The war with Iran, is it a quagmire? (Transcript)

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      The war with Iran, is it a quagmire?

Hi, Bob Barney with The Plain Truth today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com, and I guess today’s topic, of course, we’re still dealing with a war that I think some people are afraid looks like previous wars that we did not do well in, and I have warned us all along. To start again, and I’ll say this right now, I am for destroying the regime in Iran, and I believe that the policy to take out all of the leadership and a regime change is what is needed. We cannot allow the snake to survive as we did back in June, when I said then that the bombing that everybody cheerleaded how great it was did not work, and we found out that it did not work.

Just over the weekend, we find out they had to bomb the same nuclear site that they claim they utterly destroyed back in June again. Why is that? Because they did not do what they said they did, and it does remind me, and we’re going to listen to Geraldo Rivera and some other people, but it does remind me a little bit of Vietnam, where we claimed all kinds of victories and all kinds of mass killing, and the truth of the matter is we didn’t do so, and I’m afraid we could be there now, and that is because I keep talking about adults in the room. My problem with this Trump 2.0 is he has surrounded himself with mental midgets.

They are not adults in the room. They do not know what they’re doing. They have not planned anything in advance, and then you have a president who refuses to admit to the American people we have a problem, and we have a problem knocking out the Iranian military, and you go through Facebook and other places, and all you hear is cheerleaders for Trump saying, oh, he’s knocked out 95 percent, and what little bit they’re doing is nothing.

Well, this nothing they’ve hit, in which we’re going to have a report about that later this day, I believe tonight. It might have been this morning, but I believe it’s tonight. I don’t have my program in front of me.

This is the third time, now, three times a missile from Iran has hit the Temple Mount. It hasn’t hit the mosque yet, and all your people who don’t really know what they’re talking about say that Iran doesn’t mean to hit the Temple Mount. It’s just they’re just sending out missiles, and they don’t know where they’re going to land in Jerusalem.

That’s both in my humble opinion. This is why, in my opinion, the Iranian leadership would love to destroy the Dome of the Rock. If they could destroy the Dome of the Rock, then Jews would see that as a sign from God to rebuild the Third Temple, and it is, according to your Bible, going to be rebuilt.

It’s just a matter of when that’s going to happen, and I have news for you. I think if the Dome of the Rock was destroyed, there would be this move by the Jewish people to build the Third Temple, which would unite the entire Muslim world against the Jews of Israel, and of the country called Israel, and America, the true Israel of your Bible, and anybody that was a part of this war. And this is what I see is a very real potential happening, that we are not realizing we are facing an enemy who believes they’re clerics.

They’re absolutely mind-dead clerics who want to see the end of the world. Many people do notknow this. I said this, I think, in the Friday wrap-up.

Many people do not know this, but Muslims also believe in end times, and they also believe in a returning Messiah. Unfortunately, their return Messiah is not Jesus Christ, and it does not follow the Bible, but if they can make the end times happen, they think that the Islamic religion will rule the world for a thousand-year millennium under Muhammad. This is what they believe, and so if they can make it happen, guess what? They’re going to make it happen, and so I’m saying they are targeting holy sites like the Dome of the Rock on purpose, and in order to get all Muslims united.

They want to be the king of the south. They’re not. That’s yet to be coming, and it may be Saudi Arabia.

I’ve always believed it’s going to be Saudi Arabia, but we’ll see. But there is going to be a king of the north, which is the united Europe minus America and Britain, and there is going to be a king of the south, as spoken of by the prophet Daniel in chapter 11, which is going to be a united states of Islamic countries all across North Africa, all the way across the Middle East and into Afghanistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq, and maybe even further than that, and that is going to be the two end time powers that fight each other during the tribulation. I’m not predicting this is going happen in our lifetime, but it could, and we always, as Jesus said, be prepared.

But all of the people out there who want to support Trump, no matter what he does and some of the stupid statements that he makes, need to realize we are listening to the same thing we heard from President Johnson and General Westmoreland when they predicted that the war was going to end by Christmas, and it was going to end two months after that, and it was always in just around the corner there was going to be a total victory in Vietnam, and it was a total defeat for America. Not because we couldn’t win that war, it’s because we didn’t have people that knew how to do it, or were willing to do it, and that is what I’m afraid is going on right now. You had this Joe Kent resign, and I don’t think that means much, this advisor to the president, who looks to me to be an anti-Semite, and he looks to me to be somebody going to be running for office, and he wants to be at odds with Donald Trump.

But I’m going to go into the first thing here is an interview with Geraldo Rivera, and I think he’s right on target, what he says here, and please listen to him. Don’t say, well, it’s Geraldo, and he’s an idiot. Listen to him and what he says, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’re going to see he has some points that just is not being satisfied in my mind.

This nation correspondent at large, Geraldo Rivera. Geraldo, always so good to see you. I reallyappreciate you being on tonight.

I’m curious your perspective. You have seen the U.S. get in and out of several military conflicts throughout your career. Where does this Iran war, still just a few weeks in, compare? It reminds me very much of the Iraq war, where I watched the Pentagon cheerlead and always say that around the next corner was a breakthrough, that we had them exactly where we wanted them,and it took 10 years.

And that is exactly right. Now, he’s comparing it to the second Gulf War with Iraq and Afghanistan, but he has a good point here. But I go all the way back to even Vietnam with Westmoreland, who was making these stupid, boastful predictions about ending the war quickly, but we kept sending more and more soldiers, and that’s what seems to be going on here.

So let’s go on with this Geraldo interview.

NEWSNATION INTERVIEW WITH GERALDO RIVERA

 I don’t know that this will take 10 years, but I do know that this is escalation. We are escalating this fight every day.

You hear new news, a new ship is arriving, a new aircraft. Now we have the warthogs. Now we have the Apache helicopters.

Now the Marines are landing, or not landing, but they’re heading in the direction of Iran through the streets of Hormuz. It’s just everything that I’m saying now, every sentence, spells escalation. And I don’t know that there’s a way out of it now.

I don’t think the Iranians can quit. The president will not quit. He can’t either.

They’re kind of locked in. The Israelis will make sure that the president doesn’t lose his nerve on this one. And Iran is fighting for its life.

We’ve systematically, serially assassinated every level of leadership. Your former guest said the gripes that they have, the grudges, these are epic. The father, the mother killed, and so forth.

There will be hell to pay over a long time. And the thing that really worries me, and it is to me the headline by far, where are the 440 kilograms of enriched uranium that Iran has? So put that thought aside. Enriched uranium already in the country.

And now you have these two ICBMs, these two intercontinental ballistic missiles that were shot in the direction of Diego Garcia, the UK-USA base in the Indian Ocean. That’s 2,500 miles from Iran. They have two missiles.

Apparently one of them was shot down. One of them made it and neither blew up, neither hit the base. I’m still waiting for confirmation on exactly where that second missile landed.

But if indeed they have a rudimentary ICBM, a ballistic missile, and they have enriched uranium, maybe Tulsi Gabbard and John Radcliffe and the other intelligence people are very optimistic when they suggest that the president is right, that they’re a decade away, or the people who are fearful that they’re not a decade away, that indeed they can crash some kind of a rudimentary missile together with a rudimentary nuclear stuff on top of it. And we’re going to continue. But I just want to say, if they had even a dirty bomb and they could get to Israel, they’re going to use it.

Bob Barney

Israel is a nuclear power in their own right. And they’re going to take this fight to the end. There is never going to be another Holocaust of the Jews.

There is, according to your Bible, going to be a Holocaust of Muslims. A billion Muslims is going to die in a single day between the Tigris and Euphrates River. We don’t know when that’s going to happen.

It might happen in the upcoming months. But if Israel is hit, especially Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, with a dirty nuke bomb that kills tens of thousands of people and irradiates the area, Israel, and I’m sure they have the H-bomb, which is a hundred or a thousand times stronger than the bombs we dropped on Japan, they’re going to send that to Iran. They’re going to send that to Iran and they’re going to absolutely annihilate Tehran.

And that is going to bring every Arab nation into the war. We don’t even know. You know, Pakistan’s got the A-bomb, they’re Muslim, and they’re going to be part of the King of the South.

This is a problem that too many pro-Trumpers who just want rah, rah, rah, whatever Donald Trump says is the gospel. And I just see belligerence, I see arrogance, and I see stupidity with all of his advisors, none of them giving him the right idea of what we need to do next. We never plan for everything that’s happening now.

And a good general plans for everything. And we did not. And if you think we’ve planned for all of this, you’re mistaken.

Trump really thought it was going to be another Venezuela. He thought he was going to have a three-day war. He was going to declare victory and bring the Republicans into office and everything was going to be good within a week’s time.

But now we have runaway inflation. We’re going to have even more runaway inflation when the gas prices hit all of the different places, your transportation costs, railroad costs, everything, fertilizer, as you can see, has already doubled. You’re going to see a problem.

And this problem is not going to easily go away. Let’s go on. 

RIVERA

I’m so glad you bring up this joint base.

I’m so glad you bring this up. To your point, it is some 2,500 miles away from Iran. And clearly it has this kind of firepower and it seems that it may be willing to use it.

I believe when we were only a couple of days into this war, you came on this show and you said, never corner a rat. Absolutely not. Absolutely never, never, never corner a rat.

My other Geraldo-ism is, if you think the news is bad now from the Middle East, don’t worry, it’s going to get worse. For instance, you have the Marines now, 2,500 Marines coming on these vessels, this latest wave. Those Marines to be effective against, say, Karg Island, the big oil refinery that all the pundits are saying, oh, they’ll seize Karg Island.

How are the Marines going to get to Karg Island to land on the island? Don’t they have to come through the Strait of Hormuz? Won’t that expose them before they even get to the fight that they are purportedly heading toward to Iranian fire? You’re saying Iran is able to strike by land, air, and sea in the Strait of Hormuz. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen. The moment that U.S. Marines are in that crossfire and they are harmed, it is an enormous moment of escalation in this war.

Absolutely. This war is not going to be measured, this is not just day 21. This is the beginning ofthe first, this is the first month of what promises to be a prolonged campaign.

Iran is 92 million people. We have decapitated its leadership, that’s true. Although they’re always in a country that large, there’s always someone that could take over, someone who could run the fight.

They’ve been militarized since 1979. I just think that to be optimistic now is to be foolish. He is not publicly committed to sending ground troops into Iran at this time, but as you said, thousands of military personnel are en route to that region on warships right now.

Do you believe that’s an indication of an impending ground operation, and in your opinion, do you think a ground operation would be a good thing? No is the answer to the good thing question. The second they did, I guess the thought, the reason the Marines on board a vessel is less frightening than ground troops, so-called, is that they are in a vessel, they’re not slugging around fixed bayonets, charging up hills in ground warfare the way we’re used to seeing it portrayed. But I just think that when you bring these kinetic forces together, you’re bringing Marines and more ships, and the Iranians are desperate to do whatever they can to keep that, because oil is their only weapon, denying oil.

It’s going to be violent. It’s going to be kinetic. It’s going to be unpredictable.

There’s going to be casualties. Thank God we’ve only suffered, what, 13 only, 13 dignified transfers. What happens when it’s more than, I’m not even going to say a number, but I just think that people have to be wary of here now we have them asking, or the administration asking for $200 billion to prosecute this flight.

I think that’s where our leadership, to the extent that it exists, can voice an independent opinion that maybe not. Maybe we’re not going to allow you to have $200 billion to play with here. I think that that might be a fight that it’s worth legislators fighting over, because I do want people to understand that I believe, and I have deep experience in the region, that this is a slippery slope, and we’ve already started to slide.

Hi, here at the News Nation Correspondent at large, Geraldo Rivera. Always appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Bob Barney

Well, that was Geraldo Rivera, and I have to agree with him. I do believe we can win this war. I believe we could have won Vietnam, and I believe we could have been victorious in Afghanistan and Iraq if we wanted to fight a real war.

But that takes boots on the ground, and I said that from day one of this conflict. If we’re not going to put boots on the ground and take over the country as we did Germany, as we did Japan after World War II, then we’re not going to win. And here’s your problem here.

The American public’s not going to allow boots on the ground. There will be a mass exodus of people wanting to join. The draft will have to be reinstituted, and no one will show up.

The Bible says that’s going to happen, by the way. We have lost our allies because this guy, Trump 2.0, has ticked off, with his tariff policies, every ally we’ve had, including our oldest allies, England and Canada. I’m not talking about even Germany here, which we know eventually, if you know your Bible, is going to be the seat of the King of the North.

They’re going to be the Antichrist government coming out of probably Germany or Italy. We already know that. But when you are alienating England and they don’t allow their MI6 to give us intelligence anymore, the best, you know, our CIA is kind of like bumbling fools.

The MI6 is one of the best, if not the best, intelligence agency in the world. In the Middle East, of course, it’s Mossad from Israel. And we are not getting this intelligence now from the English.

They’ve cut us off. They’re not supporting us. And oil is going to be $150, $180 a barrel.

And I got news for you, businesses like mine are going to suffer major, because I’ve been through this before. I’ve been in the paint business for 47 years, and I have seen every time there has been a war, there has been an oil crunch, and there has been sparked prices and runaway inflation. And I don’t believe after four years of Joe Biden opening up the border, spending all kinds of money, like a drunken sailor, and Ronald Reagan was funny and said, well, drunken sailors spend their own money, but Biden spent our money, and Trump now wants to spend our money.

But I don’t think the American people have the stomach that we had in World War II to fight a real war. And that is a problem. When I come back after this brief break about ThePlainTruth.com, we’re going to get into some of the other ramifications of what’s going on.

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Bob Barney

One person, if we’re alive, or other people behind us, they are going to be reading the headlines that were already predicted in your Bible. Go to ThePlainTruth.com every day and learn what’s in God’s Word about today’s news. Well, we’re back, so I’m going to end this show with an interview with John Bolton.

And you know what I think about John Bolton. He’s never fought a war he didn’t like, but that doesn’t mean he’s not an intelligent person. And it doesn’t mean when Trump picked him in Trump 1.0 that he gave what he thought was the best advice from a deep state point of view.

Now, the deep state may be bad in many cases, but they usually are adults in the room that know what our enemies are planning and what we have to do to stop them. And I’m not saying that we should listen to everything John Bolton says, but if you’re not going to listen to other points of view and you’re just going to follow Donald Trump into hell, hell is coming. So let’s listen to this interview with Don Lemon and John Bolton.

BOLTON

From the Washington Post, I want you to take a look. We’ll put this headline up, but it says U.S.-Israeli rift widens over potential endgame in Iran. Talk to me about this rift.

And as someone who has long advocated for America to take on the Iranian regime, how do you think this war is being prosecuted? Well, I think to start with the second half of the question first, if I might, you know, from a military point of view, it’s generally going quite well, but I think there’s real trouble built in on the political side of this operation. And it is, if regime change is Trump’s objective, and that’s not entirely clear, he has said it is, but he’s also said other things. I think that there was inadequate preparation of the American people for launching the attack.

I think there’s a compelling case that you could make for regime change due to the threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its support for its conduct of terrorism over many, many years. But Trump didn’t make that case. He didn’t speak to the people beforehand.

And I’m not just talking about one speech. He didn’t lay out the case over a period of time. And in doing this, you don’t have to say anything about specifics of the military operation or timing or anything else.

You just make the argument why it’s necessary. He didn’t do that. And I think that’s a problem.

He didn’t, as a corollary, he didn’t make the case to Congress either. And that’s going to be a problem. He certainly didn’t consult with allies, friends, others that might be affected around the world.

We can see that problem playing out right now. And perhaps worst of all, he didn’t consult with the opposition, as far as I can tell anyway, inside Iran, who, if we’re not going to put significant boots on the ground, and I take that as a given in the Trump administration, they’re going to have to do a lot of lifting politically and otherwise inside Iran. They need help.

They could use assistance. But they really need coordination with us, and I don’t think that’s happening. So, three weeks in, it looks to me like, while the military side is generally going well, I’m very worried about the potential outcome.

So, coming to this question of a rift between the U.S. and Israel, there could well be divergent objectives. I think it’s undoubtedly the case that Netanyahu and Israel, nearly united on this point, want to see regime change. Now, whether Trump’s prepared to see it through or not, I just don’t know.

It could be that there are tactical disagreements, should Israel have hit the Iranian refining facilities for the South Pars gas field. Clearly, Trump says no. Whether that is hindsight or whether he said it at the time, we don’t know.

But I don’t think necessarily tactical disagreements really make that much difference. If you look at the history of World War II, Churchill and Roosevelt, on behalf of the U.K. and the U.S., had major differences over strategy. Dealing with Charles De Gaulle and the French resistance was a whole other question.

You can have common objectives and still beat each other’s brains out on how to get there. I think Netanyahu and Trump have enough of a relationship that it’s not going to frustrate achieving the objective, assuming they agree on it. But it certainly speaks to, I believe, the chaos surrounding this war.

They have had so many excuses. First, they said it wasn’t about regime change, and then it was about regime change, and then a host of other reasons that they gave. Then you have the intelligence, according to folks who are in the know, and even Tulsi Gabbard, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to those hearings, saying that there was no imminent threat from Iran, and that Donald Trump is the only one who could make those decisions.

Doesn’t that play into just how chaotic this is, and who actually is in charge of the war, and if there is a coherent strategy here among both Israel and America? Well, I think this is the way Trump does business. It’s almost always chaotic because he doesn’t he doesn’t think in strategic terms. He certainly doesn’t have a coherent national security strategy.

I mean, his administration wrote one. They wrote one in the first term, too. He didn’t read the one in the first term, and I’m willing to bet he didn’t read the one in the second term.

He doesn’t do policy the way we normally understand that. People have described him as transactional, and that’s a fair approximation. Everything is a new idea, new possibility.

He can change his mind from the morning to the afternoon, and so the chaos is sort of his operating style. I do think that affects how his advisors react to him, where there’s a real feeling he wanted to be surrounded in the second term by yes men and yes women, and I think that’s pretty much what he’s got. On the imminence point, I don’t think, based on what I know, that Iran was at the point of having a nuclear weapon, but I don’t think that is a prerequisite.

I don’t think you’re required to put your country at risk when it’s necessary and appropriate to take preventative action beforehand, but Trump was trying to dramatize the reason to go in, and as usual, he exaggerated. Do you think the consensus is that Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony in front of the Senate and the Congress didn’t do Donald Trump any favors? I don’t know if you agree with that. She obviously had two choices.

She could either appeal to the one person audience that matters, which is Trump, or she could show herself to be incompetent, and I think she achieved the latter. Whether she satisfied Trump, I don’t know. Certainly, the others on the panel tried to avoid the question, except for Ratcliffe, who just agreed with what Trump said, so he’s probably the safest of all of them.

I don’t think Tulsi Gabbard’s going to last long for a number of reasons. I’m surprised, really, she’s still there. That’s probably true.  (END)

Bob Barney Wrap-up

I don’t think that she is doing herself or our country any good by following and trying to please Donald Trump, but that is what every single advisor, including Marco Rubio—I mean, we made a joke about it a couple weeks ago, where Donald Trump bought shoes for everybody in his cabinet, and they’re all too large, and they’re wearing shoes they can’t even fit into. You could see in Marco Rubio’s case, there was like an inch and a half gap between his heel and the back of the shoe, and they’re still wearing them because they’re afraid that Donald Trump would be mad if they didn’t wear them. If you have a cabinet that cannot stand up to their president, then you have a problem.

And guess what, America? I think this time around, we have a problem. I did not foresee this. I supported Donald Trump in 2016, supported him again in 2020.

I paid money to his campaign in 2024, and I really believe that 2024 candidate, Donald Trump,was going to be like the first Donald Trump. He was going to be for little businesses, and he was going to be for a worldwide kind of peace. I do think we had to take out Iran, and I think he is right.

What his goal is, there’s just no planning. This is Vietnam. This is the Afghan-Iraq War all over again.

I’m sorry to say that. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but that’s what it appears like. Did you think three weeks ago we would be where we are, day 22? This is Bob Barney for The Plain Truth today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com. Thank you for listening, and until tomorrow, bye-bye.