the me well, consider alec salmon. sure, well we look at the end of the medical longest war in afghanistan, 20 years ago at the start of the conflict kernel lord and wilkerson was at the, at the center of decision making as chief of staff. then you ethic to state colin powell. no, i distinguished professor william and maybe college was his assessment of america the longest war. he joins alec shortly, but 1st your 2 semesters and e mails and response to actual last week on political polling between professor john curtis. i'm james kelly. did scott says love it.

opinion poor youth and faith doesn't stipulate what the rest of us in scotland are thinking on it's not simple morning. come, don't say that this is a must watch for all induce supporters. i didn't respond to james kelly, the parents. teddy says, great, sure. good to see you on a james. and finally, sarah alba says it was nice to see you on tv been, let's have more non veteran colonel lord and wilkerson prepared the un presentation by which colon power justified the invasion of iraq to the international community . he describes it as the worst moment of his professional life as he moved from washington insider, potential critic of the new con policies of successive us administration. he joins alex, the close of the american intervention in afghanistan. come a lot of the spoke us and thank you so much for joining me on the alex island show . glad to be with you. really. last week cover woke us in the last american

troops, nato troops of left afghanistan. but 20 years ago, you were right at the, the center of the fish and making. what was that amy thought back in 2001. this was a conflict of hon. engagement might go on for 20 years. i'm really glad you added nato. there. the united states has done its level best to pull nato into out of area operations and therefore justified continued existence, a subject on which i can relax. but to your question, i was there in the beginning. i was there when people like colon pals, lawyer himself a former deputy secretary defense william howard taft, the 4th, a very famous name and american politics objected to the war instrument pointing out that we had used law enforcement as our principal counter terrorist methodology

for years. only want exception really on a legans rate on libya in april of 1986, which didn't last very long. and there was a lot of sense to that. re, our politics sense to using law enforcement to continue to use it. the moment we selected the war instrument, we elevated al qaeda and it's like 2 warriors status. we even had extraordinary difficulty coming out with a term to describe them. so the geneva conventions and other things wouldn't apply to them. we lost and we understandably last. i think because president bush himself told a group of event jalap goals visiting the white house. my rage is up. please help me. help me restrain my rage. i think that was the most telling comment. the then young neal fight inexperienced president made. it was all about revenge and secondarily about preventing a 2nd attack. and we thought if we went after the head of the snake, we would prevent a 2nd attack better. but it was an informed decision to decide to use

military power. we now are bathed in the matter, sonia and morning of when you give executive unlimited more hours. you are on a dangerous track, a very dangerous track, and we're paying for it. and i've got us down to just one of the debts we owe. but your boss because you are chief of staff to the safety of state colon po, a himself knowledgeable but cautious general. was he advocating the wall? instrumental always he's saying there might be other ways to to bring us some of the lads to book we really wanted to explore as far as possible, getting the taliban omar and others in the council. we wanted to explore that to the ultimate as we did want to explore inspectors back into iraq later in 2002 and

3. and the administration completely blew that out. water, even as cohen, pow, got a 15 vote in the un security council to reinforce that. dick cheney was running the government at that time with regard to national security and foreign policy. so yes, we had some objections. once we knew and understood the political circumstances, let's face it, administration had no mandate, no political mandate. it had the mandate of the u. s. supreme court. there was a lot of fear in those opening days in the administration that the american people would throw us out for the mistake that we just made. tremendous mistake the causal eyes. so that trepidation lasted only a short time. as soon as bush went to new york stood on that pile and said, and those who did this will hear from us very soon, because that one, the american people's following, he got 90 percent on the bowls. then he realized our effective call robe,

his political advisor realize i, affective. that stance was and that it could, as he said, at that time, sure. bush of a 2nd permit office, if he just played the global war on terror correctly. i overheard call roving the indian treaty room at the old executive office building. i, our billing now say to is henchmen ken mehlman. if we exploit this right, we can be empowered for a long time. and that was the political incentive. so war had to be the answer and in power, finally realized that plus, dick cheney told him, essentially putting his finger in his chest. you aren't the chairman anymore, so don't be advising all war. you advise on diplomacy? not war. so, and i would say if you take other things that happened them, incoming administration as it was like that the chinese biplane crisis of, of april 2001 where the view of colon powell and perhaps george booth senior would be this one she witnessed as an old china hand of caution,

the negotiation of agreement prevailed, was at $911.00 and that from attic shocked to america, the policy in the hands of dick cheney and the nea cardinal. the for, for the general description is that was the significant thing. that's an excellent point. i've said a number of times that i think president bush was on colon side with regard to the april 10th, 2001 shoot down or not shoot down the collision of the p 3 and the chinese f. a fighter playing the crisis, he was on the panel side because he understood the importance of china a wal mart that's just a, you know, of sort of general comment, simplistic as it is, but it says, hey, without china, we want to have a very good domestic economy, so bush knew that. so he sided with bow in that instance rochelle. and cheney wanted a war at best. they wanted a cold war. they wanted to open relations with taiwan in

a significant way and tried to do so. so you got a good point later on though powell has lost some of his ability to influence the president. not only because it's not china issue, it's something else, but also because rove and cheney were working on the all along sir repetitious. li, as well as alone in the office to ensure that he really power was potentially the most powerful candidate in 2004 contest his 2nd term. and this was not something the president forgot. study this with every president since war war 2. and it is stunning to my students when they find out how domestic politics and particularly the president's desire to be successful. influences faithful decision making, where boys and girls die in conflict over c, l, b, j decision and 65 to go the rope. the road in vietnam and go 250-0000 troops. is

a good cation point. a lot of people don't believe domestic politics has that much impact on american presidential decision making, but it does. it's often the most decisive factor. and with bush, he was worried. he was worried about pal, but from your estimation as, as a military mine, as a vacuum, the vietnam is a helicopter pilot, would have been possible to extract some of the latin in particular from afghanistan to the old rule of the taliban government. well, of course we didn't do that. we got a lot many years later and we didn't get him and i've gone, it's time. we got him in pakistan. the godfather, that's all about that. all of us did not start and condo, har is common wisdom has. if they started and they started as a tool of the ios on the inner service intelligence the cia and focused on in order

to keep it after i've got to start and roiled in stable. so that pakistan would have strategic dep against its principal, enemy, india. and, and take a great strategist to figure that out why they're doing that. i even had a conversation one time alongside president sharp about that very thing which drew a smile from the general and the president august eyes behind the taliban. it's still behind that alabama. one wonders where that's going to go because it might be the thing that on seats the civilian government and then loma bought eventually, as this terrorist element began to become more infectious in ocoee thought itself. but it is, it's a, it's a dangerous set of circumstances that we're leaving. and i'm a mix mind about our leaving because that the strategist and me, which is what i trained as in the military, was educated as says we shouldn't be leaving. regardless of the minimum cost we

actually were paying for staying there, we shouldn't be leaving. and then the soldier in me, consulting many marine and army veterans tells me yes we should because they say don't stay, it's a miserable failure. it's a failure that as many causes most prominently, but i've gotten standard, not a state, it's a group of tribes. it has artificial borders, many of its citizens, so to speak, live in by lucas on or in pakistan proper or in northern iran, or as in but it was beckett on and don't see a border. so it was an impossible mission from the start, but it shouldn't been a state building mission. it should have been a mission of national security question to ask you if america hadn't divested the wall and tap into a rack. could afghanistan been a success or was it all was due to the failure?

excellent question. when i was serving power, when he was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, i knew that we had told president h w bush that we could not do to regional contingencies. at the same time and the reason for that was because we were cutting the military about 25 percent. the president knew that and was willing to buy that risk. didn't think there was that risk very tenable in the future. so we did it. and then along came clinton and we cut another 3 percent. so by the time we get to the point where we're contemplating really seriously doing a rack and it was much sooner than the breast indicated, bol is again putting on his german set and saying, ms. president, you can, you can't train ears again, putting his finger in pals chess and tell him really get out of the military business. because we had people like colonel mcgruder telling newt gingrich telling don roseville that 50000 troops could do iraq. and indeed, that's what tommy franks called bow and told him he was having to deal with in

terms of the war that was being contemplated. $50000.00 troops would be all nonsense. in other words, but that was what we were dealing with. and at the end of the day, your question is answered by saying yes, i can say and became an economy for speed or meaning minimal troops. the taliban more able to recover significantly so significantly that the 100000 plus by president obama did nothing to arrest them. and ultimately though, you have to look at the, the task and the challenge, even if you put a half 1000000 troops in afghanistan and stayed there and routed out everybody, you possibly could. maybe even eliminated half of the population. you still have the problem, i indicated earlier. it is not a state, it is not an actual entity, and it has partners as it were all around it don't like the idea of a stable functioning state. we're going to see now how much that has changed. i

think it's changed or the wrong. i think it's change with those back on. i'm not sure about pakistan. i think it's changed with russia. i think it's never been that way, but got that way and now is change with china. so the neighbors are going to determine the future of us counties time, i think, plus the nature of this new and i emphasize new taliban government. coming up after the break, alex continues is discussions with cardinal laurens. wilkerson will see that the sometimes a simplest answer is the correct answer, and a lot of people ask, why are these tax tax so why is the stock market so high? and the simple answer is that it's a transfer payment. this federal government is transferring the paper money that they print into the pockets of the tech executives. it's as plain as the nose on

your face, and you can see it in the numbers. welcome back. alex is discussing the end of engagement in i'm gonna start with kernel lauren's wilkerson, the former chief of staff, to general colin powell commonwealth. so i'm not sure question which you're probably better place than what slammed else in the planet. so we're in 2003. did the intelligence come from that suggested the worth weapons of mass destruction in iraq to justify the iraq intervention. richard bruce cheney vice president, united states who orchestrated the office of special plans through spell and douglas fights and the pentagon and others whom george tenant, the director of central intelligence, coerced in france, jordan,

germany and other places. and when i say coerced, it's not that hard to do because if you're sharing intelligence from such sophisticated national technical means as the u. s. possesses with your allies and they don't want to stop that shared and make you angry enough to possibly curtail lecture. they will go along with your war slides, and that's what people did today. people talk to me about dominic ban and france and shamrock in their opposition. i can tell you that the french were right in there when power was preparing for his presentation at the you in those french that tenant aloud. in saying that we were right. there were aluminum tubes, for example, that indeed they had spawn some in their own laboratories and they spot them 298000 rpms without visible deterioration. clearly not rocket shielding or mortar shielding, clearly metal for centrifuges. so we had reinforcement from your damian's,

from the israelis from the french, from the germans, and we all know about curveball. now the germans were at the end, the b and d at the end was saying things like, well, maybe you shouldn't trust this guy. but 10, it was paying no attention to the tyler drum hell or the european representative of the say. yeah, you told me afterwards that he actually registered twice complaints about law power was going to say at the un with john mclaughlin tenants, deputy and with george candidate himself. and it didn't, it didn't wash. in fact, john essentially said the tyler is to the trays too. far down the track now. so there was a combination of people who colluded much the way they colluded for ronald reagan in the early eighty's to report the soviet union as being 10 feet tall. so that ronald reagan's arms build up would be politically sound. they concluded to make sure that sort of saying, had them do that day,

the power and i did not see through that is my greatest lifetime professional site . and what's that growing realization? let you go and pile the world have been sold. the pop as it were, it was not the reason that you left it ministration. i'm developed into a strong critic of meal called an approach to what all politics. actually, the motivation for me was torture. i knew that the united states military had tortured people in the philippines and tortured people during the indian wars from 865891 their way to tortured people in world war one or 2. but i knew also that no president had ever officially authorized as a matter of policy torture. george w bush did, under the pressure from dick cheney and are also george w bush did. that's what really turned me off the administration off us policy and

company to be outspoken about that policy. you described, they, the intervention afghanistan has been compatible to the great game of the 19th century with the protagonists. now effectively being the main protagonist, the united states and china, it is not a valid comparison. do you think that's where we know that that's gonna stand still if that strategic significance between the, the 2 dominant, what all power? i think central asia is and i've kind of just happens to be central, the central asia. if our playing the ground strategies, i would say forget state building, forget nation building, all those things are cooter months of your presence there. and maybe you can do some things for women and education and so forth. really are there for geopolitical and strategic reasons. and you just described them briefly,

you're there because you're right next door to the potentially most unstable nuclear stockpile in the world. that of pakistan you want military hard power to be able to seize that stock. number, sir, you're there because your cheek and jail with the most well funded chinese base road, initially in case it turns out to be as antagonistic to our interest as some of the neo conservatives and others are saying it is. and you're there because you have a tiny little border with the largest province in china, bigger than france. you're in gang province where some 2012000000 leaders you live, who don't like the hon, chinese. so if you want to cover ca, covert operations in china, the way we tried to do against, wow, in 1952 to 152, and on. then you want to be in afghanistan. and you want to use those wagers as part of your tools there, all kinds of strategic reasons to stay in the great game as it were. but we don't seem to understand strategy anymore. so given that and the american made to of not

there was no for afghanistan, what would be a government decision to withdraw as they made the withdrawal has been effective for, for afghan has done the best solution i can think of is the china and iran and i noted ron's foreign minister, even this new group of hard line people into iran are doing this or trying to do this. turkey, russia, others, a note even india suddenly realize that it isn't good to have this instability in their midst and began to help. whatever results in the taliban government and gobble to get his act together and to be more like a modern state and more like they would wish to be in terms of stability, help in acknowledge, financially and so forth. i. i don't for

a moment think they will all in unity do that, but i think of russia and china may be boxed on hold off a bit. if that happens, then there's a chance that it could become more stable, that the united states might, as usual, after this, geostrategic failure have to reinserted itself at some time is clearly possible. particularly of some of the things i just described is reasons to stay suddenly become near existential nuclear weapons, really bother me today. arms control is just all part other than new start. we don't really have any more in the world and we have new nuclear powers like north korea and of course, israel with which have never been in there. we need a massive effort amongst all of us in the west to bring arms control nuclear arms control back to the front burner. and to do something about securing these nuclear weapons that are essentially like climate change,

existential at the end of the day, only in a very short, shorter time period. i'm hearing general's today flag officers in the united states military talk like they talked in the fifty's, the early fifties, that nuclear weapons do have utility. now that we can make them small and we make them tactical and we can even shoot them off ballistic missile submarines. and that they are war instruments that are feasible. this is nonsense. so how damaged is the president and the sharp town hall will his longer town decision be justified? i think it depends almost completely on how he handles this very difficult and challenging domestic agenda. he has called on clouds. you had said something really smart, i think in book a aware of the vividness. i'm translating the german correctly beware the vividness of transient events. well, that's what the media lives on. of course. and cobble is a transient event. it will only become extremely important if some of the things i

just talked about, materialized that transit event will be forgotten by the american people hel, substantive events are forgotten by the american people within 48 hours. and i'm looking at the polls now and i'm looking at what particularly democrats are saying, and i'm seeing 5560 percent, ultimately grudgingly in some cases in favor of biden's decision. not, not happy about the way it was executed at the end. but happy about the overall decision, so i don't think it's going to damaging failure in this domestic agenda arena will devastate him. iran. so any possibility there might be a change in the american policy. it was around a country emotional, middle east, which actually has described this genuine elections. so any prospect might be a rethink about iraq. that's an excellent question too. i have often said of late

that there's a theocracy in jerusalem that bothers me more than the are seen to rod for i see a lot of reality, a lot of real security, national security, regional security, international security, good thinking and they're all connected. we would have had it. i think that president obama and i met in the roosevelt room to talk about this. along with john kerry a sector stayed in november of 2015. we would have had a much better path towards a better solution that ripple tomorrow. even with iran, had we not left the j, c, p, o, a nuclear agreement that trump did that and that my palm pale was his instrument in doing that and continuing it and amplifying and making more profound . the repercussions of lat, cancellation, or that backing out of that treaty may have made it almost impossible to get back

in to her. so that's your point is well taken and it's a case i ruined regret. every time i look at it because they were our head human, our, our power for 26 years. when the job was in charge, we recognized that this was the most powerful, potentially and, and really geographically. and so for in the, in the region. and now we just disregard their at our peril and come a welcome military man, but, but not to distinguish the professor. your attitude, your brand, of republican politics, a liberal republican world view. is there any hope for that tendency for the republican party is going to be a revival of that sort of attitude or as the last and gotten forever if it is reliable, it will take another decade probably. but there are people working. there are young

people working, i've been all over the country, all 50 states. i've talked to some of them 40 and under. and they're every welcome life, their financial investment, people, their bankers, their farmers out west who are sick and tired of republicans, for example in boise, idaho, polluting their water and ruining their rivers and so forth. and these fires have just added to that. will they be able to co here and bring about a new republican party that i think is the domestic political question of the our here? because if not, we only have a single party system and that's dangerous kind of a lot of welcome. thank you so much for joining me. a male examine show. thanks for me. i really appreciate it. it started with the head of state beach. it ended with a terrorist. i think all kinds of tact, the twin towers isis killed more than $118.00 cargo after the expanding of flood of

blood and treasure american. his allies, her finally left of guns on the key or to can bloody nature of the departure should provoke much soul searching. let us hope that it looks deeper than the manner of leaving but into the real rationale for staying there. for these 20 long years, colonel wilkerson is of the view that the great game, which took him p o britain twice. and so i'm gonna start and then century is still being played with the only difference that america and china have replaced britain on russia as they main protagonist. if so, with over 200000 days, it has been a very expensive match. and so for me, alex, myself and all that the show is good bye for now. stacy's, i'm hope to see you all again next. ah

me . oh the i can't read the drugs are essential for millions of patients. or are they, they want that pill that they hope will take care of their problem thoroughly and rapidly in the short term they really work. the problem is, in a long term, they're mostly disastrous. suddenly stopping a drug can cause withdrawal symptoms more serious than the condition it was meant to treat instead of the beneficial effects of these different medicines ending up to something wonderful. very often they're harmful effects and up to something terrible can bill. so of all ills, or are we trying to mitigate life itself?

i just think i was like i was just scared, scared, little girl of 24. and like me didn't have to be so complicated the the me the was begging to go to one tunnel because what i've seen and witnessed in belgrade was so destructive to this day. i haven't, i can't sleep today. we present the 1st of an in depth investigation into the victims of america's brutal war on terror. the line told by the us, pull out from a guy was a bag full mug guantanamo detainees. shes the horace he into the sounds.