Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so
much for your support. All Right, So I was on
vacation last week, but I was following, obviously the news
about the two National guardsmen that were shot in Washington,
d C. One of whom passed away Army specialist Sarah Beckstrom.
This was the day before Thanksgiving. The other victim, air
Force staff Sergeant Andrew Wolf. I think I saw the
latest report yesterday was that he that he was awake,
He is in critical condition, he remains hospitalized, and so
that's good news. The suspect, a fellow by the name
of Rachmana la lacha laawah. I think is how he
pronounces all of that, lakhanwa, lakanawa, lachanwaw Lackenwow, there we
go that's probably yeah, that's probably it. He He was
charged with murder as well as assault with intent to
kill while armed. He's twenty nine years old. He's been
ordered held without bond. During an initial court appearance that
happened yesterday, he appeared virtually he was not there in
the courtroom because he's still in the hospital because he
got shot by law enforcement that was responding to his
murdering of Army Specialist Ecstrum, twenty years old, and the
attempted murder of Air Force Sergeant staff Sergeant Wolf. The
magistrate judge that's overseeing the initial appearance said, or that
did oversee the initial appearance, said that the government's case
was quote exceedingly strong. According to the charging documents in
the District of Columbia Superior Court, lock Awhall allegedly yelled
a Loha snack bar or something that sounded something like that.
It could be a llahu akbar, could also be that,
in which case we may never know the motive. It's
just a it's an enigma wrapped in a mystery, embedded
in a riddle as to what may have motivated this guy.
As he was screaming, Allahu akbar, this is from CBS
news dot com and they helpfully point out that the
phrase allahau wak bar is Arabic for God is great, see,
and that's really all you need to know about that phrase.
There's no other uh, no other uh context provided nothing
else here from this uh you know Firefighter of Democracy
that's reporting the story at CBS News. Uh. This has
been going on for twenty five years, almost twenty five years,
since nine to eleven, and since the latest phase, you know,
bringing the Jihad to to the American shores. All of
a sudden, we started hearing this phrase, a lahuak bar,
a lahuac bars. People were, you know, beheading other people
at the workplace or driving their vehicles through crowded streets
during a parade. A lahaak bar, a lahauac bar. And
we always got this same explanation and it has not changed.
I've talked about this in different ways over the years.
There are there are sort of templates that get written
for stories that particularly for stories that have legs. As
we would say in the industry in journalism, a story
has legs means that you can do a bunch of
different follow up stories to the initial report. Right, So
the story has legs, so it will keep on moving
throughout subsequent news cycles. Right, and so when you write
the first draft of the very first story, you know,
an event happens, and you're writing a story, you're going
to use a lot of different words and to try
to explain what's happening. Right, You've you probably don't have
as much information because it's you know, a discrete event,
and so you're just saying this thing happened, and so
you have more space because you don't have a lot
of details, So you have more space to try to
explain the few details that you do have. But over time,
as the story keeps moving and you keep getting more
additions to the initial story, you end up with sort
of a distilled down boilerplate language template that you can
then use in every other story subsequently. And that's how
narratives are calcified. That's how they stick. Okay, the initial
version of a story may take three paragraphs to describe
the event, but by the time you're in week two
or year four, those three paragraphs have now been distilled
down into one or two sentences, and that becomes the truth.
That's the template, and that is what has occurred with
a lahaakbar, which is the Arabic phrase for God is great,
and that's it. You get no other context when we
all know the context, right, we all understand what that means,
but they don't want to say it. Well, why doesn't
the media reporter here? Actually there's four reporters on this
story from CBS News, four reporters and all they give
us is God is great and that's what all huakbar means?
Does it mean anything else? Is there a context in
which somebody would be screaming it while they murder people?
I know that that is true. They do. There is
a connective tissue, if you will, that runs through attacks
with this phrase. When people are launching attacks against other
people and they're screaming a lat houakbar, it speaks to motive.
There's also another element to the story that I have
not seen anybody reported reporting on. It's not in this story.
Did you see any of the images from the crime scene.
I'm not talking about the victims, talking about the suspect,
lock Awhaw. Did you see the picture of him being
loaded into the ambulance? He was he was naked or
darn close to it, I don't know. He may have
been wearing like some jockeys or something, some briefs, I'm
not sure, but because it was like a drone or
helicopter overhead and they were loading him in and he
had no pants on and he had no shirt on,
and people were like, why is he naked? Now, there
could be an explanation like maybe somebody law enforcement was
there and they wanted to make sure that the guy
didn't have like a bunch of explosives strapped to his body. Now,
why would you make that kind of why would you
leap to that kind of a conclusion, Right, couldn't you
just search him, just pat him down, make sure that
he doesn't have anything on him? Why would you have
to strip him completely down in order to search for
any weapons? And why would it be explosives per se? Well,
that ties back to the use of the frame is
Allahu ak Bar meaning God is great, and that's all right,
there's something more to it. Or maybe they stripped him
naked because they he had gotten shot and they were
trying to, you know, perform all sorts of medical interventions
to try to, you know, save his life, because that's
what we do in the West. We shoot the suspects
and then try to save their lives. So maybe that
was it. Haven't seen any reporting on it. But there
is another There is another potential explanation. See, when people
yell Allahu akbar during the commission of a murderous rampage,
they believe that. Oftentimes they believe that after they die
in the assault, they will go immediately to a paradise
where they get to have sex for the rest of
their eternity. And so you want to be ready for
when you roll in there. And this is actually pretty standard.
People will get dressed up very nice or they strip
down because they're like, you know, when I get there,
I'm ready for action. Again, that's the connective tissue here
to the allahuac bar phrase. But CBS doesn't tell you that.
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that'll last a lifetime. All right, back to the CBS
story here about the National Guard shooting suspect who's now
charged with murder. Being held without bond. Attorney General Pam
Bondi said she's considering the death penalty for lock Amwall. Which, oh,
by the way, I did get a text from j
T who says, Pete, you get ninety nine percent of
these pronunciations correct. The one that I think you need
a little help with, though, is mom dummy or at
least I think that's correct. That's good to know, Thank you, JT.
I appreciate that. After the shooting, sources told CBS News
that Lockenwall served on a CIA backed operations team for
about eight years in Afghanistan and said he suffered from PTSD.
He and his family fled Taliban threats in Afghanistan and
were brought into the United States in twenty twenty one,
and his asylum case was approved earlier this year. Over
the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noms suggested that he
could have radicalized after he came to the US. Emails
obtained by CBS also indicate that Lockenwal's mental health had
deteriorated in recent years, and that he had become more
isolated and detached from his family. The Trumpet Minute stration
has cited the attack as reason to further expand its
ongoing immigration crackdown, halting all visa and immigration processing for
Afghan nationals and ordering a review of green card cases
for immigrants from nineteen different countries. This from The New
York Post. A leading national refugee agency, was warned multiple
times that this shooter was spiraling into mania and mental illness,
beginning in twenty twenty three. Despite this, and an alleged
failure to maintain his mandated contact with state social services,
he still managed to win asylum in April of this year. So,
once again, as Brett Winterbole would say, the system failed.
A system failed, right, that's going to be the explanation
for this. And I know right now there are you know,
people trying to blame Joe Biden. Other people are trying
to blame Donald Trump because you know, the guy fled
Afghanistan during the calamitous fall as we as we left
and we were trying to get everybody out and we
couldn't vet everybody sufficiently. And they're like, this is on Biden.
And then the Biden defender's like, nah uh, Trump drew
up the plan and then h uh, he was here
in America and he got his asylum approved in this
year a couple months ago in April. So it's on Trump.
So everybody's trying to blame like the President for this
guy being here and for his actions. But the mental
health part of this is real, and I'm not saying
that as like this guy, you know, if they put
you know, they put him to death. Like I'm not
going I'm not going to shed any tears for him
because like the stuff that I've come across so far
indicates that, yeah, like he he he was not assimilating.
And I'm going to get into the CIA connection here
as well. So he was supposed to be staying in
contact with state social services and he wasn't. He had
his his his handlers, the people that were here that
were like helping him assimilate, an integrate or whatever, giving him,
you know, access to the services and you know, lining
them up with jobs to take and stuff that. Like
they got emails that were like this guy is he's
you know, the the cheese is sliding off the cracker
with this guy, but he still gets asylum. Why his
behavior was so disturbing that a local community advocate reached
out to a refugee organization for help. According to emails
that the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants had and
were apparently seen by the Associated Press. This is called
the us CRI, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.
One of the emails said, rachman Aha has not been
functional as a person, father and provider since March of
last year. This so that would have been twenty twenty three,
So this has been going on for over a year.
He quit his job that month and his behavior has
changed greatly, said one community member. In January of twenty
twenty four, the community member said he feared that Lackenwaal
had become suicidal. He reportedly struggled to assimilate. He failed
to hold down a steady job. He did not commit
to learning English. He would go through periods of dark
isolation and what they called reckless travel. He would spend
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New York Post reporting that the gunman who murdered a
National guardsman and attempted to murder a second the day
before Thanksgiving up in Washington, d C. Had all sorts
of mental health problems. These periods of dark isolation, reckless travel,
as it was described, he would just take off driving
during these manic episodes, he would take off in the
family car, drive non stop, leaving for up to two
weeks at a time on his own, going as far
as Chicago or Arizona. The shooter also failed to stay
in contact with the Washington State Department of Social and
Health Services, which was required of him by the terms
of his entry into the US. They did say that,
you know, he would, for you know, a short period
of time, a couple of weeks, he would, you know,
do the right things, but then he would descend again
into these manic episodes. In these emails that the Associated
Press obtained, his when his wife would leave him with
the kids for a week while she traveled to visit relatives,
his children would go to school unwashed and in dirty clothes,
without having eaten well. The children's school raised concerns about
his behavior, and the family even faced eviction at one
point in twenty twenty three after months of not paying
the rent. Now the USCRI this the immigration relocation folks.
They tried to visit him and his family back in
March of twenty four, but it's unclear whether anybody reported
the mental distress to immigration authorities or to law enforcement.
Right so, there were all of these signs. Now, this
guy got into America along with his family because he
worked with the CIA during the war in Afghanistan. He
was a member of what is called a zero unit.
I had never heard this term before, the zero unit.
I'll tell you what that is here in a minute.
The Washington Post, they reported that he appeared to struggle
to adapt to his new circumstances and refused to take
many of the entry level jobs available to him as
a recent immigrant. These guys were elite soldiers who had
a career and homes in Afghanistan, but when they came
here they lost everything. They're told, you need to work,
but they don't have the skills. This according to a
former senior Afghan commander now living in the US who
did not know the shooter personally, but has extensive contacts
in the Afghan refugee commute unity, including with other former
zero unit fighters. This guy said quote, they're not ready
to just integrate themselves into the community. Okay, well, I
feel like that's part of the deal though. Right, you're
worried that you worked with the CIA, you worked with
the Americans, and so now you're worried that when the
American When America leaves and the Taliban takes over again,
now you're worried that they're going to come after you
in retribution for you going after them, right, so you flee.
But part of that deal is that when you come
to America, you integrate into America. I don't know, like,
what did you think you were going to do when
we brought you here, that you were just going to
live on the dole not after work, or maybe like
continue to do these nighttime raids on behalf of the
CIA against Americans or something like what exactly what were
your expectations. They're just not ready to integrate into the community.
So the zero units thousands of Afghans. This is, by
the way, a story from NBC News back in twenty
twenty three. Okay, thousands of Afghans who fought under the
command of the CIA for years and provided security for
American intel officers say they face a debilitating legal limbo
in the US and are appealing to Congress and the
Biden administration for help again twenty twenty three. August twenty ninth,
twenty twenty three, about ten thousand to twelve thousand members
of the Afghan National Strike unit, a clandestine force known
as the Zero Units. They were evacuated from Afghanistan when
the US military withdrew from the country in August of
twenty twenty one, but their two year work permits in
the US are due to expire within days or weeks,
and these veterans worry they will no longer be able
to support their families, and some worry that the work
they did for the CIA may even be hurting their
chances of getting green cards. So we brought them over
here and just gave them a two year work permit.
That's that was the plan. Nasir Adar, a veteran of
the force, said his comrades are struggling with depression as
the clock ticks on their work permits. Quote, some of
them are feeling hopeless. They don't know what to do.
This was two years ago. At least two veterans from
the CIA trained force have taken their own lives since
arriving in the US, according to Andar and other advocates
at Famil or Femil, the nonprofit that's trying to help
these Afghan veterans since they arrived. Most of the veterans
of the force have not received special immigrant US visas
which were created for Afghans and Iraqis who worked for
the US government. Without those visas, the veterans cannot apply
for Green cards, leaving them in a legal gray zone.
So yet another way that the pullout of Afghanistan was botched. Like,
that's what this is obviously telling me is that this
is yet another example of how the Biden administration screwed
this up. Seriously, you were supposed to get one kind
of visa, and you didn't get that kind of visa,
so they just handed out work permits. And to be fair,
the Biden administration was handing out work permits to like
millions of people. So maybe they're just like, look, we
got all these extra work permits, We're just going to
give them to you, you know. But the problem is
that if you go to apply for the Green card
and you start answering the questionnaire. One of the questions
is have you ever received any type of military, paramilitary
or weapons training? And you answer yes from your CIA,
and now your application just it just dies like nothing happens.
This is what they were saying. When they answer yes
to that question and similar questions, their applications never seem
to advance through the bureaucracy. Advocates for the Afghan veterans
say the bureaucratic process has proven frustrating and that standard
questions for green card applications do not take into account
their unusual circumstances having been drained by the CIA as operators, right,
these are veterans. According to Geta Bekshi, a former CIA
officer who worked with the National Strike Unit in Afghanistan, said,
these are veterans who should be celebrated in America. I
could never have imagined that they'd be so disadvantaged by
our bureaucratic processes. Really, you never thought our bureaucracy at
America would disadvantage people. This is America, like this is
It's pretty far for the course, I would think. Advocates
for the Zero Unit veterans say they were heavily vetted
before they even joined the force for any possible terrorism links,
and regularly underwent security checks, a level of screening that
interpreters for the US military and other Afghan employees were
never subjected to. And this raises there's a question about
you know, well, is this an example of what you
may remember was called green on blue attacks, where you
know people that were trained up by the US military
to be part of the Afghan army, and then they would,
you know, go and attack the Americans green on blue attacks.
But according to this report, in the entire twenty year war,
members of the zero Units never launched an attack on
their US advisors. They have no reported incidents of that
occurring with these Zero Unit guys. Such Green on Blue
attacks against Americans became frequent occurrences among Afghan recruits to
the army and to the police force, but never the
Zero Units. All right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
of current events, and I know you do too, And
you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources.
Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's
an app and it's a website, and it combines news
from around the world in one place so you can
compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out
at check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put
the link in the podcast description too. I started using
ground News a few months ago and more recently chose
to work with them as an affiliate because it lets
me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored
by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check
Dot Ground, dot News slash Pete. Subscribe through that link
and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use
the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. The Zero Units in Afghanistan, these guys were
They were locals, They were Afghans. They were trained in
the overseen by the CIA. They operated under a veil
of secrecy. During the war. They would conduct combat operations
and secure intelligence outposts. According to NBC News story from
two years ago, even now, US officials cannot explicitly acknowledge
the connection between the CIA and the Zero Units because
it's all still classified the force. The Zero Units played
a crucial role in the US led effort to weaken
al Qaeda after the attacks of September eleventh, two thousand
and one, and as its troop presence was scaled back,
the US increasingly relied on these Zero Units to safeguard
US and coalition personnel, including at the Kabl Airport in
the final days of the twenty year US presence, So
they were helping to provide the security at the airport
that was then attacked and we lost thirteen service members. Right,
the Zero Units have faced scrutiny over their operations. Human
rights organizations accused these troops of committing abuses and maybe
war crimes, including extra judicial executions, as well as at
tax on medical facilities. However, Afghan veterans of the force,
as well as former CIA officers who worked with the
Zero Units, they say that's not true. They say the
Zero Units were trained in the laws of armed conflict
and that each operation was carefully vetted beforehand. But some
former CIA officers are worried that the allegations of abuses
could undermine or delay the effort to resolve the legal
status of the Afghan veterans. So this has been going
on for four years. Right, These people who became part
of the CIA Zero Unit operators, they've been trying to
get their paperwork in order to remain and they've been
unable to do so because of the federal government bureaucracy.
CIA spokesperson said that there's a false narrative that exists
about these forces that has persisted over the years due
to a systemic propaganda campaign by the Taliban, which makes sense, right,
if that's true, that makes sense. The Taliban would be
very angry at the zero Units because the Zero Units
were working with the CIA to take out the Taliban,
So that does make some sense. And of course anybody
who opposes, you know, the Afghan war, they would also then,
you know, want to believe that these allegations are true.
I don't know if they're true or not. I have
no idea how many zero units there are. All that
stuff is classified, and the CIA is saying no, no, no,
they never did any of these abuses, nothing like that
ever happened. And yeah, but you're the CIA, so like,
I'm not really, I'm not really going to believe what
you tell me because you're the CIA. You guys are
trained specifically to lie about things and to misdirect stuff.
So I don't know if that's true either. However, I
will point out against all of this backdrop that beginning
December first, teachers and staff and even volunteers in North
Carolina private schools are now allowed to conceal carry at
the schools. This is a new state law that supporters
say will enhance security. Critics say it'll endanger students. It
could endanger them. House Bill one ninety three became law
back in July after the legislature overrode the governor's veto
on this. This is not for public schools. This is
only for private schools. Right. The bill went into effect
on Monday. The measure allows private schools to permit employees
and volunteers to carry concealed on campus. Proponents of this
bill said, look, these are small schools, they're private schools.
They cannot afford security, and so this is the only
way that they're going to be able to provide armed
security on campus. Think in you know, Jewish schools, for example,
might want to consider, you know, having some armed guards
at the school. It's very expensive. So if you can
get people to volunteer and theyre concealed carry permit holder
and you put them through some extra training, right, You've
got to have written authorization from the school's board of
trustees or administrative director. You have to have a valid
concealed handgun permit. You have to complete eight hours of
annual training in gun safety and appropriate firearm use. And
that is in addition to what is already required to
obtain the concealed carry permit. Right, and so this is
a way that people said, look, we want to allow
schools to provide this kind of security, and so this
was the way they went about doing it. A lot
of schools they're small, they only have a couple dozen students,
they don't have the money to hire professional security. The
volunteer approach allows schools to enhance security without additional cost. Then,
of course the gun control advocates, or as the WC
and C report calls them, gun safety advocates, they say
there could be unintended consequences. Well, yes, as with all laws,
I assume there could be. All Right, that'll do it
for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I
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thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone,