John Kiriakou

The deaths of 3,000 Americans in one day was on us because we didn't do our jobs.

So I get that these guys wanted revenge.

That doesn't make it right.

But then to pretend that you have to do these torture techniques because, well, the next attack could be worse and we need to disrupt the next attack.

Come on.

We're not stupid.

And so I never bought it.

Never, never bought it.

They're not going to be popular with the current occupant of the White House, but this was a war of choice.

And it was a war that we chose to participate in after being browbeaten by Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist right wing government.

You know, it was my experience at the CIA.

where literally every Israeli prime minister since the 1980s would come to Washington, which they do all the time.

And no matter who happened to be in the White House, they would say, please bomb Iran, please bomb Iran, please bomb Iran.

And every president would say, we're not going to do that.

until this president.

Now, the CIA published two, not one, two national intelligence estimates, which are the highest level sense of the intelligence community publication that exists.

saying that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program.

Not only that, but Ayatollah Khamenei had issued a fatwa back in the 80s forbidding the creation of a nuclear weapons program.

They were certainly enriching uranium, but not up to anything near weapons-grade levels.

I understand, I get it, that Iran is this existential threat to the Israelis.