#294 Pete Blaber - Part 1: Delta Force Commander on Roberts Ridge: The Battle of Takur Ghar

The Pete Blabber hot question.

If tomorrow you were tasked with eradicating the cartels, but you could only bring five movie actors or fictional characters. Who's on your team and why?

“And in the most general terms, what's your weapon of choice?”

And what air support would you want overhead? [LAUGHTER] Wow, well, I wouldn't go down that I wouldn't use that approach. [LAUGHTER] I wouldn't.

And you know, you've been down there and we're going to talk about Columbia. We've both been to Columbia through with and by, clandestine, especially in salt of the real grand. If you're a gringo and you're seen in some of these places, especially now, after Ben is way low.

You know, they're going to see you.

They're going to ID you. You know, you can have a really hard time collect and the on the ground until you need. I don't want to throw a damper on that, so like if I had the five, I don't, you know, I've wasted as you said that.

I was going, well, I take Larry. I think you just interviewed Larry. You know, I take a really good shot.

“Yeah, Larry would be my shoe, what are my shooters?”

And you know, I probably wouldn't take any Hollywood actors. Because I wouldn't either. Because, you know, they're just not, again, when you go into a contentious, very sensitive area like that, like counter narcotics, where it's sensitive because,

as you know, the, the narco traffickers are embedded in the local society, and not all of Omar, the rich cartel, Kingpins, some of them are the fruit stands. Yeah, exactly. Side of the road.

Exactly. So you start, you know, if some of them are included, collateral damage or whatever, you've just lost the hearts and minds for further ops, you might get one cartel, Kingpins, but you're not going to clean up the cartels.

So again, my advice would be, go, low viz,

make it a clandestine, we should never say we have,

we're even, you know, that mission is ongoing, but the infiltration should be starting right now. Obviously Spanish speakers are a lot of seventh group guys, a lot of guys who, you know, can blend in down there. Would be needed, and I think, you know, would not be that hard

to do some serious damage to them. You don't think it would be. I don't. I think if we had the intel, what, what, what, how do you, when I just go to drones,

mark an entire good, drown it? Yeah, well, is that, is that what you would do? Well, but the drone, you know, you, you'd have to know who the guy you're going for and where he's at. And if you got that, yeah, the drone would work.

But, you know, again, as soon as you start that, they're going to start looking for the drones. And, you know, we had drones, we had predators for bin Laden. And we couldn't find him, we couldn't find Zarohiri, we couldn't, you know, find Mula Omar.

And most of their lieutenants, we couldn't find and we had those drones, blind all the time. And, you know, a predator is better than most of the drones that are flying today. Is it really?

Yeah, resolution level, flight time, the whole thing, the little ones, obviously, if you've seen these new shield AI drones, yeah, yep, it's like 1,200 not up to mile, yeah, with payload. I can't remember altitude, but it's up there.

Yeah, and then remember the thing, and the 24, the supposed drone invasion and New Jersey, you know, all that, yeah, yeah.

“I mean, that was, they never put him, remember that.”

Well, I mean, I told you I got a cabin in the Tatchipi Mountains. And so, when you look south from where I'm at on the mountain, Edward's Air Force base is right over to the east in the Mojave Desert there. And Edward's is where, you know, skunk works is

and everything else north of Grumman, Lockheed Martin. And they were doing the same tests. I could see from my cabin, I was watching. And you could see what it was. It, they were testing the mothership concept.

So the mothership is the big drone. It's got the legs, it's got the antennas, and it's got the power to power that antennas.

from farther away, but it gets to vicinity the target,

opens up its payload and outcome the mini drones. And the mini drones swarm the target or targets. And that they can go in a complete silent mode

“because the only thing they're communicating with”

is directly back up to the mothership, then the mothership aggregates it and sends it back. But I was watching that, I was watching them test that in our mountains because they're completely, there's nobody in these mountains.

They're, you know, replete with people. That's why it's so, I jumped at the opportunity to buy land up there. There's only 80 private parcels. So, good for you.

Yeah, well, you got the same thing here, man. This place looks fantastic. Yeah, but, you know, it's not surrounded by protected land. So, that was one of my prerequisites. It's surrounded by a bunch of land that's probably

going to turn into a neighborhood here pretty soon. Yeah, you know, then you move again. Yeah, you got to great. This is really, really nice. And thank you.

Thank you. So, weapon a choice. What would your weapon a choice? Oh, it's still just, you know,

“clock 19 with the clock 19? Yeah, just a simple gun.”

You know, I've dropped it in the mud many times. I slept with it. I had it in a rack and Afghanistan. It was my side arm.

You know, it always functions.

I got a Trigicon site on mine, red dot site. I can hit anything with that. You know, I'll tell a hundred meters and again, I've got, I'll tell you a little something. I'll tell you a little something.

Oh, let me grab. OK. It's not a clock. [LAUGHTER] But it is, uh, low.

It's SIG's newest, uh, split. Wow. That's your swine rifle. Yeah. No, it's the MCX Spear 556.

So, I got a friend over at SIG, his name's Jason. I told him you were coming on. He got all excited. He's a shot show right now. They're on talking about this exact thing.

But, um, and then also, I got a new silencer on here. Yep. So, I got a friend at silence or shop and they heard you're coming on. So, they wanted to throw a can on there. Who makes this?

“I believe that's a SIG suppressor as well.”

OK. So, the suppressors from silence or shop, the rifles from SIG. And that's going to be the new squad rifle for supposedly all of US military. Wow. They're going to do it in this new round 6.82.

Wow. But, uh, that's awesome. Yeah. Maybe we could break that in a little bit later. Yeah.

So, yeah. They're going to send you one. Are you kidding me? No, I'm not kidding you. Wow.

They're going to send you the exact same thing. So, so maybe that could be your weapon to choice. Yeah. I will do this. But, look good up there on the mountains.

Yeah. But, yeah. They'll send that to you. Oh my God. Well, I'll tell you.

Thank you. I'm ecstatic. It'll have a place in my hidden safe off of the cabin right on. And there was one, there was one follow-up question here. So, if Delta Force was unleashed on Cartel leadership in real life, which are honest

timeline to dismantle them. Again, I don't want to sound like a contrarian, but I wouldn't put a timeline on it.

You know, I want to think Putin did it for Russia was he never told his generals.

There's any time limit on, you know, take this sector. There's no time limit on you taking it. And a lot of people don't understand that. It's, you know, the Russians are having credible strategic acumen. They always have.

If you go back read about the Eastern Front, you're amazed at what they did, how they crushed the Germans, you know, they coars of Germans at a time. And all through their strategic acumen, they think deeply about strategy and then they implement it over time. So on the cartels, if the unit was doing it, I'd go back to what are other, you know,

the answer to the other question, I would have them lead with plenty of other guys because you need all fluent Spanish speakers. So you're going to need to pick from a bunch of special ops units. And I would just give them the mission would be developed a situation, you know, get them a base somewhere they can operate and you know, I've looked at the, you know, whether that

I'm sure someone with current Mexico expertise would be able to tell us that.

So have kind of a base of operation, have these guys, you know, outwork in with the tough

“part about it in Mexico, I think, is it's really hard to trust anyone in the Mexican”

military or Mexican government. And that's not a derogatory thing, it just, it's the reality it is. Yeah. And while we said before, same thing, you know, you go in, guns blazing and you're going to kill that guy at the fruit stand, you know, and who's supporting a family of six,

you know, making a hundred bucks a month or something, which is what they paid on there.

And, you know, it would, it would backfire on us. So I, I just think of being incredibly, it's an incredibly sensitive thing and it requires an incredibly sensitive approach and, you know, clandestine is much as possible, you know, through with and by if possible, and again, I'm not a, my expertise in Mexico is not, you know, current operational.

So there may be some people we can trust there that have been bedded. I don't know that.

Do you feel like, I mean, I feel just for my limited, my experience, I mean, when we're

talking, when we're comparing cartel to terrorists, I don't think those, I think those are kind of apples and oranges. And here's why, you know, I think that terrorists, the ones that you and I are accustomed to fighting to, man, I hate to say this, but it is, for lack of a better term, more respectable than a cartel member, because terrorists are fighting for what they believe in, what they

believe to be true, their values. Cartel is a fucking transaction for money, yeah. And so if you were to, it's harder to infiltrate somebody whose motivations are not financial. So, you know, it is, it is a religion to them, it is their values, it is their fucking

“core is a human being, but a cartel member is a prostitute and all you have to do to”

want to prostitute over is paying more money than the next guy. Yeah. That's a great point. But that's the kind of thing. So, you know, if, if the mission comes up, you know, guys, tell, we want you to do

this, tell us, come back and tell us what you can do. That's the kind of input, you know, that's needed, brain storming, you know, multiple thought processes on the best way to do it and then neck it down and figure it out. And, you know, a little bit on speaking from experience, because, you know, I had the privilege of, you know, being part of both going after Pablo and then, you know, we're the guys

who captured the intel that captured the Cali Cartel. So, you know, and we did the both of those were through with and by, you know, despite what some people have said in a few books, the Colombians killed Pablo. You know, there was no, the DEA guys came out and took pictures as soon as they heard he was dead. They flew out of Bogotá into managing drove right to the target and took

“those, you know, happy to glad picks, which I think was a massive mistake, because they're”

smiling over his body and again, you know, part of any, any, you know, operational space that we enter, as you know, you've been, you know, you got a picture of Yaman up there, Afghanistan. You've got to respect the culture and the history of that country. And, you know, one of things I would just remind everyone, even for the Robs and Venezuela is everybody south of the Rio Grande, you know, grew up with Grenada, Panama, and now Venezuela. And

so it was explained to me by the chief of staff of the Guyana military. We were down there doing jungle training in Guyana and I said, he said, well, we're the helicopter's fly after that. And I was like, well, fly out, they can go around the, the, the capital city and then come back and he goes, Peter, sit down. Let me tell you something. And then he explained that to me. He said,

think it's a criminal. They think, is this the Americans in baby in her country? Wow. Yeah, and it was it, you know, he was, he was very sincere about it and I could tell by his seriousness,

and I never forgot that. And, you know, part of that's, that's a big part of what we did in

“Colombia. And I think it's a big part of what we'd have to do in Mexico. I've been to Mexico.”

I tried to open a business there. So I went to Guadalajara 15 times. We almost signed a contract. The last minute COVID happened and kind of business where you got to open there. And armor car business, armor and cars. So I had a company. I'm just in the middle of selling it. I'm closing the deal right now selling all my shares, which, you know, it's just time to do it. And I'm selling it to my partner. So, but I until that closes, I can't, I'm not sure.

I can't talk about it. But it's, we make, we armor civilian vehicles. So we've been doing that since 2018, we do a lot under cover cops, do a ton of, you know, exact BIPs. And then a lot of people who just have had threats against them. You know, for about 35 grand, you can put what we call the anti-intrusian package. We'll put B4 level. So 9 mill shot gun. It'll take 5 by 6 as long as it's not shot point blank 6 feet away from your vehicle.

“So, you know, when you calculate armor protection, you, you have to calculate the angle that a”

bullet's going to hit it at. It's all rated for 6 foot point blank. I think it's called zero degree obl activity, you know, perfectly flat. Your, the weapons perfectly flat at the same tangent level is the, as the side of the vehicle. But as soon as you move off that angle, every caliber round loses its penetration ability on armor. So B4 is really all you need to America. You can do that for 35 of grand, 35 to 40 grand, depending on the vehicle. Yep, is it?

We do, so we do the doors. So here's, so if you had, say you had an escalade. We do all your doors. We do all your windows. And we do your back hatch with armor panels. So interior armor panels and armor glass on all the windows. We would not do the top. Some people go,

I want my roof done. And I'm, so what, I always ask what's the threat? And so if, if a train

sniper is after you, you might want to do the roof, but same thing on the roof. If you explain to people that, unless the guy is on a highway overpass, shooting at your roof is a really hard to hit someone in the car to hit the roof. And when you, you know, everything, there's a cost benefit to armoring every part of your vehicle. So you armor the top part of your vehicle. Now you are going to affect the drive ability, the physics of that vehicle. You're going to

“make it a little more top heavy. A lot more if you go B6, which is 7.62. That's what, you know,”

we had in Afghanistan any embassy has B6 armor. What, what vehicle would you recommend? All American SUVs are the best vehicles to armor. They have the most room in the doors. The least amount of superfluous crap electric stuff like German vehicles are much harder to armor. What about a Toyota LC? They're fantastic to armor too. They probably last the longest. Yep. So, you know, we actually do a lot of Tacomas, you know, the Tacoma pros because people want a less conspicuous vehicle,

but also, and when people ask me, I tell them always, if it's an armor vehicle, you might as

we'll go for a wheel drive because, you know, the number one protection is not your armor. It's that accelerator, that brake, that steering wheel. You know, you drive into an ambush. Your first reaction, your first course of action is drive out of the ambush. So, what's the name of this company? Can I ask that armor? Yep. It's still, there's a website. You could still, the website still up. I'm still on the top of it to CEO. But that's getting switched over too. And yeah,

my partner will still, if you want a vehicle armored, I can still get your vehicle armored, and

companies used to be called quality coach works for 30 years. He's, you know, he's all right,

he's in his 50s. He's in, well, he's little, he's late 50s, but he's a great guy, total craftsman. And, you know, when we started the company, we, we started it saying, okay, what's our, what, what part of this company is going to make us? It's going to be our competitive advantage. And my input was, let's make it trust. Let's make it, you can trust us to put, you know, real armor and attach it the right way. And then stand by it. If you something happens,

a panel comes loose, or you think something's wrong, we'll fix it for free. And we do that in our shop is in Ontario, California, right outside the Ontario Airport, but we do vehicles from all

“over the world, all over the country. That's why I wanted to move to Mexico. It's way cheaper.”

We were also going to move to Nevada. But again, 45 grand for an armored vehicle is, uh, hurting them affordable. Yeah, my opinion. Yep. But, or to or to armor, aviates, not for the whole thing. Right. But, um, wow. Wow. That's, you should have come on here before you negotiated that deal. Okay. Yeah. But, uh, you already get into the interview? Sure. Perfect. Let me give you an introduction here. Okay. Pete Blaber, Colonel Pete Blaber retired. You commanded it every level of

first special forces operation, operational detachment delta, including interim commander during the

Iraq invasion, a combat veteran with operational experience across major US conflicts, including operations in Panama, Colombia, Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, pretty much everything. Uh, the author of the best selling books, the mission, the men in me, the common sense way and the common sense leaders, and, and common sense leadership matters. And most importantly, you're a Christian. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be

your show. It's an honor to have you. Thank you. And, um, so a couple of things just to knock out before we get to get in the weeds here. So I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription

“account that we've turned into one hell of a community. I think it's a hundred and something”

thousand strong now. And, uh, they're, honestly, they're the reason that, uh, that I was even able to start this show another reason that I get to sit here with you today. So I offer them the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. This is from Esgrove 140. Given the levels of fraud, deceit and complete betrayal by the US federal government over the last 30 to 40 years, how can you best convince our next generation to want to step into your shoes?

Hmm. It's a great question. Um, you know, I think you got to believe. I think, uh, you got to believe in what this country stands for. Uh, certainly right now. Um, I would, I would tell anyone that the country is in as good as shape as it's been in a long, long time. I mean, even, uh, in Trump's first term, unfortunately, you know, they, uh, they put some edge shoes on him, uh, 16 to 20. They were, right, the accusations started the rush of hope

started in 17. Uh, he was completely, uh, side track by that. He didn't have the right, uh, you know,

“individuals. I think in the key positions, uh, probably a little bit of naivete by the president,”

which I don't find it fault. You know, one of the reasons he makes a great president is because he's not a politician, um, but as you know, uh, they have in the key people in the right, uh,

in charge of the right agencies is absolutely essential to, you know, re-establishing that trust,

real trust. Um, and, you know, I think we said it earlier. What is that? Uh, it's people who understand that they serve the people of this country and everything they do is about the greater good, every decision they make is about the greater good of this country, uh, and the people in this country. We've had a great military this whole time. We've had incredible economic power, but none of that does any good if we don't have the right leader in charge and that right leader has to be someone

we got the wrong person, uh, leading the country. But like I said earlier, I think we have the right

“person, uh, you don't even have to agree with everything president Trump does, uh, but certainly”

if you look at what he's doing and listen to what he's saying, he's all about the people. Um, you know, he just announced that's thing. He's for, and I didn't even fathom this until he announced it that the other day that he's going to end, uh, the requirement for for seniors, anyone who owns their own house outright, that they should not have to pay property taxes anymore on it. So, you know, we have all these retirees now who own their homes and like

if you live where I live in California, um, you know, I'll just pick a number. If if your house

is worth a million, you're paying around 13,000 bucks a year for that house and for retiree,

that's an incredible amount of money. And you know, that's one of those things. That's not going to help the government coffers, but he's, he understands the things that need to happen and they need to be for the people and, uh, the his income tax thing, the tariffs, you know, historians will look back on this and, and, and just look at the body of work, look at the logic of why he's stated he does what he does. And I think the historical record will be shock that, you know, there's

actually politicians who are against all these things. Gavin Newsom has said that he, you know, will not allow the no tax on tips in California. Yeah, he just told me that he did. You just told me. Oh, yeah. So it's like, yeah, no, you told me he was here, but, I mean, how stupid is that? It's not going to save the, you know, it's not going to even be a drop in the California coffers, but it just shows you he has no, there's no principle in his head that says do what's in the

best interest of the people of California. Uh, he's wired to do what's in the best interest of himself. And that's, you know, that's one of the definitions of a toxic leader. And that's, you know,

“that's what, what happened to Patelman in his Patuna and Appent Ganistan. That's, and toxic leadership,”

common sense leadership matters, toxic leadership destroys. And if you just look at the last five years that, you know, the toxic leadership we lived under for four years being lectured, you know, being told, don't go protesting. We have the F-16s. We have all the guns.

I mean, when he first said that, you know, I was just like, no one, no one, no value-based person,

no patriot in this country has ever once walked around and gone, man, we really need a civil war. That whole thing has come up from the left out of their desperation. And, you know, one of your other, I answered some Patreon questions out there, and that was one of the questions. It's on everybody's mind. It is. It is, but, you know, my thing is, it won't be a civil war. I'd call it a civil grenade. It'll be about 10 hours long, and it'll be

over with. There's no civil war that the left can win in America. There's too many freedom-loving God-fearing patriots in this country, and although we haven't had a voice for many years, we have one now,

“and I think people would do the right thing, and anyone who would try to start a civil war would”

regret it very quickly. If you've ever hired somebody like, I'm in the middle of doing right now. You know, this can be extremely overwhelming. You put a job posting out, and the next thing, you know, you have 2,000 resumes all wanting to be the next producer. Well, if you're hiring, here's the good news. You can now review all these resumes and applicants faster. Thanks to Zipper Cruder.

Zipper Cruder has a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested quality candidates first.

And today, you can try it for free at zippercruder.com/SRS. What I really like is it cuts through the noise. Their matching technology brings the right people to you faster, and with this new feature, the candidates who are actually interested rise to the top. You're not wasting time guessing you're getting straight to the people who want the job. And you even get a better

Cut through the standard and get to the standouts with Zipper Cruder. For out of five employers who

“post on Zipper Cruder get a quality candidate within the first day. And now, you can try it for free.”

It's zippercruder.com/SRS. That's zippercruder.com/SRS. Meet your match on Zipper Cruder. Yeah, I don't argue with you that on that. I think that there are three sides to that war. I think there's the left, the right, and the government. But that's the way shadow government, or what I don't know what do you call it anymore. But I can tell you this. I don't think that there are many people up there have our best interest. And I think that's becoming more and more

apparent every single day. But anyways, I got something else for you too. Love it. Say visually gummy bears made in the USA. Legal in all 50 states, not that it matters in California. But just candy. Just candy. Yep, you've got to be careful. The gummy should

“take in California. That's what I hear. Oh, the backyard. Look at the sparrows.”

But well, Peter, I want to do a life state, a life story on you. And I know you have a lot of stuff you want to talk about outside of your story, too, that I'm interested in and been particular Venezuela, the Ukraine wars, your thoughts on that stuff. But yeah. But start now. Where'd you grow up? grew up in O Park, Illinois. It's a suburb outside Chicago. I deal with place to grow up. I was one of nine kids. Irish Catholic family.

Went to Catholic school. Got my ass kicked by nuns. You know, I grew up on good old days. Yeah, I had hose water, drinking hose water, not where it helmets. And, you know, with one mission, just to have fun. And that was not the best mission when it came to going to school. And scholastically, I was horrible student. I used to tell people, you know, the purpose of school is to learn how to be a stand-up comedian. I just wanted to laugh, you know, and I was

not suited for being cooped up in a classroom. But, you know, it was an amazing time to grow up. You know, my even though school was hard. When I wasn't at school, you know, I pretty much the same pattern of activity every day. I'd wake up, get a bowl of oatmeal, put my shoes on,

and head outside. And, you know, my amazing mom would always say some version of the same thing.

You know, stay out of trouble and be home before the street lights come on. And, you know, back then, there was no cellular phone slash beacon. I knew there were no text check-ins. You know, just freedom and independence. And, you know, there's some amazing studies, psychological studies have been done on people who grew up in the pre-digital era. So I don't put a lot of credence to the alpha, alpha, medical generations, you know, because I think more

or less generations are in like 30-year bands within those 30-year bands, the 10-year bands all overlap, and then even the 30-year ones overlap. And the reason they overlap is because, you know, the way you and me grew up is the way we try to raise our own kids. So if you grew up

“pre-digital, you should be taken some of those great things that, you know, we were able to”

the conditions we had because what this study showed is that, you know, growing up that way was

incredibly beneficial and they covered three things. The first was unstructured problem solving.

The second was something they call adaptive risk calculations. And the third thing was the ability to believe in and trust your senses. And, you know, you can, you can see all three of those. It was aha moment when I read this thing. So let's just go back to, you know, the daily itinerary of kids pre-digital. So after your mom tells you that you're, she kicks you outside and you're out in the back yard and you're like, okay, what am I going to do now? So this is unstructured problem solving.

So, you know, most of the time first thing you think is I'm going to go get some buddies. I want to hang out with some of my buddies. So whatever the type of neighborhood you're in, what that proximity is, everything, you know, for me, I walked across the alley knocked down a door, the back door.

You talk of, you know, the mom always answers, you know, can Billy come out and play and, you know,

you got, you know, four or five kids and, you know, you're in the unstructured problem solving mode. First thing is you realize, and wow, five heads is better than one, you know, more ideas, we can do more things, we can have more fun. But, you know, you, you figured it out, you realize, I figured something out. It takes action to make action and, you know, you just did it, you just took action and found yourself some friends. And then off you go, you know, no, no, I tend to vary

for, for young boys, you know, you don't know a lot. So everything is a potential challenge, every, you know, every tree, every rock wall, every construction site, especially, you know, which is like an obstacle course to another boy. And every one of those is full of hazards.

“You know, this is what the school of hard knocks is and it's why I think pre-digital all of us,”

you know, there was never a moment we didn't have scabs on both elbows and scabs on both knees.

And, you know, that's learning the laws of physics. I was, I ran too fast. I should not have tried to grab that limb on that tree. And at some point along the way, you know, you're going to get one buddy. Let's stick with the tree, you climbs up the tree. Come on, let's climb this thing. And, you know, I had a friend who was an amazing climber, incredible strength, the body weight, and, you know, grip strength. He could climb anything. And one day he was on a tree limb,

you know, young like Tarzan, I was like a Danny, you better, that, that's dangerous. You better

stop that. Sure enough, the branch broke, he fell, broke his arm. And I never forgot that.

“And, you know, that's this part of this adaptive risk calculation. You're building your memory,”

you're building, you know, all the decks of experience. Yeah. And so it's, it's experience for you, your body, your mind, you know what you can do physically. You know what makes sense to you. And so when that guy says, come on, what do you afraid? You know, on that one day you say, no, I'm not afraid. I just don't want it. It's not worth it climbing up that thing, a break of my arms. So let's go play baseball and you walk away. And the real benefit of that

is happens afterwards. You realize you made the right decision and you've now etched that pattern in your brain that, hey, you don't have to do stupid shit. If it doesn't make sense, veto it, you know, take care of yourself. And I've been asked many, many times, you know, about survival

in combat. And, you know, I tell people one reason that I never got shot or seriously injured,

you know, beyond luck was that adaptive risk calculation. I was always thinking, is this worth it? Number one, what's, you know, what are my risk and how risky is this? How much do I know about what we're doing? And if you don't know a lot, and there's a lot of risk to it, then it might not make sense, but you don't have that unless you've got the experience. And you, not just the experience of, you know, the conditions, but the experience of saying,

I don't think that, I don't think that's smart. I don't think we should do it. So that's the adaptive risk calculation. The final thing is believing in entrusting your senses. And, you know, that obviously applies to both the same things, but it where it really comes in handy is interpersonal relationships. You know, when kids are out, it's the law, the jungle. And, you know, you're going to run into some older kids, you're going to run into some strange kids.

“And you learn right away that, you know, you have to understand who you're dealing with,”

and that you can't trust strangers. You've got to, you've got to get some data on this person first. And, you know, I mentioned the school of hard knocks, you know, mistakes have consequences. You get your face washed out with snow. If you say the wrong thing or kicked in the stomach, and, you know, I remember both incidents like that happen and to me and my friends. And it was, you know, one time we were just hanging out with these older kids and one of my buddies,

you know, when you're, when you're 10, 11, 12, you say the word "fuck" as a comma. It's like, it separates the sentences you use. And when someone says something funny, it's still high, speak. Yeah, I mean, too. You know, I will probably, you know, to the viewers, they'll probably see us

with my buddies like that, never heard you swear so much. But I'm just back in military mode.

But you learn to read people, you learn to pay attention to tone of voice, to the nuances of body language. And, you know, that's emotional intelligence. You're looking at person. You're listening. And, you know, as we know, all, both those things, you know, kind of signal what a person's about to do. So, again, the real benefit is when you avoid problems, when you spot, hey, this guy's crazy. Let's, let's get out of here. Let's not hang out

here anymore. And same thing, you've now actually patterned in your brain. And you realize that the

only thing you got in the real world is your senses. And, and that's a biologic fact. You know,

Ernst Mach, the guy who came up with them, you know, Mach 1 Mach 2, the Mach principle was a German scientist. And in 1869, he came up with the Mach principle, which is just, there's no other way to prove scientific fact than with your senses. And so still to this day in science, if you have a new

“hypothesis or new theory, you have to be able to validate that hypothesis or theory with sensory”

information. Like, you can't say when someone says, well, where is it? And you say, well, it's invisible. There's no such thing as invisible than the hypothesis or the theory falls apart. So believe in and trust your senses, it's all you got. It's the ironic thing is that's even more important today than it was prejudicial because there's so much fake out there. There's so many AI generated video clips. There's so much propaganda. You know, if you haven't learned to take every news report,

with a grain of salt, every government report, with a grain of salt, then you're missing a big lesson of our time. So again, you know, rock foundation is believe in and trust your senses. And then the final thing from that study that I thought was interesting is that pre-digital, 70% of teenage boys had jobs, either after school on the weekends or, you know, an including all summer. And the majority of those 70% were not working to say for college, they were working

“to buy a car. And again, I'm reading this thing going, that's me. That's what I did. I bought my first”

car was a 72 in Palo for 250 bucks. It had 170,000 miles on it. It had a hole in the passenger side floor that I had to cover with plywood in the winter because slush would fly up. My mom wouldn't even get in it. But that thing ran like a champ and I kept it and I used it all through college, drove down to my college and back on man. Yeah. So again, you know, to sum up the point all that is not to sit around and wax poetic and say all those were the good old days. There's no such thing as

good old days. They always, the world's always changing society, culture, technology. But we could take

those foundational aspects of human nature, unstructured problem solving, adaptive risk calculation

“and believing in trust in your senses. And we can understand how important those are to the”

development of the brain and we can apply them and make every effort for our own kids and the society around us to allow that back to have that as part of the way kids grow up today. Big kudos to our parents today. You know, they call parents helicopter parents. They're hovering over their kids all the time. Ready to swoop down as soon as they run into an obstacle or get hurt or have a problem. Our parents are called Home Depot parents. And Home Depot parents

are parents where when you think you need something, you can't find anybody to help you. So you look around for a while. You still can't find anyone. You say shit. Okay, I'm going to figure this out. And so you use deductive logic to figure out what I owe this part is your search and for and then you go down find the part, you know, whether it's a toilet or electricity thing. And you start flipping them over, reading the specs on it, compared them to the specs you

real benefit of it comes at home when you find out that's the right part. You're like, I did that. I did it on my own. And so, you know, we can also try to be more Home Depot parents than helicopter parents. Yeah. So, that's my yeah. Certainly agree with the on that. Yeah, yeah. So, that's my childhood at high school, I ran across country, played hockey. I went off to Southern Illinois University in Carbidale. It's the southern tip of Illinois about 350 miles from Chicago

the farther away, the better. And it's an amazing place. It's where the Ohio and Mississippi come

together in the bottom of the state. The glaciers of 10,000 years ago did not reach Southern Illinois. So, it's still full of massive hills, ridges, rock outcroppings, cliffs, lakes, and 275,000 acres, Shawnee National Forest. And when I went down there and saw that, I was like, I'm going to this is the school I'm going to. Wow. And I didn't even tour the campus. Yeah. I went there for the, you know, the wilderness. And, you know, pretty much every weekend. I was in college. I was

out hiking in places like Panthers Den and Devil's Kitchen. It was first time I used my own money to buy a book, which was being expert with a map and compass by Bjorn Kelstrum. Yeah, I learned how to navigate what terrain features were a little that I know I was, you know, inching my way toward, uh, joined in the military. I didn't know that at the time. I hope it didn't.

“It wasn't even on your radar. No, it, uh, my, my first year I think was when the ran”

hostage rescue mission went awry. Desert one. Okay. And that had an incredible effect on me, because, you know, eight guys died in Desert one trying to save the American hostages in terrain. I think it was like 400 of them. It was a lot. Um, and it had a huge effect

on me because it was the first time I ever stopped to think about how good I had it and what an amazing

life I had in America, specifically over you at that time. Uh, it was just a freshman in college. So, you know, 18, 19 or something like that. Wow. You thought that. Yeah. And you like nobody feels like that anymore. Nobody takes the time, you know, to, to, to, to appreciate it. Yeah. Well, you might be pointing out. I agree with you. And maybe it's because, look, we can you imagine anyone kneeling for the National Anthem when we were growing up or disparaging, you know,

people who served, you know, I grew up. I remember as a kid hearing about the way they treat

“a Vietnam veterans and, you know, being completely disgusted by that. Uh, but I think, you know,”

it was, it was a more patriotic time. Uh, we hadn't had a full portion of the country who, you know, did nothing but criticize our freedom and criticize our forefathers, you know, tearing down statues. Yeah. Um, so, you know, I was a marathon runner in triathlete at the time and I'd go on long runs and the hills of Southern Illinois and one of those runs I decided, you know, I need to pay something back to the country. Uh, I'm going to, in the way I'm going to do it is join the military

and I want to be in the units to do the toughest missions. I want to, you know, make sure that

desert one never happens again that we don't have a tragedy like that on the world stage and an

important mission. And, you know, I was super naive at the time. I went to a recruiter and I said, you know, I want to join the military and I'd like to be part of Delta Force. And the first was going to that right off the bat. Yeah. This thing where they were at desert one and, you know, I didn't know there was secret or anything and, uh, and this is the first record. How did you say you heard about Delta Force from Tehran? Yeah. Yeah. That was in the media. Yep. Wow. And, um,

“he said, look, let me tell you something. The only thing going into special forces is it's going to”

do for you is when you get out is either make you a criminal or a hitman. And I got up from my chair walked out and, uh, found another recruiter in the next town over and this guy was great. I still remember his name Terry's story and he was like, what do you want to do? Well, what do you want to do? And I told him it goes, okay, you can't do that. But here you can get in become a ranger and then become that. I said, okay, how I do that. And he goes, well, you can join

for OCS. The only catch is if you don't make it through OCS, you know, you're going to be

PFC and they're going to put you wherever they want to put you. So I signed up an OCS contract and, you know, again, I freeze that moment in time because it's happened literally millions of times since 1776. It's, you know, our grandfather did it after Pearl Harbor and, you know, all these great soldiers who joined after 911, same thing, Pat Tillman joined, you know, the day after 911, he decided to join the military to leave the Arizona Cardinals and join the military. So

“this process has been happening and, you know, it's important for us as veterans to”

say it out loud and be consciously aware of it because, you know, these patriots are our country's

greatest natural resource and we have to treat them that way and we have to treat their lives that way. This is a fixed amount of individuals like this. They're not a neverending flow. So these are a special part of this country and these young men join with a lot of naivete and they, but they're joining their, they're agreeing to sacrifice their lives and their livelihoods to serve and protect our great nation and the freedoms that our nation involves. And it's so doing, they enter a contract

with the government and that contract is sacrosanct. All those patriots asked for is that the government uses common sense on when and where they're going to employ them and provide them with common sense leaders who will make good decisions and solve complex problems so they can succeed when

“they're employed. And, you know, I say it's important because when you find out like how the Ukraine”

war started a bunch of Ivy League State Department CIA people concocted that thing made bad decision, senseless decision after senseless decision and, you know, can you elaborate, I mean, we have this entire portion towards the end of the interview. Yeah, yeah, crack it out right. So the Ukraine war was started by, you say this is the biggest propaganda war of all time. Yes, it should be called

the propaganda war. The fighting's real, everything we've been told about it is basically a lie

and every piece of history that shows it's a lie has been either tucked, kicked under the rug or lied about too. So how the war started, the war started when the Obama administration, I don't

“say US because the Ukraine war could not have started with any other administration because you”

couldn't have started without the press as part of the group that was going to provide cover for starting it and they were all in on the start of the Ukraine war, but the US Obama administration Victoria Newlin, Jake Sullivan, John O'Brennan and Joe Biden. Joe Biden had one job, you can look in his archives as vice president. It was one job was Ukraine and Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan, his deputy were the architects of the start of the war and the way it started was the the state

department at CIA, non-elected officials along with their counterparts in the EU, Ukrainian politicians and George Soros's open society foundation, along with the neo-Nazi ultra-nationalists, created the fake my done protests, you can still go online, I checked before I came, videos are still there 2014, 15, look at my done protests, you'll see brand new GP mediums in the background, you'll see them serving soup, you'll notice that everyone has the same orange hardhats

on distributed to them, the weapons you'll see weapons, the same common weapons being held by the ultra-nationalist neo-Nazi's and then there are interviews, there's BBC, German, TV interviews with Ukrainian protesters and one of them, all the guy does is ask why are you protesting, every single individual that they question says the same thing, I'm here because they told me to be here

USAID funds to bribe all these people and to make it happen in February of 2014, the culmination of the

“my done protest was the violent overthrow of the Victoriano Covic government, the duly elected”

government of Ukraine, he was elected not just by eastern Ukrainians but by western Ukrainians and his election was validated by the UN but for some reason they decided we got over throw him and the plan and this is where you this senseless decision making comes from and this is all in

cables, it's in state departments, CIA cables and in for the audience cables are basically

secure emails, yes good description, it's all in those they believed that by overthrowing Janikovic installing their Ukrainian puppet politicians and then starting a ethnic war in eastern Ukraine which is populated by almost 100% ethnic Russians that by doing that this would cause so much unrest in Russia that the Russian people would rise up and overthrow Putin that was the plan and you know when you read that when you read the cables when you see that it's like

these you know Ivy League never been in a war never been in anything real in their life

it's like they were like kids playing with matches completely unaware of the the potential unintended consequences of throwing those matches into a pile of leaves or into you know something that's soaked in gas and what happened afterwards is a classic law of unintended consequences they had no plan for after they overthrew the government and in the power vacuum because they had no plan the neo-Nazis took over the Ukrainian government they had no they had no contingency plan

“no contingencies they and that's why Crimea caught them so by surprise so you also online you can”

go on any your favorite search engines and just look up Victorian Newland Gregory Payette he was

the ambassador she was the head of state department for for the overthrow their phone call was intercepted by the Russians and then published on YouTube initially it's on all search engines now their phone call is them talking about who which Ukrainian politicians that was they controlled would be the next prime minister and this is before the violent overthrow it's like two weeks before so their on record talking about who to install in the new government so there's no

there's like no this is there's it's not a theory everything there's a massive trail of evidence that shows exactly what happened to include open source intelligence the video tapes

“that show what's about to happen so when the the neo-Nazis controlled the five key”

ministries of Ukrainian government to include the Ministry of Defense John O'Brennan was the head of CIA then he flew in the day after they overthrew the Yanukovitch government met with the head of the Ukrainian intelligence and the head of MI6 and the very next day they began the ethnic war on eastern Ukraine which was really one of the great one of the most horrific humanitarian violations in modern history they just began shelling the civilian areas with artillery and mortars

and again it's all in video you can see grandmothers crying in the streets with dead you know spouses and dead children and saying why why is our own country doing this to us why is our own government doing to this to us the eastern Ukrainian O'Brennan O'Brennan that have since voted for independence and autonomy then independence and reunification with Russia so Crimea done ask in the hands all three of them would have stayed in Ukraine but they had no choice ethnic

cleansing began in between 2014 to 2021 14,000 ethnic Russians civilians were killed in eastern Ukraine

the east the ethnic Russians petitioned to the UN to come in and investigate begged for the

UN to investigate they wouldn't do it we should have as the US if if you know Trump always says if

I've been present this wouldn't happen but any objective president this was grounds for for sending forces in this was like this was worse than Bosnia worse than Rwanda any of those places we should have sent people into stop it but no one would do that and the killing just continued as well as the cover up you know most western Ukrainians still to this day believe what the propaganda said happened that my done protest was an organic protest that Yanikovic

fled because of his corruption he knew he was going to get busted he fled the country and then they say that Putin invaded Ukraine and he did not so I told you 14,000 dead

Crimea was the first in May of 2014 they they knew what was happening they instantly

“voted for independence and in the vote I think 89% of people voted and of the population voted”

and something like 85% voted to succeed from Ukraine yeah and Russia the part of Crimea that's so important is this a vaster poll naval base it's Russia's only warm water naval base they had a contract with Ukraine to keep that until 2045 they just left the base and helped the Crimea secure Crimea but Daneskin who has begged for Russian help Putin demird he was

incredibly conscientious about not pissing off NATO if you can believe that because NATO is

actively working to undermine him and he's not helping these ethnic Russians because he doesn't want it to look like you know he's invading or that he's provoking NATO so they set their own elections up in the summer of 2014 and the same results you know 80 plus percent voted and 80

“percent voted for independence so why is that important because today when you hear people say”

we why would we give the done boss base and back to Russia they invaded well you're not giving done boss back to Russia done boss can's done stands for coal bath stands for basin so done boss is the coal basin and within it is luhansk and dinask old blasts or provinces and both of those voted for independence they had no other choice after all the killing in 2015 the president the newly installed president of Ukraine outlawed the Russian language outlawed

the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which is like the sister to the Russian Orthodox Church the Orthodox Church was founded in Kiev Russia considers Kiev a wholly a wholly cities it's like

“Jerusalem to them that's why they've been so circumspect on the bombing of Kiev because it's a”

holy city but the Ukrainians forfitted any right to those to eastern Ukraine when they started killing them when they took away the all their basic human rights life liberty pursued a happiness you can't practice religion you can't speak your language you know he he stopped the pensions of all Italy is supposed to speak yeah exactly sign language I mean if you read the UN charter on human rights all those things are like the staples and if you violate those you

know the UN charter more or less says the country has right to you know for self governance to break away from whoever is doing that to it so it's again clear cut case it's not theory and then on the invasion you know I like I like and what Russia did to you know think of it this way you sure you can technically call it innovation just like if you're walking on the street and you come up to a vestibule and see your buddy getting mugged inside the vestibule but on the door to the vestibule

toss him out and save your buddy did you just trespass well I guess technically you did but you know

“no judge jury or common sense human being is going to say you shouldn't a trespass it's the”

same thing Russia did 14,000 ethnic Russians slaughtered begging him for help begging for humanitarian assistance and finally he just broke into that vestibule and to save his you know his people ethnic Russians and so calling him the invader calling him the instigator or Russia just doesn't hold any water it doesn't make sense as long as you cut through the propaganda and that's you know that's kind of why I got involved I I've been to Kiev I've been to Ukraine I love you

Ukrainian people I've never been to Russia would love to go there and I have buddies I've buddy in

state department to buddies in the agency and a buddy who is over there is a long-term contractor and

“they one night said hey let's call Pete and tell him this stuff and find out what he thinks we should”

do and so they didn't call me they just called it set up a meeting we met at LAX outside LAX and they told me everything and I was like holy shit now every one of these guys is still active and you know one reason they came to me was you know can you get the word out and I was like yeah I've got a duty to get the word out you know right now we're at about 1.25 million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed

so back to that many yeah 1.25 million yep the Ukrainian mods database was hacked about four months ago

and the number they had then was 1.2 I'm given them a benefit of doubt they've been losing about a thousand men a day every day at 20.25 so it's it's incredible numbers you can you know I'm on about five or six different telegram channels that I subscribe to and there's some great

“independent reporters I think you might have had one of them on Patrick Lancaster you have him on”

okay maybe he's on Tucker or something I probably shouldn't have brought that up but all good yeah so yeah he's he's an independent reporter he's been over there from the beginning and

and the first thing that strikes you when you watch one of his reports is where the fuck is the press

why is there no mainstream global media press coverage of the Ukraine war why have we not seen a single member you know they they forced the US military to embed them in Iraq Afghanistan you know and demanded it it because not not because they want to cover it because that's the quickest formula for a getting a Pulitzer Prize and getting you know looked on favorably as a journalist but from the beginning the question has to be why is there no coverage

of the Ukraine war and I'll tell you why there's none because if they cover it they'll expose the propaganda stories that are happening and the first way is the entire war has been fought in eastern Ukraine so every city that you get that gets taken by the Russians in eastern Ukraine they're the liberators and the people come out celebrating when the Russians come in and telling them about the hell they've been living through with Ukrainian army occupy in their town these are

ethnic Russians the whole battlefield all these flatten towns all the infrastructure that's eastern Ukraine that's where these people live that's Donask Luhansk and of course Crimea has Odessa right next to it so it's been hit too but you know one was his mating when was what the mating between but that I went to was right before 2022 right before the war started so this was a wild ago yeah and then we've stayed they feed me stuff all along I get new

stuff they'll call me out and go this is total bullshit there's been fake massacres that were blamed on Russia they're so fake they're joking this is again why you see there's no western press coverage you know people who were supposedly shot by Russians laying in the mud with their hands tied behind their back but their hands are tied with pristine white ties

went and visited Damascus site he saw the Ukrainian intelligence people pulling cadavers off out of

“frozen trucks laying them on the ground tying their hands together and he's testified on that numerous”

times same thing his life's been threatened he's been censored in France but he's another there's two of them actually two French reporters independent of each other reported the same thing and then the war itself a massive lies about the progress of the war about the casualties you know even President Trump was dupped because his initial advisors to Ukraine were were you know the the one guy he had was an ex-general his daughter ran a

NGO in Ukraine and so when he was in Ukraine he was paying his daughter's NGO to take him around and provide security for him how can a guy whose family is making money from the war be taken seriously and trying to stop the war and he was feeding President Trump you know propaganda information so initially you know President Trump was saying hey Russia's lost all these men you know really bad

million men will they haven't they've lost probably about a tenth of what Ukraine is lost yep and

“Russia remember I talked about their strategic acumen from the beginning they saw this this is a”

war of attrition and all these ex-general who are now paid influencers of course they can't understand that and so one of the things you heard year after you know 22 23 24 you know look at Russia they're they're so weak they've only moved you know 50 kilometers in the last three years well they finished that sentence and then they say and the reason we got to keep fighting is because they're getting ready to take over all the Europe so I mean they contradict themselves

with their propaganda they're not you're saying they're not strong enough and formidable enough to even take terrain in in Ukraine yet they're going to take all of Europe which they're not there's not a single statement from Putin or anyone else intercepted or not that says they have any designs on Europe and of course thank goodness for Tulsi Gabbard she just released she did press conference just about a month ago and released said hey we've already provided this to Congress

there is zero evidence nor zero indications that Russia has any intention to invade Europe

or that it would never make sense for Europe for Ukraine to invade Europe so that's been put to

rest but the propaganda continues the influencers continue to repeat it on you know the global mainstream media and you know people without the truth continue to buy into it man which means everybody's repeating it yeah so all these guys are dying you know and they're just being and people are going keep the work going you can't let it stop and they're taking their time on these piece negotiations again historians will look at this and it will really shine a positive

light on on Trump because he's the only guy who is said from the beginning we have to stop the war we have to stop the killing and he used to say that every time he talked he just he talks about it so much now he doesn't anymore but he used to start and that is the start point and back to that you know as veterans we understand that we understand that sacrosanct contract that a veteran that a patriot makes with this government and so even though these are you know rushing in

“Ukrainian military I think is you know veterans we we share you know a responsibility for each other”

worldwide and this is just senseless killing and the really sad thing is that you crane without knowing it is being absolutely decimated because these people are telling them to keep fight you can win we're going to be behind you and they're not and they can't win and you know they're in a position now where not just manpower but military industrial complex and then their command and control and leadership is so so contaminated and so dysfunctional they just have no chance against Russians

I wasn't expecting to hear all that wow wow yeah and again you most of it is still open source

peatplaybird.substack.com it's the chronology of the Ukraine War I expose it all I provide the

facts I I have hyperlinks to videos hyperlinks to pictures and you know it's horrific yeah Mike Ben's coined this and he was right he said the overthrow of the anticovich government started the the censorship industrial complex around the world so when they figured out they could lie about something that big and they could collude to create a propaganda version of reality they were emboldened and you know part of that is their control over tech because you know Facebook had a big

part in that my done protests everyone got their directions via Facebook so you know during that period

both during the Obama and the Biden administration those those tech companies were controlled by the government you know the FBI was control and Twitter and a content on Twitter at the time so you know they they were emboldened by it and again Mike Ben's you know did a great report on this

“that's what made them go hey and 2017 we can do the same thing in the US instead of my”

done protests they did the BLM protests create chaos burn infrastructure so dissent and let that happen so that you it leads to the the eventual overthrow of the government and that's what they were trying to do with those riots and everything else it's called a color revolution damn it's bad yeah no kidding let's take a quick break okay I didn't really think about how much my mattress was affecting me until I switched it you just get used to whatever you've got and don't

realize how often it is until you fix it and that's what happened when I got a helix on the first

couple of nights I could already tell the difference I wasn't tossing around wasn't waking up throughout the night I was just sleeping better and actually getting some real rest one thing I like is they don't do one size fits all mattress you take a quick sleep quiz and they match it to what actually fits how you sleep and it shows it's been a big upgrade from what I was using before they've got free shipping a hundred and twenty night sleep trial and a lifetime warranty so there's really

no risk at all in trying go to helixleep.com/srs for 20% off site wide that's helixleep.com/srs for 20% off site wide make sure you enter our show name after check out so they know who sent you helixleep.com/srs all right I'm just gonna say it most guys don't realize how much of a problem body odor actually is until it's obvious and a lot of products out there just try to cover it up instead of actually

“dealing with it and that's why I started using mando I've used it for a few different spots”

and what stood out to me is it actually works it's not just masking it it keeps things under control and once you start using it you notice the difference immediately it's a whole body deodorant so you're not limited to just under your arms you can use it anywhere you need it and if it's right into your routine nothing complicated at all some men mask their bill with sense mando men get the job done right don't mask it mando it head to shop mando dot com because for a limited time new

customers get 20% off site wide with our exclusive code and that code is srs seriously if you haven't tried it yet you really should go to shop mando dot com and use the code srs for 20% off shu p m a n d o dot com please support our show and tell them we sent you mando's got you covered as of since we're on the topic of Ukraine as of today polymarket says there's a 12% chance Russia Ukraine the Russia Ukraine ceasefire by December 31st 2026 where do you think they're coming

“up with that you think there's any legitimacy I think well what would tell me that it's far more”

likely than not is just the momentum behind what Trump's doing and and then the logic of why it makes sense to ceasefire and I don't think there'll be a ceasefire you know unless it's part of

they'll agree to the terms that they put forward you know the the five old blasts the size of the Ukrainian army the you know the how are they even getting anybody to fight one point five million I could pull out my my I show these every Tuesday on the podcast I do on CDM media and it's also on my sub stack we show every week the force conscription they're beating their their tackling people men in the streets beating them forcing them into vehicles

in the fights are unbelievable and what that's their recruitment that's the issue of

“their force conscription for their country and so I've said this numerous times never I believe”

never in the history of warfare has a country want to war where they had to force their soldiers

to join fucking believable yeah the no one wants to join the you know Ukraine took a Zelensky and Ukraine took a lot of criticism from Biden Jake Sullivan and Austin that they did not immediately draft 18 to 23 year olds they drafted they started I think at 25 they went down to 23 they still haven't drafted but they've said done the selective servicing but when Zelensky established Marshall law he closed the borders so 18 to 23 year olds were not allowed to leave the

“country he just changed that about six to eight weeks ago the day after he did it every border”

crossing was swamped all the 18 to 23 year olds pretty much I have either fled yeah and what does that tell you it tells you that the messaging you know one two three what are we fighting for doesn't make sense to the actual people who are supposed to do the fighting so when you have these actual citizens of Ukraine fleeing fighting for their lives bystanders join in and help the recruits against these force conscriptors you'll see the massive fights and women too come over they

start beating on these guys let them alone let them alone this happens every day all across Ukraine because the logical why doesn't make sense they they see people disappear they realize

“the truth is you know whispered among the people of Ukraine what's really going on”

who's really trying to win this war who's war it really is and it's not Ukraine it's the EU it's the globalists and they're the ones telling Ukraine keep fighting to the last Ukrainian but the Ukrainian people the ones that are you know the the go-to-war age are having nothing of it so then

they'd basically don't have a country no they don't it's not a real country and that's not a I'm

nothing against Ukraine I'd love Ukraine I'd love the Ukrainian people but if you just take what Zelensky did so first off on Zelensky you know in 2018 he 2017 he became the lead in a comedy show servant of the people which the producers of which which like you know famous producers in Hollywood were two of the biggest oligarchs in Ukraine multi-millionaire billionaire oligarchs the the head the one the billionaire decided hey and probably in cohoots with the Biden

State Department in CIA because they needed a candidate they needed someone for the 19 election and it had to be a stooge so they decided let's make Zelensky a candidate so up to that point

Zelensky had never even tweeted up any position on any political statement any political event

he had never spoken about any political proclivities he had never written anything he had never spoke when he announced his presidency the his run for the president and his new party that which was called the same thing as the sitcom the servant of the people party he refused to debate the other candidates he did no campaigning does this sound familiar he put out no you know no campaign promises

the election happening one seventy three percent mysteriously of the vote the first thing he did was outlaw all political parties in Ukraine except his own party the servant of the people and by outlawing and making them against the law this is if you read the definition of a totalitarian

“regime that's what they do there's no they outlaw competition political competition so what that”

did was allow him to take over a super majority of the rada because all these other people in the rada that's their congress we're not allowed to run so they just stacked it with the new servant of the people and now the rada is has a super majority for his party he also outlawed press all all independent press newspapers television stations were shut down only stations that run in Ukraine still to this day are either Ukrainian government or NGO George Soros sponsored

stations so you you outlaw political competition you you end any ability freedom of information and then he ended freedom of speech to there's no you can't criticize the government you can't no write to protest those are all the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime that that corruption scandal

that just broke a hundred it was a small one a hundred million off the energy sector where his

sidekick was indicted he fled the country he's now back working for him he just not in the same role he was before so corrupt of the bone uh this is not a government of the people it's a government installed zalinski's out of the country more than he's in country and again that's a pattern too that should make everyone a question what leader in contentious times leaves the country in once none he's gone in the last two years he's been out of Ukraine more than he's been in

usually he's in Europe galvanning around Europe and under the guise of collecting funds

“but you have to ask how can he do that well he can do it because there's no competition”

he's the stooge and he's earned his right to maintain that from his EU handlers from his globalist handlers and from his he's got American handlers too the neocons the left the people who put him in power from the Obama and Biden administrations still want him to stay in power they

still keep the propaganda going but the reality is men are dying by the thousands every day for

no reason fake war they don't even know what they're fighting for they're definitely not fighting for Ukraine right now and their leadership is is also just a canard something other than what it seems to be well I can say whether there's only a 12% chance of the ceasefire by March the first he's not having any of it he's Trump just said it a few days ago that zalinski's the main barrier he said Putin's already said hey I want to end the war and finally Trump's got good information

he's saying it now he's talking about the Ukraine over a million casualties he's talking about they

can't win they have no military industrial complex so if you can't make bullets and you know and you know beings along with you know ammunition weapons how can you fight and I'm going more against the superpower and let me answer that for you because we send them all of our shit yeah

“very true billions of dollars I think 300 billion we sent them with no strings attached do you”

have any insight on when they would run out of manpower they're pretty there I think they're there right now so Russia brought in a 443,000 recruits last year it's just a giving idea of the standard it's no one knows what Ukraine brought in but it's believed to be somewhere in the double digit thousands so 52, 99,000 so that right there just tells you you know they can't keep up and on this battlefield you know Ukraine doesn't rotate their forces if you joined in 2022 and you're still alive

off the days till they get to go home you know we talk about you fight for the guy next to you

“yeah you do but you know your foundation or what you're really fighting for is to go home to your family”

and you know where you live and and they don't even have that so they're distributed the command and control the leadership of Ukraine is is dysfunctional as can be and and we again the Obama and Biden administrations who were the architects along with the rest of NATO the Brits have been handing in on everything the French and Germans to a slightly lesser extent

train this army and it was the same mistake we've made everywhere you know from Vietnam forward

they decided we're gonna build an army and it's gonna be a NATO compatible army so everything they built was to make it by the standards of NATO and you can't you know the lesson of Vietnam

“was don't try to build an American army in another country as second world country who's got”

its own tradition of military customs, courtesy, protocols and just ways of fighting and it's the same thing Ukraine they're at most of the generals were Soviet trained and in fact the commander chief of Ukraine right now speaks Russian was trained in Russia, Syrsky but you know they don't care, Zelensky's in on the decision making for combat you know they're letting their guys die in these cities I didn't episode on this on when Puckrol fell we had a captain a Ukrainian captain talked to my

guys on the ground and tell us how the thing unfolded and he said you know he gave this example he said you know when you're you're laying in a position for a long time you know that position like the back of your hand and you know everything around you you've calculated time distance from every you know terrain feature, every tree, every rock outcropping and with Puckrol's we knew where the Russians were and my front line guys knew if they get to that cops of trees

over there this massive you know forest belt that protects the farmlands then we're dead in the water week we cannot we've got the fallback and fallback is not retreating it's just fallback that's

called a supplementary position which you always have in the defense and so once the Russians made it

to that point to that cops of trees they called in and said hey we've got this all set up we've got alternate positions time to fallback Roger standby we've got to get permission from higher that went all the way back to heave and Zelensky and Syrosky and the answer was no not one inch stay in fight and about three weeks later they were surrounded most of them killed many of them captured and the same thing happened in UEFA it's a city down south Ukraine same thing the guys knew

if they make it to that position we're surrounded we're in a cauldron and then you're dead because you know the cauldrons in this war because of the terrain and the the technology the drone technology whenever you see a position that means that a 10 by 10 kills own sits in front of that drone kills own so if you move up to here now that 10k kills own goes 10k from that point so

“that's why when that captain that Ukrainian captain said when they make it to there we got to get out of here”

you listen to the guys on the ground you know you listen to the guys who are assessing the reality of the situation on the ground and they they did not and they continue that pattern and it's because they're trying to keep this propaganda thing going that hey we can win we just need more time more money and to me it seems like the EU decided we got to get at least through 2026 and I believe the reason for that is that then they could get all the orders with the European military industrial

complex which is what's happened now when Trump said I'm not giving you stuff anymore you can buy it from us they saw that as an opportunity to reinvigorate the European military industrial

and then in those first few months but now they're all tanking because you know most most honest

“objective people see that you know the end is a faded company it's it's going to happen I mean”

if these if these guys are forced to fight for their country some of them I mean why would what do you think they're not or maybe they are where they're not surrendering a lot of them yeah the lot of them are so you I've got tons of video tapes a guys coming out of holes and you know you Ukrainians are hard people too they're all slabs so the Ukrainians are not pushovers if you know armed properly led properly and motivated properly but think about that they're not armed properly

they don't back to the military industrial complex they've got huge supply problems which is totally exacerbated by corruption they're skimming money off the top a couple of cities have fallen because the fifty to hundred million dollar trenches to dig these you know

NASA's trench systems never happened the money just was laundered and went into the pockets of

the oligarchs so the corruption has also you know greatly handcuffed the Ukrainian military but you know there's their command and control you tell guys on the ground no don't leave stay and die and you do that once you're in big trouble you do it twice they're never gonna forgive you and I believe that the majority of Ukrainian military of lost faith in their higher headquarters and that they don't accept anything that's coming out of them as being credible and then you know the final

thing is just motivation on not knowing when you're gonna go home seeing all these dead bodies they leave their order to leave dead bodies where they lay there's dead bodies all over the battlefield and Russia police is them up since those Istanbul talks there's one of

“things they agreed to is body exchanges to repatriate the dead bodies that's happened I think”

something like 15 times and the ratio we just had one and Russia turned over 1600 bodies you crane turned over 29 so whoa it was a ratio of 39 to one I don't know what it is now on bodies being exchanged but you know part of it is just the number of KIAs but the other part is they're not even allowing these guys to you know pick up their dead colleagues and bring them back to repatriate them for their family there's monetary incentives behind that if the bodies are not recovered you

crane doesn't have to pay the family and they don't even if the guys off the ledger yeah holy yeah it's bad it's bad and this is all these globalists you know they're globalists doing like again little kids playing with matches you know in a gas station no clue the laws of physics no clues of the laws of unattending consequences and what they've

“done is you know one of the most horrific humanitarian crimes I think against humanity that we've”

ever seen a million over a million guys dead just on one side we lost 58,000 and be it now

15 years I think man wow well that paints a very different picture than then everybody's told yeah thanks for asking it's it's important to people and again do the research all this stuff is available online there's plenty of people that were there early who have come out and they talk about it the war it should be called the propaganda war not the Ukrainian war the fighting's real everything we've been told about it is a lie wow well let's get back to you we were if you don't keep going to

Rangers yeah I think I'd do it oh yes it got a Ranger crop trap yep so I went to create my first tour DMZ and Korea it's great tour and I did that like I said because you could apply for the regiment it's a one year tour I applied I got fortunate to get in even more fortunate to go to second range of Italian Fort Louis Washington loved it there it was it would turn out to be out there four years and help is a captain junior captain when I my last year but it was a foundational experience

I was taught then what a leadership climate is and my battalion commander and my company commander said

this to me it was you know think of a leadership climate the same way you think of a real climate you can feel the effects of a leadership climate you can see the effects of a leadership climate and when people find a healthy leadership climate they put down stakes they work together as teams think of neighborhoods to make their their place of duty their place they're living better and the positive climate makes everyone who lives under it grow progress and succeed

now when you think of an unhealthy leadership climate it stymies growth people are miserable

“and the only thing they think about is how do I get the F out of here and get to a place”

where the sunshine occasionally and I can grow I can progress and I can succeed which is what

everyone joins the military for so you know the other thing they taught me which was foundational was that you know that a leadership climate is not does not emerge from just the most senior leader in whatever the organization instead of leadership climate emerges from the sum total of choices made by all the leaders in the climate system so you know leadership the leadership is a collective thing in an organization it's not just the guy at the top right because he can be cool and you

can have tyrants right underneath them and if they're allowed to operate then you know you're living in an unhealthy leadership climate even though the guy at the top is okay but what it also

“emphasizes is the responsibility of leaders and my my battalion commander against said this to me said”

you know Pete you can be the smartest funniest, most handsome, most tactically astute commander a unit's ever had but if you turn a blind eye to a tyrant who's making their lives miserable they'll treat you with the same derision they treat that tyrant that's your job your job is to remove these friction barriers that prevent your guys from growing succeeding in what they do and when you don't do that it's you know you're not doing your duties leader so you know from that

day forward I pass that on but I also lived it you know leadership climate takes you know constant pruning constant maintenance it doesn't mean you're looking for a guys doing things but you're

always keeping eye open for it because it's hard how would you how would you take the temperature of

the climate throughout your entire career not just at Ranger Batai just talking to guys and you know and having and listen to other people who talk to the guys you know your star major should be a huge part of that but you take that temperature and you know remember a climate just like oh just like how would you tell if you're living in a good climate you know the sunshine and everything's growing everyone's happy everyone takes pride in their you know neighborhood and

“and gets along with their neighbors makes an effort to get along with their neighbors and I think those”

are things that are hallmarks of a positive leadership climate I mean one in particular is just freedom of speech the ability to speak up out or with anyone in the battalion and so one of the things about you know common sense leaders is they talk the same way to a private as they do to a general and that's the way we all should be and when you become consciously aware of it you know you you might even catch yourself at times you know why am I subordinate myself to this

general it's not all I talked to a private and then vice versa why am I treating this guy hey and no I don't have time for you right now you wouldn't have done that if the general stuck is had in the door so freedom of speech to speak up out and with is hugely important in any organization corporate or military your people got to feel like they can come up to you and go hey sir I don't mean I don't know who else to talk to so I'm just at Whits' End but you know

we have a real problem in B company and you know I know you're busy but if you could send someone down to take a look that I would totally appreciate it you'll get that when you make yourself approachable when you when people know that they can talk to you without repercussions

don't you know by give so let's move on let's move on on your career yeah so you know from the Rangers I went a commander company a light infantry company seventh ID we participated in

the invasion of Panama amazing experience I had an amazing company 111 guys we deployed to Panama

“I had 28 fluent Spanish speakers were you with Bob Boris? No no no Bob yeah I know okay I think”

he was in the unit then I was in the seventh ID I was about to be in the unit so I don't think he was in the unit okay he got actually I think he jumped in a van with some unit guys in the same in the seventh ID I can't remember what he was in I gotta ask him yeah I know he's a great guy he'd see some action down there and then he got picked up and it wound up in a van and I believe in the van was a bunch of unit guy like a D boys yeah I saw him too

so but you know what it taught me was we had better intelligence than the agency or you know

our our division intel because same thing always listen to the guy in the ground doesn't

just apply to your the guy who's fighting on the ground it applies to civilians and to some extent you know people who are against you too listen to what they're saying but you can't listen if you don't understand the language and you know it sounds incredibly elementary but you know for all of us who are in Afghanistan Iraq you realize you know one of the biggest barriers to you know we're not winning the hearts of minds not losing the hearts of minds and understanding

where the enemy was was the language barrier you know there of course we had interpreters but

you know that was usually one per whatever type unit you were in so the inability to communicate should

be you know a red flag in any type of expeditionary warfare we're considering and it's just simple if you can't communicate you can't understand what that person's needs are you can't even understand

“how to you know get the get what you need to get out of that person intelligence operational intelligence”

or just you know like we were talking about with talking to your soldiers finding out taking the temperature of you know the society at the time so from there you know I was very fortunate because I came right into the summit ID took command also very fortunate I had a great battalion commander who understood I told him I want to go to unit tryouts after this and he said yeah by all means so I finished command two months later I went to selection again fortunate

made it through selection and you know that experience I saw your episode with Larry and I can't come close to describing selection as well as he did so I won't but there were some great moments in it again that you know they taught me a lot about human nature and you know it started with the initial psych interview and a lot of people don't remember this you probably do but you know it used to be the biggest barrier to getting into the CIA or the special mission units was the

lie detector test the potential lie detector test and of course the biggest barrier of the lie detector test was one question did you ever do drugs in high school or a college and so you know there were tons of people who you know came back saying now they didn't take me you know I because I you know I told them I tried whatever in high school I needed to include marijuana and so there was a lot of angst about that and I went as I told you I went to Southern Illinois

“University Carbonale I think way way before I was there in the 70s playboy magazine called it”

the number one party school in the country it was kind of a party school but you know it not egregiously it just in a very fun now I know it wasn't your wilderness down there for example so but I was a marathon runner triathlete I had rehearsed all this in my mind what am I going to do when he starts asking the lie detector test questions and you know just to be honest I it was impossible not to have tried marijuana where I went grew up in high school in college

and again the only thing that kept me that allowed me to you know stiff arm it was I was a hard

time so you know I I did not I stopped everything when I started competing in college so I walk

“into the psychic interview and Larry's the head psych guy and he's sitting there and he's got a”

vanilla folder up and he just motioned me to sit down I sit down I'm like what the fuck's he doing and his first words out of his mouth are Southern Illinois University huh that's quite the party school isn't it it's so when it told me you know whatever you do don't give more information than the question so don't answer them and then go into some long litany about how you

tried it and it was not that great or you never tried it and you're you know all jittery can tell

you're lying so just answer the question and I said yeah it got some rating and play boy but it was really you know a great college and I loved it because it was a great place to run and trained for triathlons I could swim in lakes you know run to the lake run back and do my training there and he asked me one more question I can't remember what it was it was something about

“did you ever do ever see cocaine or something and I just answered him honestly no I I never saw”

cocaine without context and then he said okay and he put the vanilla folder down and

then at the end of the interview his phone rang his his phone beeper and it was like yeah I'll be

right there sir and he goes hey I get to leave you know we got one more person you got to fill out some stuff and so you okay yeah I'll wait he goes out I picked that vanilla folder up it's empty this is Larry Vickers no it's not like he's a really interesting choice to give us like he probably could have pulled that off too but you know I it was part of learning about human nature and about you know effects based activity that you can if you know a desired outcome

then you can plan backwards and use little props to get that effect and I probably did

“in my 13 years there you know there's two selections a year I probably did 10 boards set on 10 boards”

and probably five or six times me and my star major when there was a guy with it's like hey

he's got some serious gotten some police trouble we don't know it might be nothing you know and so we'd pull off the vanilla folder that thing about the vanilla folder is it's not to try to catch the guy it's just to see how they react because if the guy goes yeah you know I smoked some weed and you know I smoked it for a while but I stopped you know and I haven't smoked in two years whatever that's fine you know same thing I got drunk one night I got in a fight

you know there are a lot of those in guys who but yeah guys would think I would get thrown out it'd be hard to find one that didn't know that yeah yeah but you so you're not trying to trick them to say something you just want to see how they react and I carried that forward into the corporate world and I probably what is the reaction you're wanting you want to see a cool com collective you want usually a smile like okay you know and then instead of getting all up tight

and talking fast and stutter in they just tell the truth you know they're they're resigned to tell the truth they're resigned to hey I'm gonna throw myself at mercy of the court and they handle it it's it's a little bit of pressure you know it doesn't seem like much but ownership yeah yeah and if you think about that you know it also it also comes with when you're on an interview board military or corporate you know respect for the person they're there they've

done everything to get there this is their dream you know this is this is their life so you know callous decisions going on unlike the guy cuz you know smoked weed once or he got drunk that's not what you're looking for but guys who then turn that into you know stuttering long-winded making up stuff you know and you you can already see that you know he was arrested he got in it he did battery all this other stuff and they're not talking about that those guys you know

you want to scrutinize a little bit closer it's the same thing in the corporate world like I said I hired about 500 people or I did about 500 interviews I don't know how many we hired you know

for whatever context you're hiring them and I was hiring people for sales and marketing you know

“senior sales and marketing people so you want to see how they react under pressure if you're a sales”

person you got to be able to take pressure you know and the bio farm industry you're in front of doctors

you're in front of payers you know guys who make a million bucks a year who are going to

price your drug and whatnot you've got to be able to stay cool you know under stress and so part of that is what we talked about before the unstructured problem solving your ability to just work through something and I had read this thing in Harvard Business Review right before I got out and it was about what companies like Google were moving to which was just intellectual questions that you asked someone and you're not necessarily looking for the right answer you're looking

at how they come up with the answer how they approach problem solving and how they communicate that approach so you know one one question was how much water does the average family of four use over a 48 hour period in their house and you know you'd be surprised some people immediately

well well I don't know I've never worked for the water company and you know someone else

dissects it well yeah smiles could have four people let's see this washer yeah drink a gallon of

“day right and go through exactly that's what you want to hear their unstructured problem solving”

they're saying it out loud they're using logic you know deductive logic to come to an answer another question was why are all sewer caps round and you know there's no right answer to that it turns out but there's a lot of reasons they're round they can't fall into the sewer you know around it's square will break the street the the structure of a square to put that into a asphalt street will cause you know the physics of the street to fail much quicker than a circle

which is you know I guess the strongest self supporting structure or self sustaining structure so there's no real answer but you want to see how they handle it if they can think on their feet they can use logic in common sense and you know you don't if you ask point of questions tell me about a time you know the famous questions tell me about a time you you know had a difficult customer most of that stuff they've got already prepared there's a pat answer

you're not going to learn how that person thinks with those type of questions but ask them something that makes them think that makes them problem solve see how they react see how they communicate and that that tells you a lot about that person makes a lot of sense what I mean how was it do officers go through with the enlisted at OTC yeah they do any any anything extra curricular what do you mean that you'd go for example

in in I mean through the seal pipeline the officers have they have an extra an extra section yeah there's there is an extra is there yeah how many officers are going through it what's it depends sometimes you know there's none sometimes there's there's a good number

I'm not sure on the current but you know there were always it always seemed like there were four

five at least per class I heard you had an incident with a bear yeah yep one to bear was a pig I thought this is going to be good I was you know navigating on one of the famous

“legs of the long walk and I was I believe no one knows the actual so very few people know the standard”

I don't I believe I was way ahead of schedule kicking ass and I also believe I was close to the end so I had to get up this mountain I took this route that thought would be the best route and I ended up in a what every class like 10 guys end up in it it's a man's a knee of forest all so it's like swimming through a sea of a thousand pitchborks you're caught in this thing and there's really once you're in it you know you make the dumb decision initially to keep going

this thing's got to end then you're in the middle and there's really no way out except picking your

rock up again and so you know it could take you 100 throws to get out so I tried to get up a little

“bit higher to see if I could spot you know which direction I should go to to the would take me”

quickest to the edge of the man's knee of forest and so I got up a couple of branches high you know right as I'm reaching for this next one I'm going I probably should have taken my rucksack off before I started climbing and snap that thing snapped I fell from the tree fell down instantly thought okay I'm either paralyzed or broke my back so I felt right on my back so it was probably a good thing well it it caused me to fall probably so I don't know if it was a good

thing but it cushioned my head the blow and you know as soon as I checked all my limbs and I was okay I was like all right man and then I heard you know this noise behind me and because I've been walking for 30 some miles I tried to crew my my neck like you know an arthritic old man you

know when you're running right second you can't move your neck anymore and I just turned half way

and I saw this thing coming at me small and I you know it was squeaking and screaming and I instantly thought you know that's a baby bear and then I heard you know so I was like baby bear and of course any outdoorsmen knows if there's a baby there's a mom then I heard the massive crushing of the man's knee of eyes behind it and like the snorting and bear snort and so you know adrenaline rush I picked up my rock sack used it as a shield and just

started sprinting like a madman and mowing down man's knee is best I could and sure enough I came to the edge of the forest the the bears the what I thought were bears were closing in on me I could hear him get closer so my adrenaline was you know all I had left and once I broke free you know

“the exaltation of breaking free was quickly dampered by the fact that the only thing at”

front of me was a cliff oh and so and so I was you know I'm like I'm not getting eaten by a freaking bear while trying to go through selection so I got up to the edge of that cliff and I you know it wasn't a sheer cliff it was you know like the West Virginia Hills pretty steep and I just hurled my body off the edge of the ocean yeah yeah and you know my feet I thought I was going to grab this tree it was a bad plan they went right by that tree cartwheeled down and I ended up

about 300 meters down and I lost my map so it I one of the things is if you lose your map your weapon you're mapping your weapon you're disqualified so my map you know at the end of it was a sheer cliff my map was gone it was like that thing's history but I had my weapon my rubber weapon and I'm like fuck now what am I gonna do at least I didn't get you by the freaking bearer and then I look up and their up top is you know is a bore a pig a baby pig and a mama you know

the it was a massive pig and of course I'm from Illinois so I never knew there were wild pigs

you know anywhere much less West Virginia and I was like fuck and you know I had the momentary feel sorry for myself and then I'm like dude you got to get back in it and I just brushed myself off you know made my way to the top the pigs were gone it was just starting to get dark so you know I had no map but I've been to Panama JOTC 3 times and in Panama you learn to navigate with your feet to read terrain with your feet so if your feet are at this angle you know you're

walking off the ridge line you know when they're flat you're on the top of the ridge line same thing you're going left downward so you literally are your brain is totally in touch with your feet because you can't see the terrain features in Panama they're they're covered so thickly

“with jungle canopy so you navigate with your feet and that's what I did up there I got dark”

I just said I know I looked at this route what's left is about four or five kilometers on the ridge line it the ridge you know meander too so I got to stand this ridge you know with no map and so I stayed on it I remember you know because probably the adrenaline rush I was completely

washing machine on the trail up there and you know I keep going keep going and I yeah I thought

“it was a washing machine because it was a little red light and I got up to it and it to the washing”

machine and it was you know one of the Delta cadre and he was like you know color a number and I gave my color a number and he goes go sit over there and I went sat over there and I'd like I'd fucked up I don't even map nothing and a lot of five minutes later so our major came over and said you know welcome to the unit you made it no shit yeah so so you know

it's just never give up oh I felt amazing I was you know my dream it was my my singular goal

and the military it's why I joined so I was ecstatic and you know they didn't ask for the map no I I can't remember I don't somehow they knew I lost it somehow he cuz later later a guy who became my my start major was one of the cadre and he goes yeah we laughed pretty hard to you and he goes you know that happens but two or three times every single but I said no and he said yeah and I said you have anyone ever been chased by pig before and he said not that I know but

but bears yes and you know I don't know what else is up there okay yes or so I'm so today I want to talk about something a lot of us put off life insurance but if you got people depending on you it's not really about you it's about making sure they're taken care of

“if something happens fabric by Gerber life is term life insurance you can get done today made for”

busy parents like you all online on your schedule right from your couch you could be covered in under 10 minutes often with no health exam required if you've got kids and especially if you're young and healthy the time to lock in low rates is right now and if you already have coverage through work that's a great start but it might not be enough and it doesn't follow you if you leave that job fabric makes it simple they've got flexible policies that fit your family and your budget even

something like a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day depending on your needs and there's no risk 30 day money back guarantee and you can cancel it anytime

“join the thousands of parents who trust fabric to help protect their family apply today and just”

minutes at meet fabric dot com slash on meet fabric dot com slash on and use my link so they know I sent you m e e t fabric dot com slash on policies issued by western southern life assurance company not available in certain states prices subject to underwriting and health questions right on so what do we go from here yeah just uh i don't know uh you're the what squadron b b i started in a i commanded in a b okay well i mean how is it talked to a lot of them listed guys that have

been over there but never an officer so what is it like for an officer to check into the squadron

as a new guy yeah it's you know to me it's as it should be your you know you got to earn if you're going to get any respect you got to earn it um that's not going to come quickly you got to earn it over time so you know you going in and talking to people tell them you know how great you are what you're how you think is not going to do it uh you know you've got to like earn their trust and uh part of that is you know is your competency with tactics techniques and

procedures and the other parts just your you know ability to use common sense to communicate to talk to people and you know for me like when my first job the first true by got as a brand new you know i was a major so i'm brand new in the troop that that troop Larry was one of the team leaders so Larry and I right from the beginning you know kind of connected he was one of the three best shots in the unit you know stories of his you know amazing shots have circulated the unit

it had been known to me and a lot other people but more than he was always a very astute

he he was like a sounding board for me uh operationally you know when i would think of something

“hey what do you think about this and you know one of the things we talked about was dogs and uh he was”

one of the first guys you said to me yeah a lot of people have talked about a long time there's

a lot of people don't want them but somebody tell me uh they're going they got to go down and clear a deeply buried underground bunker and tell me that they don't want to dog with them to go in first and uh and I was like I agree and same thing how about perimeter security how about clearing a just a building a house where you got known enemy uh so you know Larry was a big source of common sense to me uh he's also very funny you know he and I used to sit through briefings

and you know go back and forth crackin each other up and the most famous one was when uh for 9-1-1 after 9-1-1 have when we rub it j-sock and the j-sock intel officer was briefing the plan they had come up with which was an empty target raid and it wasn't even the empty target raid they ended up doing it was another empty target raid and me and him were sitting there going okay so he opened the the presentation up said you know we got to do something meaningful and then he said

we've been we've got the whole staff we've been working for 96 hours and this is what we came up with and Larry and I in that conversation created this concept we called it the operational cold-a-sac uh you know you you see the sign that says dead end but you decide to go down the street anyway just to get turned around in the cold-a-sac and end it up back where you started from in the

“beginning and that's what we're gonna do here we'll do an empty target raid and that would be like”

okay let's find a target why not find a real target why not you know instead of just looking for targets why not make the mission get some guys on the ground and start figuring things out and you know so to back your question if you don't have someone like that who you can speak freely with who you know you respect their opinion they tell it like it is you know I think it's a lot harder for an officer but but you know it should be because

uh it's an incredible position you have to be in my opinion you know they don't need an officer

they but they need someone to be looking over the next terrain feature someone's got to be talking on the radio to hire someone's got to be able to call you know a meta-vac someone's got to be marking off buildings if you're clearing you know a small uh town or whatever so you know focus on what how you can contribute make sure you stay in your lane and uh and the guys you know see the value of having you around but if you do nothing but you know act as a barrier negative

squasher of ideas uh overbearing you know and tactical operations and planning you know they you're gonna fall right into the you know the I the famous I know my officers and again to be fair uh when I got there you know there were there were some individuals where I just scratched my head and said you know what the heck how did they ever get in here wow oh yeah yeah

“yeah yeah yep so I think it's good it's part of the process you learned you know you've got to”

adapt you've got to blend in you've got to figure out your role and you got to respect the amazing

combat and intellectual power of a bunch of operators why do you believe Larry did say you are the only officer that he ever liked working with you wanted to make that click wow wow let's see that is a high compliment I did not pay him for that so oh man so you went to do you went to Columbia with yeah that was my first uh deployment so that was the first one yeah so yeah into the unit you know I I just give you my impressions like it was like Nirvana because when I

got there everyone I talked to at some point talked about common sense and you know back then that's what if you had to do an elevator speech on what the unit was it was just an organization that uses

binders that said this is how we clearability and this is how we you know the formation we use

“when we're doing uh desert mobility or whatever you know there were there were historical”

records there were things that showed here here's the formation we used for this or that but you know back to that adaptive risk assessment it was kind of this adaptive approach to any mission don't take set piece approaches to things don't you know every mission does not take one true one squadron or one platoon one company one you know battalion think about what you need and then

you know array allocating group your forces that way I really like how I've never heard none of the

but none of the guys that have come in here have talked about that and describe the unit as a place of common sense and that really fucking resonates with me yeah because yeah I'm trying to put it into words but I mean it's just other units are not able to operate with common sense because of the fucking red tape and the guard rails that are put all around them so true flying at night daytime operations only all these kind of fucking things

and I mean those are just the two that pop up my head immediately but you have those guidelines

over there why why don't you think that more military units use fucking common sense because I

“even in the sealed team a lot of common sense fucking completely gone yeah no I uh that's what I do”

now I consult I teach companies how to use common the common sense way to make decisions and solve complex problems and it's it's not again it's not theoretical it's biologic you just got to you know follow your instincts what the brain tells you to do and we'll talk a little bit about that later but that's that's the way the unit was described to me when you know the unit had the closest thing to like a charter was three guiding principles and you know I

used them on every mission I went on the first one was understand what's going on around you the

second one was blending anywhere and the third one is the only failure is a failure to try and later I would you know minimize those to learn adapt and interact in any situation learn about the situation going on around you adapt to it adapt to what you learn and interact it's the only way you're going to learn you got to get out on the frontier and interact with the Indians in the terrain you've got to understand that so you know when that was first told to me I was you know I

took it like you take any guiding principles it was like wow those are cool but when I got down to Columbia so Columbia just to give you some background it started 91 when Pablo Escobar escaped from his luxury prison and the president of Columbia said you know no more no more dealmaking no more being nice he's going to jail and he's going to jail for life so the the man hunt began and of course you know the man hunt in a foreign country or any operation is run by the embassy

country team and you know you know that a lot of people don't understand that but the embassy

“country team which is an ambassador usually the key instruments a national power there's a”

middle group commander for the military there's a CIA station chief there's a DEA station chief everywhere down south and there's usually an FBI guy smaller group they do criminal international criminal stuff but the the middle group commander the CIA and the DEA were the you know key hunches down there the ambassador the guy incredibly a student ambassador his name was ambassador Buzzbee he was very unhappy with his country team because of one of the most common

symptoms of all country teams instead of working together and collaborating as a team they work across purposes and a big reason for that is because they're incentivized to whoever gets credit for taking out Pablo is going to get the big budget they're going to all get rewarded a lot of people don't don't do it in DOD but you know in the agency if you do well in a mission even back then you got like a 30k stipend for you know not not an archive not a little ribbon with a piece of

you know that we were like did you see this archive I got wow you know all proud of it they got like

same problem you know you've seen it in the agency the majority of people in end up in those stations

“are people with no life experience they're never going to leave the embassy all the reports you know”

I big eye opener down there I'm like you're the guy right some reports never left his office

in Bogota he's writing about Cali writing about Medine wow yeah but they're working across purposes and so he said he had been to a demo and he he's called back and I'm not sure who he called to but he said I want some unit guys down here to help me figure this thing out and so the unit sent a first team down I wasn't with the first team but that team he told same thing he told me later which is I need you guys to help me bring this team together

they don't work together I might as well have four country teams because there's no communication

“there's no sharing of information and if I you guys getting on this then maybe you can do that”

and you know our one of our missions was we are what you need us to be so you know we

we took that on as a challenge and when I got down there it was the last of Pablo's when Pablo got killed in Medellin and my job was liaison in the embassy in Bogota so I was part of the country team and right off the bat you know I was like when I came in and the ambassador told me he gave me my chart and he goes look I'm dependent on you and if we're gonna get him and get the other guys we're gonna need you guys to do it and so I went back to my office and I was like okay

what in the F2 I do now and then I just thought about it you know the three guiding principles understand what's going on around you blending anywhere the only failure is a failure to try so I understand what's going on around you immerse yourself in the history of the country immersed myself specifically not just in the the cartel traffic but you know all the way back

to the Panama Canal times where basically Panama used to be part of Colombia and why is that important

because a lot of Colombian still carry a chip on their shoulder about Panama and the canal that that's one thing getting up to speed on the Spanish language making sure you're fluent I had a good you know I took it in college I had a good understanding but I had to you know up my game on the language that's understand what's going on and the other part that was key was understanding the two guerilla armies that were actually a huge part of the cocaine

“processing network and that was the FARC and the ELN and you know they're both I think back”

around again because Maduro refinanced them and you know rebuilt them the ELN's in the north A hersito liberacion national and the FARC is down south in Amazonia so you know and then blending anywhere you know now you're working on a country team so besides you know my khaki jungle stuff I got to wear a suit every day I got to comport myself so that you know the people in the state department CIA and Cania knuckle dragger you got to be able to communicate

and you know only failure is a failure to try my my main thing was we got to get people out of Bogotá they need to be down where the narco traffic is going on we have to be interacting with the environment and the people and that eventually I mentioned Pablo got killed the Colombian HRT deserved 100% credit for that and they did it the agroposione is what they're called down there but immediately the day after he died the ambassador called me in and he goes okay I want to go after

the cali cartel now and I want you to lead the effort to go after the cali cartel this is after Pablo was killed the day after can you talk about the day he was killed yeah it's pretty much he you know one thing about him was he loved his family and they it identified this weakness he had to get on you know a mobile phone and talked to his son and his son at the time his son and his mom were staying in like the the hilton in Bogotá they were you know house

they were not allowing so Pablo was in medigen I can't remember the relationship of the house I think his mom was either his mom's house or his mom's friend he was hiding out there and he got on his cell phone to call his son the his voice he instantly was voice matched we had trained up the agroposione on how to use the the direction finding uh singing you know a package which was literally a package you put it in the back seat and then you had a you know like the equivalent of an antenna

that you would point out it looked like a bullhorn you'd point out and that thing could triangulate

“a cell signal and they literally the because the the initial hit on it just put it in I think a”

400 by 400 meter area so they went out driving uh two guys with the direction finding equipment and they just did you know a comprehensive search in the neighborhood up down up down and on like

their third up down being a hit and the guy who got the hit you know looked up and there in the

bathroom window of this house was battle Pablo on the phone and they immediately slammed on the brakes ran up there got in the gunfight and and shot him dead wow yep and uh yeah one Bogotá a medicine you were a medicine what you know I was in Bogotá when it happened yeah but I had there were guys down there in medicine when it happened and they were in a safe house but it was 100% you know Colombian when you hear people say US did it that's we had nothing to

do with it and we that was not by accident we knew how sensitive it was and we knew that you know to kill Pablo it's got to be by the Colombians or a capture him um because you know a bunch of gringos grab him it just makes him a martyr or a hero you know and uh a lot of people who liked him down there they did especially around medicine he sponsored soccer teams bill parks you know

employed a lot of people yeah so uh but anyway I mean how does that have as that feel first

first deployment kill probably the number one most one a guy in the world well you know I didn't do it but I mean it felt good to see it happen to see success that the efforts you know what you've

“been going on I think six or nine months were you know we're successful and then you know I didn't”

have time to reflect uh because that next day said we're going up to the cali cartel and you know I did the same thing I was like what do we need uh how are we gonna do this and you know to our conversation earlier the first thing was no embassy employee had stepped foot in cali up to that point so you had this place that was supposedly one hundred percent control by the cartel you know totally in hospitable to any outsider we were like well there's only one way to find out let's get some

guys down there and there was there's a military airfield down there so we you know flew down there unloaded our guys the calumbian our partners the HRT was you know very sensitive about down there they're like you guys have to you know maintain low vis out here or you know it can get really bad but what they found first off cali's beautiful they ever turned into a resort you know take off like almost nowhere else in the world gorgeous terrain yeah it's it's beautiful people you know all

cross calumpian are a great they're super nice super friendly and you know so we had we had the beginning of of an up and you know I returned I would go down there check on them the guys you know

the guys were living in squalor I went back to the embassy and you know I had instantly an amazing

breakthrough and this is probably three weeks to four weeks in from when he gave us the mission so

“I'm back at the embassy it's it's Christmas time in Bogota and I can't remember I think it was like the”

23rd and I was in my little office next to the ambassadors office it was seven o'clock at night and I just you know the the I just got off the set count with the guys down there they were and what they told me you know gave me pause they were like peat we barely get any food

but the real problem is water you know we've been out of bottle water we're trying to boil it

“a lot of the we're not sure if some of the food the calumbians or feedness is cooked in you know”

water that was boiled at the right temperature and sure enough we're all sick as dogs you know shit in our brains out we've lost like 15 pounds we're living in squalor and the safe house what's supposed to be a safe house it's definitely safe but it's not a house it's a shit shack so it's a safe shit shack that we're staying in and I said well shit man you guys you want to come home I'll send an aircraft down tomorrow bringing home they're like no no no no we're fine we can hang another

couple weeks just don't forget about his panther and and get some good intel and I'm like

brought you that so I literally you know put the sat count receiver down I was standing there and then

“another sat count radio that printed out digital messages beeped the life and this one was”

was an intel net and it was sending me a sicken hit from the massive you've seen them the massive radar dishes that dot salt america was a sicken hit and I you know tore the thing off and read it and it was like sicken hit Miguel Rodriguez Oriela one of the Oriela brothers head to the caly cartel what positive ID at this lat long and I want to call these shit so I go over we had a wall map you know about half the size of this cut this wall in half it

we covered the half the wall and I went on and you know took me a couple minutes to do that long and I remember looking up at it and going wow these fucking guys know what they're doing he was in he was in a hundred meter square around the most pricey kind of minion real states up by the Zona Rosa in Bogotá and then because it was a one over twenty five thousand topographic map I followed the terrain down from the sicken hit and right below him was the ten acre US ambassador's

residence and you know my first thought was like simple genius what better place to hide than

right next door to the guy who's leading the search against you so my next thing was I got it you know

“we got to take action on this so I left my office like I said I think it was around seven at night”

I left my office went down to the agency's office locked tight no one there lights off DEA locked tight no one there lights off mill group locked tight no one off and I was I was really looking for DEA or CIA and specifically CIA but nothing so I got on the phone the landline I called their emergency numbers got voicemail on all of them so this was this is another you know I'm as I'm doing this I'm going this is why the ambassador brought us down here probably out drinking

yeah well you know it's we're we're like military guys when they're on a mission they're on a mission there's no time limits you know you're gonna pull an all-nighter if the mission you know requires it but that's not the same and and for good reason they all had their families there but you could see most embassy company country teams have this corporate mentality you know you just cannot match the work ethic no military guys probably especially soft I'm not worked in a conventionally it

but you you cannot you cannot fucking match that work ethic anywhere you go unless you're working here it's a franchise I talked to some of your employees they told me they weren't their fucking asses up is that's the what they got a heck of a team out there but that is one of the things I noticed immediately yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah all they give a fuck about is getting drunk yeah tally bar yeah and it's it's not good and then for the wrong reasons and you're trying to do

something it gets frustrating if you let it but anyway you know so so so I'm trying to figure out what to do and there's a knock on the door and I'm like come in and it's the ambassador's secretary her name was Alcala Maria and she was like this could go on a two way sure maybe both ways I don't know so I heard you're a delta I already had a good relationship

just an administrative assistant but if you needed an answer in that embassy like if you

“needed to know hey you know I got this who do I talk to and then what do I do after I talk to”

I'm she tell you okay don't talk to this guy talk to this guy don't tell him what you want just tell him what you found she'd give you advice like that very highly contextual very valuable you know she she helped us I can't you know put a put adjectives on it but she stuck her head in the door she goes hey I just wanted to check on you it's pretty late you're the only one here and I'm like yeah yep I got a really we got something kind of hot right now Maria you know I'm super busy and she

goes oh well I wanted to just tell you we're having dinner at my place tonight a bunch of people from the country team were coming over we've got you know the stakes in Colombia are like all

“world stakes we've got fresh stakes the chefs gonna put them on in like 20 minutes they should”

be ready in an hour and I'm like you know yeah I can't I'm here I'll probably be here all night and you know this is really hot I'm sorry and she goes okay well you know if you change your mind here's my address and I don't bite and I took the address and she said I don't bite and this is part of not working with women the door shut and I awkwardly said well then how will you swallow your meat and I was like fuck I cannot believe I just said that I'm stupidest thing I ever said

oh shit and I go back to plot the thing and also the door opens up again and she goes what did you just say and I go I asked how will you chew your food but she goes oh okay I thought she said something different but okay the offer still stands we're gonna be there you work really hard so if you finish this up please just come over stakes will be ready it'd be a good time and I'm like yep you know no change so I went back I called my guys down you know in Cali and I told bounce it off

then I said hey guys here's what I got and they're like panty you got to figure something out

man you got to act on this this could lead to a lot of intel and you know this could be it this is the opportunity we can't pass up and I'm like yeah okay I'll get back to you guys I'm going to keep trying to call these other country team members I tried again no answer so I went over the map board and you know some about this yellow sticky she gave me I was like oh no where this is so you know it was like one two two Cali something like that Cali you know C-A-L-L-E

so I went up the map I got inside the circle like in cheese her condo is which makes sense is also above the ambassadors residents the best real estate in town inside this at the time it was

a hundred meter circle the second circle is her apartment some like damn so I called the guys back

oh and I go guys horns with dilemma here you know no one's answering their phone this this cigarette hit is getting colder by the minute right now it's 26 minutes old so what I found out is the cigarette comes either the same apartment or the apartment next door to one of the embassy employees who asked me to come over for dinner but I told her I can't you know I'm not going over at anyone's house for dinner while you guys are shit and your brains out there like panther

come to your senses get your ass in the car and drive to that party and check it out it's the only thing we got and I'm like okay I'm gonna do it I'm gonna be going I gave a five-point contingency I said it takes it should take me about a half hour to drive there I'm gonna drive so give me a half hour there half hour back I may need to hang out the party just as part of my cover for action so give me two hours max if I'm not back in three hours call Southcom and tell them you know what happened

and where I went like Roger that sleep it affects everything when it's off you feel it

“focus drops recovery slips and you're just not operating how you should and that's why I started”

using dream since I started using dream I've seen a real difference I'm falling asleep faster staying asleep and waking up feeling like I've actually recovered dream isn't the cheap overpowered stuff

and wake up clear no groginess no crash just deep restorative rest that lets you hit the ground

ready to work train and show up for the people who are relying on you best of all being as an American company that makes clean science back products designed to help people perform at their best dream is their sleep formula and it's loaded with ingredients your body actually needs to recover rishi magnesium, elthianine, apogenine and melatonin but dosed intelligently I mix it up about 30 minutes before bed and it's just part of my nightly routine now and for a limited time I've got

my listeners an exclusive discount of up to 50% go to shopbeam.com/srsuse my codesaurus to get up to 50% off this is the best discount beam gives out so tell your friends to even if they don't

“listen to the show if they want to fix their sleep they've got to try beam so remember go to shopbeam.com”

slash srsuse codesaurus with my codesaurus you can grab dream for 50% off try it today

so you know again this is my first deployment I get my car it's nighttime there was not a restriction

against driving at night in bogato but it was highly discouraged by the state department security but I knew the route I driven all over bogato and the route to get there took me through parking national which is pretty hairy part of bogato and I remember all my you know all my training had come into place I took my 45 out it had a piece of velcro stuck to the the hand grip I also had a piece of hook pile tape which is what Velcro sticks to on the dashboard so I stuck

“my 45 on because I got to drive you know so I stuck my 45 on the dashboard put it my a hat over it”

so that if I ran into an ambush in parking national I could just blast away through the front windshield

and drive out of the ambush so I drove you know made it there I got within you know about 500 meters slow down I was like okay don't you know if I'm doing the right thing here you know and I know I don't want to go to the apartment but I got to check it out to see if I got to check the signal hit out so I drive up and you know my cover fraction is I'm going to this dinner so you know I'm shift my mindset don't act like a guy checking out a signal hit act like a guy

a dumbass embassy employee going to an embassy party so I pull up beautiful glass faced you know

“a high-rise condominium 20 stories may be beautiful you know you can tell these are massive”

condos full glass vestibule and I get out of my car I park in front and the car next to me was Alexis a black Lexus with tinted windows and with soon as I got out of my car I was like there's someone in that car and they're looking at me and you know the same thing it happened to me my house he got enrobed in Washington a couple years earlier and I came home from a bar and the guys who robbed it were in the car next to me and I had the same thing I was like my spider sense is set off

that someone was looking at me so you know I I dismissed it I'm like stick with your cover stick with your cover keep walking so I walked up you know act like you've been here before I've opened the door act like you know where you're going I walked over to the you know the doorbell call box thing saw her name hit the thing you know walked over to the elevator it was a private elevator and you know turned and as I turned for guys we're getting out of that Lexus

three of them were gigantic one was you know your typical like CEO looking guy in the back seat which you know bit the whole profile and you know I'm like come on elevator come on because they're coming into the lobby and as soon as their door opened into the lobby the elevator door opened for me and I took one glance before I walked in and I saw the lead guy you know $1,000 suit at the time and I saw a side arm that he was armed you know there's no guns you know a lot of guns in Colombia

unless you're an archer trafficker or pistols in Bogotá so I fell you know up elevator I'm going

it comes to her condo being the doors open the whole condo is like dark there's you know like five

“people in there tricky champagne soft music there's like candle it all the table in the background”

and all five of them turned at the same time and they're all dressed they somehow changed dressed to the nines all of them turned pee welcome so glad you're here you know I looked at them and again you know can't hide my geekiness bam I hit the closed door button and the down button hit the same down they're like the last thing I heard was what are the guys say what the fuck all right man breathe breathe you know I'm going down I'm going down what if they're still

in the lobby first thing I did was touch my my 45 you know and then touch my spare mag I had eight rounds in the 45 seven in the mag so I had 15 shots should be more than enough if I get in the shoot out but I don't want to get in the shoot out what I want to do is walk right by him get their license plate and then drive away and so being the doors open up there they are again same thing this time they're standing inside the lobby just one of them's on like you know

the old school brick cell phones so I take a deep breath I walk you know right by him I walk out I look at the Lexus it does have license plates I in a split second I was able to memorize the license plate number I got my vehicle and I drove away and I you know I drove about a block away and then just watched and sure enough they right after I walked out they loaded their vehicle and I was

“like I might have spooked them you know I got like I think worst case scenario so I got back to”

the embassy immediately got in the sack comp to my guys I go guys here's what happened they're like

what the fuck did you go back there I'm like no you know I can't go back again I don't want to blow the cover and I don't want them to you know know that there's embassy people live in there or whatever but we got a process this thing and so can you guys somehow without you know letting the agrupassion intel guys know what we're doing just see you know I know they run they run plates all the time they have a massive database of Columbia plates see if you can run it and see

what happens and he goes out no problem panther we know the guy does it will do that so they ran the plates and sure enough they were registered to this office in Cali which you know they called up on a satellite photo that they had on their laptop like it's an office it's a one story office can we go now and I'm like guys it's got to be HRT you know and they're like yep Roger okay we'll get him ready for an op tomorrow morning and so I stayed in my in slept in the

my office that night the next we always HRT what's that FBI's HRT no these are the

Colombian HRT is their equivalent of seal team six and Delta Force they're the agrupassion on this what they're called they're their CT Force and so you know the next morning I wake up because I hear voices out and it's the ambassador he was an early riser and the CIA station chief out there and the CIA station I walk out and the CIA station chief's going ambassador we we got this signal hit last night we processed it we know where it's at and we're ready to go and and ambassador

goes okay make sure you brief Pete and then let me know what you guys decide to do and he turns to me and he goes okay and I go hey man check out this license plate number and tell me what you find out and he goes okay I mean you know what happened I told him yeah I was here last night

did you didn't you get my answering machine message you go that was you yeah I never listened to

those so that next day all this work together to get approval for the agrupassion guys they hit this a small office one story office with my guys so they get to the they get to the facility

“and this is 92 I think 92 yeah 92 so I mean think about even in 1000 most people don't know”

what you know computer hard drive is in 2000 even in 2000 people were still learning the internet

like panther we got to go inside they don't know anything about computers they don't know what the

grab you know what could be sensitive they don't not interrogate the devices and we had our cigarette guy down there he had all this high speed shit you could just plug in so I go okay I got it I got it talked to Southcom because our ROI is we're not allowed to go step foot on any target the THRTs and so I call Southcom and I'm going this probably isn't the smartest thing to do but I got to do it so I call them guy gets on the phone he goes okay okay let me run it by the boss

calls me back 10 minutes later permission denied you shouldn't even be out there it's uh it's their up should be letting them run the up themselves but permission denied they they're not allowed to go in so I call them back up I go guys here's the guidance you're not allowed to go inside they're like Roger that so you know they had all the had the group us in all open all the windows they went to each window around the building they got on top of the roof there was a massive skylight they

opened the skylight they started pointing that's a hard drive get that get that and the result was

“all that info turned up it's somewhere in there were two things eight key congressmen that they were”

bribing in the Colombian government and also an address of one of their main residences and that resident was was taken by DA and agency guys and they ended up going in there with the Colombian HRT and arresting the Oriale brothers found one of them it was hidden and it was in a hidden room in there so you know to me I reflected long on on that you know and my lesson was

how sensitive decision making is to context and that you can never

pre decide anything or you can never tell what you would do in a given situation with our context you know was was I going to the party as an excuse to check out the cigarette or was I going to the cigarette as an excuse to go to the party I don't know would I have gone if it had been somewhere else I can't say that but I know in the context of the moment why I did what I did and you know I was happy with every bit of it to include you know

leaving hidden the down button on that elevator it'd go and down and you know they they they found out what happened and all that did was get me invited to but 10 more of those nice yeah

but you know we we had very clear lines demarcation lines of never mixing business and pleasure so

right on so yeah that was my and so you know you started this asking about

“going after the cartels in Mexico and that's what I mean something similar to that”

but the added challenge it's so difficult to know who to trust in Mexico and specifically in the government yeah um that you know it it's going to be tricky but I'm sure there's some you know Mexico experts who can come up with a counter-solution and then just incrementally work the valve to situation work the intel have people in place where you can take advantage of opportunities and then you know the courage or convictions to act if it makes sense do it even if it

seems like you're bending the rules a little bit how can bend a man and you know you have ask for ask for you know ask for permission later or ask for forgiveness later I've got a question for you you know what since we're talking about cartels and I just wrap it up into you know everything I mean if we're if we are taking out a cartel a terrorist organization some type of a machine through everything that you've been through because you've

been through just about every damn conflict that's that's happened and what since since Panama

“would you rather go start with the bottom up or the top down I think if you got the intel on the”

top down go top down it's just usually it's the inverse you got the intel on the you know the

you got to take it while you got it just finding a guy who doesn't want to be found is even with all the technology today is super difficult you know the maduro thing is an incredible up and someday I'm sure we'll find out you know where the intel came from but it had to be pretty good

I wouldn't have passed that up either so yeah I'd always go top I think

“you know that's why human hunting you know if we'd taken out Hitler if we had had the balls”

in 98 to take out bin Laden and we he wasn't that hidden he was in caves he was living in Kandar driving to cost you know every week which is like 400 miles on you know elephant-sized pot hold rows surrounded by landmines so it takes like 10 hours to drive there and he was doing that every week we could have gotten him in route we could have gotten him in chaos could have gotten him in Kandar we stayed in his house we used it as safe house after the invasion we could have

taken that thing out but no audacity no you know no listen into the guys on the ground

“you know I doubt President Clinton at the time had someone telling him you know we can do this”

it's not this complicated thing but at the time he had a four-star the head of the military was telling him you know whatever we do we can't it can't involve boots on the ground in Afghanistan it's like dude why you know no one even know you could land in Afghanistan could have landed any time before 911 on a on a dry lake bed a dirt road anywhere and no one would have known you were there so you know those are the components and you know we have those now so it's just a matter of you know

the interagency unity of effort again and that's critical and I'm hoping that that's working

“you know I know that the CIA is still needs a lot of course correction from the you know”

title wave of worldchires they made from you know 2020 to 2024 and I'm not being derogatory I'm just that's the truth and I would say that if they were all right-wing fanatics you can't have political people in the CIA you just can't can't have them in DOD either but you can't have in the CIA because it's much more prone with the money and everything else to nefarious activities and as we saw you know we now have seen again Tulsi Gabbard released at that memo where you know

the head of the CIA had already approved that the memo the famous you know 100 byte in laptop memo 51 it already endorsed sending that thing around Gina Haspel right was the so you just can't be that way and it's so foreign to most of us like if anyone had ever said to me during the Obama administration hey we got some guys there's guys on the inside and they're working to overthrow Obama I've fucking read them out man he's a president of the United States and you know they

wouldn't have said that because it's so far out of the you know out of the just any concept of righteousness or logic but you know that was the case they were doing everything they could to you know get rid of Trump and who knows how many opportunities were missed you know with real criminals real narcoterrorist real terrorists during that time they were all focused on Trump yeah so where do we go from here to Somalia yeah we go there next we'll was your involvement there

I was back up so I'm in so seed did the missions so before the mission happened it actually coursed through all three squatters so be had if you were on alert you had the mission and you rehearsed it the Somalia mission how to get a deed you know it was more or less a single snatch type

thing we were working on and so be had at first then a which was me and Larry and then see

which you know it's fine they and they did amazing there but you know the rehearsals were

“I think you know have some key learning points in them too because the rehearsals this was this was the”

the like onset of the MH60 dominating every mission that special ops went on they were they were knew the fleet was just updated all the 160 black ox were new they were big you know they were they held the most people and they want every mission was you know a default to an air assault raid and so we were out there rehearsing there's no competition between squatters and like all missions you're not really believing this one's gonna happen because you know we've been through a thousand

dry holes or a thousand nope don't need to plan anymore you know knock it off so it was just

you know the way I described Larry before like just common sense looking at she at what works

“what not and so after the first night we were like these black ox are not assault platforms”

it takes 45 seconds for a black ox to break flare hover and get his rope down and then it takes another 45 seconds just to get one aircraft load of unit operators all the way to the ground so you're talking a minute and a half a little bird with four guys on it can pull up to a balcony the top of the building the side of the building if it's a balcony you can do one squid skid turnaround do the other

skid but it basically a a little bird it's break flare hover dislodge 15 seconds so a little bird was

15 seconds in and out and a black ox was a minute and a half and we were like they're going to blow that fucking black ox out of the sky common sense common sense and Larry there he can say it was me and Larry it was like two in the morning and unfortunately in the AR was led by all black ox pilots and they were great guys who I know and I would be honored to fly with but they took it like you know personally or like we were making an emotional thing and it said guys I like

your black ox too but I just don't want to ride that thing into combat we have enough little birds why don't we put the whole squadron on little birds so we needed 12 little birds to do that the whole assault force I should say and and you know that went all the way up to the community general well the community general was a helicopter pilot a black ox pilot and so the answer came back very swiftly keep the black ox and so the next thing we were doing is you know

your horse and the shit out and we're like can we at least try some other techniques and you know one idea someone in the someone in the troop came up with was you know they have these shit

“suck and trucks that is the only way they they don't have sewer sewer lines they just have”

shit suck and trucks that suck the shit out of their little vats below the houses and they drive all over why not get a shit shut the shit shut the shit shut the fucking truck hollow that thing out clean it out and we ride inside the shit suck and truck right to the target jump out grab them you know we can even wait inside of it until the target presents itself and that idea got kind of gosh too and not by you know any not by other squadrons or

anything by the higher headquarters so it just you know it was just formidable to me because you know I already it was already a parent that everyone expected the U.S. to come in helicopters you know and and and we knew how easy it was to knock a helicopter out of the sky just with an AK-47 much less in RPG so you know it just did not seem to make sense and from then on you know I was you know I was dogmatic about now no helicopters allowed and the main reason is you know

not even the the tactical operational that I was just talking about it's because when you default to the helicopter solution you immediately divorce yourself from the real deep thinking that's required for any successful lab you know what

do each night you know at the specific time we're looking at HR you know can we can we use

“something like the shit suck and truck to get in there all these things that if you don't have a”

helicopter you know you're gonna you're gonna think about so I guess going back again to unstructured problem solving you know you're not it's not unstructured problem solving if someone says I need you to do a raid on these blackhawks there's all the only option is either fast rope or land where a blackhawk can land so already you're you're fence in your options in and then that means you've completely lost surprise and so squirters unless you're surrounding the target you're

gonna have squirters and squirters almost always get away so you know defaulting to the the

helo mindset it's nothing else we still need helos there you know we need to have them but I think even most blackhawk guys would agree it's not in the salt platform it was never built to be an assault platform that flies to a target with known enemy and somehow lands or discourses it's guys the little bird is it's like a flying dirt bike it can get anywhere it wants to go it's got that small bubble signature it even crashes well it bounces when it crashes very survivable um and they're

in and out you know like that 15 seconds versus a minute and a half so you know I just became a

“big advocate of don't use he loads unless you have to and if you do have to always try to use”

a little bird first who shot that down well multiple shot that was just the smallies with the RPGs no no no no that's who shot the the ideas down oh jay sock jay sock shot it down yep yeah at the time you know probably take some hits for this but yeah like the helicopter mafia was in place and by god we've got these multi million dollar machines and we got to use them we got to show results for spending all that money on these he loves it's human nature but so so it was a

it was a it was a TF 160 mafia it's it jay sock yeah and I wouldn't even call them old TF guys but you know I think I mean that is a mistake maybe what I mean that it itself is a mistake isn't it yeah I think so

“I'm again I don't want to sound controversial but you know in in those first years”

I was commanded by my jay sock commander for air the battle of shy coat was an air force one star general who flew transport planes and he flew C141's his whole career and so

and he was a nice guy but my uncles a nice guy too but I'd never put him in charge of a bunch of

commandos in a war zone and you know where show me where in the military guys like you and me are taking command of F16 wings or F15 fighter squadrons that's not they don't put ground guys in charge of air so why are you putting air guys that's that's in charge of ground zero fucking sets yeah but there's been a bunch of women you know nothing against those guys they're just taking what they can get but I I just agree with your premise it's it doesn't make any sense

you know you the all you can contribute at that level is wisdom and knowledge and hopefully learn through experience but you've got to be able to relate the nuances you only get that from a well-rounded team yep yep what was the sentiment at the unit after that happened after my issue I was you know great like concern I mean first empathy for the guys you know and see the families I you know I I can't speak for everybody but for us it was my circle of

guys it was just you know we need to learn like hard lessons and be very honest and you know

it was always very good at that you know you you pull off what you think's the most successful

up in the world and you get your ass ripped apart in the AR afterwards and usually good stuff

but we never really were able to high-wash it you know a number of key commanders got her

“general hero he became a general he was injured by that mortar round so you know was in a”

little bit of turmoil I don't think we ever you know did justice to all the lessons and quite frankly you know more more than that I wanted to hear like each of these team leaders who were in sea I wanted to hear their stories you know what happened to them because they were all in slightly different battles you know all throughout Mogadishu and one guy pretty much became a personal hero in mind Paul how because he was taken it to the enemy you know the Rangers

and a bunch of other people had to you know ordered hey stay static stay in position we got to get figure out where everyone is well Paul how was like I'm not staying static let them surround me and he just started moving and clearing buildings and clearing up a huge portion of the sector to ensure it wouldn't you know they wouldn't get surrounded on the you know one or two square block area wherever one was located so you know I wanted to hear more of that but other

not I mean it was no there was no negativity it was just empathy and you know compassion for the families and the guys who got injured some of them you know very seriously so it took a you know it took a big toll and you know same thing I said you're earlier no one was walking around cursing Bill Clinton no one was walking around that didn't exist you know we didn't take it out politically we take out on ourselves what could we have done better you know should we have agreed

to this you know I know one of the things C brought up was this template mentality they were forced to follow it was the same because you had this helicopter package the same package was used the little birds went in immediately around that whatever the target building was or on top of the black ox went to the four corners drop fast robes ranger isolation for securities forces and so that package you know we even it was even called a template at the time

became you know the default and you know they'll I definitely a lot of us learned formidable lessons from it and I know I did because it affected every up I was on from there on out

man yeah I've interviewed Tom about that never anything like it yeah and he was in the real

shit he's an amazing guy too I would love to have heard his you know classified AR every bit of it because so much of the stuff those guys did you know changed course corrected the unit on things like CQB our tactics techniques and procedures is Tom probably told you you know we all went to Mogadishu with skateboard helmets on and we only wore helmets to hold our knots and you know our pel tours to our year but after that the units the one that invented what's

“now I think called the mole you know the partial helmet the unit invented that you know started”

cutting just like they always do started you know turning operators loose with saws and helmets

and cutting him into the right shape and then turning back to vendors and going can you do this can you make one like this and change the padding and they changed it and they built the current helmet you know of the version that boost the current helmet that everybody wears in the military so that's just one thing but tons of tactics techniques and procedures changed after that moving along walls stuff like that because the walls were getting hit by RPGs and bullets and you can

you don't really have to aim if someone's running along a wall if you just hit the wall in front of them with their RPG it's gonna splash all over them with you know 7.62 round if it's a good wall it's just gonna you know ricochet and go through however many guys are in a line along that wall so

“that's another one I remember but I'm sure Tom and the rest of those guys have a ton more that”

would be fascinating to hear will be let's say a quick break yeah sounds good

conversation you can't just show up with surface level notes you need real depth structure

and the right questions that's where I've been using clawed it's helped me with research building outlines and shaping better questions before I sit down with a guest I'll take a topic or a guest run it through clawed and it helps organize everything and tighten up the structure it's a tool I use every day and it has become a huge part of my workflow clawed as the AI for minds that don't stop it good enough it's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and

thinks with you whether your debugging code at the midnight hour or strategizing your next business

move clawed extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter it's not doing the work for me it's helping me think deeper I still bring my own perspective but it sharpens the questions tightens the flow and helps me get more out of every conversation ready to tackle bigger problems get started with clawed today a clawed dot AI slash SRS that's clawed dot AI slash SRS and check out clawed pro which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode

clawed dot AI slash SRS all right people are back from the break

“I think we're moving to Bosnia and the Balkans next yes so Bosnia I did seven”

rotations in Bosnia what was what were we doing over there it was I came in on the tail end of this yeah it was to capture a war criminals S4 was the security force for Bosnia so the international criminal tribunal equity I can't remember what the last part is indicted these Serbian war criminals for there were for good reason there were massacres massive massacres hundreds of people and they you know once they were indicted there was

the NATO and the UN charged the U.S. with and the multinational force over there with capture them and then we I will jace up to selected to you know run the op which was continuous

“I think started in I want to say 95 went to 99 and you know I think the war ended in 95”

so you know you saw the end of the war you saw what happened and it's crazy I mean like the ethnic hatred you know I'm all sides it was pretty pretty heavy and you remember what I said about understand what's going on around you the first thing you do before you go to Bosnia is again understand the history and you understand you know Bosnian Bosnia's Muslims and they were the the object of most of the the ethnic killings um but you know the

history of of that area goes back to 1389 when when the Turks came in and slaughtered

Serbs and Croatians and they kind of never forgave them for that and you know the the

Turks brought Islam to the Balkans so you know you'd hear Serbian guys and Croatian guys talk about that and it's like wow 1389 that's a long time ago but you know you understood and to me you know I sum up Bosnia is it was a living laboratory it was like this you know you can do whatever you want to figure out how to capture these guys and and we did you know back to that unstructured problem solving you know first thing blending anywhere

you know usually when you're over there you wore what most males wear in Bosnia and that's like blue jeans a white t-shirt and a leather jacket some cigarettes yeah a lot of cigarettes the

“you know as you remember one of the girls came down and on the first day over tour and”

the for some reason the most common color of hair in Bosnia at the time was a color that knows no equal in nature we just called it red not found in nature she somehow when I bought a box

know the ability to go into a town do a close target wrecky walk down the street see if you could

spot the the war criminal a lot of cool innovations at the time like you know to track someone you need the I forget what the triangulation sighing thing is the cops have uh is it low jack I don't know

“yeah I think it's called low jack but it's the three antennas when you're when you're”

tracking a beacon you know you optimal is to have three antennas you have three little antennas on top your car but it's like how do you keep that from sticking out well same thing you understand what's going on around you and people in Bosnia use their cars for everything you know you go is a five cars in one it's a pickup truck it's a stop truck it's a bus you know and so you see constantly see cars with you know everything strapped to them and we just decided hey let's put a box on top of the

car to cover the antennas and we switch the box out every few days you know make a look I go washing machine or something and strap it on and drive around like that you know there was no it was

“the 90s so there was no Google maps or anything so you had to have also a set comment on it the”

downlink you know your digital set com your maps because you might want one you know that you don't have a satellite photo it's something so a lot of little innovations just again in the in this you know art of human hunting tracking you know surveillance and then the setup you know

setting these guys up there were some incredible ops that were pulled off over there you know

really really valuable long term one device that was invented was we called it the Kevlar tennis net and it's a good example of how stuff you know how the unit you know does research and development it's just hey guys we got to find out another way to stop vehicles we already had the spikes

“which are good but you know we wanted to stop a vehicle and then with the intention of pulling”

people out and capturing them so one of the guys did some research and he found this German scientist who would sewed together a Kevlar tennis net and he did it to stop to put on the side of the Autobahn for cars that lose their brakes to be able to drive through you know and he came to me one day and he said hey if you see this thing and I'm like no it's like this guy Germany I'm pretty sure he was German has it and it's made a couple of our nettle stop a car

up to 60 miles an hour that's incredible man you got to check that out and sure enough you know

he flew over checked it out we bought it and we employed it and one of the biggest work criminals he was a serve general I won't name him was captured that way and it was cool we spray painted it gray so it would blend into the asphalt on the road we first you got to find the right terrain so you know anytime you're doing the damage you wanted around the curve so there you can get the vehicle as slow as possible when you do the hit so we found a good

curve in the road and then as luck would have it there was a bridge abotment so we were able to anchor the net on both sides to you know and I'm not talking to I'm not talking to bridge over the road I'm talking to it was a bridge the creek went under the road actually and it had like the guardrails and stuff but the cement abotments and we anchored the net that way then the guys dressed up as road workers road worker best shovels but six of them were out there and then

two people followed the target he got in his car and then passed it off to an aircraft that was tracking the vehicle the aircraft tracked it downloaded it to the assault force the assault force was waiting in the woods off to the side not it was the capture the guys were going to do it the workers were had were all armed they were going to be the initial but you know we had like 25 guys out there and sure enough here he comes down the road 50 miles an hour you know you just you

sometimes you can't believe shit why it's happening and you know they pulled that net and it stopped that vehicle and you know everyone was pretty serious but it was like little kids in a you know

thing snagged this vehicle and capture them without you know hurting him he had an amputated legs

was leg his fake leg came off but you know capturing without hurting him you know which is what the intention was and in the process invented this new you know vehicle stopping device

“that I think is still relevant today if you need to do it so that's what I mean by living laboratory”

a lot of things were invented a lot of things were perfected and you know they set us up really well for afghanistan because you know the last tours I think were 99 in Bosnia so only by a year and a half till 9-1-1 happened anything else notable how many work criminals do you think you guys took I think captured seven or eight there was you know there were a couple of things

that so Bosnia was the first time VTCs ever showed up video teleconferences so the Bosnian

commandic control cell was called S4 security forces Bosnia I guess and and it was the most bureaucratic structure you've ever seen a four-star general american four-star at the top like a two-star Brit below him a one-star German below him they all they all needed to approve everything

“so on your guys is on our guys yeah so it was crazy I remember one up and this we actually”

hop when it actually came to fruition we passed it the you know the seals eventually came over we were rotate and doing I can't remember if they did autonomous but they were definitely over there

and they did a couple of the capture ops and on this one was a guy we'd been following for a long

time he's an old man you know just live in quietly we knew we lived in apartment every day you know got up walked to the fruit market bought some fruit and walked back so you know the seals plan was we're just gonna pull a van up there when he walks by we're gonna open the van doors grab them throw them in and drive off I'm like fucking a creak plan you know it's so but it had to be approved by S4 and like I you know shit else you're gonna do it yeah I can't

“remember why I had to go to to brief it with them but you know I was up there in the yet all these”

generals and they listen to plan they go once he gets inside the apartment how many steps to his apartment see you guys like 20 23 there's okay we need to know exactly how many steps it's like all right what else what kind of anti intrusion devices do you think he's got in the apartment guys like I don't probably not many he seems pretty cash you know he's just walking up and down the street I don't see him taking a lot of measures and this is a really an exact

common he's like you know I read somewhere that one of the best devices to tell if someone's breaking into your houses to just put a soup can on the door with some change in it do you think maybe he's got a soup can on his door what the fuck man and we were just like holy shit that's when you know it's not even yeah and that's when we start this is it's going to come into play later but you realize this this hierarchical decision making this these disconnected

chains to command and this is even though they're you know on the other side of the city they're completely disconnected they're running the construction all this admin shit and they want to play you know infantry commando you know when the missions come up I hate these fucking people yeah it really tries you and it tried everyone's patience there were guys pulling their hair out this is the shit why only have six years of the military yeah because I just looked it is a

24 year old I was able to go you're a fucking idiot I'm out yeah but you'd think uh common sense again within the day makes me fucking hair on the back of my head stand up it makes so angry yeah it's just so fucking angry it should because you care about soldiers you care about doing the right thing and and that's what it messes up so that guy I mean if everyone my

and that's what I witnessed and I was like this is not what the fuck it was cracked up yeah you know a lot of a lot of guys had a great experience you know but I had some really good experiences but I just ran into that too many times and I was like this is not the fucking place for me man yeah but no I'm with you um and you know just to give you like the the final story I was again 99 I believe so it was in the middle of that we made a bomb Belgrade

“for like 78 days I don't know if you remember that the capital of Seriable or a capital”

excuse me of Serbia bomb number for 78 days it's NATO doing offensive operations in order to bring the country to its knees another stupidest decision but during that the cause of all things was also going on so what happened was the Serbs finally decided to pull back out of Cozobo and this was all being run from now you come headquarters because Cozobo wasn't part of the Bosnia thing was up to you come so one day the I get this intel tip and it says hey the Serbs are pulling

out of of uh the Prostina airfield Prostina airfields the only airfield in Cozobo that can land

transport aircraft it is absolutely critical to US interest that we secure that airfield so I was like

“I know exactly where it is I had 20 guys we were doing some either prepping for something or we were”

gonna do some training things so I 20 guys and I'm like we have vehicles I can get my car right now we'll drive there with the 20 guys and we'll hold the gate and hold us by force a perimeter by covering it you know with weapons but we can easily secure that base because no one's gonna fight us for it it's just whoever arrives their first owns it so I briefed this right to the S4 commander and the S4 commander was like okay well we don't have approval authority it's got to come from

you com so he gets on the phone to the 4 star and you com 4 star and you com goes negative negative negative we need to we need to put this into the planning cell figure out how to do this so

“you com goes into this 96 hour planning cycle that same day a lot of people will know this the”

Russians were part of the multi-national security force in in Bosnia and the day before that Intel trip to Peron Christina came in we had driven out and bumped into these guys they had like 10 BTRs parked on the side of a road near where their base was and it was their sector and everything we stopped it was kind of cool you know we was like this has got to be the only time US and Russian military guys have set you know set down talk to each other we shot the shit game memories they

gave us our food we talked for a while you know they were they were like normal guys well Russia obviously wanted that airfield too you know Serbia was a huge ally of Russia and they were red hot pissed off we were bomb in it anyway so they were looking for ways to

you know get their moxie back and do something poke you know the eagle instead of always having the

barepoked and so 18 of those BTRs loaded up with guys followed by 20 civilian vehicles they drove 400 miles to Prasina got in the gate shut the gate behind them and still to this day Russia controls that airfield in Prasina and the Russian general just put this out he's a civilian now he put it out a couple years ago someone interviewed him and he said well the first thing is we knew that NATO was a paper tiger they wouldn't do anything if we went there so we were convinced

to go there and then we knew all's we got to do is start out because the multi-national bureaucracy

that they have in Bosnia can never make a decision it's there'll still be talking to each other

between Germany the U.S. Britain and the other commands and I mean he called it like laughingly fucking embarrassing it is but you know again it's only you know it's apparently more what's that I said those fucking generals probably got awarded for it yeah yeah but again experience only

and you got to be audacious and you can't go through this hierarchical decision-making process in the real world it doesn't work and remember there was no real world Bosnia is kind of a you know it's not a war definitely and you know Columbia was in a war so we were not at war we weren't these generals were the same way they don't have a concept of operations of how things unfold for me and my guys we could see instantly just drive there you know 400 miles will be there in

six hours or eight hours seven hours and it's a simple thing no one's gonna do anything we'll take it but you know this demerine in this you know get the jaggin here we want to see if this is legal

it's never gonna work and again I I add that in because we're about to go to Afghanistan and

see all of these you know negative destructive C2 protocols just you know impede any potential for success on some of the biggest ops in Afghanistan man that that shit just it just

“in rage is me you know it's gonna get worse yeah I know Afghanistan and and that's what”

Ukraine is just to keep going back to Ukraine because we only talked 2021 so the New York times just didn't expose and it's a funny thing you know it was meant to be a propaganda piece to prop up the DOD and CIA guys who've been fighting the war will it turns out the Ukraine war was commanding and controlled by US generals from U.C. in we spotting along with bridge generals and I'm talking four star three star generals there micromanaging they're coming up with these attacks they're

coming up with these counter attacks applying this the number one negative lesson of all the way back to Bosnia but for sure of G-Watt which is what I'm describing and I'll describe again and that's

that decision making and problem solving by disconnected change the command never has and never will

be capable of making sense of the reality of the situation on the ground nor will it be capable of making sensible choices for what the guys on the ground should do next and the reason for that is not theoretical it's biologic the very nature of a disconnected hierarchy means it's senses are disconnected from the environment and as I mentioned earlier with you know mock

“the only way to prove scientific facts is with your senses the only way to make sense of any situation”

is with your senses a video anything else does not work it has to be sensory information that's how the brain works sights on smell taste and touch so these disconnected hierarchies that are you know have our on steroids now they're ten million dollar every one of these jacktocks is a massive space age you know conglomeration and where did this stem from when did this start to happen I think it was part of technology they they figured out they could do it and I think what entices these

generals is when you're running when you're telling people what to do off a VTC it's like being a

captain again like being they can be a company commander again and tell tactical shit but they never

understand that they're looking at a one-dimensional view of reality that they can't smell they can't feel the cold they can't feel the fear that a guy has because he heard some guys coming up behind him none of that is relative relevant to guys who are sitting in talks tactical operation centers with a wall of big screen TVs uh in you know air conditioned heated in the winter you know

“eat in there three four meals a day working out um and so I think it just became intoxicating to these”

generals to we did it and it stem from entitlement to they think they don't need to be on the battlefield now because they have a fucking star yeah what it where did this shit stem from no one ever self-corrected it and you know that's it's fucking crazy I mean yeah there's this man Jamie Sands we're heard of this guy hmm who is he oh he was he was he was uh with the hell I

same failed experience he was he was my CEO at two oh yeah just oh just he just got fucking shit can't finally but it's it's I mean just I just don't fucking get it yeah I don't know I would

“love to know when the start of happening was a world war two well I think I think the VTC I think the”

that's the common VTC yeah I have allowed these I mean I think it's always been you know you

see in the old movies of World War II the generals in a shell a moving you know a little icons across a board so it was probably some extent then but the chaos of World War II and the inability these send messages quickly uh precluded a lot of that micro management but now you've got you got a predator so you're seeing eye in the sky stuff you think you're you got better essay than the guy in the ground you don't have any idea what he can see you've got sack

I'm radio so you're hearing sound bites of people talking and sit reps of what's going on

“on the ground and they I think they just get caught up that they feel like they've got this”

this tactical omnipotence they can understand everything and then you know the very

nature of the fact you know their generals makes them realize well no one can come up you know with a better decision than me I'm going to use my wise general officer you know wisdom to to inflect this operation and they just can't resist it and I've seen it I remember coming in from Shahiko back to Bagram and sitting in one of the talks and an op was going on they were all watching a predator and they called in fast movers the fast mover dropped the bomb and it nailed these

people and you know I was not even convinced they were enemy definitely some of them were more civilians and the whole place started cheering yeah and me and my agency buddy we're standing

back and you know we we didn't even we never even gave a peep we didn't cheer we didn't say anything

because we were still looking on how the fuck do they know who that is that just got hit and it's this your it's just this enticement that hey I can't resist injecting myself into this battle and potentially you know hitting the hitting the mother load and capture and belawn or whatever and I remember a general at that same VTC said peep come over sit down next to me and put it head set on and guys started asking questions and I knew the answer to the question

and then somebody asked me something like well you know what you we do and you know I because of Shaiiko I knew what the response is to that the response is what you recommendation and get that guy talking get him unloading the tacit knowledge that he's accumulated on the target because most of it is tacit in other words he hasn't made it physical yet it's just inside their head but no one has given him a chance no one said hey blank slab tell me

what you do if you were in charge what what do what do I need to know right now and they just start talking and within that conversation you these pearls of wisdom these nuggets come out and you're like

“of course that's what we need to do and it's you know back to that principle always listen to the guy”

in the ground but you know the the best question any commander can ever make when he's trying to figure something out to a subordinate is to ask what's your recommendation and get them talking you know so you have some kind of accuracy to pivot off of and again I think that comes with experience most of these you know generals they don't care it's been we've been doing it now 25 years so if you just take if we take the end of Bosnia till today I guess it's 26 because we spotten

it's one reason that I believe Ukraine's been so unsuccessful not only we build an army that was supposed to match NATO which doesn't match Ukrainians and Ukrainian military training we commanded and controlled it with the same disconnected hierarchies that cannot make sense and they in their

well shows like this so you got to get the word out you get the the truth out and educate people and

I think at least we can chip away you know the right guys in the right place at the right time and who's heard you know the lessons and that's that's the other part you know said earlier experience only matters if you learn from it and I don't give a shit about proven I was right or someone else was

“right or someone was wrong that doesn't matter and that's why I try not to say names you know about”

people like why don't you name the guy I'm like because then you'll be thinking about that guy instead

of thinking about it's one of the perils of human nature and that that guy's out but there's

10 of him back in right now so it could happen to you again but it might surprise you because you only think that guy does that shit and so don't personalize it just talk about the foundational lessons and we have a responsibility to do that so they don't happen again and you know that's an example of one right there prevent these tragedies from happening again when did you show up in Afghanistan we were the you know November of 2001 so we you know the the initial raid on

“Mulomor's house was kind of the opening combat boots on the ground I was flying I was the”

LNO in the AC 130 during that so I flew above it and then from there you know again a piece of

history our command wanted to go home after that empty target raids said you know there's no more missions for us and I had had this powerpoint presentation that we built in 1998 when we were told by the Clinton administration come up with you know a way to get been on and I described to you we drove from Khanohar to Calst 400 miles so I showed him this template which was get guys in moved to a safe house sequestered them in the safe house and then you know wait for the right moment

move out set up an ambush grab them and get out but what we found out while we were doing that was that Southern Afghanistan's full of destroy late beds that are like pool tables so you can land see one 30s on them you can you know land see one 30 discord vehicles discord little birds and that became our plan let's fly into these dry rate late beds unload vehicles unload little birds let the little birds go hunting age sixes have a couple mhs but mostly ages and the vehicles go

“out we can take key roads block those roads interdict the roads and they we're gonna still blow it”

off but it turned out Frank's general Frank's was so pissed off he's like you know why do we pay you guys all this money you're not even you know doing anything you you raid two empty targets you know you didn't capture anybody I need you to do something so they sent that plan up to Frank's he's like approved and the next day we started the process halo and guys into the dry lake beds doing penitrometer checks to check the soil and you know the surface hardness and see one 30s were

landed like a night later unloading hours and little birds and that's when the hunting began that's when you know almost all the enemy fled kind of her after that and ended up you know when he's turn afghanistan in the shiai code valley where they hid oh shit yeah you were in an anaconda yeah yep I was a folk commander a lot of history there yeah it was mean it was the biggest battle at the time and it ended up being the biggest ongoing battle of the war

but you know it started the same way you know we described earlier General Frank's I was on the ground it was the Taliban had fled it was early January now and we had 45 I had 45 AFO guys under me and they were mostly unique guys I had some seals some sealed team six guys Air Force CCTV and some special mission

and you know I had given the mission guys we're gonna move out the frontier and start to

develop in the situation and Frank's heard he had read one of our sit reps and he's like now this is what we should be doing so he flew into biagram and he said tell blaver to come see me so I you know went to biagram and it was a it was a shit hole at the time there weren't even fence around it and I met him in a room but a lot of a hangar and he said look it's real simple I want you to get AFO go find the enemy and then kill or capture him I was like Roger that sir that's the best

“mission statement I think I've ever gotten in my life and it was it was a blank canvas and”

you know immediately got together with the guys I you know shared the guys here's our mission okay you know how do we how do we accomplish this Afghanistan's massive 645,000 acres and so you think you know 45 AFO guys wouldn't be able to do anything but you know that's where like logic and the process of elimination comes in you know but Bin Laden's only allies in Afghanistan were posh tunes so there's almost no way everyone else hated him all the other tribes so he's not

going to be hiding amongst tribes that hate him he's going to be hiding among tribes that like him the tribe which is posh tunes and that's really just the southern part of the country and then up

“the east side of the country so you've now neck the country down by about a third”

then if you start looking at you know what you have in that third there's vast tracks of desert

flat this can be the same places we landed on he ain't going to be out there two vulnerable there's you know all throughout massive mountains 20,000 footers he ain't going to be up at altitudes you know old the rumor at the time was that he had diabetes or a kidney failure but you know we just kind of necked it down and then we you know one of the big breaks that haven't for us is I had been there for the initial

invasions and then like I told you the our higher headquarters swapped us out they wanted to start rotating people we'd only been there like three or four weeks and so everyone was like why why do it now but you know we did it so Roger that so we all went home the seals came over and then the AFO concept I you know selected the lead AFO so I flew back and I came back a different route this time under alias and everything a lot of people hesitate when they're told they might need to

start taking something for their cholesterol that they're not comfortable taking long term people

“want to feel like they still have some say and how they take care of themselves that's why”

more Americans are turning to more gentle alternatives with ingredients they recognize things like co-cute 10 ginger pomegranate and omla one of those is dose for cholesterol dose for cholesterol is a clinically backed cholesterol support supplement the targets triglycerides LDL HDL and total cholesterol levels I'll say this too I use dose myself I've been consistent with it and it's just part of my daily routine now it's daily two ounce liquid shot tastes like mango no capsules no

powders and if it's right into your routine I love this stuff new customers can save 35% on your

first month subscription by going to dose daily dot co slash SRS or entering SRS a checkout

that's d-o-s-e-d-a-i-l-y dot c-o slash SRS for 35% off your first month subscription so um you know then that initial portion why I was home this Intel guy I worked with for many years had called me up and he's like hey Pete there's a uh there's a guy uh who used to be uh one of Bin Laden's lead trained button on the security detail work on his detail and he's in prison right now in the US and he's uh written a um like uh you know his own personal uh like little pamphlet on

how to find out k-d-n-a Afghanistan so it was like 20 pages long uh legal paper because you got any

tell you one thing and I go what he goes he's been in prison since 1998 and I said well you know

“if Warren Buffett wanted to give you a stock tip two years after he retired would you take his stock tip”

yeah he'd fucking take his stock tip so why would I turn down the guy who trained Bin Laden's security detail you know two and a half years earlier he still knows how they're trained their habits it's got to be something there so he sent it to me and this thing read like you know best selling novel every bullet and I was I highlighted the entire document and it up being highlighted tabed uh it was just full of solid logical operational information and the part that stood out most was

he uh was his recommendations for once we go over there so

before I tell you what those are I called the guy back and I go hey man can I talk to this guy because yeah sure he's in the you know he's in a prison up in a large city on the east coast it's a prison that sits right in the middle of a large city and I'm not going to say what that city is and I'm like okay what do I need to do he goes you just need to I'll take care of it on the

“army side but you need to call this number at the bureau prisons and get permission and I always point”

this out this was this period right after nine one one happened was a unique period in American history

because it's for a brief short period this is how you saw how the government should work

bureaucracy was not the watchwork we're all Americans we're all pulling together and I saw it right off the bat I called the guy I'm real prison say I'm people ever I explain what who I was what I'm doing you got any problem you see that he goes ready to see you tomorrow just give me a time we'll be ready same thing DOD was like yeah tell him to go we don't think he's gonna produce anything but let him go so you know we had this we broke down these bureaucratic barriers and you could

actually get things done so that next day I showed up at the bureau prisons at the prison itself show my ID they took me up into a room you know all the tables and chairs are connected to the floor can't be used his weapons sat down in a couple minutes later door slid to the side and in you know in chains in an orange jump suit came this terrorist Ali Mohammed and he was imprisoned for the canyon in Tanzanian embassy bombings but he had also

trained bin Laden's security detail so I had his thing and I told him I just want to talk to you and when I asked him point blank hey how do we find okay in Afghanistan he said ask the shepherds because they have to have lamb meat to survive ask the shopkeepers because Arabs eat different spices than the Afghans and the shopkeeper will tell you be able to tell you who bought them ask the money exchanges because all the Arabs al-Qaeda who come into

country come to Pakistan so they have Pakistani rupees instead of the currency of Afghan choice which was the american dollar and ask the taxi drivers because the Arabs don't have driver's licenses they don't know how to drive and so you know we took that we were like wow this is really good and you know I finished my meeting with them like a couple days later flew back to Afghanistan and and then we just started we knocked everything down we had a warlord tell us we asked a warlord

hey do you know where al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan and he told us somewhere in the mountains around guard des so we occupied a safe house outside guard des and we started you know a methodical searching and you know one day we were out it was a long day by eight hours driving around and

“I think the drivers the guy who saw him you know he just also looked over the right and I was”

looking at the same time and he yelled a fucking shepherd you know because we've been talking about these shepherds everyone knew the asked the shepherd after shopkeeper everyone was saying it's but it wasn't really yet you know we hadn't had a shopkeeper a shepherd or a taxi driver or a money exchanger so we see the shepherd in like yeah I think there were five of us in the vehicle like little

guys you know shit that picture you had up there at the sniper hide say yeah you know what

guys do during the downtime they laugh most of the time you laugh and so we got up to them with the war interpreter we asked them respectively if we could talk to them you said of course and we just said to them you know do you know where al Qaeda is hiding in Afghanistan and he just back in dust with his fingers turn around headed for this probably about 1500 foot hill and then just power strode up that thing like a you know Olympic gold medalist speed skater

“and behind him was us the warrior athletes you know no peer and I always remember I got that”

top and I'm like you can't send the knees next guys up for all you know second air and I look up and there he is at the edge of the of the ridge and you know I follow his arm down to his narrowly finger and he's at the end of it was these daunting palaces and he just said you know

two words shyy coat and you know they never used maps they always pointed to stuff or drew your

little sketch in the ground and so we could see the mountain range we still didn't know where the shyy coat valley was but we saw this mountain range and you know to give you an analogy it was kind of like looking at the grand t-tons from you know Jackson Hall still a big ass thing but at least

“you know we had it neck down and we used the same process the same way our brain makes sense”

this process of elimination it just starts chopping shit down to get to the relevant part that has a chance for whatever success you're trying to achieve and so we looked at these mountains and you could see you know he's not up at alpine level in the snow that would be too difficult we already knew that the Afghans weren't creatures of habit so they they needed an urban and biblical court they needed quick access to a small town or somewhere where there was water wells

and food to buy you know to feed to feed them so they weren't like to be a con look it's survive on grubs and stuff they needed that urban and biblical court so by the time we

“next the whole mountain range down it was not a big chunk it was pretty much the area they”

ended up being in and probably a small area off to the right of it and we decided okay we need to do environmental re-cons which is just go out walk through the hills check the route up to the area we think we want to go like is there a route and then you know understand the environment is there any source of water up there you know what's the terrain like can you can you hide up there is are these barren you know mountains are they too exposed is there any sign of life

civilian activity enemy activity up in these mountains then all the operational stuff how does the cold and altitude affect our our batteries our nickel cadmium batteries how about our weapons you know we learned we needed the desert you know silicon spray for our weapons to keep from clogging up and getting frozen up so a lot of little things the environmental re-cons proved but mostly they proved we can we can do what we can get in there and we came back and

started planning to go in with three teams I first had to request those three teams which was

incredibly contentious I got on a VTC with the higher level commander I was proud of what we done I thought this is an old brainer so I went in you know like a naive kid and when I finished my briefing you know all the intel we found it was like very clear that this was not going to go that way there general said what makes you think that you're theory that there's al Qaeda hiding in a pocket is correct when we've combed that area with satellite imagery and there is nothing in

there and I'm like well we've talked to people we've had a warlord tell us they're there we've had a shepherd there's activity we've we've talked to a couple of Afghan who lived in the villages and they confirmed they had seen these guys Arabs going in and out so we had a lot of circumstantial evidence enough certainly where this was not like us just guessing you know they're in that mountain

I got two teams from the unit I needed three and at the time my my acting star major I we didn't

“call him that but he was you know like my sidekick was a guy named Homer seal team guy he was my”

star major and he goes you know the seals are all sitting back at Bogger and cooped up dying to get the fuck out of there and I know for a fact that if you request a couple of teams from the commander he's almost assured they're going to give him to you I go what can you can we work it from both ants can he goes I already started they're already waiting for your request so I went back requested two teams they gave me one and that team was a team led by a guy named Mike Goodenbow

fantastic guy you know sniper wrecky mentality to the end to grie funny common sense guy warrior I knew him yeah great guy he was killed in action as a as a contractor after he retired

“but uh did you fuck an amazing guy yeah really uh and you know just to bring him up it”

takes up you got to personalize it now go to back to what that thing on Ukraine you know 1.25

million of those guys dead and you know goodies dead and uh you know there's a number of other

guys so when you know we had the debacle of the pull out from Afghanistan you know it like to meet dishonored all those guys we made all those sacrifices but anyway good he was out there so we were set we moved in one team used ATV's two teams we did vehicle drop off they walked in and within a couple days they were set in position and the battle began I'm gonna try to give you a short version of it so the battle began two days after the teams had surrounded it and it

opened with a thought because the 10th mountains plan was to land and the valley floor we told them you can't land and the valley floor and you shouldn't fly those helicopters because there's dishkas and if if you look in my book there's a picture of it that good he took with a cool picks camera of an enemy stand a right next to a dishka and he's standing right where the brigade

commanders of the hundred of the hundred first who is participating in this with 10th mountain was

gonna land and right on the OP we picked so you know another lesson is when you when you pick out something because it's good terrain don't be surprised to find that the enemy made the same choice expect every OP that you're going to to be occupied because it's good terrain and it was and so you know that fight started off it was going well for us they the guys remained uncompromised

“first time in modern history I think I've ever that's happened the three OP's they were just”

calling fire in nonstop you know liquidating targets five here five there 10 here 10 there it was shooting fish in a barrel but again things were not going well for the 10th mountain they were pinned

down they knew they couldn't get the second chalk in with the second wave of shunooks because the

first ones had taken so much fire so the brigade commander who's didn't have a radio a sack on bro came up the goodies position he was like can I use your radio to call back so it was our AFO satin at me called back and he said hey to the 10th mountain commander great guy general hog and buck said Acer I recommend we call off the OP bring everyone back we reset and come back in another day and general hog and buck said right at Roger that you know he listened to

the guy in the ground now it was our net so I couldn't you know hold back from adding some context so I got in the radio and I said look I just wanted before you make a decision I want you didn't know what we're seeing because it's a totally different battle than what what your guys are seeing we've prosecuted at the time I can't remember 37 targets or something we've bond damage

our guys have enough supplies to stay in position for another 48 hours before they need re-supply

and quite frankly this is the battlefield opportunity of a lifetime and if you guys leave I told

“the understand but we're staying and then hog and buck did something that you know I think is”

a model for all future generals he changed his mind he consulted with his two one stars who were there one of them was a general hero ex unit commander great guy and they said yeah I don't think he should pull out and he got back on a radio and he said okay we're not pulling out we're staying

we'll get the next chalk in tomorrow here's what I want you to do and you know he did the right

thing for the mission he did the right thing for the man and he did the right thing for himself by changing his mind and so you know I point that out because you know the future battle commanders never feel don't allow ego to stop you from changing your mind changing your mind is what you do when you

“got more information and the only reason to change your mind is because you have relevant information”

that makes you change it never hesitate to do that whatever you do don't talk yourself out of it because

you might embarrass yourself by saying you know I was wrong or I shouldn't have said that

when I did so you know they we stayed in we kept the fight going and that night you know the battle was like on everyone's computer everyone was being briefed on it the the predator feeds were on in the White House situation room sent calm was monitoring our sat calm 24/7 having meetings about you know what was happening and that night the phone rang and so all that adulation was coming to jay so sent calm was gone jay so a great job is unbelievable

“what you guys have done you know who knows if the president called but they knew that they were”

getting a lot of positive attention for this and so that night the the guy who was the jay sat commander at the time a one star air force general calls me up on the red phone and he said hey Pete great job on everything you guys really you know really done super but look you know we can't have you do this anymore it's too much I need to get you out looking for the next battlefield I need to get you out looking for where the other places the enemy are and what I want to do is pass this

mission off to the seals and you know sometimes when someone says something so I'll land issue of no response and that's the way I was I guess it's called dumb struck and I had like three fire fights going on at the time so I'm like sir can I get back to you you know and he's like yeah okay I hung up and my intel guy was like I fucking cannot believe this because essentially what he's doing is trying to change the command and control in the middle of a battle and it's an incredibly

nuanced battle the terrain the enemy what we'd done to prepare ourselves just being acclimated we were telling everyone you need four days here minimum to acclimate guard as a 7800 feet the battlefield was between 8500 and 11000 so serious altitude yeah so I got back on that night and I go sir you know this this makes no sense we're fine the teams are fine they got another 48 hours I'm not I'm fine I'm not red line in it we can keep commanding and controlling this thing and

trying to trying to pass it off to people who have not been immersed in all the things we've done in all the coordination is a formula for disaster and he ended the conversation with Pete I'm sending the seals down tonight put him in bite tomorrow night and that's an order holy fucking shit yep and so he sent that you know I went went to get a couple hours of sleep me and my intel guy were trading off

when I woke up you know the song was just coming up and I noticed you know a couple cars new

and I said you know what are you doing man and why didn't you tell us you were coming

“because they're really lucky they didn't get shocked by the Afghan guards they shot someone”

two days earlier a civilian who just drove up without stopping at the sign said oh because General Tbilon told us to come down and you know he said you were you were all good with that I'm like oh man so one of the guys with them was a guy named Britslavinsky and I knew him from Bosnia he he had done a tour same time I did I'd ridden in a car with them for like 20 hours so you know an A and I a lot respect for him and we had a good collegial relationship

my said slap can I talk to you outside and he's like yeah sure said slap you're a sniper

wrecky guy you know this makes no sense putting you in tonight you haven't even acclimated yet

“you guys haven't talked to the Afghans you haven't talked to the guys who already went in”

and did the environmental recons you haven't reconfigured your kit you know we've got all this these spray paint cans so you can get the model look of the mountains the lava rock and everything else you know your weapons you guys need to test fire your weapons your nods everything frequencies and he's like I hear you I hear you peat but I already fought this back at Bagram and they

wouldn't listen me there and they're not listening to me now I I've been told it's an order

and you know we have to obey orders and then you said I know you guys don't have to but we do it and that's a joke he doesn't we do have to obey orders but like you said earlier in a unit based on common sense one of the hallmarks is freedom of speech in the unit you tell a guy to do something outlandish and he's going to go tell me the logic of why why does that make sense and you're going to debate it and the irony of of having that culture is leaders end up

saving themselves more often than not from doing really stupid shit because they're saying it out loud they're they're brainstorming you know with other human instead of just in their head bouncing up the walls of their head so you know and I understood that like you know the the culture at the time was you know you will bathe your your officers and you don't ask questions and you know slab had to do it so and I was given an order so we let them plan they came up with a

concept to go up to talk or guard and the original LZ was called LZ one it was to the east of talk or guard on the flatland it was not on the mountain and we chose it because one of our other teams due the team could see that HLZ so at least we'd be able to cover it by visual visual Overwatch and by fire if needed so the mission was on for that night in helicopters

“and I also told the general that we had a no helicopter policy so but the only way that”

we were going to get in was by helicopters because to get them in tonight that's the only way you can't drive them and have them walk and expect that they're going to make it tonight so you know now we had an air assault to bring them in and that night we me my agency counterpart my special forces counterpart all move forward with the convoy the Afghans we were going to reinsert the Afghans that night the HLZ to pick up make of three zero slabs team flew in and landed at guard

does and immediately you know call back and said we have engine problems so it was darkness so probably eight o'clock at night local engine problems going to be an hour they're at nine now if things go right and the problem was slabs backwards calculation of the time it would take to get up that mountain in nightfall was about thirty to forty five minutes away from being you know past so you know forty five minutes they still couldn't get the aircraft right but during that time

the seal troupe commander who was a major uh one up to the pilot and he said hey what do you

and he said it is I've seen an imagery I have the imagery so I think he went in got the imagery

showed the pilot I think the pilot was Al Mack think you've had him on um and uh and it was yeah and so Al's like you know he can land a freaking Chinook on a nuts ass if you wanted to so he's like yeah we can make it up there thinking you know this is all good well slab had already recommended we roll twenty four hours because it's now like an hour and a half and he's passed his minimum on a time to make it up to the top in darkness and and so slabs said no my recommendation

is roll twenty four well the two commander walked away from slab got on the blue sat call back to his headquarters said hey here's the deal we got engine problems slab wants to roll

“what do you want me to do and they were like Charlie Mike you need to you need to get on that mountain”

and so he went back he was completely you know this is what I meant by a troop commander you don't know anything yet but you're full of women bigger you know I want to get in combat I want to be in the greatest firefight and I think a lot of that was operating with this guy and uh he went back to Al Mack said the missions ago let's do it and you know slab same thing he told slab you're going up on a mountain and so now things are just getting worse the delays

keep coming I'm forward but I'm full sweet a com so I had sat down I had UHF VHF

I had a predator downlink but they never called me they never

“what and whether it was headquarters or or anyone else never called me and said hey”

and the troop commander should have called me the last thing I said to him anything happens call me and we'll talk it out and he should have told me because I would have immediately shit canned it and said we don't need to go up there there's no we control the valley not them there's movement on that hilltop but they're not shooting any weapons so when we have time we'll go up there and the tenth mountain was halfway up the mountain anyway so I kind of figured they'd end up

doing the top of the mountain clearing um but so slab you know finally the helicopter goes they

hop in they fly up to Tucker Gar before they reach there someone told me see one 30 to check it out he may see one 30 came came back it said negative activity on the mountain turns out it was spider webbed with pad this there was a donkey tied to a tree a fire up there somehow they didn't see any of that and slab goes flying in and you know the the way this mountain is is the only place to land the peaks up here the only place to lands right here it's 50 feet or five

stories below so the place where the where the donkey was there was also a bunker you know a hardened bunker so they here comes the Chinook brake flare flaring it's whole belly exposed RPK machine gunfire RPGs they knocked the shit out of that somehow almak credible you know example of air manship studies the thing but while that was happening uh Neil Roberts fell off the back of the helicopter tumble down under the undo uh Tucker Gar and uh your crap went over the side

did a controlled crash landing on the belly floor and you know slab got out of that thing immediately called me online a site radio gave me a sit rep and said you know I said same thing to him what you recommendation said I got to go back up there I got to go up and either rescue him or recover his body it's like Roger that um and so we began planning to reinsert those guys up on top of the

“month shit man yeah we're not even to Tucker Gar yet and that's that's what's coming next and that's”

the real tragedy but you know it's the same thing it's these you'll hear this disconnected chain of command trying to make decisions and solve problems and then injecting

everything know what the right thing to do are you know nothing more than like gnomes who have to

“obey these mindless orders from the Starship and uh that's why say it's the main lesson of of uh”

g-watt and you know I just saw something that they're looking to spend a couple billion dollars on this new C2 thing that as AI and you know all the screens and I want to tell Hagset do not do that do not invest the money you need to go back to the old way you need to go back to the the whole goal

of the military should be reorganized so the command and control is always at the lowest level possible

we don't you know you can still have talks and jokes because they're good for things like helicopter and fixed wing aircraft e-confliction they're good for beans and bullets stuff logistics but we

“should call talks the support talk you know the talks job is to support the guys on the ground whatever”

they need not tell them what to do and only talk to them you know when they're not watching a BTC with another general officer in it man let's take a break I've got to tell you

this is one of those things I didn't realize how much I needed until I actually started using it

every device I got needs a different chord phone headphones watch it's a mess especially when you're traveling but ridge they fixed it they're five and one travel power bank has everything built in so you're not carrying a bunch of cables around anymore you've got magsafe wireless charging apple watch charger lightning USB-C all in one device I've been using it and it just simplifies everything I'm not digging through a bag or fighting for outlets anymore it's got 20 watts of power charges your phone

fast and with 10,000 milliamp hours you're getting multiple full charges out of it and like everything ridge makes it's solid it's built to last and it actually looks pretty good too not like those cheap airport chargers one thing to pack five ways to power you can find ridges power bank it best by or our listeners can get 10% off it ridge dot com by using code srs check out just head to ridge dot com and use code srs and that's it you're all set after you purchase the last where you heard about them

please be kind supporter show and just tell them we sent you all right Pete we're back from the break and it's about to get heavier yeah so you know we picked up Neil Roberts fell out of the hello crash landed the hello right in the middle of the show he code valley slab gets out immediately calls me he's me sit rep what happened and in that sit rep it's I'm going back up so you know

right off the bat he never no one was telling him to go up you know no one had to control or convince him

“he was going back up well that helo is not airworthy so another helo comes to pick them up and remember”

what's happened in here back to context you know slabs I'll go now to go back and pick him up right so the context of moment matters uh so the helo picks him up takes him right to guard as it's only a minute and a half two minute flight where we're uh the guard is safe houses exactly seven kilometers from the center of the valley so touch his down at guard does to wait for another helo an airworthy helo to take them back up so I'm I'm at the base of Tucker Garra so to speak you know the the

base in about a half mile away so I can see Tucker Garra from where I'm standing I have line a site I'm talking you know I can talk to the top of the mountain with line a site no one's up there right now but the AC 130 is narrating what he sees and unfortunately you know when we look at the tapes there were a lot of missed opportunities there the enemies just you know non-challantly walk

were taking his equipment one of the guys uh was later gets killed guy named Redbeard we called Redbeard

“is where Neil's cortex pants lay in there dead with his hands on so you know they're they're”

tapping into this banana material but we're not you know there's no high resolution feedback and not you know I don't even have a predator video I'm walking around um you know in the shyy code valley so slab gets back to guard as the other aircraft picks him up now all these talks pogrom which is 50 miles away mesero which is a thousand miles away in a time zone our going be high you know this is we got a crash you know we've got a man miss him we're gonna launch a

rescue operation and you can hear they're they're trying to get inject themselves and remember

“all the accolades it come the night before you know and everyone's watching so I think”

you know and this was described to me by a staff officer they were conscious that this thing they just got complimented for and then took over immediately went to shit now little that I know they were taking it over because uh that was about to start uh my deputy whose name is Jimmy uh another unit operator I had put him in the 10th mountain top right in the beginning so that we'd have an LNO there all our radios they could hear our radios they knew everything we were reporting

and Jimmy did an amazing job at that now in totality he's probably got the best essay of anybody

because there's a predator down down link he's got that he's got the AC both AC 130's on radio they're orbiting around he's got AFO sat he's got purple sat he's here knows where the 10th mountain guys are so Jimmy gets on a radio and uh he goes Roger sit rep follows the enemy is surrounding Roberts right now punching up if we hit him right now at the AC we should we should be able to either dispersome or kill some of them he was making a recommendation the Air Force one star

told you about gets on a radio goes stop getting all emotional on a radio why don't you just get off the radio kick some off the net fucking kidding me though and uh and little do we know at the time this was you know this was this was like you know what's that you know that fuckers name yeah general to bone it's uh it's like a fucking piece of shit yeah I mean it gets it's gonna even give or talk to these guys live with themselves I don't know yeah so Jimmy's off and unbeknownst to me

right after he did that he gets on what's called the purple sat j-sox sat so I'm I'm AFO sat the blue sat is the seal sat everyone's got their own seal every their own seal their own set come freak for command purposes but for this mission it's AFO sat AFO is running this battlefield but they get on the radio and unbeknownst to me they say switch all stations to purple sat without telling us so now it's quiet I'm like wow well at least they exercise in some you know a radio discipline

and I'm not they're we're not hearing anything what's going on what we now know because uh we've got the tapes the tapes from the radio so they switch the sat frequency and this they put so he's the commander and this is another point the guy they put on is a major he's a field artillery

major he's never come in and controlled anything before much less a complex multi unit infantry battle

“because that's what this is now he calls special ops but we're battling like infantrymen on a mountain”

and down in the valley and using fire support uh to reach out and touch the enemy puts this guy on and this guy is confused he doesn't even know he begins injecting himself in a battle he doesn't even know that Roberts fell off on top of Tucker Garer he thinks he fell off

mortar puttune so he immediately begins obsessing telling the AC 130's grid you know 1 2 3 4 5 6

“I want you you're cleared hot I want you to waste them and the AC luckily the lead AC pilot”

heroically he's he knows he knows Roberts fell on the ridge he knows that grid he's talking about is in the valley it's not where Roberts is on top of Tucker Garer and they're like five kilometers away from each other they're not right next to each other so he continues talking these guys in trying to get them to open up this is a 101st mortar puttune and luckily he gives the approval of fire in the AC 130 you hear the pilots say negative negative we're not you know we're not

going to do that do not fire on them then he straightens him out at the same time the guy is telling

everybody everything flying okay we're going to salt this mountain we're preparing for an assault

“how many shooters you got on board first thing he calls as an HH60 which is a meta-vac”

he low how many shooters you got on board it's a female oh my pilot she's a good pilot scored away none really how many guys got guns we all got guns okay you're all shooters now holy shit I'm out of that key blocking kid no and he's saying assault and he's he ended up saying it I counted 15 times on the three tapes and major major point here

in infantry and special ops words matter ever especially words that describe offensive tasks

assault is what you do when you have enough people enough firepower against a position you can overwhelm this is a bunker five stories above them through the snow they've got nobody

“slabs team is not assaulters they're sniper reconnaissance guys they got SR 25s I believe he had”

plastic helmets on there too they have no Kevlar on they're kidded light like snipers they should be yeah fucking sniper but he's telling him assault and he's telling everybody's salt slabs aircraft lifts off so their aircraft has purple sat Chapman who is a CCTV you know no I don't know exactly enough ass slab if he knew what he was doing and he said no I don't but I believe he was plugged in to the inner calm on the aircraft

and if you're on the inner calm you can hear the comms especially the purple sat so Chapman who's a new guy and he's an air force CCTV is hearing this assault assault assault which is you know beyond belief it's the last thing the plan that we made it's slab ram by me was they fly us up we're not gonna land in the same spot there's a deflate position up there we're gonna move to the deflate contact the AC 130 and then do recon by fire and begin picking off targets

from our deflate it was a beautiful spot surrounded by rocks and that was the plan but now I'm no longer there's no one to talk to because I can't talk to slabies in the aircraft I could have talked to the 47's but they'd switch freaks so I'm thinking wow why why is nobody talking anymore you know there must be something going on might must be internal calms and they must be stuck at guard as so I should mention before they left I got a radio

check from guard as it was make of three zero Charlie which is John Chapman the Charlie is the suffix for RTO he he's a CCTV but he was there RTO and CCTV and so you know he told me we're loading up guard as take off ETA 10 minutes or some as Roger that so off they go instead of even going right from guard as we're now we're not like an hour from when slab initially said that instead of going back to the mountain and landing off set the the guy they put in charge

that major who's a thousand miles away realizes he made this mistake and he was telling the AC to waste a mortar friendly mortar puttune he yeah he's a whoa whoa whoa we got to get things straight tell razor zero four I think it was to go into an air loiter so instead of going

the thump thump of rotor wings of a 47 are like they're in your backyard from a nautical mile in the mountains so the guys on top of the mountain the enemies like they're over there they're doing

“something over there they sit in that air loiter for I think I think it was 40 minutes”

and then he gives him the go ahead okay send him in and does one final assault god did so if you look at the video the video that's on the internet and and the more videos will be coming out the actual videos unedited that show the full sequence of events and when you see them everything becomes clear about what happened uh on the video you watch the 47 lands in the exact

same place it tried to land the first time so all this gibberish on the radio he's doing he never

tells them and oh yeah remember do not land on the same spot but they do they land on the same spot luckily the the enemy decided to just wait and shoot once they aircraft took back off to try to knock it down again so a discord just slabs team make go three zero and you can watch on the video and it's on the internet right now you'll watch four guys run as planned to the deflate position and one guy alone be lines it for the bunker when I first saw that I didn't know

what happened so after everything happened I'm jumping forward a little the two days after it happened I flew back the bottom to watch I wanted to see the tapes that's when I first watched the AC 130 and the predator videos when I see this guy get out of the heel and go right to the bunker I'm like I thought it was slab and if it wasn't slab I thought I you know I didn't know even though did that you know I didn't even wasn't even thinking he's got a CCTV with him or anything I'm like

“what are you doing because one guy is going right for the bunker well what I believe is that”

you know a Chapman is a junior guy he heard over and over I told you 15 times we're gonna salt this is an assault so he gets off that heel he's new remember this is 2000 and two there hasn't been a war so everybody is a new guy in actuality we've been out there at least a little while we've been sneaking around so we're a little more you know attuned to things but everybody else is new so

all the little things that became second nature like getting off a heel and making sure you never

stray from the guy in front of you and you know as an RTO you just follow your leader and if that's a team leader you follow that team leader that radio is your weapon and it's the most effective weapon

“up there but I believe he was confused it's cold it's cold it's dark snow's blowing you've got”

enough many of heels and you know how easy it is to be just temporarily disoriented but if you've also been listening to this cacophonic you know gibberish and this assault assault assault he's fucking thinking the plan changed we're assaulting the bunker and off he goes and you know I point this out and I mean it he's a new guy but this is kind of a heroic thing he's charging a machine gun nest you know he's he believes his mission now is changed and he's charging a machine gun

nest well slab obviously takes a headcount notice he's missing sees they can see him up ahead he's heading for the bunker he yelled to chappy chappy what are you doing and I can't remember exactly what chappy said it was something like I don't know or I'm not sure and right when he said it the bunker opened up on all of them fire in blindly they don't have night vision they don't have sights so you know the one thing they these guys had going for him was they had night vision

and the the ooze backs who were up there did not so so chappy heads up slab goes right after him

and you watch in the tape and it's you know the guy in the tapes has seen the team leader never

catches up with them well duh because he's going up five stories through a foot and half a snow you're not going to catch a guy who's ahead of you up going up five stories in a foot and half a snow and

bunker two it's not a bunker it's a stove it's just a cutout into the ground surrounded by rocks

“in the video they say he first clears bunker two it's not a bunker there's no one in it there's”

no you can see the heat signatures of everybody up there you can see the donkey still alive up there so slab follows up chappy goes down right you know right when slab gets there and they're under withering fires slab brings the rest of his team around because they followed up to and start trying to position them they're on a rock the big boulder a couple of guys they're spread out like they should be four guys two two and another guy gets hit another one of slab's

guys gets hit he's on top of the boulder rolls down hitting the legs so now slab's got one dead one nine ambulatory injured and he said and they're under crossfire from three directions behind them the side of them and in front of them the machine gun nest so slab makes a decision okay we got to go over let's go over to side we need we need to get out of this kill zone right decision again

second guess by a lot of people he gets over as they're going over the side one more guy gets hit so

now he's got two guys injured one guy dead he's actually got two guys dead because Roberts is dead too and you know he's got him in one other guy who are ambulatory they go over the side this is twenty twenty four minutes after they landed so from the minute they landed the AC130 I had briefed the AC130 I'm talking to him line of sight now so he doesn't know I'm not on the purple sat the ACs don't know that but I'm talking on the line of sight fires in that and so I told the

“AC okay here's what you need to do you need to cover these guys movement when they get out of the”

helicopter any enemy you see up in the bunker area you're cleared hot to fire on them any movement you see you're cleared hot to fire on them he said Roger that so when they got out of the aircraft within one minute the AC130 is calling make a three zero make a three zero this is grim 33 and grim 32 over no answer no answer so I get on they they call back to me you know ultra zero one this is grim no answer from make a are we cleared hot to fire and I go I can't clear you hot now I it only

slab can clear you hot I can't see the top of the mountain so I can't do that I don't know where anyone was good thing because you know if Chappy was even he was not an ambulatory might have still been alive but those slabs team had made it all the way down and the ACs usually very

inaccurate and it's first rounds so I tried I did what you're supposed to do you don't want to

clog the net by nonstop make a three zero ultra zero on over so I go to every 45 seconds to a minute

“make a three zero ultra zero one over it turned out remember I told you they demanded they get put”

in that night so slabs team had less than 24 hours to prep probably 18 hours for one of the most complex deadly missions you could ever send guys on my guys had two weeks and 10 days of immersion and during that immersion you do stuff like okay what freaks are we all on you're all on your internal comms which they were on but unless you've been in combat you don't everybody doesn't have the fires freak loaded or unless a fires guy comes around and loads it right that's just even

the soldiers the fire guys comes around before goes there you got the fire support freak no load me up so none of them had that slab had it but he's on his internal comms he's not even though the Empire can monitor both he's doing what he should do talking to his team trying to you know keep him alive but for 24 minutes I called every 45 seconds to a minute no answer finally at 24 when slab makes it over the side he switches freak he knows I got to get the AC and boom now we're talking

to you know my initial assessment the reason I never thought that

chapy lived was because of that right there not only did I watch the videos and never see a body move but I called for 24 minutes and no one answered he's the CCT I know his radio worked

radio fucking calling in hell on earth on top of himself and from everything I know he was that kind of guy he would have done that but he didn't have it he he wasn't on that freaky there so I don't know

“I don't you know I believe he was killed right off the bat slab begins I you know I tell”

slab slab you got to control the AC just go ahead and have at it you know where everyone's at I don't I can't see it so they open up the AC like I said it's 105 fire it's incredibly inaccurate they bomb the shit out of it when you watch the full tape you'll see this is hell on earth they probably fired their basic load which has got to be 25 to 50 rounds of 105 on top of that mountain why they're doing it you look up at this tiny rock crop crop rock outcropping up on

this finger that leads down to the bunkers and there's two guys just fucking huddled up sitting there you know showing you what kind of warriors that are up there these are mountain fighters man and you know we have pictures of them because from the sensitive side exploitation these are fucking hard core mountain fighters and sure enough they hang out the AC 130 ceases fire it's you know they're they're about out of ammo but then they fly off station and this enemy

somehow knew that and you watch this is I told you I asked when I saw the the edited tape where's the enemy where's that enemy that comes I empty an individual movement technique across the snow plane and that's when you know it's like I forget it you don't want to watch it

“and he shut it down so I it's not on there but that's what kept me”

skeptical and want to find out more information sure enough this is Redbeard the first guy of the two

comes down up down up down up down well trained fighter they're confused I believe he thinks slabs team has taken over the bunker and but here he comes he's coming back to get the bunker again so again telling you what kind of guy this is he's I empty in back to assault that bunker but the first place he goes to and he the whole way he knows that's mountain he's got Roberts pants on his Gore-Tex pants on he knows this mountain because

when you track where he went he went into a perfect defiliate position where the bunker could not shoot you know it's below that five story thing you can't

“de-elevate your weapon to shoot at that angle the first thing he does is go up to that stove”

where chappy was hit I empty's right up to it sits there for 30 45 seconds probably checked saw that John was dead I empty's right back down his position this ought to deflate goes down all the way around flanks the bunker gets up you watch his AK you watch the report on the predator video he begins firing at the bunker then the fire comes out of the bunker fire both RPK machine gun and RPG Redbeard goes down

and how do we know all that about Redbeard because where he goes down in that video tape is exactly where my guys found him when they came across him on the sensitive side

explication we took pictures we marked the body marked the position never never moved from

that position now the other enemy was hiding up there starts IMT and down he two comes down all the way to where chappy ended up but he doesn't leave he stays there and what's going on in the background again unbeknownst to me I'm down there it's starting to get a little bit light not not light enough where you can see anything but you can see the horizon and behind talker guard talker guards eleven thousand behind it is another mountain to the

east it's like twelve twelve five so sunrise and BMNT are even later for the top of talker guard

you think mountaintop it's going to get sun first but it's not it's occluded by this other

mountain range to the east of it and so the sun's rising also in the AC says hey we've been ordered off station I said negative you cannot go off station he says yes we're going off station and so I got another radio to tab Jimmy check it out see if he could find out what the order was

Ranger QRF the Ranger QRF who's that's your job QRF so you wait around and then during fire

“fights you get ready they ran into them they said we need to get the QRF forward right now the”

QRF commander captain goes what's the mission where we going there's no time just getting the helicopter we'll tell you when you get to guard as well the helicopter they get in has no sat

calm so these Rangers from first battalion getting this helicopter to come on a mission they

know nothing about they don't even know Roberts fell out of the helicopter so their flying forward to guard as they pause in guard as and then I hear this this radio transmissions on the line of sights say uh tell the AC they need to stay until the QRF gets here and I get on the radio and I go QRF what what's going on with the QRF the QRF is inbound they're like five minutes out now I hear the Wopwop eroters here they come then they so they're going in on short final the AC is

pulling off say and I've been ordered off I tell the AC 130 and this is a quote I say if you you are I am ultra zero one on the ground force commander I am ordering you to stay on station if you leave station right now they're going to blow that helicopter out of the sky when we watch the tapes later that aircraft was already on its way back when that when that tapes play and they're already on their way back so they're gone now here comes here comes the QRF

“this is either 51 or an hour plus after slab had landed slab was told in the beginning remember”

I told you when you said I'm going up he was told on the radio in the helicopter the QRF will be right behind you so slabs getting out of that helicopter when he got out and you know a Chapman headed up slabs thinking well we got QRF right behind us they're not they're an hour out

still which again he never would have executed this mission slab would have called the thing off

with the helicopter before it ever landed but he didn't know that either he's not no one's talking to him either so here comes the QRF and you know I wish I had my pictures here I'd show you the QRF lands in the exact same place yeah so now we're on our third helicopter landing in the exact same place five stories up from where it's gonna land is an RPK machine gun it's already cited in on two other helicopters this one comes in nails it with RPG nails it with RPK shreds

“the helicopter I believe three guys are killed before they ever get off that helicopter”

no one on the QRF helicopter still knows Roberts fell out of a helicopter there seals up there there's enemy and they of course they don't know don't land on the same spot the second QRF helicopter somehow got word it lands over on the other side the mountain down a bit these guys going to Superman mode power up that mountain took well took it took them about an hour but it was an

incredible feat by those Rangers but they tore up the rest of the Rangers you know the guys

continue to get hit they were pinned down again three directions slabs now you know calling trying to figure out what's going I'm trying to figure out I'm trying to figure out who's up on top of that mountain something else that happened that same troop commander who overroads slab for sliding it 24 hours and told him to go hop down the second QRF aircraft at Bagram didn't tell anybody didn't tell me he's leaving guard as he was you know like the acting

oh I see you've guard as gets off the Ranger helicopter goes you guys do your thing I'm going off goes off on his own to find Mako and find some and he doesn't have radios but he's got a cell phone so he makes cell phone connectivity back the damn neck damn neck is talking to the blue talk I still don't even know this guy's on the mountain so now things are compounding even worse

up there and no one knows it doesn't make sense in these in this period after the Rangers arrived

“up the second half the QRF Jason coming in was his heroic JCU he's a he's a air force medic”

he's treating the pilots both pilots have been shot got AB bags going a guy from behind them sneaks up shoots him got shots him so now we're on golden hour you know we got a gut shot guy we got to get him off in one hour so you know I got to get this this count correct so they can

allow this medevac helicopter to fly in I'm telling him bring it in finally get the count correct

because someone comes up someone says hey the troop commanders up there the blue troop commander I'm like fuck so we added him the count now works and I'm talking to Jason and I'm saying I need that medevac now we're 20 minutes into the golden hour he's got 40 minutes to live I need him now

“yeah we've talked it over we can't send another helicopter up there we've already lost two”

and it's the risk is not worth it and I'm like fuck I told them again I need that helicopter you

need to send it I'm you I'm giving you my word the top of the mountains secure they got some

other report that a mortar had been fired or whatnot and there was still enemy but it was worth bringing a blackhawk in you know with other monogies we had up there to provide fire support we could have built a wall of fire I still would have brought him in it was worth saving a guy's life at this point but the you know the request was denied and Jason bled out up on the mountain so we we weren't allowed to medevac him everything went quiet the the bunker I should add

was still firing away there were at least one maybe two guys in there on that RPK they have plenty ammo they held the Rangers the Rangers could not assault and take it they were pinned down there and you know there's no there's no superpowers when it comes to frontal assault on a machine gun as nothing you can do so they were they brought F-15's in the F-15's were missing and I'm like one of my OP said hey Panther did they know the predator has a hellfire on it and I'm like I thought

they did but great you know great point and I called the CCT up there and I said hey use the predator hellfire it's one shot one kill and sure enough he used the predator hellfire

“one hellfire blew up the bunker killed the guy the mount was secure and that was midday I think”

twelve or one o'clock and they wouldn't allow he low in there the rest of the day we had to wait for night finally he those were set forward and evacuated all the guys off the mountain so they all left J-Sock went back to not commanding controlling we stayed finished the battle up I think four more days and then we headed out for the northwest frontier province in Pakistan but you know again everything from the injection the forced injection of a team that doesn't

even want to go in not giving them sufficient time because you don't understand how critical time is that

we don't pull shit out of our asses in combat we prep ourselves to address every possible contingency especially on top of an 11,000 foot mountain because all you got is what you got so it's in you know PhD combat packing list but they didn't have time to change their freaks then change in the radio net taken command over without telling the ground force commander or even consulting you know tell me hey we got this nothing like that then put in the aircraft telling the AC 130's the wrong

target putting the aircraft in an air loiter delaying that beyond comprehension sending it in not telling it to land offset or in a different spot from where the other helicopters landed this is the prima facie this is 2002 and i'll just say the lesson that would go on to haunt armulitary throw g-watt and still haunts it today and is now been exported to Ukraine and that is

sense because the only way to make sense is with your senses and a disconnected chain of command by very definition cannot make sense because their senses are disconnected from the environment so

you know never again we've got to shit can this whole concept that a battle can be commanded remotely

from a multi million dollar top it does not work it's a fucking ego problem it is an ego problem how the fuck do they live with themselves i don't know and there's a documentary about to

“come out about the cipher yeah there is and well there's a movie too uh Ron Howard i believe is”

making a movie about the version that you know from the edited video that slab left the guy and you know i've said to people slabs my friend not like we hang out i haven't talked to them in a year or something and you know a friend like anyone you go to combat in is your friend and slab is my friend i knew him in Bosnia i wrote around in a car and him he's if you know

slab you know he would never leave someone on a mountain who he had any doubt was not dead

and to character assassinate him like they did to get this other narrative forward just doesn't make any sense i don't know anything about that yeah well you find it out that's

“what the whole that's what the whole documentary is the documentary is proof that”

John Chapman was killed uh by that first volley which even the autopsy backed up it was terminal terminal uh injuries from the first rounds but in order to get the you know he got up and cleaned out the bunkers himself you had to include that slab left him up there and that became the

narrative and you know i'll say this slab wouldn't mind but he he went through you know

it caused physical harm to him to say that and there's a hard enough balance in your the whole PTSD thing when you get out especially with all the shitty went through but when you've been you know falsely accused of some it makes it even worse so yeah there's a movie and then the documentary which is being made which is in my opinion a you know a very productive piece of history because they go into great detail they interviewed all the ranchers they interviewed all the helicopter

pilots they interviewed AFO they interviewed General Hagenbach the 10th mountain commander they interviewed seals they interviewed other Air Force CCTV it's really a comprehensive you know peace i haven't seen any of it i know what they're doing but a lot of that info is what needs to be put out they've reached out before have they they've reached out before to come on here yeah they'd probably be probably be a good guest and bring some of the clips heat went back to Tokuragar got permission from

the Taliban and some unbelievable footage they went back and filmed the battlefield geography again and the geometry you know what i was talking about the five stories the areas that are indefinitely and and those that aren't so you know my thing Sean i'm not i'm not getting involved in the the bickering a lot of its inner service because it started in 2015 when the secretaries of all the services put out a memo and it said all services are directed to review review all silver

stars in above to see if any of them qualify for metal of honor so all the services did that the Air Force had not had a metal of honor yet in afghanistan and they this is 2015 and so they put you know that's where the that's where the john got put in for the metal of honor the navy counter did and put slab in for a metal of honor and then it began this inner service bickering i know nothing about that i what no one called me i remember hearing about it i'm like

“they're changing their war i wrote slabs initial reward i think there's a rag that says you can't”

change it unless you consult with you know the prior commander but you know the seals the seals have a history of the shit yeah the seals have a history of the shit well the it both sides did it neither side you know called so i would have just told them i don't have a

you know i'm i think they were they were pretty accurate and ended up being accurate

“but you know the battle so the battle still today online and everything is these narratives and”

someone asked me to address you know the Air Force guys criticism that i was supporting this other narrative and i'm like it's i'm not supporting anybody i'm the ground force commander john Chapman and bristle vinsky were my guys i still consider on my guys and my only responsibility once that battle ended was to make sure that the lessons that were learned from that battle are shared

and passed on to current and future warriors so the same thing never happens to them and that's all

i give a shit about i give a shit about accuracy i don't care about either sides parochialism i don't have a dog and a fight i don't have a favorite and i'm not going to get involved in a debate with any of them about what they think they got involved in this in 2015 often edited video i've been involved in it since 2002 off real world experience and i'm the only guy who's seen every video from start to finish so you know to me it's about learning and the fact it's turned into

this narrative battle about you know what happened after john got shot is also letting off these people you very elegantly directed some you know emotional intelligence toward uh you know they're the ones the lesson is the disconnected chain of command caused this entire thing this op was going you know as smooth as a massive battle op could ever go especially when you're talking about three uh sniper wrecky teams infilling over 11,000 foot peaks amongst a thousand enemy

and never being compromised but what happened on top of a guard happened and we got to learn from it

good bad and indifferent you know uh all the little things every maybe some guy in the future will go hey do i got my fires freak on my radio another guy in our TO go okay when i get up to self got their fall to team leader fall to team leader fall to team leader don't ever even if you're by yourself just take a knee and hold what you got you're not an assaulter you don't go assaulting something unless you're with the assaulters and preferably behind them but the biggest lesson of all

is that this C2 system is broke hard and this was the first major incident uh you know if we

talk about patelman it's the same thing happened to patelman in his platoon uh you know i'll explain

that one but it's the exact same thing they were their deaths was the responsibility of this disconnected chain a command micro managing uh and ignoring when they needed it ignoring the guys

“on the ground uh and again same thing we need to learn that and if we don't change it that's why i'm”

so big on headset understanding this we're gonna get our asses kicked the next time we get into a real battle something a real war like the Ukraine war we're gonna get our asses kicked because i and it it's also tragic because the real strength of the american military is bottom up command and control it's letting guys adapt and improvise on the battlefield communicate themselves they know what to do but when you take all that away from them uh you know

you've you've messed with nature and you've messed with human nature and the results continue to be to this day either catastrophic or uh massively unsuccessful have there been any consequences no leadership they're probably still fucking in no one star got promoted to two course he did the two star got promoted to three or see did uh you know no no consequences at all they they covered it up

“there's some awards yep everybody a fucking hero yep yeah good job yep that's what the”

fuck they did i know that's where those awards came and to me the crime is you're denying those current warriors and future warriors they're freedom to learn the lessons that could keep them alive in combat and these are foundational lessons but they're also it's the beginning of

senseless c2 method and go back to dispersed c2 guy in the ground c2 flexible c2

“but everybody works for the guys on the ground you're in support when guys are on the ground in”

that that's like a philosophical shift that has to be taught and repeated over and over repetition breeds recognition we need to everyone to know that a tox job is to support the guys in the ground and that's all they're there for there's a request they answer it if it's intel that they need update they can send the intel but they don't tell the guys in the ground what to do and they

“certainly don't tell them you know key life and death decisions like they feel free to do right now”

i just i just want to clarify something i am i am not commenting on whether they whether those awards should have been given or not i don't fucking know i wasn't there but i will fucking comment on this the ninety-six navy has a fucking history of turning people into heroes to

cover up fucking shit that never should have happened yeah and you know what the fuck i'm talking about

yeah no don't and and walking bunch that the navy has a fucking integrity problem yep probably every other fucking branch does too they do this what i'm aware of because that was the

“fucking community that i was involved in and i am a fucking ashamed of it i think it's higher ranking”

people the first recourse when an operation goes south and it's very clear why it went south

because the fucking orders that were delivered via micro messenger whether it's on over the radio or in person are what caused it so the first recourse to cover up a tragedy is what you said drowned the participants in a title wave of awards then the awards eclipse the fuck opposite a positive right and no one stops asking well yeah but what do we learn from it and the generals get promoted the admirals get promoted because it's looked at this job for fucking

killing people you fucking pieces of shit sorry man let's take a break [Music]