Retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer told Newsmax on Friday that the United States has "paid for both sides" of the conflict in which the Middle East is currently embroiled.
"Look at Iran," Holt said during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show." "We have looked the other way while they have illegally rounded up about $100 billion for their war and their war machine that we have faced in Ukraine, we're facing it here, and we won't deliver a blow to them because we're the ones investing in them, and we won't call them the enemy.
"Meanwhile, that administration took the Houthis, bloodthirsty terrorists, off the terror watch list, and they have forces in place where they could have engaged them if they just would have let the commanders defend themselves.
"The economics of warfare is very clear, and the corruption has been on full display here," he continued. "You can't win wars if you're going to build $4 million missiles when something that costs less than $2,000 and can be operated by a 4-year-old can come kill your ship. That's nonsense. And so this gets into procurement reform acquisition.
"Who made the money? Why do general officers get to be on the boards of those companies? Why don't we have an ethics reform? Look, Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin is exposing it all by doing nothing."
Despite the Pentagon announcing Operation Prosperity Guardian, a new multinational initiative to protect commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Biden administration has not struck back at the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen for attacking ships.
The price tag for each munition used to take down Houthi drones and missiles is reportedly between $1 million and $4.3 million and the ships cannot be reloaded at sea. If the Houthi attacks go on much longer, the vessels will be forced to return to port to reload.
Shaffer said the Biden administration's failure to launch a counterstrike against the Houthis is "absolutely woke incompetence."
"The Pentagon plans for everything," he said. "We have contingencies for everything — from space aliens to five men in a rowboat — and we do it very well, so it's not that we haven't anticipated this. I know the intel is there to tell us that they were planning this, they had this. This whole idea of re-provisioning ships? Come on! We knew this was coming, and we've seen it.
"So, this is a political decision," he continued. "This has nothing to do with the military capabilities, even as diminished as they are, of the U.S. military. We could be conducting effective, precise, and overwhelming military strikes immediately. Take out all the resources, make them go back to Tehran and ask for more and then hit those when they're coming out. This is a political choice not to do that."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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