On Christmas night, while families across the country were gathered together, the President announced U.S. military strikes in Nigeria.

Another war.
Another country Americans never debated.
Another decision made without a vote of Congress.

In this episode of the Bring Our Troops Home podcast, we respond directly to that announcement.

We acknowledge the very real persecution of Christians in northern Nigeria and the human instinct to feel sympathy and moral urgency. But we also draw a hard line between compassion and constitutional authority.

Moral outrage does not declare war.
Social media posts do not create consent.

This episode examines how undeclared wars begin, why “limited strikes” rarely stay limited, how the National Guard becomes a human tripwire, and how the same logic used to justify intervention today can be stretched tomorrow — whether for terrorism, resources, or even something as absurd as cocoa.

Nigeria is the case study.
Process is the issue.
The Constitution is the standard.

If America is going to fight a war, the people deserve debate, a vote, and accountability before the first strike — not an announcement after the fact.

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https://DefendTheGuard.us

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The Truth About Dick Cheney — The Cost and the Choice

This episode closes the circle.

For six episodes, we’ve traced how Dick Cheney built a doctrine, assembled a machine, and helped normalize undeclared war. In this final chapter, we stop talking about power in the abstract and confront what it actually did to real people.

This is the human toll of Cheney’s worldview.

Not in statistics.
Not in talking points.
In lives.

National Guard units pulled away from their communities.
Service members sent into wars Congress never voted on.
Veterans who came home carrying wounds they were never given the truth about.
Families left with folded flags and unanswered questions.

This episode connects the dots between unchecked executive war powers and the damage done at home. How the National Guard was quietly transformed from a force meant to defend the states into a permanent overseas deployment pool. How Congress stepped aside. How war became routine. And how the cost was shifted onto citizens who never had a say.

But this is not just a postmortem.

This episode is also about the choice still in front of us.

Defend the Guard is not a slogan or a protest. It is a constitutional pressure point. A state-level law that forces Congress to do its job before the National Guard can be sent into foreign combat zones. No blank checks. No executive shortcuts. No pretending the Constitution doesn’t apply when it’s inconvenient.

This is the practical path forward. The last off-ramp before the next generation is asked to fight another war no one voted for.

If you’ve stayed with this series, this episode explains why it mattered. Not to relitigate the past, but to reclaim the future.

This podcast is produced by Bring Our Troops Home, a veteran-led organization committed to ending endless war and restoring Congress’s constitutional authority over war. Our work focuses on passing Defend the Guard across the country, state by state, before the next crisis is used to justify another generation of conflict.

Learn more or support the mission:
BringOurTroopsHome.us
DefendTheGuard.us

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If this episode hits you, share it. The truth only matters if people hear it. And the Constitution only works if we’re willing to enforce it.

Welcome to the final chapter of The Truth About Dick Cheney.

The Global and Domestic Blowback of Cheney’s Doctrine
The Truth About Dick Cheney

The Iraq War didn’t just destroy a country overseas.
It destroyed the rules that restrained American power.

Episode 6 of The Truth About Dick Cheney examines what happened after the invasion — once the guardrails were removed and the machinery was allowed to run.

This episode traces the global and domestic blowback of the doctrine Dick Cheney helped hardwire into American government: the belief that the presidency could act first, explain later, and treat Congress as optional in moments of crisis.

What followed wasn’t chaos by accident. It was consequence.

We walk through how the collapse of Iraq created the conditions for ISIS and other transnational terror networks to emerge and adapt. How instability became transferable, migrating from one fragile state to the next. How war stopped being something the nation declared and debated and became something it quietly managed.

The episode also explores how emergency powers normalized overseas eventually came home: torture defended as policy, surveillance expanded until it became permanent, and a Congress that surrendered its authority and never fully reclaimed it.

This is not a hindsight lecture.
It’s not about how the war was sold.
It’s about what actually happened once the doctrine moved from theory into practice.

In this episode, you’ll hear how:
• Undeclared wars became permanent features of American life
• Executive power expanded while accountability disappeared
• Surveillance reshaped the relationship between the state and its citizens
• War faded into the background without ever truly ending

We also trace the moment the official story began to collapse — not in Washington, but among the people who lived it. Veterans and National Guard members returning from repeated deployments, comparing notes, and realizing the justification no longer matched reality.

By the end of the episode, one truth is unavoidable:
this system didn’t survive because it worked.
It survived because no one was forced to stop it.

Episode 6 sets the stage for the final chapter.

In Episode 7 — The Cost and the Choice, we focus on the human toll: National Guard units used as an overseas labor pool, families broken by repeated deployments, injuries that never healed, suicide numbers that don’t fit into talking points, and the quiet betrayal felt by those who eventually realized the war they fought was sold on lies.

And then we confront the choice that remains:
accept permanent war as the cost of doing business, or reclaim the republic that was designed to restrain it.

Bring Our Troops Home is a veteran-led organization working to restore constitutional limits on war.

If this episode matters to you:
• Follow the show
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• Leave a rating or review

And visit DefendTheGuard.us to sign the petition.
Defend the Guard requires Congress to vote before National Guard troops are sent into combat and gives states a way to act when Washington refuses.

Endless war only continues if no one stops it.

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