Video: Scott Ritter: Kharg Island Explodes — 2,500 U.S. Marines Walk Into Iran’s Trap
Watch the interview of Scott Ritter with GavetaTV.
Full transcript was generated from Youtube.
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a a Marine expeditionary unit consisting usually I guess you’re the
expert here. So I definitely want to ask you about this 2500 Marines will be sent to the Middle East. And that begs the
question, Scott, how is the war, now that it’s two weeks in, how is the war going for the United States and for all
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the aggressor parties right now uh given this escalation? And maybe you can talk about what this escalation really means.
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Well, I mean, um, for a marine expeditionary unit is basically a u a
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reinforced battalion. U, so you have a battalion of Marines that have different other attachments put on um to give them greater capability intelligence- wise,
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logistics wise. They’re relatively self- sustaining for a limited period of time.
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They have an air component, so you have helicopters and fixed uh wing strike artillery. They used to have tanks, but we don’t have tanks anymore. Uh, but
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it’s it’s it’s 200 Marines that are capable of, you know, conducting expeditionary operations ashore. um you
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know in and and in theory the the the you know marine uh expeditionary units traditionally will um have been deployed
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uh in in around the world like carrier battle groups um just floating offshore uh floating around the world ready to
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respond at a moment’s notice to any emergencies that might uh occur. So, um,
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you know, I don’t know which MW has been, uh, has been, you know, given the,
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um, the warning order, and I don’t know where they’re coming from. Are they already deployed? Are they, you know,
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are they, are they, you know, training off the coast of Australia, or are they currently in the United States or Okinawa or wherever, you know, the MU
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would be generated from um, and and need to embark in u, and and and travel. But
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their forte is assault from the sea. Um and they tend to operate off of um you know amphibious assault ships um where
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you put several hundred marines on a single ship and then uh they either go from you know ship to shore using elcs
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or landing craft or they uh they they go ship to shore using helicopters. Um when General Burgerer, former comedon of
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the Marine Corps, became the comedant a couple years ago, um he did a review of the national security strategy and the national defense strategy and he’s
supposed to write comeat’s guidance. And what he said is that he cannot in good faith uh say that the Marine Corps is
capable of implementing the tasks that they’ve been given by the National Command Authority. Um and one of the reasons was that we are married to a
legacy um amphibious assault concept that dates back to you know
General Leune the the man who invented amphibious warfare um in the Second World War where we perfected the art. Um
he said that modern munitions and such area denial weapons uh make it impractical because if we close in on an
hostile shore in amphibious assault uh shipping u and they hit one of our uh
ships with a missile we lost 900 Marines and that’s it. That’s the end of the game. Um we haven’t changed our legacy.
He tried to in the Pacific, he tried to come up with a uh a new uh regiment regimental structure that um that that
used smaller ships carrying up to 75 marines to um you know make it harder to
stop the entire uh assault by sinking one ship. Um we were looking at long range etc. It’d be interesting to see
that that system by the way has been declared to be a failure. I don’t know if they’ve disbanded those units, but uh basically these this new structure was
supposed to be confronting the Chinese in the South Chinese Sea. And um I think we’ve the Marine Corps has determined
that this has not been a success. Um I don’t know if we still have units configured that because actually those
units would be very um more realistically employable in a straight or Hermuz situation than bringing in a standard uh amphibious ready group. Um,
I just think this is fantasy and pie in the sky, though, because a MW has uh specific limitations. Uh, you know, it
can’t sustain itself forever. It has limited combat power. Um, and you know,
let’s say that you engage it. Um, how do you reinforce it? Okay, so you put them in and they they get they get engaged.
Let’s say you want to take Car Island. Uh, so we achieved the beach head. Uh,
it’s just a battalion. It’s not more than a battalion. There’s only so much a battalion can do. Um, you know, so you know, if you go three companies across,
um, you know, now you’ve you’ve secured the beach head, but where’s your follow on assault forces? You’ve got to take them from the troops you have. So, you
got to thin out this and assault forward. Um, what if the enemy puts up concerted resistance? What if they counterattack? Is there reinforcements
that come come in? Do we have a second MW coming in? So now we’re talking about a brigade, not a not a battalion. Um,
this is insanity. The size of Car Island, you know, we we it took us divisions during World War II to take that to take those islands. So the, you
know, this isn’t going to be Granada where, you know, a marine expeditionary unit or at that time I think it was called a MAU, a marine amphibious unit
was able to run around and rescue students and uh and and kill Cubans and uh and kill Grenadians. Um, you know,
this will be resisted by Iranian forces that have lived on the island. Uh,
they’ve dug into the island. Um, they have their fire support identified. Um,
and they’re going to make sustainment of this force impossible. Once we land,
we’ll be shelled the entire time. Wave after wave after drones will be coming in. How much anti-air does the Marine Corps have for a MW? Not much. We have
some handheld man pads. Um, but we have a limited amount of ammunition and when we burn through it all, the drones will
keep coming. This is not going to happen. There will not be a Marine leader who will say, “That’s a mission we’re willing to do.” We know that the
military’s already told Trump to pound sand. Take the ships through the the straits, naval escorts. The Navy went, “No, we’re not doing that. [laughter]
Not going to happen.” Um, and we’re not going to put boots on the ground. this is a a a show force um because we don’t have
any capability to put boots on the ground. Uh so for the president to say well I may have to this is just a a show of force but it’s not enough. The
Marines are good but they’re not that good and they can’t do um what the president wants with the forces and and it’s very risky. Uh because if we go in
with um an amphibious assault ship and it gets hit by a missile, we could lose 900 Marines plus the embarked sailors that who are part of the crew. You know,
we could have 1,200 men in the water. Um no president wants that. And for what?
To take an island that isn’t going to open up the straight or moves anyways.
Um but I I just think this is basically a propaganda thing.
safety. I I don’t I my guess is that this war will be over before those Marines are on station. Again, I don’t know where they’re coming from. So, if they’re close, they could be on station,
but my guess is that Trump is desperately looking for an off-ramp, but in the meanwhile, he’s going to be posturing because the whole Trump thing
is peace through strength, and you have to be looking strength. So, he’s going to continue to drop bombs on empty buildings and um and and and and allow
Pete Hegath to say psychopathic
[clears throat]
things and um and such, but he knows this war is lost. I mean, there’s a general consensus in Washington DC that
there will be no regime change um and that the missiles will launch, keep being launched. We can’t stop them. Um if Iran [clears throat] wanted to, they
could shut the straight to Hormuz and strangle the global economy. right now they you know if you’re if you call and coordinate you can go through otherwise
you get sunk there’s nothing we can do to stop it but Iran is in the driver’s seat right now they’re the ones with all of the initiatives uh we are reacting to
them the whole concept of boots on the ground is a reaction to the reality of the situation that we’re not winning and therefore we would have to bring in
additional resources to achieve outcomes that can’t be achieved right now that’s the definition of losing Wall Street Journal it is going to be
the Japanbased USS Tripoli that is going to be uh uh bringing in that uh marine
expeditionary unit. So I guess they’re uh they’re moving from Japan. Uh I don’t know how long that will be out of Okinawa. It’ll be Okinawa based
Marines. Uh the ship might be the Tripoli might be u homeported in Japan,
but they’re probably going to take um the uh the Marine battalion that’s um in
uh in Okinawa. um that battalion is traditionally um trained in conventional
um application, but because it’s part of the Pacific, they may have some experience in doing the um the specialized tactics. Uh again, if you
can uh to be honest, if you take if the way I do it is I take my Marines uh to um you
know, land in um you know, a a port city u far away from the Persian Gulf. Um and
then I would um assemble them and their resources um in the United Arab Emirates and I would run a um a short toshore
amphibious assault. I wouldn’t be bringing the tripollet anywhere near um the Iranian coast. I would have my marines uh doing you know an assault
from the shore helicopter and small boat based. Uh if you go in with small boats um you can afford to lose one or two um
you know marines in the water hopefully we can rescue them. Uh you come in with helicopters and we should be able to project some power ashore. We should be
able to achieve a beach head. Um maybe if we did it as a raid that is possible.
We’re very good at raids. So, we’d go in there, uh, element of surprise, uh,
extreme violence. Marines are very good at violence and aggression. Um, and you just assault through, blow up some things, blow up uh, a couple buildings,
take some prisoners, and then you withdraw. The raid is the only military operation where uh, you design retreating. And normally, we don’t even
consider retreat because retreat is is defeat. But a raid, you go in, you do your mission, and then you withdraw. And
so we could be looking at a marine raid on Car Island. And if they have this MW that’s been configured for small boat
operations, um, you know, that becomes more realistic. But then again, you have to ask yourself politically, is this
worth it? Um, because there’s a chance things go very bad. The Iranians have been preparing for this. It’s not like
we’re going to take them by surprise and we could be walking into a trap and next thing you know you have a company of Marines cut off on Car Island. Um, you
know, people need to start looking up Cotang Island. That’s another uh place from Marine Corps history. That’s where we went in to rescue the Mayagu crew
when they were um taken over by the Camir Rouge uh at the [laughter] in April I think of 1975.
Um, we ended up doing a a helicopter assault on Cotang Island. Um, almost all the helicopters were shot down. Uh,
Marines were in the water. Um, Marines were on shore split in two portions. Uh,
that it looked like they could get overrun. Um, you had to run constant air support missions in until we could finally get them out. And it was only through a miracle that we found enough
helicopters that hadn’t been shot down to come in and get them off the island.
And even as well, we left three Marines behind. a threeman M60 gun crew uh didn’t get on the last helicopter and
were left behind. Marines don’t ever leave anybody behind, but we left these three Marines behind and they were captured and executed by the Camir Rouge. Um a huge embarrassing moment for
the United States Marine Corp. Um we could end up, you know, Car Island could become the next Coten Island. So we
people need to study their history and understand,
you know, what can and can’t be done. I remember I when I was brought into uh the ad hoc planning sale put together by
General Gray. Um one of the plans that I promoted and was actively going for and there was a lot of support for was a
raid a marine raid on the uh Azubayer logistics facility. We’re going to take a reinforced company of light light
armored vehicles and uh basically put them on the ground and have them run up the highway and shoot the hell out of this site. blow things up, kill everybody, and then then evacuate,
leave. And uh everybody thought it was the sexiest plan ever except a colonel who had flown helicopters during Desert
One, Colonel Ciphford. And uh he looked at it, he was very nice to me. I mean, I give him full credit for this, but he said, um, you know, there’s so many
things that could go bad here. And if the Marines are, you know, in the, you know, in a firefight and they start
taking casualties and, um, they can’t be extracted, um, they can’t be reinforced.
Um, we lose this this Marine Company for what? For a propaganda exercise. Your raid isn’t going to change the war. Your raid is designed to have people say,
“Look what we can do.” And we don’t need to have anybody say, “Look what we can do.” Um, if it doesn’t change the war,
if it doesn’t win the war, we shouldn’t be doing it. If it doesn’t influence the war, it shouldn’t be a feel-good exercise. And hopefully we have Colonel
Ciphertz today that will be saying the same thing about a Car Island operation.
This is not a warning exercise. you are not going to seize Car Island with a MW and hold it um and be able to secure shipping because the Iranians will still
control their coast and they’ll just make life a living hell for the Marines on Car Island and um and and they will
continue to sink shipping that seeks to transit through the uh straight over Moose. So, this is a political exercise,
a feel-good exercise, a propaganda exercise. it has no impact on the overall operation and there’s a really
good chance that we go bad and we lose a lot of Marines. So, I’m hoping there’s enough real Marine leadership that says,
you know, I don’t need to win a Silver Star. I don’t need to get a Purple Heart. I don’t need a combat medal. Um what I need is to keep my Marines alive.
U so that if we ever really need to use them for a war effort, um they’re available. But who wants to write letters home just so you can say, “Yeah,
I I I I uh I was I invaded Car Island.” No one.
Brilliant military strategist uh Pete Hegth Scott uh recently said that the straightforward moves is actually open
so long as Iran does not shoot at any ships. They are just free to go. Donald Trump said uh the day before that that
uh ships just need to be courageous uh and just go through the straight. Um uh talk about you said earlier that Iran
maybe we can get to the Iranian side now. Iran has the initiative. uh talk about what that looks like now in two weeks in and what do you make of these
comments these genius comments by Pete Hegth uh around the straight of Hormuz closure which is uh sending shock waves
through the uh oil prices and the oil markets.
I mean some things just speak for themselves. Um this is a secretary of war um who has tried to impress people. I mean I I
listened to him talk. He’s literally you know there [clears throat]
was a period of time when when you know we used to be leaders. The Marine Corps trains leaders. That’s what we did.
That’s what I went through when I went through a basic school and officer candidate school and I got into the fleet Marine Force. Um we weren’t
managers. We were leaders. We led. I mean and leadership is a whole different thing. You don’t impress people with your words. You impress people with your
actions. You lead by example. You become a tactical expert not because you can articulate it, but because you can do it. Marines know a leader because a
leader stands before. Marines say, “I’ll follow you to hell.” A manager comes forward and Marines are going, “Yeah,
get the hell out of here. I’m not dealing with you.” Uh, you know, Marines create leaders. I’m not saying they create that this is the best thing in the world for all of society. I’m just
saying for combat application, there’s no replacement for true leadership,
especially at the small unit level. Uh I was trained in in that school and I think I did a pretty good job. Um but the one thing you didn’t do as a leader is get up there and the troops.
Uh and you you you didn’t have to sell them on anything. You just had to tell them this is your mission. Let’s get it done.
What happened after the Gulf War though is you know we went into a peacetime military transition back into a peace
time military and um we needed to um you know have a peace dividend. The cold war was over. We were looking at the
consolidation of forces and instead of leading we were told to manage. I remember when this happened because um
you know we they the the Marine Corps bought into something called TQM, Total Quality Management and we all of the
young you know captains who won the Gulf War um got put into a room into a into a into a you know an auditorium and said
you are now managers and we went no we’re not we’re leaders. I mean we revolted. We literally revolted. We said no, we refuse to to play this game. And
a lot of people ended up leaving the Marine Corps because of it. Because we do leadership. We don’t manage. Manage is what the Air Force does. Army wants to manage or you know you manage this.
But um we’re not going to do that. Um but the Marine Corps transition and as a manager now you become a salesman. See leadership isn’t about selling anything.
I either inspire you or I don’t. I either know what I’m doing or I don’t.
When I stand in front of a team of inspectors and say, “Today we’re going to go to the gates of hell to the presidential palace and we’ll get out of the vehicles. Machine guns are going to
be aimed at our face. RPGs aimed at our cars and they’re going to be threatening to blow your arms off. What I need you to do is just relax because I’m in
charge. Look at me. If I panic, you panic. But if I stay calm, you stay calm. I have a plan. This is my plan.
I’m going to implement the plan.” And the inspectors all went, “Okay.” and we went into the world’s worst situations and things went to hell in the hand
basket and I would get out of the vehicle and be calm. That’s leading by example. And my calmness led them to be calm. We stayed focused on our mission
and we accomplished the mission. Um that’s leadership. Um, but [laughter] if I had to get up there while I’m doing
this and sell them, what we’re doing here is applying psychological um, manipulatory
uh, you know, tactics to get the enemy to overrespond and stimulate the hypothalamus [laughter] of the the you’d
be sitting there going, “What?” That’s Pete Hicksth right now. He’s just throwing words out there. He is a guy that doesn’t know how to lead. He’s a
guy manages and is seeking to impress people with his language. He’s a salesman up there selling something. And
what he’s selling is 100% garbage. Pure garbage. And um it shows because a leader is also honest. Look at the
letter that Dwight Eisenhower wrote to prepare to give if D-Day went bad.
Look at that letter. He didn’t sit there and try and deflect and say, you know,
this that and the other. He said, “It’s on me. I made the decision, you know,
and the failure is all mine.” Um, and you know, we are going to learn. We’re going to come back, regroup, and we’re going to move on and do the next thing.
But you know, this has been a failure.
My failure. Pete Hex doesn’t have the courage to stand up there and go, “Yeah,
we got it wrong.” Um, you know, we made certain assumptions. Um, you know, and I I I acted on those assumptions and uh we
were wrong. And so now what we’re going to do is we’re going to have to hit the pause button and re-evaluate. We’re going to meet with the president to uh to discuss options. Uh, and I’ll get back to you as soon as we have options.
But no, the ward isn’t going the way we wanted it to go. Um, we’re not achieving the results that we thought we needed to achieve at this time. And um, you know,
we’re going to we’re going to have to make adjustment. That’s honesty. And I think people would appreciate honesty instead of saying, well, we didn’t
expect the the the the Iranians to be able to, you know, continue to fire their missiles, but we’re in control.
95% degradation, bombs on target. We’re killing. We’re the most lethal force.
That’s That’s just that’s just, you know, and people see right through it. And so here’s you have that kind of man whose brain [clears throat]
now is in the business of just selling crap.
And what you get is that statement, the straight hormuz isn’t closed. It’s open.
It’s open because we say it’s open. It’s open. It’s only closed if the Iranians shoot at you. Well, no Sherlock. I
mean, that’s the definition of closing the straight horses. when the Iranians decide to close it by shooting at you.
So, it’s not open. You haven’t uh succeeded. He can’t tell the truth, though. He’s he’s so impressed. I mean,
this this notion that we’re winning because we say we’re winning. But we haven’t achieved any of the metrics of victory. We sank the Iranian Navy. Then
why can’t you open up the Straight of Hormuz? Because the whole idea of sinking the Iranian Navy, according to Donald Trump, and he says it over and over, we sank all their ships. I don’t
know why we can’t go through the state of Hormuz because it was never about the ships, Donnie, baby. Never about the ships. When you look at the Arif brigade, there’s four battalions of
them. Their job is to keep you from crossing through the straight of Hormuz.
What have you done to I don’t want to hear about you sinking um a boat that had nothing to do with anything. I want to know what you’ve done with the Arif brigade. Where’s the first battalion?
Where are their modern cruise missiles?
Where’s the second battalion? Where’s the third battalion? We know where the fourth battalion is. They’re on Car Island and they’re going to kill you if you try and put Marines across the beach
cuz they’ve been living on Carlagen for a long time and they’ve dug a lot of holes and stuff. You thought it was bad going into Mount Sabbachi. You thought
it was tough going into Tara. Try going to Car Island and have your Marines assaulting across uh a terrain that the enemy controls and they’ll be shooting
you from the front, the back, the rear underground, rising up Hezbollah all over. What Hezbollah is doing to Israel and southern Lebanon, the Iranians will
do to the Marines on Car Island. Marines will fight bravely and we may even prevail tactically because we’re we’re pretty damn good. But we’ll lose a lot
of Marines for what? So that Pete Hagath can say we have projected power of ashore. American boots are on the ground
and I’m telling you that ground is now free. Those boots are touching free Iranian soil. I mean that’s the kind of crap he would say. Yeah. Um
for for what? So no, we we don’t we’re not in charge of anything. The Iranians are directing this war every step of the
way. The Iranians got us to strip five THAAD batteries from South Korea. The
Iranians did that. They got us to strip Patriot batteries from the Pacific. The Iranians did that. The Iranians have got us considering putting boots on the
ground. None of these things were things that we thought about when we started this war. We’re only doing it because the Iranians are in charge. The Iranians
are dictating the pace of operations and we’re reacting. And now I get to John Boyd’s udaloop. Um, you know, the udaloop was the fighter, you know,
fighter fight. If you have two planes come in, Boyd was, you know, using the udaloop, observe,
orient, decide, and take the action. So he’s looking, he observes, sees you,
looks at your airplane, knows what kind of plane you have. He says, “I want to bleed off some speed.” So he’s going to pull an a note. He has superior speed.
You’re going to pull him, but you can’t match it. You’re going to be slower.
Now, he’s going to keel over. You’re going to make a turn. He’s going to come in behind you. He’s going to shoot you down because you’ve been reacting to him the entire time. He anticipated your
reactions, and he took control of the situation. The Iranians are executing a perfect udaloop on the United States. They have observed what we’re doing.
They’ve oriented on us. They making decisions and they are acting. And they are generating this decision-making cycle quicker than we are. They are
inside our decision- making cycle which is the key to victory. So we are reacting to them. We are doing things.
They’re in control. They’re they they’re controlling the pace of operations.
They’re controlling targeting. They’re controlling everything that we’re doing.
And um we’re losing. There’s no aspect of this war where we’re winning. None whatsoever. Unless you want to say that
uh we win by blowing up empty bill. And uh that’s what we’re doing. We’re blowing up empty or schools with children. Uh we’re very good at blowing
up schools with children, but we’re not blowing up military facilities of note.
Um the Iranians have been preparing for this. They’re underground. They’re dispersed. And it’s also misleading.
We’ve been using a lot of standoff weapons. We’re not penetrating into Iranian airspace. When we decide to penetrate into an Iranian airspace, we
will come face to face with Iranian air defense. And that’s a whole different level of fighting. I I see the mouth breathers in the MAGA world, you know,
uh get very excited about the, you know,
the A10. A-10 is a nice aircraft, but you know, the last several generations,
the A-10 has fought in Afghanistan and in uh Iraq against insurgents. The last time the A-10 went up against a uh a
modern military was in the Gulf War. And I’d invite people to take a look at the battle damage suffered by the A-10 and include that uh you know A-10s were
being shot down on the last day of the war. We were losing pilots on the last day of the war because uh modern battlefields aren’t friendly to low slow
flying aircraft like the A-10. Uh out west when the A-10 was used in scut hunting, we didn’t allow it to go below I think I forget what the cap was. Um,
I was going to say 10,000, it might be 30,000 ft, but we had to keep it keep the A-10 very high to avoid getting shot
down by air defense. So, even though it’s this thing where it goes burp and sexy and all that, the A-10 was way up here because it couldn’t get down here uh or else it gets shot down. So, again,
the people that are talking about the A-10 don’t have any experience with the A-10. don’t know anything about modern warfare. And um [clears throat] but
again, the fact that we’re talking about putting the A-10 into this situation is a reaction to the
Iranian actions. Um so, you know, we’re not sitting there saying, “Let’s insert the A-10 to shake things up.” The
Iranians aren’t expecting it. Iranians are like, “Nah, you haven’t suppressed us, so we know you’re going to come in with joint special operations forces,
A-10s, helicopters, and we’re ready.”
They posted their their their boys out there saying, “Please come come. We want to party with you.” Um,
they’re in charge. They’re inside our udaloop. They’re winning this war.
Even the propaganda machine is having a lot of difficulty interpreting events.
uh a lot of uh uh there you know there was a fire for example on the USS [clears throat] Ford. Uh there was I
think the USS Lincoln was approached by an Iranian vessel and they even admitted Sentcom did of missing of of of trying
to shoot the vessel and then having to shoot missiles at the vessel because they couldn’t get it with uh their uh with their gun on board. But then
there’s the uh the issue I want to know if you have any comments on the uh refueling tanker. I think believe there were two. One uh was was crashed and
there were six American Americans who died uh from that and then another I think was able to land over Iraq. Talk
about what this the explanation for this was. It wasn’t friendly fire and it wasn’t hostile fire and uh the Iraqi
resistance took credit for the refueling taker the KC35.
um talk about what you’ve noticed about how the US Sentcom in particular is talking about this war now given that it
seems like every incident is explained as some kind of error rather than I said you said earlier like maybe it’d be
better to be honest and say maybe we’re actually taking some hits here. Well,
again, I um I know you don’t want to give the enemy false credit or you don’t want to hype
up the enemy, but say this. Um aerial refueling is a complex operation.
We’re flying a lot of airplanes into um you know, into the Iranian theater and so the skies over western Iraq are
packed with refuelers. We had this problem in Desert Storm, uh, where, you know, we’re sending strike packages into to Iraq and they’re going off and doing
their thing. Maybe they get, uh, some SAM missiles fired at them. They have to hit their afterburner sucking up more fuel. So, they’re they’re bingo fuel,
which means they can’t make it home. Um,
and now the tankers have to adjust to this. The the tankers are in a in a in a rotation over here waiting for the planes to come up and take fuel. But
instead now the taker has to make an adjustment and come in and and take a new position to to get the fuel in. And
sometimes Awax isn’t up to the job. Awax is the controller. There’s the one managing the battle space, the airspace.
And uh Awax may have taken their eye off the ball, may have gotten complacent. Um or planes just did it without going to
Awax because of an emergency. We don’t know what was going on. But what I can say is that um we had so many near collisions of uh of refuelers during
Desert Storm. Uh it’s a real problem when you get that kind of tight airspace. [snorts]
[cough]
Keeping uh aircraft from flying into one another is um is a big challenge. Uh I have no reason to believe this was
anything other than two tankers in a very complicated uh airspace with a whole bunch of airplanes flying through.
um they they got in each other’s airspace and they collided. That’s what I believe happened. Uh if there was a surface air, first of all, we’re not
going to put a tanker over an area where there surface air missiles. That just isn’t going to happen. Uh we’ve cleared that ground. If you remember, there was
an incident a little while ago where uh American forces landed on the in Anbar province. Um and uh and we’re setting up
a base of operations and uh an Iraqi uh unit responded investigating. There was a firefight and we killed a bunch of the
Iraqis um because we’re not going to allow the insurgency to come in and set up underneath our
refueling um platform. So, we have troops on the ground in Iraq uh who are actively patrolling and um they aren’t
going to let anybody shoot down these tankers. You can’t the tankers, you know, can’t we lose the war if we can’t
refuel the aircraft and we can’t refuel the aircraft if our tankers are responding to surface air missile attacks. So, we have troops on the ground in western Iraq. I don’t think
we’re supposed to know about that, but there was the media report, so I’m going to comment on that. um and their job is to
actively patrol and keep um anybody from firing surfacetoair missiles against the refiller. So, I’m confident that there
wasn’t a missile attack against our aircraft. What I’m confident is that we have a very complicated airspace that includes Israeli aircraft. Uh and that’s
a problem, too. I mean, who’s refueling who? Uh are we, you know, do we have separate refueling areas for the Israelis or are they jumping in? Um, and
again, just having experienced this during the Gulf War, you know, you got the tanker up there and you get a schedule and so Awax will say, “Okay,
you know, uh, flight of three uh, you know, F-35s coming in, call sign, you know, uh, Juliet one, two, three, uh,
you know, they’re going to refuel in this order.” So, they get they get stacked up. Juliet one comes in, takes on fuel, breaks off. Three comes in all of a sudden, you know, you know, this is this is Charlie 64, an F-22. Bingo.
Fuel, low on fuel. Emergency refuel. Um,
and they’re like, “Okay, Charlie, you need to vector over.” No, I can’t make it. Bring the tanker to me. And now the tanker’s breaking off. F-35s down there.
Has to break off uh while the tanker moves in. But they didn’t coordinate with this other tanker that’s making its big move in with a couple more airplanes
behind it. And so planes are now moving towards each other. Awax is supposed to deconlict and two planes were in the
same airspace. That’s always a bad thing.
People need to research how we do refueling operations, especially in an environment like this where we’re running um hundreds of combat sorties
into Iran on a daily basis. The skies over western Iraq are loaded with aircraft. And um you make a mistake, you pay with your pri you paid the price.
And tragically, six Americans lost their lives because one KC135 ran into another KC135.
That’s my take.
Yeah. Well, yeah. And uh lost their lives for a war that uh that’s another question. Is not is not going so well. Yeah.
It’s not their It’s not their fault.
They’re doing their job. They’ve been given a mission of refueling aircraft.
That’s their mission. I don’t blame these people at all. I blame the president, Hegith Rubio, and all the guys with stars on their shoulders.
[snorts] The guys with stars on their shoulders, especially, they should have stopped this war. When you have Tulsi Gabard, everybody’s like, “Where’s Tulsi? Where’s Tulsi?” Well, Tulsi was
actually doing her job. Ladies and gentlemen, Tulsi actually put together a national intelligence community assessment delivered to the president
before the decision to go to war was made where she basically said, “We will lose this war. We will not achieve regime change and we will not get the military victory you’re looking for.
Don’t do this. That’s her job.” The president opted not to listen to her. But for all the people, where’s Tolshi?
She’s a traitor. She’s not doing her job. She did her damn job. She did her damn job where the generals who are supposed to tell the president, “Hey,
sir, the intelligence doesn’t support this. We can’t do this. I’m ordering you. I’d like that order in writing and
I want it copied to the United States Congress because after you give me that order in writing, I’m going to resign and then I’m going to Congress to say that this is an unlawful order,
you know, and you your career is over.
My career doesn’t matter. I serve the American people.” um you know so the second that you ask me to break the law
or carry out you know conduct a war crime um I’m not going to do that and I’m not going to you know sell my soul to continue we need we don’t have
military people of that caliber anymore there was one the the the director of the joint joint staff he was fired because he told the president we can’t
do this going to happen we have a secretary of war who’s a clear psychopathic war criminal um [clears throat] I’m finishing up an
article right that makes this case in black and white and he um should be removed from office and then the
attorney general should be uh prosecuting him for violations of the war crimes act 1996 law that says that
you can’t operate in violation of the Geneva Conventions and and he has and uh several of the general officers are in the kill chain have done the same thing.
Um the the girls school serves as the um as the proof positive of this. But these are the people that are supposed to say
no to stupid ideas. Um and they’re they when you have the director of national intelligence get the consensus view of
the US intelligence community that um this war can’t be won that none of the goals and objectives can be achieved
that we’re we’re going to lose. Um, you know, this is where military officers worth their their their weight and gold stand up and say, “No, Mr. President,
no. Uh, we we’re not going to do this.
Um, it’s unlawful. Um, you know, there’s no reason to do this.” You and yet they don’t do that. We don’t have people willing to, you know, make those calls.
And uh that’s why it’s important to prosecute peak heads because people have to understand that there are consequences for failing to do your duty
and failing to obey the constitution and failing to obey the law.
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