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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
David Rutherford Show: Iran Rescue, Australian War Crimes, a SEAL Kill Squad, and the Istanbul Attack
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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. In the last week, we've had one of the biggest Cesar missions ever conducted in US history. Two pilots on E and E in the mountains of Iran. We have one of the most decorated sas, Australian SAS soldiers in history be brought up on war crimes in Afghanistan. We had a bunch of Green berets and Navy SEALs that got busted for being their own assassination team for a foreign government. And finally, just this morning, the Israeli consulate in Turkey gets shot up by some bad guys. I'll tell you what, a lot of former operators and current operators are getting their op on today on the David Rutherford show. Booyah. All right, Jordy. Holy buddy. We have absolutely like this is the operator's Delight episode. All right. If you're an operator or you want to be an operator or you dig operator, I'm going to tell you what this is the. What this is the episode for you because I'm telling you what the four stories we're going to cover today are absolutely paints the, the essential picture of the various stages of an operator's life. Right? This is. No, I'm telling you this is the way, this is the narrative of the well. And I, I know if you're listening, hey, I live this life maybe not as quite as aggressive as if have some friends who are in this ballpark in a bunch of ways, right? But this is the reality of what's going on. So let's jump right in. All right. This past weekend, I think we, everybody was paying attention was on their, you know, the on pins and needles and paying attention to this incredible cesar, which is a pilot rescue and recovery mission conducted by I don't even know how many different units were involved in this CESAR rescue attempt over in Iran. And if you're not familiar, here's some of the background. An F15 East Strike Eagle from the 48th Fighter Wing over in UK was shot down over southwestern Iran by, by what Iran calls a shoulder fired missile. Right. And so that's really key to understand in terms of, you know, in the context of a grander invasion or terrorist attacks around the world, how absolutely effective shoulder fire missile systems are. Right? And there obviously are reports of these things all over, some that have gotten out of Ukraine, some that have come across the border. Obviously any one of these countries in the Middle east is going to have an opportunity to get their hands on them. In particular Iran with the size of their military that they have. Well, one of the interesting things is, you know, this is the first aircraft that we've lost and had a pilot down since 2003 Iraqi invasion. There was one in Serbia that became a famous incident. And really it's pretty powerful. Now if you want to understand how powerful these are in terms of or how difficult. Probably the most incredible one I've ever heard is the story of Tommy Norris, who is a Navy SEAL in Vietnam who was taken off a very covert mission to come in and go rescue three downed pilots in North Vietnam. There was a movie with Gene Hackman about this. They really didn't portray Tommy Norris's story, but you can look it up. He received the medal of Honor for this. This was in April of 1972. Just an absolute incredible mission. Tommy ended up rescuing two of the three downed pilots. Just amazing. You can check out in a book called Bound by Honor, which tells Tommy Norris's story. And then the follow a further later on mission where Mike Thorton, another Navy SEAL received the Medal of Honor for actually saving Tommy Norris's life in a recon mission that went wrong. But. All right, so let's get back to this. All right, so you know you had. The pilot was obviously located very quickly off after he ejected, right? Every pilot carries a Cesar radio with pre programmed frequencies. The challenge with that radio is as soon as you turn it on, enemy forces can triangulate where your location is. So every pilot based on, once they have their idea of where they are, once they get out their gps, their compass, they figure out exactly where they are in their 10 digit grid. Then they can figure out obviously based on enemy response or civilian response, they'll have an E and E, an escape and evasion protocol that they followed. Every pilot has to go through what's called SEAR school. Search, escape, rescue, invasion. Every special operations force that goes downrange has to go through SEAR and we have advanced seer. Green Berets have very notorious elite SERE training. I went through SERE back in the day and everybody has, even pilots, helicopter pilots, all pilots, everybody has to go through Sears. So they're very highly trained how to do this. But the Cesar mission itself is, is a very complicated time oriented mission for obvious reasons, right. The pilot is trying to escape and evade to save his own life. Because as you can imagine, if a pilot gets captured by enemy forces, he became, he becomes an incredible value not only for the information or intelligence he has that can be extrapolated through enhanced interrogation tactic techniques or the fact that he can become a leveraging tool to, to negotiate. Right. And, and certainly as I think both sides are reportedly pursuing negotiation Tactics, somebody having a downed pilot would give them substantial leverage. All right, so you know, the first pilot was wrapped up and recovered pretty quickly. But there was another pilot that was still out there on E. We saw recently that Trump came out and he said he's going to fry. The leaker who came out. Well, supposedly the leaker was one of Netan's top journalists over in Israel. Who actually leaked that information. I haven't been able to confirm yet, but that's the alleged report right now. So, you know, in the ensuing rescue attempt, another black helicopter was struck by Iranian fire during the rescue, but did stay airborne. But on the other hand, and there was another separate where an A10 Warthog, Mr. Dale Stark's aircraft of choice, nothing better than that sound if you're out on E. I bet Warp providing support was hit near the Strait of Hormuz and the pilot flew into Kuwaiti airspace and then ejected and ditched the aircraft. Now, the invasion was roughly for the other pilot was Friday through Saturday. And this pilot had to escape into the Zagros Mountains where he hiked up to a 7,000 foot ridge. Now again, man, you know, you're flying a mission, you get shot at a sky, you hit the thing, your aircraft crashes, all hell's breaking loose. Everybody's out trying to hunt you down, trying to find you. Man, you gotta hustle and bookies. So it's good thing that rule number one cardio was intact for this guy to be able to get up on that ridge ridgeline. Now he ended up hiding, supposedly in this mountain crevasse for about 24 hours. And again with that radio, you want to be restrictive as you turn that thing on to make comms with any the rescue unit that's trying to put together the Cesar mission for you. Now, he sent one short radio burst, he said, God is good. Pretty cool if you ask me. If you want to go up on cool factor points for anybody on the ground, right, Rule number one is always be cool. And God is good is definitely cool. You know, one of the things is, you know, when a transmission does come for a particular thing, you want to make sure it's actually the person because it could be a trap. The enemy could have recovered him, taken it, forced that gunpoint for him to turn it on so they could use it and, and pass over whatever they thought they needed to pass. Right Now Iran launched a massive counter manhunt for this guy, including IRGC soldiers. They offered a $60,000 bounty. On state TV, they appealed to armed civilian tribesmen and everybody, you know, and there's a ton of BBC recorded footage of these people firing arms at, you know, the C130s that are patrolling, the. The Blackhawk helicopters that are constantly patrolling. And you got to imagine, as you know, once they get a vector on this guy, you know, they'll have, like, 19 aircraft stacked up ready if anybody gets near to just vaporize these people with either a Specter gunship or Predator drone strikes or Apache helicopters, just mowing these people down to keep this pilot safe. You know, there was also this interesting CIA, CIA deception campaign, which is always interesting when. When the agency gets involved, right? And what they're allegedly saying happened is the agency passed misinform and disinformation through Iranian channels. And obviously, the goal is to confuse any responding Iranians as to, you know, the guy was already picked up with. The other guy was picked up or whatever it might be. Oh, we saw him over here. We saw him over there. Maybe even dropping false beacons in and around to distract where he might be. You know, my favorite is they. They used unique in quotations, unique capabilities to distract the air, you know, or con to distract them. Now, the one. One shot that was put out from Iran that I thought was awesome, which probably was AI But I thought it was funny, was there was a group of Iranians holding up American flag boxer briefs, and I just thought that was awesome. Hey, if I'm gonna go on E, I'm gonna dump my drawers to get out there so I have less rub, right? And rubs a real thing when you're on E, I'm telling you that for sure. Now, the extraction, you know, Saturday night into Sunday morning, this was pretty amazing to me. And if these numbers are actually correct, 155 aircraft were involved, right? Hundreds. Hundreds of special operations troop. When we would train, we used to train where you'd have one platoon, maybe, that was on the ground doing this. But obviously, Trump did want any chance that this thing went sideways, although a huge aspect of it did go sideways in the rescue attempt. They had some very significant complications. They had two C130, 13 0130J transport aircraft malfunctioned on the ground, and they had to destroy these. The US Forces destroyed these along with four helicopters in order to deny the technology that's in them to Iran. So, you know, one of the interesting parallels, when you think back to the Iran hostage crisis in 1980, there was an old Delta Force operation that had taken place back then called Desert Claw, or was it Eagle Claw? Operation Eagle Claw. It was Back in the day where a helicopter and One of those C130 fuel replacements connected, the helicopter ran in, they both exploded, and they ended up having to kank that mission. Fortunately for this one, that didn't affect them. They ended up going in and really establishing a presence on the ground with those. Not only the, the, the, the stacks of, of surgical air capabilities above, but hundreds of Special Forces. Now, we haven't found out if it's seals or Green Berets yet. Could have been a combination of both. Could have been Rangers in there, right? Certainly Air Force pararescue men. They're the most highly trained. PJs are the most highly trained for that CSAR mission out there. There's their ABSOC units are absolutely phenomenal at what they do, but I'm sure they probably took every soft guy around who wanted to go shoot Iranians and be, hey, you want to go? And they're like, I'm in. I'm all over that. One of the interesting thing, there were no major injuries obvious aside from a sprained ankle. No other Americans were killed apparently. Allegedly there were some Iranian people that were killed on the ground. You know, and what they're calling it is one of the most incredible CESAR missions in American history. And, you know, this is a really interesting thing. You know, we used to train for Cesar and everything we do. And, and like I said, Cesar can be incredibly complex in particular as it relates to the terrain that you're going to be operating in. Right? And this guy was obviously in mountainous terrains, which makes it very difficult to move. It makes it very difficult to find him or spot him. Right. It makes it very difficult to get to him or access to him in terms of being able to land helicopters in the area or close enough in proximity. All these things become very tedious. The other is dependent upon the climate of, of what's going on. If it's dry, hot and arid, you know, the guy doesn't have a lot of water on him. He may just have a camelback or 1e and e canteen on them, or if they're injured, it makes it incredibly difficult from the ejection because, you know, that ejection is, you know, you're going 300, 200 miles an hour. You pull your ejection, you get shot out at, you know, a bunch of G forces. Maybe you hit the canopy, maybe you don't. You know, your fall to the ground isn't like, you know, you're free falling. It's a controlled crash, essentially going 30, 40 miles an hour, you know, then all of a sudden you hit the ground and you've got a bunch of people who are trying to hunt you down pretty quickly. So you know that that mission is very difficult, both, you know, for the pilot to be on ENA and to think clearly and escape, but also the complexity of, of making sure you're tracking the guy, getting to him in an effective way, making sure you can hold off any responding forces and safely extract without any casualties. And once again, US Special operations community has done so, has, you know, completed another absolutely insane operation which, you know, for me is just fantastic because what it proves is that our special operations guys are just, you know, so good and so amazing at what they do. I just commend and am so proud of all of the individuals that were participating. I'm proud of that plot. Those pilots who, who didn't shit the bed and were able really effectively support and enhance their ability to get found. So again, but as I, I back out of this thing again, you know, you have to take a, a close assessment of this and recognize that, you know, Iran has the capabilities to shoot down our fighters, to disrupt rescue missions. However, those C130s got impeded from their ability to complete it. We had to destroy that. And you know, what it means is that there are vulnerabilities and there always is. So, you know, yeah, we want to be proud of our guys, but we also want to recognize that in war there are bad things that happen. We've already taken, you know, 13 casualties and others. Some reports are it's in the hundreds that have been injured on some of these base attacks. So war is hell regardless. But yeah, we should be super fired up and really commend the special operations community and all those others, the agency, their ground assets or some of their sources in this very, very successful Cesar rescue mission. So way to go boys. Who? Yah. All right, next story. Ben Robert Smith. All right, Ben Robert Smith is the Australian SAS guy that is being brought up on civilian charges, which is always interesting for war crimes he committed in multiple years in, in Afghanistan. Now what's interesting is one of my good buddies, former team guy, a teammate I knew, who also was a tier one unit for us, actually was overseas and served with this unit for what's called the pep billet, and basically said that these guys were absolutely impeccable in their operational capabilities and their work ethic and what they did. He did a combat deployment to Afghanistan with them. I forget what year it was, but he said these guys are phenomenal operators. Across the board. To give you a little bit more background on who Roberts, Ben Robert smith is, he's 47 year old former corporal in Australia, Special Air Service. That's sas. Special Air Service Regiment sasr, which is their tier one unit over there. He's Australia's most decorated living soldier. Let me repeat that. He's their most decorated living soldier. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, which is their medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan in 2010, which was a hellacious year for Afghanistan combat, plus the medal for gallantry in 2006. Now I'll tell you, my first deployment over to Afghanistan, I got to parlay a little bit with the Australian SASR guys and really learned a ton from them. Uh, I remember those, that unit being one of the first units that figured out how to go out and really pick fights. So they're super aggressive and they're super good at what they do, which is turning long range, long timeframe reconnaissance, 30 day plus reconnaissance into picking fights with the enemy. They're really spectacular at, at doing this. We learned a lot from those guys. Now to get in this. He had six tours to Afghanistan between 06 and 2012. He actually met with Queen Elizabeth II and his portrait hung in the Australian War Memorial. That's how significant a role this guy played in the history of the Australian SAS in their involvement in the GWAD. All right, the arrest. April 7, 2026, he was arrested by Australian Federal Police at Sydney Airport. He was charged with five counts of war crime. For war crime, murder, which is a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The charges related to the deaths of Afghan nationals between 2009 and 2012 in Urzgan Province, which is one of the deadliest, most active and aggressive providences you could operate in. We did a, a couple ops there in my day. And two counts directly causing death and three counts ordering subordinates to kill unarmed civilians. Now he is the only second Australian Afghanistan veteran ever charged with a war crime. All right, here are the pro. Here's the prosecution's case. This is the allegation that Whiskey108 mission in 2009, the that he machine gunned an arm armed man with a prosthetic leg. Now it's reported allegedly that the soldiers later drank beer from this guy's prosthetic leg. Now again, what you have to understand is that there were people in his own unit who testified against him. But I'll get to that here in a little, little bit. Right. As well as there were Taliban members in Afghanistan that testified. And I'll tell you about that, which is again bizarre. But. All right, all right. So the other allegation in the Whiskey108 mission in 2009 pressured a newly deported SAS soldier to execute an elderly unarmed Afghan. Called blooding the rookie. Kind of an initiation, indoc tradition or ritual, whatever you want to look at it. The other allegation is from the Darwin Mission in 2012 where he kicked a handcuffed civilian, Ali John off a cliff and then ordered his soldiers to shoot him. And then there was another mission in 2012 where he ordered another soldier to shoot an Afghan male who was under detention. SAA witness testified under pseudonyms to score sheets, which is a body count competition among operators in a 2023 civil court found allegations to be in quotes, substantially true based on a balance of probabilities. So that's the key thing, the balance of probabilities. Now this is unique to Australian civil court. All right. And. And as the defenders case, this is what they put this, that Robert Smith maintains his complete innocence as and has denied all charges since 2018. He claims the men killed at Whiskey108 were legitimate targets. Taliban fighters shot lawfully in the heat of battle at Darwan. It says he and another soldier lawfully shot and killed a Taliban member hiding in a cornfield, not a handcuffed civilian. He argues the witnesses are jealous former colleagues who fabricated testimony because he received the Victoria Cross, the medal of Honor for that an investigation had no access to Afghan crime scenes, no forensic evidence, no photograph, no ballistics. And the investigator acknowledged a challenging starting point to begin these accusations with this is. And the other thing is that he was support. Robert Smith was supported by former PM Tony Abbott who asked why alleged crimes were caught weren't caught by senior officers aft in the after actions reporting of these particular incidents. Now here's an interesting thing. 2020, this is the fascinating Bratton Bariton report found credible evidence of 39 unlawful killings across Australian sof in Afghanistan. Of the 53 war crimes investigations open, 39 were closed without charges. Many allegations did not survive any scrutiny. Now here's a kicker. Afghan witnesses testified from a Taliban controlled Kabul. The reliability and coercion questions are pretty substantial if you ask me. On those, the Tallmade committed systemic war crimes for 20 years. Mass executions, torture, child soldiers with zero international prosecutions. Right. The Australian military whistleblower David McBride who helped expose the war crimes. Guess what remains imprisoned. All right, here's the deal. When I talk about war crimes on a battlefield, do they happen? Hell yeah, they happen. They happen a bunch. They happen a Ton. But the reality is, you know, there are a lot of war crimes in combat, even by the righteous people. You could go back and you can evaluate thousands of different scenarios from World War II, post World War II, to Korea to Vietnam. Remember we had the Malay incident, we have Iraqi incidents, Abu Ghraib. Right. All these incidents of war crimes. And when you start going down that reality of war crimes and war, I found that you typically have an axe to grind or you have people looking to make rank. The most prolific one for me was my friend Eddie Gallagher, who was tried for war crimes in a 2017 deployment to Mosul where he and his teammates were clearing out ISIS for us. You know, where three junior members of his platoon who essentially didn't want to go up to the front lines anymore because they probably got a little nervous, ended up telling, jumping their superiors and going directly to NCIS and saying that Eddie had killed an ISIS fighter on combat and then murdered him while conducting medical experiments on him and the aftermath. And for that, Eddie Gallagher was looking at life imprisonment. You know, very interesting dichotomy or thing that begins to happen now. Here's what I will tell you. The battlefield is not a courtroom. And the fact that for the entire gwat. I mean, in my very first giant mission that we did In Afghanistan back in 02, we had a lawyer come in and brief us on what we could not and could not do. So when you start to think about that there's law on the battlefield in some capacity, that's where things are always going to get a little sketchy. Right now, do I believe that we need to have restraints? Yeah, absolutely. Does killing innocent civilians and women and children and the elderly, is that legit? No. If you're caught doing that, do I think you should go to jail? Hell yeah. Does it happen in extreme, extreme extremity circumstances? Hell yeah. If a platoon is pinned down and they're danger close to being overrun and killed, would I advocate for a 500 pound bomb being dropped on the attacker's force? And if there's collateral damage with that, do I agree to that? Yeah, unfortunately, I'm going to have to go with that one. Is it right? No. Is my conscience going to carry the load on that? Yeah, for sure. But that's war, right? And so you got to always be leery of being an armchair quarterback and passing judgment about what people do on the battlefield. You know, the idea about this, there's this thing they call it the Tall Poppy syndrome, I guess, which is this jealousy of him receiving the Victoria Cross. That's a reality. That's a true thing. You know, when, when guys and units get awards that other guys don't get. Yeah, it can be incredibly challenging. I mean, I, I have several friends that came out and kind of became the face or received accolades for specific events. And there's a lot of people that are really upset with the attention that they've gotten, including the families of some of the fallen that were involved in these operations. You know, I try and always stay out of what I wasn't a part of. I try and restrict my commentary on what did or did not happen. That's between the guys that were on the battlefield. But I do know this is a reality. So, yeah, it's possible that you know these guys. But again, here's the, here's the interesting one. You know, there were, he had, there were 20 dudes who testified against him. So if it's one to three to five. Yeah, you know, I, I, I, that makes sense. But when you have 20 people testifying against, you know, that's why I'm really interested to read these court transcripts and to see what was written. When this comes out, I think it, it should be a relatively, a really good story. You know, one of the other, the last little piece I want to talk about is, you know, when you're coming back and you do AARs and you know, we, there was this, you know, I thought Andy Stump having Rob o' Neal on recently, his podcast to talk about aars and what happens. Yeah. Do aars get scrubbed by guys overseas to cover up different things that go on the battlefield? Hell yeah, they do. They always have. It's just a part of, you know, this process, you know, our AARs sent up to the head shed and for them. Yeah. And then that's incumbent upon, you know, your senior officers to do that next level investigation if there's questions about what happened, happen or didn't happen. So, you know, is this the end of this kind of thing now? This is always going to be relevant in the history of combat. It is what is held back in the old days, there was nothing like this. It didn't exist. There were no war crimes or anything. So just the fact that western societies presume to hold themselves accountable to war crimes, you know, that says something. But again, just in the most recent war in Iran, we've seen some questionable things, most particularly the bombing of the girls school in Iran. Yet to see any culpability for that. All right, we're on a roll. Before I jump into that, I just Want to really talk about my incredible partnership with one of my best friends, and that's Evan Ha and the boys over at Black Rifle Coffee. I'm so honored to be a part of their organization and just really can't thank them enough for allowing me to participate. What I want you to do is go toBlack Rifle Coffee.com and I want to check out their new energy drinks. They have these incredible energy drinks that you can buy at all different kinds of stores. Walmart, Bass Sports, and others. Or you can go online and order. And if you want to put in your little promo code froglogic20 there, you get a little discount on stuff there. I highly recommend that for me. It's my morning coffee. I am addicted to Black Rifle coffees. Just black. I think the tiger stripe camo definitely reels me in. The other one I love is the AK Espresso. This one right here is phenomenal. Love these. But they have so many different things that you can get at Black Rifle Coffee. You will love it. Again, when you go over black rifle coffee.com and you're checking out, type in FrogLogic2.0, get your little discount quote and tell them, oh, ruddy rut rut said you. So to all those folks out there who love coffee like I do, please do yourself a favor and go over and check out my. My brothers at brcc. Oh, and we've got a cool event coming up that I'm going to be a part out in Vegas. It's a staccato shooting, big shooting event with BRCC on April 15th. So Jordy and I are going to go out and participate in that. We'll get some good footage and maybe a couple interviews. All right, who y'? All? All right, let's get to the next one. All right, the mercenaries one. Holy Jordy. If I had. Dude, if I had a dollar, honest to God. Do you know what the number one thing that Dudes, when I was in, when we were not working, we were downrange. You know what the number one thing that we would do in our off time was? I'm sure it's not working at a coffee shop now. Now definitely not working at the coffee shop. It's not playing World of Warcraft, right? No, it's. It's sitting around talking about how we were going to make millions, be mercenaries once we got out, Right? So that's just the thing. That's just the thing you do. I'm telling you what our plan on west coast was. We would come back from deployment, right? We'd have our 30 day down window which nobody really knows what's up, right? We come back and before we kind of check in and everything gets processed, all of our, our bags, our kit and all that, we just sneak down in Mexico, take down a cartel, right? Pull in, I don't know, $20 million come back in, go buried out in the desert for, for five years. Wait, everybody gets their goes out and when they retire, you go out, you take your little piece, right? And then we figure out how to launder that, that stuff and, and next thing you know, we've got our little seed money for the rest of our lives. Dude, perfect. What could go wrong? What could go wrong, right? Well, I'll tell you what could go wrong. So last week the SPEAR Operations group was basically came out that Abraham Golan, an Israeli Hungarian dual citizen and former special forces commando, the founder and CEO of SPEAR Operations Group, basically ran an assassinations hit team out of a seven million dollar mansion in Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego. Isaac Gilmore, a former Navy SEAL who was the coo Spear, he had been decommissioned from the military for accidentally shooting a fellow SEAL during training. There's one, there's to have a negligent discharge and then there's to have a negligent discharge that shoots your body. That's pretty much grounds for dismissal. And then get this. One of the most famous Delta operators there is, Dale Comstock, former Delta Green Beret, was recruited as the head of the target and assassination and he was paid $40,000 a month plus bonuses for the successful assassinations. Now these people have been under investigation and basically all three defendants publicly admitted their roles in Buzzfeed interviews, BBC documentaries and different podcasts out of there. So it's not even like they denied it, right? So here's the operation. So it was incorporated Delaware 2015 and dissolved in 2018. And the UAE, the United Arab Emirates paid Spear $1.5 million a month plus bonuses for successful assassinations. The deal was brokered over lunch in an Italian restaurant in UAE military base in Abu Dhabi. And the team was given a 23 person kill list cards with names and faces by a uniform emirate officer upon landing in Yemen. The targets were primarily members of Al Isla, Yemen's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. UAE designated them terrorists in 2014. Critics dispute there this a senior El Aish member who won the 2011 Nobel Priest Price says no, we're not part of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists. Gilmore admitted some targets may may have been people who simply fell out of favor with UAE royal family. Think about this just for a second. Just for a second. Now hold on before I, I extrapolate this into fantasy land. It's not fantasy and it's reality. And guess what? I've got one word for you. The Hessians, right? You remember who George Bush had to murder when he crossed the Delaware, Delaware river in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. Guess where that they were German mercenaries that the British had hired to take out us. So to think that go back to what, who was the one group back in ancient Ukraine. It was man they were a huge for hire. It was uh, the Khazarians, uh, that the empire, right, you had Rome, you'd mercy used mercenaries all over the world, right? So you know this isn't just a one off story. I thought this was just some crazy story, dude. This happens a lot, dude. The Mexican cartels have been using foreign mercenaries to train all through years. And the fact that, that these uae, these Gulf coast states who have trillions of dollars in revenue, who don't want their own people to go do their fighting because you know, they don't do that. Why not pay the, the heathens, the knuckle draggers to go do it. Went and found themselves a bunch of Navy seals and green Berets, you know, to target some other brotherhood. These guys are like I don't give a shit who I'll kill anybody, anybody, as long as it's, as long as it's in quotations, terrorists. And I can make you know, couple million dollars for my efforts. To hell with it. Why not? Why, why shouldn't I do that? It beats being a Walmart greeter. Hello, nice to meet you Right now. All right. Now the interesting thing was that the assassination attempt took place in December 2015 and Comstock placed an explosive charge at this guy Mayo Al Aisha party in head headquarters in Aidan, Yemen Drone finish captured the full attack. The explosion, the gunfight, then the booby trap SUV detonated. Comtac Comstock said in court docs I was going to try. I was going to open the door and throw a couple hand grenades and then just go running and shoot everybody. That's the Leroy Jenkins approach right there. Dude, I was just thinking the same thing. Leroy Jenkins. And if you don't know what Leroy Jenkins, look it up, go grock it and you'll find out. It's hilarious. This is our, I think our second Leroy Jenkins reference since the show started. We got to keep it going. Yeah, we will for sure. All right. The USA also recruited former Al Qaeda members, including a USS Cole bombing subspec into their security forces. Despite public emissions, the DOJ has never charged anyone under the war Crimes act or federal conspiracy statues. The CIA has stated, has stated the claim that it signed off on these operations is false. Now again, this is not the new. Remember the last one which was the other special forces guy that tried to set up an overthrow of Maduro down in Venezuela who's now on the run. Apparently that guy is out there doing it. And if you think there aren't a bunch of former Spetsnots or you know, what is the mercenary group from, from Russia. You remember what they're called? Yeah, yeah, the guy. Yeah. Putin killed the head guy when he got over his skis in Ukraine. The Wagner group, they're out doing it. Yeah, there's, there's groups from every country all over the place. It doesn't take much and your skills are valuable. So again, while you're sitting in that woke ass course at college trying to go through, you know, your therapy, counseling, wink, wink, nod, nod to my buddy who had to do that recently who's a former tier one unit guy. You could be out there doing targeted assassinations for the uae. And you get away with it, by the way. That's what this is saying, is that you get away with this, right? Yeah. Unbelievable. All right. You know one of the things about, you know, if you're thinking about becoming a mercenary, it's a very short lived operation, I can tell you that. There are also hundreds of stories of these guys getting wrapped up and put in, you know, the dankest nastiest prisons in all around the world and being left to rot there because guess what? Plausible deniability. Right? If you're out there conducting these types of missions, generally the US government is not coming to get you. Like if you were a hostage, right. They're going to let you rot. So you know, you want to make some quick cash, roll the dice, have at it. But the ramifications if you do get busted, death or imprisonment in these places where you'll rot for the rest of your life. Tortured, beaten, raped, all those different things, you can't imagine anything worse. Last but least, today's attacks on the Israeli constant in Istanbul. What happened? Uh, three gunmen opened fire around 12:30pm Local time. They had long barrel weapons, AKs and pistols. They engaged the Turkish police in a firefight. One attacker was killed, two were wounded and detained. Two police officers were also injured. The Turkish interior minister said one of the attacker had links to an organization organization that exploits in quotation Religion. I don't know what that means. The Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed its consulate was not currently staffed. The Istanbul governor, David Gould called it a move that reeks of provocation. Three prosecutors signed to the investigation. Turkey's Justice Minister confirmed on site examinations underway. Okay, one of the things why this is kind of interesting right now, we did a show recently about the rise and radical or political motivated attacks in a show the new threat Paradigm recently. And I think what this is is something similar to what we're seeing, right? We're seeing direct engagements against the Israeli consulate who by the way, recently one of their ministers came out and said that Turkey is the new Iran, basically insinuating that that's going on. There's a lot of other disgruntled people in Turkey as a result of Israel's actions taking place in southern Lebanon. They're, They've displaced about 1.2 million people in southern Lebanon in the last week, week and a half. There's over 1400 people that have been killed in a bunch of old ancient villages have been leveled. Now they say they're doing this for their security to push up approximately, I think it's like 14% of all of Lebanon they're taking to give them a buffer zone from missiles. But again, basically they've invaded Lebanon. So one of the interesting things to see is are these attacks going to continue to elevate? I would imagine they do. I find it fascinating that we're not seeing any attacks originate from Syria right now, considering the former head of Syria is one of the former heads of Al Qaeda. That's an interesting perspective. We should pay attention to that. Also attention to Turkey, Jordan and Egypt as well too. Also I think we should be watching Europe for further on attacks like this as well. Obviously there's been hundreds of thousands of immigrants that have flooded into Europe from these particular regions in these areas and these sects, whether Sunni or Shia, that are not happening with what's going on now, again, this correlates to a lot of what we talked about in my episode with Sarah Adams. Go check that out. About attacks that are going to take place in the west, both Europe as well as America. She feels that there's like a 95% probability of this, but we are seeing these spikes in terror elevate. So you know, we should pay attention now. What can you do? Again, get out there and train, carry. Keep your head on a swivel and recognize that we are in this new threat paradigm. And it's important for you to keep your head on A swivel. Dude, I tell you what, man, this has been a week for the operators, right? Good God Almighty, man. Not. I mean, in some cases for that guy Smith, it's not a good week for him for sure. For the mercenaries, it seems like, yeah, man, this is awesome. We got away with. Made a bunch of cash and we're good to go basically either way. Basically clearing hot for all my buddies that are sitting on the sidelines waiting for. Waiting for the civil war to clack off, right? They're all sitting into each other in group chats like, yo, do you see this? Yeah. Oh, dude, they're texting them directly. Hey man, how do I get on board? Let's, you know, what is it? Gold Corp. Gold Corp. Their. Their signups just went up by like 85% this week because of Spear, you know, and I. It just again, you know, it's really fascinating. You know, as a former operator and intelligence person, you know, you always try and wonder what your life is going to look like while you're in obviously and crazy happens for sure. And you know, God bless those Cesar folks, man. That is obviously one of the most dangerous operations that can take place and one of the most complicated things to. In order to be effective in doing it. So Bravo Zulu to all you guys, man. God bless you and your families and I hope those pilots recover quickly and you know, some, some get awards or handed out to those cats for sure. On the flip side of that, you know, the war is still going on, it is still very dangerous and, and we still have to be prepared for the, the backlash and all these. Because the, the more we continue to bomb or, or, or inflict the civilian casualties or damage on civilian infrastructure to really put pressure on the Iranian people, I think the more likely we're going to see these responses. So. Yeah, man. All right, Jordy, for you. Big week for the operators, man. I enjoyed doing that show. If you've are. If you're digging the show, what we really could use help with is, is obviously subscribing. We need that the most. The more we subscribers we get, the more we get paid, the more we can bring you better shores, more dynamic. We got something big in the works coming up this weekend. Jordy and I are flying out. We're going to do something really cool with some of our friends and bring that, that show to you here you. Soon we can be able to afford to do more of that which we want to do. We're talking about maybe starting to do some more external guests to come on and shoot training videos that'll go into our Frog Logic Institute. If you want to check that out, go visit davidrutherford.com I've got three courses are there automatically. Embrace fear, Forging self confidence. Live the team life. We're going to go. With your help and support and our support from our sponsors from Iheart and Black Rifle and others, we're going to get out there and we're going to try and recruit top people who have great lessons to teach and bring them on. Jordy's in the process of developing an app which I love. We're really going to start working hard on that. We're hopefully get that out by the summer to y'. All to where you can have a very fixated place on your phone to go through all the curriculum for, you know, obviously small fees and upfront. But then over time, but we just want people to come on and use the site and then obviously if you can write, share it with another person, give commentary, you know, obviously a review of the show is amazing for us. So if you could take five minutes out of your time, give us a little review. Five stars really drive us up all over the algorithms everywhere sharing on social media. If you want to follow the show, you can follow us @DavidRutherfordShow on all platforms except X. At X, it's at D. Rutherford show. If you want to follow me, I'm on X and Instagram at Team Frog Logic. You can follow us there. All right, Jordy. Oh man. Dude, big week, buddy. Listen, we love you guys. We love the operators out there. Hoo yah. God bless. Thank Christ. Hoo ya.