you know, taking long it may, makes you as a to ukraine, is your, on fi one as a conditional loss. that is to be paid back through maybe ukrainian resources. natural resources is the idea that ukraine is essentially finding a proxy war for united states. ukraine has been put in the position it is in right now, because a need or security, you least want it to use ukraine as a proxy word against you. what russia leads russians. yes. if charles idea is ok, now we were going to fight russian to the last. your brain is when you create is have to pay for it. i think this will persuade more republicans the especially if you are more favor america. first 7 policy to sign to get on board. um, to extend as a package to your brain or is we're all tied wants to rule 20 the unfinished a new hires like quincy is to pose so is that maybe 70 percent of americans won't

pokes to take place. the 2 ends the conflict and you create a spot, the us administrations ongoing assets, the personal aid for the key of agenda. ok, so on a boy co host of wells of pots hopes with jeffrey sachs who had to be sensitive, full, sustainable development at columbia university. he says, americans a tide of washington using tax paying money for endless. foreign goals that lead to mounting that at home. the interesting thing is the public is setup. so the american people don't want our government just spending the money on these wars which event trillions of dollars a day. see that the budget deficit is huge, the data keeps rising, they keep being told we can't have health care or dental care, or i care or your children can't get help for school because the budget is in crisis and then biding comes along and says, no, no no, no, there's 61000000000 here,

and 14000000000 for is real and this much for this. so the public's against it. yet it still passes the 7th and it passes the 7th despite the public opposition, because the senators, by and large are agents of the military industrial complex i and they do, it's bidding, the american people do not think this is a good investment as they already got as, as an economic advisor to them, but of course self appointed, i will say to them, it's not a good investment. this is allows the investment for the united states. we're not getting rich out of this, you're not benefiting from this. this is a waste of money and a waste of time and a waste of lives for any sign state company. this monday. i hope you're having a great start your week as well for me for today. but my colleague page of scotts will be head with all the latest news updates in 30 minutes. the

hello and welcome to the cross top boulevard. here we discussed some, we'll in the hello, i'm the miller 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 in change efforts failed. we'll discuss the rising risk posed to us troops with the fantastic panels 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 u. s. 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 were 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 at official michael maloof. and joining us remotely is our friend jim jeffers. jim is a former us diplomat and senate g o. p advisor, a gentleman so great to have you both. thanks for joining. thanks. thank you. so,

mike, i'm going to go over to you 1st. so it's been reported that the outside of the air base has been operational since 2016, which puts us squarely at the set up 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 syria and then to the for 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 power 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? what's the tower?

$22.00 is actually a logistical support facility small is located in jordan to service. i'll 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 tower $22.00 does is take in drones in it not only provides logistical support, but it has a landing strip for drones to 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, and that's what led to this calamity is that either through a 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 land 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 22 types there are, uh, when you look at the map of, uh, of, of iran. uh you have something like uh over 2000 and 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 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 number. jim, i'm going to go over to you. uh, president obama, who once famously called isis junior varsity. he found himself meeting 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 air strikes. but the

russians, the difference here is the russians were invited there by president bush r l. a sod. unlike the us. 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 illegally occupies 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 to read this notion that there's anything like a u. s. constitution 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 things you don't 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 would be trying to do. and iraq was the lynch band. 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 were concerned. what's going to be the, the she, i core door that iran was going down the road to the mediterranean, a through a friendly iraq is friendly, syria, and then to their friends with his beloved. so all the time is basically where we interject that core door. remember at the very major part of the american presence and serious isn't the north in the courage here. a curtis areas in the north and east of the country out of 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 famous 2012 defense intelligence

agency memo that predicted that the result 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 the one that member was and confirm later to alger xerox, that this was not a result of negligence. it was the desired outcome of the policy. you'll notice that for all is talked about isis ice is isis. they don't really attack american interest in the region. they don't attack is really interested 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 iraq because otherwise isis, isis, isis. it's just the local version of, you know, russia, russia, russia, china,

china, 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 a president likely. donald trump that says, let's get 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. now. absolutely. now now mike, since we're on the topic of isis, as we know, tom 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 out of town? still there for, i mean, the regime change operation failed, i guess back then. i mean, so isn't this just on mission creep?

well it 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 is supposed 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 get 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. and it was still active in the military at that time. yeah. see, what's the head of the i is,

jim pointed out. so this and, and, and then and then his, his world crumbled after that. yeah. but, but, but i'll, i'll top is there to be that cross roads and it, it's, and we're, we're 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 ship. okay. and they're all now part of the rocky government. okay. and they could easily deal with, uh, uh, a uh, a pricing with, with, with any up with any, uh, isis. uh, a come return 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 and, 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 in ices with sunni radical sunni, but still us, and in fact we use ices 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 panels to type the m. o will be right back the the the

the, the the the welcome back to the m o i manila chad. 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 d, 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 of the consensus for that among the world. we are willing to establish printed washington, whichever party it's 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 usual for us and, and how it applies to this or that circumstances? i mean, as i recall when we 1st went into our syria, it has 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 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. that's pretty accurately. so uh, 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 not, i'm gonna let you take 1st crack at 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 what creates such a quagmire for us. and i, i'm hoping that there might be divine intervention some place that can avoid that. but um, uh, the way things are moving its homeless. i, i hear netanyahu constantly trying to a get 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, the iranians will follow through, they will attack they, even though we created all these bases for the turns, the charts has gone, of our deterrence is gone. now these have these bases now become our achilles heel . because we have all of our personnel exposed, all of our efforts are all targets. i swear all targets. so we gotta be very careful. and i hear the live, i hear the lindsey grands and, and,

and the bolton's written the war. they don't like they're there near guns, short 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 redeemed change 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 you foresee the war hawks in dc having their way? and that's 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 for joe biden 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 reach. and let's remember that when nothing. now, who's supposed to come for a to congress? several years ago, he talked about 4 areas where the radians were able to 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, the are 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 in 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 directly. 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. and 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 1000000000 just like from size i'll, i'll end the or a ukraine war, 24 hours, i don't think that will be going on in january 2025. i can be wrong about the both of those. um, you know it's, it's hard to read truck cuz remember, you know, his, he always says i, i could have stopped this for the i have a to run 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 sage was said under his watch, largely for the reasons that 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 it's going to happen. assuming the situation is even more or less what we're, we're talking about now that he could very well find himself in power and, you know, and this the same, 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 gonna, we're going to do a re match of 2020 an ad in a rock of bobby kennedy is. well, 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'd 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, 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 with the work and his family's golden parish. sure. so i think he's gonna look the more toward cuddling up with saudi arabia and what they, what i mean, that's just my hunch. i think he can read it. i can 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're 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 gentlemen and 2025. let's wait and see jim chatter as 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. of 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 in. we'll see you again next time to figure out m. o, the russian land. a fast 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 holding one with 2 boys in so doing the pursuit can use. this is where i'm located. pardon, do you want me to be able to teach this as russia? can they be in the email to get together that you mentioned that almost a week, maybe i was not made as you go to the next to stage to the new into the, into the interview was conducted the addition to the end of the one to be for the of

the, the town itself is family under the control of the russian forces. there are no sabotaged groups. there's no ukrainians, or there's no ukrainians who left here who decided to stay here willingly. strategic city of, of gift coast taken was russian armed forces evacuate schools of wounded ukrainian troops who apparently left behind. the result says it's upset that israel has declared its presence of a sudden non drop this the comparing the depth of civilians in gauze up to the whole, the cold. excessive is there any governments have given the sea up people? only 3 options displacement subjugation voted that

while this time demands israel and.