05/13/15 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, introducing Adam Morrow, friend of the show, living in Cairo, Egypt, and he's a journalist, at least some of the time, and has at least in the past written a lot for interpress service, and ever since the Arab Spring broke out at the beginning of 2011.
He's really been my go-to guy above all others when it comes to what the hell is going on over in the American territory of Egypt these days.
So welcome back to the show, Adam, good to have you on.
Thank you, thank you.
Good to be back.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
So, first of all, I wanted to talk about this story in the Daily Beast.
I'm not sure if you've seen this piece, but I know you're familiar with the topic here.
Secret tapes of the 2013 Egypt coup, of the coup plot, pose a problem for Obama, is the headline here at the Daily Beast, and you know, of course, this is about the American politics of it, where they're trying to pretend this is not a coup, right?
Our Secretary of State, in 2013, when the military overthrew the elected government there, the post-Arab Spring government, he said, well, this is the restoration of democracy, and that's their loophole, is that they're just pretending that black is white, basically.
And yet, these leaked tapes, you know, make that pretense pretty hard to keep up, I guess, is the basis of this.
But I was just hoping, you know, first of all, you could just tell us as much as you could about the tapes.
Who leaked them?
Do you know?
What all is in them, and what all it means for Egyptian politics?
Sure, sure.
The implications on the U.S. scene, I'm not really following too closely, but I can tell you from, you know, from the Egyptian side, that these leaks have been coming out every couple of weeks for the past couple of months.
It started shortly after the coup, but they've sort of picked up in sort of intensity, in the intensity of their content, and they're usually published, or they're usually introduced by either Gazeta, the Qatari-owned news network, or pro-brotherhood satellite television stations that have sort of cropped up in the wake of the 2013 coup, that broadcast mainly, I think, mainly from Turkey.
But one of the big questions is, the content varies.
First of all, the content varies.
I mean, there's different stuff that implicates the judicial system.
There was one several months ago, in which you had different military officials sort of talking about how they were going to fix something or spin some lie in order to justify, if you remember, Mohamed Morsi, who was the democratically elected president, who was imprisoned after the 2013 coup.
The tape revealed how the judiciary figures were playing around with terms and that sort of thing, and basically trying to change, basically trying to cover up the fact that the man was being illegally imprisoned, that there was no justification for his imprisonment, that he was being held anyway.
That was one of them.
There have been other recent ones in which Egyptian officials, including Sisi himself, I believe, are sort of talking about, talking in sort of derisive terms about the Gulf rulers and how money should be forthcoming to Egypt, how desperately they needed Gulf money to basically fund the country's faltering economy.
And they speak very, again, they speak very sort of derisively about the Gulf rulers, to the point where I think he actually, I think Sisi actually issued an official apology to Qatar because he was taped insulting the Qatari emir's mother, which you can imagine in the Arab world is a big deal.
So you basically had these string of embarrassments that have ranged from financial to judicial misdealings to all sorts of things that have implicated Sisi and implicated the coup authorities.
One of the major questions also is, it's not just the content of these leaked tapes, but it's how they were obtained.
You know, a lot of people are saying, how is it possible that at the highest levels of government, you know, can be infiltrated or, you know, how is it possible, compromised is the word I'm looking for.
Exactly.
But again, at the highest levels of government, I mean, we're talking about personal conversations that the president himself is having with his main, with the top brass.
So you know, that's one of the big questions is just, you know, it's sort of points to incompetence.
Right.
Yeah.
So tons of scandals in here.
I think it's notable.
I can't help but point out the detail of the one where they, as they put it in this Daily Beast article, they held Morsi in the wrong jail after the coup d'etat and the kidnapping.
If only they had taken him to a civilian jail, they could get away with that.
But now here they are caught on tape saying, no, you idiot, you shouldn't have taken him to a military jail because that's illegal.
And that might end up, as they put it here, that might end up with him having to be released.
And I just thought, you know, isn't that funny?
Because of course, in America, you take Jose Padilla, where they turned him over to the to Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet, the military custody to be CIA tortured.
And then they just turned around and indicted him and put him in prison anyway in the civilian court system.
And there is no question here in the heart of the empire that the fact that he had been held illegally would somehow make his further trial and conviction and imprisonment null and void.
But here, that's how it is in Egypt.
They got a more of a rule of law there.
And admittedly, he is, you know, an elected president who's been deposed here.
So maybe that's a little bit different.
But it just seems like in America, the law was never really the question in that case.
You know what I mean?
Whether they could prosecute him again on that question, whether they could prosecute him again, that was never a question, but seems to be one here.
Right.
Right.
Well, what's for certain is that the content of these leaks is I mean, it is damning.
I mean, I can't remember all of them.
You know, there have been at least half a dozen major ones over the course of the last six months.
And they're they're all really, really damning.
I mean, these guys are really caught red handed committing criminal acts.
And now CC had already kind of I mean, we all remember regular listeners to this show certainly remember your coverage in the lead up to the coup with the kind of big fake Tahir Square kind of copycat pseudo Tahir Square protest where they use that as the excuse to overthrow the government.
But they didn't really have that kind of public support like the 2011 revolution.
They just tried to make it look like it in an imposter kind of way.
And I guess, you know, we talked about the Muslim Brotherhood certainly had their problems when they were in power, you know, being able to effectively govern or even making wise choices in their attempts to govern.
But it seems like if he ever had any kind of popularity, it's long gone.
It was what, a year ago or more.
When was a year and a half ago when they held the election where he got like 2 percent even turned out to pretend to give him a rubber stamp on his coup and his legitimacy and power?
I just wonder, you know, is he just, you know, George Bush in 2008 here with no public support whatsoever at this point or how bad is it?
How bad is it?
Yeah, well, we've talked about this in the past after the initial euphoria that came in the immediate wake of the coup where the media was trying to push this image that everybody in the country was entirely behind what's happened.
And in fact, millions of Egyptians did buy into it.
And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to downplay the size of the 2013 protest that led to that led to Morsi's ouster.
I mean, it was big.
There's no getting around the fact that it was big.
But that was only because there was a concerted media push for four months before that, urging Egypt, pushing Egyptians of all stripes to hit the streets.
So I think a lot of people were just answering these calls by the media.
So they were big.
I mean, the pro the 2013 protests were big, but they were also exaggerated.
The size of them was exaggerated when they weren't necessarily a million people when they weren't all necessarily calling for the military to cancel the results of the elections either.
They were calling for what initially started as calls for a reelection, which was ludicrous because, you know, the guy had only been in power for one year, you know.
So they were what initially started as calls for a simple reelection quickly became demands for Morsi's ouster.
I mean, as the hysteria heightened in the days leading up to the in the days leading up to the protest and the eventual coup.
But that's a good point.
I mean, a lot of a lot of sort of liberal, liberal people out there who who joined the protests didn't weren't expecting the military to step in.
You know, people were sort of expecting Morsi would be forced to step down and that fresh elections, fresh democratic elections would be held.
They didn't think the military was going to come in and just, you know, lock everything down for the next several months and then and then have a and then have a pro forma election in which Sisi would win 97 percent of the vote.
So that did come as a surprise to everybody into or at least, you know, the sort of sort of more idealistic people that might have joined the protests as for waning popularity.
That initial euphoria is long gone.
I mean, I would say six months ago, you know, six months ago, it was it was long gone because basically we have Egypt suffering from the same pressures.
It's facing the exact same pressures that it suffered that led people to hit the streets in early 2011.
You know, when the Arab Spring began, poverty remains the same.
You know, the rampant, rampant unemployment, you know, the lack of development, poor infrastructure.
So you've got all these economic motive motivations that are still there.
You know, nothing has been solved.
So those pressures still exist.
So, yeah, his popularity is definitely, definitely sunk.
I mean, he's now basically now it's down to sort of a small core of supporters.
But a lot of that, you know, floating middle, you know, a lot of that, you know, a lot of that big silent majority has probably gone from initial support based on, you know, based on media to to disillusionment and the realization that actually, you know, nothing is going to change.
And I think he's come out recently saying things like, you know, Egypt needs at least another 10 years before change can be felt and that sort of thing.
So people are sort of realizing that it was kind of a hoax, you know, that it was kind of a it was kind of a trick and that Egypt just finds itself in exactly the same situation that it was before the the initial popular uprising in January 2011.
Yeah, it sounds like that small core of support is the officer corps.
And that's really what counts, right?
Yeah.
Officer corps and their families and their and their and their circle possibly.
Yeah.
I mean, but but again, also, you don't don't forget, you also have the media pumping out a steady diet of pro-government propaganda.
And unfortunately, you know, people from outside looking at that or maybe the more sophisticated viewers watch that and they laugh at the silly government propaganda.
But what people have to believe, realize is that there are tens of millions of, you know, simple Egyptian folk living, you know, down the, you know, down the Nile, Nile Valley, you know, farmers and things like this who who buy into this stuff.
This is their only source of information in many cases.
So there are tens of millions of Egyptians out there who see this stuff and buy into it, you know, believe that Egypt is under attack by, you know, by terrorists.
And what Cece did was basically rescue the country from the from the clutches of of an evil Muslim Brotherhood that was bent on, you know, dominating everything and would refuse to refuse to relinquish power, even if it lost elections in the future.
And so a lot of people have bought into this stuff, unfortunately.
But that being said, you know, the lack of change is making people realize that, you know, they're still in the exact same situation that they were three years ago.
Whether that whether or not that will translate into any kind of popular movement remains to be seen, though, because the level of repression now is so tremendous.
You know, it's like what happened in January of 2011 really gave the regime here or the deep state what's popularly referred to as the deep state really gave them the shock of their lives.
You know, that really caught them by surprise, caught them with their pants down.
And I think it really gave them like a psychological complex to the point where at this point, they don't even want to see people.
They don't want to see crowds of people under any circumstances.
You know, what about the psychology of the masses, though?
I mean, don't they have such a taste of power?
And wow, it turns out they really could have overthrown Mubarak all along.
All they needed was the right spark to go out in the street and demand it.
And he was done.
Took him, what, two weeks?
So how can they go back to the bad old days after that kind of victory?
Because they're afraid of live ammunition, you know.
I mean, back in for most of the 18 days or for much of the 18 days, and certainly for a lot of the things that followed the revolution, a lot of the clashes and things like that that followed the revolution, you security forces mainly relied on tear gas and birdshot and would and only, you know, would would would resort to live ammunition or heavy ammunition as sort of like a last sort of resort sort of thing.
Whereas nowadays, after the coup, I mean, they just come that just starts with the live fire right off the bat.
Forget about the tear gas.
We're going to forget about the birdshot.
I mean, they're just shooting to kill from the get go.
So I mean, because, again, they are they are looking to completely cow the public.
You know what I'm saying?
I mean, they're taking no prisoners.
They are making sure that what happened in early 2011 never, ever, ever happens again.
Like, for example, I mean, I walk through Tucker Square every day and it's been converted largely to to a parking lot.
You know, they've built sort of parking lots and things like that.
And I suspect they're changing the geography of the square even to ensure that to ensure that, you know, what happened in early 2011 can't can't be repeated.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, we all remember it shouldn't go without saying, though, that when they did the coup and they first came to power and arrested Morsi, that they murdered approximately a thousand people in the streets of Cairo right then and there in the first few days.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Well, they they wanted to deliver a message right off the bat that, you know, dissent would not be tolerated.
Now, you might remember, I'm sure you do, that in the beginning, I'm going to say January or February would be my guess of 2013.
Phil Giraldi, a friend of the show, sponsor of the show, former CIA officer.
He came on and said that his former and current and retired and you know how they are, those CIA guys, his buddies were telling him that they knew that the Saudis were bank rolling rent-a-mobs in Cairo to try to agitate against the Muslim Brotherhood and soften the place up for the coup.
And we had discussed that.
And, you know, you were never in a position to confirm the Saudi involvement there.
That was Phil's story.
But it does raise the question.
And it seems like it's pretty openly talked about nowadays, Adam, that the Saudis are very much in with with the Sisi regime and and very much hated the Muslim Brotherhood and wanted to get rid of them, even though we see, as you mentioned, Qatar, they support the Muslim Brotherhood and they're behind all these leaks.
The publication of all these leaks there through Al Jazeera, you have the opposite stance by the Saudis.
Is that it?
Yeah, yeah, Saudi is definitely leading the pack along with along with its friends, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are definitely the main bank rollers and chief supporters of Sisi and the coup.
So with that in mind, given everything that's happened subsequently, it makes perfect sense that they would have had people here on the ground actively bankrolling and organizing what would later turn into the, you know, the June 30th demonstration that would culminate in Morsi's ouster.
That makes perfect sense.
And then if you look at Saudi now, how insanely activist it's become on on foreign on foreign policy issues, I mean, just in the last couple of just in the last two years alone, you know how it's gone after the Assad regime and funding all of these funding, all of these, you know, these these heavily armed opposite so-called Islamist groups that are in opposition to Assad.
If you look at the you know, if you look at the events in Yemen, the latest events in Yemen and the what Saudi is doing there, actually, you know, putting together an international air coalition to attack Yemen targets.
They're talking about sending ground troops and things like this.
I mean, Saudi has suddenly become an enormous player.
And I think the idea is I'm sure you've talked about this with other people.
The idea is that, you know, they feel that they've been let down by the United States because the U.S. is cutting a deal with Iran.
So now they feel like, OK, we can't rely on the U.S. to protect the region.
So now we have to sort of take things into into into hand ourselves and, you know, do things ourselves.
I mean, that's that's how it's been interpreted anyway.
And of course, the Americans are running the whole war forum as kind of a sop to the Saudis, I guess.
Yes, we're doing a nuclear deal with Iran, but here we'll help coordinate.
It's but, you know, it's all our AWACS and our battleships out at sea that are coordinating the war.
And.
Is that a fact?
I wasn't aware of that.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, no.
The Wall Street Journal had a thing all about I may be I may be exaggerating a little bit on the the solidity of the fact of the, you know, AWACS and ships.
I don't think they they're that specific.
But, you know, basically, yeah, I mean, we're.
And, you know, I need to go back and read that thing now and remember what all's in it and what all's from what I read elsewhere.
But, you know, basically for the Saudis to do this without the Americans coordinating, it seems impossible to me.
So I guess that's my problem is I work off of that assumption in the first place.
And then the Wall Street Journal just kind of, you know, they elaborated on some of it basically.
But I think it's kind of a fair assumption because the Saudis are in a situation where, you know, it's like money can only accomplish so much, you know, at a certain point, you actually have to be able to, like, feel the fighting force or be, you know, be be be willing to put boots on the ground or that sort of thing.
I mean, there's only so much that all of that Gulf money can do.
I mean, you can buy a lot of shiny new weapons and aircraft and that sort of thing.
But if you don't have the human resources and the personnel to fly the thing, if you don't have the expertise and the experience to actually operate and use the weapons at hand, then you have to rely on your your patron.
Yeah, basically.
And now then again, remember, there's that whole thing where over Israel's dead body, Ronald Reagan went ahead and sold AWACS to Saudi anyway.
So maybe they really do have their own AWACS and their own capability to control their airspace and that kind of thing.
I'm under the impression they don't have much of a field army, but apparently they got a pretty good air force.
But so that does raise the question of of Egyptian participation in this thing, because the Saudis, of course, they got way out ahead of themselves in announcing Pakistani participation before it ever really kicked in.
And that was kind of a problem.
But to what degree is the Egyptian military dictatorship going along with the Saudi war in Yemen?
Do you know?
Well, yeah, I think they did.
They made a major, major blunder and sort of assuming that these poor nations could be coerced into into sending troops like Pakistan didn't.
And I think they had originally hoped that Egypt would.
And there were originally there was originally a lot of speculation.
There might have been one or two like sort of reports that Egypt was planning to send ground troops.
And those might have been test balloons where they just sort of put that out there just to test public reaction.
And I think it was decided that that sort of move to sending, you know, basically overthrowing the elected government and then sending and then sending Egyptian boys over to Yemen to get killed by Houthi militiamen.
I think that they realized that that would have been political suicide.
And it's like, there's no way this is going to play like like like we were talking about before.
Sisi is already Sisi is already struggling with a popularity problem.
And to throw that into the mix as well would have been would have been devastating.
So I think they came up with some kind of face saving device.
But at the end of the day, I mean, Egyptian, you know, I think Egyptian, the Egyptian contribution to to the whole Yemen campaign is very limited.
And there hasn't been any there hasn't been any more talk of sending Egyptian ground troops.
And there's also the idea that that Egypt has a has a history with Yemen in the 1960s, where they I think thousands of Egyptians were killed in the Yemen conflict during the 1960s.
So Egypt already has its own.
In fact, I think it's referred to as Egypt's Vietnam.
So Egypt already has this sort of complex about Yemen.
So I think they just realized that it would would just be totally politically unviable given the current circumstances.
So they've scaled that back.
You don't hear any any more talk about about Egyptians being deployed in Yemen.
And by the way, just real quick, I googled it and the article that I was referring to, not that I had time to go back and reread it just now, but the article is called U.S. widens role in Saudi led campaign against Houthis in Yemen.
But then what's funny is when I googled it just a little bit above in the search results is in strategic shift, U.S. draws closer to Yemeni rebels.
And this is from January 29th.
And it begins U.S. has formed ties with the Houthi rebels who seize control of the capital.
And so here we are working with them because, hey, at least they're against Al-Qaeda, right?
And whatever.
And this is just from January 29, 2015, it says.
So now here we are a few months later.
And and after backing Saleh and backing Hadi and backing the Houthis, now we're backing the Saudi war for Al-Qaeda and against the Houthis there.
Right.
Right.
I'll tell you, any kind of, you know, analysis of Middle Eastern issues at this point has become so convoluted and difficult because of because of everything that's happened post Arab Spring, because of the total chaos that has that has engulfed so many of these Arab Spring countries, including Yemen and Libya and Syria and even Egypt.
It's increasingly difficult to keep track of everybody, especially Syria, with all these different groups fighting each other.
And I, from what I understand, there's also going to be a fresh push on Assad, like the Saudis are also very interested in continuing the war with Assad.
You know, they very much feel that that's unfinished business.
So they're you know, so we're going to see we should see some more action in Syria as well.
Saudi led.
Hey, by the way, do you know why the Saudis hate the Muslim Brotherhood, at least the Egyptian one?
I guess they were kind of.
I don't know how they I don't know about Syria, but anyway, do you know why they hate the Muslim Brotherhood and why the Qataris like them and what all that's about?
OK, why the Saudis hate them is basically because, you know, the Saudis want to protect their the rule of their dynasty above anything else.
And the Muslim Brotherhood represents, you know, a democratic reformist force that could potentially threaten them.
And the main thing is that it's an it's an Islamist force.
You know what I mean?
It's you know, the Saudis could always claim, you know, could oppose any sort of, you know, liberal force or secular force or anything because it's such a conservative Muslim culture.
But the Muslim Brotherhood offers a an alternative to their rule, which is also Islamist in nature.
So that's that's what freaks them out.
You know, it's basically like, you know, it's it's an it's an alternative.
It's a Muslim.
It's another Muslim alternative to, you know, to their to the dynastic rule that they've set up.
You know, and it's a grassroots thing that's, you know, succeeded in some ways and that then they find that threatening.
The reason why Qatar supports them, that's the big question.
That's that's kind of the that's kind of the more interesting question.
I mean, presumably their leader.
I mean, it's you'd have to, you know, presumably it's their leaders.
You know, I mean, the Qatar itself is ruled by a dynasty.
So so what makes them different from their from their Gulf neighbors, all of whom are uniformly against the Brotherhood?
That's that's a good question.
And it's something that makes Qatar very interesting, because at the same time, we also know Qatar is also an ally of the US.
And, you know, it hosts, I think, one of the one of the biggest US air bases in the Middle East is in Qatar.
I mean, there's no doubt that it's it's America friendly.
So why why did they alone support the Brotherhood?
That's a it's a good question, and it's, you know, it's still still sort of open to debate.
Well, and yeah, I think back to it in 2011.
I mean, I don't want to sell the Egyptian short.
I don't think you could.
I mean, it was clearly a real grassroots revolution where the people, virtually all factions in the country, other than the officers and their families aforementioned, all joined together to overthrow America and Israel's sock puppet dictator, Hosni Mubarak.
At the same time, boy, the the Qataris and Al Jazeera sure played a huge role in what was going on there.
And so I wonder to what degree.
I mean, it's a matter of quality, not quantity.
But, you know, I wonder to what degree that that whole that whole revolution in Egypt actually, you know, is represents the culmination of a Qatari foreign policy that ended up, of course, being canceled by the Saudis and their allies in the military.
But what do you think about that?
Am I overstating?
Yeah, well, I mean, I think you can't underestimate the power of of Jazeera, which which the Jazeera channel, which was sort of Qatar's claim to fame, you know, nobody had even heard of Qatar before the sort of hit the scene in the mid 90s.
And it was years ahead of its time.
I mean, it has its imitators now.
Years later, you know, a whole slew of, you know, Saudi put out several news channels, there's a whole slew of Arabic news channels.
But but Jazeera definitely paved the way, was definitely the first of its kind in terms of being a very, you know, being a respectable, well-produced Arabic language news channel, both in terms of content and, you know, just the quality of production.
So and has since become a sort of a foursome to itself, you know, a very, very powerful foursome to itself, which largely reflects Qatar's foreign policy, as you said.
I mean, I like it.
I like their coverage of Egypt because it's, you know, because it's anti-coup, which you don't you don't see on any of the Egyptian, any of the Egyptian channels.
But at the same time, their their Syria coverage is extremely biased against against Damascus, which is in line with Qatar's, you know, anti-Assad direction.
So but there's certainly no denying that it's like it's become a foursome to itself.
It's very, very influential.
I think it has very wide viewership.
And certainly in in the case of Egypt, it became very, very much a part of everything that happened, you know, towards the end, it was really the only channel.
It was the only way Egyptians could hear or what it could have access to any kind of, you know, any kind of opposition, any kind of opposition line was through Jazeera.
Everything else had been shut down or was, you know, was Saudi controlled or and in the end, they finally managed to successfully close down Jazeera Mubasher, which was an affiliate channel that was devoted entirely to Egypt coverage.
And that basically that provided the main venue for for anti-coup news coverage up until about four months ago, I'd say, when Egypt finally succeeded in having it, having Qatar closed it down, Qatar closed a cease to transmit cease transmission just through because of pressure.
If you remember about the five, five months ago, there was a huge attempt at reconciliation and Qatar sort of made some some confessions, one of which was one of which was that it would close its its Egypt affiliate channel.
All right, now, if I can keep you here, we're going over, but what the hell?
That's the benefit of recording.
Yeah, sure, man.
I'm like rambling and I'm not in particularly good form.
No, you're doing fine.
No, you're doing fine.
I'm totally engrossed in this.
I love talking with you.
And I want to get back to Syria.
But, you know, more important, I think I want to learn what you have to say about the Rafah border crossing there.
The last time we spoke, the Egyptian, of course, for people not familiar, the Gaza Strip is bordered on two sides by Israel, one side, the sea and the other side, Egypt.
And so the Egyptians participate in their part in Israel's blockade and imprisoning of the Palestinians, refugees that live there, most of them refugees, most of them children, minors at least.
And anyway, so the Egyptians, the border crossing there was at Rafah.
And the last time we spoke, the renewed military dictatorship in Egypt had basically razed the entire adjacent village there in order to basically, in effect, make it impossible for people in Gaza to tunnel under the border and come up under something with a roof on it in secrecy so that they can smuggle highly needed food and medicine and everything else they need through their basically their prison wall there.
And but you know what?
We sure don't get much coverage of certainly the Egyptian side of that situation around here.
So I was wondering if you could help fill us in.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, nothing has really changed in the last several months, certainly since the last time we spoke.
I mean, it's closed.
I mean, after after Sisi took over, they the Egyptians basically renewed Mubarak's policy of shutting down the tunnels, going after the tunnels, demolishing the tunnels in many cases.
And I think at this point, the entire tunnel network is is completely demolished.
I mean, there might be a couple of exceptions, but it's not a particularly long border.
I think it's between 12 and 14 kilometers long, the Egypt Gaza border.
So, I mean, it wouldn't be that hard to ensure that the entire tunnel network is destroyed or disrupted.
And I think that's the case you have now.
Now, the reason why they're doing it is because they're saying, oh, militants can can smoke and can cross through these tunnels and they can come up in Egyptian Sinai and can and can join the can join the insurgency and fight the Egyptian army and that sort of thing.
Claims that I personally think are wildly exaggerated.
I think the last thing that Hamas wants to do and Hamas is the group that controls the Gaza Strip.
The last thing Hamas wants to do is get involved in the Egypt conflict.
You know, the last thing they want to do is get caught sending fighters to fight the Egyptian army, because then that would basically justify Egypt's policy of closing the border.
So I think the reason the reason why they want the tunnels, the reason why they've relied on those tunnels for so for so many years, since Egypt or since the siege began in about 2006 or 2007.
The main reason they have those tunnels is to get vital supplies into the territory, which, as you said, is entirely blocked by air, land and sea.
So in order to get medicine, food and building supplies, which are I know are in very short supply there, they desperately rely on these tunnels, all of which are, you know, apparently destroyed by the by Egypt at this point.
Well, let's let it go at that.
We're over time anyway.
Thanks very much for your time, Adam.
I sure appreciate.
Sure, Scott.
All right.
You're the best man.
That's Adam.
More.
Wait, tell me, are you still writing for IPS?
I do it.
I haven't filed with IPS in a really long time, man.
Sorry.
OK.
Yeah.
No, I was just wondering if I should say that.
But anyway, formerly a journalist with IPS News, but still doing great journalism on this show every once in a while.
So I sure appreciate you coming on the show again.
Thanks, Scott.
Thanks.