maybe this time the war will 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, data troops, and contractors in 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. but 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 those 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? i'm on your former colleagues, colleagues, did you get any support? 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. okay. i understand. well, i agree with medium bassett, or, and we actually had a deputy ambassador in 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 they have 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 receive, pushed back from, was from the senior levels of the pentagon leadership and the senior levels of the state department leadership. you, i, i could tell you that one of the things the pentagon did through central command, which general data patrice has been charged with the time they hire a student communications firm to discredit me. you know, and this is all, you know, so when you have a whistle blower, someone who's speaking out against, you know, the established authority that establishes authority, uses all the resources, it has to clash 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 sheet of communication from hire by journal portray 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 happen where 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 coming 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 gonna take a short break. stay tuned for more of our conversation. we'll be right back. 2 2 2 2 the

hi, i'm rick sanchez and i'm here to plan with you whatever you do. do not watch my new show. seriously. why watch something that's so different. little opinions that he won't get anywhere else. welcome to please, or do the have the state department, the c i a weapons, bankers, multi 1000000000 dollar corporations. choose your fax for you. go ahead. change and whatever you do. don't marshall state main street because i'm probably going to make you uncomfortable. my show is called stretching time, but again, it's not. we don't want to watch it because it might just change the way you

the welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry onto were speaking with whistle blower. matt. whoa 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, the punishment was nothing compared to yours and you went to prison for speaking

the truth. so uh, humbled to have you say that to me think, why does the the, you know, so you do you have post traumatic stress disorder? you have, i 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 becoming more familiar with, basically because of the body armor and vehicle armor we had in the rock and ask them wars we survive, things walked away from explosions that in any previous were, 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 in 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'd just 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 over time 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 and taken part in things in iraq. uh uh 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 notice uh, shakespeare wrote about this, the greeks and the romans wrote about this home or 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 in that exist, 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 purpose is 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 the united states has had and put good quotes. right. but the civil

war world war to 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 wound because more does kill your soul. yes, a casual tooth 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, i states marine corps would not spend millions and millions of dollars training recruits to kill. you know, if you're a young man, you joined the marine corps. are you going into the infantry? i should say, woman. now, because when i can go to 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 wears off and that's where the moral injury starts. to study and as you have to then rectify, you have to deal with what you took part in that. what that means to whom you believe yourself to be as a person. this is without transportation comes in. matt, 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 have gone to work for defense, contractors, weapons manufacturers. and even then among them there is, uh, 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 handcuffs 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, a, an eagle or stars on their shoulder as you know, or they work for the defense industry. so i think most people,

and we know this is polling, we know that the majority of veterans of the rock and asked him words, think those words were a mistake, think they should not have been slot. a higher percentage. veterans think that been to the general population and general population by ward my wide margin believes that so you can see see that those of us who went there and saw and experienced it took part in it. and i think a lot of people don't speak out because there is a shame there is regret, but there's also too of a false patriotism, a junior wisdom that exists in this country that does not allow for descent. it 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. 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 eisenhower media network. and that's a lot of what we try and do is trying to 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 conducting military ventures across the globe. i think you're absolutely right. more recently you are 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 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 seat at the disenfranchised black voters. as long as he was taken care of it, i think that's what you see there's, 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 the signature that we needed. we far surpassed the number that we needed actually. and then we were hit with allegations of corruption of fraud is 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 if,

as soon as we turned in our signatures to get on the ballot, they just went to the playbook. and okay, this is what we do next. and we file a lawsuit. we file complaints with the state board of elections. we do a, b, c, d, and try and exhaust up. unfortunately, we were able to not be exhausted. we are able to persevere, hold on how to a great attorney who was pro bono otherwise we wouldn't been able to do it so couldn't afford to do so. and we were able to stay on the ballot and we won twice. we one in the federal court, the 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, i was running in the us senate raise one was the trying about the goals were to try and get valid access. tried how trying for a, these independent political parties, that was one of the goals, but then the other goals were to, to basically, you know, try and get certain issues into the race, medicare for all, and frank control, especially as well as ending the war on drugs because those are things dominate life in north carolina. and so you know, insurance, we were never a threat. we,

we never would have been a threat. 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 to squash us. they also know that they're there, right? and they know their 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 2 the the the

november 22nd 2022 found raised orthodox christians, confronted ukrainian security service offices, looking entrances and exits. the key is owed as monastery. they were looking for i like russian spies among the monks, and we mean zillow seeming us. uh and it goes no why not all the reason for the brutal crack down. once you choose permission, it sits on a song about the wrong being reason enough to condemn any orthodox christian attacks in prison and even kill them. but i knew i shot my hand to pick it up so many was store any store to fill? i slide it in your, your store thought i shoot. we used to use the same, you know, the same,

we will send you both are used to miss dog this season. you need of the, i'm actually i've just, i've been doing news now for 30 years and 2 languages all over the world in here in the us. and i've interviewed for. busy our us presidents working for of the united states major television networks been fired by a bunch. i believe there should be honest and direct and impactful. and this is direct impact. the, you know, there's this video that continues to circulate seemingly everywhere. it's a clip of joe biden looking like, well, in this video to be fair. he looks

a little bit like an alzheimer's patient who got lost in a nursing home. look, i don't mean to sound me. i'm not trying to be mean about this, but he really does look befuddled, confused, not exactly sure where he is and it seems like the more he thinks about it, the more confused he seems to get. the mr. president plan to watch what happens now. when the announcer starts to talk to try and give the president directions, he's helping them out. the president appears to get even more confused. at the end of such a meant to survive the world. thank you. seems kind of an adequate but for all the millions whose lives will be saved to the communities where life will be

transformed. thank you. so thank you president buying now, if you're wondering what is happening here, the answer is actually pretty simple. called old age. i mean, look, so i did a little work for us here. i looked up what happens when we all turn 80, and here's what i found. and basically i'm going to read to you what the experts on this aging site. physically, our bones tend to shrink in size and density, which makes us weaker. our muscles, it says here also lose strength, endurance inflexibility, which affects our coordination, stability, and our balance. and now let's see what it says about our minds at 80. our brain actually shrinks, particularly in the frontal cortex, and yes,

that means our memory, the clients. as a result, memory tasks become much, much more difficult. not look, i'm not saying that the 80 year old can be smart and can't be happy and can't even be physically fit. in some cases it's just all i'm saying is it's just, it's not the norm. it's not the norm. and to be president of the united states, here's what drives the driver to the states that are affected. here's that, that you can do the drivers. so there's an age or just the type of thing that can happen to any one. the answer that question is pretty simple and also complex. but one cannot ignore that. this type of thing has happened more than once now to mr. by like these videos that we see on, you know, on the google as i say. and we also can ignore the fact that he's the what happens

to be the oldest president ever in fact, you know, who are the 2 oldest presidents in the history of the us in the last 2. that's right. part of the go button. the oldest man ever occupied the white house was donald trump, who's now celebrating a 77th birthday newspapers like the new york times, are now writing about this problem. should we say, joe and tucker, see that's what it's called. geron talk receive. look at this headline that asks the question. if americans are stuck on german park or see how tired are americans of the very old generations, always running this country. according to a, cnbc full 70 percent of americans say, they don't want mr. button to run for a 2nd term, 70 percent saying they don't want them to run again. that's

a lot of people. is it possible, though, that our country encourages this? actually, our system encourages a tired and state and politicians. and if so, why, why do you think somebody, medical scholars reminders that the system is skewed towards conformity? in other words, why rock the boat? why change things? and there are so many people making so much money. just as things are with the same older people in charge. does the average american benefit from this? how about young people pass so seems obvious. well, i wanna show you a chart now. look at this chart detail, is it pretty much detailed who boats in america? look at that, the percentage of 60 to 80 year olds who vote in presidential elections is more than 70 percent. the percentage of the older people loading is 70 percent. and when we look at those who are $30.00 to $40.00 for that percentage goes down to about 50

percent. in other words have, don't even bothered about. and now look what happens when we look at 18 to 29 year olds. that the number goes down to roughly 40 percent. in other words, the majority of americans in that particular category don't vote. so in america, the older you are, the more likely you are to vote and the older you are, the more like the more likely you are to get elected as well and stay elected. and with each passing year, this geron park receive gets more and more pronounced. and joining us now is uh edward woodson. he's a tv and uh radio host whose name has appeared on too many periodicals to name. and he's work for probably too many outlets to name is. well, let's start with this there of only been 2 presidents in the united states in their seventy's and guess who they are. so they are joe biden. and

donald trump. yeah, i mean, what do you make of that? what does that say about us as a country? i think what it, what it represents is that the boomers aren't ready to like go. right. you know, you've got to solve this boomer generation which by the way, if you look at the birth, you know, of the boomer generation such as such a, a long generation right. but it was 1947 to or 1964. so you've got the, the we're, we're, we're just coming to the end of the boomer generation now. and i think part of that is that the boomer generation doesn't want to like go. and i think that's what it is. well, there's the writing. there's something that many are writing about now it's called geron park receive. busy and, and to me, i mean, i don't know what it means to you, but to me it means too many entrenched. a people in our system of government who are going to probably remain there for years and years. and there is the,

and like you said, they don't want to let go good or bad. the good or bad to, you know, i, i'm a conflicted about this because i know this has been a media narrative for the last week. now, you know, you're and i, and i, by the way, i wonder why that is because the democratic party watched the push button now. right, well, i mean, i'll tell you this. um, i'll tell you this recently, and i think a lot of americans have seen this and for our audience overseas. i think you'll find this quite interesting. president biden isn't a news conference any calls out congresswoman jackie larson right back. we have the video, we're going to play it right here. okay, now we're coming out of the video. busy did you, did you see that? i mean he's asking if she's in the room and she's dead, she had just died in a car accident. they do it and everybody knew it. i mean,

i'm just watching that mom and then i'm thinking to myself, god bless them. but is it all timers? is it, is it? well, what do you make of that moment? well, look, that's not an isolated moment, rick. i mean, we've had other moments like this, right. and, and, and a lot of people in washington, a lot of people have had whispers that perhaps joe biden is, uh, you know, uh, early onset of, uh, of dementia alzheimer's. right? i mean it's, it's a natural progression of his age to be that way. so i think that what we're seeing too is um, slowly, but surely you're seeing this would be, you know, the documents and you know, as a matter fact today they just search the robust house. you know, the d o j a went in there and i, i, i think this is a slow role to kind of take him out and, and possibly bringing somebody younger. so no, i mean, we'll talk about the numbers in a little bit. and by the way, just let me just ask you, uh, do you see him running again?

do you think there's any possibility he can run for a 2nd, sir? so i, i think that maybe he might want to, but i, i feel like the forces, i think after the mid term, when he made that announcement right. saying that he was gonna run or possibly run . i think you already kind of started to see the writing on the wall and you kind of started seeing. but you know, there's no coincidence a gavin newsom now is making a big play. you know, you've got talk of. 1 you know, bringing in new blood, frankly. yeah. you know, you across america, by the way, i mean, correct. it doesn't, but you can, we can talk about, i mean, look at the republican side, there's trauma, right. and uh, i mean uh say what you want about a guy doesn't email, doesn't text barely knows how to use technology and his reading skills. well, watch in stem fios where women have.