the, the hello i'm vanilla chan. you are tuned into modus operandi. a seldom discussed us base in syria gets attacked, leaving 3 west service members dead. suddenly, american mainstream media attention turns to syria after a long pause afterwards. name change efforts failed. we'll discuss the rising risk posed to us troops with a fantastic panel straight ahead. alright, let's get into the m o. the power 22. nobody had ever heard of it until late january of 2024. that's one of drones struck the living quarters and killed 3 west service members and injured dozens more. the u. s. was quick to blame iran and the media brought voices calling

for immediate action and retribution. iran denies the attacks and us officials have since soften their language, opting now for a rainy and back groups who are behind the droning. some just, what are us troops doing there in the 1st place to discuss it will bring in our expert panel. in studio with me is michael maloof. he is a former senior pentagon policy analyst and has a rumble channel where you can all go follow him, an official michael maloof, and joining us remotely is our friend jim john for us. jim is a former us diplomat and sent it g o. p advisor, a gentleman so great to have you both. thanks for joining. like thank you. so mike, i'm going to go over to you 1st. so it's been reported that the ton of air base has been operational since 2016, which puts it squarely at the setup years in the obama era. it was supposed to

serve as this, you know, kind of geographically perfect location, kind of in this, this tri state region that's along the borders of, of northern jordan, obviously jordan, a friendly country to the united states. it hits southern in syria and then to the far this west of iraq. but there was this little secret outpost called tower 22. i see you're grinning. were unfortunately through this folly of errors. 3 us service members were killed recently by drone tower 22. not a secret anymore. what can you tell us about tower? $22.00 and and are there others like it across the middle east? what goes on places like that? well, to tower $22.00 is actually a logistical support facility. small is located in jordan to service. all tom switches in syria where we're now not invited

. oh, tom is in is in just inside of syria, but they're so almost co located except by a border. what, what tire $22.00 does is take in drones in it not only provides logistical support, but it has a landing strip for drones and, and actually provides intel in support of the us mission in syria, which is look for isis. and so it's, it's remain remote, it hasn't, it's never come under fire before. and uh, and that's what led to this calamity is that either through the very, very good luck on the part of the iraqi resistance or through planning they, they stage the, the,

the style that hit the base to coincide with a landing of a, a friendly drone y m, as a consequence of it was let in and they, they didn't know the difference a which also indicated that because it was small and remote, and in a, in a friendly country, it didn't have the sophisticated uh, detection and, and missile defense systems. okay. that you would have at the other facilities. are there other can 22 types there are uh when you look at the map of uh, of, um iran. uh you have something like uh over 2 dozen bases that surround someone has just ones who put a run in the middle of all of our basement. but uh, but they're big and small. some are very significant. some are attached to the 5th . 5th, lead out above the rain. others are, are in the weight. oman and, and saudi arabia certainly. and you, a cuts are sprinkled,

throw out all over the place, okay. all over a plus in, in africa itself. you have small, special forces at elements which are spread across the northern africa to deal with the spread of isis and, and, and the groups that, that align with locals. and so that we're, we're talking like over uh, 3 dozen. wow. okay, that's not an insignificant member, jim, i'm going to go over to you. uh, preston obama who once famously called isis junior varsity, he found himself needing this varsity level response to this. apparently not. so j, the threat. so us troops found themselves in syria back then in his era, isis has since been defeated and in large part due to russian airstrikes. but the russians, the difference here is the russians were invited there by president bashar al assad, unlike the west. now,

congress did not vote to go to war with syria. wire. us troops still being placed in harm's way. and as many would describe it as a legally occupying syrian lan. i mean, is there some sort of legal or diplomatic loophole that we all missed? you know, of course not. i mean let's, let's, let's go over this notion that there's anything like a us constitutional or us rule of law that governs any of these things that we, that we've law long since left that behind. but i think there's a couple of weeks you may not need to understand here. first of all, isis is just a pretext to that. for the better part of the 3rd of a century. there's been this obsession in a us policy makers without basically occupying but least 1st occupying iraq and then bring down syria, bring down the wrong, have total american control, the region of the reasons for that are complex, but there's no doubt but that that's what be tried to do and iraq was the which

been unfortunately when we invaded iraq got rid of side of hussein was a primary bulwark against iran. we end up creating what we have done, the same policy makers work. concern was going to be the, the she, i core door that iran was going down the road from the mediterranean, through a friendly iraq as friendly syria and then to their friends with his beloved. so i'll tongue is basically where we interject that core door. remember, the very major part of the american presence in syria is in the north, in the courage here, a kurdish areas in the north and east of the country all the time. the south is designed to cut off the main road between iraq and syria, and to close up this core door that you're largely responsible for creating in the 1st place as far as isis. let's remember that same is a 2012 defense intelligence agency memo that predicted that the results of american policy of supporting the ssl office. she'll need terrace groups in syria would be

the creation of a so called so office m a rich in eastern syria, which turned out to be isis. isis is a direct consequence of american policy in syria. and in fact, a general michael flint, who was the head of d i a one that member was and confirm later to al jazeera that this was not a result of negligence. was the desired outcome of the policy. you'll notice that for all is talked about isis, isis, isis. they don't really attack american interest in the region. they don't attack is rarely interest. so the region isis is essentially a boogie man. that allows policy makers to say, oh, we have to stay in syria. we have to stay in rock cuz otherwise isis, isis ice is, it's just the local version of, you know, russia, russia, russia, trying to, trying to china. you, ronnie, run iran, you know, you come up with a suitable threat to justify what you want to do for completely different reasons. and as far as congress, to the extent to which they're even aware of what's really going on a lot,

they've long since seated the aggressive designs of the executive branch to the president. the congress is not true, however you have her present life, say donald trumpet says lift it out of syria. that's another story that went back out the allowed because after all, isis would take over in the vacuum that we left. yeah, absolutely. now now mike, since we're on the topic of isis, as we know out tons was established as a result of this so called isis crisis. mm hm. and then soon after it started getting used to train lo and behold, anti aside militia, what is al town still there for? i mean, the, the regime change operation failed, i guess back then. i mean, so isn't this just on mission creep, but is it has been and we were not invited there as the gym and has pointed out an ad and we were invited into a rock. however, i'll top, it has now become

a very serious point as to why we're even there any longer. but we isis suppose to have been done away with. and frankly, when we went in to deal with isis and, and jim's right about the 2012 and memo from d. i a, it, it, it, i remember when it came out it, it basically called it a prince, a pallet that was being developed initially and then became the caliphate. right. okay, so it, it and, and that really created because because flynn brought this out and was right. this really created a problem between obama personally and, and flan, that's why he was always on the outs afterwards. there was still active in the military at that time. yes. he was a head of the i is jim pointed out. so this and, and, and then and then uh his, his uh, world crumbled after that. yeah. but uh, but, but the top is there to be that cross roads and it, it's um,

and where, where remaining there that is under the, under the rubric of trying to deal with isis. but you know that what you have today now that we didn't have then were these popular mobilization forces of the, of the sheer. okay. and they're all now part of the rocky government. okay. and they could easily deal with, uh, uh, a uh, uprising with, with, with any up with any, uh, ices. uh, uh, come returns or any kind. so we need to be getting out there is talk of the rocky government asking this once again. party please, would you please leave them and we may take them up on at this time we didn't before because we wanted to remain in syria to deal with um, uh the oil shore where, where we're making revenue off of it. sure. so the, the, the whole, the whole idea of, we've always supported the sunni's and isis was soon

a radical sunni, but still us. and in fact, we use isis even to this day as, as, as well as the israelis for our own purposes against one other country. iran, i say, alright, well hang on to that thought, coming up next. a lot of hey, has been made about, you know, the ballooning deal, the budget and sending money overseas to places like israel and ukraine. some other foreign interest though. fly under the radar. we'll discuss it when we return with our expert panel. sit tight, the m o will be right back the the

the at the end of the 18th century, great britain began to conquer and colonize australia. from the very beginning of that, british penetration to the continent. natives were subjected to severe violence and deliberate, extra patient. according to modern historians, in the 1st 140 years, there were at least 270 massacres of local b. both any resistance to the british was answered with double cruelty. hundreds of

natives were killed for the murder of one settler. indigenous australians were not considered complete people. no wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance has they are men, women and children are shot when ever they can be met with squatter, henry myrick wrote in a letter to his family in england, in $1846.00 plus strategy as fast as these rightly described as blood soaked in races. if at the beginning of colonization, there were one and a half 1000000 indigenous people living on the continent. then by the beginning of the 20th century, their number had degrees still 100000 people. despite the indisputable historical facts, the problem of full recognition of the crimes of white australians against aborigines has not been resolved so far.

more expensive. and i'm going to plan with you whatever you do. do not watch my new show. seriously. why watch something that's so different. several opinions that he won't get anywhere else. welcome to please or do they have the state department to see i a weapons bankers, multi 1000000000 dollar corporations. choose your fax for you. go ahead. i changed and whatever you do, don't want my show state main street because i'm probably going to make you uncomfortable. my show is called stretching time, but again, you probably don't wanna watch it because it might just change the way and say the welcome back to the m l. i'm a know a chance. let's jump straight back in with our expert panel. michael, move here in studio and jim jeff trust joining us remotely. thank you for sticking around, guys. jim, i want to go straight to you this time. uh, so with no declaration of war in syria, iraq has voted, i think,

several times at this point to purge american troops from their land. how does the executive branch, today's executive branch or the legislative branch of our government continue to justify this ongoing deployments of these troops in these places where we continue to send tons of money as if it were this given part of the, the annual d o, the budget, it will be exceptional beans never having to say, you're sorry, i mean, if we have this inflated view of our role in the world and there's a consensus or a consensus for that among the world we were ruling establish printed washington. whichever party is little things like, oh, the un charter, the rule of law, the united states constitution thinks of this sort simply do not mean anything. and you know, they can talk all they want about. what's the authorization for the use of force and, and how it applies to this or that circumstances? i mean, as i recall when we 1st went into our syria,

it had something to do with the the authors, officials passed after 911, which had absolutely nothing to do with anything to do with syria, but with a straight face. they would, they would cite this again. manila, it's, you know, i, i think a lot of americans have this kind of a antiquarian view toward how our constitution applies to the, to the way that affairs are really conducted on our behalf of our country. and it just doesn't apply once they have a consensus, and the consensus is always in favor do something. however disruptive it might be, it's never in, in, in a consensus in favor. we need to get, get out of these places. the constitution and the law are, are quite flexible and really not existence. and i think it's kind of sad actually that many americans assume that their government behaves any constitutional responsible way. and it just doesn't. yeah, i think that just about summarizes it all. but that's pretty accurately. so this

question is gonna go, i'm gonna say i wanna hear from both of you on this. let's 0 in on iran for a moment. mike, i'm gonna, i'm gonna let you take 1st crack this. we've heard the likes of john bolton, lindsey graham, and for years before his passing, we heard from john mccain all rail on iran, explicitly calling for war with iran. do you foresee that happening as well? that's going to be a tough a. uh i, i tend to doubt it. uh, i tend to doubt it only because that would create such a quagmire for us. and i, i'm hoping that there might be divine intervention someplace that can avoid that. but um, uh, the way things are moving its homeless. i, i hear netanyahu constantly trying to a guest into it. yeah. and, and pushing us into it. and basically, netanyahu is guiding us policy right now. it has for years and,

and we always look at the middle east of the prism of, of israel anyway. and which is wrong. and unfortunately there the, if it goes to a, to a, to a higher level of, of a kinetic warfare out there, then, then exists now. so the iranians will follow through, they will attack they, even though we created all these bases for the turns, the charts has gone, our deterrence is gone. and now these have these bases now become our achilles heel . because we have all of our personnel expose all of our efforts and are all targets. i swear all targets. so we got to be very careful. and i hear the live. i hear the lindsey grands, and the bolton's written of war. they don't like their, their near cons. sure and, and as a consequence, they want to push american democracy even at the barrel of a gun and,

and that's what they've been doing. and we solve this with a rock. we saw, especially with a rock when we've, you know, we had troops committed in afghanistan and then in 2003, we switched switch horses all of a sudden and, and, and when i was a d o d, this happened. and i recall being told the policy will be we go into baghdad. we, we, we over throw back uh, saddam hussein setup bag that as a hub then to tech, have regina change in, in iran, syria, libya, and then saudi arabia, all countries at that time, which were in the who, which were hostile to israel. and this is what we are living. this is the policy we are still following today. jim, what's the, what's your rate on this? i mean, do for see the war hawks in dc having their way and us going to war with iran.

i, i tend to agree with michael that the chances are probably less than 50 percent, but not as low as i'd like, given the as, as, as michael says, the fact that mister benjamin yahoo has more influence in washington than joe biden does. of course the, how much joe does joe fight even have on joe biden given started at this point. uh, 80 it's um, i think it's one of these. i remember what the, the husk the passes were joe by and said the other day that these, the, these attacks on the who these in yemen have not stopped the attacks on the shipping, but they will continue anyway. so we have this kind of mentality here that if we hit something somewhere, that shows we mean business, but it doesn't actually have the desired effect except to stimulate more pressure on our forces to get out of the region. let's remember that when nothing yahoo spoke to come for a to congress several years ago. we talked about 4 areas where the radians,

whereas best of the effectively controlled foreign countries, human, syria, iraq, and lebanon. and you noticed those are all the places now there are heating up because of the crisis and gaza. we have the confrontation with these. we have the computation between the israelis and the north of israel with the with has blocks. and then of course, we have the of the shiite militias in iraq, which is michael points out, are officially part of the rockies. you governmental governing structures, their own forces. and then of course, we have the assad government, the legal government of syria in each one of these places. as michael points out, our presence, our liabilities, rather than assets. we can't actually do much with these assets that uh, that wouldn't instigate even greater blow back. and, and, and danger to these forces will be on these 3 unfortunate people that were killed in a tower $22.00. if we had any spence, we'd get out of there,

but we don't have any sense. and that's where the real danger comes in. i don't think despite the bolt ends in the lives of grams and the rest of it there that many people in washington, especially at the pedagogy or crazy enough to say, push the button. let's go to, to iran. but you never know. and what are these things will spin out of control of more than just 3 people get killed or maybe an american worship, a song or something like that. and then we're off to the races and the thing escalates from there. that's the thing. yeah, in general, let, let me stay with you while you're on the soapbox where we're in an election year. obviously, nikki haley is in that camp with lindsey graham for war, but i'm personally not certain where we're trump would fall on this issue. and, and the current post jo biden's administration is certainly taking a pretty aggressive posture i would say against iran. what's your read on how this plays out in 2025 after and now your ration day the you know, i think it's,

it's very hard for me to foresee that we're going to be in essentially this situation in, in january of 2025 1000000 just like trumps i just i'll, i'll in the or a ukraine war 24 hours. i don't think that will be going on in january 2025. i can be wrong about both. both of those. um, you know it's, it's hard to read truck because remember, you know, his, he always says i, i could have stopped this for the i had it around in the box. i'm big gun tough. these things. what happened on my watch? well, let's remember all of this stuff brewed under his watch. we arms ukraine to the teeth. under his watch, we basically threatened everybody in the middle east to put pressure on the wrong. under his watch to the stage was set under his watch largely for the reasons that we wait. we discussed earlier truck come from can give all the orders he wants and he did when he was president and nobody followed them anyway. so the idea that he would come in and somehow wave his orange magic wand and make all this go away. i

don't, i don't think is going to happen, assuming the situation is even more or less we're, we're, we're talking about now that he could very well find himself in power. and you know, and this the same that, you know, the set of swap creators will really be calling the shots no matter what he thinks he wants to do. yeah. mike, final thoughts on this? i mean, we're really only going to be, we're going to, we're going to do a rematch of 2020 an ad in a rock of bobby kennedy. well, i, i think trump will probably make it, if he makes it. i see him taking a slightly different approach toward the middle east. for this reason, it would be his last, it would be his last term. i think he's going to move all of the trump international overseas. he's got a nice saw your radio. sorry radio wants to re establish uh, uh, the uh the, the abraham a court. and they said if israel stops the war, they will that and, and, and creates

a palestinian state. then they will normalize relations with israel. it'll get and he's done. everything he can for is real right now. so now he's got to look out for his golden parachute for the work and his family's golden parish. sure. so i think he's going to look the more toward a cuddly and up with saudi arabia and what they want. i mean, that's just my hunch. i think you can read it. i, we just stop funding ukraine and, and we begin to pull some of the troops out. and if, and we're here in the europeans already talking about, you know, a postnatal environment. well, the talking about you having a european defense system. so we're gonna see changes, and i think they're going to be to trumps liking. oh boy, it's going to be a totally new year gentleman and 2025. let's wait and see. jim chatter his former us diplomat incentive g o. p advisor, michael maloof, former pentagon senior analyst be here and check out his new rumble channel at official michael move. thank you gentlemen. both. all right,

that is going to do it for this episode at modus operandi the show that dig deep into foreign policy and current affairs. i'm your host manila chan. thank you so much for tuning and we'll see you again next time to figure out the m. o. the take a fresh look around his life kaleidoscopic isn't just a shifted reality distortion by power to division with no real opinions fixtures designed to simplify. it will confuse really once a better wills, and is it just as a chosen few fractured images presented as fast?

can you see through their illusion going underground can hello and welcome defrost of full force. here we discuss the wheel in russia. land, a vast resources found less potential for civilization. this has been to the level of the view from the bushes, fixed shooting system countries, most exciting accomplishments with tier boys and to do with the pursuit can use. this is where i'm located. pardon? do you want me to be able to teach such as the russian can?

i mean that many, many years ago, but you have with almost a week and was not made as seo to stage to move into the, into the interview. stop the induction, the institution, to the end of triumph. simple the to be for the the the,

[000:00:00;00] the russian forces evacuate schools of wounded ukrainian troops who apparently left for dead by yes. ahead of the russian take to the of the strategic city of up the got and the donuts for public distressing images from garza where over 70 civilians are reportedly killed in a massive wave of these rainy strikes on the central parts of the only slave fitting. a refugee camp plus as washington claims its helping find terrorism in africa. us the think tanks reveals that the number of civilian debt. so in the continental shelf,