As a helicopter force ingress towards the objective at low level.

We arrived at Maduro's compound at one one am Eastern Standard time or two to one am Caracas local time, and the apprehension force descended into Maduro's compound and moved with speed, precision, and discipline towards their objective and isolated the area to ensure the safety and security of the ground force while apprehending the indicted persons.

So how old is Maduro?

I gotta think he get woken up from a sound sleep, and there's a bunch of you know, us super secret special Forces special Forces dudes with guns and flashlights and stuff in your face.

Takes a while to.

Get your bearings.

You got to have at least one thought that, wow, this is a weird dream.

He's sixty three.

Yeah, it take me a little while to yah sec I had some price of food last night.

What's going on here?

Right right?

Well?

General Cain there describing the critical kind of you know, the climactic moments of the raid and coming across Maduro.

We skipped past where he helps us understand the incredible complexity and sophistication of the operation and for that analysis.

What a pleasure it is for the first time the year to talk to military analyst Mike Lyons about this awesome, awesome demonstration of American capability.

Mike, how are you, sir?

Do you have a good holiday season?

Good?

What you guys?

Happy New Year?

Yes, had a great holiday season and what a way to start the year for sure.

Yeah.

I was really digging your Twitter feed in the middle of the night the other night following your analysis of it is what's happened?

So thanks?

Yeah, you know, just watching this, you know, here's to me is the biggest issue.

For months, I've been talking to former special operators and other people in the military trying to figure out what are we doing in the Caribbean right Obviously we're projecting power blown up drug boats and the like there, and we all thought that this mission was going to be impossible.

I mean, for us to go in kinetically take out Maduro, it would mean an invasion for US.

I kept saying, well, nothing's going to happen because the Army's not in the game yet.

And the only I can think of it's like you're sitting on a desert island.

You got a can without a can opener and you're not going to eat, and then all of a sudden the next day the cans open and now you're gonna be able to eat.

I mean, the level of from an operational perspective was so complex and just just incredible, and from a competency perspective, And I still have the scars from the nineteen eighties with you know, Desert one and what happened there and the ashes that that took place there.

So I can't reiterate just how incredibly amazing this mission was and the complexity of it.

One hundred and fifty aircraft, no casualties in and out two and a half hours.

It's you couldn't write a script that said it would go as.

Easy as a one hundred and fifty aircraft.

Yeah, help us understand what kind of aircraft and what were they doing for we layman.

Just give us the broad outlines of the complexity of the operation.

All the levers of forces that we have in power, we're applied here.

Aircraft that took out their air defense systems, drones monitoring surveillance, helicopters shuttling in the seventy fifth rangers.

You know, this was if you had to give a visual.

It's kind of like Blackhawk down back from the nineties, that failure of a mission, unfortunately.

But you know the fact that we had the Rangers in there protecting the strike force, which is the Delta guys that go in and extract people like this, this is their mission.

And we know that they ended up practicing this for months before they had a set up and they had done this.

I'm still surprised that Maduro didn't have thirty thousand troops surrounding him.

I mean, given the fact that you know, he knew the United States was going after him.

So it still is just incredible about those those soldiers getting in.

But every single one of those aircraft had a mission either bringing troops in, gathering surveillance, taking out targets, just a real high combination.

And you noticed General King kept talking about the joint force.

The joint force.

That is the difference between US and every other military out there.

This is why the Russians are wallowing a novacane in Ukraine, right.

They can't jointly bring all their forces together to make to attack something and move forward with They don't combine air power with ground power and ISR.

They just go one at a time.

But in this case, the United States is able to take with interagency, take all of these levers of power and bring them together and create this incredible fist that can take anybody out that we choose.

To give me an idea of how risky this would have been, like if you do it ten times, are you successful eight times?

Or do you have any guests on that?

Well, that's why we all sat around and said, this just wasn't going to happen, wasn't even a kind of a course of action.

And I was talking to guys that at the highest levels of Jaysak and you know that that had been in that spot.

They just thought it was going to be just too difficult.

The element of surprise, just maintaining that that alone was a factor that just was incredible.

And then the weather played, I mean, the D Day type invasion is what we all thought.

We thought that, yeah, if they thought they would move twenty to twenty five thousand troops or so, and because we thought they'd had to get an egress point in, but they were able to take out any of the air defense systems.

So the other thing this does, too is that it shows that once again the total crap of Russian military equipment, because that's what's been surrounding Venezuela when it comes to their air defense system.

So the essay three hundred, you might as well put it in a museum right now, because anybody who has it is never going to use it again, because the United States just blew right by it.

So we take out the air defense platforms, we take out their systems, and then we've shut the power off in the country.

I mean again, there's no other country in the world that can do this.

But to say that you wouldn't expect a casualty, or you wouldn't expect something to go wrong, very unlikely.

In this case, eight out of ten times something else would go wrong.

You have the expectation, commanders expect losses, you'd have an expectation you lose something.

Right, Yeah, miraculous success.

I was struck by General Kine saying we rehearse this over and over and over again, not so that we could get it right, but so that it couldn't go wrong.

Now, obviously fate and God intervened, but that that's that's a philosophy that we civilians don't I hadn't heard articulated in that way before.

Yeah, that is that's a result of Desert one and the fact that you have to plan.

When when I was on active duty, we said, with the planning gets slimed, right, what's going to happen to us along the way, And you have to plan for every one of those contingencies, rehearse them so their second nature, so you know exactly what to do.

It's that your playbook, checklist mentality that the military has military trains for that.

That that within our military because of this thing called commander's intents.

Right, I'm watching people try to say, oh, the soldiers are the sailors, they don't know where are going.

You know, we're invading Venezuela.

None of that.

Everybody got the mission.

Everybody knew what the mission was.

Get in, get out, extra extra, extra, strate the guy, get him in and out.

Everybody knows commanders intent.

And that's what's another thing that makes our military work better than everybody else's.

Well, as you're talking to some of your friends who've been there, done that with regime change and nation building and everything, is there some concern that we're going to have boots on the ground trying to keep Venezuela a stable place for a certain amount of time.

I don't think so.

This is not a rock.

We don't have one hundred thousand troops there.

This was not an invasion and it's also not regime change.

Their constitution has put their vice president, Kelsea Rodriguez now in charge, and we've given her the message you're either going to play ball or not.

And if you're not going to play ball, you might find yourself in a pair of white tennis shoes and a Nike jumpsuits sitting in the back of a Special Forces helicopter here if you don't play ball.

And the thing about it is, this is what we want to do.

We're taking control, taking control of three hundred billion barrels of reserve crude oil in our hemisphere, not allowing the Chinese, by the way, the Ranians that had already built a drone facility manufacturing drones in Venezuela.

The Chinese are taking their oil.

The Russians and the military this is long overdue to take care of this situation right now.

I mean, this is this has been so, this will be so pivotabal for our country and from from a generational perspective and how we've reset the world and reset the economy and any energy market in particular.

It's fantastic.

I'm we're talking to military analyst Mike Leons.

Mike I mentioned earlier in the show that you almost have to compartmentalize each part of this because you always want to leap to the next part, and you kind of did, which is a great discussion, and I'm a little mystified by this.

The operation was amazing, and as a demonstration of American power, I think it will echo around the globe and it should.

Uh, But going forward, can we exercise Lever's power effectively enough to get what we need out of the Venezuelan regime given the fact that they are still what they were and this this Gallow's in charge now is a hardcore Maduroite socialist.

Well, we're going to find out.

And she controls the military right now, and he's basically said we'd back in if we had to.

So we're gonna let this thing ste for a little bit.

Again, It's not been regime changed right now, it's just different person running the country right now.

I've got confidence that we'll put enough pressure on them we will then start to take over the petroleum assets and where they actually pump oil from.

And we'll do all we'll do all those kinds of things, which is what we're trying to do here, which we're trying to get to.

I think.

So for example, this this administration that Trump's was not keen about restoring Machado.

That was the individual won the Nobel Peace Prize from UH this last year and was.

And we already won the left election right.

Right, But this but real politic on the ground.

She doesn't control anything, you know, it's right now, this is hardcore human nature.

Who controls the military.

This is for you know, grown ups.

This is not for you know, theoretical people that are running the government.

She's got no legitimacy.

Unfortunately, I hate to say it like that, but she doesn't to run the government.

So we're gonna give this person, Rodrigae, the chance because she does control the military and the oil.

We're gonna cut a deal with her.

I'm sure, and we'll move this.

We'll move this down the road.

And if we do it, this is again trumped with leverage.

He is the leverage meister, getting leverage of oil.

Right now.

The fact that we have this control now over there oil puts Canada on notice, China onnoticed.

China might not be able to invent inde Taiwan now they only have twenty five billion barrels in reserve.

They might not have the energy to do it now.

So there's so much leverage that was gained by this operation that without even a casualty being gone, I just can't talk about it so much.

So if this gal doesn't come around, we snatch her up, and then the person after her, and before long it's like being the head of isis you know the first thing you do when you get the job is you're write your will.

Yeah right.

You know what's funny was they got asked the question like Marco Ruby got asked question over the weekend about why did you just take him?

Why didn't you take all his other henchmen.

It's like, do you not get do you not hear yourself?

I mean that was the mission of getting that one person, which is the person.

So again it's all done legally too, which is really why we go in there in the first place, under this guise of you know, getting him from legally from a drug perspective.

No, you can't argue against it.

Again, you know the Democrats wanted him out five years ago.

They just didn't have the nerve to do what.

We did military analysts.

Mike Lines, Yeah, Marco gave a fine spank into Margaret Brendon.

We enjoyed that.

I wanted to ask you this before we let you go.

I purposely went to New Orleans over vacation just to go to the World War II Museum.

I assume you've been there before.

I have amazing just you know, the stories you know, starts in the that real car and you walk through.

That's the most amazing museum I've ever been to anywhere in the world.

Absolutely incredible.

A lot of presents there and just the sacrifices made and we just should never forget.

And we're getting further from that generation, but it's just incredible.

I advise everybody to go there.

My classmate actually is one of the directors there, works down there and they held nice events there, but just the his historical what they've captured there is just amazing.

We'll tell them I'm impressed.

Yeah, yeah, I want to hear more about that from you, Jack as well.

Mike Lines, Mike, thanks so much for the time.

Great to talk to you.

Great guys.

Thanks for having me all right

Our pleasure, Armstrong and Getty