John Kiriakou

I've known them for decades, and these are serious thinkers.

But they were adamant that nuclear weapons are the final taboo and that part of the Israeli calculation is if they break that taboo, it'll free up other countries to use nuclear weapons, which might not be a bad thing.

And I said, how is using a nuclear weapon not a bad thing?

And the response was fascinating.

One of them said to me,

We're not talking about North Korea in this conversation.

Do you know why?

Because North Korea has a nuclear weapon.

So nobody is going to mess with North Korea.

The only reason that the United States and Israel attacked Iran is because they didn't yet have a nuclear weapon.

If they had, there would have been no war because that would have been the deterrent.

Yeah, it does.

Because at that point, they've won.

The United States already is the only country in the history of the planet to use a nuclear weapon, and we've done it twice.

If we did it a third time or allowed the Israelis to do it, I mean, that's going to be the end of the American empire.

It really would be.

We have a satirical paper here in the United States called The Onion.

a very funny newspaper.

And they had a headline last week, Chinese happy to sit back and watch U.S.

destroy itself.