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Twenty eighth day of April twenty twenty six, and where did the month of April go? Allegedly according to that thing we call a calendar, This the Ocelli Effect, Wednesday, hump day, middle of the week, Wolden's Day, whatever you want to call it.
Here we are and we're live.
But most of you, and I do mean the overwhelming majority of you, will likely catch the podcast at a later time, so I'm just noting for you when the recording was done. Anyway, you're not gonna hear a lot out of me tonight because I am happy, of course to have Larry Hancock with us once again, the author of many books.
I'm not going to.
Give you the full list, because you could go to one of the hyperlinks in the show notes tonight and go and look at all of Larry's work, which is online. Oh, by the way, the Oswald Puzzle, the paperback, the updated version is available, I believe, and we'll be available for Kendall sometime soon. But either way, the actual physical book is what I recommend.
And oh, by the way.
All of Larry Hancock's books that you see listed on Amazon or on many other fine sites out there. Guess what, I have them all on my shelf, and not just because Larry's a friend of mine, but because I highly recommend all of them. His co authors are excellent as well. Never forget them. Of course. We recently had David Boylin on and that was great, as we did the discussion about the updated Oswald Puzzle, and I think that was an interesting interview for sure, and we got to hear
from David a bit, which is always great. Not like I don't like hearing from Larry, though, because if I didn't like hearing from Larry, I think we would have stopped doing this couple of years ago.
But Larry's been on.
Here fairly regularly for god, how many years now, Larry, how many years have you been on the show with me here?
I would, I would say regularly at least five, and then probably another three or more before.
That, So it although it was probably close to ten.
Years, yeah, conservatively as tunning as that seems right.
Because I'm thinking your first appearance on here might have been in twenty fourteen, and then, like you said, you know, here and there, a new book came out. I wanted Larry on stuff like that, and then of course we did the entire collection of Larry's work at that time and did book by book, you know, a discussion about each one, you know, from someone would have talked all the way to unidentified. You know that's about UAP's they call him now, and I didn't say UFO that time.
You know, the discussion of the National security state and its reactions to many other things like the assassination of
doctor King. We've obviously had discussions about the assassination of OURFK Senior let's call him at this point, since Junior is out there doing something else aside from what his father's political legacy was, for sure, but anyway, opinions aside RFK, MLK, JFK certainly lancer discussions throughout the years, Larry a bunch of different things and and a bit of history, some of it in real time, some of it from the past, and sometimes mix and match, including various discussions on one
of your best books. Absolutely and best is saying something considering Like I said, unlike most authors, I recommend.
All of your work.
But you know, books like Creating chaos, surprise attack, shadow warfare. Wow, those weren't about assassinations particularly, but.
They did include assassinations.
I think the unidentified didn't include assassination in a technical sense, but most.
You would be the only one, I think.
Right, I mean off the top of my head, you know.
And who knows, maybe one of these days we're going to get a book on horticulture or you know, ham radio, but or some other kind of broadcast medium.
You know, Larry might surprise.
Us and tell us all about the history of I don't know, shortwave and AM radio, but if he does, it'll be a solid piece of work because history and historiography are definitely strengths. And oh wow, that word that we always hear from Larry, which I love is context regarding historical events and characters in history. You get all
of that with Larry Hancock's writing. But tonight's focus is actually on something that has come up, continues to come up, and especially has been out there in the zeitgeist in my opinion, at least post nine eleven reality. Well, why would that be Even though it's you know, relevant previous to nine elevens, it has become more relevant in my opinion, since nine to eleven and the administration.
Of George W. Bush.
When it comes to America's oh, should we call it war footing, military posturing, the dynamics of high end, low speed woe diplomacy. You know, there's a lot of ways we could phrase this. I'm sure Larry will do it better. But the war powers act right, and the president, you know, engaging in military actions in a limited sense, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, I'm not the guy to
do the presentation on this, though. I may have a couple of questions, Larry, given the circumstance in the engagement with Iran at this point, and the nature of it, with the allies being declared and rhetoric be wrung soundly around the world, and of course the limitations and expansions of news media and various nations.
Where should we begin to suss out?
I don't know a sober reality about what it is we're facing in real time and the dynamics of what history might wind up recording regarding this current see I keep stopping myself from saying war with Iran, but.
We have something happening.
There is a military action, and it does involve the military on some levels. It does involve intelligence on some levels. And I don't mean intelligence as in are they smart or not? And I know smart is not intelligent. But point is, that's not the point. What is happening here? And what about the.
War Powers Act?
And although Trump does what he does and heg Seth does what he does, and they make lots of declarations, how about the reality of what we're seeing unfold and what that means regarding the War Powers Act? But maybe you have a better starting point, Larry, Where should we begin?
Well?
I think that the fundamental question that brings us back to, and this is a question that has come up over the decades, is to what extent is does the American public through Congress have control over the actions of the president and obviously some activities that can affect the general public, which takes you directly to when does Congress become involved in When the United States conducts military actions of different levels?
And there there certainly are different levels between uh, you know, deployments and quite frankly even intimidation and support of diplomacy or geopolitics down to outright you know, combat engagements.
There are there are levels of all those.
Things that The interesting thing is that there are legal boundaries to our military forces uh uh titles, bodies of law that that control what they can do in a civilian domain or in a military domain. Uh, but the law is much much less structured in terms of the the president making decisions on when to put them into a combat domain. So they're actually the military has a lot more uh legal guidance, legal boundaries uh, set out
for it than the president does. And those the ones that drive the president have only come up out of very radical situations. You know, congressional legislation following our years long engagement in Vietnam, which is you know, the War Powers Act that that that's not embodied in any fundamental legal code in the Constitution, you know, the the Authorization
for the Use of Military Force. Again, a congressional action that they don't they don't put this stuff in place in a structured that that just happens after we get in our overhead someplace and then it's set up and it's it's always not to detail, which means the next time around the president can find a loophole.
Okay, so just really okay, sorry, just pause right there for a second.
Lary because here here comes the problem, right in a general in a common sense, or the Vietnam War was not technically a war because in order for it to be a war, the Congress must declare it a war.
Okay, but action was.
Taken clearly, it was you know, in a realistic descriptive and you know, adjective only since it was a war.
And we've had other actions that have gone down like this.
But the president, through various you know, things like the Gulf of Tonkin resolution going through the Congress and things like that, we have, you know, mixed actions that result in something that in all other aspects but by name, you know, arose by any other name, is still a war kind of thing. And that's what happened with Vietnam. We also have the War on Terror, and this was thought to be so dynamic in its ever changing kinetic reactions and actions. And I did put him in that
order for a reason. You know, the president required wider latitude regarding his powers, et cetera, in order to conduct that effectively. All Right, now, that has become a greater debate. As I said at the beginning of the show post nine to eleven. So let's make it very simple. There is a difference between a declared war technicality legally et cetera right, and an action which does resemble in always possible a war, except without that legal declaration, you know.
And some people would say, what is the difference and why does it matter?
Well, it does kind of.
And now that we have this engagement with Iran, which I don't know exactly how to label, is it, you know, as Putin said about his moves on Ukraine, is it a special military operation?
You know? What is the circumstance? You know? And also we are acting in concert.
With the ally there, which is Israel, right, and we don't have a technical legal agreement. You and I talked about this just before going to air and we were going over it and I said, you know, unlike what they have with Russia, you know, and I do mean.
Iran has with Russia.
Let me be very clear, unlike what Iran has with Russia,
where there is an agreement of mutual protection. In other words, if either nation is attacked, they should be able to call upon this special ally they have an agreement with in order to assist in the protection of their nation because they're under attack, you know, sort of like what an ally should do, whether it's a bar fight or you're slugging it out with you know, millions of dollars worth of military hardware or billions excuse me, dollar's worth
of military hardware. You know, here's your backup guy, because you have an agreement in writing. We don't have that with Israel, but it's clearly understood in a rhetorical sense, in a general sense, in a direct action sense. So you know, how do we suss this out? Regarding the War Powers Act, which again are the powers that allow a lot of things to happen, much like it is a war already, but without that legal declaration. I guess what is the difference between a war and what we
see going on? And why does it matter? I guess would be the fair thing to insert here? Or do you disagree?
Well?
I think if you go back, the bottom line is the United States, its founders, in the very beginning, did not see us involved in foreign wars.
They really didn't. You didn't.
The thought that we now have a Department of War would probably astound them. The thought that we go overseas to find wars to fight in would astound them. They viewed war as a defensive action. You know, the War of eighteen twelve, even the Mexican American War was a defensive action in response to incursions in New Mexico and Arizona, a cross bordering. It's like, okay, we will go off to fight and we will declare war when somebody attacks us.
That that was that was the definition of war. Wars wars.
When somebody defines attacks us, we declare war. And then there are you know, there are rules of engagements that we you know, legally fight under when we go to war. You know, what kind of troops can we deploy, what kind of can we do, mobilizations, all the things that you do if you're going to get engaged and you know a longer term you know, mobilization, uh, defense, arms production, all those things, if you're really going to settle in and go to war having been attacked.
Now that that's where it started. Right now. The point is after that.
During the especially during the Cold War era, we made a lot of defensive mutual defense packs with Europe in Southeast Asia, and we did sign mutual defense agreements that said if our allies were attacked, you know, we would go to war to help defend them. Didn't say we would go to war with them to attack somebody else. This is a defensive agreement, Okay, As you said.
We don't have that with Israel.
We're acting as if we did, but we don't have that formal legal agreement.
But we made those agreement with.
Lots of countries, you know, right, I mean with East Asia, Treaty Organization, NATO. But it's still always in terms of defense, right, I will go to war.
With you if you're attacked.
Yeah.
Sorry, I was going to bring up but you beat me to it that. You know, the the broadest example of this would be NATO, where indeed, you know that that agreement is supposed to be if you're a nation, a NATO country under attack, all of the others, and this is a phrase that has been mentioned many times, are supposed to react as if they were also attacked. Right, that's part of the language in that agreement that says, you know, treat an attack on one of us as
an attack on all of us. It's gang mentality. Okay, but I mean, I'm sorry I take things to that level. But true, you know it's the gang mentality. But nation states, you attack one of us, you attack all of us, right, and this is one of the things that we did as a matter of you know, marshaling things post World War two for sure, but it's not unheard of or
brand new at that time. It's just a matter of that was one of the things that was a key part of the Cold War, so to speak, when it comes to diplomacy and defense, and you know kind of like you know, you know, going in what the circumstance could be, and that in and of itself was meant to act as a defense mechanism. You don't want to attack one of the NATO nations because you could wake up all of the NATO nations to turn on you.
That was kind of the thing, like you don't pick on the one gangbanger, the one Hell's angel, the one because you'll have all of them to contend with if you do. I'm not trying to reduce it to that level, but I'm just trying to make it relatable here, Okay.
So that is the intensity of that agreement or am I misrepresenting this?
No, it's a defensive pack.
And of course, in regard to NATO, it was primarily the fact, especially the fact that Europe was considered to be a valuable asset to the United States.
This is not all self interest. You know.
They are all sorts of linkages, commercial linkages, same thing to southeast age. So in a sense, helping protect them from being overrun by the Soviet army, which outnumbered all of them by fifty to one, is in your vested interest, not just being a good bye.
You know that.
There's a vested interest in all of this. Strangely we seem to be forgetting that. But the whole concept of those defensive alliances was, you know, there were economic and social and political relationships with those countries that were to our benefit, and the best way to keep that was to make sure that they didn't get evaded and taken away from us, especially in Europe. So now that's that's the self interest was always part of it. So we
have to be honest about that. And and there were other areas where we didn't have actual legal alliances, where we were perfectly willing to project power to protect American corporate investments. You know, Latin America is the case of that. We we were perfectly willing to project military power, not good a war, but project power. We did uh blockades of Guatemala because we felt it was going communist and just was a political threat we did. You know, it's
not like that. We have not projected power where we didn't have mutual alliances. But that's far different than actually going into combat, sending your troops into combat, keeping your forces out there for months at a time, calling up your reserves.
Again, it always.
Stuns me that the founding fathers would probably just would not understand how we can send national Guard troops overseas for deployments of a year at a time. No, that's not what the National Guard was created. It's a national guard, Okay, it's here you're guarding the nation you're not in, you know, Syria or Afghanistan.
That would it's just a new way that.
We've decided to project force because we didn't want to spend the money to keep a standing army that was large enough to do the same thing.
Well, right, and there are many nuances here, right, But Larry, there are many nuances here too.
You know.
For instance, you mentioned blockades and you know, quarantines and things like this. Right, in a technical in a legal sense, a blockade or a quarantine is an active war, even if you're not shooting, so you know, it doesn't always involve shooting, okay, in order to have an active war, so you got to be careful between the things that seem obvious to be war and things that maybe in a legal technical sense or not necessarily. I don't mean
you have to be careful, Larry. I'm talking obviously to the third person here in the room, which is the listener. And the point is that there are a great many nuances involved throughout all of this, and I'm pretty sure it still stands that a blockade is an active war, right, I mean, even though again it isn't involved shooting or death or anything which most people would think were absolutely necessary to declare something a piece of war in any way,
an active war an action that is war. But a blockade in and of itself is an act of war. And as a matter of fact, if you blockade people and you know, keep them separated from certain essential resources and such, you can be committing a war crime without firing a shot. So there are many nuances along the way. Would this not be an accurate thing to also add for context here?
Yeah, And it depends on like who who is the authority for saying something is or is not. You know, we have lots of treaty agreements with other countries that we don't honor. There are many agreements relating to warfare that we're not a party to, and if we didn't sign up to that, then it's we've left ourselves out of it, like land mines something like that. So you get into that level of detail. I mean, theoretically, a
quarantine is much different than a blockade. If I stop all vessels going towards a certain country and let some pass that are you know, economically viable. If let's say I'm just stopping the oil, Okay, that's not it's quarantine. Kennedy did a quarantine, a qubic just for Russian missiles, right, he didn't stop. It wasn't really that kind of blockade. When I talked about Guatemala, that was just really a quarantine for shipments of Soviet weapons.
It wasn't a total blockade.
So what we're what we're talking about, certainly in Iran right now, comes much closer to being quote unquote economic warfare. In other words, war that's targeting the civilian population, not the military. That takes you much closer when you start different between going to war with an enemy nation's combatants and to their civilian population. Lines can be drawn there. Certainly, once you declare war, then it's everything's off the board.
But the strange thing, of course, is we haven't done that. We've reached a position of saying, oh, we're going to go to war against a civilian population, or we're going to go into combat against a civilian population economic warfare, but we.
Won't call it war. All right.
You know, we're playing with word games at that point in time. But the point I was trying to get across is, you know, it's Congress and our own rules are what really can you know? They're the only constraint. International treaties mean nothing if we don't choose to honor them, if nothing if we don't choose to sign up to them. The only restraint in place our military action is the personal restraint of the president and the legal restraints that
Congress can impose. And as we started talking about this whole thing, Congress has never stepped back and imposed a series of legal restraints on the president in the same fashion they have the military.
There is no title quote, you know, title.
Number, number number related to the president like there are titles of legal acts relating to the military. So we've made it it's a pickup game. You know, Congress can either act or not act. Act after the fact, and you brought it up earlier. What was what was so dangerous with the the you know, the authorization for military force after the terror attacks of nine to eleven was that any president can declare anyone a terrorist threat and
use that as a justify cation. Congress intended it to only be related to al Qaeda and al Qaeda factions, but they didn't tie it down in the language, so the president can apply it any where he wants to, and that that literally leaves the president. There's an argument to be made that you know, President Trump can literally say Iran is an imminent threat because they could have an atomic bomb. Well that kind of doesn't make them an imminent threat, but declare that he is acting against
an imminent threat of Iranian terrorism against the US. In some fashion, saying it's against Israel doesn't really count legally. But you know, there's a big difference between the au m F and the War Powers Act in that regard. The with the au m F never envisioned, there's nothing in there that envision and long term deployments, a call up of military reserves, deployments, you know, new weapons productions.
That's it was supposed to be.
Authorizing special forces units to go out and take take out al Qaeda or ISIS terror cells with individual strikes, not deploying multiple carriers off the coast of.
Iran, right, And that was meant to untie the hands of the president so that he could take action on things that were eminent required, you know, swift action and things like this. And one of the examples that is easy to point out where you know, the normal rules don't apply anymore, would be anwar Alaalaki. And the fact is that the guy was a US citizen on foreign soil. Obama authorized an action which led to his assassination or
elimination or whatever. And in a direct sense, the president authorized the killing of an American citizen because he was an enemy combatant and a terrorist as declared by the administration. Uh Now, as for whether that was valid or not, I'm not debating it. I'm not discussing it. I'm just saying this was the end result. Because this unties the hands of the president, allows him to.
Take actions like that. Am I reading this wrong or.
No, No, that's right. And the point is basically the au m F was drawn up and directed towards individuals, whether it's a single terrorist, a group of terrorists, it's in't you know, you know who they are, you identify where they are, and you take them out. That that was the whole point, and that was the response to nine eleven, and that's why it wasn't.
That's why I brought up that example, a.
Large individuals, not countries.
Yeah, as trying to say it would be the difference. Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean interrupt.
I just all I was trying to say is that's why I brought up that particular example because that fits. That was he authorized it to get rid of the guy who was the leader of what they called what excuse me al Qaeda in Iraq, right, so the Iraqi al Qaeda faction, and he was the leader.
So happens he was a US citizen.
Normally, if it's not a terrorist and an enemy combatant, you send people, go arrest and bring him back, put him on trial. But in this circumstance, because of the reaction to nine to eleven, and because of the way this thing was structured that allowed the president to say, nope, we eliminate him, that's it, and Obama did so.
Right.
Yeah, and we've been using that same justification to strike you know, Iranian National Guard members operating in Syria or I mean when we took out one of them on the airport in the capital of Iran, of ira you know, that was the justification. He's a terrorist, then he's there and we kill him.
You know. So we've declared that.
We have the right to strike individuals who we deem as an imminent terror threat.
To the US.
By the way, to the US or US forces. Uh, that's a lot different than Iran as a nation.
Right, that's a different thing.
So now we turn back to the current events. Okay, just so that we got all that context out of the way. Uh, and what do we see happening here?
Because you know, you and I discussed before starting to record, Uh, the idea that the one thing that concerns me is what happens when because this mutual agreement with Russia and Iran, the mutual defense agreement, you know, could potentially lead to what Russian soldiers who are you know involved in this, and we could wind up killing them, they wind up killing us.
That's a literal.
Direct engagement, and that becomes a political nightmare. Though I don't imagine, and neither do you, I think imagine the Trump administration making a great stink about it if indeed it is Russian military assets that are responsible for eliminating or taking off the board, let's say US military assets or people.
But the potential exists.
And we have Iran being bombed not just at you know, some far away allegedly nuclear facility, but we also have you know, bombings that have occurred within the capital city in other locations. We have Iran launching missiles, not just at Israel.
So we have you know, more going on.
Here than is being reported on as per usual, but also an understanding of all this and the dynamic what do we do with it?
Larry Well, I think the big problem that we have going on is that there's been no definition of what we're doing. Even under the War Powers Act, you would you would have to identify a direct threat to the United States physically United States forces, but but normally it would be towards the United States or towards an ally, and Congress would would essentially authorize our implementing all of the actions that are available to US in in combat.
I mean, whether it's long term deployments or uh whatever, whatever it is. Essentially, that's what that's what we did in Vietnam. We didn't we didn't declare war, but Congress passed a resolutions essentially saying you're you're allowed to fight one We we actually just don't want to declare it because that would that would maybe force the other side, you know, if we declare war against the one guy, their allies can come into this battle overtly, you know, publicly,
because they've signed mutual defense pacts. Historically, Russia and China both have covertly supported warfare against the US in Korea and Vietnam. Russia operator fighter craft. Russian pilots flew against American pilots in Vietnam. There was some of that. The Chinese were a major factor in the Vietnamese War, which we never acknowledged because if we acknowledge it, it takes it up to, oh, well, then you're in a war, and you're in a war with their allies and them both.
So we never acknowledged those things. Didn't They never acknowledge it either, But I think again, what we're facing with the the War Powers Act here is that it's so nebulous that Congress will be able to duck the responsibility.
And the interesting thing is if at the moment they appear to be very much into ducking responsibilities, but you would if they were really behind it, and if the administration had designed a clear threat to the United States, an imminent threat, which is, you know, one thing, then they you'd expect Congress to actually do what it did in Vietnam, pass a resolution talk and golf resolution, pass the straight of Hormono's resolution, and Congress actively, not just
on political shows, actively passed laws that said, okay, we believe you or behind you. We accepted your testimony, and now Congress is legally behind what you're doing, and we've passed a resolution maybe put into clear war, but we passed a resolution. In this case, we don't even Congress doesn't even have to have the nerve to go either direction, to constrain the president or to support the president, which is a pretty amazing thing. And I'm not sure that we've ever seen that before.
Right so publicly, like you said, they're willing to go on TV shows to support them but they don't take any solid or you know, on paper action that supports them. At the same time, so it appears to the public as though the Congress is fully on board with them, but they haven't actually memorialized any of that in a resolution or I mean as far as I know, I mean, maybe I missed something, but there's no resolution.
Yeah, good, No, there's no resolution. And the other big thing that goes along it is they've not funded it. And again that's why a Secretary of the poor Defense whichever you want to choose, that's still defense to me, is before Congress today explaining how tremendously expensive this is. Because Congress is going to have to wrestle with how do you fund this enormous expense that was in the budget and do you hide it within a new version of the budget or do you spend fund a special
funding resolution? And it's not in this case, it's not just to sustain operations.
I mean, we got a lot.
Of resources in the area of Iran carrier groups. We've had had aircraft air Force units deployed overseas now for weeks, massive resources and we've depleted. Estimates are between forty and sixty percent across a variety of our most advanced weapons going to be very expensive to rebuild that. Now, if Congress was on board with this, they should have passed a resolution not only supporting the action, but somehow funding it. All Right, American people, we're going to do war bonds.
You know that was this earliest stuff. We're going to do war bonds, We're going to whatever. But it looks like they're going to bye not engaging with the subject. They're going to try to hide it within the other portions of the military budget. And then the battle that's going to come up. Is this going to increase the depth? Is it even further? Are you going to look for offsets by cutting other programs? They're really ducking this quite frankly.
They're talking about it, but they're not engaging with it at this point in time. I think they're hoping it will go away, but they're not engaging with it, either legally or financially.
Right.
Interesting side note too, just you know, because you said, okay, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of Defense, it's still defense to you. Well, it's still defense officially, by the way, because it would require an Act of Congress to change the Department of Defense to the Department of War. That's one of the essential elements to literally change that entire
you know, government agency's name. Okay, So even though they have declared it by name the Department of War, and it was at one time the Department of War, technically speaking, right now as we speak, it is still the Department of Defense, regardless.
Of what the rhetoric and political.
Statements are and et cetera, et cetera, and what pe Haig Seth says, truth is, it's still the Department of Defense technically as far as I know.
You know about that, Larry as well, Sure.
It absolutely is, and it's only it's it's the the executive order allowing it to be called the Department of War is just simply political positioning. In all honesty, again being objective about it, the administration has changed its style of geopolitics. We've really moved into using war right and military operations as as a tool of geopolitics of uh
international economy. I mean, the one thing you can say for it is it's it's being right up front about it, like we're we're no longer looking for alliances, We're no look looking for negotiations we're looking.
It's like.
We're where if nothing else, we're into intimidation.
You know, like it or don't.
It's it's hard to it's hard to duck the implications of changing from defense to war. It's like, okay, what we're here for?
War?
Is it?
Okay?
Get used to it, right And in a direct sense, it may be a more accurate moniker for the uh, you know, for that office at this point anyway. But truth is truth, in fact is fact. It is still officially the Department of Defense.
Anyway. I just I just want to point that out. Okay.
Uh So as we move forward, though, you know, what, what does this tell us all together? I mean, somebody might say, okay, this is.
Great, guys.
You provided us with a lot of information, and yes, there is a way to looking at this. There's the legal, there's the technical, and then there's the reality, and they may all meet somewhere. But point is, what does this all mean for us as we watch it now? Of course, we the implications that you have an unpaid for war or you know, whatever you want to call this action.
The money's going to come from somewhere. Yes, indeed, they are assets that are available to be utilized for anything, and they just need to be you know, directed at this. But there will be expenses. Now, is that part of the budget. I don't remember it being in the National Defense Authorization Act for this year, so maybe I'm wrong about that, but I don't think it was in there.
And yeah, that's why the Secretary is asking for like ninety billion. That's one of the reasons he was with Congress today is asking for a huge supplemental funding package.
Right.
Definitely he was not in the budget.
Yeah, because the military, like every other aspect of our government, works on a budget and they get it, you know, allocated based on what the Congress, you know, deems necessary through their process, et cetera. I mean that's where the purse strings lie, you know. I've always heard that, and by lie, I mean lay. But nonetheless, this is the circumstance and why the Secretary of War is up there saying, hey, I need some more money, because he does, you know.
I mean they can shuffle things and take you know, existing resources and direct it, but that will leave other departments hurting and that might be a temporary situation until this is funded.
So okay, that's one aspect of it.
But what else do we have happening that maybe is not being reported very clearly or concisely by others that you can think of here, Larry.
Well, I think a couple of things have not it's very clear have it been reported across the United States. Is one is the degree of damage and effective damage that Aron carried out against its Gulf neighbors, both in physical military attacks against their infrastructure and economically. The fact that you today had the UAE pull out of OPEC, and not just OPEK, but the extended Russia OPEK, which you know, effectively the US have taken Venezuela and oil away.
Now UAE is going to produce as much as it can pump and it doesn't want any more restrictions. There are terrific global impacts about this. If anybody thinks this is just about preventing from having a nuclear weapon, certainly it's not about that. It's there far more reaching than that. So I think what's not being discussed are the the
what okay, what is not being characterized? Before whenever the US was asked to go to war and Congress committed to war, it was made very clear to the American public what the trade off was going to be, here's why we're doing it, and we're going to ask you to bear some hardships. We're going to ask you to work longer, pay more taxes for you know, for go gasoline. You've already got a Republican congress person saying, you know, give up driving. But we're going to ask you to
do all of these things because it's worth it. And you know, if it takes us, you know, we think it's takes us six months, it takes us six years. Here, here's the case for it. Congress is signed off for it, and here's then you start a campaign, you know, so that you've got the public on your side because you're asking it to bear some serious burdens.
Now about that burden, though, that's right now. About that burden. No, we're not actually carrying it yet fully for sure. But about that burden, Larry, I don't think that they realistically look, regardless of what the rhetoric says, I don't think it's about, you know, take the hit for the team at the pump and stop driving. I don't believe that for a second, even from the mouths of those who say it with
a straight face. What I think the actual purpose there is, and maybe it's just me and my suspicious thought patterns, but you know, I think really what that is is so that people don't start to complain when it does cost an outrageous amount extra at the pump, when the price of goods that have to travel by truck, etc. Are now rising in price even more, during a time when we are all feeling the economic burden already just
from the pre Well conflict, let's call it circumstances. We were already feeling the burden, if you will, of an economy where costs were going to be up. I think this is a way to say no, it's like your patriotic duty now to be charged more and more money and for us to justify price increases in a general sense. I think that's the real purpose of it, not you know, hey, give up driving or for go gasoline again.
That's my opinion.
Maybe you have a different view on this, Larry, but I think that's the true purpose of it.
Go ahead, well we see that.
I mean the model has been going on, that's Putin's special military operation in Ukraine is the model for that. You know, something that was supposed to be over in a week, lasting years beginning to slowly year by year crush the Russian economy, but constant appeals to Russian patriotism, imminent threat, as if anybody really thought Ukraine had been about to invade Russia. Somehow, that's the model we see it. It's easy to look at and we're just we're just
approaching it in that same way. Now, if this is if this had been over in a week, you know, I think it's kind of like Russia again, nobody would have flinched, but I can't. The messaging is still it's it's easy to carry off that messaging in Russia because Putin has total total control of internal messaging now that
is even shut down most of their social media. Whether you can maintain that level of control in the US is another question, but I'm continually today again you're starting to see administration talk of maintaining the blockade for months, you know, and you knows, as you're saying, is this just a matter of easiness into the into the budgetary impact, you know, because our call is going to come up with that with the elections that are coming up. You know, Uh,
we really still do have free elections. The Russians do not. You know, so you're going to have to deal with our social welfare program is going to go away to support Is that going to be the offset? That's one thing that's been proposed already, cut medicares, cut social cut whatever to support the new military funding. Where's the offset going to come? All of that will be has to be part of the campaign. I hope it's part of
the game campaign. If it's not, then we have moved far closer to Russia than I would ever have seen, and we've moved into a state where we American citizens ignore what is happening to them for some strange reason. That's that would that would be not on our normal history.
But what's normal now?
But yeah, Chuck, I think it's at this stage it's warm up. And I thought, well, yeah you could. But as long as the straight or Foremo's stays closed to most oil shipping, uh, you know the economic consequences, You don't have to be at open war as long as.
That that stay. We've been lucky up to date.
All the prices we see now are the result of oil was that was already at sea, it was already in delivery mode. We have yet to feel the real price impacts, the consumer price impacts of that stuff, and I don't understand it because I don't yet see I don't see the messaging that says what the end game is, or even the message for how to get to the endgame. But that one D game could have been to get
back to our subject. One D game could have been war powers and a new resolution either to sustain okay, I mean, Congress could have stepped up and said, we really really need to do this, and by the way, we're going to increase taxes because it's worth it.
They're not going to do that.
So if Congress doesn't move either direction, the only immediate place for resolution is Congress, and that means it's not going to happen.
Right, I mean, Or you know, a special fuel tax that they say will be temporary if they put a dollar on it per.
Gallon, you know, something like that.
That could be done across the board, because there are federal fuel taxes that are applied automatically and are part of your gas price. I mean, that could be another way to go. But of course, if they add a dollar to the cost, potentially based on the way the dynamic is moving, you could see the relevant cost double at the pump, say from what it was a few
days ago or a few weeks ago. And remember this, you know, as I said, working for Exxon Mobile, I learned how that you know functions, and it still prevails to this day that the true impact of your price takes sixty days for it to actually affect the fuel price. It's two months the cycle, okay, and it's still that way as it was in the late nineties, early two thousands.
It takes sixty days.
So when you see the price affected, that's them preparing for the price to change and not the actual price change, you know. So that's something to keep in mind here as we see, Yeah, if there's a change in the supply, the price will start to jump immediately when they know it's coming, before it even actually is the supply that's in hand, right, It's like futures. But you can see it at the gas pump, and it's.
And everybody, everybody is seen the price of gas at the gas pump, and most of the average consumer is not thinking about the price of diesel, which is where the real impact is going to hit because diesel is so much more expensive and so much more part of our transport infrastructure. That's that's not even been part of
most of the dialogues. It's we're tracking car gasoline prices, we're not really tracking diesel prices, and nobody's calculating the impact on that other than the people that decided, you know, to keeping the debt rate flat today because obviously they can see what's coming, no matter how much they would have liked to have lowered it.
No, all true, and and that's and that's the circumstance we find ourselves in, right, Uh okay, So how would we sort of tie bow.
On this one?
Because I don't want to take up too much of your time tonight, Larry, but I think we've effectively gone through it and really clarified a bunch of the information that we see out there outside of the cheerleading, so to speak, right the the the political points trying to be scored on.
All sides of the aisle. Let's say, whether you're objecting to the good.
Yeah, yeah, I think tying of bow on it is really just truly understanding the difference between a War Powers Act, you know, resolutions in Congress, the au m F as being different things, having different purposes and different constraints and kine of bow on it really to me means understand it enough, understand it, understanding enough to evaluate what Congress is doing, and the consequences of Congress choosing the not to act at all at that point, at this point
in time, that applies to almost everything, since Congress is choosing to act on virtually nothing. But that's I think that kind of ties a bow on it because a lot of people don't really understand, you know that they assume we keep using the term that this is a war. Clearly it's not a war. It's not even a special military action. And the longer that it lacks definition, the
more out of control is likely to get. How can we say that, Well, those of us who went through the Vietnam experience, you know, it was all good year by year, month by month.
You know, it's like until it wasn't.
Well.
And that's the circumstance we find ourselves in, and in recent history. Is any sort of barometer for the forecast that we can post here?
You know, the.
Congress does not seem all that enthusiastic about taking any particular action one way or another. And I don't mean just in this particular arena of debate, discussion and formatting for what's going to go forward. But I mean, I take the most recent congresses, the past couple, quite frankly, to be groups that don't want to take any decisive action kind of just you know, the president. A lot of people would note the president just does whatever he wants.
The Congress just sort of doesn't even bother to sign off on it. They just take zero action against it. Or there's a few symbolic gestures by the minority, and you know, the new cycle changes the end of story. That's one way to look at it. And if we get that at this particular point in juncture regarding these events, what does that actually mean moving forward, except that you have something that is not you know, defined rather clearly, but still in motion and still something that is happening.
They are going to need a budget at some point in order to conduct this thing and to even deal with what has already been spent on it. So I don't know what the financial, you know, fallout is. I don't know what the consequences are. As per always, I hope that we don't see a lot of US servicemen return to.
US in boxes. But you know, and obviously I don't want to see a lot of human beings end up in boxes. But either way, you know, that would be the only time I.
Would see the public really reacting outside of the reflexes and the the general sort of you know, root for your team, whichever team that is mentality that we've seen among the public. So I don't see a strong anti war faction really gaining traction. The pro war people are just fine with what's happening, it seems like. And and here we are with the Congress that you know, for lack of a better phrase, here.
Is in a do nothing mode.
Either way, Do you think I am misrepresenting something or seeing something that you're not, or whatever means we get ready to close this out.
Do you think that that's where we are at? Yeah? Good?
The only thing I would two things I would add. One is as former military, I will say.
The thought of.
People returning in boxes is one thing, But you can destroy a lot of lies, a lot of marriages, a lot of careers. To the extent that we have taken so many of our National Guard personnel and deployed them for months at a time away from their families, their jobs.
Yeah, yeah, did they get.
Paid sure, but there is a price to pay for this sort of thing. There's a price to pay for keeping your surface people destroyed and inactive and constantly under stress. There's a price to be paid by keeping your weapon systems deployed and not going through normal maintenance and retrofit. There's a price to be paid by using up your ammunition so much faster than you can potentially rebuild it. But I would make a point for the military service personnel.
You can do a lot of damage with an ongoing battle that they're not really fighting, and you're making it look you know, life is different, and when you force them to be away and in constant deployment overseas, and we have done that to our National guards particular for years now, and it really isn't fair.
So I'm going to make a point on that.
Yeah, they signed up, they volunteered, but you know, the deployment ratios are not anywhere where they should be saying with the number of an extension of deployments. The other thing that I would say when you're talking about Congress, this is more amusing than that was. But I'm seeing a lot of political ads here in Oklahoma where candidates are running simply on a platform of standing with the president. And it's like, what is standing with the president mean?
Does it mean photo ops? Are you guys actually going to do something? Or do standing mean you're just not going to do anything at all? If that's true, it's like I'm I elect you to go to Congress so you can do nothing so that the president can just do what he wants. You should come out and say that we've talked about this before. Congress people need to just get off the soap box and start are you there to do something one way or the other and take a stand?
Uh?
And that just does that mean photo hops?
Right?
And not a popular you know action at this point in time. As I said before, they're they're pretty much you know, you might as well send the same people back to Congress then that they're already there because they're effectively doing nothing one way or another. Uh, and just sort of well the president wants it, go ahead, you know, I agree with them.
I'm gonna make public statements. I'll have a press.
Conference money right there, I'll go.
Yeah, that way, you don't have to, you know, have people move or anything else. Hey, you'll save some guess that way nobody's got to move in or out of DC.
Uh, you know, and these guys can continue.
To lost the connection.
Oh sorry, we can we we didn't lose the connection.
I was muted to you.
Sorry, okay, I was just saying, we can save money.
Yeah, we could save money.
Well, we could see by not having anybody move in or out of DC. See, you save fuel, you save money. And you know what, you can tell these guys to stop wasting money on political ads that tell you that they're going to stand with the president, whatever that actually means, and maybe they will get some photo ops out of it.
Why not go ahead?
Good for the office wall, not really good for us though, you know, the people you're supposed to serve and represent allegedly and anyway, so Larry, yeah, that about does it for this. And I would say, you know, look, this is a unique discussion in that it was very clear and concise and it's not just a matter of political cheerleading or what you get on the Sunday shows. Does anybody even watch the Sunday shows anymore?
I'm not sure.
They just probably watched the clips, right, But either way, we don't even need it, because you got everything you need right here, and the reality of what's happening regarding the Eagle circumstance, the mutual protection agreements, and what the president is actually doing. I mean, geez, all they got to do really now is just fund it, Larry, And you know it's a rose by any other name is.
A war still. I'll stick with that.
So anyway, go to the links in the show description, go ahead and follow up. Larry Hancock's blog is well well underpriced for the admission, and it's free over there.
You can read that. But I would definitely highly recommend.
That you get all of Larry's books as well, and the Oswald Puzzle is now out in an updated version the paperback. I have one, and you should have one on your shelf too, as I have every one of Larry Hancock's books on my shelf.
Right now as we speak. Actually, no, the Oswald Puzzle is not. I lied.
The Oswald Puzzle is out here because I was reading over it recently before I talk to you and David.
Anyway, with that, Larry, any final.
Word, no, I think that'll do it for me.
There you go, So once again, the great Larry Hancock on the show, and I appreciate you guys for listening. And you know, any contribution at Ochelly dot com this week will definitely get you an executive producer credit in the next week or so. Because here we are at the beginning of the month and we did survive all those other things. But I'm going to go to the flea market again, try and get that rolling. See what
else we can do. But if you have the ability to be the effect, do it because I can use your help anyway. With all that in mind and all that said, no matter who you are, where you are, when you are, Yes, indeed I am here leo'celly, you are the effect, and I hope.
That you are.
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