to link to it from time to time, the full thing. And now we have, of course, this debriefing from the CIA eventually was declassified by the Senate or something or other. And you can read where he explained to them, man, believe me, I got rid of every last little bit of it and all that. They knew it. So then when W. Bush comes into power,

Again, the policy was forget the weapons. That's just a pretext. The policy is we keep the sanctions until Saddam is gone. We refuse to normalize relations with Iraq until Saddam Hussein is out of there. And when W. Bush comes in, there's all this pressure against the sanctions and they go, well, we're not gonna lift them. If we're gonna lift the sanctions, we're gonna have to do a regime change. So we're lifting the sanctions on an Iraq that we're willing to welcome back into the international community instead of the Saddam Hussein led one.

that became then another excuse for, geez, you don't expect us to just keep the sanctions forever? I guess we have to start a war instead.

Keith Malinak (39:19.102)

I have just to throw this out there so you can mentally prepare for this. I have a list of what are five justifications that were explained as reasons to go to war with Iraq in 2003. So we did the huge WMD stockpiles debunked.

The other thing going around at the time was that Saddam, and you've kind of covered this already, restarted the nuclear weapons program. aluminum tubes for centrifuges and yellow cake uranium from Niger. Now, and there was a mushroom cloud threat at the time. And I find it fascinating that, and correct me if I'm wrong, the CIA, the CIA who loves

starting up wars around every corner of the globe. Even they, right, they said that those Niger documents that said that Saddam was buying yellow cake uranium from Niger, that those were forgeries, right?

Yes. And now it was the CIA who's who pushed the aluminum tubes hoax. It was wind pack, which is a group within the CIA that pushed the aluminum tubes hoax. Even though the other analysts and CIA said it was nonsense. The energy department says it was nonsense. Anybody who knew anything about centrifuges knew that these tubes are for Katusha rockets, like picture a Toyota pickup truck with a rocket launcher in the back.

That's what these things are for and everybody knows that and we already know that Iraq has used these exact tubes for those rockets. And then you might remember the UN had their big vote to send the inspectors back in in the fall of 02. And the inspectors, of the first things they did was go and find the aluminum tubes from the previous purchase orders right there at the rocket factory where they're making rockets out of them.

Scott Horton (41:18.69)

And the whole thing was ridiculous. And they couldn't find any actual nuclear expert to say that these could possibly be used for centrifuges. Nevermind the fact that you can't just drop a chunk of yellow cake, partially refined uranium ore into a centrifuge. What you have to do is, it's a complicated process to convert it into uranium hexafluoride gas.

which then you have to inject into what's called a cascade, meaning a huge long group of centrifuges all connected together that enrich and spin the uranium and then send it from centrifuge to centrifuge to centrifuge in order to enrich it to higher and higher purities of uranium-235. I mean, this is Manhattan level, Manhattan project level stuff that obviously the Iraqi regime

Absolutely could not do in front of the satellite eyes of the United States of America. It's just absolutely impossible that they had a nuclear program of that kind of description anywhere. And by the way, they had yellow cake uranium still in the country under lock and key just in storage facilities from their previous nuclear program that they just had never.

moved it out of the country, but it was declared nuclear material. So if they wanted to use, and there weren't inspectors at the time, so if they wanted yellow cake uranium, they didn't need to get it from Niger. They already had some, and they could have just done that, but the whole thing was just made up. And by the way, and I'm sorry, because let me just wrap up the point on the chemical weapons that hurt our guys, is that the chemical weapons that were left in Iraq, that did hurt our guys in the second Iraq

They had all been declared, that is capital D, quote unquote, official legal terminology, declared to the United Nations inspectors who knew, again, led by the United States, who knew perfectly well where these chemicals were, and they just buried them out in the desert because they said it would be safer to just bury them out in the desert and let them decay under normal shelf life conditions compared to trying to take it out of the country.

Scott Horton (43:41.29)

It wasn't any kind of nefarious secret lie that he was keeping these weapons and preparing them for use against the Americans, whether Ronald Reagan had bought them or whether he had made them himself or whatever. It, it wasn't like that at all. It was just, it was all declared and admitted just not removed by the UN inspectors choice to just go ahead and leave this stuff to rot. Then it turned out when the sun came back and did a rock war two and launched this massive.

insurgency and all of this stuff that then the locals started digging this stuff up out of the ground and making homemade landmines with them and stuff like that. absolutely it was false and they knew it was false that Saddam had these active programs and was preparing to use these weapons. And by the way, they also knew from just after, and I'm sure you were about to say this, from just after September 11th, they started saying that Saddam is tied with Al-Qaeda. just-

After September 11th, they ordered the CIA to do a review and the CIA had already done a review of this and found the same thing. And then they did it again and they made sure and they found that no, Saddam has no operational tie to Al Qaeda whatsoever. Certainly had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this attack. And you might remember the big lie of the whole thing. Supposedly connecting them to, to the hijackers, right? Was the meeting in Prague where

meeting in Prague.

Scott Horton (45:07.4)

guy named Abu, Ali or Ani Abu Ani, who was the foreign minister was said to have met with Muhammad Atta, right? This guy's not a spy. He's the foreign minister. And he was said to have met with Muhammad Atta, the lead hijacker. And, and therefore obviously was helping him plan the September 11th attack. Right. And this was repeated by Dick Cheney and all of the neocons on TV, especially on TV and radio. And in fact, this often goes unnoticed, but

the Israelis claimed that, yeah, and guess what? We were there too. And they may have been the origin of this story in the first place. I don't know about that. In fact, there are other indications, but they then at least said, yeah, well, we were there too actually at that meeting and saw it too. And guess what? We saw that Ani gave a flask of anthrax to Mohammed Atta.

And they told that to the German magazine, build B I L D. And you can still find proof of that in the Los Angeles time. So if you search build without the U just build B I L D L A times anthrax, Prague, ATA, you'll find it where the L A times repeats that story. And so this was, you can see what they're doing right there, trying to tie Iraq to the anthrax. Nevermind where Iraq ever got its anthrax in the first place, but you know who has anthrax Iraq.

And which of course raises real questions about who is behind the anthrax attack, which I have my suspicions, but I can't make a solid case for you, but we definitely know it wasn't Al Qaeda and it wasn't Iraq that did it. and we know that the FBI lied their ass off when they blamed it on Hatfield and they lied again when they blamed it on Ivans. And so what's the real answer? I don't know that it was Dick Cheney and Ariel Sharon, but maybe,

Well, okay, but it's a Dom in bin Laden. I mean they didn't even like each other

Scott Horton (47:00.606)

No, Saddam Hussein was terrified of bin Laden and everything bin Laden represented, right? you know, just, I mean, this sounds ridiculous, but it is like, yeah, just look at them, your honor. One of them's got a big bushy mustache, and the other one's got a long, you know, holy beard. Okay. One is wearing olive green with a beret, and the other one is wearing Obi-Wan Kenobi robes.

Hold on, so you're saying that there was no al-Qaeda training camp in the middle of Iraq? Because I heard that at the time too.

Yes. So they claimed that there was a, there is in fact, or was a police training camp at a city called Salman Pak in Southern Iraq. And, I guess maybe it's east of Baghdad and they had a airplane fuselage there for training special operations police how to raid a plane to prevent a hijacking. And instead they just lied and said, this is where they're training Al Qaeda guys on how to practice to hijack planes.

Yeah, because I remember that there was a fuselage in the desert. And aha! Look at that. Yeah, I absolutely remember that. So but I also heard at the time about mobile bioweapons labs. I want you to tell us about an informant with the name Curveball.

Yeah. So curve ball was the brother of the secretary of the leader of the Iraqi national Congress, which was a group of Iraqi exiles, Shiite exiles backed by Iran and Israel to lie America into that war. And, essentially they came up with much of the propaganda. Now the CIA did torture a couple of guys into pointing their finger at Saddam Hussein and his ties to Al Qaeda.

Scott Horton (48:48.75)

and they lied about the aluminum tubes. And I'm trying to think of any other major stuff the CIA lied about, but essentially the CIA wasn't lying well enough. Like this whole thing where after the war they went, but the CIA said so, come on. They were breaking the CIA's arm behind their back, going, give us more, give us more. Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby and Newt Gingrich, or just Cheney and Libby, his chief of staff took 14 different trips to CIA headquarters.

to put the squeeze on them that we need more against Iraq here. So because the CIA wouldn't lie well enough, the neoconservatives in the Pentagon created a group called the Office of Special Plans to take the lies directly from the exiles and then launder them straight to the media and straight to the White House and making them look official. They also got access to essentially the CIA's raw data. And in other words, they got the right to dig through the CIA's trash.

cherry picking whatever they wanted to make themselves look right and discounting anything that they didn't and And we know that the Israelis had an operation in Ariel Sharon's office Where it was just like the office of special plans in the Pentagon where they were manufacturing fake intelligence in English to funnel into the intelligence stream to lie the American people into war and so that's where the the mobile biological weapons labs come from that's where much of the

ties, alleged ties between Saddam and Osama come from. well, actually that was the project, the policy counterterrorism evaluation group across the hall, but in the office of special plans, was mostly focused on the weapons of mass destruction.

So what about this imminent threat to America that we had to strike Iraq first or we would die?

Scott Horton (50:34.648)

So this really goes to show the cynicism of George W. Bush in all of this. This was a very deliberate thing. A reporter would say to him, but you know, Mr. President, people are still wondering, like, why do we have to go after Iraq? Because it seemed like the answers weren't just quite adding up. You know what I mean? Like, they have these weapons, but they had these weapons last spring. You didn't attack them then. They're friends with Osama, but apparently you're not accusing him.

of doing the attack on the tower. like, I don't know, you know, it was kind of like, it's not quite adding up. And then so they say, so why do we have to do this? And he would say, because of September 11th.

Scott Horton (51:18.348)

Because we learned the lesson that day that from now on, you got to start all the wars and you can't just sit around and wait for somebody to attack you first. Cause look at how bad September 11th was. Well, first of all, that doesn't follow. That's complete garbage. But secondly, but more importantly, you see what he was doing there was with that giant pregnant pause. He was letting you fill in and edit his language for him. Cause you know that he's, he knows that you know that he's George W. Bush, the dingbat who can't string a sentence together to save his life.

And so if he says to you, we have to do this because of September 11th, you and your mom and your dad are going to go, I see what he's saying. He's saying because Iraq did September 11th. And so we have to kick their ass. They're the bad guys over there in Arab land somewhere, whatever, where all the bad stuff comes from. And so and if the president says we got to do it, then yeah. And it really worked. And like, I like to tell the story about this guy. I hope he's not mad at me.

But I was a cab driver at the time. And I loved arguing with the people in my cab because they're just such perfect regurgitation machines of whatever media they're consuming. like, well, maybe the case doesn't make any sense, but they must have secret information that we don't know about that would make the case since you're able to debunk everything I say, whatever, you know. But I remember there was this guy and he was a real estate guy. And I took him to like the swanky bachelor pad apartments in

in South Austin for like, you know, wealthy guys in their late twenties and early thirties type guys. you know, a man about the town, all his friends are doctors and dentists and lawyers and, and city councilmen and stuff like that. He's one of those guys, you know, from that kind of higher part of Austin society or whatever. And I'm talking with them about this stuff and you know, he's busy. He's a real estate guy. He's not an anti war.com guy. What does he know? You know,

So he's just kind of going off of what he knows. And what he knows is that his entire social class supports this war. And of course they do because this system is for them and the system is doing this. And so what's to question? How could you question George W. Bush? How could you say that what he's doing is wrong? It makes no sense. I mean, you're telling me that after something horrible like September 11th, that our leaders are then going to go and do the wrong thing.

Scott Horton (53:39.598)

They're not going to go and like try to save our lives by protecting us from bad guys, but they're just going to lie and cheat and, and steal like they're all just nothing but Bill Clinton's up there and get away with murder in the aftermath of 3000 people slaughter like that. makes no sense that George Bush is so cynical is such a liar. can't be right. And I go, yeah, but dude, and then he's saying, so, so then he rationalizes. So Iraq did do 9 11.

That's what it is. They did. And you're just a cab driver and you're wrong when you say that Iraq didn't do 9-11. And then ISIS to him, I go, but no, dude, I promise you seriously. And you promise me when you go inside that you will check, don't just drop it till tomorrow, whatever, go inside and you check carefully and you will not find George W. Bush, the president, literally saying Iraq, Saddam did 9-11.

You will not find Colin Powell say that. You will not find Condoleezza Rice say that. You will not find, you know, Stephen Hadley or even Donald Rumsfeld say that. You will find Dick Cheney saying that. That's true. But he's a goddamn liar. And none of the other principles are saying that. Why is George Bush not quite going that far? It's because he doesn't want to get caught in that bad of a lie. He doesn't want to provoke every intelligence agency in the world from putting it in their newspapers that that's not true. Right. So he's not.

quite going that far, but he's happy to let you suffer under that false impression. He sure is happy to let you feel like he must have said, that's why we're doing this. Right. And so then the guy said to me, but Iraq had to have done September 11th or else why would we be attacking them then? Right. Because it's, it's built into the thing.

Yeah.

Scott Horton (55:32.706)

that they're not gonna do the wrong thing. They're not gonna lie. They're not gonna take advantage. They're not gonna bait and switch. When they already bait and switched you from Al Qaeda to the Taliban, now they're baiting and switching you to, you know, Arab Muslims over there somewhere. Don't get a map out.

Yeah, they've all got to know each other right so I was reading where 935 documented lies from the Bush administration were those Any of those specific based on you just mentioned how how Bush was very careful? To let you fill in the blanks. I mean do we have the president of the United States specifically? Saying a liar or was dick Cheney just the one that was the mouthpiece

No, no, no. Bush told a lot of lies, but he just didn't say that Saddam did the 9-11 attack. Right? But yes, he lied all over the place about we know he has these weapons and how do we know he still has them? Because he hasn't brought us the ones that we know he has. And like this kind of circular thing. He goes, you turn over everything. So Saddam turns over a 12,000 page history of their entire unconventional weapons program. And W. Bush goes, there's nothing new in there.

And since there's nothing new in there, we know you're lying because we know there's new stuff. And they are just lying, dude. That was all it was. They were lying. And W. Bush told his biographer, Mickey Herskowitz, when he was still the governor, if I have a chance when I'm president, if I have a chance to attack Iraq, I'm going to, because that's what you need to do. You have to have a quick, successful war against a small country. And then that way you can get your agenda through in your second term.

And then they said, that's a lie. Mickey Herskowitz lied and made up that quote. Well, that's funny because Bush's father, Bush Senior, then the former president decided to hire Mickey Herskowitz again to write the biography of his father, Prescott Bush, which doesn't seem like the kind of thing that one would do if a biographer had already lied and put false words in his son's mouth, declaring his premeditated plot to lie us into war and murder a million people.

Scott Horton (57:43.16)

But he did. So I think that that means that Bush senior believe that Micky Hirskovic was telling the truth. And I believe that he was too.

Okay, so I'm looking at the clock here and I want to respect your time.

Yeah, I better check my thing. I could be late for something here. no. Make sure I'm not.

I want to while you're checking your schedule. I want to put this up here. just put two minutes. All right. Well, real quick. Yes, as you can see, based on this poll that I put up this morning, just a temperature check on Iran. It looks like the majority of the people say at least take a couple more months, maybe as long as it takes. That was the overall thing when it comes to Iran.

No, I do have to go in two minutes.

Keith Malinak (58:28.086)

You know what, I hesitate to open this can of worms since you have like 60 seconds here. So maybe we'll have you back to talk about Iran. are we making the same mistakes now that we've made in the past?

Well, mean, fortunately, they're not trying to send in the entire Third Infantry Division and Marine Corps to try to sack Tehran and take over the country, which they can't do. Which is exactly why not to start this war, because they had no good way to finish the thing. We've known this all along. As you know, I have warned about this quite literally for 20 years. And in the same terms that Iran is three times the size of Iraq, that is twice the size of Texas. They got two massive mountain ranges.

and they have a million man army and they have an entire, their entire deterrent, military force is based on medium range missiles, which means that when our guys were in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were hostage, but still all of our bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, in Kuwait, in, in, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and Oman, all of those are up for grabs. You've all seen the map.

If Iran isn't a threat to us, how come they put their country so close to all our military bases? Well, we put all our military bases right there and the Iranians have reached out and touched all of them and closed them all for business and called the bluff on America's entire military empire. They have not been forced to give up enrichment and they will not be forced to give up enrichment. They have not been forced to give up their support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis and the Iraqi Shiite militias and they will not be forced to forsake their friends and

Now instead of the Persian Gulf being an American lake, it is now again the Persian Gulf totally under the dominance of Iran for the foreseeable future. And for that matter, America's conventional military deterrent and offensive threat throughout the world has now been called into question in Asia, in Europe and everywhere else. China.

Keith Malinak (01:00:21.484)

getting a lot of recon.

This war is an absolute catastrophe and there's nothing that Donald Trump can do to make it right. These people say finish the job, they can't explain what they mean by that. Are you saying conscript 16 million men and do a D-Day type invasion on a World War II level effort and send all our men to go die for Israel, to sack Persia that's not a threat to us, never did anything to us? That's completely stupid and crazy and wrong and impossible and we're not doing it. So then you could drop an H-bomb on Tehran.

which would make you as evil as Hitler and Mao and Stalin and Tamer Lane and still have accomplished nothing and you still won't really have your regime change. so, no, the war is a catastrophe and everybody needs to start snapping right out of it right now. There's no reason in the world that you should be bound to believe this nonsense. There's just not.

Let me let you get to your next appointment, sir. I appreciate your time. hope we can talk again in the future. I'm concerned that the gold states are seeing that aligning with America is. Yeah, I mean. Well, I see I'm sorry I didn't mean to hang up on you like that, but I'm sorry I want you to be able to get to your next thing there. What I started to say that the gold states, I'm just concerned that that I love having them as allies. Don't get me wrong.

Too late now, buddy. Next time, next time.

Keith Malinak (01:01:44.364)

But the way that they've been proven vulnerable to these attacks launched from Iran is concerning. Because now I'm concerned that they're concerned that being aligned with us long term is going to be a reason for concern. Does that make sense? The biggest thing I'm concerned about with Iran is the fact that China is learning so much about us and how we fight over there.

kind of our methods and they're getting to see it in real time and and that's that's that could be a problem that that could I feel like there's an article 30 years from now that some Chinese general is gonna be quoted to say yeah let me tell you what we learned from Iran with the US there and and God bless the families we've lost 13 Americans now and those families their children aren't coming home and did we lose

I feel like 6,000 young boys and girls during the war on terror over there for Afghanistan and Iraq. And this is a national conversation that we need to have, but I just don't know, are we having it or are we just yelling at each other? And are we just lining up behind our guy because, you know, I voted for that guy. So whatever he says, I'm good with.

I would hope that we've learned to ask questions of our government and learned to at least take pause when something is serious and a life and death matter such as this.

Let's proceed with caution and let's be prayerful as well because these are not decisions to be taken lightly. And pray for our elected officials too, that they would have the wisdom to make the right decisions, whatever they are. I'm not telling you one way or the other. I'm just saying we need to ask questions of our government and we need to really think things through and consider lessons of the past.

Keith Malinak (01:03:57.07)

Because as George W Bush said right fool me once shame on Me you however, he said it I'm sure it was very smooth, but We do need to take take some more time and deliberation in Having these conversations do check out Scott Horton anti war comm there's a lot of it. It's it's

It's just a bunch of links to stories that you're not going to find most places. And I cannot recommend highly enough his book, enough already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. I don't know what the answer is in Iran. If I were the president today and just handed the reins, I don't necessarily know what my next step would be. But I know that I would proceed with caution, whichever path I chose.

And I saw a report today that the president is over the Iran war and ready to move on, which I don't blame him. But again, like Scott said there at the end, how do you define victory at this point? Hell, the president has already declared victory. And then afterward said, we're close to finishing it off. mean, this it's another mission accomplished moment. So anyway, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to just participate and listen.

and have a conversation that maybe doesn't happen often enough on our side to go back and relitigate something that we were so sure of, many of us, 25 years ago, 20 years ago. And I just never stop asking questions. I never stop trying to learn. And I don't have a problem admitting when I'm wrong on something, especially something as serious as that. Now,

Tomorrow, I know that Brad will be here for the Friday live stream. don't anticipate the girls being here. I have some fun stuff. I know it's been heavy lately. And that's why I really hope you got a chance to watch yesterday's Wednesday wild card where we read 20, 21 lost stories in history. Now, I say it was a little lighter yesterday. Yes, we talked about being adrift at sea.

Keith Malinak (01:06:20.302)

treading water for five days and being pulled under by sharks. And we also had the guy who survived both nuclear bomb blasts. I mean, but it was a light show. It was a light show, right, Keith? I mean, we also talked about inventing the bikini, right? The first fax machine from the 1860s. We talked about, there was some lighthearted stuff, right? I'm just doing this off the of my head. Right? There was.

Anyhow, one of the things that came up in discussion yesterday was Kerry's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who was Captain Stephen Goodrich in the Continental Army. And I told you all downstairs, had the... Because we talked about the first president really wasn't George Washington. It was that John Hanson guy. John Hanson from Maryland under the Articles of Confederation.

But I said that we have a photocopy of the paper that made her great-great-great-great-grandfather a captain in the Continental Army. And see, it's signed by the president at the time, John Hancock, literally have his John Hancock. And it just says up here, you know, this is the order that just makes a...

Steven Goodrich, let's see, is this from Lieutenant, Captain, something, I can't read it because it's interesting photocopy, but I see the words like Lieutenant and Captain. So that's pretty cool. And I hope that you can find similar stuff in your family's history. But I need to go to the, we got to get the original. If I go to the Library of Congress, they're like, I want the original. Where is this? Will they wheel it out here and just say, hey, just sign here? How does that work?

Anyway, so I wanted you to see that we have that downstairs and it's something we really cherish here in the house. All right, kids. So let me just see if there's any questions here. Good show. Thank you, Crispy. I appreciate that. And I hope that those of you that aren't necessarily on X, I hope that us live streaming simultaneously at YouTube is helpful and useful for you. So.

Keith Malinak (01:08:41.964)

taking advantage of that, please like, share, subscribe, all that stuff. I'm so grateful when you do that, if you rate and review, Spotify especially. If you could share a link to a show that you like, whether it's something heavy like this or lighter like yesterday, I hope you will head over there and find the link and maybe use iTunes as well, whichever you use. Sharing the podcast is very helpful as well.

That's pretty much all I've got. Let's see, let's look ahead here. I always like to tell y'all, because it's not often, it really isn't that often that I have these shows planned out this far in advance. So when I do, I kind of want to take advantage of it. The opportunity to give you a heads up, but just looking ahead. So next week, we're going to talk about who was Willie Teppes and the Matthew Crooks situation. You talk about a story where our government lies by omission, if anything, right?

And then on May 7th, I think we need to have a conversation with Jovan Pulitzer, be the sixth conversation we have with him about election integrity. How we doing on that front, huh? Because we can't get the Save America Act, so I'm sure all the states are fixing everything on their local levels. Let's see, May 14th, that's when Dr. Jeremiah Johnston will return for part two of our Jesus discussion, Shroud of Turin and other artifacts that just...

Cement your faith, quite frankly. And then on May 21st, we're have a crypto discussion with the Garbear. He's been here a couple of times. We've talked about 15-minute cities with him. We've talked about central bank digital currency. Let's see what's going on with crypto. Let's get some wisdom on that front, because that's something that I think a lot of people have really soured on in recent months. I think since what, maybe October-ish? I think that's when the slide started.

on Bitcoin in particular, but there's a lot of different avenues with that we can discuss. Chasing some other guests right now. And I do think that you will find some compelling conversations on the horizon. And now that I moved to the cheat sheet, my little list that I keep here, it was on other side of the room for no good reason. Now that I have it in my line of sight here at the mic, it only took me two years to...

Keith Malinak (01:11:05.326)

Never mind. All right, kids, I appreciate you. I will see you what 23 ish hours from now for the Friday live stream. We'll try to have some laughs and decompress after a long week, have some drinks. And, you know, I got to move some furniture, though, after tomorrow's live stream. I don't know that I'll be drinking. just will see after that conversation. I might need to because, boy, that was information that we needed. But, boy, it hurts to hear, doesn't it? All right. I appreciate you all.

Take care, we'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye.