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- [00:00]
Dave DeCamp
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Dave Smith
What'S up? What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I'm thrilled. Real quick, before we start the show, getting on a plane tomorrow, Tacoma. There are still some tickets available for at least a couple of the shows. So Tacoma and then Spokane with Robbie the fire Bernstein. Comicdavesmith.com if you want to go grab tickets and come on out. It's going to be a fun time. This was a real fun run of shows last year. Looking forward to doing again. And I'm also more immediately looking forward to this show because we have back with us once again Dave DeCamp. Who you know, listeners of this show, I'm sure know Dave DeCamp and have read him. But if, if you happen to not. You really got to familiarize yourself with Dave. His work over@antiwar.com is just invaluable to me personally. You, you really are a big part of how I stay informed on what's going on in the world every day. I'm reading your articles over there. And of course, he also hosts the Anti War Radio podcast, which is a great way to just catch up on what's going on in the world. I know at all times the US Is involved in so many conflicts that it is hard to keep them all straight in your head. But really, you know, everybody in our world just knows how important Antiwar.com is. It's really like just the most important project on the Internet. And it is the, it's something that you hear all types of people, even like, you know, it's, it's run by a bunch of good Ron Paul libertarians, but all types of left wingers and right wingers. You will hear crediting Anti War with how they stay informed, antiwar.com that is, with how they stay informed. So thank you, Dave, for all the work you're doing over there. And before we get into the meat of the show, it is the fundraiser time for Anti war dot com. So just as I was saying, how important a project this is, it can't continue unless good people like you help them to. This isn't, you know, when you're in the business of promoting wars, you're going to get all types of think tanks and defense contractors and all types of people in D.C. are going to be throwing money your way. But when you're in the business of exposing the war criminals, you got to rely on, you know, regular people to contribute. So if you can, I highest possible recommendation, if there's any organization you can contribute to, there's no better one than Anti. War. Com.
- [02:31]
Dave DeCamp
Well, thanks, Dave. I really appreciate that intro. That's very kind. And yeah, if people could help us out, antiwar.com, we're not the biggest news site out there, but as you mentioned, a lot of prominent people, including yourself, do read antiwar.com and rely on us and constantly cite us. And the only way that we're able to do this work is from donations from our readers. We're kind of a David fighting against the Goliath of the military industrial complex and all the think tanks that get these huge grants from the weapons makers and foreign governments. Governments. But you know, we're constantly fighting against all those, those narratives and, and trying to provide people with news and viewpoints. And again from, as you mentioned, from all over the political spectrum. It is a libertarian run site, but it's a single issue kind of coalition project. So if people could help us out, we really appreciate it. Antiwar.com donate for that.
- [03:26]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I remember that like that was one of the things that was always when I first found antiwar.com, which must have been like, I think like around 2009 or something like that. But I remember that's what used to blow my mind is just be like, hey, they got a Noam Chomsky article and a Pat Buchanan article right here next to each other and they're both making a lot of sense. And like it was, it did a lot for me. Not just to inform me about, you know, conflicts going on around the world, but to kind of like shatter that, you know, false paradigm that I had in my head of like left verse right, that not to say left and right don't exist, but that it's not exactly the way they would tell you it is. And you know, the, the hacks in the middle will call that horseshoe theory or whatever, but really it's just people who are against mass murder campaigns who are making sense. And you can come to that from a left wing or a right wing point of view and very easily from a libertarian point of view because of course, war is the health of the state.
- [04:24]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned Chomsky and Buchanan because that really goes to show, you know, there's an interview Buchanan did back in 2017 and, and you know, the reporter went to his house and said, oh, he starts his morning off reading all these newspapers and then going on antiwar.com and to check the news and you know, they a little brief description of us. And then Chomsky a couple years ago, you know, he did some seminar or something, and he mentioned us. So we emailed him and said, you know, he's like, notorious, not notorious. He's known for answering his email. So we emailed him and said, hey, could you write us a fundraiser letter? And he said, yeah. And he wrote us a really nice letter and made it very clear that he does read antiwar.com so not only do we, like, publish people from all over, people read us prominent, influential people.
- [05:08]
Dave Smith
Yep. And this stuff. This stuff really is important because it's like, at least for me, you know, it's. It's. It's a real. You know, it's like a. It's something in my utility belt or. What was that? Is that what Batman had? His bat? But, you know, when I'm. It's the thing that. Where people, you know, look at, you know, me going and doing some debate or something like that, and they'll be like, oh, yeah, Dave, you know, you got that guy, or whatever. But it's because I've got the information in my head and I've been armed by antiwar.com, you know, largely. I mean, obviously with Scott Horton there being, you know, like, kind of chief amongst the. The whole crew. But you're right there next to him, and it's a big part of how, you know, it's like, if you're going into battle, it's like, I'm coming over and Dave decamp is just handing me and, you know, a new weapon to go into battle with. So it certainly, for me, has been invaluable, and I know for a lot of other people. And the topic will. Will try, you know, to. To cover a couple things today. But the major topic that we wanted to talk about today was this piece that you just wrote over@antiwar.com which was. It's titled Trump Administration Shatters the Record for Annual US Airstrikes in Somalia. And of course, if you read the piece, you will see that he shattered his own record, which he set back in 2019. And you. You had reached out to me about it and been. And as soon as you did, I was like, yeah, this is really something we should talk about on the show, because it is. It's something that the war in Somalia really is like the forgotten war. And I think there's, you know, there's a number of reasons for that, but there is something like, even for my audience, I'm sure there's some people who, like, aren't even aware of what, like, what we're still bombing Somalia maybe just assumed like they knew that was one of the countries that I always list off that were at war with. But you assume, isn't that over? Wasn't that. Aren't the terror wars kind of over? I mean, people know we still have some troops and in Iraq and we still have some troops in Syria, but like, we're not really actively in terror wars anymore, are we? And then in fact, you find out that we're shattering the record. And I do think that, you know, I'm talking about my audience here. If you were to just ask regular Americans, I really, I'd be interested to like, see what the results of that polling would be. But like, just stop regular Americans, at what percentage of them even know that there's even tensions with Somalia? Like if I think if you stopped a random American on the street, the best you could hope for would be like, they saw Blackhawk down and know that during the 90s there was something that went on there and some of our helicopters went down. I don't know how many of them even know that we've been at war. War there. But really, depending on how you measure all these things, you call it the longest war in American history and it's a CIA JSOC war. And so it doesn't, you know, it didn't get the attention that Iraq and Afghanistan did. And it wasn't quite as like, I don't know, it didn't have some of the sexy features of the other wars that made it stick in, in people's heads. But man, how bad for, like, how bad for the collective soul of a nation? Not that I actually believe that exists, but there's something really disturbing about the fact that you could be the citizen of a country that's at war that and you don't even know about it. I just find something so profoundly disturbing about that. Whether you would ever support a war or be against the war, the idea that you're fighting one that most of your people don't even know about is just dark. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is the Wellness Company. We've all heard the studies. 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- [10:27]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, and this isn't just, you know, a drone strike here and there. I mean, this is heavy airstrikes that the US Is launching in Somalia now. So, I mean, one of the reasons why nobody knows is because there's literally zero coverage of this air war in US Media. I am literally the only, as far as I'm aware, person in American media, you know, writing articles. Who's covering this regularly. Once in a while you'll see a story from like one of the military focus sites like Stars and Stripes, had one recently that's like, oh, we're sure launching a lot of airstrikes in Somalia. But I've been covering the day to day basically and the information is extremely limited. So I've basically been working with what AFRICOM US Africa Command tells me and they do not share many details. So we really don't know what's happening on the ground. But just to get into the numbers first. So when I wrote that article last week, it was after the US Was involved in a two week campaign against an ISIS affiliate in Puntland, northeastern Somalia. And during that two week battle, the US Launched nine airstrikes. So again, this is not just a drone strike here and there. So they didn't specify the number. So I asked Africom, how many strikes did you launch in that time? And they told me 9. And that brought up the total annual number of U.S. airstrikes in 2025-68, breaking the record that Trump set in 2019 at 63. And now Biden did continue this drone war, but it was like a dozen, maybe a year. He did send troops back there. I'll get into some of the. More of the background in a minute, but just to kind of get into the numbers and over the Weekend, there was more U.S. airstrikes against Al Shabaab in southern Somalia. So the number stands right now at 71 in September. I think there's a good chance, if the rate continues, that we're going to get close to 100 US airstrikes in Somalia. As you said, in a war that I would guess more than 90% of Americans aren't aware of. You know, I would be curious to see what a poll would find. But again, and you know, the reason why is because there is nothing. There's no coverage about it. And even as you said, like, among our people, a lot of people are not aware that this goes on. And they might think, oh, you know, like, they launch a drone strike once in a while, kind of like in Syria, once in a while, the US Bombs an ISIS guy, even though they're supporting the Al Qaeda guy that just took over the country. But, you know, this is significant battles that the US Is involved in. And this is something we saw from the first Trump administration. When he first came in, he loosened the rules of engagement to allow more airstrikes. And airstrikes kind of ramped up in all of the different conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and Somalia and Yemen as well. And a lot of those winded down towards the end of his administration. But Somalia, they really kept at it. And then Biden came in at the end of the first Trump administration. He pulled a few hundred US Troops out of Somalia that Trump sent there in the first place when he first came in. Biden comes in, he sends the troops back, continues the drone war, but at a lower level. And he reimposes some restrictions on drone strikes and counterterrorism operations. So Trump comes in again this year and loosens those rules again and expands the authorization for airstrikes. Essentially what it allows is lower level US Military commanders to call in airstrikes without getting approval from the White House outside of areas they. They don't consider combat zones. And right now, the only two areas that are technically combat zones for the U.S. only two countries is Iraq and Syria. So by loosening those rules, you know, they've just really ramped up the bombing and to this level. And, you know, for the real, you know, the historical background on this, I would recommend Everybody go to antiwar.com or open up your copy of Enough Already, the book by Scott Horton. But if you go to antiwar.com, we published, I believe it was the whole chapter on Somalia. And just search anti war. Sorry, search@antiwar.com, scott Horton, Somalia. And it's the first thing that comes up to read the background. You know, you mentioned Black Hawk Down. I mean, you know, the battle of Mogadishu as they called it, which many people are aware of. But this current war really started after 9, 11 and the start of the terror wars. The US was, the CIA was backing these warlords in Somalia, the same people they fought against in Black Hawk Down.
- [15:01]
Dave Smith
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's an important detail. Like it was the same group. And I think some of the kids of the guys who shot down our choppers were the ones who we started backing. And George W. Bush, who everyone knows for his wisdom and foreign policy and that. But can we just real quick, just to interject before you get in there, because in that middle time period there, or you know, like what a lot of people, I think some people still remember that, you know, I, I, I got in this argument, by the way, just, literally just came into my mind and I can't remember the guy's name, but he was a pretty big like, Twitter account, like a conservative guy. You could go, if you like, go search my Twitter history, you could probably find this where I was like arguing with this guy and he hit me. It started with him hitting me with the old line that people used to say to libertarians, oh, you're such a libertarian. Go live in Somalia. And then I like, was like, actually Somalia was doing a lot better until George W. Bush launched a war there. And then he responded and he went, no one launched a war in Somalia. Like, this guy was like a professional political commentator having a public feud with someone and was so confident that he would have heard about this if, if it existed, that he just publicly went, there's no such thing there. But anyway, this was so Somalia was a communist country. And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they basically devolved into like warring tribes. And none of them really could take over. None of them had enough juice. So they did live without a state for several years there where it was, you know, I would call it a libertarian society, but it was in anarchist society. And this became the punchline to like, you know, oh, you're an amcap, go live in Somalia. But actually, when you look back at it, Somalia was doing the best it had ever done in this time period. And it was the standard of living was raising at a faster rate than any country in Sub Saharan Africa. That doesn't mean it's perfect, but it was much better until 9, 11. And then at the end of 2001, George W. Bush sent JSOC in there and this is what destroyed the whole country. So just to make this very petty point, but to all of the people, whoever like, in your face, libertarian, go live in Somalia. It's like, yeah, actually George W. Bush ruined that too. It would have been better. So anyway, I'm sorry, take off.
- [17:20]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, and you could also, you could, you could look at Somaliland in the north, kind of the northwest, that has basically been an autonomous country since the 1990s and there hasn't been been war there. And they've done relatively well compared to the rest of Somalia. But yeah, so as Scott lays out in the article, the US starts backing these warlords again. Not again. They start backing the same warlords that they fought against. And in 2006, a group called the Islamic Courts Union took power in Mogadishu from these CIA backed warlords. And they were in power very briefly. Ethiopia invaded, the US backed this Ethiopian invasion. There's reports that US gunships were giving them air support and they ousted the Islamic Courts Union. And then Al Shabaab is the radical offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union. And their first recorded first claimed attack was in 2007 and it was against Ethiopian troops occupying Mogadishu. And then essentially the African Union and the US and the Europeans back this new transitional government which they made official in 2012. And they've been fighting Al Shabaab ever since. So it's been a failure. It's been a complete disaster trying to prop up this very weak central government, which I don't even like calling it a central government because if you actually look at the map of Somalia, they control very little territory in what they consider the internationally recognized borders. And especially in recent years, they've really suffered some. They've lost a lot of territory to Al Shabaab. And also there's an offshoot of Al Shabaab that turned into an ISIS affiliate that's up in Puntland, which also essentially acts as an autonomous region. They recently withdrew from the federal system and cut ties with the US backed government. And they've actually been, there's been some fighting between the government backed clans and Puntland forces. I mean, so the whole, you know, just US intervention has, has been a disaster. And there was a report in the New York Times back in April that, you know, the Al Shabaab's offensive was very successful, that they thought Mogadishu was next, that Mogadishu could fall to Al Shabaab. And this was a meeting in the administration and apparently State Department officials recommended actually evacuating the embassy in Mogadishu. But there was another side, led by Sebastian Gorka, who's Trump's National Security Council counterterrorism official, that said, no, let's escalate. Let's double down on propping up this government. And he won the day. And they've really escalated and ramped up these airstrikes. And people ask me, are there civilian casualties? I mean, the fact is we don't know. AFRICOM doesn't share any information besides announcing a strike and saying how many they've launched. And then the media, it's tough to know what's happening on the ground in Somalia. But all kind of like the counterterrorism experts agree that there's no winning this war against Al Shabaab. It's very similar to the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, a weak foreign installed government fighting against the Sunni insurgency. And it's just, you know, we're just offsetting kind of the inevitable that eventually one day they're going to have to either negotiate with Al Shabaab or the government's just going to fall and they're going to walk into Moganishu like the Taliban walked in to Kabul. So, you know, it's probably going to go one way or another.
- [20:48]
Dave Smith
Yeah, there's something, and this Afghan Afghanistan is a, is a good comparison because there's something that is, you know, as disturbing as fighting wars of choice and wars of aggression already, like, that's already pretty wrong. But there is something about fighting them even after, you know, you can't achieve your goals. Like, even after, you know, that Donald Trump acknowledged in 2016 that Afghanistan was unwinnable. We still fought the war for another five years. And you're like, well, what are you doing at this point? I mean, it's one thing to maybe come up with some justification for fighting a war if you think you can achieve whatever the end is, maybe. But when you know you can't to continue, it seems just totally indefensible. And on, on top of that, I mean, I, I, you know, when you're saying we don't know, you know, like, exactly what the civilian, you know, death toll is, but we do, like in the broader scheme of the war, right. We know there was this massive famine that hit. What Was that in 2010 or 2011? And the, the famine, you know, there was a, like, it was like the, the entire region was affected, but only in Somalia did you see people dying and they were dying of like the Hun by the hundreds of thousands at that point, like hundreds of thousands of people starving to death. And all because, like, you know, their food distribution and supply chains were all messed up because of the war. So these are essentially casualties of the war. And so what you've got here is a war where at least hundreds of thousands of people have died of a result of it. You know, you can't win the thing. It's still continuing and the average American has no idea what's going on. It seems pretty indefensible on every level.
- [22:41]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, yeah. And if you remember, in the first Trump administration, as you said, fighting an unwinnable war, he really ramped up the airstrikes in Afghanistan, I mean, to levels that we didn't see since the initial invasion. And what did that do? What did that achieve? Nothing. And so it's going to be the same thing with these airstrikes that we're seeing against Al Shabaab. And again, very heavy, like week long battles and you know, like they recently retook one village. But I mean, Al Shabaab has been, you know, they recently took a lot of territory so, you know, they might claw some back. But it's not like a sustainable thing here that's happening. The African Union apparently, you know, they have troops there that are fighting as well, but they seem like they don't want anything to do with this war anymore. And there was reports that the US Was going to cut funding to the African Union mission there. I don't know if that's actually happened. But they continue the airstrikes and they continue funding the Danab, which is a special military unit of the Somali military that's funded and trained by the U.S. yeah, so it just, it just goes on and there's just no, you know, what's the end goal? There's no debate here. Nobody's even talking about it because nobody's aware of it. And that's really what I'm trying to do, like writing these articles, like a headline like Trump Shatters the Record for US Airstrikes in Somalia. Doesn't that seem like a significant story? Like, you know, and it doesn't really get much attention, you know, because sometimes other media outlets like, pick up our stuff. But this Somalia thing, man, it's just like, it just goes on and people just kind of shrug their shoulders. I think one thing you mentioned earlier, like, it's not really like sexy. It doesn't fit in with a lot of the narrative about what's happening in the Middle East. A lot of people say oh, it's about Yemen and the Houthis because Somalia is on the Gulf of Aden and that's really more northeastern Somalia, but the US has a base in Djibouti. I mean, look at Djibouti on the map. You can't really get closer to the Houthi controlled parts of Yemen than that. I just don't really think that that's what this is about. This is kind of just a holdover of these terror wars. The machine is just kind of feeding the beast that is the military industrial complex and nobody's complaining about it, so it just goes on. And when we talk about the civilian casualties, there's no oversight. So the Pentagon, Africa, they don't have to answer any questions because there's just no attention or oversight on this war at all. So that makes me think there probably are some bad things happening on the ground with these airstrikes.
- [25:19]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, I guess it's, it's re. It's a reasonable assumption to think that when there's absolutely no oversight, there will be more, you know, atrocities committed than there would otherwise be if there was some type of oversight. And it really is like, and, and I'm not trying to like, I'll, I'll put myself in this category too. Like, it's crazy that I could maybe have listeners who don't even know that this thing is going on, or at least not really be aware of like the scope of it. But it really is a crazy comment on kind of like the entire broader anti war movement that there's just not more pressure put on this thing. And I, I will say, like, I, you know, I hate playing this card because it does get totally overused all the time. But it is kind of interesting where like, you know, like even like a lot of the, the lefties who have like woken up over Israel, Gaza and kind of rejoined us in this anti war place where we've been the whole time. And they'll talk about like the racial component of it a lot, that there's like a whole lot of European looking people in Israel and a whole lot of brown people in Palestine and there's this kind of racism that goes along with it. But then for whatever reason, when it's just the, just objectively speaking, out of all the terror wars, the darkest skin target that we're going at, it does seem like there's just like, doesn't seem to work up as much sympathy. And I, you know, look, I'm not like saying like that's the entirety of it. There's there's other factors as well, but there is something to like, I don't know, I've just, you know, I've spent. I don't know about you, Dave, but For the last 15 years I've been lectured by the left about like internalized bigotry and stuff like this. And like, it is kind of wild that even all the anti war leftists, like, I just never literally our camp were the only people I've ever heard talk about Somalia. I just, you know, I'm sure there are some others who I don't know of, but not the prominent ones for sure. It simply just doesn't come up. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is my Patriot Supply. September is National Preparedness Month, so it's the perfect time to ask yourself some questions, like how much food do you have on hand for emergencies? How would you get clean water if the tap went dry tomorrow? What would you do if a storm knocked out your power for a week? If you're anything like me, there's some room for improvement on this stuff. Luckily, our friends at my Patriot Supply are making disaster preparedness easier and more affordable than ever by giving you fifteen hundred dollars worth of emergency food and preparedness gear for free. They've just launched their Preparedness Month mega kit. It includes a full year of emergency food, a water filtration system that can purify almost any water source, a solar backup generator, and a lot more. And here's the best part. If you go to my Patriotsupply.com problem, you can get the 90 day preparedness essentials totaling over 1500 dollars absolutely free. Just head to my Patriotsupply.com Problem for full details. That's my Patriotsupply.com problem. All right, let's get back into the show.
- [28:34]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, I mean, I'll give credit to Misty Winston, who had me on the Jimmy Dore show when she was guest hosting the other day to talk about it. And Jimmy Dore, I've seen people have sent me, he's been covering like my articles of it. So, you know, but you know, he's kind of an outlier. Yeah, but yeah, you're right. I mean, you think about all the criticism of Trump right now and like he's breaking records for dropping bombs on a, on a country in Africa. Like, don't you think the liberal, the left, the liberals or whoever would, would be on that? Like, that would be something they'd be at least looking at and saying, hmm, what's going on here. You know, a lot of the narrative, like, it kind of works on people. Like, you know, because I tweet about this a lot, I say, oh, you know, we broke the records for bombs on Somalia. And I'll see people like, well, we're not bombing Somalia. We're launching airstrikes in support of the government. It's like, well, look at the map. See how much territory they control and how much support they have. And literally just two of the major regions pulled out of the federal government over changes to the Constitution. So this is not viewed as a legitimate government by most people in Somalia. But that narrative seems to work. And then the other one is, oh, well, we're just killing ISIS guys in the one bombing. It actually is two wars now, because in Puntland where the US Is backing local forces against isis, and then Al Shabaab in the south, and people say, oh, we're just killing terrorists. And it's like, okay, so you're just going to take their word for it? I mean, it's literally like making the argument of, why should we leave Afghanistan? Like, we're just killing terrorists, just killing the Taliban. It's just a smaller scale. So it doesn't. For that. For a number of reasons. I don't think it's attention. I think that's one of it is just. It is small compared to Afghanistan, but it's still raging.
- [30:25]
Dave Smith
Well, it's also like, you know, you just. We have to go off the information that we have. And I know, like, there were a couple, like, big studies that were done during the Obama's massive drone bombing campaign in Pakistan. I remember there was one that I think came up with, like, 96% of the people killed by the drone bombings weren't the intended target. And that's not even getting into, like, whether they had the right target or not, because there. That is quite often it's not a given that just because you're on the US Kill list that you are actually the bad guy. Of course, like, one of the major ways that the. That D.C. determines who's supposed to be on that list is to pay locals to give them names of terrorists. And obviously, we could all see, like, the incentive problems with that is that then they're incentivized to give you as many names as they can. But, you know, yeah, if you're telling me that the one that we know about 96% of the time you were getting civilians, my, my guess is you didn't turn around to be batting a thousand in Somalia. And you're probably killing a lot of innocent people there too.
- [31:32]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, and this is different because that, you know, those kill lists, like, you know, they claim that they're like, targeted, that they're targeting specific people. And that has happened in Somalia, like in a few of the strikes, but for the most part it's the government forces on the ground calling in airstrikes from the U.S. so, you know, they have no idea. I think it's, they probably have no idea what they're really bombing. And then when it comes to the isis, you know, it's in a very rural part of the mountain, like a mountain range, they're bombing caves some. Once in a while they put out videos of the strike and it's just, you know, you can't tell what, what's going on down there. And it's like, you know, we just really have no idea. And who, and who are these forces in puntland that we're backing? You know, and, you know, there's just no conversation about it. We're just, yeah, we're going to help them with airstrikes and, and everything.
- [32:22]
Dave Smith
You wonder if, like, you know, with, with as, as loose as the supposed justifications are for so many US wars or US Backed wars, you do kind of feel like, you know, if, if you asked Joe Biden why we needed to keep arming Ukraine, he would have had an answer for you, you know, and it wouldn't have been good or compelling to us, but he'd have had something. Or if you ask Donald Trump why we need to, you know, bomb around, he'll say we can't let them go nuclear, or say, and I just wonder like, if Donald Trump was just asked about this, does he even have a thing prepared? Like, would he even have anything if somebody, like, if, if you were in the White House press corps and you were able to say, Mr. President, you just broke the record for strikes in a year in Somalia, like, why are you doing this? I really don't think he'd even have a reason. Like, it's not even like there's been ever a stated reason of why we have to do this.
- [33:30]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, no, we haven't heard anything from like, the officials. You know, when they launched the first airstrikes that this administration launched in Somalia was against the ISIS affiliate and they were like, huge airstrikes and Trump like posted a video of it on Truth Social and said, we killed, you know, this amount of terrorists or whatever. But since then, I mean, we, you know, they don't even discuss it. It. And you Know, when I wrote the story that they broke the record, someone I mentioned it to somebody and he said, oh, I bet Trump's happy that he broke the record. And my response was, I bet he doesn't even know. Like, yeah, I bet there's a good chance he has no idea that he's launched more airstrikes in Somalia in a single year than any other president, including himself, in history. You know, so, yeah, and it is really. It does say. I think it is. Like, it does say something about our country and kind of the way, you know, living in the empire, you know, and this might be a good segue. I mean, the US Military just blew a boat out of the water in the Caribbean claiming that it was carrying drugs. And actually they did something similar in Somalia a few months ago. They bombed a boat and claimed it was smuggling weapons. And I remember thinking, like, how could you know that? How could you know everybody on the boat is even aware that they're smuggling weapons? Like, how could you really know that? And they're probably just relying on, like, whoever their allies are, whatever they tell them about that boat. And now we see it. I mean, this is a precedent has been set. Now, if you want to get into this by this US I believe it was an airstrike. It hasn't been confirmed. Maybe a drone or something. The US Bombing a boat, claiming that it's carrying drugs and killing, according to President Trump, 11 people, which he calls terrorists. I mean, I think we really just kind of crossed a line here, and it is very concerning.
- [35:23]
Dave Smith
Yeah, there is something so disturbing about, like. And even just seeing the reaction, at least from what I've seen of it, is like, yeah, that's all you got to do is say, like, they had drugs on the boat. And then everyone's like, yeah, great job. Killed some drug dealers or some terrorists and prevented drugs from coming in. And there's something where, like, look, as. As horrific as the war in Iraq was under George W. Bush, there was almost in a weird way, something calming, you know, just to, like, your concern with your fellow countrymen that, like, they had to lie to you and tell you that Saddam hussein was in on 911 and had nuclear weapons and he was going to hand them off to. To the terrorists who were going to use them to nuke Kansas and then at least put, you know, your. Your uncle in a position where he was like, well, we can't live with that, you know, and so, okay, there's at least like, some. But this thing where there are people who literally didn't even know there was a thing. Didn't even know there was a conflict or anything that we were supposed to be mad about. Don't even. It's not as if, like, Venezuela, like, what threat are you saying they pose to the United States of America, aside from the fact that a bunch of poor people from there want to come here after the country has been destroyed by socialism and U.S. interference? And. And that they'll just root for this. Just. Just root for it. Like, even without, like, any real story having been told to them or any propaganda that would even. Like, as ridiculous as the idea that Saddam Hussein posed some eminent threat to the United States of America is, at least they did convince people that. Whereas in this case, it's just people cheering on something that they know poses no real threat to America, where real people died. And then again, it's just this. Take the government's word for it. Well, he says they were terrorists dealing drugs. Okay, we're for it. It is. It's depressing that this works on people.
- [37:25]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, it is. And, you know, another plug here for antiwar.com. i mean, that's kind of the purpose of following us, is that when these wars do start, like, you know, you know, we've been kind of following it, the buildup, and we can call out the lies in real time very easily. Same thing happened with the bombing campaign against the Houthis that. That was the last time I was on your show. We talked about that. It was very clear it was going to fail. They were lying to us about why they were doing it. And they slaughtered a whole bunch of civilians in that one. More than 250. And then they ended it and said, oh, you know, it was a success. It's like, what. They basically gave up on trying to get the Houthis to stop targeting Israel. That's what really happened. But the whole narrative. But anyway, that's kind of another story. But when it comes to this Venezuela thing, you're right. I've seen this, and people say, oh, this is what I voted for. And I've also seen people MAGA people, quote, tweet someone criticizing it and be like, oh, I can't believe this. Many people are defending narco terrorists. That's a term that you just heard for the first time, probably. So there's a lot of, like, we're really being. They're lying to us, which isn't a surprise. And in a lot of different ways. There's just so much coming at us with this whole Venezuela thing. I'm struggling to Figure out where to start here. But I would go back to the first Trump administration. They declared the election in Venezuela illegitimate, and they stopped recognizing Maduro as the president. And they declared that Juan Guaido was the interim president, and they essentially tried to install him in a failed couple. That this was John Bolton's policy. Marco Rubio, as a senator, was really in support of this. And Rubio and other, like Cuban Americans especially, you know, in Miami, Florida, you know, they really agitate for this to continue the blockade on Cuba, which is really a relic of the Cold War, that hasn't achieved anything, but that goes on because they have a lot of political influence, and they're also very anti Venezuela and anti, you know, the government and anti the government in Nicaragua. I think John Bolton called those three countries the troika of tyranny when he was in the first Trump administration. So, anyway, so they imposed really heavy sanctions, which essentially amounted to an economic blockade, and made the migrant situation much worse. A lot more people fled Venezuela after that. I think it was in 2019 or maybe 2020. Bill Barr, then Attorney General, this is when the narco terrorist thing first really started. Indicted Maduro and like, top Venezuelan government officials claiming that they're narco terrorists. And the allegation is over cocaine. But if you actually look at the numbers, the vast, vast majority of cocaine that comes into the US first is produced in Colombia and also goes through the Western Pacific. It doesn't go through the Caribbean. A small amount does, but it's nothing compared to the other part. So it's clearly this whole indictment is about regime change. It's not about stopping the flow of drugs. Yeah, I mean, so just the fact that the reality of, like, the drugs, you know, where the drugs actually flow, because this is specifically about cocaine, that's what these allegations go back to. You know, when you actually look at that, the data there, it's clear that this isn't about stopping the flow of drugs to the U.S. this is about regime change. And the fact that you have Marco Rubio involved in this in 2019 when they tried to do the regime change against Maduro, Rubio tweeted a picture of Gaddafi, the before and after, a picture of him right as he was being brutally murdered. So that's the guy who's really running the show here. So I think it's important to understand that. I think there is a legitimate. I understand the sentiment among people. I come from a place that was ravaged by opiates and then heroin and fentanyl. I know a lot of people who died because of that. And I get the sentiment that like, yeah, we should go after these people flooding our country with those drugs, but the demand is still going to be there and the drugs are going to find their way in. But the fact is, is that Trump, and really it's a lot of this, so much of this is Rubio. They're taking advantage of that legitimate sentiment from the MAGA base and using it for this regime change effort, which is clearly what this is, because they also like increased the bounty on Maduro to $50 million. They deployed all these warships. I mean, there's an armada of US Navy warships in the southern Caribbean. And instead of like stopping a boat to check if it had drugs on it, they blew it out of the water and killed 11 people. I mean, it's just, it's just the whole thing is really nuts. And they claim that Maduro is the leader of a cartel, the Cartel de los Solis or the Cartel of the Suns, which doesn't actually exist. So that is a label that has been used for kind of an alleged network of Venezuelan government and military officials who they say are involved in drug trafficking. But there's no group that calls itself the Cartel of the Suns, yet they declared it a terrorist organization and said Maduro is its leader. And now they're saying that they're bombing so called terrorists bringing, carrying drugs. So it's clear that this is like, like they're marching towards some sort of regime change effort here. We don't know exactly what they're going to do, but you know, the drugs, if fentanyl and everything is what they're trying to solve. This is not, this has really nothing to do with it. And also Trump claimed that these were members of Trende Aragua, which is a Venezuelan gang that has been active in the US in the past couple years, according to, you know, law enforcement. And they claim Maduro's their leader, like the leader of that gang too, which there's just no evidence for that. There was even a US Intelligence document that came out that said, you know, it's unlikely that Maduro and the top government officials direct or they like, they view this gang as a threat. And this is, there's just so many, there's just so much lying and misrepresenting things going on here. So for the people saying, oh, you know, who even think we should take military action, action against cartels, they need to understand that that's not why this is happening. This has nothing to do with that, really. This current deployment in The Caribbean and blowing up this boat and whoever, whatever else is next here.
- [43:49]
Dave Smith
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Download the app today and use the promo code POTP to get $50 in lineups after you play your first five dollar lineup. Once again, the code is POTP to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Prize picks. It's good to be right. All right, let's get back into the show. Yeah, it's amazing, like how much they will just lie about these things. You know, I was thinking I didn't get a chance to make this point, but I was thinking I was on Piers Morgan's show earlier today and they were, you know, they were talking about this, the military parade that they just had over in, in China and kind of like a broader conversation about like the unipolar moment being over and stuff, which is a very interesting, you know, topic. And I, at one point I was thinking to say, but there were, there wasn't really, really a good hawk on the panel for me to argue with. But it's just like the thing just came into my head was just like, hey, remember when you guys were lying and saying that China was committing a genocide five years ago? Remember that? Remember like this like came up for like a little bit. I even remember like, even in, in like, you know, different, like, like circles of libertarians or something, like they'd be like, oh, they denied the, the Uyghur genocide. And it was all literally just that Mike Pompeo told you so. Like Mike Pompeo just said it in 2020. His one source was that Adrian Zenz, who just, like, no opinion either way, just objectively just got the numbers wrong. Like, just didn't carry a 7 when he was supposed to, and, like, got. Came to a completely wrong conclusion. And now that's not even a thing that they even use. Even when they're trying to ramp up, you know, be hawkish on China, they don't even say that anymore. It's just like, they lie, they move on, then it's whatever. Then they come up with another excuse for it. But again, and this is to your. The point that you started with there, that it's like, this is where reading anti war.com helps, is that whenever there's a. And. And sorry. And just in general, whenever there's. I apologize. I'm having some work done in the house. And so if you hear some of that, I do apologize, guys. But whenever there is, you know, these conflicts come up. They've almost always been going on for a while, but everybody's not paying attention to them. You know, it's a big advantage if you're me and you interview Scott Horton all the time. Scott Horton was talking about the maid on Revolution on my podcast, like, for years before Vladimir Putin invaded the country, but no one's really paying attention to that. Then when Vladimir Putin invades, they all start spinning their propaganda and, like, it's a. It's a big advantage if you're like, oh, I've actually been paying attention to this since before you just started lying. And so what happens is that you realize that, like, even the way you just said it, it's like, look, there are. I'll. I'll say this. There's a lot of people of good faith who really do just look around and see how many lives fentanyl has. Has ruined or how many ruined lives, you know, then get more ruined by drug addiction and things like that. And there's definitely some people who I think are good people, like Cubans who moved to America, people who really hate communism and, like, because they understand firsthand how destructive and oppressive it is. And so these people, like, get sucked into this. But you're like, look, if the goal here was really to keep fentanyl out of the United States of America, why are we picking on Venezuela? Why does it happen to be the regime that you already wanted to overthrow now happens to be the target of this military strike? Like, I'm sorry. It's just. It's like when they said they wanted to Fight the war in Ukraine to protect democracy or something like that. And you're like, wait a minute, if you're all about democracy, well then why are you propping up the King of Jordan and the House of Saud and the like, this just doesn't pass the basic smell test. And so they manipulate people with this like, oh, protecting democracy, that does sound like a noble enough goal. Hating communism, that sure does sound like a noble enough goal. But again, also, if you really hated communism, like at a certain point, wouldn't you go, we've run this playbook and it doesn't work like we've got with Fidel Castro right here a few miles off of our coast. We had the toughest sanctions, multiple assassination, regime change attempts. It only made the people support for that regime stronger. And of course, this is a point that I think only like us libertarians, the non interventionist libertarian types are really making. Maybe there's some other people outside of this, but like, can't you like, as an American almost understand that, oh, just think, think about how much right wingers hated Joe Biden in this country. Like just, you know, like thought the man that most, the average right winger in America thought that the election in 2020 was stolen, that Joe Biden was senile, that he was, you know, the other shadowy pedophiles were really running the government and Joe Biden was just their fate. But like, if the Chinese came in and tried to overthrow Joe Biden, those same right wingers would have grabbed their guns and taken to the streets to defend him. Because screw that, you're not coming in here and telling us what we're allowed to do. Like, you don't get to just rule over us people. Like autonomy and sovereignty is something that matters to human beings. And so of course, if you really cared about, if you really cared about, you know, people dying of drug deaths, you would just call off the drug war. And if you really cared about, you know, Venezuela becoming more capitalist, then you would want to just trade with them. It'd be the best move. They never try that, but that's, that would be by far the best move.
- [50:38]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, I mean, especially with Cuba too. Like you said, it's so close. They've been under these sanctions since what, the 1960s.Same government still there. Like, what has it done? How can you justify continuing this policy? And yeah, with the drug war, I mean, this is just like I saw one report in the New York Times today, a US official saying there's going to be more of these attacks on these boats or Whatever, who knows what this could turn into. There's talk of launching drone strikes in Mexico, but, you know, turning the drug war like it's, they're combining the drug war and the war on terror. I mean, that's like literally what they're doing. Narco terrorists is the new thing. I mean, drug traffickers are not terrorists. Like, it's a different thing, but because they have this, I guess, whole machine built up, you know, they're gonna just try to use it against the, the drugs. And I mean, and to be clear, we don't really know exactly this boat that Trump bombed. There hasn't been any claims from the Venezuelan government that it belonged to them or anything. Interesting to see how they're going to react. So we don't really know what the next step is when it comes to the push for regime change or anything. But it seems like, I really think a big part of this was setting a precedent and they're trying to figure out what they're going to do with Venezuela because I mean, Maduro says, you know, he's mobilized this big like pro government militia that he claims that has millions of members. And I, like, I don't think the US can do like an Oriega, like Panama style invasion and just take him out like that. So I think that they actually are, you know, there was a report in Axios, I think I might have sent it to you, that said that like the Trump administration doesn't really know if this is like, like what, what they're going to do next here. And you have some officials saying that they might do an invasion, they might do a drone strike to take out Maduro. So we don't know where this is headed, but either way it's a very dangerous direction. And then there's the other side of it. Like, you know, are they going to start doing this in Mexico? You know, there's reports that they might start launching drone strikes in Mexico against the will of the Mexican government. And I mean, where is this all going to lead? The fact that they think they could just bomb away this problem? I think again, that also says a lot about our, the soul of our nation. The fact that people think that, oh, our friends and family are dying of drug overdoses, you know, calling the military, calling the drone strikes.
- [53:06]
Dave Smith
Yeah, yeah.
- [53:07]
Dave DeCamp
I mean, it's kind of really sad to think about.
- [53:10]
Dave Smith
Yeah. You know, I was so on my, on my last. Yesterday on the show, I was. Which by the way, got us a copyright strike. I guess I'm not allowed to use content from that jubilee thing or whatever. I'll keep that in mind going forward. But there's. So I was. I was, you know, we were trashing this communist, like, girl who was just making this. You know, she was just making an argument about how, like, the communist position is that we should live in post scarcity. And then we were mocking how ridiculous that is. It's like, oh, is that your position? All wants and needs should be met. Hey, great, that's my position, too. But, like, whatever. And I kept calling it infantile. And then I was thinking about this, like, last night as I was falling asleep, but I was like, you know, so much of this stuff it does, it comes down to almost like a God complex. You know, it's like, it's not just that you're like. And this is true, like, kind of across the board. It's not a coincidence, by the way, that the commies are always atheists. And there's something about, like, when. When God is removed that then people, you know, it's like, creates a vacuum. And then people. And. And this is. It's like a through line through, like, look, all the crazy transgender stuff, it's like, what is that? Well, you're saying you can play the role of God. You can argue with biological reality. Like, no, you can't. What are you talking about? And the idea that you can abolish scarcity. What do you mean? That's the condition of man. You don't. I'm sorry, that's above all of our pay grade. That's somebody else's job to make that decision. And it does seem like there's something about that with the. Whether you're talking about the war on terrorism or the war on drugs, the idea that you think you have the power and the ability to dictate who puts what in their body or what government is in charge of, what other group of people. When the objective. Look, it's Nancy Pelosi, who was on record a couple years ago saying, we're going to take all Ukrainian territory back from Vladimir Putin, including Crimea, I mean, what is that other than, like, a disdain for the limits of reality? Like, no, you actually can't. And if I tell you, like, I got these big trees in my yard, and if I go, I'm going to take one of them down with my fist, and you go, I don't think you're going to be able to do that. Like, the conversation isn't about whether it's right or wrong for me to knock down a tree with my fist. The conversation is like, you do not have that ability. You will shatter your hand before you knock down this tree. And that does not seem to enter these conversations at all. That it's like, we're just not as. I think it was Harry Brown who came up with the line. It's always my favorite line about the. The war on drugs. But you go that the federal government can't even keep drugs out of federal prisons. Like, the area that you have on lockdown is still riddled with drugs because your own guards are smuggling them in and then. Or visitors are smuggling them in or whatever. And then, like, you have this nerve, the nerve to think that you can. By what, blowing up ships? You're gonna stop Americans from demanding drugs. It's just so. It really is. There's something that. It's like a God complex of some sort. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, one that is very near and dear to my heart. Of course, I'm talking about Body Brain Coffee. I've been drinking Body Brain coffee for a couple weeks now. I love it. It's delicious. I feel great. And it is, of course, the company founded and run by my brother, Louis J. Gomez, who is really a big part of the reason why part of the problem exists and has existed for so many years. He's always been a backer of this show, and now he's made this amazing product which genuinely, everyone is raving about. 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Without the crash, you're going to be healthier, you're going to feel better, and you're going to be drinking a delicious cup of coffee. Go check them out. Bodybraincoffee.com promo code Dave. 20 for 20% off. All right, let's get back into the show.
- [58:08]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, I mean, especially when we're talking about Fentanyl. Like, it's such a small. Like, you need such a small amount. Like, they could smuggle that in in so many different ways. And, you know, I like one thing, I like that you always bring up in your debates with, like, Zionists and. And stuff is like, you know, the. Try to apply war to, like, a domestic situation. Like, if a killer had a shootout with the cops and ran into an apartment building, would anybody ever accept. Kept blowing the apartment building up? Or if there was a hostage situation, they just, you know, dropped the bomb on. On everybody? You know, none of us would ever accept that. And, I mean, that's a similar thing here. Like, they claim these people on a boat are carrying drugs. What if they were, like, you know, off the coat? What if they're in the Long Island Sound or something, right? And they. And they claim that they had drugs. Would anybody ever accept just blowing a boat out of the water and killing everybody on it? Because the government claimed that they were running drugs. And a lot of the people who are actually the ones transporting the drugs, they're not like the narcos. They're not the cartel leaders. A lot of them are just poor people just doing what they can to make money, or some of them are even forced into it. So it's really immoral in a lot of different ways. And I think it's good to try to put that in a domestic lens. Like, if someone was on your nearby lake in a boat and they said, oh, he's got cocaine, blow them up. I mean, especially when you have an armada. You have eight warships in the area. The whole thing is just crazy. And what are they going to do, like, in Mexico, in the border? Like, are they going to start blowing up cars that they claim are coming from cartel labs or something? You know, where is this. Where is this going to go?
- [59:48]
Dave Smith
And it's like the idea that you think also that, you know, like, it's like people's brain just stops there. Oh, we're going to. Okay, so we're going to. We're going to label because this idea has been floated out and by people who I even kind of like. I mean, I like Vivek Ramaswamy, but this was one of his just like, absolute worst ideas on the campaign trail, that we're going to declare that the drug cartels are terrorists so then we can start drone bombing the drug cartels. It's like, okay, and then what? Like, play this. That's it. That's the end of the story now. Now there's no more drug cartels and everything's good and there's no negative reaction that comes from that. Like, how about the level of just like. Like how many innocent people you're gonna kill while you're doing that? How much hatred is that gonna now engender from our neighbor to the south? Anyone want to think about that for five minutes before we just declare war? Like, gee, I mean, it's just, you know, I was thinking about this also earlier because. And I didn't get to say any of this stuff on pure. So maybe I'll just say it now to you. But there's. I was thinking about this because as. As people were talking about, you know, like kind of the collapse of the unipolar moment, which probably ended a while ago, but they're now trying to had a parade, and so now it's over.
- [61:03]
Dave DeCamp
But Trump could have went. I think he was invited.
- [61:06]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, that. Maybe that would have been a good idea. Got to deal with people even. Even people you're not friends with. But. And he. He has already met with Putin and he's met with Kim Jong Un in the past, and he's met with Xi in the past. So, like, it wouldn't have been like, like inconceivable for him to do that. But there was something. So I was thinking about this, and I've just heard this, and this is a little bit anecdotal, but I think this is right. Is that right after the collapse of the Soviet Union that, like, the Russians kind of had a favorable view of America and that they were like, you know, look, if you think about. You remember, you know, Metallica went to Moscow and they had like the big. You ever seen like, the videos of that concert? Yeah, 1991. It's like, dude, they describe. There's so many people. Dave. They describe the amount of people there. Like, you're talking about casualties from a huge war. They go. It's believed that 500,000 to 1.2 million people were there. Like, they don't even know how many people there. And they're just loving it. And that was the thing. Right? And I Always love bringing up the King Crane Commission when they went to Syria and asked who they wanted to rule over them in a League of nations mandate. And they overwhelmingly picked the United States of America because. Because before we started intervening in that part of the world, they had a favorable view of us. And the same with the Russians. It wasn't that they were going, hey, you guys did such a good job with the Cold War or the war in Vietnam was really great that you guys fought. That had nothing to do with none of that. They just saw our prosperity. They. They loved our blue jeans and rock and roll music. That's what they thought. And so, I don't know, there's just this thing I've been thinking about that it's like. Like the biggest lie ever told was that was George W. Bush and the neocons saying that they hate us for our freedom. But the inverse of it is what's actually correct, that people loved us for our freedom. That was actually the things they loved. And so this idea that, like, the way you're going to extinguish, you know, socialism in South America or even drug cartels or anything like that, is to use the force of government to go over there and start killing a bunch of people or impoverish a bunch of people. What? No, that's. That's what. That's what engenders hatred. That's what makes people hate you. Statism makes people hate you, and freedom makes people love you. It's the exact opposite of what the neocons always said.
- [63:30]
Dave DeCamp
Yeah, and when it comes to bombing the cartels, it's not like there's, like, a model of success to look at, because essentially, like, what Vivek and others have said is like, oh, let's, you know, use this military machine we created for the terror wars against the cartels. It's like, as if there's a successful model to do this off of. And then the other thing, when we talk about sanctions in Venezuela, I always remember when Biden was putting sanctions on Russia and one of his lines was, oh, we turned the ruble into rubble. Even though that wasn't true, the ruble bounced back pretty quick. But imagine if you're in Russia and all the Russian government has to do for their propaganda purposes is just play that speech. Biden, like, bragging that he destroyed the Russian economy. You know, again, no matter what you think of your own government, if there's a foreign government saying that about your country, how are you going to respond? And as we saw a similar thing in Iran, with the, you know, they had the rally around the flag moment, and I saw even like, US funded NGOs who are always very anti Iranian government, were, like, very against the bombing campaign. So, like, made the regime stronger in a way. And I think we see that with. We could see that with Venezuela, because Maduro, you know, if you watch him, like his press conferences, he's always talking about the US Empires after him, this and that, and now we've deployed seven warships, you know, to the Venezuelan coast. And he's like, see. See what I've been talking about, like, the propaganda points for the. The governments that we target, just, you know, we really help them out with that. Yeah, there's just so many things like, like, just foolhardy about this. And, you know, this idea, like you said, it's like people just want to wish away fentanyl, just say, you know, we got this military. Why can't we use it against it? But it's just like, it's just going to create more problems here. And one thing, you know, Seth Harp, he just wrote the book the Fort Bragg Cartel, which I need to read. But he was on Tucker recently, and Tucker, who I think has supported the idea of military action against the cartel. Cartels asked him about it. And one thing he said, you know, is that the cartels, like, it's not like how people picture them in movies or TV shows like the net. The. The network that gets the drugs into our country is like a network of corrupt officials. And like, in Mexico and in all of Latin America and the border people, you know, like, it's a whole wet. It's not just like, you could just target, like, a cartel leader and it's going to stop this. I mean, I don't get how people can even think that.
- [65:58]
Dave Smith
That. Yeah, yeah. And it's also just, you know, the stuff with. With drugs particularly. And, you know, there's that one. You know, there's the. The famous rats study where they bas. So, like, there was this initial study that, like, was to. Was totally relied upon for all the drug. You know, all the war on drugs propaganda, all the just say no stuff. And basically they took like a rat and they had, like, two water bottles, and one was laced with cocaine, and one was just water. And the rat would taste cocaine and then just drink the cocaine until he killed himself. And they were like, look, that's. You know, you get one taste and you're hooked, and then you're going to kill yourself. And that's why you have to just say no. And we have to fight this whole war. And then there was like, one scientist who looked at that and he was like, well, let's do some variables with this, because, like, this is a pretty miserable experience for this. This rat who's just living in a cage, isolated by himself. So let's like, give him everything he wants. So they. They built like this, like. Like a big, like, you know, like. Like almost like a little amusement park for a rat with all these toys. And they gave them other rats in there, and they gave them sexual partners and all this stuff, and then put the two water bottles in, and none of them killed themselves with it. They'd all just try the cocaine, have a little bit, and then go back. And I get just. The point of it is that there's a deeper problem when people are ODing on drugs. There's like a much deeper problem. It says something about what's going on with our society. You know, I got little kids. I. I know you do too. There's you. The older the kids get, especially, like, I mean, I've had so many examples of this before, but you meet. This is just the way it is, man. Like, you meet really nice people. Like, my daughter's best friend or parents are like, just really great people. And their little girl's the sweetest little girl in the world. And then the one who's a problem in her class is like, you know, their kid parents are a mess. You know, it's like, you just. You see, and like, there's just like these major problems that are much, much deeper than the substance. And you would think that, like, particularly right wingers who really seem to get this when it comes to guns, you know what I mean? That, like, this is. This is goofy for you to blame the inanimate object. The problem is the person behind it who's willing to go.
- [68:14]
Dave DeCamp
It's like blowing up a Glock factory or something.
- [68:17]
Dave Smith
Yes. Like, this is just not. This is not serious. This does not solve the problem. And you would think, what are we going on? 50 years of fighting a war on drugs, and now they're saying it's worse than ever. It's like, well, I think that might be your answer right there. Final word to you, Dave. And then let people know where they can go find your amazing work and support your stuff.
- [68:38]
Dave DeCamp
You know, one thing, I mean, just about the war on drugs, I just wanted to say I remember when I was a kid, you know, I grew up again, I grew up on Long island and in the town I lived in, like, drugs, just like Flooded in there when I was like, high school age. And I remember when I was a kid, kid, I smoked like, cigar. Like, I would try to smoke tobacco, but I didn't touch cigarettes because I was like, oh, I'll get hooked in like a day. And then I remember an older kid said, you won't get hooked. That's not true. And I started smoking cigarettes and I was like, I'm not addicted. And I said. And basically my thought was, well, what else can I try? You know, I guess everything they're telling me is a lie. So it, like, led me on this path to, like, trying all these drugs and. And, you know, now I have kids and I'm very against drugs and everything. I'm more Catholic than anything these days. I had, like, a big reversion to my faith. So I really do not like this stuff. And one of my best friends is dead because of it. So again, I get the sentiment, but unfortunately, we can't just bomb this problem away. But anyway, that's it, I guess. And go to antiwar.com donate if you could help us with our fundraiser. As Dave Smith says, he relies on us for a lot of things. So if you appreciate him and our work and you could help us out, we really appreciate it. That's again, how we get by. I really hate asking people for money, but it is necessary for what we do and what we want to continue to do. And also check out my show. If you're watching this on YouTube, go to anti War News and subscribe. I do like a daily show of all the news stories I write.
- [70:01]
Dave Smith
Yeah, it's an excellent show. Your articles@antiwar.com are always excellent. And yes, we'll make sure to put the link for the fundraiser in the show. Notes of the episode. Dave DeCamp, as always, thank you so much, brother. It's always great hearing from you. Thank you to Everybody for watching comicdavesmith.com I'm on the road for the rest of the year, so come on out and see me and Robbie the Fire. Hope to catch you then. All right, peace.
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Dave DeCamp
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Dave Smith
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Dave DeCamp
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Dave DeCamp
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Dave Smith
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Dave DeCamp
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