Speaker 1: And now for a moment of clarity.
Speaker 2: What Secretary of Hegseth said about it being fortified could
be true in fact, but it's how it was fortified
that I think is interesting to me as I read
that piece. It may have had tea walls, big concrete
six foot walls around that tactical operations center, which would
in fact make it quote unquote fortified. But was it
fortified against an air attack? Was it fortified against a
drone coming from up high? And that's I think an
open question. It is possible that it wasn't, So you know,
both things can be true fortified, but not necessarily fortified
against the threat. So the accounts given by those soldiers,
that certainly is alarming and interesting. And I hope that
when the Central Command finishes this investigation that they'll be
you know, completely transparent and fulsome in describing what they
found and more critically, what if any lessons learned they
they got out of it, and what changes they might
have to implement to force protection going forward.
Speaker 1: I don't know how we meet that expectation, or how
this administration meets that expectation when everything virtually coming out
of them is a lie or a reframing of facts
to meet a storyline and a narrative John that they
want to perpetuate. This for them is a video game,
This is a television series. You know, to listen to
the Secretary of Defense. We don't have a Department of War, people,
but it's the Secretary of Defense sitting up here talking
the way he talks. These young men and women. What
is their expectation when they go into battle? And you
know that's not going to be their reality. Their reality
is not going to be this clean cut. Oh yes,
we dropped the bomb. Things blew up and everybody went
scurrying back into their holes. That's not how it works.
The enemy fights, the enemy responds. We have thirteen soldiers,
men and women who are dead because of these actions.
And this yippie kaya crazy out of this administration. But
here's the other dividing line here, which is fundamentally just
a parable in itself about this administration. The strait of
horror moves now from everything we've been told, and this
goes to my first point. They obliterated any obstacles that
could stand in their way to keeping this channel open.
And yet here we are and David Rhodes our ms
NOW correspondent notes Gregory Brew, a senior around An energy
analysts with Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk consulting firm, told
ms NOW Iran's new control of the Strait has given
it more leverage than it had before the war. Hello, people,
where are we? John? I mean they so it controls
the nation.
Speaker 2: It's a fair point, Michael. I mean, you know, forty
days ago, before the war started, the Strait was open,
completely open, and shipping companies didn't have to check with
Iran before going through the Straight of Horror moves. And
that that tiny, little narrow gap there, it was open,
and something on the order of one hundred to one
hundred and thirty five ships per day were transiting in
and out.
Speaker 1: Catch Michael Steele on the weeknight Monday through Friday at
seven pm Eastern on ms NOW