From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

“We have a government that consists of 525 lobbyists – and that’s why we have the policies we have.”

Following the news that the U.S. Congress has finally approved $95 billion in “aid” to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor has returned to ask the difficult question – why is the U.S. funding wars when it is bankrupt?

In an April 21 video interview with U.K. member of Parliament George Galloway, Macgregor gave a blunt and shocking answer.

“We have a government that consists of 525 lobbyists – and that’s why we have the policies we have.”

His full remarks open the video with a searing assessment of the level of corruption in the United States government:

I would currently say that we have a government that consists of 525 lobbyists as opposed to representatives – people who are all busy lobbying for money with which they can line their pockets. Now some of them are just ignorant … some are destructive … but all of them, I’m afraid, with very few exceptions, are bought men.

The U.S. is facing disaster, says Macgregor. With the national debt at over $34 trillion, and the total U.S. debt including households and corporations at almost $100 trillion, the economic situation is just one dimension of the disaster of debt and corruption he says has financed the capture of the political system.

His startling description of a blackmailed captive political class would account for why such an indebted nation is so keen to hand over so much money to fund foreign wars. After six months of wrangling, the House voted to approve $95 billion in lethal and non-lethal aid. $60 billion goes to Ukraine, $26 billion to Israel, and the rest is allotted to future flashpoint Taiwan.

With Macgregor and others saying there is no public support for these measures, how is this level of spending possible?

Washington, D.C. ‘a large Epstein Island’

“Friends of mine inside Washington [D.C.] now refer to Washington as a large Epstein Island,” continued Macgregor, as if introducing a tasteless joke. Yet the punchline was that he was deadly serious.

Epstein Island, as you know, is the place where people were set up with underage girls, and it looks like enough of them have been involved in it that they’re all they’re all blackmailed.

Macgregor notes he is not the only one to reach this conclusion:

That was Tucker Carlson’s most recent allegation – that people on the Hill who lead sadly bizarre lives are blackmailed.

Macgregor is referring to this April 3 interview between Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, in which Carlson asks why Speaker Mike Johnson seems “completely disconnected from what we want.” The video below shows a brief excerpt from the interview.

Carlson observed the striking difference between Mike Johnson’s principles and his actions:

Mike Johnson has made a complete departure of who he is and what he stands for – and to the point where people are literally asking, ‘Is he blackmailed?’

Carlson also noted that “70 percent of Americans … and the majority of Republicans do not support funding Ukraine.”

Macgregor’s Epstein Island thesis may explain the mystifying personality change in Mike Johnson. Macgregor went on to conclude:

If that’s the case [the elected representatives] could be compelled to vote in whatever direction the very wealthy and powerful oligarchs in the United States [desire].

We are used to hearing “mogul,” “scion,” or even “philanthropist” to describe the billionaires in the West with state-level influence. This is the reason for Macgregor’s use of the term “oligarch” – usually reserved for the same class of people in enemy nations.

I say oligarch because someone who’s a billionaire hedge fund manager can just as easily buy policy outcomes as an oligarch in Russia or Ukraine.

Macgregor sees this sponsorship of politics as the root of the crisis in America.

I think that’s our biggest problem.  The only way that it will end is with some form of financial collapse – which many of us think is going to happen.

Macgregor points out that the vaunted GDP – the Gross Domestic Product by which the size and health of the economy is measured – “is an illusion.”

“We are currently living on income that is close to 50% of government income,” he said, pointing out that the U.S. is living not only on borrowed money, but also on borrowed time.

“This can’t go on forever. We just don’t know when it’s going to happen but something is going to come along and tip us over,” he warned. “When that happens there will be an opportunity to clean house and hopefully start over – and put an end to this unnecessary overseas empire.”

The domestic crisis is largely ignored, said Macgregor, by a political elite which “acts as if it is still 1991.”

This crisis, which includes that on the U.S. border, and a breakdown in law and order so severe that Elon Musk called for crime to be made illegal again, is one which sees no explanation at all as to why actions are taken to make everything worse.

Time to make crime illegal again

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2024

As Carlson pointed out, no one in power ever really explains why they are taking these decisions, as their policies fuel an expanding global and domestic catastrophe.

Since Joe Biden became president, the U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting an undeclared war against Russia.

No one in all of that time has explained really the purpose of this war, why it would benefit the United States or the world.

Yet the war in Ukraine is not the only one being funded. The genocide in Gaza simply could not continue without a constant supply of U.S. arms – and money. Carlson added that “ethnic and religious” reasons play a part, but that even these fall short of a convincing reason.

Clearly, at least some policy makers are motivated by ethnic and religious hatred. That’s probably part of the real reason. But officially, no one has told us why we are doing this.

Ukraine war – and NATO – lost?

Regardless of the dark motives for the wars, Macgregor considers the one in Ukraine lost, and the money will make no difference to Russia’s post-war plans. He thinks this defeat will break the NATO alliance, with the Europeans breaking away to forge a different future.

I think even the Europeans, who were even more misguided and utterly confused than much of the American population, are going to realize that there’s no future in this relationship between us and them.

He says the European allies will see “that they too have to save themselves – that they’ll have to chart a new destiny for themselves. So I think that’ll be the end of NATO.”

With a dissolving military alliance abroad, Macgregor turned to the question of Israel. Why has the Biden administration changed its initial tune of “unconditional support” for Benjamin Netanyahu?

Until recently it was unconditional support for Israel. I think the reality has begun to set in with some of the senior people behind the scenes that are instructing Biden and controlling the Congress, that there’s a very real potential for a major war that would draw in Russia and China – and other countries – and could frankly destroy Israel and fatally harm us.

So now I think there’s a sense of helplessness, and that helplessness leads to pleas for cooperation with Mr. Netanyahu.

Macgregor warns that though it is “a good thing” that Netanyahu “did not get his war with Iran,” he counsels that this “doesn’t end the probability of a future war with Iran,” as Netanyahu “continues to enjoy unconditional support [from the U.S. government] for this program of mass expulsion and murder in Gaza.”

‘You’ve got to save yourselves’

With politics controlled by a “donor class” that effectively dictates spending, Macgregor warns against the desperate belief in some national savior.

“I’m one of these people that really dislikes the notion that any one candidate is going to rescue us,” he said, addressing the idea that some “Napoleon” may emerge to save America.

I keep telling people: stop talking about Donald Trump or RFK Jr. or anybody else saving us.

You’ve got to save yourselves.

He thinks this message is getting through – “but we’ve got a long way to go”. Most Americans are “too busy trying to put food on the table,” he adds, with others sadly taking in “the usual nonsense from the mainstream media.”

He thinks perhaps a third of Americans have awoken to the gravity of the situation:

Right now perhaps a third fully understand what’s happening in the country and the dangers abroad- but that’s about it.

Macgregor, a retired US Army colonel, makes an impressive summary of nuclear capabilities in the Middle East, mentioning the widely held assessment of Iran as a “threshold” nation. His appraisal is that the dangers of war are misunderstood, or even ignored, by a political management that is out of its depth and disconnected from contemporary reality.

Speaking of President Biden, he said “we’re dealing with someone now who is eminently incapable of coping with the reality of what you and I have been discussing,” before going on to note that those behind the president are less incapacitated, but deluded.

However, there are others behind Biden who are not total fools. They … are simply amateurs.

He says their assessment is of a reality that no longer exists – and whose God-given rights and way of life their policies are destroying.

They’ve been playing at everything as though America is still what it was in 1991: they are ignoring the open borders which they have deliberately created to dilute our population and essentially erase the American culture and national identity.

Macgregor says they are responsible for the chaos inside what were America’s borders.

They are the ones who are releasing criminals onto the street by destroying the justice system. They’ve ruined the armed forces in terms of morale and capability – it’s at an all-time low.

This toxic combination makes for a bleak prognosis from the retired colonel.

So you add that to the equation and the only thing I can see ahead for the United States right now is total disaster.

Yet Macgregor does not simply pronounce doom. He is trying to mobilize Americans in defense of their nation under God.

Macgregor is the CEO of Our Country, Our Choice – an organization which stresses the centrality of God, family, and country to the American success story whose passing he laments in detail.

Its founder, RJ, describes himself as a “devoted Christian” appalled at the theft of liberties under lockdown and shocked into action by the chaos flowing from the Biden administration.

“We’re driven by an unwavering commitment to protect what matters most: our faith, our loved ones, and the land we call home,” says the founding father-of-four, describing why he created OCOC in 2021 himself. “As I witnessed America’s trajectory under the Biden administration, it became increasingly chaotic and disheartening.”

He tells how he was moved to do so:

I reached a breaking point, realizing that the responsibility of reclaiming our country and defeating the deep state ultimately rests with us, the American people. No one else will step up. So, I made a bold decision, risking everything I had, and founded Our Country Our Choice.

His message to the American people is that they can take back their country and their politics from a class determined to destroy them.

It is one which Macgregor is determined to spread. There is hope amidst this desolation, says Macgregor, who believes that it lies with the American people themselves, and the defense of their God-given rights.

Published April 22, 2024 by the Claremont Institute’s The American Mind

Author: Todd Bensman

The latest release into the American interior of an FBI terrorist suspect who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border—a twice-freed Afghan national man free to roam America for 11 months until his capture—demands that the federal government regard this patterned problem as a chronic national security emergency requiring elevation to the highest priority within the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, and Congress.

The case of the 48-year-old Mohammad Kharwin, whom an overwhelmed Border Patrol freed into America on March 10, 2023 before agents could confirm the FBI watch list hit that initially flagged him and whom a swamped Texas immigration court freed a second time in February, is the seventh example of its kind that can establish, just from disparate public records, a mortally dangerous failure pattern.

More cases of accidental Border Patrol releases of illegally crossing terrorism suspects, who did not reach the public record, are highly likely if not certain.

But this latest miss-and-release propels the problem well beyond the critical mass threshold justifying coordinated high-priority government intervention, even if Congress must politically force it, before the next one—or those still roaming the country lost to authorities even now—needlessly kill and maim Americans.

By current public accounts, an initial Border Patrol database check flagged Kharwin for membership in Hezb-e-Islami, which the U.S. Director of National Intelligence describes as a “virulently anti-Western insurgent group,” when he illegally crossed the California border in March 2023. He was among 23,286 illegal aliens caught crossing that month in what would turn out to be a record-breaking year for the agency’s San Diego Border Sector. All told, there were 230,941 illegal crossers caught in 2023, up nearly 60,000 from 2022 and 90,000 more than 2021.

That extraordinary traffic no doubt strained all normal Border Patrol counterterrorism and vetting processes.

Instead of keeping Kharwin detained as a “special interest alien,” tagged until standard face-to-face interviews and corroboration of the initial hit was complete, Border Patrol agents under orders from Washington, D.C. waved him through like millions of other illegal crossers on “Alternatives to Detention” (ATD) personal recognizance papers, where they agree to voluntarily report later to ICE in a city of their choice.

​NBC reports that Border Patrol never even informed ICE of the initial FBI watch list flagging; that’s evidently how the same collapsed border management system missed a second opportunity to catch Kharwin in late January of this year, when he showed up before an immigration judge in a Pearsall, Texas, ICE detention facility for a hearing. Perhaps because ICE still didn’t have the initial terrorism flag hit, that agency’s court lawyer representative did not report it to the judge, or appeal, when Kharwin was ordered released on $12,000 bond for a distant 2025 hearing.

“The judge placed no restrictions on his movements inside the U.S.” in the meantime, NBC reported.

Somehow, the FBI figured all of this out and got word to ICE agents to find and arrest Kharwin, which they did a month later, on February 28, in nearby San Antonio.

An Established New National Security Threat Pattern

Terrorism threat border lights have been blinking red for some time now in a non-specific way, especially since the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency in March 2022 began publishing “Terrorist Screening Data Set Encounters” by the month on its public-facing website. Those began breaking all national records when the Biden government took office in January 2021, when apprehended illegal border crossers on the FBI watch list ballooned from three during Trump’s last fiscal year in office to 15, then by another 98 in fiscal 2022, then 169 in fiscal 2023, and another 75 so far in fiscal 2024.

Through March 2024, Border Patrol caught 342 while partnered federal agencies like the FBI and ICE intelligence presumably investigated and dealt with each. That they did so is less a good national security story than an unacceptable sampling of much bigger flows of watch-listed illegal aliens coming into America who are not caught and handled. If some two million of these so-called “got-aways” went through since 2021 (like Kharwin evidently tried to), more suspected terrorists on the FBI watch list are almost certainly among them.

But short of vastly reducing the millions-per-year border crossings by restoring former president Donald Trump’s discarded policies, the Biden Administration could at least be forced to triple down on its counterterrorism resources at the southern border.

In recent months, the terrorism threat at the border has generated some public concern, but never explicitly about the preventable accidental releases of terrorist suspects authorities later had to chase down.

In September 2023, for instance, I testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Judiciary about the accidental releases I knew about at the time. Mine was indeed a rare warning that named the accidental-release problem in juxtaposition with my 2021 book America’s Covert Border War, which revealed counterterrorism programs at the border that have kept the nation safe from infiltrated attacks for nearly 20 years. I told the members that Biden’s border crisis had severely compromised those old programs, caused a spate of accidental terror suspect releases, and elevated the threat of terror attack as a result.

The Biden Administration’s own 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment warns, with far less specificity, that “terrorists may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States” and that “individuals with potential terrorism connections continue to attempt to enter the Homeland illegally between ports of entry…via the southern border.”

With even less specificity, in his latest testimony to Congress about what he regards as a rising terrorist border infiltration threat, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that a “wide array of very dangerous threats…emanate from” the southwest border, including the designated terror group ISIS.

Despite the variably specific warnings about the border infiltration threat, the ever-growing number of known accidental-release cases like Kharwin’s and the ones I told the subcommittee about remain broadly unrecognized as the unique emerging threat problem these cases indicate. Probably because no one has been killed yet as a consequence, few federal agencies or homeland security committee lawmakers seem interested in calling it out.

Case Candidates for Investigation

To date, only one federal investigation has produced a public report branding the problem, remarkable but forgotten or given short shrift by major U.S. news media, although I did write about it. That eye-opening document was the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office report about the April 19, 2022 crossing and mistaken release of a Colombian on the FBI watch list. ICE agents were not able to track him down to Florida for two long weeks.

Its key finding was that Border Patrol and ICE agents couldn’t do normal counterterrorism protocols because they were simply too “busy processing an increased flow of migrants.”

But these six other cases qualify as investigation-worthy: