At 6:48 AM EST this morning, I was awoken from my sleepy stupor by the pinging of my phone.

My Brother had sent a series of two screenshots to the Family Group Chat. They were news articles, one of which read: “U.S. Bases Across Gulf Targeted by Iran”…

In grey my Brother’s comments were added: 

“And we’re back….” 

I saw this and thought little of it. The Iranians are always shooting missiles somewhere, and there have been too many false alarms to count. 

However, knowing my passion for the Middle East, and my belief that it is key to the National Security of the United States, I was happy that the threat from the Jihadi foe was getting people’s attention. 

So I wrote back: 

“Just because you’re done with the Jihad, doesn’t mean they’re done with you. GWOT ain’t over, it’s just half time”. 

I’ve been preaching this message since August of 2021 during the Fall of Afghanistan. 

And with that, I rolled over and went back to sleep…

Little did I know how true my platitudes would be! 

NEIL SEDAKA NEWS 

At 8:38 AM, I blearily opened my eyes, woke up, and checked my phone again. 

On Youtube was a short ABC7 written post reporting that the 1950s Pop Singer Neil Sadaka had died. 

This made me quite sad, as I have always been a big fan of Neil Sadaka, with him and Frank Sinatra providing the soundtrack to my teen years. 

So I went up stairs, turned on the shower, and began cranking Neil Sadaka hits like “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”, “Bad Girl”, “Calendar Girl”, and “Oh Carol”.  

As I was gelling my hair, I was reflecting on how I probably like Neil Sedaka because he’s a squared-away clean-cut 1950s guy hiding a high libidio that comes out with a love of problematic women. 

Lazily enjoying the Saturday Morning, I went downstairs with Neil Sedaka continuing to play on my phone, I fired up my computer, and opened up Facebook…

And there it was. 

A Facebook post with a picture of President Donald J. Trump that read: 

“A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.” 

My mouth hung open in shock. 

LIKE JOHN WAYNE IN THE SHOOTIST

Quickly I turned off Neil Sedaka and googled the full speech on video. 

I wanted to see Trump saying it for myself to make sure it wasn’t some kind of AI fabrication that comes across Facebook these days on the daily.

And there it was…

DJT, standing at the podium, looking haggard and grave, hawk-eyed and hard jawed. 

Like John Wayne in The Shootist. 

And then he began to speak these words: 

“A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.

“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people…

“They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore…

“Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. 

“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. 

“We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.” 

The gravity of the situation washed over me darkly.

And I began texting the Family Group Chat the notes that would become this article below.

THE MAN ON THE SPOT 

I trust President Donald J. Trump at the helm of this operation.

Many people don’t know that I wrote a book about him in 2016 entitled Go Make America Great Again! How An Average Evangelical Became Trump’s Biggest Supporter. 

I trust him now because of what I saw in him then…

He’s a guy that understands that if you want to know what’s really going on, you talk to the Taxi Driver or the guys working on the Construction Crew.

You throw the paid analysts’ slick talking points out the window, and you go straight to the guy on the ground, the man on the spot.

This is how I’ve learned to live my life over the years, and I appreciate a guy who lives it the same way. 

So I cast my vote for him in 2016, and supported him all through his first term loyally. 

But I have to admit…in 2020 I was disappointed with DJT. 

DISSAPOINTMENT IN A NO-WIN SITUATION

I was disappointed with DJT in 2020 because he didn’t bring the hammer down on the BLM crime rocking the country, which was a literal domestic insurgency declaring cities like Seattle and Portland to be “Autonomous Zones” independent of the United States.

The hands of Cops that I know and love were tied behind their backs that year, and every day on the street they were facing a “No-Win Situation” similar to Vietnam…

Every day, they were risking their lives and wondering if they weren’t killed, would they end up as the media’s next hit job? 

I thought Donald Trump hadn’t fulfilled his end of the bargain, and by this I was personally hurt.

THE TREE PRODUCES GOOD FRUIT 

Fast forward to 2024…against all odds, DJT came back. 

I voted for him again, giving him my backing and another chance.

I didn’t know how much good he was gonna be able to do with all these entrenched special interests that have only grown in depth and depravity since 2020.  

But in the last year, I have been shocked and impressed with everything that DJT has done. 

He has brought the hammer down against anti-Police and anti-ICE agitators, wiping out the shame of 2020’s “Summer of Love”. 

He put the Aytatollah back in his place for a while with Operation Midnight Hammer…and warned him he’d do it again if he got out of line.  

And then he took out the drug-dealing Maduro with a quick precision raid powered not just by AI and the Delta Force that everybody loves to talk about…

But by a vast DEA Human Intelligence Network coming out of Columbia, painstakingly built up by our DEA Heroes and their Green Beret friends for over 40 years.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:15-20, NKJV that: 

“You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 

“Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 

“A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 

“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

“Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

The fruit has been good. 

It looks like my 2020 doubts were misplaced…

And my original 2016 analysis was right after all. 

THE VALUE OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE 

Which brings me back to my original point…

DJT is a guy who understands that if you want to know what’s really going on, you talk to the Taxi Driver or the guys working on the Construction Crew.

And when you look at how quick and precise the operation to take out Maduro was, the whole thing was built on this principle. 

In the DEA Academy, they teach you to always make friends with the janitors and the maids in the building. 

They’re the ones that know what’s going on…they’re the building blocks of Human Intelligence.

And DJT was able to do the Maduro operation because of that institutional culture that DEA has built…an institutional culture that built their Human Intelligence Network of Confidential Informants all across Latin America. 

That Human Intelligence Network is what prevented Venezuela from becoming a long and drawn out Iraqi Insurgency situation. 

In fact, if we had had that kind of Human Intelligence Network in Iraq in 2003, things would have gone a lot smoother for us!

But what most people don’t know is that we had it…

And we threw it away.

A TRIED-AND-TRUE PLAN 

As Kenneth R. Timmerman reports in his masterful 2008 book, Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Sabatours, and the Party of Surrender, we had a vast Human Intelligence Network on the ground in Iraq in 2003.

Ahmed Chalabri’s anti-Saddam INC…the Iraqi National Congress. 

Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz at the Department of Defense had planned on putting them in the lead of the Iraqi Invasion, with the support of US Green Berets and Air Power.

We had done the same thing successfully in Bosnia a few years back with friendly Bosnian and Kosovar Insurgents, and again in 2001 with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom.

It was gonna be a “light foot print” with locals in the lead to maximize their knowledge of the lay of the land and its people, with the American role minimized to save American lives. 

But the CIA and the State Department put a stop to it.

“SAFE AND VETTED DEFECTORS” 

The CIA and the State Department undercut the intelligence gained by guys on the ground from the INC at every turn, slandering them as “Iranian agents”.

The CIA and State Department instead decided to use their own “safe and vetted defectors” from Saddam’s ranks.

As Yosef Bodansky reports in The Secret History of the Iraq War, these “safe and vetted defectors” at the CIA and State Department were all double agents for Saddam…

And when Delta Force operators were clandestinely inserted to take Saddam out at the start of the war a la Maduro, these double agents kept the Delta Force operators holed up in their safe houses “for their own protection”.

On top of that, they provided the coordinates of bunkers to the CIA, claiming that Saddam was hiding in them, but instead were empty, while Saddam and his Revolutionary Command Council leadership were dispersed all across the country in safe, secret locations.

The inability to take out Saddam and his RCC Leadership allowed them to organize, coordinate, and lead the Insurgency against US Forces that killed 4,598 American troops. 

After US troops left Iraq in 2011, these same surviving RCC commanders were left to constitute ISIS, the scourge of the Middle East that would haunt the region with blood-soaked tyranny for years. 

This could have all been avoided had we put the Human Intelligence Network of the INC in the lead as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had originally planned. 

American Troops would have been alive, Iraq would have been safe and free, and a victory would have been added to the illustrious annals of the United States…instead of a disturbing defeat whose physical and spiritual effects have never really gone away. 

KEN ASKED, AND RICHARD ANSWERED  

Fast forward to February 25, 2026.

I came across a post by Kenneth R. Timmerman on his LinkedIn page, a post he had put up two weeks prior. 

In it, he asked: 

“Can the US effectively bomb the Iranian regime out of power?” 

In a public comment on his post that day, I responded: 

“You’d have to have a ground element calling in those strikes, a la Operation Enduring Freedom with the 120 Green Berets and Air Force guys calling in the strikes embedded with the Northern Alliance. 

“Who could we use for this? 

“The Israelis obviously have a human intelligence network operating inside of Iran, and they got Military/Intelligence guys working that network embedded on the ground, otherwise they couldn’t have been taking out the IRGC guys on foot as was widely reported last year.” 

THE PREDICTION COMES TRUE 

Fast forward 3 days to today, February 28, 2026. 

That is exactly what has happened. 

The prediction came true. 

Israel has provided the Human Intelligence Network that our Bosnian and Kosovar Allies did in Bosnia in the 1990s, the Northern Alliance did in Afghanistan in 2001, and the DEA Human Intelligence Network out of Columbia did on January 3, 2026. 

And we have been providing the Air Power with what Centcom is calling the biggest projection of American Power since Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

But this time, DJT has not made the mistake that our CIA and State Department flunkies made then. 

Instead, he’s gone with his gut, thrown the paid analysts’ slick talking points out the window, and gone straight to the guy on the ground, the man on the spot.

And every hour, it is bringing our Fighting Forces closer to Victory. 

AN OLD-FASHIONED CREED 

For all of our Heroes out there tonight, past, present, and future…my heart and my prayers are with you. 

And at the end of the day, all I have to say is this…

It’s a little old-fashioned, and not exactly in vogue in our understandably jaded age. 

But I believe that it’s the right thing to say nonetheless: 

God Bless our Fighting Men and Women in action in Iran, all across the Middle East, and all over the World. 

God Bless the Noble and Longsuffering Iranian People, long brutalized by the Tyranny of the Ayatollah and his Henchmen. 

God Bless our Commander-in-Chief…because at the end of the day, as Harry Truman says, the buck stops with him. 

And God Bless the United States of America. 

Sincerely,

Richard Barrett

02-28-2026

Written at 9:34 PM, somewhere in the USA…

Sources Cited 

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