ad, it just took me to time to shake out. i had the intelligence in front of me as well as colleagues, friends of mine in the marine corps who were in iraq, who were, you know, saying this is not going well at all. so by the time i get to a rock my 1st time in spring of 2004, i had this idea that this war, of course, at that point we understood to be a lie. we understood. there were no weapons of mass destruction. there were no ties to off high to etc, but also to this war was a colossal era for american foreign policy. that what we had done was catastrophic, not just for the rocky people, but for the entire region in the repercussions. we're going to be something that the united states is going to have to deal with for years and years to come. so you look at it from that, that policy perspective of what we did and what resulted from that cause. so many fires costs, so much instability that you almost have to look at it and say ma'am, was planned because how could i be so incompetent?

but i think is both you and i, john. no, yes, that incompetency. certain that in competency certainly does exist in those on full display, in the rock war. uh by i think one of the things that we think you would agree with this and this gets into this idea of moral injury. is that even though you disagree with it, you take part because you think you can do some good. you think that you can be a moral agent that you will retain your own moral agency. the reality is that in something like war, you cannot, you're, you're, you're, you're nothing compared to that leviathan to that force of nature. and so you become subsumed by it and you become an agent of the war. so whatever, however you think you're going to do good, how are you thinking your own bubble in your own spaces? you will do well that you will, you will not harm others that you will have a white hat on. the reality is, is this is by taking part in the war. you're wearing a black hat. oh, you're absolutely right, matt. you were in the middle of a promising career in diplomacy and national security when you were assigned to

afghanistan, but you took exception to us policy there in a big way. and you resign from government. what was happening at the time that like you to that decision as well? personally i was, i was again, like i said before, intellectually morally broke and then i, i think that's the best way to describe it. i had just lied to myself for so long about these wars. gone on with the wars, be training, all kinds of principles and values that i held. and that is the essence of more injury, that you transgress that well, your, your core foundations of who you are and whether those be inspired by religious or ethical, or moral or historical, or what have you. under paintings, you've transgressed those and it, and it's a darkness that is hard to describe unless you had experienced it. and what i planed to people i ought to point out to people is go back to high school, go back to macbeth and recall lady macbeth and having the blood on her hands and how she can get that blood off her hands. and she didn't even do the killing right

. she but she was involved with it and then guilt soon, sir, and hopefully destroys her. and i think when people reference an understanding the in the larger human sense, the largest and is larger idea of regret, deal shame, and how powerful those things are taking part in the worst. continuing to lie. and then getting to ask a lie to myself about what i was doing, and then getting to afghanistan and, and say, thinking okay, maybe this will be different than our rock. maybe this time where we'll have a purpose. maybe this and ministration will have some objective in terms of actually like bringing about stability, bringing about some end to the suffering, the asking people doing something that actually promotes american security rather than continuing to jeopardize it by have by, you know, conducting these occupations. and so seeing that the obama ministration was no different than the bush administration, seeing that the escalation of that war, which was a mass of escalation of the war member when brock obama comes in the office.

there's about 3035000 american troops in afghanistan about equivalent number of contractors and about 15000 nato troops. by 18 months later there is a quarter 1000000 man, western army composed of us troops, nato troops, and contractors and afghanistan. so it was a mass of escalation of the war, seeing that, that was just going to fuel the insurgency, give reason for the taliban, allow them to have that credibility as a national liberation army, which most atkins wouldn't agree with when you put a gun to their head and say, hey, take the foreigners or pick the taliban. unfortunately, main parts of afghanistan, they choose, the top is a seeing all this understanding it, but then realizing that it was not at all different than our rock. right. knowing where i was, uh, that was uh at my point where i said i have to leave this and i did, and resigned in protest. and, you know, since then i've gone to work with a lot of great people, including yourself, with tremendous professionals,

people who love their country and who speak out against the wars against the machinations of, of a foreign policy a cobble, basically that's dictated by mega mania and read right, and we do this because we love our country and we don't want to see it committing the citizens that it has committed for so long. what was the fallout like for you when you made your decision? you you resigned and then went public with your objection to us policy? i know in the whistleblower community of course you were. you were hailed as a hero. what was it like for you on your former colleagues, colleagues, did you get any support? and i got a lot of support actually i had a tremendous amount of support from my, my state department colleagues at the time. so i was involved with problems with the state department in afghanistan and my colleagues who were in the other more touring provinces can a stand or agree with medium basset or, and we actually had a deputy ambassador and cobble as well. they agree with me,

the deputy ambassador said to me when i was resigned and you know, i have, i have children that are military age and i would not allow them to serve here in afghanistan. this was not worth it. you know the bad bachelor ichenberry agree with me about that are holbrook who is the president special representative for afghanistan. pakistan said he agree with me. you know, they gave, they gave the president my resignation letter in the present and read it and, you know, mean, so there was the, in, among my colleagues from the marine corps, including uh, you know, men who were in afghanistan, nothing but support. where i received pushback from was from the senior levels of the pentagon leadership and the senior levels of the state department leadership. um, yeah, i could tell you that one of the things, the pentagon did through central command, which general day with the trash has been charged with the time they hire as cheated communications firm to discredit me. you know, and this is, you know, so when you have a whistle blower, someone who's speaking out against, you know, they established the authority that established the authority uses all the

resources, it has to cost them. so as i was speaking out and i was getting a lot of media attention, i was getting on cnn and i was being interviewed by, you know, big newspapers and so on, so forth. the seat of communication firm, hired by general, betray us would bad mouth me. and then they've got to the point where they would say things such as, look, if you're a type of journalist, your type of media organization that wants to work with someone like mount, how we don't think you're the type of organization that we want to work with so basically, uh too many, and i had this path and were producers booker tankers would show me these documents, where the pentagon was se to the media organizations. you can either talk to this guy who opposes the war, or you can go on helicopter rides with our generals. next time you come out and then we're speaking with state and defense department was the blower. matt ho about his decision to resign from the us government in protest of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. we're going to take a short break. stay tuned for more of our conversation. we'll be right back.

2 2 2 2 the take a fresh look around his life kaleidoscopic isn't just a shifted reality distortion by tell us to do vision with no real opinions. fixtures designed to simplify will confuse really once a better wills, and is it just as a chosen for you. fractured images presented is 1st,

can you see through their illusion going underground? can the welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry onto we're speaking with whistle blower, matt who about his decision to resign from government service in protest of the rock and afghanistan wars that thanks again for being with us. hey, thanks john for help me with you. glad to have you. matt. you've paid a higher price for your experience, and most whistle blowers have besides the professional fall out for resigning your position. you suffered personally, you've spoken very publicly about p d. s. d, about depression and moral injury. for example. those are 3 things that i was also diagnosed with in the past. tell us about your experience and how you dealt with these challenges and they really are difficult challenges. they are, they are. and i, of course, i have to say, you know, my, my, uh,

on schmidt was nothing compared to yours and you went to prison for speaking the truth. so humbled to have you say that to me think, why did the, the, you know, so you do you have post traumatic stress disorder? you have dramatic brain injury and more on injury. and i can tell you the, the traumatic brain injury, which comes from explosive related blast. and this is something people are becoming more familiar with basically because of the body armor of the vehicle armor we had in the rock and ask them wars we survive, things walked away from explosions in any previous where would have killed us. and this is why you see such as very high numbers of, of, of, of brain injuries. we, we have, i have marines and my command to on a 8 month deployment, 78 month deployment would have 10 explosions, hit their vehicles, you know, and they would block away. we dust ourselves off and then similar but different to

what the football players and boxers and rugby players go through. there is a brain injury that develops overtime is late and see to it. so for me, the symptoms of my brain injury didn't really manifest until around 20142015 or so . and but i can tell you as the bill of lading is, that was as painful as that was and manifested through just just terrible migraines . that would last as long as 18 hours of stream fatigue. i. cognitive dysfunction where i couldn't use a computer, i, you know, as bad as that was that was nothing compared to the moral injury. that was nothing compared to that regret that deal. that shame, you know, his years i went uh wanting to kill myself, planning to kill myself. slowly try and do it throughout the whole, but also to always having a plan in place and coming close to carrying out that plan a number of times to kill myself. is that how to do with the guilt?

the regret, the shame to take important things in iraq are that you know, to this day, i won't speak about that. so there are, there are, after so invisible wounds that have always been with warriors of every conflict. going back, we noticed, like a shakespeare wrote about this, the greeks and the romans wrote about this home are writes about this in the early . it means this idea that there is a moral component toward devastation and ruinous aspect to the soul that comes from war is something that is not on known is something that should be surprising, surprised nobody. and that exist in every generation that goes to war. regardless of how good or bad the war is, possibly it's, there's more of extent to this say in a war like a rock or vietnam, where you don't understand the purposes where there are so many allies behind the war that it's quote bad war. but certainly we know that in the good moore's united

states has had and put good quotes right. for the civil war world war 2, the veterans from those wars carried moral injury with them at, at levels where they were killing themselves at high high rates. similar to save veterans, so this is not anything that is new or unique to my generation, our generation of combat veterans. this is something that has always been with combat veterans as a consequence of war, this invisible and because more does kill your soul, yet it catch you 2 things, no matter how you justify it, is simply on justifiable and look. i think the best way understand is, is that if killing came naturally to human beings, the united states army, united states marine corps, would not spend millions and millions of dollars a training recruits to kill. you know, if you're a young man, you joined the marine corps. you're going into the infantry, i should say, woman. now, because when they can go in the imagery as well, you will spend 13 weeks and recruit training. then you'll go to advanced infantry

training, which i believe now is about 10 weeks long. then you will go to your unit and you will spend the rest of your time on your contract with the marine corps training the kill because that's what they have to do. to condition you to get to the point where you can go across the planet and kill a stranger in their homeland problem is when you come back, you're not dream washer condition. so when you come back, that conditioning where's off. and that's where the moral injury starts. to set it, and as you have to then rectify, you have to deal with what you took part in the what that means to whom you believe yourself to be as a person, missus, without transportation comes and met. you do a great deal of work now with groups like veterans for peace, veterans, veteran intelligence professionals for sanity the world beyond war. some of the more important piece groups here in the united states. what kind of reception have you had among former colleagues in government regarding the work that you're doing now toward piece uh, you know,

it's really well accepted with the exception of those who have gone into the military industrial complex. the people who've gone to work for defense, contractors, weapons manufacturers. and even then among them there is uh, almost in the barrack nature, a lot of time and what they do when they will offer the site, the golden handcuffs. right. they will say i got 3 kids were going to college soon and what, what, you know, what, what else could i do? you know, i came out of marine corps. i came out of the navy, it came out of the army. you know, what was i supposed to do this was, this was an opportunity for me to continue to provide for my family to the golden hancocks are very real. but i generally, um, you know, and it's hard to for me to, to think of a time where somebody has told me off because i'm now a peacenik or whatever. uh, so it's rare that that happens. and usually it comes with somebody who's still attached to the military. they're still in the pentagon, they're there,

they've got a government, a, an eagle or stars on their shoulder as you know, or they work for the defense industry. so i think most people, if we know there's a tolling, we know that the majority of veterans of the rock and ask em worst, think those wars were a mistake, think they should not even slot a higher percentage of veterans. think that and do the general population in general population by ward my wide margin believes that so we can, you can see see that those of us who went there and saw and experienced it to pardon it. and i think a lot of people don't speak out because there is a shame there is regret, but there's also to a, a, a false patriotism, a junior wisdom that exists in this country that does not allow for descent. that does not allow for patriarch uh, descent uh you know, you go to a football game, you go to a hockey game and you know that the spectacle, the, the jingle isn't that exist there. but it makes people feel as if they can't question. and i think that's a lot of what we do with our work. you know, i work with an organization called as an hour media network. and that's

a lot of what we try and do is try and educate people about war trying to show that there are people who took part, who are military veterans who believe that we should be conducting war making throughout the globe, stopping around with 800000800 base is around the world. you know that we should have some restraint and we should be investing in our country as opposed to uh, conducting military ventures across the globe. i think you're absolutely right. more recently, you're a candidate for office as the green parties nominated for the united states senate from the state of north carolina in 2020. the democrats worked hard to keep you off the ballot. you were a threat to them apparently, but you went to court and you one, tell us about that experience. what was it that the democrats were so afraid of? to see that there is an entitlement that both of the major political parties possess that they feel they own the process. and they've gone to great lengths over

the decades to ensure that. and we see that width about access laws that make it very difficult for independent or 3rd party candidates to get on the ballot as well as gerrymandering. yeah. which makes it so that way, you know, and you see this where the parties were clued pro public. i just had a great story about jim cliburn, the, the venerated democratic congressman from south carolina to colluded with the republican party, to make sure that his seat was protected. he was willing to give the republican some more c and the disenfranchised black voters. as long as he was taken care of it, i think that's what you see there is. there's a greed, there's an entitlement within the parties that also to a desire to protect their donor base. so for us, we got on about we got all signature that we needed. we far surpassed the number that we needed actually. and then we were hit with allegations of corruption of fraud. as they said, we turned in thousands of ford signatures, which we did not to and but we had to go to court because they have the lawyers,

they have the money. they know they, this is what they do. they know how to put in all these obstacles almost as of as soon as we turned in our signatures to get on the ballot, they just went to the playbook and ok, this is what we do next. and we file a lawsuit. we file complaints of the state board of elections. we do a, b, c, d, and try and exhaust up. and fortunately, we were able to not be exhausted. we are able to persevere, hold on how to a great attorney who is pro bono. otherwise we would've been able to do it cuz we couldn't afford to do so. and we were able to stay on the ballot and we won twice. we won in federal court, but one in federal appeals. courtney was the one state court. so it was very serious and in the threat of what i mean, i, this was a, i was running in the us senate raise one was to try and get about the goals were to try and get valid access. try to try increase independent political parties. that was one of the goals, but then the other goals were to basically, you know, try and get certain issues into the race. medicare for all them rank control, especially as well as ending the war on drugs. because those are things dominate

life in north carolina. and so, um, you know, insurance we were never a threat. we, we never would have been a threat. uh, i raise the most amount of money for any non democratic or republican candidate in the country last year. as one told, and i raised $200000.00. that's nothing, you know, in my race and my senate raise the 2 major candidates democratic public and they raised a $100000000.00. so we were never going to be a threat. but what it was is that we were stepping into their turf. we were, we were broaching on we, we were encroaching on their entitlement. how dare we that type of thing. and so they thought the squash as they also know that they're there. right. and they know they're corrupt and they're afraid of, of anyone saying anything that might insult or hurt their donors, such as advocating reg, control, or for medicare for all you know, in, in a major race. i would like to thank our guest, matthew ho for joining us today and for sharing his experience in whistle blowing and thank you to our viewers for watching. sometimes the most profound sentiments

are the simplest. my husband got the once told us to observe good faith and justice toward all cultivate peace and harmony. with all i appeal for a cessation of hostilities. he said, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad and its essence, we will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. gundy was right, of course, even if we haven't yet learned our lesson. john curiosity, when you've been watching the whistle blowers, thanks again for joining us until next time. 2 2 2 the a the,

[000:00:00;00]

the a hi, i'm rick sanchez and i'm here to plan with you whatever you do, you do not watch my new show. seriously. why watch something that's so different. listed of opinions that he won't get anywhere else. what could i please or do the have the state department c 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 you the headlines on off the international and

pushing back on kids counter offensive as a rushing forces secure front lines and don't pass the quote into moscow officials, but president zalinski tours, nato member states looking some old weapons on the protest erupt. thing across kenya, other opposition lead a head to movement against the current governments. economic policies sort of made devastating inflation. also in the program, the protesters lambaste israel outside the united nations in new gold about palestine condemns us plans to build a new embassy on occupied territory. so we gauge reaction into it was a problem that the american decision to move exam, because it contradicts american foreign policy, especially since moving the embassy and the 2 state solution to the us is the one encouraging the occupied to break international law and keeps the patient states

and both international law, the good to have you with us a full that's a live pro. costs are from must go. this is all to international, straight to your top storage right now. so russian troops continue repelling ukrainian attacks on the front lines near the city of out of trouble of schools are known as bach mood. that is, in the donated republic. it is also according to the russian ministry of defense, especially using russian times moving into combat positions near the front lines. and the neighboring new guns were public. crating and troops are reported to have had the well to say they've been up rooted from the previous strongholds, is all according to this report from us, senior correspondent, or are you pregnant and soldier parts of the special forces squad, films, an attempt to the tag on the russian outpost, you run across and stick tight to cover on the left,

any cover we move that way. it doesn't go according to plan to support the attack is sponsored by russian troops. a machine gun opens up. an injury injured. i'm injured. the 55 loss, so in the minutes, utah, you played me in squad. he's killed the speed you epitomizes. you pains disastrous. defensive. across hundreds of kilometers the scene, but pete's head doing attacks against fortified russian positions. the casualties are renewal most then added. yeah, the american supplied max pool with the vehicle takes a direct heat reportedly ins up are always your region over the past month. billions and billions of dollars worth of need to weapons and vehicles have but,

and the financial stress is telling the conflict. this conflict has no military solution to say, i do not accept the provision of munition, especially if it is from the reserves of the vote during all me. because like you, i am the president and supreme commander, and i have clear responsibilities not to weaken the defense capabilities of demo jerry nomics know to go to see amongst native states. well, we're in, this is on the rise now, but the prospect to have a quick ukrainian victory has been proven fantasy instead of fight. they're starting to say to wait for the key of is that acceptable safe needs guns that money last piece better than they should have given us. i'm sure that you in the european union and ukraine, europe should have common values and ukraine and nato should have common values anymore, and it cannot be otherwise. it is impossible to strike

a balance or support russia in this war. why? because russia wants to destroy nato and europe, and destroying the european union. is there aim? do you understand that lensky is determined to continue as long as the united states and it's need who allies keep sending and have you nation. he can keep the war going. there are still millions of ukrainian men left to mobilize for the grind . no matter the losses. phone 321, direct case. it's directed. but the question remains to what and a quick ministry victory who arguably victory a tool for ukraine is now a distant and to use every prospect. and the more parents that becomes the hard,

the, it will be to maintain a united need to front more. i guys do you have a t from new guns region? well, they are criminal in spokesman says a negative, so put pressure on turkey or 2, or at least leaders of the notorious as of a tally. and they were previously p o. w is held by russia,