➡ In the 2024 presidential election, Republican voters prioritized the economy and immigration. President Trump, on his first day in office, signed an order to secure the borders and combat illegal activities like mass migration, drug trafficking, and human smuggling. The administration claims to have made significant progress, including seizing large amounts of drugs and rescuing thousands of children from trafficking. However, the author expresses skepticism about the accuracy of these claims and encourages readers to do their own research.

➡ The speaker reflects on how America’s focus on counter-terrorism after a significant event led to a shift in military strategy, potentially allowing other countries like China and Russia to advance their military technology. Despite this, the speaker believes that the American military, if allowed to fully utilize its resources, is unmatched. The speaker also discusses the controversial withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving behind valuable equipment. Finally, the speaker appeals for support for their network, emphasizing its commitment to delivering uncensored truth.

➡ Bradley Bowman, a senior director at the Center on Military and Political Power, warns that if the U.S. only uses military force to address issues in Latin America, it could lose to China in competition and waste military resources. He suggests that the region needs more than just military intervention, including support from different agencies and the private sector to tackle economic challenges. The text also discusses the potential risks of overstretching the U.S. military, the importance of securing U.S. borders, and the need for careful decision-making by U.S. leaders.

➡ The text discusses the challenges and consequences of overburdening the military, emphasizing the need to consider the impact on soldiers and veterans. It also highlights the importance of planning for potential losses in military operations. The text further discusses the U.S.’s focus on drug cartels and China’s increasing influence in Latin America, particularly around the Panama Canal. Lastly, it mentions the U.S.’s controversial war on drugs and the recent actions taken against drug smuggling vessels.

➡ The text discusses the harsh realities of the war on drugs, emphasizing its brutal and destructive nature. It criticizes those who question the harsh measures taken against drug traffickers, arguing that these criminals cause immense harm to American society. The author believes that the current administration’s tough stance is justified and necessary to protect American citizens. The text also touches on political issues, expressing dissatisfaction with the influence of foreign states and dual citizens in the U.S. government.

➡ American Hemp Hub offers a range of hemp products designed to improve your mood and reduce stress. Their Entourage line includes three unique blends: Low Rider for relaxation, Focus THCA and CVB for energy without a crash, and High Flyer for fun without a hangover. These products are made from potent, pure hemp from the Midwest and aim to enhance good vibes while reducing the bad ones. Check out their offerings at Americanhemphub.com.

So it seems that apparently US Officials of some sort have taken upon themselves to talk to the media in this instance that we’re going to explore today, military times. Under the promise from the media that they will remain anonymous, they have agreed to talk about sensitive information as it relates to military involvement in places around the world. And it seems apparently that the president and the cabinet have announced that they’re gonna, they’re gonna shift focus, they’re gonna shift focus now on the homeland, protecting the homeland and more focus on the Western hemisphere. And as you can probably imagine, that would be China.

And so today we’re going to explore a little bit of this and we will see where it leads us. I’m sure that there’s a goat trail or something somewhere that will end up down. Hopefully not. I’d like to stay on track, but I do not, do not do a good job at doing that sometimes. So anyway, today’s conversation will be structured around that. So stick with us. Don’t go away. We start now. Hey folks and welcome here to another installment of the Richard Leonard Show. I’d like to thank you for joining us and as always, if you’re a person that is new here, we want to thank you for coming back and participating and watching.

If you’re, if you’re not new here, we’d like to thank you for participating and coming back and watching if you are new here again, let me start over. If you’re new here, we thank you for checking us out. Hopefully we can capture your attention enough to bring you back for another show or two or many. But nonetheless, we thank you for being here today. Before we get started on the conversation, we have to take a minute to talk about our, our friends over at Cortez Wealth Management. After all, they do help us keep the lights on.

Get yourselves on over to America first retirementplan.com check out their website. You’ll notice that there are links for information, videos and documents and things to read. Carlos Cortez and his staff want to get you down the path to a tax free retirement plan. And they want you to get down this path and secure a future financially by investing your money, if you so choose and are so inclined with America first businesses, American owned businesses, businesses that support the economy and the community here on our homeland. But most importantly, their products and services are all American made and distributed.

So get on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com check out all the information. If you have any comments, questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to them. They are There willing and ready to help you get over any of those hurdles that you may have. So again, America first retirement plan.com. get over there, check them out and you won’t be, you won’t be disappointed. I’m confident of that. Okay, so the President has announced that they are shifting a global focus to of course, the homeland, as we mentioned, and the Western hemisphere. As we know that ever since 9 11, our Department of Defense, the Pentagon, the U.S.

military, all those things have been focused on this war on terror. In fact, even veterans who have served in the military who took part in any of these operations anywhere across the globe have all received the Global War on Terrorism service medal. So what does that mean? That means that our focus as far as the world order of things was to focus of course on the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan, we know it was the longest war in our country’s history, but also all the other places around Iran, of course, the Middle east as a whole. I used to refer to it as not really the Middle east, but Southwest Asia.

And so I think that all of those apply. I don’t know, I don’t know that it’s a, it’s a super stellar idea to take away all focus on the Middle East. I think that there are, or let’s just say the Eastern Hemisphere, but let’s just, let’s say that there are threats, there are continued threats. I mean, after all, earlier this summer the United States did launch a pretty, a pretty radical, I don’t, I shouldn’t even call it radical, but as a pretty gnarly mission to bomb nuclear facilities in Iran. So for us to say or think that we are shifting focus completely away from that part of the world, I think would be not, not a smart thing for us to do.

Of course we need to keep an eye, we need to probably keep a presence in that part of the world, in that part of the world in case something happens, something pops off, we will have troops there already. But what does this mean? What does this mean that we are now going to, to focus on the homeland and the Western Hemisphere? Well, let’s dissect this. Let’s at least read through it and, and talk about what this might mean as far as the opinion of Richard Leonard is concerned, which isn’t really, it’s not a universe altering opinion.

I’m not a person of power. I’m just a guy that sits here, talks to you through a microphone and has my own opinions based on my life experience as a military member. And just a person who tries to be as observant as possible. Because the other thing that we do know to be true is that nowadays if you don’t do your due diligence to look for more information to shape your opinion about what’s happening in the world, you are most likely going to roll with whatever lie the mainstream media tells you. And I think that we’re also finding recently that there are many independent content creators, I guess you could say podcasts or social media accounts or whatever you want to call it, that are also feeding bullshit to the world, but most importantly for our purposes, the American people.

And so, as usual, I do like to, when I have conversations with people, I do like to tell them, you know, you really got to take it upon yourself to dig a little bit deeper and really kind of focus on what’s important to you and take in all the information, read all the articles, watch the videos and dissect them and analyze them for yourself the best you can to shape your opinion and then see what all the other stuff that you’re being told, if any of it makes sense. And some stuff just makes absolutely no sense to me based on how I perceive the information, some of it makes a little bit of sense and some of it is pretty clear to me at times.

And I think that that is common amongst most people who have made the decision to try to do their own research and try to find things to shape their opinion based on what’s important to them, and then realizing also that the things that are important to me as it relates to government or the goings ons of the world may not be important to you or anybody else for that matter at all. So keeping those things in mind, let’s, let’s check out what we got going on here. So here is the article in the Military Times. New Pentagon strategy to focus on homeland in the Western Hemisphere.

China remains a top national security threat according to officials that tell the military. They told the Military Times this the Pentagon’s top national security focus will, will mirror that of President Donald Trump’s America first agenda, with multiple US Officials telling Military Times that the department will prioritize protecting the homeland and the Western Hemisphere. Counter countering China will remain key national security interest of the new defense strategy, which is expected to be released soon. Officials say. You know, I always like when they, when they just say officials or those people or those guys. And I think it’s a little bit different when it’s coming from somebody who’s doing things like this, right, because we’re not, you know, I’m not A trained journalist.

Right. I didn’t go to school for journalism. I don’t have any experience working for a news outlet or anything like that. The experience I have is here on this camera and then at the studio I have for my other platform, 3 clicks media. But other than that, I have no formal training other than, I suppose, my. My bachelor’s degree in public relations or communications, which isn’t very. I don’t believe, gives me a whole lot of pedigree. But who are officials and who are these people? Right. If we’re going to be a bona fide media outlet or source, is it okay to say officials? And they’re going to outline here that these officials agreed to give information under the understanding that they would have anonymity.

And, I mean, I can understand it, but I don’t know, I always feel like it’s a little bit fishy when we don’t have names or titles or, you know, where this information came from, even if it’s kind of broad. But that’s just me. The Pentagon. The Pentagon document lays out the military’s plan to increase lethality, deter aggression, confront adversaries, and defend America’s borders. A mission one official said was why Trump was elected. Republican voters in 2024 in the. In the 2024 presidential election ranked the economy and immigration as their most important issues, which the President has vowed to address and bring under control.

On January 20, on his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order calling on U.S. northern Command to help seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasions, including unlawful mass migration, which it seems as though he’s made a pretty good dent in that. I mean, if the numbers that we are told from Tom Holman and his crew are accurate, then Trump is doing that. I mean, he said that that was one of the things he was going to do, which was a huge reason why I think people voted for him.

Territorial integrity and security in the United States. Repelling forms of invasion, including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities. So if we just talk about these couple things. Mass migration, narcotics, other criminal activities, but human smuggling and trafficking. So the mass migration, I believe if the information is accurate, that he’s. He’s addressing it. He’s addressing it like he said he would. Narcotics trafficking. According to Cash Patel last week, who testified to the Senate committee, I believe it was appropriations or something like that, that they have seized all kinds of drugs.

In fact, I think one of the statistics he put out was that they, they have secured enough meth and or fentanyl to kill a third of the US population. That’s drugs that will not hit the streets. Those are drugs that will not kill Americans today. Does that mean that it’s all gone? No, I’m sure that there’s a lot more, but I believe that a third of the American population, that’s a lot of drugs, that’s a lot of fentanyl, it’s a lot of meth. And it is good to know that if that is accurate, if it’s true, that’s a huge dent not only in saving lives of American people, but it’s also a massive kick in the shorts to the cartels, the Chinese, whoever was involved in this, I don’t know who it was, they never really said.

But you would imagine that those things come from China. They come up into America through the southern border. I’m sure a lot of it comes through the northern border as well. But this is going to be a massive kick in the shorts to the folks who stand to make a whole shit ton of money on these drugs that are now I’m sure destroyed. If not, they’re being held somewhere for some other purpose, but hopefully they’ve been destroyed. Human smuggling and trafficking, I guess that’s self explanatory, right? I don’t know that we ever will know what the true numbers are.

I think that when you talk about things like trafficking in human beings, a lot of it gets away, a lot of it is never uncovered, a lot of it is never talked about or heard of. But the fact that we are saving children, I think Kash Patel also put out a statistic that was something like 4300 children or something, or maybe it was 4900 children have been saved and found or whatever and returned to safety and to their families since, since the President took over. And again, if that is true, that’s a pretty, that’s a pretty impressive statistic in my opinion.

I can’t imagine I have four children. I can’t imagine one of them being snatched up or coaxed into some kind of online relationship to meet some pervert somewhere and then be drugged or kidnapped or beat up, killed or worse, sold to somebody else to suffer through whatever it is they do to these children. And I’m sure it’s super dark and I’m sure it’s super gruesome. And so if this is true that we saved between four and five thousand children since the beginning of this year, that’s fantastic. Hopefully next year that number doubles. We can only hope that the people who are perpetrating our children are stopped, held accountable, and then dealt the same exact viciousness, I suppose is a good word, the same exact viciousness that they’ve showed these children.

And then. And then a lot of people get away with it, which is even worse. But we can do what we can do. And so, again, if all of these numbers are accurate, I think it’s a. It’s a. It’s a pretty. It’s a pretty strong statistic that the President could hang his hat on. Hopefully this stuff is true. The chances of it being true, I’m positive, are not 100%. So what that percentage might look like, I don’t know. But I think that there’s a lot of things that we are not told. There are a lot of truths that we as Americans will never know.

We’ll never know the truth about a lot of things we’ll never know the full truth about. Epstein will never know the whole truth about Diddy. We’ll never know the whole truth about the Clintons. We’ll never know the whole truth about all kinds of things that have happened. That, quite frankly, the American people deserve to know the whole truth and probably now more than ever, because as we all know, the wool has been pulled over our eyes on a whole lot of shit. And I think one of the positive things about our country right now, if, you know, if we can name, we can name any, is that we do have enough people seemingly in the communities across this country that care.

That care about the fact that they may be being lied to. They care about the fact that innocent people are suffering and they’re going without. They’re being thrust out of their livelihoods for whatever reason. Parents losing their children, spouses losing their. Their. Their. Their other spouse. I mean, there’s just a lot of things going on, and unfortunately, I just don’t think that we’re going to ever know the real truth about all of it. We may not never know the. No, we may not ever know the real truth about any of it. So take what we can get.

And that’s why I say, I think it’s important. It’s important for you to get down and dirty and do your own research and make up your own mind without being swayed by one thing or the other. So it’s important that if we’re going to pick a topic to dive into that we look at both sides of the story, look at anybody who may be in the middle of both sides. Take it all in, digest it, maybe sleep on it for a day and then formulate your own opinion and then ask questions and then dig a little bit deeper to find the answers to your questions.

Sometimes they’re hiding right out in plain sight. I think that that’s, I think it’s pretty clear now. I mean, we have enough technology, we have enough people who are, I got to say this quick, ever since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, among other things happening in this country, I have to give some credit to some of these Internet sleuths, some of these folks who sit at a computer, maybe it’s after work, into the night or they sit at a computer all day and they start dissecting this and they start watching and they start formulating ideas. And not just in, in Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I think that there’s, I think that there is a whole shit ton of theories about what happened and I think that probably 85 to 90% of them are complete and utter bullshit.

But again, I don’t know that we’ll ever know the full truth. So anyway, let’s continue. Defense of the American homeland has historically been the top national security priority for Republicans and Democratic presidents alike. To achieve this goal, the Pentagon has used a combination of projecting military power forward to meet threats where they are building alliances to work together against common enemies, maintaining a strong nuclear deterrent, and building a missile defense capability to protect key population Centers. After the US was attacked on September 11th. Okay, here we go. Washington shifted on, shifted to a counter terror focus as near peer competitor Beijing continued to develop its military.

This is the interesting part. During, during Trump’s first administration, the Pentagon reprioritized the focus on great power competition with China and Russia over countering terrorism. Keeping its competitive advantage over China and Russia remain the department’s top priority under the Biden administration. One official stressed to Military Times this week that the new NDS will not, will not be a complete shift away from China. Instead, the official said, the Pentagon can use this hyper focus on the Western hemisphere to better counter Chinese evil activity in Latin America, in a region even though as it’s thought of, China is often thought of apparently as America’s backyard.

And I think that this is an important point because there was a massive shift after 911 and it wasn’t very apparent to me. I mean, I was in my second year of college when, when 911 went down. In fact, the day that it went down and it was all over the tv, I was brushing my teeth in my dorm room, getting ready to go to class. That morning. And then of course, the universe blew up for America as we watched what happened, classes were cancelled, all of these things. And you could feel, you could feel the shift, you could feel the change.

And I will say that at that point in my life, I didn’t follow politics. I wasn’t interested in the goings ons of the world. I was more concerned about trying to get halfway decent grades and make sure I wasn’t late to football practice. And so my interest in being informed about what’s happening around the world didn’t come to me until, until I joined the military. And so, but, but this is a good point. We went right to a counter terrorism posture in this country. It seems like, if you look back, it seems like for the most part, all of these initiatives that were in place to try to keep up with other world’s militaries, Right? Because part of the challenge is to make sure that you have adequate equipment, that it’s advanced enough to compete in case you’re attacked or need to attack somebody else for whatever reason.

And having superior equipment and technology is something that’s very important, right? I mean, if we think about it, just having, just having rifles that shoot bullets and have any old tank that can, that can fire heat rounds or sable rounds or cannon rounds, whichever ones downrange and hit a target is one thing, but having equipment and munitions and lethality as high as possible, if you can be the most lethal military in the world, well, you’ll probably be pretty safe. And so we went right to counterterrorism. And as this reporter is saying, the rest of the world, the rest of our biggest enemies, China and Russia at the time, continued to grow their army.

They continued to research better equipment, better munitions. They began to, just to do more to keep their lethality growing versus us, who went on the, the, the offense as it pertains to terrorism, was that a good move? Maybe, maybe not. It seems as though now it may have not have been the best move, but I would argue that America still has superior firepower, equipment, aircraft, all of those things. So maybe we didn’t lose a lot of ground in that sense, but I don’t know, man. I think that if the American military was allowed by the powers that be in this instance, President Trump and Pete Hegseth, in the event of a war breaking out or some big battle that we need to be involved in, if the US Military was allowed to use its munitions and its equipment and its tools of war to their full potential, I don’t know that there’s Any military in the world that can stop us.

I believe that part of the problem is that the bureaucrats, the powers that be, the leadership in this country and also in our military, they handcuff soldiers. For example, when I went to the Middle east on my second deployment, we were stationed in Kuwait. It was at the time when they said the war was over and we were closing the gate from Kuwait to Iraq. We were pulling out. And so part of the mission of our brigade was to convoy into Iraq as far as we were allowed or as far as was feasibly possible. I mean, some, some units, some elements went all the way to northern Iraq, but most of them, I don’t know, went a whole lot further north of Baghdad.

I could be wrong about that. And then they would bring soldiers, you know, that were stationed up there. But most, most importantly, equipment, vehicles, all kinds of stuff, they would bring it back to Kuwait. The stuff that they thought was valuable enough to do that. I mean, don’t be mistaken. I had a few friends that were on these convoy teams that went into Iraq to close down these bases. And the things that they said we left was quite extensive. Much like we talk about leaving all of our equipment and our weapons and aircraft and all that stuff in Afghanistan.

When we unasked that ao, I don’t believe it was that bad. But we left a lot of electronics, TVs, computers, hopefully they were all wiped. A lot of vehicles, a lot of permanent structures and even modular structures, you know, places where soldiers were sleeping or officing out of all of that stuff, left millions and millions of dollars, maybe even a couple billion dollars dollars worth of equipment and things. And then when they closed down the base, when the last truck was gone from a lot of these places in Iraq, they just left the gates open. So first come, first serve on all of America’s vehicles and things that they left.

But they did bring. They did bring a lot of stuff back. I saw the trucks rolling through Kuwait. So what that stuff was, I don’t know. I wasn’t part of that, part of that element that did that stuff. I just know people that were there. So I mean, there’s just a lot of. There’s a lot of questions and there’s a lot of contradicting information about a lot of stuff. I mean, the example of closing down Iraq was just, just one example. Oh, look at this. We are out of time for the segment. Boy, it went really fast.

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And this came from Bradley Bowman, who is the Senior director of the center on Military and Political Power at the foundation for Defense of Democracies. That has to be one of the longest titles of an organization. Wow. Anyway, that’s Bradley Bowman. However, analysis, including Bradley Bowman, caution that if the US Only brings a military hammer to a region that needs inter agent, interagency and public private sector support for its economic challenges, the US Will lose the competition with China in Latin America and waste a lot of money in military resources. So what does that mean? What does that mean? That if we, where is it here? If we only bring a military hammer to a region that needs interagency and public private sector support for economic challenges, the US Will lose the competition with China.

So this is, this is a perspective of it’s not just about military force. It’s not just about, just about occupying. It’s not just about conducting some kind of ghost operation to take out China in Latin America. But it seems to me that they’re also talking about goods and services, that if, if we only, if we only go into Latin America or Mexico or whatever with military force and might, well, there’s a whole lot of other things that we’re going to destroy, right? I mean, we all know that if there are military operations that involve any kind of combat, there’s collateral damage.

And maybe there’s something to that. I mean, it wasn’t long ago that the President deemed Ms. 13 trend Aragua, all these other Latin gangs as terrorist organizations, all these cartels. And so if we’re going to bring the fight to the cartel, I guess I’m not necessarily opposed to that. But if it also means that we’re going to lose massively in other areas, well, maybe that’s something to consider. But, but what we do need to focus on is making sure that the overwhelming amount of drugs and other bullshit trafficking and all these other things that are coming into our country through these other places.

What’s the, what’s the, what’s the better option? Right? Do we, do we take the fight right to the cartels and just wipe them off the face of the map? And then maybe there’s a conversation later with these other governments in South America and Mexico or whatever to help rebuild and re revitalize their countries? Maybe that’s part of it, or maybe it needs to be more calculated. I don’t know. I’m not a, I’m not a military strategist. I’m just an infantryman. But I would not want to be one of the people that had to make these decisions because it seems like there’s a whole lot of other, a whole lot of other bullshit to sift through.

There’s a whole lot of other people that you need to appease when you make these decisions. And so it seems like it ends up being a conversation or something that you have to be willing to sacrifice something from your side to get something that you want. And I would argue that as it relates to drugs, as it relates to massive migration, as it relates to human trafficking and all those things that we talked about earlier in the article, I don’t know that we want to or should be sacrificing our stance on those issues because at the end of the day, those things all lead to a whole lot of heartache and hard times for American people.

And is it a situation where if America said, I don’t care what anybody says, we’re going to stop this, we’re going to bring the fight to them and we’re going to, we’re going to just end this? Is that a possibility? I don’t think it is. I don’t know that there’s enough bureaucrats, if any, that are willing to give up their seat come next election, willing to give up any kind of donation money or anything like that. I don’t know that there’s any bureaucrat that’s willing to give up money, power or control or all three to stop this stuff completely.

Because we hear a lot of people talking about due process and this and that and the other thing. Well, at what point do our leaders in this country make the decision that we need to protect our people? The American people deserve to be safe. They deserve to be protected. I mean, that was the old. That was a whole idea, right, of this place. That’s a whole, That’s a whole reason why our founding fathers wrote the documents. That was the idea. The American people deserve to be protected and represented fairly. And somewhere along the lines, clearly we’ve lost that.

And so again, we may never know the truth. We may never know exactly what’s going on, and we may never even see any positive change in the near future, maybe even in our lifetime, who knows? I know things are so divided and polarized at this point that it almost seems like it’s. We’re just waiting. We’re just waiting for the hammer to fall anyway, so you guys do what you’re gonna do. Those of us who are just regular guys and regular gals, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get ourselves in order, right? Because if the Rapture is coming, you gotta get yourself right and you.

And then just live day by day, do the best you can, be the best human being, you can be all of those things. And it does get frustrating. I agree a thousand percent with people who are like, well, you know, this just gets so frustrating because I’d like to know what it’s all for. You know, why are veterans talk about it all the time? Why did I hand the government a blank check for. For my life to defend something that some say is a complete nutter lie? It’s a complete fabrication, and none of it is ever going to equate to anything positive.

Some people really believe in it. They believe in this idea of America and this pursuit of happiness and democracy and all this other stuff. Either you’re on one side or the other, and then the third position is to be in the middle. And I think that in a lot of issues, me personally, I’m in the middle on quite a few things and probably because often I don’t feel like there’s enough information to pick a side. A lot of times I feel like, well, these people seem, their story’s compelling, the words that they’re saying are compelling, but it seems like there’s something missing or there’s some pretty big questions to be answered.

And so it becomes hard to pick one side or the other. Let’s see here. However, analysts including Bowman caution that if the US only brings military hammer we read that Mr. Bowman also, he has also warned that defending US vital interest in the Pacific, Europe and the Middle east while adopting a more robust US Military posture in Latin America could quickly exacerbate existing shortfalls in US Military capacity. And that’s true. That’s true. We don’t have the numbers, we don’t have the numbers to shift our focus this massively to the Western Hemisphere in the homeland and then keep up all the military operations we have, for example, in the Middle east, we don’t have enough people joining the military, even though recruitment is allegedly, as we’re told, it’s going up.

All the services, to the best of my knowledge, have reached and some even exceeded their annual recruitment goal. And so that’s positive. But I really don’t know that we still have any kind of size. We don’t have the numbers to, to conduct these operations all over the world. Not in a way that would make them something that benefits the American people. And so of course then if you stretch yourself too thin, that leaves you open somewhere or extremely weak somewhere. And so this may be a thing where we need to make a decision, not we as in you and me, but our leadership, our president, our government, they need to make a decision about what the focus is going to be.

And if you ask me, the number one focus at this point in time should 1000% be our borders, 100%. I believe that there are, there are people and organizations, if you want to call them organizations, but there are groups of people in many places in this world that are looking for us to completely crumble and fail. And when that happens, if that happens, we’re really going to be in the hurt bag. So something like being careful not to stretch our military too thin or overwork them, overburden them, is probably pretty important. We saw some of that, you know, during the later stages of the Iraq, Afghanistan wars.

The soldiers were being deployed 6, 7, 8, 9 times, depending on your branch of service and what your job was. And the one thing you’re never going to get. Well, I shouldn’t say that because there’s probably a lot of them now. But back when I served in the early 2000s, I believe it would have been difficult to get most people to sit out of a deployment. Not because they wanted to go fight tyranny and take down terrorist organizations or whatever. They didn’t. It wasn’t because they wanted to bring democracy to somewhere else in the world. I mean, all those are those touchy feely things that they talk about, but it would have been pretty hard, in my opinion, to get a bunch of soldiers to sit out when their brothers and sisters are going forward.

I could tell you one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my military career, other than hand over my six month old son to his mother without knowing if I was ever going to see him again, was to. After I got blown up by an IED and was told that I couldn’t go outside the wire for a while, I think it was three weeks, while they monitored my concussions and my brain and all those things, it was really difficult to watch my team leave. I would sometimes go sit in the talk and try to listen in on the radio traffic to see what was happening, see what was going down.

But sometimes I wasn’t allowed. I was taking up too much space maybe, I don’t know, maybe I had too many questions or opinions or something of that nature. But it was a really difficult thing. And so I believe that if we are going to stretch our military too thin, people are going to get overburdened. Their deployable status will diminish. And then we leave ourselves open. And not only that, but then let’s think about what effect that has on the men and women who are strapping up boots every day and putting on body armor and going out and fighting battles or doing civil affairs work or whatever it is.

We as a country have to take care of these people after they’ve done all that. And so another consequence of overburdening our military force is that we have to then take care of them. Not that we don’t want to take care of them, not that we shouldn’t take care of them, but we already have a lot of discussion and there’s a lot of examples out there currently and in the not so distant past, and the distant past, I guess, about how veterans are not necessarily taken care of, not the way that they were promised anyway. And so when we hear things like, you know, if we do this, this and this, well, we could overburden our military.

And that is not good because we don’t have numbers to do that. But we do not ever talk about, in these instances, there is never talk about the aftermath. There is never talk about how it affects the men and women who are fighting the battles, the ones that are sacrificing everything for this mission, whether they agree with it or not. Those discussions aren’t had. And if they are had, they’re not public. But people like me think about that. I think that there’s probably a whole lot of other Veterans, military people, family members, those types of things that do think about that.

And I’m going to go on a limb and say, I don’t know that if it’s always really taken into consideration when these decisions are made, maybe it is. Maybe there’s a guy or a gal in these meetings that are going, wait a minute, hold on. If we do this, this and that, what is the aftermath going to look like? You know, we’ve had discussions before about how it would be difficult to be the person with a whole lot of bling on your chest as far as rank goes, having some meeting with other military leaders about some operation or some battle or something, some military operation, and then get to the part where we talk about what are our expected losses.

And I tell you, man, that would not be a job that I want. I don’t want to be part of planning a military operation and then having to come to terms with the fact that, well, okay, we’re going to send 250 soldiers here to do this. We’re expecting a 12% personnel loss, a 5% personnel loss. Those things have to be part of the conversation, right? Because you got to talk about reinforcements, you got to have QRF online, you got to have air support, you got to have all kinds of logistical, all kinds of things. That part of the planning process.

I don’t know that a lot of people take that into account. Maybe they do, but I’ve never come across a conversation or been invited into a conversation about military things where people are talking about, well, it’d be really sweet if we could go do blah, blah, blah, blah, and just wipe them off the map. Well, that might be true and maybe even necessary, but the common person doesn’t think about, how many soldiers are we going to lose? And with the understanding that, you know, it’s war, people die, but it still needs to be taken into account.

And that is not a job that I would like to have. Let’s see here. If we take on additional military commitments and requirements and don’t provide the Pentagon commensurate additional resources, readiness will erode. And we have seen that movie before and it is not a good one. That was another thing that Mr. Bowman from. Here we go. Hold your breath. He is part of. Yeah, that’s right. He’s the senior director or whatever of the center on Military and Political Power at the foundation for Defense of Democracies. Man. As part of the new strategy, the department will continue to focus more on drug cartels, including cartels that are tied to China.

According to A US Official. This official also added that China has drastically increased its footprint in Latin America, particularly around the Panama Canal, a crucial trade route for both Washington and Beijing. So the strategy is still very keyed on defending against China, and that’s probably a good thing. I think that China and Russia are ones that we need to keep an eye on. Maybe it’s one of those things where we keep our enemies a little bit closer for whatever that looks like for our current administration and then administrations beyond. Michael Schifter is an adjunct professor of Latin American studies at Georgetown.

And he said the Panama Canal is called clearly very important to President Trump. Negotiations are underway to shift two ports there away from the Chinese to oppose controlled by the US company BlackRock. So apparently part of this plan is to get the Chinese out of a couple ports in the Panama Canal and then turn them over to a US company BlackRock. I wonder what kind of shenanigans that’s going to drum up. So US company BlackRock and Panama has withdrawn from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has extended Chinese and extended Chinese investment to more than 100 nations.

With the current administration focused on illegal drug problems in the region, Shifter hopes U.S. military assistance to Latin America will not repeat the actions of its checkered past. Washington’s war on drugs in the 1980s, along with its determination to keep communism out of the Western hemisphere, led to policies backing militaries that territory that terrorized local populations and committed human rights atrocities. Okay, so this is interesting. Let’s just. Let’s fast forward a little bit. The last time US sent ground troops to Latin America was in 1989 to depose de facto leader General Noriega. Noriega was also wanted in the US for racketeering and drug trafficking.

And Shifter is very skeptical whether the US Would send ground troops anywhere in Latin America today. I don’t see that the president wants to risk American lives anywhere. Well, that’s good. And a lot of people got killed in Panama. If he did it in Venezuela, a lot more people would be killed. I think that would be a huge risk that I don’t see Trump being prepared to take. Meanwhile, President Trump on last Friday, he said that the US Military had carried out its third fatal strike on an alleged drug smuggling vessel this month. Okay, can we talk about that? We got about four minutes left in the show.

I want to talk about this blowing up of drug boats back in the 80s as it was outlined here, President Reagan started this war on drugs. And I’d like you to think about how Much time and money and other resources, personnel, lives that have been lost to this war on drugs. And now the President has a whole lot of naysayers and a whole lot of criticism about blowing these boats out of the water. Can anyone outline. Can anyone talk about any kind of offensive posture that the US Took that was significant enough to win this war on drugs? President Reagan started it in the 80s.

At some point, it got all convoluted and sometimes maybe even just pushed to the sideline to be picked up at a later date. And now we have somebody who is making the decision. Whether it’s right, wrong, or indifferent is not what I’m after here. What I’m trying to express is that we finally have somebody who has taken the reins and made a decision, which I think is something that we should be talking about. Whether you agree with President Trump and his stance on these drug boats, for example, or not, I believe he at least deserves the credit for making the decision.

And in my opinion, making a decision that seems to benefit the American people. I mean, after all, folks, this is the war on drugs. The first word in it is war. There’s nothing pretty about it. It’s not supposed to be pretty. War is vicious. War is gruesome. It’s bloody. And it takes a toll on the people that participate to fight it and win. Also takes a toll, of course, on the people who participate, fight it and lose it. There’s a lot at stake for both sides in any war. And ever since the 80s, when this war on drugs, this war on drugs was initiated, I can’t recall.

I mean, I was born in 82, so maybe there’s a lot I don’t know about it, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of stories about any kind of initiative that was taking the fight right to the gangs or the cartels or the governments or whoever was pushing these drugs into our country. And now it’s come to a head, and the guy who’s currently sitting in the Oval Office seemingly has made the decision and said, we’re done with this. If I catch you trying it, we’re just gonna. We’re just gonna erase you. And this goes back to conversations I had on a show I did last week on three clicks.

Media. These folks don’t understand diplomacy. They don’t understand negotiation. These people 1000% operate to make money, to secure power at any means necessary. And if you don’t know and you haven’t looked and you haven’t researched, go out and find some information about how these Cartels treat people that they don’t agree with, that do not agree with them, whatever the case may be, if you get in their way, they are going to kill you. So if that is the case, why would anybody be concerned about drug boat operators due process? Why is that even a concern for people? First of all, due process is something that’s in the United States Constitution.

These folks weren’t American citizens and after all, they’ve been dubbed a terrorist organization, an enemy of the United States of America. So just because some greasy ass politician gets on a social media platform or on a television camera and whines and cries about these people’s due process and their families, this and that and the other thing, well, you know what? I feel for the families of these people who are meaning to do harm by any means necessary to you, the American person. I don’t know that we need to feel bad about obliterating organizations or people that mean to do us harm.

And by do us harm, bring in drugs that kill people very fast. And the ones that don’t die overburden our systems, they, you know, walking the street, destroying property. Talk about due process with a business owner in a place that’s riddled with drug addicts, that’s losing their whole livelihood, everything they’ve ever worked for because these drugs are flooding our streets. Talk to family members or parents of people who have been killed by illegal immigrants or killed by drugs that are coming from Venezuela on small boats to our southern borders. Talk to them. Tell them about your disdain for what the President has done.

Talk to them about due process. I dare you, Dari, to go to a father of a young girl who was kidnapped, trafficked, raped, murdered, fed drugs and is now gone forever. And if not gone forever, is forever changed, has been traumatized to deal with it for the rest of their lives. You go talk to that father about due process. Talk to parents who just buried their children because of some bullshit. And if it was you and it was your kids or your loved one or your whoever, wouldn’t you want whoever is on the top, sitting in the top chair to take the fight to the people that killed your kids or your wife or your husband or your sister or brother, anything.

Talk to them about it. It’s real easy to be some dipshit reading through a bunch of social media posts and videos and then go out and protest and talk about this, that and the other thing. You take your ass to somebody who’s really been affected by, whose life has been forever changed by these things and you try to get them to understand your perspective. It’s not possible. It’s not possible for all these right fighters who, who, who really don’t have all that bad of a life. It’s not possible for them to talk to these parents and these family members and these communities that are being destroyed by this stuff.

You’re not going to change their mind because they’ve lost everything. And those are the people, I believe that when these decisions are made, these are the people that are in the minds of the decision makers, or at least I hope so. Of course, there’s all these conspiracies out there about money, power and control. Of course. But hopefully, hopefully there are some places within our system that they’re thinking about. They’re thinking about the American people. They’re thinking about the families that have been affected. You go talk to them. I bet you, all of them, all of these families and people that have lost loved ones due to this, this overwhelming amount of drug traffic in our country would love to see more of these boats blown out of the water.

They would love to see these, these. These fishing trawlers and these small. What do you call them, cargo ships, small boats that they’re finding hundreds of pounds, barrels upon barrels of drugs that kill people. Just one time, it can kill you. You go talk to them about it. If you don’t get slapped in the face, you probably should. It’s an atrocity, man. And so I don’t believe that it’s fair that we pass judgment if we haven’t been directly affected. I mean, I shouldn’t say that. Of course it’s fair for us to pass judgment, but I don’t know that it’s fair to be out protesting and, and destroying property and things of that nature because the president is killing drug dealers, the same people that are attempting to kill you by putting their product on your street, in your community, in your neighborhood.

Just think about somebody breaking into your house and pointing a gun at you, and you’re having this standoff. You’re both pointing guns at each other, you’re both standing there with knives pointed at whatever the case may be. And you come to this realization that I’m going to die today if I don’t do something. Would you hesitate? Would you hesitate to pull that trigger? Knowing that behind you, upstairs, downstairs, wherever your kids are sleeping, your wife is sleeping, your family is there. Are you going to be worried about due fucking process? I sure hope not. And if you are, I hope that the people that depend on you for protection and safety find a Different person.

I would argue that you don’t deserve to have a loving family if you’re not willing to take a life for them, if you’re not willing to protect what’s yours and what’s important to you. I’m not saying we need to go out looking for violence, but I am saying that if it’s you or them, I hope that your first instinct is to protect you and take their life if that’s what’s necessary due process in that instance. Good night. As Christians in a Christian country, we have a right to be, at minimum, agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied.

We literally should be at war with Israel a hundred times over, and instead we’re just sending them money and it’s fucking craziness. Look. Look at the state of Israel, look at the state of Tel Aviv and look at the state of Philadelphia. You tell me where this money’s going. You tell me who’s benefiting from this. I am prepared to die in the battle fighting this monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any rights to my property and to take away my God. Go fuck yourself. Will I submit to that? If you’ve got a foreign state, you’ve got dual citizens in your government, who do you think they’re supporting? God right now? Would you protect the nation of Israel and protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that’s willing to put their neck on the line and say, we stand with them.

We stand with them. You go to Trump’s cabinet, you go to Biden’s cabinet, it’s full of Jews. I have a black friend in school. I have nothing against blacks. She has nothing against me. She understands where I’m coming from. Excuse me. I’m a Jew. And I just like to say that, you know, in our Bible, it says that you’re. You’re like animals. The Jews crucified our God. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for our pets. They’re like our children. Our friends at Pet Club 247 have developed natural products that contain the most potent strain of a mushroom that’s been used for thousands of years to help support the immune system.

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