21:51 As the final convoy of the Army's 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team based at Fort Lewis, Washington entered Kuwait early Thursday. A different Stryker brigade remained in Iraq. Soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team with the 25th Infantry Division are deployed in Iraq as members of the Advise and Assist Brigade." advise and assist the army's designation for brigade selected to conduct security force assistance so this basically corroborates that the note I just read you. Yeah, but meanwhile we still have these propaganda machines on both sides of the aisle going now the one they got i thought was the funniest and you can play as much of this is you want too but I have a clip of Richard Engel who is NBC's foreign correspondent he spent more time in Iraq than half the troops
22:37 And the way I see it when i'm listening to him he's actually become one of the troops you know which is you get, You know. You're working with these guys all the time you're gonna pretty much pick up their habits or ideas? You're gonna be reflective of them so your friend Rachel Maddow Bad cow that racial madcap brings him on because he's like nbc so you know she is expecting him to put the road just about the party line and what a great response for it was not only a little out there sure an angle just blows the whole beach in far as he's concerned the whole thing was a fiasco all the while once he begins
23:16 Maddow sat there and just steamed in her own juices and couldn't get out of the hole. Wait a minute, isn't this pre-recorded? This isn't live is it? Her show... Is it live? She yeah when that's live to tape Yeah but so like for ten minutes they're not gonna do any post on it They can't kick him off So this guy is totally a candidate He's a candidate for you end up on CBS is what it is, but let's listen Operation Iraqi freedom will be over Joining us now is NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, who spent more time in Iraq than any other American I know. Hi Richard! How are you? I'm alright...I think The president speech tonight..ummm....I guess i just want your overall reaction to him marking the end of a war this way No mention of democracy You talked about all the reasons that US went to war The one that we heard all the time when were in Baghdad was democracy That this was gonna bring a new flourishing society
24:15 Nothing instead it was thank you to the troops But didn't exactly say thank you for what they did just thank you for Achieving what was asked. Thank you for doing what we asked you to do she's already like for the people of the people to do there were some just on this in a row just one second or two disarmist states he said became a fight against an insurgency where put the future of iraq in the hands and its people a belief that out of the ashes of war a new beginning could be born a very what is that with which where was mad cow when we went toward this this was about saddam hussein weapons of mass destruction
24:52 Yeah, when did she change sides on this thing? What's up with that?! Oh my goodness. Thank you for sort of something there was no real sense of thank you for what you've done have you made the world safer Have you made America safer He talked about thanking the Iraqis for creating an opportunity For the Iraqis to find their own destiny emerge from the ashes and start Their own society Society started there It is literally the cradle of society, you know look up the Sumerian tablets. That's crazy I can't believe anyone would say that you can start society over again Good job the first time around
25:35 That's a tough lesson to, uh- a tough message to hear. Thank you for the- for fighting, thank you for doing what we asked but I can't really pin down what i'm thanking you for Yeah let me ask about one... Yeah shut up and let me try and get you back on track here A specific thing he said about essentially whats gonna happen in Iraq next He said Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission. Extremists will continue to set off bombs attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife but he said ultimately these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals Iraqis are a proud people they have rejected sectarian war and they have no interest in endless destruction My question to you John is do you think that unfortunately I believe i know the answer but do you think that the American public
26:21 is really just so stupid that we're just really forgetting what this war was about, it was all weapons of mass destruction. It was horrible it was like press a button and were all dead here Saddam Hussein who we found in the hole and got hanged remember all that? I mean do you really think people are just forgetting all this and thinking oh yeah that's right! Yeah we were there to help him! Yeah its all over we did a good job Do you really believe that thats whats gonna happen Yeah, because obviously the public gets pounded by these people with whatever... Here's our talking points for the month. We've got to make everyone think this way and we like you know the way you got the American public 70% of them I think at some point believe that Al Qaeda attacks originated in Iraq because they were told so by this mainstream media
27:10 in some odd ways. They weren't directly told, actually the mainstream media was sending the other message but they were doing it in such a way that it made people with you know what neuro linguistic programming don't know like advertisements like I gotta go buy some Hot Pockets because they're good for me yeah now its just blows me away that we're But she is such a stooge about this. Well totally! She's the one, I wouldn't actually expect Mad Cow to come out and say you know this is bullcrap this was about weapons of mass destruction Yeah instead she sitting here helping Obama's cause I mean she's basically an Obamabot to an extreme and it's actually embarrassing
27:48 at that. I hope he's right and Iraqis themselves don't want civil war, and they didn't want civil war when it happened! And a lot of times people don't get what they want. I'm from believer that no people want more yet wars happen and they happen quite often. And Iraq right now even if the Kurds in the Sunnis and Shiites don't want to fight each other there are groups pushing them in that direction and if there is a major catastrophe up big bomb in Najaf. I don't think the country is strong enough to prevent another round of civil war, especially if they don't have a government. They have security forces that have been created by the United States and are pretty good but if you don't have anyone leading them and you have fewer American troops then you don't have effective security forces." Right But this is where she should say well that's not our problem now is it? It's not our problem! She actually says right
28:44 Well, your brain is grinding away on how this interview went off the track because it was really meant to just extol Obama. And let's hear what she comes out with then. President Maliki in... Prime Minister Maliki in Iraq today gave his own televised speech in iraq marking the same transition just as a bomb and he shouldn't even be prime minister he was not elected didn't win the elections he's hanging on to power we could meet with backing him right now there i've spoken lot of people who are involved these negotiations the deal is will try and reduce maliki's influence and then weaken his post a little bit and bringin i had allow a d the person actually won the elections and will try increase some sort of she powersharing agreement
29:29 I think it will be a tremendously weak. You ought to see her. She really has a concerned look on her face. ...government that cannot handle the real problems, the people who are trying to push Iraq back into a civil war and it's not anything that the Iraqis are used too they had a centrally controlled government now they have no government and if the American plan going forward is to give them some sort of weak consensus government I don't see how they're gonna get out of this Richard, we all know the list of justifications for the Iraq invasion. Oh! We all know them John? Is she gonna list them? Is she gonna list the justifications? She's scrambling now... I don't think there was actually a what do you call it a congressional declaration of war. I don't think we actually had that did we
30:22 So justification or not, it was an illegal war not sanctioned properly. And as a left-wing progressive she should be bringing this up! Yeah it's in the Constitution only Congress can declare war but this was award declared by President Bush And by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Justifications, yeah that's justification so let's hear the hopefully she'll tell us what the justifications were because we all know them John we all know them. The effects of the Iraq war um that turned out to be bull I went through all of those in my initial segment yes i heard Democracy across the Middle East democracy is not broken out in the middle east no it was the justification
31:01 Yeah, apparently. Americans leaving because they're they were concerned that Iran will be the biggest player there are people who fought against the United States in Ramadi and Fallujah and Sunni areas Who now? And they didn't join up people who joined The Awakening People who were with the resistance and who now say you know maybe it's not a good idea for the Americans to leave Because we don't really want Iran to come in and take over Wow. I mean, it is
31:46 It is amazing to think that even without a new government being formed, even without us knowing exactly where things are going. Even with as you're describing the prospect of another civil war the probably most accurate generalization we can make about what the effect on Iraq has been of this war is that we turned it from a Sunni dictatorship into the world's only Shiite Arab state. Shiite failed sectarian corrupt oil patronage state, it has been...it is a basket case in the Middle East Anyway, that's enough. Hey! That's great I love that you know of course the bottom line is of course we won You have to as an American? I know that We win a war after we killed about 100,000 people what's the score today? Oh? 100,000 yay War is over. We've done it mission accomplished. We killed some people good job everybody