Mick Mulroy Talks BDA on Iran, War Powers Act, & Gaza Negotiations | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS - The Team House

Episode Transcript
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(00:22):
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(00:42):
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(01:28):
another episode of aizon Ngio Politics. I'm here with Mick mulroy.
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(01:48):
five stars and actually helps us out a lot, and
of course our Patreon. All right, I'm done talking. You know,
lot going on per usual, not as many bombs dropping
and welling up except in Ukraine. Really you need to
like point that out. Maybe another like a pretty pretty
significant and a steady bombardment from Russia. First things first,

(02:15):
going back to the battle that damage assessment for the
Iranian nuclear facilities we hit last week, a bit of
like people on both sides or some people are saying
it was amazing and we knocked them out completely for
years or definitely, and some people are saying it's a
few only a few months, where are you at with that? Like,

(02:36):
what are you tracking?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
So the first thing I'd say is the BDA is
a battle damage assessment. Like you said it, it forms
over time, so you know, there's an old adage. First
sports are usually wrong, which is often the case because
it's based on preliminary information that changes over time. Right,
Sometimes the best information is gained further down the road

(03:01):
when people get complacent and start talking about it on
you know, communications devices. Sometimes they're smart enough to know
we're listening right up front, so there they say disinformation,
thinking that we'd listen to it. Obviously. In this case,
if you're looking at overhead imagery, you see you know,
little holes, right, it's kind of looking at somebody who's

(03:22):
been shot, which is you know, obviously not something you
want to do. But the whole going in is kind
of small inside in the back totally different story, right,
So they need to be able to get more information
on what happened subsurface. I mean, these munitions are designed
to detonate two hundred feet below the surface, so you're
not going to see a whole lot at the top.

(03:44):
But I would say in general, from my knowledge of
the modeling for this and this was done over twelve years,
and there there is two people that we're in the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency that I think General Kane reference
that really deserve a lot of credit, you know, for

(04:04):
this operation, which was militarily very successful, and I think
we should be impressed with our forces for planning and
executing it. But the concern now, of course, is the infrastructure.
It's largely significantly degraded, right, I mean, just an amount

(04:25):
of munitions we put down there, the centrifuges. I don't
know the exact numbers, but I heard some people that know,
I think pretty recently saying that Neton's had like seventeen
thousand centrifuges and Fordau had about three thousand and four thousand,

(04:46):
and they're very difficult to move apparently, and so they're
likely we're destroyed as well. Doesn't mean that we destroyed
all our centrifugions, and then it comes down to this
highly enriched uranium, right, That's what everybody's concerned about. There's
a lot of talk about these vehicles that were there
before the strikes. I think the White House said they

(05:09):
were likely there to reinforce the shafts, you know, the
air shafts that they're shooting right down. I mean, you know,
and if you remember the briefing of the Pentagon, five
GBU fifty sevens went down the same hole, which is
just super impressive. I thought before I went to the Pentagon,
I was pressed by looking at CIA operations, which are impressive.

(05:31):
But when you see a full d D operation, you're like, oh,
I'm glad, I'm glad they're on our side. Right. But
the question then is, and this isn't a question about
anything wrong with the military operation, it's whether all the
rich ranium was there, and we don't know. I think
there's reporting that the intelligence that the Israeli intelligence believes

(05:52):
it was there. There's also reporting that a lot of
it was held at istafon which I'm sure we did
surface strikes on, but I don't think we did many
or any subsurface because it's really deep. So what I
would say is we probably set back the nuclear program
as it existed before our strike back I think years.

(06:15):
There's no really way to tell, because every time they
just start building, we could Israel could strike them again,
So you could say indefinitely, right, So I mean it's
going to take a lot to rebuild it. The question
is do they have this highly enrich uranium, can they
move it to a secret facility, and can they then
get it to either a crude nuclear weapon, but even

(06:35):
a crude nuclear weapon could be like Hiroshima and right
a gravity bomb, which essentially with that was so I
view this as two parts. One. We had an opportunity
that only we could fulfill, which was what we did,
degrade the nuclear capabilities, and we did. And hats off

(06:57):
to the men and women of the US Air Force
particularly and Navy who did a lot of the Trident
missile strikes, So the tom Auk missle strikes, I should say,
but we also need to have a laser focus from
US intelligence community on where this stuff is and what

(07:18):
are they doing with it, because they told us one
hundred times before they strike that if we did it,
they're going to get a nuclear weapon. So when your
enemy says something like that, you ought to take them
for their word, and we should be laser focused, and
if we have to, we restrike, but preferably this instead
ends up going to a negotiated settlement. At one point

(07:39):
when I was researching this, when I was overseas for
tucking on ABC. A lot of people didn't know. I
didn't know we actually gave or on a nuclear reactor
back in the sixties, right when we were friends with them,
the Shaw and at the time, we gave them a
lot of highly enriched uranium. We just, I guess we're

(08:00):
very gullible back then thinking that people would want it
for a nuclear weapons program. But then in nineteen seventy
nine you had the revolution, and then of course we
cut all support for them. But it's a cautionary tale
that you know, friends don't always say friends, and enemies
don't always say enemies, and we need to we need

(08:21):
to be careful about the type of what could potentially
lethal technology transfers that we do as a country.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, that is an interesting point that no one really
talks about, right, I'm assuming this we set them up
with a nuclear reactors like this first commercially used right
for power?

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, for power exactly. Yeah, it was like Atoms for
Peace or some initiative. Again, it's it's a different time,
hindsight's twenty twenty. We were friends with Iron Nash and
we're trying to Yeah, yeah, uh, you know, it's more

(09:01):
of a cautionary tale than you know, beating yourself up
something that happened a long time ago in it was
a different scenario, but more importantly today is we're gonna
have to stay on this, right. So, and last point
I'd make on this is look after action reports. That's
our reviews are done by every military unit and the
best military unit. It's a very critical self period. Right,

(09:23):
So I would say I think this was exceptional, so
there's no real criticism, but the idea that people would
look at and see how the effectiveness of a military
operation or what could have been done better. I mean,
that's that's what makes the US military the US military.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Sure, it's not unpatriotic to do to do that.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
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the Patreon, Patreon, dot com slash the Teamhouse. Hey guys,
we're back again. Sorry we had a little bit of
a technical issue. I'm still here with McK mulroy. Thank god,

(10:49):
Thank you for your patients, Mick. My patients is wearing thin,
not with you, but with technology in general. But that's
another that's another story for another day. I could talk
about that with my therapist or something. We were talking
about the BDA and how it became a little bit
like a little politically divided and stuff. The Trump administration

(11:09):
was talking about kind of trying to paint it like, oh,
the people that think that the strikes weren't successful in
terms of like the amount of time that they pulled back.
They've knocked back the Iranian nuclear program, and somehow a
reflection on the pilots and the crewmen and everybody who
was involved and like doing the strike that's never been

(11:30):
done before. And I think that's a little bit of
BS because you know, the facts will bear out what
the facts will bear out in terms of the BDA
and how badly the Iranians program is set back. No
one's taken away, you know, the precision strike that the
B two B two's and all the refuelers and all
the fighter jet guys like pilots and stuff did, and

(11:53):
like the you know, incredible feat of like military power
that this was. I don't doubt that for a second.
But at some point we're just gonna possibly have to
come to terms that, like maybe the physics aren't there. Right,
it's not taking away anything from the pilots. Obviously they're
fucking badasses, and like thank god they're not Russian or Chinese, right,

(12:14):
thank god they're United US, you know, US pilots. So
I don't know, but like you said in the beginning
of the show, in terms of like the BDA, it
takes time, right, Like it takes time to actually get
what's going on in the ground. You got to see
what the Iranians are doing on the ground like they
had I saw some satellite foot picks now that they
had some excavators around the site in Fordau. And hopefully

(12:39):
this these strikes bring them back to the table, the
nuclear negotiation table, and we can get some kind of
deal that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
I hope so too, And I think everybody should uh
right now, I think the United States feels emboldened as
they believe they set it back signific can lee and
I don't even know how they're estimating the time like
that means, like the time now they start rebuilding it,
it'll take you know, three months or three years that's
taken that's not taken into account that we can stop

(13:12):
them from rebuilding. Right, So, the IDF and the United
States Air Force still owns the sky, right, they have
no air missile defenses. They've taken it all out. There
is no air force to speak of. There really wasn't
to start with, but now it's completely estimated. So if
they start rebuilding these facilities, they can be struck again.

(13:33):
And they and they should let's let's let's point out
there's no reason to have sixty percent enrich uranium unless
you're going to a nuclear weapon. It only takes two
to three percent to use it for civilian peaceful energy means. Right,
So they are telling the world what they're doing. They're
likely to pull out of the NPT, the Nuclear Non
Proliferation Treaty, and they're likely to discontin possibly to discontinue

(13:59):
cooperation with the IAEA, which is basically standing up and
saying we are going towards a nuclear weapon now. So
the criticism of the strike, I think is as much,
you know, as it relates to the US president being
able to take unilatal military action as it was the
actual action. I mean, people are certainly capable of disagreeing

(14:23):
on this, but that was the opportunity to take, i think,
from the US. Israel already started the conflict. They had
already significantly diminished the air defense capacity, which was the
biggest part of the actual operation when we planned it
many moons ago. So this was the time. It was
it perfect. No, it's never going to be perfect, but

(14:46):
it did, I think seriously set them back. Now we
just have to stay diligent and hopefully they will decide
that the best course of action for them, them being
the Iranians, clearady people, is to get to a second
nuclear agreement of which they get considerable sanctions relief, very

(15:07):
beneficial to their struggling economy. And the White House is
put out that we might actually come up with a
multinational investment fund to help fund their nuclear energy program,
right right, So there's a lot of carrots out there.
I think I know most analystis and I know a

(15:30):
lot as you would guess that are very very knowledgeable
on a round say they're never going to agree with
no enrichment on their soil. I hope that's not the case,
because it doesn't look like, especially now, the US is
going to accept anything less than that.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Do you think it sets a bad precedent now, like
the tooth base is kind of out of the tube
because it's always been like a threat during the negotiations
over the years that we would hit their nuclear facilities.
Do you think it gets us past a point of
no return? Or is it like kind of like we're
showing like, hey, we're serious, we'll bomb the shit out

(16:05):
of you guys if you don't come to the table.
And I mean latest report I did see that that
Iran's not playing ball with the IAEA as of yet.
I mean, so they are, at least outwardly and you know,
maybe for their domestic audience too, are saying that, yeah,
we're not playing ball because we said that we were

(16:26):
going to develop more uranium, get it to a point
where it's a point of no return. Obviously, it seems
like that's like their leverage, or at least the regimes leverage,
not as the country as a whole, but you know,
as a regular layman person, you see, like we don't
really fuck with North Korea. Really. They have sanctions and
stuff like that, but the fact is they have fifty

(16:48):
or so nukes. We really don't fuck with them, you know,
barring like different presidents act differently towards North Korea, clearly,
but so like what would really stop if they have
If Istafahan is deeper than Fordau and you can't really
touch his fahn, what's to stop them? I know, if

(17:10):
I'm them, I kind of would be pushing it to
the limit. Also, the other factor that like drips in
here is like Israel does what Israel wants to do, clearly,
they obviously coordinate with US, but they're not listening to us.
And I would argue that like the last two years,
Israel has become more belligerent than ever before. I'm sure

(17:34):
there have been pockets of time like over the over
the last decades, but you know, maybe we are getting
close to a deal or something with Iran, and what's
to stop Israel from bombing in the beginning, because I
feel like Israel has a legitimate like, uh, I don't
even know if they have a legitimate concern to be fair,
because obviously Israel's like military is way better than the rounds.

(17:55):
But saying we just can't control is and frankly, a
ton of people in America have of that feeling, where
like we don't really control Israel. Israel at least politically
controls US. Well, I mean, that's the layman interpretation.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
That gets into a lot of the politics of it.
You know, Israel is going to make the decisions based
on Israel's what they think is best for their national security. Obviously,
the United States is not only a most significant partner
in ally to Israel, but the one that stands no
matter with it, no matter what, and we provide a

(18:38):
substantial portion of their national defense. But yeah, I've heard
as high as seventy percent. Check me if I'm wrong
about that.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, but it's very much subsidized by the US.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yes, Now that is that just total charity. No, Israel
ends up fighting a lot of the enemies of the
United States, not because they're fighting them for US, but
you know, they chant death to Israel, address to the
United States, you know the enemy. Well, Israel's a friend,
but that that is one of the things they do.

(19:10):
And they've decimated Hasbela, they decimated Hamas, They've taken considerable
strikes against the Huthis, and now they have essentially shown
or on for what it is, which is a paper tiger. Right,
So the amount of money we spend on Israel is
also goes to our own defense, which is the same

(19:31):
thing for Ukraine. For those that you might want to
stay consistent across your because it's the same thing holds true.
You know, the money that we paid to Ukraine is
in charity. Uh, they're fighting our number one adversary or
most significant or more dangerous adversary. You can argue about China,
but that's that's not charity either. So when it comes

(19:53):
to Israel, Uh, they're going to take and I think
you can make a really good point to what's to
keep them from striking the and if they don't like
the deal, I think they probably will. That could rupture
the negotiation process.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
I mean they smoke the lead negotiator in this last one, yep.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Right right before. I mean you can yeah, so I think,
but I don't know what is the US right now.
My understanding is asking for no enrichment on Iranian soil,
so they get enrich uranium that's only up to the
three percent you know margin whatever is needed for energy.

(20:30):
All the enricheruranium that succeeds that will be taken out
of the countries. So they have to turnover. And there's
a there's a provision that US wants to add about
the amount of ballistic missiles that they can have, so
it's pretty stringent on or on.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
No way they go for that, and may come on.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Bro, then we're gonna have to be super diligent about
tracking their efforts to get a nuclear weapon, because you're
absolutely right. We look at Libya, look at North Korea.
You know, Libya gave up. It's we talked them out
of their nuclear weapons ambitions. And Kadafi, although nobody's going
to shed a tear form, was killed in a ditch
right right, And we all see what happened in North Korea,

(21:08):
So they're they're not stupid. They realize if they get
a deliverable nuclear weapon, multiple ones, that their regime stability
increases substantially. So we're going to have to and that.
But that's not acceptable. You can't just say that, as
every politician and every president of every party has said
it's unacceptable for On to have a nuclear weapon. Then
you have to be willing to do something about it

(21:29):
or it's all empty rhetoric. So I think this is
going to be. This is going to be you know,
are we going to use aerial denile weapons to keep
them out of these facilities? Not sure why we didn't
do that already, you know, but but there's going to
have to be a major undertaking for tracking h and
verifying the intelligence because this could be a take for

(21:50):
tack that goes well into the future unless they're on
eventually comes off of their pretty hard line.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah negotiations, Well, Frank, I mean, like obviously the ballistic
missiles are probably tied to the nuclear weapons because you
could strap a nuclear warhead on it and it'll reach Israel. Right,
I get it. But like, I think the argument can
be made that, like their ballistic missile program is for
their general self defense, non nuclear right, like they have

(22:20):
to at least. I know they're bad. I know they're
bad guys, but like thinking, like in pragmatically, they're gonna
need some kind of self defense forces in their care.
Even if they make a great deal they become new
players in the world economy and their GDP fucking thirty
x's right, and they become like a shining bright light

(22:40):
in Middle East, they're gonna need to They're gonna want
some self defense weapons in turns you know, yep, yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
I think every nation has a right to defend itself.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Problem with iron is it's the most destabilizing force of
the Middle East, and it's proven. It's proven that so
to the extent that you can control it. Uh, you
want to, but you're right, You're gonna have to make
concessions to allow them to have a military of self
defense for sure, for.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Sure, correct me if I'm wrong. Wrong. The first JCPOA
had the deal where like there was. I mean, whatever
was highly enriched got trucked out of and taken to
a separate monitor place. Right. I don't know if it
was any roun or somewhere else, but correct me if
I'm wrong, because you know the particulars more than I would.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
So the limit, although they could enrich inside, Okay, I
got you, it was still limiteded to three point sixty seven,
so way below nuclear weapons capacity. Which is why so
many people now are saying, well, we probably shouldn't have
got out of the first agreement because you could, we
could have always addressed the proxy issue, right, we could
separately because it wasn't in the agreement. So it's not

(23:49):
in the agreement. Doesn't mean the US can't sanction the
hell out of them for spotting the terrorist organizations or
you know, ballistic missile testing that exceeds the through you
know the allowed upon mount but you know that's water
under the bridge. So it's we can have a theoretical
or academic discussion on it, but we are where we are.
So I do think the US, if we could get

(24:09):
all three of those, it would be we would be
in a better position going forward. And we'd be in
a better position because we took this strength. Now that
War Powers Act aside, we can talk about that next. Yeah,
you know, I think this was the right move to make.
It was the right time to make it. But we

(24:31):
have to be uh fair and say it's it's not
the end all be all. It's not doesn't mean you
like you pull trigger. So they're never going to get
a nuclear weapon. Now, this is this is going to
get them to realize that they're conventional. The terrence is
almost zero, yeah, almost zero. It was it was such
an overmatch by the Israelis and obviously by the US

(24:52):
that they're going to definitely go for a nuclear weapon.
So we just have to accept what they say and
make sure.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
I mean, and they have F fourteens from the seventies, right,
like they're the only you know, we used to have them.
We retired them fifteen years ago. And F four's I
think too, so like they're they're hardware as old as shit.
Obviously it's not going to hang with F thirty five's
and you know, more advanced cruise missiles and stuff. Yeah,

(25:22):
so moving to the War Powers Act, there was a
bit of back and forth and a lot of hoopla. Politically,
people are saying that the strikes were unconstitutional. Other people
were saying, no, it's in their president's right to do that.
My understanding is, like the argument on one side that
said it was unconstitutional was because it didn't pose a

(25:45):
clear and and what was the word like quick clear
like obvious threat to the United States that needed to
be acting on right away, right because the fact is
they're not exactly a week away from making a nuclear weapon.
They were months or a year away from weaponizing their
rich daring and getting into ninety percent and then weaponizing it.

(26:07):
Where you ad on.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
That, So it's it is one of those.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Debates.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
It keeps coming up, and it probably should keep coming up.
It's the most important thing that a government does. It's
decide to go to war, not right. That's why it's
prominent in Article one, which is Congress's right to declare war,
and prominent in Article two, which is a president's role
as commander in chief. The War Powers Act was passed
in nineteen seventy three over the veto of then President Nixon.

(26:40):
No president has ever accepted it as constitutional, Just to
be just so everybody's on the same sheet. What it
says generally is if there's a notification provision within the
first I think forty eight hours. It could be wrong,
but it's a certain amount of hours where the president
has to notify Congress of his intent to enter troops

(27:03):
into harms way hostilities.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
He didn't do that.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, there's there's two parts here. Normally notification prior to strike,
which we did. If you remember the strikes in Syria, as.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
They tell the Gang of eight, right, that's what they
call it.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yep, the Gang of eight, which is the majority and
minority leader in both the House and the Senate, and
the key chairman's and vice chairman's of key committees like Defense,
Intelligence and I imagine foreign policy. They usually get briefed
before the strikes as a courtesy. They don't get a vote.

(27:44):
They don't get to say that's a bad idea when
they can, but they don't. Actually, they're not part of
shade of command. That was only done with the Republicans.
This time, that's going to be a press president could
be a president setting, which I don't think is a
good thing. I think they probably did it because they
didn't want to leak. I think the Gang of eight

(28:04):
would say that's they wouldn't leak. But you know, quite frankly,
the first intelligence assessment from my understanding, that was leaked
was one that was sent to Congress. So we got
to come up with a better way to control classified material,
which means to me, like that's a whole another episode.
But not allowing it to be printed, having some kind

(28:26):
of stamp and serial numbers on it so we know
who actually leaked and all that kind of stuff. We
could do better. You could turn it, You could turn
the average tech company eat and come with a better
system of protecting our classified material. But that again it's
another topic. But then of course the notification and then
in the War Powers Act, the President is allowed to
maintain and keep them in combat for sixty days, right,

(28:49):
so this was way shorter than that, So this would
even violate the War Powers Act except for the notification part,
but it says within forty eight hours, so it might
be solid there. And then after sixty days, if Congress
doesn't declare war or pass an authorized use of military force,
which was the entirety of the GUA was based on

(29:09):
au MF for the military side, not the agency side,
then he has thirty days to withdraw those forces. That's
under the Warpowers Act. The Supreme Court has never decided it.
They've never shown an inclination to step in and decided.
So it seems to be one of those things that
wi just won't be resolved. Presidents will do what they
want and Congress will complain that it violates the War

(29:29):
Powers Act. And to me it seems like the Supreme
Court if they can't decide that, I don't know why
you have a Supreme Court. It's the most important thing.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting too how you said like, no,
no president since the War Powers you know has Yeah,
obviously they don't want to give up their fucking executive power.
Whoever it is right, you could be a fucking peace
peace nick and also be like a crazy Hault and
you're not going to want to give up your power
to do it? Is that why we stopped in Yami

(30:02):
versus the who this in like fifty five or fifty one,
fifty two or so days?

Speaker 2 (30:09):
There could be an well, I don't know, I don't
remember that being Powers Act, Congress could obviously defund something.
It continues going. That's the other thing. They have the
power of the purse also constitutional. They can say we're
not funding this operation anymore, and unless you know, they
try to pull it out of their budget for the DoD,
which usually doesn't have you know, this kind of money

(30:31):
staying around and.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Maintain just like a operations. Yeah, tens of billions of
dollars discretionary just ready to go. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, So there's still ways Congress can exert its authority,
which is I'm not funding the war in Afghanistan for
example anymore.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
Yah.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
But that was AUMF authorized US a military force, which
from September eleventh, two thousand and one, when and then
when they passed the AOMF, we're still using that to
keep forces in Syria today today, right. It's it's still
the au m F that was passed after nine to eleven.
Is why we have the ability to uh, the legal

(31:08):
authority to keep forces in Syria today.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Al Qaeda al Kaida splintered in a mini groups. One
of them was ISIS. Isis spread to Iraq and Syria
or they spread across rock in Syria. We have an
enduring defeat of ISIS mission in Syria. Therefore it's au
m F. That's the that's the logic.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, I mean, listen, I could see that logic. My
my personal pain is I think we should get out
of the Middle East outside of like a stroke of
soft and the agency present to beat the tits off
of isis. That's like, you know what I mean, that's
mostly what it is.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
It's mostly there's support elements out there. Sure, even with
the National Guard, God bless them. National Guards everywhere, by
the way, not just looking after hurricanes, which is significant enough,
but you gotta any place in the world and they'll
be National Guard guys.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Or downtown La downtown Las another star.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Right, They're everywhere, so they I think they do get
the credit, but it's always good to point out just
how significant they are to US domestic in nationals and
international security.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah. Uh, moving on to uh, you know, it seems
like kind of people forgot about what's going on in
Gaza with the Israel Hamas conflict there. Where do you
think we're at with the I mean whatever, I'm gonna
take a little bit of heat for that. I'm not
gonna take heat for this, but I'm gonna be a
little bit like I'm gonna talk to my ship a little.

(32:41):
What's going on the humanitarian eight side. It's fucking ridiculous.
I mean the last two weeks you've seen multiple instances
of Palestinians getting shot to ship by the IDF, and
Haretz made printed something out a few days back where
it's like that was like their order was to shoot

(33:01):
people going to get fucking aid. Uh. It's fucking disgusting.
The Aid's not good enough. It hasn't been good enough
since the GHF started. Gonna be honest, and I get it,
you want to smoke humas, keep smoking humas. I don't
find the fact that, like you've mentioned many many times,
there's upwards of seventy thousand kids that are fucking starving

(33:24):
is a joke. And the fact and IDF shooting up
it's been like every day people are dying, like citizens
are dying at AID stations. At what point are we like, bro,
we invaded two countries. We didn't. We fucked up for sure,
but we didn't do this like we would never do this.
We would be in fucking jail if we did this.

(33:48):
So sorry, I'm going a little hard make I don't know,
you don't want to you know.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, no, I get it. It's full disclosure. Just as
a lot of listeners know I'm involved in humanitarian eight
delivery a wrong the world. We are not involved in
Gaza right now or have anything to do with the
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but we have talked to the UN
a former UN very senior humanitarian officials on this, and

(34:15):
we already knew this from our time when we were
involved there through the maritime corner. It really would take
like four hundred aid delivery positions to adequately get food
to two point two million people, and there's like four.
That's just not accept I mean, it's just basic math
that needs to change. As much as Israel has done good,

(34:40):
which I would say defeating or just annihilating Hesibal La
taking out everything we just talked about for the first
part of the podcast, this isn't acceptable. This shouldn't be done.
The aide should not be restricted to innocent civilians period.

(35:00):
I think the Israelies would say they're not I think
the world can make their own decision. There's a lot
of free and open press that's available on that. But
either way, this needs to change. There needs to be
humanitarian assistance brought in distributed in an orderly manner so
it's not you know, the strongest take it and then

(35:21):
try to sell it to the weakest, which is why
these humanitarian organizations have very specific specific rules and procedures
and principles that they go by. That doesn't favor that
does make sure that the weak get food as well,
which or is distribution. And part of distributing in a

(35:43):
manner that's consistent with that is doing it all over
the place, including where people are, instead of making them,
you know, walk miles to get food to walk back,
which obviously defetes the point. So there's a lot going
on here. I hope it ends in a cease far
negotiation like President Trump is talking about. I think he

(36:03):
does want to see a ceasefire, you know, and I
think he's going to put pressure on Prime Minister Netanya
do that. Whether it's enough pressure because he's concerned that
he will his government will collapse because some of the
more far right like smol Tritz and Ben givere Right,

(36:25):
I don't know, but this needs for the good of
the hostages, who obviously should have never been there in
the first place. Twenty eight will come out under the
US proposal if it's agreed to, and over a thousand
Palestinians or ability from prison and HUMANITARIANNAD will go up
in large numbers. I would hope that she is distributed

(36:45):
by angios on the UN which has all the stuff
ready to go right, just sit anywherehouses and then we
can get to a place where it's not a threat
to Israel. So Israel's in need long term occupation that's
going to require a mass to lead. I would hope
part of the agreement is the leadership on down to

(37:07):
the middle level. Uh, leave Gaza, they can go to Oran,
whatever they can take them in and then you know,
intelligence services have long memories. Just put it that way.
But anything to get the crisis over, to answer the
mail for Israel's security, which is legitimate, and to get

(37:31):
somebody working for the Palestinian people in a leadership position,
not just for their own you know, demonic terrorist agenda,
because we can see where that led the Palestinian people
in Gaza. That needs to happen. It's a proposal on
the table.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Is there going to be a lot of pressure put
on hamas I hope, So let's see what happens if
if hamas Kin agrees to it, hopefully the president can
put enough pressure on the Israel He.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Said, they look at you to it as well, I
wish I was as optimistic as you are, Mick.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
I don't know that I'm optimistic. I think there's a
lot of pressure getting put on ye men Yahoo right
now by Israelis.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Mean, people tend to think there's some kind of monolith
over there, like they agree with everything pro mister Nen Yahoo.
That's not my experience. I spent a lot of time
over there, and I know a lot of IDF people,
as you would guess, there's a lot that have it's
a democracy, right, they have opposing views of the current
Prime minister and even inside the idea.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, they fucking hate him, I'll say. I mean, I've
spoken to a couple of Israelis who live here who
are some former IDF folks. They fucking I mean, at
least these guys say anything total right. They do not
like Yahoo whatsoever. And they you know, the first thing
they tell me is about the hostages and stuff like that,

(38:56):
and about how they need to smoke. But the same
people that hate bebing Na and yeah, we'll also talk
about and this is anecdotal smoking and like this is
probably this is like conversations that we're not talking publicly,
is like totally wiping out Gaza and again anecdotal, Right,
there are poll numbers out there. You can look at

(39:17):
them and see, like gauge more of the atmospherics of
the entire country. But I think it just needs to
stop and stop as soon as possible, or if it
doesn't stop, at least let the fucking aid go in.
And if we need ten thousand American contractors to sit
there and make sure it fucking works, fucking do it.
Because seventy thousand kids starving is a fucking joke, and

(39:37):
not even that's not even a good enough way to
say it. It's fucking this. It's horrible. It's like the
worst thing in the world. We can all admit that
starving kids is bad, right, yep, thank you, Okay, I
know you think so.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
And there's plenty of angios and international organizations that can
go in and distribute, right, you know, that's anything's wrong
with and contractors.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
But I need to secure capacity.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, the capacity to do the distribution is there. It
just needs to be done in a way where so
much is coming in that people it will de escalate,
right if you see it should be coming in the
ground corridor, you know, five hundred trucks a day was
what was coming in Humani Charinay before the conflict. So, uh,

(40:24):
they need to get that way up. And unfortunately sometimes
I'm also going to take some of this, but you know,
if you have to, if you have to accept that
to feed who's who's in I p C. Stage five,
which is the end, you know, if you're asking me,
I'm saying it's worth the.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Trade, right, so flood it so in so it doesn't
become a black market where like they grab the food
and they can charge you know, tons of money for it. Right.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah, agreed, here said they're done, but this is going
to be needs to be done, because we're going to
start we're going to see mass starvation. It's because even
the food that's getting in, if it's just being hoarded,
that means the weakest, the sick, the elderly, the children,
the people that don't live near where these food stations
are are going to really get hit hard to a

(41:13):
point where I'm not sure how they would continue if
they can't get food. I mean, it's just basic, just
basic knowledge. So but the easiest way to get there,
of course, would be a ceasefire that both slides can
creat it.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, we'll see, hopefully it happens a little bit of
some extra stuff. I mean, I know you're I would say,
you're as close to an Africa experts is out there, right,
I mean you've spent some time there.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
I've lived in Africa, particularly East Africa for many, many years. Yeah,
I have multiple programs, you know, humanitarian enabling programs, particularly
in we did Sudan, South Sudan, and we have a
lot of request a lot of big cut and foreign
foreign assistance, particularly on the humanitarian side. So we're getting

(42:03):
a lot of requests. But yes, so I've spent a
lot of time Africa expert. I mean, I don't know
that's for other people.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Well, you're the Africa expert in this zoom call right now.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Okay, yeah, I'll take that.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
You're the closest thing to that between us. So the
DRCCS fire, what are you tracking with that?

Speaker 2 (42:25):
So if it holds, certainly a good thing. This has
been an area if you remember back to the Rwandan
genocide in nineteen ninety four, famous book and movie called
Hotel Rwanda, we do a lot on ending the use
of children as soldiers. So if you remember that, the
UN General de Laire Romeo de Laire Canadian. He started

(42:49):
a group that deals with ending the use of children
of soldiers. They came from that right, so and we
support them. But we also had the Congo War, two
of them, but dates might be a little off, but
in the nineties and then the mid nineties and late nineties,
and then we've had this conflict where March twenty three

(43:10):
movement also known as just m twenty three is supported
by Rwanda and they're an insurgent group in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo Democratic a couple of the Congo's
government is supported by yu Gone in some other African countries.
Twenty three Rwanda, they have made significant gains and twenty
three that is they've taken cities like Goma. There's a

(43:34):
lot of rare earth minerals and you know, highly thought
after minerals like gold that is there. So there's also
that issue which brings in external actors, which sometimes, if
not all the time, extends the conflict. And of course
when this happens, you have huge humanitarian issues. So that's

(43:55):
why we're we look at it so closely. This would
be a great thing, you know that the White House
announced on Friday. If it holds, there's a lot that
people who don't believe it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't
try if it. If it stays, that would mean that
the Rowanda withdraws support from M twenty three and potentially

(44:17):
they and I think as part of the agreement, they
get reintegrated so they're not as one group, which is
obviously causing the civil war, but the ones that are
redeemable if you will, get you know, parsed out into
the military to different units, and again Rowandas stopped supporting them.
And for the US, what's in it. I think there

(44:39):
is priority over US investments in these rare earth minerals
and such. So obviously a big issue with this second
Trump administration is access to that, and DRC has that
and it you know, from a business perspective, you're not
going to be exploited if you're in the middle of
a raging civil war. So it benefits everybody, including hopefully

(45:02):
this is a benefit to the people of DRC, not
just wealthy foreign countries. But I think if that's the case,
it's a win win all the way around. So we
should all be hoping that the Trump and I think
Qatar orchestrated ceasefire and DRC holds.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, I hope. So, I mean cutter really becomes is
a spot that like they are in the middle of
fucking everything, huh, Like in terms of like negotiations and
stuff like that. Why is that.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
I think they have the ability to talk to a
lot of these groups they view themselves as part of
their foreign policy is their ability to settle these They
get a lot of grief for that, but it's really
important that we have people that can talk to Iran, Right,
we can negotiate with Hamas. Yeah, if we don't have that,
it's gonna make these these negotiations more difficult and the

(45:57):
chances of agreement less likely.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
I mean they can defend themselves, but you know they
should get credit when they are just like the United States,
just like Trump administration, when they assist in getting to
a ceasefire anywhere. Right, So this is a good thing.
Let's see if it holds. It's all hope it holds,
and then uh and and the longer it does, the
more likely it will.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
McK we covered a lot today. You got me red hot.
The technical issues got me more red hot than and
I wasn't you it wasn't you. It's never you, but
it was just the zoom not working. I want people
to go and check out N Child Soldiering dot org.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yes, if you hit N Child Soldiering, it's it's it's
a page. It's also associated with Lobo Institute. Lobos. Our
company in child Children is the five O one C.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Three Yeah does that?

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Great book as well by Mark Sullivan. Yep, all the
Glimmering Stars. Incredible story. It's kind of wild. It's our
story that should be made into a fucking movie and
should be at the Oscar's going to be completely honest
with you because it's like I'm you know, I'm a
cynical fucker. But when I hear things like this, it's

(47:14):
two child soldiers that ended up meeting, got married, got
out of it, and were able to continue their life,
have children be great people and not you know, obviously
traumatized through like what they've gone through. But it's an
incredible human interest story where like we don't have enough
of that, where like people have persevered in like impossible scenarios,

(47:37):
so so true.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
And now when I first started filming, his name's Anthony
opoca At, his wife's named Florence Opoka. It was mostly
for academic purposes, like I'm a regular warfare you know,
practitioner at the time, but then I realized the human story,
like you just laid out to you, and it's incredible.
It's literally, if you think your life is hard and

(48:02):
you think about giving up, if you watch this, you
will not, right, I think you will change your perspective.
It's it's it's very inspiring. It is not how most
stories in for child soldiers, right, so it's important to
point that out. But this is a very true story
that should inspire everyone, not just other child soldiers. But

(48:22):
they spent once they got out, a lot of their
effort getting other child soldiers out rehabilitated with an occupation.
That's what we do now within child soldiering. Both Anthony
and Florence are part of our organization. They're all two
youngest sons against six kids. Are my godsons twins by
the way, and they are just incredible people. So I

(48:43):
hope this gets made into something bigger. The substantial portion
of the book, thanks to Mark Sullivan, goes to our
five O one c. Three And if it's made into
a movie, that's the intent, right, help more kids and
inspire more people. I think gets made into you know,
some kind of film.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Or yeah, yeah, yeah, check it out called the webs.
So I want to put the link in the description
if you want to read about the story, the link
is all well, I'll put all the glimmering stars in
the description as well. Uh, it's a it's a in
a world of absolute ship. Like these people are a
bright light of you know, the power of what you

(49:23):
can do if you're really like, it's just great. They're
just amazing people, and like they've gone through things where
they probably shouldn't be right, Like they're an absolute success
story and where it started in a horrible place. So
make you do good ship, man, Thank you. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Man. That's it. Everyone, have a great Sunday and we'll
see you next time. I'm not doing plugs for our ship.
Just check out and child soldiering dot com. Link is
in the description dot down below.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to
you for a moment about how you can support the show.
If you've been watching it enjoying it, but you'd like
to get a little bit more involved and help us
continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon
It is patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse, and for
five dollars a month you can get access to all
of these episodes of The Teamhouse ad free. The same

(50:19):
goes with our affiliated podcast eyes On with Andy Milburn,
Jason Lyons mcmulroy that one, you will also get all
of those episodes ad free, and you support the channel
and the show, and we really appreciate it. The Patreon
members are literally what has helped this company, this small
business survive, especially during our early years, and you are

(50:43):
what continues to help this thing going even as we
navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really
appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a
link down in the description to that Patreon page, and
there is also going to be a link to our
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(51:05):
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But they're also for sale on the merch shop and
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(51:27):
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Mick Mulroy Talks BDA on Iran, War Powers Act, & Gaza Negotiations | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Mick Mulroy Talks BDA on Iran, War Powers Act, & Gaza Negotiations | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS