America is repeating the Iraq mistake in Iran

It's the tip of the spare in the epic battle to defend the United States of America.

The National Security Hour exposes the wolves and sheep clothing and then a various plots

to undermine and destroy U.S. National Security.

Hello and welcome to the National Security Hour. Thank you for joining us on the mission.

The National Security Hour is the tip of the spear in the epic battle to defend the United

States of America. I'm Brandon Wynkert, your friendly neighborhood host. You can catch

me right here every single Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern and you can follow me at We

the Brandon on Twitter X and check out my writings at 1945.com and the Natset Guy section

on emerald.tv. Today we have somebody I'm super excited about talking to. His name is

Sam Fattis. He is a CIA operations officer, not an analyst. He wanted to be very clear. He's

got a bevy of experience in the Middle East and he's just a very well-informed guy obviously.

So without further ado, Sam, it is great to have you here with us. It's great to be here.

Thanks for making that clear. I was introduced once as an analyst and I went into anaphylectic

shock and took me like 10 minutes to recover. I don't want to have that happen on air.

No, look, I mean, all kidding aside, obviously, collecting intel doesn't mean much if there

isn't somebody to actually do something with it and write up reports. So analysts are

kind of critical. But as long as it's not one of John Brennan's higher ease, I think we'll

be as long as it's not somebody, yes, who's writing communist fiction. Yeah, that would be nice.

We could get into that later too because I've been a deep critic of Mr. Brennan for many years

as has our friend Mike Shoyer. Mike Shoyer calls him the former American, John Brennan.

And perfect. So I want to start out with sort of we're recording on St. Patty's Day. So I want

an IM for everybody. I'm where I have green pen. I've got my green watch. So, you know,

everybody's getting on because I have pink on today, but whatever. I want to get into this

breaking news. Joe Kent National Counterterrorism Center puts out an absolutely beautiful

resignation letter. He's done with what's going on in opposite. He's opposing the Iran War,

which is in its second week now, more than its second week now. It doesn't appear to be coming to

an end. Sam, Joe said something interesting in his letter. And I studied it very closely.

He called out Israel. And he said, look, Israel has had an undue influence not just on American

politics, but specifically Donald Trump. And he says that, you know, he says that for the last

year, they've basically just been feeding Donald Trump pro-Israeli, neo-conservative propaganda.

And he also said something interesting. Joe Kent says, this is the same things they did to

get us to go to war in Iraq, where I know you spent some time, many a lot of time. So just

talk to me about what you think is really behind this, this Joe Kent letter and where you think

things are going within the administration. Because to me, it looks like everything's falling apart.

Yeah, well up front, I think it appropriate to say as a caveat. Look, I know Joe.

We didn't really serve together downrange, but I got to know him sort of later on. I knew his

wife better, Shannon, who was killed in Syria, because I trained her. I was the senior trade

craft instructor running the training program for the unit, the classified unit where she was

working at that time. So I trained Shannon and then worked alongside her, if you will, for a

number of years. And she was a class act. She was everything you would. I mean, she knew her job,

she was squared away, and she was easy to work with. She is one of those people that

was serious about the job and not carrying an ego around, if you know what I mean.

So I say that as a caveat, right? Look, Joe has resigned and his letter, his notice is there for

everybody to read. It's pretty clear. I think he's exactly right, right? And I think it takes

a tremendous amount of moral courage to do what he did to say that, you know, to say, I mean, he's

not staying inside, sabotaging things, dragging his feet. He's doing the honorable thing, submitting

his letter of resignation and saying, I cannot be part of this, which I think is we'd love to

see a lot more folks do at critical points in history, right? Yeah. Under the Biden administration,

we were always asking for the equivalent of FBI. When is the guy going to stand up and say, no,

I'm not going to go raid Roger Stone's house with a platoon of guys when you could just call

them down to the courthouse and hand him some papers. We're not doing it. I think he's right. I mean,

look, we, my opinion, and I think based, you know, talked to a lot of folks with access, who

feel the exactly the same way, believe exactly the same thing. This was not a war that we went into

because we sat down with the intelligence community, the defense department, and made a sober

judgment based on their recommendations that we needed to do this and that we were going to

prosecute it this way. That is not how this happened. I know that's a lot of people assume that

because that's typically, well, that's the way it should be done and has been done. This is

actually pretty close to the opposite in my estimation, which is we were pushed by, certainly

by the Israelis and their friends here. And I think probably a certain segment of just the

neocon crowd that seems to be ready to invade anywhere at any time into doing something actually

contrary to the advice of folks who really understand the region and what we're going to do.

So I think Joe, you know, Joe subnit up much more succinctly. I think he's dead on.

That's exactly where we are. And now, I mean, basically, as far as I can tell, we went into this

with the expectation that in about 72 hours, the Iranians would fall apart. The people would rise up.

There would be joy in the streets. Happy ending fairy tale. And now reality has intruded,

and it didn't happen. And it ain't going to happen. And now we're trying to figure out what the

hell do we do? What do we do now? That's where I think we are.

I think you're 100% correct. And as you know, I do occasionally do consulting work with

usually the department of the Air Force. So I'm aware of Dan Cain and some of the people around him.

And I haven't heard a single person I know at the kind of top levels of the Pentagon uniformed

side who was cheerleading this thing on. In fact, everybody I spoke with, in fact, in fact,

I remember a year or two ago, I was up in DC and I was asked to give a briefing about my book

on Iran. And I kind of told them what I had been seeing and what I had heard. And I had a

colonel who was flew the tankers, the refuelers, who said, have you ever seen Iran from above?

And I said, no, I said, why? And he said, we are never going to be able to take this country because

it's just the logistics are, because it's just flying over, just flying near it. He said, it's too much,

it's too much for us to do. And so how do you think the president, I know that the uniform

commanders told them this is a bad idea. How do you think the president came to this conclusion?

Is it just he just was listening to the neocons or do you think he really just believed that the

country would collapse? Well, I do think absolutely that he, that he took this action because he

believed it would collapse. I mean, at this point, that is my assessment. Literally that we're

going to bomb the hell out of these guys. We're going to decapitate their leadership. The

Israelis seem to have some obsession with this concept that you decapitate a regime and it

collapses. I'm not sure what there didn't happen to has below. I'm trying to figure out,

you know, usually when you say that, it would be nice to show an example of when it had worked.

Right? If I'm in the NFL and you tell me to run a play, I'd like to know you have a track record

that it works and they don't actually have one, but they're obsessed with it. He was absolutely

convinced of that. I mean, do I think he's very poorly served by his advisors around him? I do

think that absolutely. I mean, I don't, and look, I mean, there are many facets to this. One

piece I'll throw out because I'm an old case officer, you know, operations officer. Our human

collection, our human intelligence collection on Iran is of no consequence whatsoever. It's

nil. It has always been a tough target, but we used to run a lot of sources inside Iran. I mean,

there were times in my career when I alone was running a dozen Iranian sources at a time.

We run almost none inside, so we have almost no collection. So, you know, a decent think tank

in DC, reading the newspapers is putting out assessments on a par with what you're getting out

of the agency. And that's not a knock on the individuals. There's a whole bunch of structural

reasons for that, which is a whole nother conversation. So, okay, that means we know actually almost

nothing about the internal workings of the leadership, which means that the Israelis hold enormous

power because there, when we're talking about our intelligence, particularly human intelligence,

what we're really talking about is what the Israelis are telling us. And when you're in that

position, just think about that. If you don't have your own intel, they can tell you the truth,

they can tell you decide not to tell you things, just omit things. And then they can flat out why

to you. And if you don't have your own sources, you're basically led around by the nose, by these

guys. And that, you know, the antidote to that is you have to have your own intel. And I've sat in

many briefings with senior guys and foreign intel services talking to the head of the service

in the Gulf, for example. They're telling me he'd give me his assessment of terrorist activity in his

country. And I have my own collection, very robust. I know when he's lying to me, I know when he's

omitting things. And actually, I can tell you when he's telling me what he thinks is true,

but I know he's wrong because my sources are better than his. That's because the guys in the

station are doing their friggin job. And we've got book on what they know. And we know more. And we

got better sources. When you stop doing that, then you're at the mercy of these other guys. So the

is that's that is absolutely our status with the Israelis right now. So when it comes particularly

to human intelligence, we're either accept what they say or we're blind. I mean, you've got two

choices because we got nothing. And that, you know, it's hard to maybe to convey to people the

amount of power that gives you. You know, the Israelis say this is going to happen. And we got nothing.

What it now, what do you, what do you do? It leaves you in a very bad position.

Do you believe, because in the letter Joe wrote, and this is something I've been saying, as you know,

I'm banning the show, do you believe that the claim that Iran was eight or 12 days away from

surge capacity with nukes? Or do you think that that was just some, you know, I don't want to say

made up, but probably made up or exaggerated claim? Well, I got about nine million questions about

that assertion, right? And it let's just be clear for folks that are unfamiliar with me.

I am no friend of the Iranians, and I've worked against the right to always forever,

and actually worked against their new program for a long time and recruited sources inside it.

And I've been saying for a long time, we need to be a lot more concerned about and focused on this.

So I have, but our own intelligence community assessment last time I checked was that they don't

have an active nuclear weapons program. That's our official assessment. That was. Okay, so

got that, that's a big question. If you're telling me they're 10 days away, but our ISEE says

they don't have a program at all. Well, something doesn't add up there. Either our ISEE

isn't doing its job. Where the hell did that information come from? And also that number,

you know, for people who were into the inside baseball crap and actually have nothing

better to do to track the status of the around nuclear weapons program. This number seems to

jump around all the flip and time. They're either 10 days away or they already have nukes or

you know, the last time we checked, they hadn't, the last sense I got from the administration was

no devices have been constructed. They had highly enriched uranium. Well, they had 60%

enriched uranium or whatever. So they were within potentially a few weeks of having the fizzile

material. But that meaning you got this stuff inside that will ultimately go boom,

but you haven't built the thing that you put it into to take the physics and boil it, boil it

down to my grade level. Anyway, the point is all of a sudden, there are 10 days away from having a

nukes. You're like, what? How is that consistent with anything that has been said prior to this?

Also, let's keep in mind as of what six months ago, eight months ago, whatever it was,

we were told we obliterated their nuclear weapons program. And that nuclear weapons program was

gone. Yeah. Yeah. So how did we, I mean, by the time I said fire the DIA director,

who was secretly telling everybody we didn't obliterate, we degraded. And remember,

heads have fired the Air Force general. Well, when you're, when you're done, you're sort of like,

okay, you know what? Even for the average person who doesn't want to get lost

of the intricacies of how to build a new, you're like, these assessments, these statements

do not compute. They are all over all over the map. They're political assessments. They're not

actually intelligent. Well, that's what you're left with. Your common sense tells you. So you're

kind of telling me whatever suits politically the moment. The National Security Hour on America

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Thank you for listening today and thank you for joining us on the mission. The national security

hour is the tip of the spear and the epic battle to defend the United States of America.

I'm Brandon Wiker. You're the cipherer of truth in an age of lies. You can catch me right here.

Every Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern and you can follow me at We the Brandon on Twitter X.

I think maybe I said this to you in off air at one point. Anyway, you know, I was in Iraq.

I took the first team into Iraq and out to almost a year in advance the invasion.

So we went into Iraq. There were originally all a grand total of eight guys.

And then we plused up eventually probably a little over 50. And we're the only guys in Iraq.

Okay, we landed in Iraq. By the way, we didn't pick up contact with and exist a single existing

source, meaning when we went into Iraq, it was like we parachuted onto the face of a new planet.

So there was no into, I mean, other than what the Kurds might have been telling us, we had no

sources. We started from scratch. And by the end and the guys, I've not personally taken

a credit for it. A bunch of guys are working their asses off. I mean, ultimately recruited hundreds

of Iraqi sources. But the point is we started from ground zero. There was nobody before us.

So whatever came out of Iraq was what we produced. We never found proof that there was a

functioning existing Iraqi WMD program that they had had chemical weapons in the past and

using them on the Kurds. Okay, everybody knows that that they're all kind of gave them a lot

of those chemical weapons, by the way. You know, and that they might reactivate the program

at some point or whatever. The point is we never told anybody we found WMD because we did not

find WMD. And I remember very clearly sitting in the teamhouse, the basehouse, watching

and on our pirated CNN, on our pirated TV, watching CNN when Colin Powell addressed the United

Nations. You know, why we were all watching? Because we were curious what the information was

about Iraqi WMD because we didn't know. So we figured, I don't know who he is, but somebody

somewhere has got a source telling them something that we don't know and we would really love to

know that Colin. And when he was done talking, this is like probably 30 guys sitting around

cross-legged on a floor in a house. Right. And this is a bunch of CIA guys and a bunch of Black

soft guys from various units. Pretty hardcore group of guys. And there's dead silence. And finally,

one guy, one of the Black soft guys, maybe the hardest guy, nicest guy, but also hardest guy,

ever met. Very in the sense of really squared away hard-nosed operator. He speaks first and he says

that's it. Those are the first words out of his mouth. At least look at it, everybody in the room.

I mean, keep in mind, these are all guys that volunteered to be the first people in the war. Nobody

was forced to go there. And they're all living in the, you know, the mountains under constant death

threat to take down this regime. So they're pretty predisposed to be, you know, not friends of the

Iraqi regime. And their reaction is like, what? That's it. Where's the beef, man?

And this is playing out again, you think with your own?

You certainly have that fear. Don't you? I mean, that feel to it. It's like, okay, wait a second,

man. Again, there are no friends of this regime. And you know, somebody putting together a coherent

long-term plan to focus on containing them. Yep. Maybe even working toward regime change over

the long term. Yep. Let's build an opposition. Let's cut off their money. Let's, you know, the kind

of anaconda approach. Yep. That would make sense to me. And this is what I thought what they were doing.

That's fine. This is what I thought what they were doing with the Abraham Accords. In fact,

that's what Jared and Avi told me in 2018, this was sort of part of the grand plan, was that they

were going to empower the Arab and Israelis to come together. And, you know, and I thought that

was the best of bad solutions. And we apparently have just shredded that. And I can't, for the life

of me, the only thing I can think of because of the connections I have with certain Israelis,

well, I can think of is I remember the Abraham Accords. Every Israeli I knew were dumping all over it

behind the scenes. They hated it. So clearly there is a push from the Israeli side for total war

against Iran. Can you just talk to us, you know, put on your, well, put on your analytical cap for

a moment and talk to us a little bit about how you think the war is really going. Those who

seen me on Bannon, seen me on Tucker, they've heard my assessment. But I'm kind of curious to see,

you know, what do you with all your years of experience in the region and with our intelligence

and military capabilities? How do you think the war is going for Uncle Sam right now?

Yeah, not well. I mean, look, from a conventional perspective, if that's the right term to you,

are we cleaning their clocks? Yes. Anybody who actually thought the Iranian military

would stand up to the American military in a conventional fight must have been on drugs, right? I

mean, okay, so their navy doesn't exist anymore. Not that it was any great shakes to begin with,

but okay, it's gone. It's Air Force, which was essentially non-existent is gone. And we've trashed

command and control and leadership and all sorts of other things. Okay, but they're not actually

attempting to fight us in that realm, right? If you will. It's never been their stick either.

No, that has never been their intention. They never, they no matter what they say,

you know, beating their chests and talking into a microphone and appearing on video,

they never had any idea that there would be a result other than that. But the point is,

so they planned for this. So we know it's been very clear, right? Long ago, they focused on this

whole idea. I guess it's called the Mosaic doctrine, but anyway, you know, there's like something

like 31 separate commands and essentially each command has access to the military, the besiege,

you know, the thugs that be people up in the street and disappear. Anyway, and they're all autonomous

and they all just continue to fight and act on their own. So it doesn't matter that orders are not

coming from Tehran anymore. You just drive on. It's sort of like al Qaeda's approach to the franchise

approach. And something that his history would tell you, we don't have a really great track record

of combating, right? Particularly when we try to combat it with conventional forces, which

it doesn't friggin work. I mean, I always felt about Afghanistan, you know, the first five

months of Afghanistan and one of the most brilliant military campaigns since the Second World War,

grand total of I think 402 Americans on the ground at its peak. Tribal forces,

CIA guys, SF guys, USA are unbeatable. Then all of a sudden the bureaucracy came in and

big DOD's got to play. And now we're going to take a 12th century country and turn it into

Switzerland and South Asia. And now we're friggin doomed because we're just going to keep

doing stuff that doesn't actually impact the real war, right? Instead of fighting that tribe leader,

we should have gone up there and made a deal with him. And we pay him X number of dollars a month

and some of our guys hang out. And the only thing we care about is don't let the Arabs come back

which is their term for al Qaeda. And we were done, right? The war was won, but we got to keep

this. We're almost like fighting ourselves in some psychological sense. Anyway, so it's not just

that there's the decentralization thing. And then obviously their methodology is, you know,

we're not really fighting you and we don't have to. If we hit an oil tank or every couple of days

and blow it up, nobody's going to run the straight through the hormones. And pretty soon this

will happen in the Red Sea too with the Houthis. And the straight up Babel Mandem.

Precisely. So we win because we just crashed the world economy. And you act, and you know,

what we can do this with a fishing boat that we rigged with cheap, hobby level remote control gear

and some explosives. That's what we need to attack your oil tanker. And our Shahid drone,

I don't know the cost. What? I mean, it's impossible to estimate 30,000. Yeah, I've heard 30,

I've heard 100,000. But anyway, look at it. It's cheaper than anything we're shooting at it.

But, you know, and the sophistication necessary, you know, guys that work on fiberglass boats

and do remote control aircraft or it's a hobby, have all the sophistication necessary to build this

friggin thing. You straight and put some explosives. So you can build it in a garage. You can

build it in your friggin house. You could build it anywhere for almost nothing. And there's no end

to the supplies. You can't, this is all commercially available cheap crap. And they're tethered with

China and China has all those supplies. And that's before we get to the part where the Chinese are

getting the Russians are going to give them targeting data. And okay, and you don't need to

fight the carrier battle group and send it to the bottom because you've got the whole world by

that. Well, we've got a stranglehold on the whole world. We'll keep it clean. But anyway,

the bottom line is wait, you could do that forever for nothing. That's right.

And I guess the real frustration for me is we've done this a whole bunch of times where

we're fighting an unconventional enemy that fights in this fashion. And we decide we're going

to use conventional forces to combat them and think in conventional ways. And then we see mystified

when it doesn't work out well for us. And I was talking to Ben in the other day, and I know you

know this stat. We dropped what, at least three times as many bombs on into China. 5.2 million

sorties were flown by the US Air Force alone. That's not including Navy and Marine Aviation

for the duration of the war. We still lost. Yeah, we dropped more bombs on Laos alone.

I think that on all of Germany and World War II, something like that, you're like, you know,

Laos, which is, and yes, and we still lost because it's freaking irrelevant to the outcome.

A human element, the human factor drives the, and the human will to win or to survive whatever,

that outweighs whatever technical capabilities you bring to the target.

Yeah, I mean, I know you and I have said this before. One of the things that has really,

really bothered me since the beginning is this idea that, okay, we're going to bomb these guys

for a few days and they're going to capitulate. Either they're going to capitulate or the people

are going to rise up and the government's going to be with them. So anybody who's ever been involved

in planning any kind of operation at any level in the field headquarters where their first question

would be, oh, when that doesn't happen, what do we do next? What's plan B?

Right, you never plan an op based on the assumption that everything, yeah, hope is not a plan

and everything will go your way. You know, that's not, no, in fact, of experience,

of experiences in a guide, you plan everything's going to go wrong from the moment you go outside

the wire, right? That's all everybody knows that who's ever been involved. So when we bomb them

for three days and they don't quit, what? And when we bomb them for another three days and they

don't quit, what? And you get the feeling, unfortunately, and I'm not trying to be snide because

it's a very serious matter, you get it feeling that in terms of the people who made the decision

to go to war, there is no answer to that question. I agree. They never contemplated. I don't think

that's being snide. I think that's, I think it's very clear. Again, General Cain and his team,

I mean, we were on Bannon together and I mentioned this vice-emoral culture was kicked out of the

the joint chief's role there as I think he was director, I don't remember what his role there,

he was a senior guy there because he leaked to the press the conversation that Cain had the night

or the afternoon before the war began in which he was explaining exactly that after three days,

what do we do? And Trump wasn't listening. In fact, at one point Cain supposedly kind of got

in Trump's face and said, Mr. President, I really don't think you're hearing me on this. And he

wasn't hearing him because Trump wasn't listening. Trump is, you know, I have many people that have

briefed him before who says the man doesn't read, he doesn't listen during briefings, and you know,

Cain he was like that too. I know somebody who briefed him about WMD in Iraq and he was reading

the economist the whole time. You know, that's just how some of these personalities and power are

toward that end though, we're clearly at an impasse. The Iranians are not going to quit.

I was told the Iranians actually have anywhere between 18 to 24 months worth of ballistic

missile capabilities still. So they can go at least that long. Is that correct? Do you think that's

correct? Do you think we've really done damage to their capability? I don't know because I hear

dramatically different things. One is that they're almost expended and the others they have a ton,

but I keep coming back to the part where it's like, okay, let's assume best case, you're right,

they're about to run out of ballistic missiles, and those are relatively sophisticated,

and it takes a while to build them, and plus maybe you can identify the locations where they're

being built, because there are some signatures, yada yada. Okay, let's just take that off the table.

Even if we're just back to drones and other crap that they can build in the garage,

and they aren't even really engaging the US, they don't have to engage the US, right? And

not suggesting they haven't, because there are questions about to what extent they've degraded

our air defense capabilities that are legit. But even if that wasn't on the table, okay,

there are completely civilian targets of enormous importance. First of all, to all our allies,

in the region, I mean, like the Gulf States kind of, it matters when Abu Dhabi Airport is shut down,

as it was yesterday, maybe still is. But oil is clearly the centerpiece of this oil and natural gas,

and they can take oil and natural gas off the market with drones and suicide boats, remote control

boats, and other crap. So it becomes a test of wills between Trump and whoever's

running Iran now. Well, and you've put them in a corner, haven't you? Because if you've,

if your plan is you're just bombing them into submission and taking everything away,

and it gets to this point that I think I describe this to Ben and as, you know, let's all go to

hell together, kind of. That's exactly right. You burn dust down, so cool. We're all, that's right.

Let's, let's, let's burn you down as well. And so, you know, here are people talking about

where to crossroads, time to go with the, let's declare victory and go home plan.

And increasingly, my concern is we lost that capability because they won't stop. They'll be like,

okay, you stop bombing us. That doesn't mean we have to stop shooting at oil tankers.

And Pazesky and the president recently said as much. He came out and said that we have to hurt

the Americans in such a way where they will never again threaten us. Which honestly, you know,

I hate the regime, but it's a rational response to what's going on. I mean, I can't say that he's

crazy. I say, well, that's, that's what these guys are going to do because it's what we would do.

You've got to keep the, the enemy back. The National Security Hour on America out loud talk

radio network on iHeartRadio is where you come to hear military and intel experts like me.

America out loud talk radio plays on the iHeartRadio network. You can also listen on our media

player from any web browser anywhere in the world. We have the best in class apps available on

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podcast on those same apps. Be sure to make America out loud. News, America out loud. News,

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Thank you for listening today. And thank you for joining us on the mission. The national security

hour is the tip of the spear in the epic battle to defend the United States of America.

I'm Brandon Wiker, your host of action. You can catch me right here every Wednesday night at 8 p.m.

Eastern and you can follow me at we the Brandon on Twitter X. We begin our final segment with that

in mind. It seems like the only thing the United States can do. I'm not convinced Trump is looking

for an offer amp. He might in two weeks. They always said four weeks was like the maximum amount

of time they wanted to do this. So that'd be two weeks from this time of recording. So maybe we

get lucky and he's like I'm done. But it doesn't look like that. And it looks and sounds like

Trump is really a believer in this thing. So we go up the escalation ladder and they've already

moved 25 I hear two different numbers 2500 or 5000 Marines as part of this M.E.U.

Scuttle but is they're going to be deployed to some point along the coastline of Iran so that

they can try to it sounds like Gallipoli to me. And I think John Mearsheimer recently said that.

Have you heard this? Is there any reality to this? And what will happen if we try to do that?

Look, you know what I hope to God? I hope to God that somebody is moving these Marines there

to prepare for contingencies like we have to evacuate embassies. We have to do neo operations.

Or Shiite unrest in Bahrain gets to the point where the marine platoon that's typically deployed

there for security purposes, whatever the acronym is. I can't remember. They decide, okay,

that's not sufficient. We need to put in a couple of companies.

Clearly contingency then. I am hoping to God that's the case where somebody's looking at.

Sooner or later we're going to have to go get a down flyer out of Iranian soil. And we might

want to have more than just kind of a hodgepodge of capabilities we might want to have.

I mean, I assume these guys are coming with the MU will be coming with a typical Marsoc component,

right? You can potentially in any event, it's not a hodgepodge. It's a self-contained

entity with aviation and supporting logistics and all this. So I'm hoping that that's the case

because if anybody has any insane idea that we're going to start putting American troops ashore

on any Iranian soil and holding that territory, particularly if they're going to do it with like

2500 Marines, that is, yeah, that is Gallipoli. That's, I mean, come on. I mean, let's be real.

You were talking about taking Iran in the size of it. If you wanted to actually invade Iran,

which is an insane idea, you would, you need a bigger army. You don't just need the U.S. Army.

You need a bigger U.S. Army. You better go reactivate a bunch of divisions that we shut down

and plus up. And I don't know how you're going to do that sort of a draft.

Well, in Caroline Love It has never walked back those comments from a week ago.

So, so I mean, the U.S. Army has constituted, does not have the force necessary to do this.

The entire army doesn't have. Forget about the fact that, you know, we might want to keep

some troops in Korea and be prepared for other contingencies. And North Korea is popping off

their new regime. And North Korea is popping off. And, right, I mean, there's all of that aspect.

So, you know, no offense the United States Marine Corps because God bless them. They're

squared away outfit. But 2500 Marines in the scheme of things is nothing. I mean, that's not

there. Not there. Maybe some maybe geography were different, but not there. Not what those

Shaheds, you know, is an interesting anecdote. I wrote a, I was asked to comment on this for the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation recently. But, you know, we just are advertising. We captured

a Iranian drone a few years ago in Ukraine. And we've successfully reverse engineered it. I think

it's the Lucas drone. And as I told the Australians, I said, I don't know why we're proud of this.

I mean, this is, it means that the Iranians have obviously leapfroged us in a key area. And they

have better mass production capabilities, especially with being partnered with China and Russia

and North Korea than we do right now. And why don't you tell the audience, though, one thing,

what could those drones, the way that they were arrayed along the coastlines of the

Strait of Hormuz, if we were to land marine units, Carg Island or somewhere, you know,

somewhere on that coastline, what do you think would happen with, with those Marines? They wouldn't

be fighting Iranian ground troops, would they? No, I mean, certainly that would not be the preference

of the Iranians, right? Again, they look at the psychology of the current conflict, right? They're

not attempting to fight us, man for man, weapons system for weapons system. They're responding

in a completely asymmetric fashion. So yes, it would not be trying to line up and

face off with the United States Marine Corps. I mean, they got these cheap drones they can make for

nothing. You know, it is interesting the way you let into this because one of the things that

really strikes me about this whole business with the drones and how we reverse engineering a

captured Iranian drone is, what does that say about our defense procurement process, right?

Why it's broken? Why is our system producing unbelievably expensive systems that take forever to

produce such that we have to go copy what amounts to a hobby shop drone that the Iranians

cobbled together? Well, now you know why I'm not invited back to the Pentagon anymore.

Yeah. I mean, I ask questions like this all the time to them.

Right? Did it ever occur to us that maybe we should have been doing this on our own?

Right. Yeah. Why don't we produce something that we connect? Of course, we have this problem,

as you will know, throughout our whole procurement process, right? Producing ships and planes and

missiles that look at, that's great. It's the greatest in the world. You know, we can't afford to buy

them, right? And also, and we can't maintain them. And we can't maintain them. And it's been 10

years since we asked you to produce this thing and it still doesn't actually work, right? You know,

look at the USS Ford. Well, I mean, you think things been a boondoggle from day one.

You think about this psychology? I mean, Sherman tanks in World War II, right? Not necessarily

feature by feature the best tank on the battlefield. But man, they could be maintained and they ran,

and we could produce them by just crank them off the assembly line and ship them all over the world.

And then guys out in the units could actually keep them running. And they would just swarm.

They would just swarm the enemy. That's what they did. That was the method.

That was also how, by the way, General Grant beat the South. Was he just through more equipment

and men than the South could muster? And you just grind them down. That's the Russian way.

It's a traditional warfare. You just grind them down. So... Well, it helps if the weapons system

actually works, right? Yes. And it's, if it's affordable too. Because people... Well, I mean,

you know, we used to say that I certainly just say this in the field all the time when somebody

from headquarters would show up with a new G-Wiz gadget that they wanted us to use. And I'm like,

you know, I can't afford to play with this thing. That's right. So if this thing actually works,

and it will work consistently under the conditions that it must, and it actually makes my job

easier or I'm more effective. Man, I'll adopt this thing in a heartbeat. I won't go out the door

without it. But it has to pass all those tests, man, if it works sometimes or takes me half of my

time just to maintain the damn thing. I'm not sure if it'll power on, won't power on. Then

screw it. It's not a game. I can't afford to be in the middle of an op with a guy who wants to

kill me and find out that your radio doesn't work or your little gadget doesn't work. I can't do

that. Which is happening now in the Middle East. And not only that, the Iranians have effectively

degraded the radar systems throughout the Middle East that we built. So we're now deploying the

Hawkeyes, which are the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the detection planes. And then the F-35,

this is not well reported. We've used the F-35 more as air defense sensor than we have as actual

attacker, which is definitely not what the plane was built for. I mean, it was, you know, can do

that, but it was supposed to be this big, aggressive attacker. It's not doing that. So clearly,

it's, it's, the Iranians are degrading us as much as we're degrading them. And my question to you

is now as we talk about escalation, I know we have about about like nine minutes left. But, you know,

as we, as we enter the discussion of escalation, we're looking around the region. We're seeing our

Arab partners. I think the economic miracle of the Arab States is going to be over for a while,

at least. And then we look at Israel and contrary to what is being said in American media,

Israel is getting pounded. There's, there's reports and rumors that Netanyahu is either dead or

incapacitated. There's another rumor I heard from someone today this morning telling me the IDF

is basically operationally controlling the country now because the political leaders and

intelligence professionals, the leadership have been basically made inactive. So what does Israel do?

Because they have an escalatory option as well, which is their nuclear weapons that they supposedly

don't have. Do you think that we are approaching the, the, the moment where nukes might start popping

off in the Middle East? Well, I hope to God not. I, I don't think we're, I don't think we're

the, we are there yet with Israel. Okay. But maybe the word yet in that sentence is the most

significant, which is we come back to sort of the point of origin when we started talking.

This war in my mind got launched based on a, this whole, I, it, just to simplify it. We're

going to bomb the hell out of these guys. And in three days, they're going to quit. The regime

is going to fall. People are going to rise up. However, if that happens, we're ending this problem

once and for all. And it's going to be that simple. Not much more sophisticated analysis now. Okay,

that didn't work. And it was never going to work. And it was never based on it. Reality. And

now we're sort of in, we're just in the mode of when people that started this don't know what the

hell to do next, other than just keep escalating, keep hitting more things. But okay, that didn't work.

That failed. Your premises were wrong. You went into this under completely, that, that was all

wrong. And it was never going to happen. And now you're trying to figure out how to get out of

this mess to be blunt. And you don't know anyway, anything other to do, then just keep making it

worse by hitting, hitting, escalating. So yes, you start to wonder like, at what point then do we

say, okay, well, all bets are off. Nuclear weapons are on the table. I also throw into that

analysis, the fact that, and I've said this before, Trump, I believe perceives that the end of

this is, Iran is free, liberal and democratic. There's a happy ending. There's a happy ending.

The Israelis, I don't think, have the same idea. They don't care. If Iran ends up as a wasteland,

torn apart by famine, civil war and chaos, that's a happy ending for the Israelis, because

they presume it means they can't, they won't be busy building missiles and funding has belonged.

So chaos and destroy, if Iran ends up as a much bigger, much worse Libya,

for Netanyahu, that's a job well done.

It hasn't worked out anywhere that that has occurred, Libya, Syria.

No, it hasn't worked out and Iran could make all of those look like nothing, right?

So I'm wandering around now and responding to your question. I think we need to try to find our way

toward, we should, if assuming we were going to do this in any form, which I would have not

have advocated for, it should have from the beginning been with limited goals, yes,

to if you will, defang them. Yes. Again, I would have still had grave hesitation about that.

But at most, we're going to take off the table of these capabilities, at least for the foreseeable

future, call it a day. And somehow we need to get back to that. I agree. Which is,

okay, we degraded this, we took out this, we took out that. It won't solve the problem forever,

but it solves it for a long time. And we'll call it, you know, my obvious concern about that is,

I'm not convinced the Iranians will let us quit. Yeah.

I that, you know, we'll announce we're going to stop shooting. And then next thing they'll do is

hit another whale tanker in the Straits of Hormuz and say, well, we're not quitting,

funny. So we're not done. Our last question, and I know you've got a few minutes left,

only my last question to you is, this is clearly an intelligence failure. Just like a rock,

an intelligence failure. How do we go forward? We cannot keep doing this with the intel community,

where they're, I don't know if it's ignorance or if it's they're just being railroaded by the

politicians. What are some things you think we should do to prevent this from repeating in the next

20 years again? Because I feel like that we're going to be in store for this down the line somewhere

else. Well, look, I, you know, I've said this for a long time, right? I wrote a book

well over a decade ago about CIA called Beyond Repair. So, you know, the title kind of gives you

a clue as to the tone. Our intel apparatus is broken. I mean, we got spy satellites and we got

drones and we got a lot of people with technical knowledge and very dedicated folks. We don't actually

have any spies most places, sources worth a damn. And we've lost that edge long since and we're,

and this extends to the analytical core too. We don't have real experts with integrity who are

going to say operating in a system where they're allowed to and encouraged to give you their honest

assessment based on their experience and the information. We've broken this whole apparatus.

So, you know, again, when, when, as I said much earlier in the interview, when Netanyahu's boys

are coming and telling us we got this super secret sexy intel and the Iranians are going to have a

missile and it's going to be able to hit here and they've got this nuke and it's almost assembled.

You should be in the position to say, okay, that's cool. Then walk out of the briefing room and say,

well, that's bullshit because our guy, we got better access than they do and we know none of that's

true. But we don't have that access anymore. I mean, that CIA, what was the answer?

Ratcliffe needed to walk through the front door. He needed to fire every top executive on the

top floor of that building day one. And then he needed to take all of these Brennan era reforms

so called and throw those out the window and say, we're going back to the business of espionage

and doing it. That's right. We are, we're going to become a serious spy agency again. And all

this Mambi Pambi crap and focus on DEI, but also just all this corporate bureaucratic mindset is

gone. You know, we're going back to the way the OSS worked in World War II. Get the job done.

That's right. Come back with the crown jewels. We never did that. They haven't changed anything

at CIA in 14 months. Well, Ratcliffe is, I think, compromised and he's a Zionist and so.

Yes, 100%. He's compromised. Plus, he walked through the door and doesn't know anything about

the business. He doesn't understand. He doesn't care. And, you know, we'll end it there because I've

been a critic of Ratcliffe for a while. And Sam, is there anywhere you want people to follow you

on social media or anything? Go to Substack. My wife and I, she's actually a retired spook as well,

my entire, my entire career to be honest is Operation Coatails. Just follow her around and try to

take credit for what she did. Go to end magazine at Substack, a-n-d magazine.substack.com.

And she and I and some other old spooks right there. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Well, thank you so

much. He is Sam Fattas. He is America's James Bond in many respects. So we appreciate him giving

us his time. Thank you for joining us. I am Brandon Wiker. Don't forget to subscribe and

like the Natsack talk on Rumble. Check me out. Natsack guy on emerald.tv and 1945.com where I'm

a senior national security editor. We will be with you again with another episode. Luis Canone will

be coming on. I thank you for listening today. And thank you for joining us on the mission.

The national security hour is the tip of the spear in the epic battle to defend the United States

of America. I'm your America always first host, Brandon Wiker. You can catch me right here.

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