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Friday, 11 September 2026

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I'm Venetia Rainey, and this is a run the latest.
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It's Friday, 11th of September, 2026, the seventh month of the war between the U.S. and Iran.
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On today's episode, Houthis have taken control of Yemen's entire Red sea coastline.
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I'm joined by the former commander of the U.S.
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Army in Europe, General Ben Hodges, to discuss how dangerous this moment in the war is.
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Plus, we'll be talking about strategic drift in the Pentagon and reflecting on the lessons of Middle East wars, 25 years on from nine over 11.
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Ben, welcome back onto Iran.
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The latest we had you on right at the beginning of the war, I think really the first week of the conflict.
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And then we also had you on to mark 100 days of the war in a round table with Holly Dagres.
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So it's great to have you back on now as we're approaching the 200 day mark, if you can believe it, today is 195 days since the conflict erupted,
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so lots to reflect on and discuss.
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I'll just give you a slightly more formal bio.
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You were the former commanding general of the U.S.
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Army in Europe, and the co-author of the book, Future War and the Defence of Europe. Welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you very much for the privilege.
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going to start with what's happening around the Red sea, because the Houthis have completed a sweeping offensive that has now given them
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control of Yemen's entire Red sea coastline, according to reports.
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So yesterday we were talking about how they seized the crucial port city of mocha, which they've been attacking for quite a few weeks.
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Apparently, government forces had already fled.
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Al Jazeera is reporting that there's been a complete withdrawal of the military forces of the Saudi backed, internationally recognised Yemeni government from that whole swathe of territory.
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So Houthi fighters apparently met very little resistance. They then moved south.
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They took dub and then Murad, the final western coastal town.
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And that is right on the Bab el Mandap strait.
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They're now pushing offshore.
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Apparently they've seized or fighting is ongoing on the Mayan island right in the middle of the Mandeb strait, sometimes called the island.
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And that's according to Reuters.
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They're citing four Yemeni government sources.
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And this is a really important island because it divides the Mandeb straight into two shipping channels.
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So if they've got that plus the Yemeni coastline, any ships going past can be attacked just with artillery.
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I think it's worth just explaining to our listeners and viewers that the moment of Strait is it's even smaller than the Strait of Hormuz.
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It's just 20km or 12 miles wide at its narrowest point.
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So you don't need missiles or drones to attack boats going through there.
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And Saudi military forces have carried out two airstrikes on Yemen's Mocha airport, according to reports.
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But other than that, we're really not hearing about much pushback from the internationally recognised Yemeni government.
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We have heard from the Houthis and from Iran, which I think is very telling.
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We've heard from the president of the Supreme Political Council.
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He's issued a statement calling on fighters of the internationally recognised Yemeni government forces to lay down their arms.
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And Iran has called for a return to negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, and has urged Saudi Arabia to end its blockade
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of ports and airports in the Houthi areas.
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I think a real sign of their confidence there, having gained the upper hand in a very short space of time.
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How dangerous is this moment in the war, Ben?
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Well, I have to say, Venetia. Wow.
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That was an impressive opening explanation and setting the context.
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I was learning some things there, here in the last two minutes, as I'm sure all of your listeners are accustomed to with you.
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The danger, of course, is that the.
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Lack of sophistication and depth of American strategy here is being further exposed.
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I mean, I believe that MB s has turned to the US, and hey, are you guys going to help us out here?
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And the Trump administration is said no.
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So, I mean, the the inability or the unwillingness of the administration to connect the dots and all the things
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that are going on of whether it's in the Persian Gulf or the Red sea, why this all matters.
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It's, a reflection of the the lack of really good, deep strategic thinking.
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Now, why is that?
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You can be sure that Admiral Cooper and his team at Central Command, they understand that, but they are.
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Even Admiral Cooper himself has said that we've seen the limits of what American military power can do just against Iran.
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they don't have resources they could really adequately deal with.
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What's deal with the Houthis?
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course, I have to admit also that the Biden administration failed to adequately deal with this situation as well.
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And so it just highlights, again, how badly we need allies because we don't have enough capability to do things or self.
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But the Trump administration pretty much wrecked the idea of allies helping, from the beginning.
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Yeah, you mentioned Trump refusing to help us.
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And Axios reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump twice yesterday asking him to launch strikes
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against the Houthis, and Trump declined.
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However, it does appear, according to reporting in Axios and CNN, that the US is sharing intelligence with Saudi Arabia to help them target the Houthis.
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And Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S.
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Central Command, travelled to Saudi Arabia yesterday for coordination meetings.
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According to reports, there are around 200 U.S.
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military personnel already in Saudi Arabia providing non support.
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So intelligence sharing we guess.
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And apparently there's a newly established joint Forces command that is supposed to be tackling this Houthi threat.
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I mean, you're sort of alluding to it there.
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Do you think they're too overstretched to do more that we're not going to see a return of Operation Rough Rider, which we saw last year, or Prosperity Guardian from 2023?
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strategic approach to this entire thing, was not fully appreciated by the administration.
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And again, I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to shield Central Command from any blame for mistakes they may have made,
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but at the end of the day, the administration owns this.
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And, you know, the you have a national security apparatus that has evolved over the decades that, you know,
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could rightfully be criticised as being maybe cumbersome or too big or whatever reason.
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So this administration got rid of much of it.
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But now you've got our Secretary of state wearing the hat of national security adviser.
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And you've got a secretary of defence that seems to be doing whatever the president wants.
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So we don't have the the normal things in place that would be looking at threats, risk, opportunities
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and resources that you would get with a normal strategy.
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So I know you didn't bring me on, and I don't want to be I don't want to use up the time of your listeners just to bang away on the administration.
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There's plenty of blame to go around.
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But what we are seeing are the things that we're probably known in Tampa at Central Command headquarters.
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And yet we're not appreciated or listened to by the administration.
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And I'm going to sound a little bit like a scratch record, which is emphasising why you have to have allies to help do all the things
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that need to be done, not because allies should be helping us, but because we have shared interests in the region.
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And this was not, I think, properly done ahead of the beginning of all of this. So are they overstretched?
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Absolutely.
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The US Navy, as good as they are, and with ten, 11, 12 aircraft carriers is not enough.
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Because as most of your listeners will know, only about 4 or 5 of those can ever be underway at any one time because of maintenance requirements. ET cetera.
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And, you know, the air crews, all the stuff that goes into that. It's just not enough.
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And so you've got to find other ways to protect the strategic interests. How do you think?
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I mean, I mentioned at the top there that this when approaching the 200 day mark, I get the sense that you feel that the U.S.
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military is being hobbled slightly by the fact that the white House is directing all of this.
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And we'll get on to some of the turmoil and the Pentagon later.
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But how do you think this war is generally going for the US from a military perspective?
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You know, we're hearing this week about Iran having a new escalatory doctrine in a straightforward moves, then using new and upgraded ballistic missiles. They're targeting U.S.
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warships.
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They've shown they can hit US bases even when America withdraws.
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As far as Jordan, they clipped a wing off an A-10 Thunderbolt earlier this week.
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Killed service members, obviously in July seeing munitions being drawn down.
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Trump this week has been saying the war will be over after the midterms and that he has no regrets.
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But Wall Street Journal is reporting that top white House advisers, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, think the war
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could drag into 2029 right through the rest of Trump's term.
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I mean, do you do you share their assessment or do you think there is a military way out of this? Yes, I agree with that.
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Assessment of this is going to go on for some time at some varying levels of intensity.
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But there's never a military only solution to any problem.
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The military is a is and should be a component of an overall strategy to protect
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strategic interests or achieve strategic objectives.
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It's not like, okay, we've done all this diplomacy stuff.
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Now you military guys, y'all go in and do that. That's not how it works.
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That's not that's not how it should work.
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I will honestly confess to being a little bit reluctant to being too critical of the military when I don't. I'm not there.
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I can't see for myself what they're doing.
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So I'm going to caveat what I'm about to say with that. Okay.
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And I'm happy to be proven wrong.
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But when I hear about aircraft being damaged on the runway, I immediately thinking like, well, okay, do have have
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we put up if we invested in putting up the concrete walls, for example, so that one rocket, does it damage 3 or 4 different aircraft?
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Maybe they have and maybe they have these revetments that you normally find in places that are going to be contested.
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Like, clearly Iran is able to hit pretty much every airfield in the Middle East.
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Hopefully we've taken the steps by now.
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I don't know the launching of 30 something Patriots in one night. Holy hell.
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I mean, now maybe maybe that's what they needed.
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But, you know, there's a reason you exercise air and missile defence all the time.
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And this is a lesson for all of Europe, by the way. You have to practice.
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How do you use the right weapon for the right target?
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Everything coming in doesn't need a patriot.
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You have to have different weapons to use against different things.
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And even in more time, you still train. You still practice.
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And when I heard about that, many patriots been expanded and still so much damage was done.
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I think, that's something I if I was there, I would want to understand.
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Okay. What have we done to train and practice and rehearse for these kinds of attacks, which obviously are going to continue, especially when you're talking about American, Jordanian
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and other nations being involved in the missile defence.
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So I don't I don't know that we've done all the right things yet to protect our, our assets that are there,
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but it does make a question and, and maybe this we can get to this later or for say get a more intelligent, guest.
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Why what are our interests in the Middle East?
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I mean, why do we have so much there?
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I mean, are our interests protect Israel? Okay. You can.
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You don't have to be in Bahrain to protect Israel or even in Jordan.
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I mean, you can do things to protect Israel.
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The United States and many of our allies are self-sufficient on all and gas.
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We don't want Iran to have nuclear weapon.
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But do you have to have so much stuff there that has been exposed as being so vulnerable?
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I think I think we're overdue for a serious review of our force structure. They're in our interests.
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mean, that is and that is what the Trump administration came in wanting to do. Right?
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But like so many administrations before, have been sucked into a middle East war.
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The economic implications of that Houthi escalation that we're talking about are, are enormous.
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I mean, Houthi officials are saying that Red sea navigation is safe or shipping companies except for Saudi vessels.
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But that's a very significant targeting, because Saudi Arabia has been relying on the Red sea to export its own.
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Since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, they've been able to ship oil in bulk to customers in Asia that have been especially badly affected by this war.
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We've seen South Korea considering getting involved in reopening the Strait of Hormuz because they rely on the Gulf for something like 70% of their oil imports.
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So if the Red sea starts to close as well, that's going to have a huge impact.
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We're already seeing all at its highest price since May, creeping up to $110 a barrel.
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Now, transits through the Strait of Hormuz fell to a total of seven yesterday, compared with 11 the previous day.
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If America is not going to do anything to stop what's going on in the Red sea, I mean, do you think we can
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expect to see Saudi Arabia stepping up a resumption of the Yemen civil war?
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a lot of nations that have an interest in this that are that are affected, even though maybe it wasn't their fault.
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The fact is, you're still being impacted by it.
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And so where are those other nations, whether we're talking about European nations or in Asia or elsewhere in the Middle East?
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What are you doing to, address this?
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That that to me would be very interesting.
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Is it time for Europe to get involved then?
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Is that is that where you think we're at?
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Well, I think Europe is involved, at least in terms of feeling the effects.
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You can't just hope it goes away.
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So, you know, the EU, for example, or your EU plus UK and others,
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using diplomatic and economic power to try and address the situation.
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That's easy for me to say, much more difficult to do.
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But, clearly the the Houthis and their sponsors, the Iranians have a lot of leverage here.
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The Chinese, of course, get depend a lot on the region for their all and gas.
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Russia, which is in deep trouble with its war, you know, benefits obviously, when gas goes over $100
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a barrel, that that benefits the Kremlin.
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So, all, you know, these things are all connected.
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And unfortunately, the United States is not playing a very effective leading role in this.
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So somebody else is going to have to find ways to do this.
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Interestingly, it seems to me that the president of the United States, either he's faking it or he just he's really lost interest.
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I mean, he's, he's he's doing a wreath laying ceremony at the Pentagon today, and then he's getting on his plane
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and firing to Ireland for to his golf, one of his golf places.
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So, he just he's pretty much he's he even said, you know, he's he's bored with politics.
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Hey, he sees they're going to get crushed in the midterm elections.
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And it's like, you know, it's really it's the opposite of what we need, which is decisive, unifying leadership.
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So somebody else is going to step up from somewhere else.
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I mean, in other countries are stepping up their not bored of trying to sort through the politics of this mess.
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We've got, Brick Summit happening today.
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So Iran's president is there in Delhi.
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Putin, Vladimir Putin, leader of Russia and Chinese leader XI Jinping, Narendra modi, obviously the leader of India, they're all going to be meeting.
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We're also hearing that Gulf foreign ministers are planning to meet their Iranian counterpart, Abbas, next week.
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That's according to the feet.
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They're trying to find some kind of temporary deal to sort out the Strait of Hormuz, U.S.
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increasingly absent from these diplomatic efforts.
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And meanwhile, a growing alliance between Iran and Russia and China and India.
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How much does that worry you? Immensely.
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Secretary Rubio, of course, is pretty much nowhere to be seen. He's our secretary of state.
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And I think because he knows that this these things, you just are all catastrophes.
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And he doesn't want to have his fingerprints on any of it.
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So we we we just really seem dysfunctional right now in so many elements of
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strategic thinking and strategic action.
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I have believed for the last several years I just was not very effective at or compelling in trying to get people to,
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to think about it, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, these are connected not in a license way,
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but they do help each other and they do benefit from what each other is doing.
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And so much like Churchill and Roosevelt back in 1941.
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When there was no reason for any optimism.
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But they met in the Arcadia Conference in Washington, D.C., right after Pearl Harbour.
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And and they agreed that the allies had to defeat Nazi Germany first.
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That was in January 1942.
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So right after Christmas, right after Pearl Harbour, they agreed.
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And of course, this was the time when nobody in America wanted to get involved in a war. A land war in Europe.
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But yet they were able to explain to the American people why it was in our interest.
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And so, you know, it drove everything but that that strategic clarity defeat Germany first.
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And I think that's what we need now.
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Defeat Russia first, help Ukraine defeat Russia.
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That will lead to the isolation of Iran, because Iran really didn't have any friends outside of Russia. So defeat Russia.
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I don't mean, you know, get Ukraine in a better negotiating position.
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I mean defeat Russia, make them live inside their own borders, wreck their ability to export, terror.
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And then that would also send a message to, China that the West really does have the political will
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and the capability and the industrial capacity to do this.
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I think that would be an important message to China.
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And then, of course, the North Koreans, need to be reminded that we have interests and capabilities in South Korea.
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So rather than reducing exercises in South Korea, which is what the president told hex have to do, we should be launching a major exercise
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in South Korea so that North Korea doesn't feel like they can just send those troops and missiles to Russia against to use against Ukraine.
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That's why I think strategically is so important because you if you allow these interests and these objectives,
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then you get your rice, your resources in the right place and you get the priorities correct.
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How much of that strategic drift that you're outlining there is down to the turmoil that we're seeing in the Pentagon under and ultimately Trump.
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You know, we had last week Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigning very popular by all accounts, latest in a series of high profile figures who have either jumped or been pushed out.
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This week, reports of dozens of senior U.S.
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military officers being forced to sit through lie detection tests over leaks.
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My understanding is that this is completely unprecedented.
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Tell me if you think otherwise. Highest ranks of U.S.
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military have apparently never been subjected to mass polygraph testing.
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I mean, I don't want to be too over the top here and pull me, pull me back from the brink.
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If you think I'm being it, I'm going there.
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But last summer, I spent last summer putting together a series on the Chinese military, and I did a whole episode about the purges that she has been conducting and this paranoia that no one is loyal enough.
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We're not there yet, obviously, in the US military, but there are echoes of it, aren't there?
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I would say very loud echoes.
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first, first of all, every admiral in general and senior officer in the, in the Department of Defence knows that you serve at the pleasure of the president.
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I mean, that's that's what we talk about.
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You know, that you could be sacked on any given day, but generally it's for either incompetence or an integrity thing or mismanagement, some failure.
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And then of course, everybody knows why you got sucked. That's important.
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I mean, the Secretary has the prerogative and authority to do that.
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What's extremely unhelpful is that they never say why they don't explain we got rid of Hodges, or we got rid of Milley,
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or we got rid of Brown, or we got rid of Donahue or whatever.
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Because this, this is this or or even, you know, you're willing to accept that we lost confidence.
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And usually when they say we lost confidence is because this guy was, didn't get it in terms of what our priorities are.
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Or, maybe there was a personal conduct thing.
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And so they say it's lost confidence. We don't even get that.
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So what that leads to is everybody starts figuring out, okay, why did why did CD Donahue, the best officer in the US Army?
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I've served with him.
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Everybody that's ever served with him said this is the best guy. He's the most lethal guy. He's the most fit guy.
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And he's also the most forward thinking in terms of innovation and technology. ET cetera.
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Supposedly, everything that Seth said he wanted, why would you get rid of him? Because, they want people.
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Or remember what Trump said.
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I want generals like Hitler had. That's that's Donald J.
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Trump said, I want generals like Hitler had. Which means you stand up. Yes, sir. Do whatever. And so what Mr.
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has done is created an environment where people are very reluctant to push back or to speak up or to or to go too far.
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that's the danger of the chaos that he is creating there.
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That's it's quite a terrifying prospect because, you know, as you say, they serve under the pleasure of the president, but you expect them to be able to give Frank an honest opinions
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and for that to inform decent policy and strategy.
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And of course, the Congress is absolutely total, totally AWOL in their responsibility.
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I mean, article one, section eight of the Constitution, is what lays out the roles and responsibilities of the Congress
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oversight of the military, not just declaration of war, but all oversight.
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And, you know, this Republican led Congress has the authority but is not using the authority to require Mr.
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Hegseth to come up there and say, okay, where the hell's all the money?
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What what are our objectives?
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Why did you sack all these officers that we just confirmed in the last year?
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And you sacked them without any explanation? What's going on, Mr. Secretary zero?
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Does it cause long term damage, or do you think this is the kind of stuff that can be reversed when and or Trump, you know, disappear in a few years time? What a great question.
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And unfortunately, yes, it's going to cause long term damage because now you've got a whole generation of younger officers, that are watching all this.
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And, you know, what's the culture here?
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I'm old enough that when I was a brand new cadet back in 1976, this was right after Vietnam.
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And so all of my instructors were Vietnam veterans and all of them talked.
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And of course, the whole memory of the massacre was still fresh in everybody's mind.
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And so every officer said, hey, Cadet Hodges, when you're an officer, make sure you know it is your duty not to obey an illegal order.
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It's your duty, and your oath is to the Constitution.
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what these young officers today are seeing is not that they're seeing something different.
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So, I think it's going to take some time.
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It's not just about replacing people who are sacked, but the whole culture of what do we want in our officers?
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You know, the, the German Bundesliga, the German military, when they were re-established back,
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several years after the Second World War, they created something called the Inner Referral, which is an institution
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that was designed to help educate all German officers on their constitutional duties, to tell them you are responsible for any decision you make.
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You cannot say, I was just following orders and I think we may have to.
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I used to scoff at the ideal.
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We don't need that in the US.
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We have our oath to the Constitution. That's not our problem. It has. It is becoming our problem.
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And I think we may need something like interfering.
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In the aftermath of of this current administration, we're talking a lot about history here.
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And today is also a significant day in another respect, and that it's 25 years on from the horrific attacks of nine over 11.
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What are your reflections, looking back 25 years on from nine over 11, you served in Iraq, and maybe you could tell us a bit about your record there, what you did there,
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and how it feels looking at another war in the Middle East now.
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Well, obviously, hopefully you're a lot smarter as you get older and you can look back on things, things that you didn't think about or didn't realise at the time.
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I did become the commander of first Brigade at 101st in the summer of 2002, and then the 101st deployed to Kuwait
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and then into Iraq in early 2003.
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And at that time, my whole focus as a brigade commander was we got to be ready, get the troops was ready to go.
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We were getting new equipment.
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We were preparing for what we thought we were going to be doing, and that was all the focus.
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And so I didn't spend a lot of time as a colonel thinking about our strategic objectives.
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We were focussed on getting ready to accomplish our mission.
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And I'll even, I'll even admit a little bit, sheepishly, that we didn't want to miss it.
27 minutes, 3 seconds
We didn't.
27 minutes, 4 seconds
You didn't want to miss being a part of this.
27 minutes, 6 seconds
Of course, I didn't dream we'd be there 20 years later, or that we would still be in Afghanistan 20 years later. Just didn't think about it.
27 minutes, 13 seconds
And for sure, when we got into Iraq and it was March of 20, 2003, we were looking for weapons of mass destruction.
27 minutes, 21 seconds
I can remember going in with a flashlight.
27 minutes, 24 seconds
People would report a bunker we'd go into it with looking for expecting to find big piles of chemical weapons.
27 minutes, 32 seconds
And of course, we didn't.
27 minutes, 33 seconds
Now, there's no doubt that there were chemical weapons that Iraq had them, but it was not what we were looking for.
27 minutes, 39 seconds
And so then, you know, after, really just a few weeks and we ended up in Mosul, I,
27 minutes, 47 seconds
the Hunter and first did in northern Iraq.
27 minutes, 49 seconds
I spent 95% of my time working with the Iraqi police chiefs, sheikhs trying to rebuild security forces
27 minutes, 58 seconds
and all of that, and now separating Kurdish and Arab farmers, disputes over who control the wheat harvest.
28 minutes, 6 seconds
I mean, that was what we were doing.
28 minutes, 8 seconds
It was not what I had expected.
28 minutes, 10 seconds
And so you started thinking like, well, what the hell are we doing here? What why are we doing this?
28 minutes, 14 seconds
And the idea that somehow Iraq or whatever, it was going to become a democratic utopia now looks so, so foolish.
28 minutes, 25 seconds
But when I left our we we redeployed in 2004 back to the States. Thought that was it.
28 minutes, 34 seconds
And then it got worse.
28 minutes, 35 seconds
And so then I come back the second time in 2002 for six to be the director
28 minutes, 43 seconds
of operations for Multinational Corps Iraq, based in Baghdad this time.
28 minutes, 47 seconds
And man, old man, oh man, that was it was hard, you know, and we had people getting killed.
28 minutes, 54 seconds
There was just there were so many different things. And. And you still.
29 minutes
Well, what was our what was the desired end state?
29 minutes, 3 seconds
You know what what are we trying to accomplish?
29 minutes, 6 seconds
And so you end up counting how many terrorists have been killed, how many Iraqi battalions have been created?
29 minutes, 13 seconds
You're looking for metrics for success.
29 minutes, 17 seconds
And what was missing, of course, was that clearly defined political state.
29 minutes, 24 seconds
And it didn't matter who Republican.
29 minutes, 26 seconds
Democrat didn't matter which administration.
29 minutes, 27 seconds
That problem transcended multiple administrations.
29 minutes, 32 seconds
Do you think the lessons have been learned?
29 minutes, 34 seconds
No, no, we're doing it again. We're doing it right now. I mean, I guess the U.S. military hasn't gone in.
29 minutes, 39 seconds
They haven't sent that forces in.
29 minutes, 41 seconds
There were all these reports about an amphibious, you know, taking of Cargo Island or something, and they did with they did with stand that temptation if there was there.
29 minutes, 48 seconds
this is this is another great question, Venetia.
29 minutes, 51 seconds
The, of course, the military has a responsibility to give the president options.
29 minutes, 59 seconds
I mean, you have to have feasible options and and some of these things to get a lot of troops in place and all the necessary logistics.
30 minutes, 7 seconds
This takes time and you have to position things and, and so, you can't just say, Mr.
30 minutes, 13 seconds
President, if you want us to go in and seize Clark Island or go in and grab whatever, you know, this is how long it's going to take.
30 minutes, 21 seconds
And in the meanwhile, you're hustling to get to be prepared to deliver whatever the, the secretary and the president decide is is the answer.
30 minutes, 32 seconds
It's not good strategy just to say we're never going to put boots on the ground for why would you tell the enemy what you're not going to do?
30 minutes, 41 seconds
For starters, number two, sometimes boots on the ground may be exactly the right thing to do.
30 minutes, 47 seconds
But you, Demps, you're better know what is the objective you're trying to accomplish?
30 minutes, 53 seconds
And are you prepared to make sure that you've given these soldiers and Marines every possible advantage,
31 minutes
so that they can have the best chance to accomplish it, but also the best chance to survive?
31 minutes, 5 seconds
And if you have it, it's easy for me to say this.
31 minutes, 9 seconds
It's very hard to do to clearly define an end state and then explain it to the to the Congress, to the public,
31 minutes, 17 seconds
as well as to your military.
31 minutes, 20 seconds
feel like the, the, the state that the war is in, this, this, this limbo, is so overshadowed by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, you know, that this fear
31 minutes, 28 seconds
of forever wars that Trump was elected partly on the back of. Right.
31 minutes, 32 seconds
Promised that he'd never do something like this again, a promise that he's betrayed to some of his supporters.
31 minutes, 38 seconds
JD Vance, clearly very against this war right from the beginning.
31 minutes, 43 seconds
And some of the people we've spoken to have suggested that now, given how Iran has responded, it's not ideal.
31 minutes, 49 seconds
But one option would be for the American military to escalate a bit further to try and put an end to this, but they're sort of fudging it right.
31 minutes, 57 seconds
They're trying to do as little as possible, and it seems to me that that's partly a fear out of it becoming another Iraq.
32 minutes, 4 seconds
And so it's kind of lose lose. again?
32 minutes, 7 seconds
What what what is our objective?
32 minutes, 9 seconds
What are we trying to accomplish?
32 minutes, 11 seconds
You know, before the war, keeping the strait open was not even on the list of ten things why we're doing this now.
32 minutes, 18 seconds
It's the only thing that, matters.
32 minutes, 21 seconds
It's getting the strait open.
32 minutes, 24 seconds
if I hear, okay, we need to escalate or we need to get troops in there. Okay, great to do what?
32 minutes, 30 seconds
I mean, what do you want them to accomplish?
32 minutes, 32 seconds
And I think it's criminal when you send troops anywhere and you haven't clearly defined what it is they're supposed to accomplish.
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