Col. Douglas Macgregor: How Iran Defeated the US and Israel

Excerpt:

getting the lay of the land in a political sense, going forward:

COL. Douglas Macgregor: How Iran Defeated the US and Israel

Judge: You refer to [Trump] as surrounded by a bubble. It’s a bubble of sycopants. I mean, we keep hearing these stories that General Caine—the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—and the Vice President might not have been part of the sycophant group and might have expressed opinions to [Trump] contrary to what he got from Secretary Rubio, Secretary Hegseth and the others. I don’t need to mention all of their …

Mac: Well, actually, Judge, I spoke over the weekend to some people in the White House and they said the opposite. There was no one more enthusiastic about going to war with Iran than JD Vance. And that’s my own experience with him. I saw this up close and personal. He was always talking about going to war with Iran. So I don’t believe [the Barnes narrative].

Judge: That’s consistent with his financial benefactors, Peter Thiel and Palantir and people that make a fortune on these wars.

Mac: And when it comes to Caine, you know, we’ve discussed that before. He was not appointed and made a fourstar to say no. And he’s an airman. And I think like most airmen, he was more than willing to give it a go because they thought this might be another opportunity to win a war with air power only. Of course, that’s nonsense, as we both know. But nevertheless, I’m very skeptical of these attempts to retrospectively confer a degree of credibility and character on these people when I didn’t see much evidence for it to begin with.

Judge: I guess I have fallen a little bit to the PR view that Vance has thought of himself as the loyal soldier but the dissenter up to the point of the decision to go in. But I accept very much what you said.

Mac: Before we before we leave this topic completely, I think it’s worth pointing out that right now—behind the scenes, at least—I’m being told this, that the argument is that President Trump was misled by his quote unquote Israeli friends and that had he paid more attention to his American advisers, the narrative goes, then events might have taken a different course. But the truth is, there is a mountain of evidence that–like President Lyndon Johnson–Trump and his inner circle, including Vance, were really driving military action and escalation from the beginning. And Trump seems to have rejected advice from anyone in or out of uniform who opposed it. But very few people that opposed what he wanted to do ever got to the White House, if any. And I think that’s your point on the bubble.

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Judge: So, Colonel, have your friends in the White House expressed a view as to what Trump will do and who will he blame? Will he blame Hegseth? Will he blame General Caine? Will he blame the Israelis? He’s certainly got not going to take blame himself. If he does, it’ll be the first time in his adult life.

Yeah. Well, that’s a good question and I don’t have a good answer to it, except to point out that there are a lot of people who are blaming the Israelis behind closed doors, but they’re all afraid to say so publicly. And I think part of that is that they don’t want to admit that the Israelis have led us down the the path to destruction eagerly. And in fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke quite recently, just a few hours ago, as I understand it, saying that the war is not over. and it must continue. And I think that’s what he wants. He doesn’t care what it costs us. He doesn’t care what it costs the world. He doesn’t care how many people starve in the Global South. He doesn’t care whether or not inflation is going to destroy us along with large numbers of governments all over the world. It’s irrelevant to him. He wants complete dominance, control, hegemony over the Middle East. The only way he can get it is with us. So I think, unfortunately, Trump can’t blame it on the Israelis, whether he likes it or not. He’s going to be held responsible.