Johnson was taking cover in a bunker designed to protect troops against much smaller warheads weighing only sixty pounds. Knocked the wind out of me, followed by the most putrid tasting ammonia, uh tasting dust that swept through the bunker coated your teeth. After the blast wave and debris came the flames. The fire was just rolling over the bunkers, you know, like seventy ft in the air. Johnson's bunker provided no protection from that. We're gonna burn to death.
We start heading down and make it about a third of the way there, the big voice we call it clicks in. Incoming, incoming, Take cover, Take cover, Take cover. I've got another football field to run. I don't know when this next missile is gonna hit. Can you hear the incoming like a freight train going by you? So as from Sunday night sixty minutes. The second story, which I highly recommend if you haven't seen it, You remember when Trump killed that Iranian general, their top general obliterated
in with a drone strike. Well, Iran's response to that was firing some missiles at our base in Iraq. And the story at the time, as I remember it was it looks like they gave us a heads up. We got everybody out of there. They kind of fired something to save face, and that was about it. Well Sunday night, at least, it was the first time I'd heard the real story. It was a serious attempt. It certainly appears to take out a whole bunch of planes and equipment
and a bunch of people. And it's a miracle that we didn't have a bunch of Americans die. Let's talk about the attack, the spin, the could have beens with military analyst Mike Lyons served with the United States Army very capacity various capacities in the US and Europe Ron Star winner for his actions in combat. Mike, how are you, sir? Great to be back. Anything you want to straighten out about our setup? If where we get into our questions now? Spot on. I I'm still trying to get my head
around what what we were thinking. And um, you know that was surely not a recruiting video for the U. S. Military. How do we allow ourselves to get pounded like that? Um? From the Uranians? And the same thing I had heard back at the time was they had targeted empty buildings and my sources told me that was what happened. Now, so when that major told that, so a little bit concerning too, when he begins that with a goodbye to
his son. I'm always concerned about people like that in combat, only because you know, self fulfilling prophecy has come true. I could tell you when I was in combat, I a lot of my soldiers wrote good bye letters to their wives and things like that. And my wife was asked me why I never did that, And it's because I just think self fulfilling prophecies come through. I didn't come eight time zones to die in that desert anyway. That's that's really interesting stuff right there. I realized that's
kind of a side. But that's that's a fascinating psychological thing. Yeah. I And and the fact that your soldier you can't think that way. And um so the way that whole sixty minute story began, and then as I started, you know, getting into more into it, I'm just looking at this going we've gotta be kidding here. And but I I actually think after talking to folks in the Trump administration,
it's all about how they communicated with the president. So what I've been trying to figure out since I watched that, why did our Pentagon or government whoever made the decision want to keep it a secret that Iran came out
of so hard. I think it had to do with kind of what we're doing as normal business right now and the fact that presidents and I think the last drone strike that President Biden just did is another example of our presidents are getting out of touch with what the commander in chief is supposed to do, because he should have been Trump should have been briefed on all
the aspects at this top to bottom. When that mission was over, should have been briefed, and this should have been told the extent of the damage that was there. But it seems as though what was only communicated to him was nobody died, and so that was the bar that was the most Almost nobody died. We're not gonna do anything. We're not gonna retaliate. I just don't get why we didn't retaliate, And it just goes to show that we don't have any strategic vision, We don't have
a strategic deterrence. For example, you do that to the Israelis, the strategic deterrence is you get you got one X comes to us. You're getting ten times coming back to you. And I don't understand why we didn't have Patriot missiles there. We had airplanes there, and what was it a politically not expedient to put them there or the signal that would send. I mean, all those mistakes we've made in the past in the nineties and Mogan issue so so
again time after time. These people are so close to the situation and the President just isn't didn't ask the right questions. And the fact of the matter is, no, the bar wasn't casualties. The bar was they destroyed equipment, They destroyed a lot of different things, and we got to retaliate right. Well, they also caused a tremendous amount
of traumatic brain injury. Just real quickly, Mike, we got a note from somebody in intelligence who knows of somebody who knows of somebody who was in the situation room in the attack was happening, and says that President Trump wanted to strike back immediately and was talked down by Mike Pompeo, who knows if that's true. Um, I'm a little surprised that you're assuming that the President didn't know the full extent of the attack and the damage done well,
so so the right so communication. Let's gets back to what I've talked to people that have been around the president say, you've got to speak his language. So usually a guy like Donald Trump has not talked out of something like that. But if that was the case, that that that happened, if Pompeo talks not, he would be the guy that could do it because he speaks the president's language, and in most cases that means getting in the word no casualties in the first five seconds of
the conversation. Uh. And that's you know, really what I think is happening here. And I think that the President didn't rely on his instincts well enough, didn't have that didn't even seem there was a plan for it, like for example, the second those rockets left Iranian territory, we have targeted on them. We could respond it immediately to them. But I also think again that question gets back to
where are your defense capable? Reason why if we were going to have all these airplanes sitting in the middle of the desert in a in a rock we don't have any way to protect him? What were we thinking? We've seen them use those rockets before if three or seventy Americans had died in that attack, which could have very easily happened, right, I feel like if we were told about it, I don't think you could keep that secret. Uh, there would have been pretty big public pressure for a
world pressure to to to strike back, wouldn't there have been? Absolutely? And and that's why that shouldn't have been the bar. And I think you know how the story even comes out right now, ob obviously fell through the cracks between these two administrations because it just doesn't make us look good. Now, even in the Biden administration, it it comes out, and if he wants to make things better in the Middle East,
the story doesn't do that either. So um so again, I'm just surprised on how graphic and how much detail came out. You know, four star general there's speaking about how we're basically running away from these Iranian incoming missiles. I'm just shaking my head, saying, you had the job job to defend that place, not not to be not to take a pounding like that, but be ready to deliver one back. So I don't know. Mil Concerned Military
analyst Major Mike Leons is on the line. The other thing my friend in military intelligence said was that if we had retaliated, that could have been a big step toward an eventual war with China. He said, I don't have time to explain right now. I wonder if you have any idea what was on his mind? Geo politically speaking, how did how did those steps take place? Okay, so
here's nobody wants to fight the United States conventionally. I'm not sure you know if that means that China would have done something in the South China seat, maybe that would be the case. Um, but no one wants to fight the US conventionally, and so we've got to play to our strength, and this would have been our strength. Our strength would have been responding to this one particular attack.
Now again we're he's making a presumption, or he's making a presumption that China is going to start anything with us. I just don't think that's going to be the case. Um. Again, deterrence what keeps these other countries from doing this In the very beginning, we know what's China is because China knows that doesn't want to get into a conventional war with US. So what you know again, you look at all these excuses that come out about why we attack it,
we don't attack again. Go back to the Syrian the recent one with the Biden administration thought it was okay now to attack Iranians or Iraqi's inside of Syria for a retaliation for a drone strike, you know, two weeks ago. My head is just just shaking because where is the strategic deterrence. But the person who comes up with the next mutually short destruction, the next strategic deterrence to keep
these countries from attacking us, wins the next Nobel Peace price. Interesting, um so on the timing of this story coming out, Iran has been in the news a lot. The Biden administration and UH leadership in Iran have been going back and forth, have you got to do this? Well, we're not gonna do this, you know, negotiating and they said they won't even sit down with us, and they said you're not allowed to have surprise inspections anymore. And we're
going to keep enriching uranium, all these things. In any chance that we wanted this story to come out to help move public opinion towards these are bad guys who might have to attack. Well, I don't see attacking them again either because we don't have any real resources there. We have to deploy. You know, everyone's gone. I mean those days are over of trying to deduce anything on the ground there. We can fight them from the air and drone strikes and things, but that those days are over.
If anything, we're leaving out of a rock faster than we are before and we've got off ramp to Afghanistan. But again, those troops are nowhere in the neighborhood either. So um no, I don't know what's going on. The administration is trying to resuscitate this relationship with Iran just because Donald Trump of what he did. So it's it's dumb, it's full hardy. The bottom line is we need to be all out of the Middle East unless we have unless we come back with a clear strategy as to
how we want to deal with it. It's it's a tinder box that will blow up. But the bottom line is, uh, unless we're gonna come up with some other strategy. From the military perspective, I just we're just wasting our time. Great stuff. Military analyst Major Mike Lions. Mike, it's always enlightening. We sure appreciate at the time. So tinder box, it's
going to blow up, he says, Yeah. You know what it reminds me of a little bit is the first attack on the World Trade Center in I think it was, and we didn't really respond and we didn't pay much attention to it and kind of acted like and then years later you get a more significant attack. I feel like this is kind of one of those. I mean, we sent the message to another group of bad guys of you can come at us pretty hard, and we don't really pay attention, we don't respond, and we don't
really do much. I like Mike's rule of ten to one. You hit us with one, we're gonna hit you with ten. You want to hit us with two, we got twenty for you. How long you want to keep this going? I mean, that is deterrence. And but Pompeo Trump the idea that they were you know, lily livered or or unwilling to deliver a response that doesn't ring true to me. So so so Mike Lines doesn't think Trump got the full story or grasp what was going on. That's what
he was suggesting. Yeah, Now, Sean Sean says, the the anti Trump version of this is that the Pentagon did not want Trump involved in something that could lead to a war with him as president, so they didn't tell him what happened because they were afraid of how it react. Mike seemed to be suggesting, Yeah, that was perhaps part of it. Um although Trump, you know, his whole thing was not getting involved in these Middle Eastern countries. That was his whole thing. I mean, that's what he ran on,
That's what he talked about all the time. So his his default setting is to not get involved in these things. Well, and with all due respect to the anti Trump media, which is everywhere all the time, it's also possible. They said, look, we have a couple of choices. Number One, we could retaliate with means we are going to be fighting Iran on and off in various ways for a very very long time. You will be the war president in the Middle East. And he said, and it's possibly. He said,
all right, let's see what happens next. We'll hold back for now to wrap this up now, unless you want to talk about it more later. Do you see Tucker last night? So his whole first segment was about how he's he just thinks it's awful that Biden sending the missiles into um, you know, against Iranian militias fought back at all. He just thinks that's terrible, that we shouldn't be involved in the Middle East at all. China is
the only threat in the world. I couldn't figure out where he was going until he got to this, but I kind of see this, you know, the the Obama administration. Now we're going back. Three presidents wanted to pivot away from the Middle East to China. Why why are we Why are we getting sucked into a rack and Afghanistan and Syrian these various places. None of those are going to change our way of life or or in America. China actually could, and that's their goal, and they could,
they could actually pull it off. So why isn't that are so focused? I just think we're still operating under the assumption that we broke irack, so we bought it. We've got to help defend I think we say sorry about that, are bad, and move on. Take full responsibility. I take full responsibility. Okay, I don't know. I'll tell you. The most interesting thing is Mikelines seems to be as confused about this as anybody else, and he's got a lot of connections and a lot of history of understanding
the way the world works. Well, anyone a bronze star right there, so you know, is the area fascinating? Text line four two nine five k f TC