What's going on in Yemen, Professor Gibbs? The Houthis look like they've taken control of pretty much all the important real estate.

Well, ever since the overthrow of the Saleh dictatorship in 2011 during the Arab Spring, you have had a contest between kind of an internationally recognized government that only controls, I think at present, something like 20% of Yemen, and an unofficial Houthi militia that controls most of the rest.

The Houthi militia is at least loosely aligned with Iran, and they developed an extraordinary fighting force, it must be said, which includes evidently a sizable arsenal of missiles and drones.

And they've used them to great effect, not only to control most of the country, but also evidently to shut down the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, for those, you know, you can see on the map there, is a critically important waterway, somewhat like the Strait of Hormuz.

It's the gateway from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea and through that to the Suez Canal and trade with Europe and the Atlantic.

It's a shortcut around the continent of Africa, you might say.

I think that's

What does Europe do now going forward? Because they're very blustery these days.

I'm very worried about that.

The language you're getting coming from Europe is some of the most reckless and disturbing I've ever seen in my lifetime.

I'm old enough to remember the Cold War and the kinds of things that they're saying in Europe and doing in Europe.

It goes far beyond anything ever done during the Cold War.

Kaya Kallis is effectively the foreign minister of the EU.

She's nuts.

There was also apparently, and I did not know this until Andre told me yesterday, when Putin recently went to the Kuril Islands in the Pacific and met with the Russian Far East Pacific Fleet commander, he apparently did issue an order uh to seize any french italian or british flagged cargo ships within reach of the russian pacific fleet is that the way the russians are going to escalate they're going to do sort of what we've been doing with their shadow fleet or they're going to possibly strike maybe crete in the thought that it wouldn't escalate but would it escalate i mean how how do you think nato would respond to this

David, may I ask you to start us off maybe with where you think that this most interesting part of the Balkan Wars is that, you know, Douglas MacGregor has already reacted to you.

Let me just give a little bit of background, I guess, just historical background and also a little bit of background about both of us, beyond what you said, is that Yugoslavia broke up as a state in 1991, resulting in a complex series of wars and civil wars, most notably Bosnia-Herzegovina.

which was settled with NATO military intervention in 1995, and then a NATO, or I should say, U.S. brokered agreement.

And then Kosovo in 1998, 1999, also involving NATO military intervention, followed by a U.S. brokered agreement.

Now Colonel McGregor was involved as an insider and we'll be discussing his experiences as a military aid to the US participants in both those events.

I myself have written a book on this topic in 2009, First Do No Harm, Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia.

And I did a podcast on this topic about a year ago.

This kind of nonsense has continued right up into the president until they finally ran into somebody that couldn't defeat called Iran.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'll be very specific.

What are the connections in the CIA and, uh, academia? The best record on this is a 1975 investigation by the US Senate under Senator Frank Church, the Church Committee, as it was called.

They issued a huge number of reports.

It was a serious investigation.

It wasn't a whitewash, at least not mostly.

And, um, they, they touched lightly on this issue, by the way, of academia.

Uh, you know, I, I did wanna ask, though, in, in addition to how the journalism, journalists fit in here, w- w- what are the main objectives, then, of the intelligence agencies? You mentioned they didn't want to have any coverage of the, the, the, yeah, the covert operations, but are, are there other key issues they're essentially where they wanna shape the knowledge or the information?

But whatever it is, those kind of obsessions probably keep us in check sometimes, right?

Yeah, I wear a whoop, I'm obsessed.

You're right, maybe it's age or something, we're more focused on death.

But I come back to a similar point when I said that I'm less interested in the brain and more interested, or what alcohol does to the brain and more interested in the individual.

Yeah, death wakes us up, but in what way? Because...

Death becomes present as we get older.

And so we have this idea that we want to live forever or we want to have longevity.

That melting pot is quite difficult to distinguish from, I guess.

So then the big question is, Professor, what happens in Lebanon?

Well, I'm not very optimistic about the, the treaty.

I mean, I, I, certainly it's a good sign that the Iranians are making positive-sounding noises, or at least some Iranians are.

And, um, you know, as Trump, of course, you know, he's promi- he, he's been promising a deal since the war started, you know, with one deal after another after another, so that doesn't mean anything.

The fact that the Iranians are speaking with somewhat guarded positive tone is, is a good sign, clearly.

Uh, it indicates something is happening.

Uh, it's hard to know what.

That is insane

I'd love your analysis of them.

My guess is the Iranians are going to...

I've made a determination they're going to have to settle it on the battlefield.

I think they feel that they have the leverage.

They will win on the battlefield.

That's how they would view it.

If I were in their position, that's how I would view it.

Otherwise, it's going to be perpetual violence in the region, as we've seen.

And, um, when you have people like him targeted, I'm like, wow, that influence is a lot more than I thought, and that's, uh, concerning.

Well, a, a couple of things is that, uh, you know, the, the effort to use repression against podcasters, uh, evidently you're facing some of it yourself or a possibility of that.

That's been going for a while, and that's bipartisan.

Um, uh, the Europeans are doing it.

Uh, you know, there was...

I've done neutrality studies with Pascal Lottaz, who's a Swiss national who, who, who works from Japan.

He has a academic appointment in Japan.

Russia.

As they near Teri's room, he notices something strange.

The first thing that hit me was the noise.

And I honestly thought, "Did a air conditioner go out? Did something happen?" And then I thought, "Well, did they put her on a ventilator?" I mean, my, my brain was like confused.

It was like, "What is this loud mechanical noise that I'm hearing?" And as we would move into the room, Mary was in front of me so I was kinda coming behind her, but I realized it was Teri's breathing.

She's writhing up and down on her bed.

Looking at Terri, I was shocked by what I was seeing.

I, I knew she was not gonna be well, but when you start to see someone that's dying of dehydration and starvation...

I looked at her mouth, and, and I had seen chapped lips before and, and people that have, you know, skin that's been, uh, frostbit or something, but I'd never seen a totally dry mouth where, like, the tongue is white and flaking, and the roof of the mouth, you could see it was peeling.

It was about all the rest of the people who didn't want the government telling us how we could die and when we were allowed to decide that we didn't want further medical treatment and whether we were going to let a vocal minority change the rules for everybody." Schindler attorney, David Gibbs, didn't know about the conversation at the time, but looking back, he wonders about the ethics of it.

And there were times, obviously lawyers give input to clients, but if a client says, "I'm done," and you're fighting for death, you have to step back and say, "Well, wait a minute.

What authority do I have to push past that?" And there is an element where, you know, I mean, I was honored to stand with the Schindlers and- and they stood to the very end, but if they had come to me and said, "David, we are not going to fight anymore," it was their decision, we're not representing ourselves.

And I- I would say that it definitely became very personal for Mr. Philos because it had gone on for so long.

The hearing doesn't go well for the Schindlers.

I sort of expected, and, and maybe this was hopeful, that the Congress acted, the President acted, and the Federal Court would do what was necessary to let all of that take effect, that there would be a reinsertion of the feeding tube and we would look at everything and that this could go on for a year or two, and if Terri was to ultimately die, it would be after a very fair, due process had occurred in the federal courts.

So my expectation was for the judge to, in my mind, do what made the most sense.

And sadly, and unfortunately, uh, that's not what he chose to do.

It's a legal ministry that defends the rights of churches and other Christian groups.

I went to law school wanting to help people.

I tease that I'm a little bit of a frustrated social worker.

Um, I think that law is a tool, if you can help hurting people, help make a difference.

And so that was kind of my passion and draw to it, um, trying to help people that a lot of times felt like they didn't have a voice.

Uh, as in Terri's case, you know, I never anticipated that it would literally be a right to life case.

The Schindlers seem like good people and he hates to give them bad news, but he leans forward, adjusts his glasses, and levels with them anyway.

And I said, "Well, we'll look at it.

Thunder booms overhead.

And we went out in some pretty bad weather.

I mean, there was no lights.

Everything's knocked out.

We saw massive damage.

It was...

Roads were cleared.

For Larry King, the show must go on.

But by March 2005, police officers inside Florida Hospice of the Suncoast are searching everyone.

I mean, they didn't remove our clothes, but empty all your pockets.

No pens, no mints, no anything that would in any way be able to, um, photograph or video Terri, record her, or give her any nourishment.

Then through a parting sea of protestors, he escorts her inside.

And I remember walking in with Mary, and there's armed police.