Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 72- Robert Bales

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Robert Bales was a Staff Sergeant in the US Army. He is also one of the worst war criminals in recent American history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.gq.com/story/robert-bales-interview-afghanistan-massacre https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/06/26/soldier-convicted-of-massacring-16-afghans-seeks-new-civilian-trial-citing-a-psychosis-inducing-anti-malarial-drug/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/19/army-soldier-wife-laughed-about-killing-charges/2674853/

The news of that American soldier accused of putting on his night vision goggles and then methodically going door to door killing children and families in their homes in Afghanistan. It is a slaughter that threatens the already fragile future there and tonight we are learning more about who he is. But we begin with ABC's Nick Schifrin in Kabul, an exclusive new video from that village in shock. Americans and Afghans agree on this much. This crime was unforgivable. an exclusive new video from that village in shock. Americans and Afghans agree on this much. This crime was unforgivable. Hello, everybody, and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast.

I'm Joe, and with me today is Rich. Hello, hello. How are you doing today, Rich? I'm doing all right. Just drinking some spiked seltzers, you know, chilling. I'm doing all right, just drinking some spiked seltzers, you know, chilling. Because the only laws that you can't break when you're drinking the claws is war crimes. Now, I am very ill. I caught some kind of awful Victorian wasting disease, and I have been vomiting for about a day and a half now.

So I think I'll be okay. My smooth podcasting voice might be slightly strained. Very ill seems subjective when you're drinking alcohol. But sure, we'll give you that. It's to keep the withdrawals at bay. Now, this episode has... I think it's the first time in the history of the show that I will be doing an episode on something that directly impacted not just my life, but your life as well. So to start this story, I have to take everyone back to Kandahar in the night of March 11th, 2012. The beautiful, beautiful Kandahar.

Yeah, it's beautiful with its brownness. Dust. Poop smells. I then Corporal Joseph Kasabian was acting as Sergeant of the Guard for a small patrol base in the outskirts of Kandahar City that didn't really even have a name.

I don't remember what time it was, but I do know it was late or early in the morning. That was when panicking, my platoon leader, a guy named Lieutenant Marshall, began to ask all the NCOs to get in the Tactical Operation Command Center, also known as the TAC. So I left my spot where I was smoking and joking with a friend of mine who was on tower guard and walked over to the T talk tent. There we were receiving reports of somebody, maybe an American soldier, or maybe up to a dozen American soldiers, were going into nearby villages and killing people. Nobody was entirely sure of what was going on, but we knew it was bad. We were worried that if this was true, the Afghan people, and rightfully so,

would take their vengeance upon us and various other sparsely populated and defended outposts in the Kandahar area. Thankfully, that never happened. But later that night is the first time any of us have ever heard of a man named Staff Sergeant Robert Bales. Now, Robert Bales was born June 30th, 1973 in Norwood, Ohio. He was the youngest of five brothers and by all accounts had a painfully normal Midwestern upbringing. That being he was all around good guy and a jock from an upper middle class family. Everybody who ever met him said he was pretty friendly guy. Never really had any conflicts with anybody outside of

being a shithead jock from a rich family. Which could cause a lot of conflicts, as we now know. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, this is... Nothing's really come out from his childhood. By all accounts, totally normal. Totally normal guy. And nothing will because the normal American

childhood for a wealthy jock could potentially be pretty violent and unfriendly and just never come out because that's the American way. I think it would have came out during the investigation, in the background investigations done by various journalists up until this point. At the very least, we know he came from a normal family,

which is not something I can say for pretty much every other criminal that I have done an episode on. Not so much like the shitty staff officers who sent thousands of people to die. They're normally from normal upbringings too.

But this guy is much different from the other war criminals we've covered. He graduated from a local high school and eventually enrolled in the College of Mount St. Joseph. Eventually transferring over to the Ohio State University where he studied economics. This is where I get... I guess people are probably expecting me to make an Ohio State joke because I'm from Michigan, but both are just garbage. I don't care.

I'm a little disappointed. Yeah, I don't care. I didn't go to the University of Michigan. I don't give a shit. The whole rivalry started because Michigan invaded Ohio back when both were territories. And it's a funny story. If you need some good Ohio hating,

just watch that YouTube video where the guy's singing the song about how terrible Ohio is. Yeah, it's Cleveland. Yeah, Cleveland. Yeah. And he ends it with, at least we're not Detroit. So go watch that video. Yeah.

Now, just because he was normal did not mean he was not kind of a dumbass because he spent several years in college, kind of did terribly, racked up kind of a dumbass because he spent several years in college, kind of did terribly, racked up tens of thousands of dollars of debt and dropped out without getting a degree. Now, like every slimy piece of shit you can think of, he went and got his stockbroker's license and moved to South Florida. Once there, he actually did pretty good for himself.

He didn't do anything too flashy and said he stuck to trading small stocks in community banks, but eventually he fucked that up too. Now, the reason he was doing really, really well is because he was breaking the law on virtually everything he was doing. As one will. Yeah, a bank in West Virginia went tits up before Bales

could divest and he lost everything. Not just all of his money and his life savings, mind you, but all of his clients' money, his family's life savings, and everything in between, which ended up being kind of illegal. Bales fucked up so bad that one of his clients sued him and won, winning a judgment of $1.4 million that he could never collect on because Bales' flat broke and the client simply gave up trying to get his money back. Wow. Yeah. By the time of the September 11th attacks,

Bales and his family were virtually homeless. Now, in Bales' words, he decided to serve his country. But the real story is significantly less heroic. You see, if you're him as stockbroker, gone broke and get sued, because you were almost definitely breaking the law, you become virtually unemployable, even in the soulless industry of stock brokerage.

Enlisting in the Army for Bales, and many others just like him who may be sitting at this table and recording this podcast, was a job and a lifeline that he jumped on. So in November of 2001, Bales enlisted in the U.S. Army as an infantry soldier at the age of 28. Once in the Army, Bales, to the shock of absolutely nobody, fit right in. He'd always been hyper-aggressive while playing football and had been in a frat in college, so the hyper-alpha-bro culture of the infantry role is right up his alley.

Bales began to develop something of a hardcore drinking problem while getting married within a year. So yeah, he was basically every soldier who's ever existed. As one does when they join the army, you develop a drinking problem and get married. Not necessarily in that order.

No, normally it's like you get married at a basic training, go on your first appointment and then develop a drinking problem. I'd say within a year is pretty accurate. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, develop a drinking problem out of basic training. You've got to drink away the horrible memories of a drill sergeant calling your hands dick skinners.

I distinctly remember being called a cum dumpster. I don't remember dick skinners. distinctly remember being called a cum dumpster. I don't remember Dick Skinner. Well, I mean, as long as they're evolving the roast with whoever happens to be in training, that's good. Bales and his wife eventually had two kids.

And then he reported to where else but Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, which happens to be just down the street. Hey, that's where we are. Well, not necessarily, not where we are now. In case anybody was wondering what unit he happened to be in, it was 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Striker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division.

Called out. Yeah. Well, they actually had, after Bales was arrested, people did an in-depth investigation in his unit and be like, holy shit, there's a lot of horrible stuff happening here. In an army unit? Well, there had been a disproportionate amount of suicides and homicides within the unit. Bales, obviously, being the crowning jewel of dysfunction.

Oh, by the way, if nobody here listening is somehow aware of Robert Bales, don't worry, we'll get to that. Oh, by the way, if nobody here listening is somehow aware of Robert Bales, don't worry, we'll get to that. Bales deployed three times to Iraq over the next several years. During that time, he saw extensive combat in places like Fallujah and Najaf. During his deployments, he was lauded for his leadership and soldiering abilities. A platoon leader called him, quote, one of the best soldiers I have ever worked with. A platoon leader called him, quote, one of the best soldiers I have ever worked with. And ironically enough, quote, he was he was better than everybody else in being able to identify the good guys from the bad guys that will become important later. Also, during this time, Bales was in an army publication about leadership that was on the army's website until about a month after he committed his crimes. It took him a while to take him down.

During his time in Iraq, he claims he was wounded in the foot, though there's no records of this ever happening, nor was he ever awarded the Purple Heart. One thing that did happen, however, and this is irrefutable, was he received a TBI, or a traumatic brain injury. He suffered this when a vehicle he was riding in hit an explosive device, otherwise known as an IED, and it rolled over, causing a concussion. Now, I don't normally attack people's disabilities, but I feel I have to here.

Over the years, Bales has made numerous excuses for the awful, awful crimes that he committed, which I will go into in detail in a little bit. One of the things they blamed was his TBI and his post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD. For people who are unaware, I have a TBI, and it's very mild. I mean, now, the science behind TBIs has come leaps and bounds through the years, even when I suffered my injury. Even at the time, they were making advances month by month. They went from when I first got injured to, you'll be okay, it's a dinger, to having TBI specialists in clinics within like six to eight months. And what is important here is when you suffer a TBI, when he suffered a TBI, because it's about the same time as I suffered mine, you have to go through a pretty thorough health

assessment, which includes MRIs to receive a diagnosis declaring that, yes, in fact, you have a TBI. a diagnosis declaring that yes in fact you have a TBI when I was injured I got an MRI doctor said yep you have a TBI we're going to send you to a TBI specialist Bales was given a clean bill of health after an MRI

so he didn't actually suffer a TBI it's possible he did but it was so mild that it did not show up on an MRI so you can have short-term, long-term TBIs. Like myself, I suffer memory loss. I get lost very easily. I don't sleep very well, things like that.

That's considered a pretty mild one because I can still take care of myself. I mean, some people would debate on what level I can take care of myself. Some people, yes. But Bales was given a clean bill of health with imagery behind it, which means that he probably was pretty shaken up after it happened. He suffered a concussion. That much is undeniable. He lost consciousness.

But he should have been fine. Is there a possibility of, sorry, I can't remember what it's called now. Like a misdiagnosis or something like that? No, no, no, the football head injury. CTE? Yeah, is there a possibility of that? So CTE and TBI, well, if you suffer a CTE,

you do have a traumatic brain injury. Okay, so that would have shown up. But the main difference is CTE or it's chronic, meaning you suffered a lot of different concussions. Okay, so I was going to try and make a link between him and that wrestler that killed his whole family, but I guess that's not applicable here. Ah, that is Chris Benoit, the Canadian crippler.

Yes, yes, yes. Not the same thing. Yeah, not applicable. I suffered several concussions during my time in the military, not all of them combat related i do not have cte uh that is something you develop over years and and uncountable numbers of concussions now there has been studies that show high school football players even start to suffer forms of cte uh but that's because football is an awful sport and they're teaching children how to

tackle their fucking heads. You mean ramming your head into something over and over again is not good for you? And this is why I never understood why stupid fucking people criticized my mom for letting me play rugby because I never once suffered a concussion playing rugby. I suffered a lot of concussions in the army though. I don't think I've ever had a concussion,

but I did get head-butted pretty hard in the face playing soccer. CTE has actually been shown to impact soccer players as well through head-butting the ball and stuff like that. It's chronic, so it's a compounding effect. But no, he didn't have that either. It's chronic, so it's a compounding effect. But no, he didn't have that either. But what is proven and has been corroborated through other stories,

he was becoming incredibly paranoid. Bales would hardly ever sleep. Instead, he drank up to a dozen cans of sugar-free Red Bull a day. The army way. He is literally following the exact path that any soldier would. Now, in the middle of the night, he would patrol the home and the perimeter around his house.

It should be noted that this absolutely was not some kind of flashback incident or sleepwalking. Now, if you have a flashback, which I have had before, you do not really remember how it happened. You don't have a clear thought of why you're doing what you're doing it just kind of happens it's like uh your body's autonomic

nervous system takes over somehow um if you ask me why i did something i won't know it's kind of like being blackout drunk your body just does things I can see that. This was not that, nor was it sleepwalking. It was something he did so often while wide awake that his wife literally just thought it was, quote, I just thought it was part of

having a loving soldier who's taking care of his family. What? Yeah, he would make the choice to get up and patrol his home. And I keep bringing up why the things that he did were wrong because it will become important

when it comes to his court case um also i don't buy the idea he simply was nuts i don't i i believe there's something much worse um now it's around this time that bales began drinking uh which was already a problem but it began to get him into legal trouble. He was twice arrested for fighting outside of various Tacoma bars and casinos to include the Nisqually Casino, which we have been to. Hey! He was eventually charged with criminal assault, which is a misdemeanor in the state of Washington. In another incident, he got drunk and wrecked his car

before running off into the woods. And yet another incident, he got drunk and assaulted his girlfriend. No, not his wife in a hotel. Wait, so like he was married? Yes. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. He received an open container ticket, but did not get issued a citation for DUI. Can I just interject something here? Shoot. If you have a girlfriend outside of your marriage, maybe don't

assault her because that kind of i mean i would contend don't have a girlfriend outside your marriage yeah don't do that but i'm just saying like that's a good way to get caught man also if you are a police officer and you're listening first of all please don't arrest me and secondly if you come to a car accident a single vehicle car accident where the guy had drunkenly rammed his car into a tree, arrest him for DUI. Arrest him. I mean, it's Washington. Yeah. They're really strict on DUIs here.

It should be noted that if this police officer who responded and gave him an open container ticket would have issued him a DUI, he would have saved at least eight people's lives because he would have been kicked out of the army. Right. Yeah. Way to go guy so let's just end this episode right here and say that it was that cop's fault that this all happened and not robert bales yeah if robert bales wasn't white he wouldn't have gotten the chance to commit a massacre i mean but mostly white people commit massacres these days. Yeah, he probably still would have shut up his church or something, but not an Afghan village.

Now, at the same time, he was beginning to become very frustrated with his career and the fact he was repeatedly being passed over for promotions. Is he a sergeant at this point? He's a staff sergeant. Oh, he's a staff. Yeah, that happens. Is he a sergeant at this point? He's a staff sergeant.

Oh, he's a staff. Yeah, that happens. Now, we know this and his continued frustrations due to the fact his wife had a blog that she just chronicled their entire relationship. Is it a Dependa blog? It is. Oh, my God. I want to read it.

So she scrubbed the internet of it, but a lot of journalists were able to take a ton of screenshots before she was able to do so. Carolyn Bales, which was her name and is still her name, kept her blog pretty well updated all the way up until the massacre occurred. Blog chronicles the life and times of a military spouse that is interspersed with comments about how, quote, after everything Bob has given, he got passed up again and how they're willing to run into money problems. As a staff sergeant will. Well, now, when he was in Florida and before they were married, Robert Bales is used to a very comfortable existence. Now, he was normally living on his client's money, which was illegal And is why he got sued But he had millions of dollars Which you know he lost

But he was used to living that way So he probably continued to live He sure tried That way He began to miss mortgage payments On their nearly $300,000 house In the Lake Taps area Which is a very nice area

I know we could certainly not afford to live there Debatable I think right now nice area. I know we could certainly not afford to live there. Debatable. I think right now, this is $300,000 about eight years ago. It's probably over a million now. Right, right, right. With that great

backdrop laying the foundation in this marriage, Bale's deployed again, this time to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Now, his time in Afghanistan is marked with heavy foundation of in this marriage bales deployed again this time to kandahar afghanistan now his time in afghanistan was marked with heavy combat i can attest from personal experience kandahar in 2011 2012 nor was it really ever in the chronicles of an occupier's history a great time to be a member of an occupying army bales hit the ground running and saw pretty much sustained heavy combat. It's unknown where Bales was mentally before the deployment. The military insists that he passed all pre and post deployment assessments up until that point.

But it should be noted that those assessments are pretty much just an honesty test. Let's note here that people that we deployed with probably were not in the correct headspace to be deployed. I would contend I was not mentally well enough to deploy in my last deployment. Yeah, those tests are garbage. No, they're honesty tests. Like, do you ever have nightmares?

Nope. Do you ever have, like, violent tendencies? Do you drink too much? Nope, never. Oh, do you drink too much? Ask anybody in the army that and the answer is a lie. I fucking guarantee it. Well, to be fair, their metrics on what is drinking too much are ridiculously low. Yeah, you can have like two drinks. A beer a night,

you're an alcoholic. Yeah. No, because it's like three drinks in a week or more than, no, it's like more than two drinks in one night and more than six drinks in one week or something. Well, it's like America has this weird Puritan line going through it where like, well, if you have a beer with dinner, clearly you just really needed that beer. Like, motherfucker, you don't know me. If I need to get drunk, I'm not going to have a beer with my steak.

I'm going to just drink Jameson from the bottle like my dad did. I think the way that the Army asks the questions now is mostly based on medical research. But at the same time, come on. It also requires you to be honest. Now, if you don't say you're having a problem, and mind you, I was receiving counseling in the army at the time, around the same time this occurred. The culture was not supportive. If you're having a problem, and I would argue it's probably still not great, but I've heard it's much better than it used to be. I won't ask you to comment on that because I know you're not allowed to. But if the culture of of I need help, it was pussy shit, for lack of a better term.

Like, like, I'm not mentally OK with this. Like, I need to talk to somebody. I'm feeling suicidal. I'm feeling homicidal. Like you're being a pussy. So I will comment on that briefly because it has gotten better. People are much more receptive to people needing to go and seek help. That being said, your chain of command being receptive to you seeking help and allowing you the time to do so and not calling you a piece of shit for doing so does not mean that it does not ruin your fucking career. If I remember correctly,

you had a friend get shot down from a school that she needed to advance her career because she required counseling once. Yes, you will be rejected from broadening assignments. You will be rejected from promotions. And this is in the last two years. It was, I think, yeah, about a year ago. You will be rejected from things.

You will be turned down from things, especially when you start getting into the more senior ranks. You will be turned down from things, especially when you start getting into the more senior ranks. You will be turned down from things for seeking mental help. So people are forced to make a choice between a career that, this is how I keep a roof over the head for my family or my health. And I know which one I would pick, and it wouldn't be my health. I went to counseling because I knew I was getting out of the Army, and I was single.

Well, wasn't it recently that some dependents, it was some higher ranking person's daughters or something that were trying to join the military. And their father was a career military. They moved around a lot and they did have a lot of friends. And they had a really rough childhood because of the you know the way that the military structure is sure um and so as teenagers they had been suicidal or they had had suicidal tendencies or something like that and sought therapy and when they tried to join the military themselves as adults uh the military looked back through their records through DOD or through deers or whatever and denied them from joining because as teenagers, they sought help.

You know, and I'll comment that's bullshit on the part of the army because the only reason they did that is because they had unfettered access to their health care records. Yeah, which should be a complete fucking. It's a HIPAA violation in my opinion. And now I'm not a recruiter I don't know if they're what they're capable of but like I know when I joined it was an honesty test because I had been diagnosed with depression I had been medicated when I was a young when I was a young kid and I was like nope never happened they're like okay granted that was in

2005 when they're like the recruiting slogan was we don don't care, just go to Iraq. Yeah. So whatever. That's the same thing as if they ask you if you ever smoked pot. No, never. Of course not. Right. I'm not high right now. I popped hot on my first drug test and they're like, come back next week.

So we bring that up because I feel like this is all really important. Robert Bales is almost certainly suffering some kind of pretty crippling PTSD, and it should have been obvious to everybody, and nobody said anything. He certainly wasn't going to because at this point, he was a career man. He had no other options in his life. Now, the difference between me explaining why this is important and me saying it's an excuse are very, very important. This is not an excuse. There's hundreds of

thousands, if not millions of veterans in the United States that suffer from PTSD. Not all of them massacre people. The difference is criminal and it's stark. Yes, I understand mental illness might cause violence, but not most of the time. And the fact was, it's an important distinction. And I'll leave that to the listeners. I mean, I obviously have my own opinions and people like to tell me I'm wrong all the time, which is fine. I encourage it. Not the death threat so much, but, you know, if you think I'm wrong, it's fine.

And I will say my piece at the end and I'll let everybody else make their decisions. Now, unlike a lot of war crimes, and like a lot of killing sprees, or even serial killers, anything, whatever you want to call him, you can actually pinpoint when Robert Bales finally broke. We know this because he told us. In 2012, on March 5th, Bales was acting as a sniper, overwatching a position that the military knew to be targeted by Taliban for IED placement. Only a few minutes earlier, an IED had gone off as a truck attempted to return to its unit's base, called Ballamby. The truck flipped over, but the soldiers inside were mostly fine, shaken up, you know, get their heads checked out. Bales was put in place to make sure no more bombs

were set in the area. That was when he saw a man in a white robe approach the blast zone. He had something in his hand but what it was bales cannot make out army rules of engagement at the time said that soldiers could shoot anybody uh that they could tell was carrying an icom radio uh because these cheap handheld radios were the transmitter of choice to set off ieds i can attest this is in fact true our rules of engagement did allow us to kill people on site who were carrying these things.

Never did it, but I can see why. But the man was too far away to 100% make out that he was carrying in fact an Icon radio, not just a shitty Nokia cell phone. Bales decided not to shoot the man. That should become important. He saw someone he could have legally shot and killed and did not do it. A few minutes

later, a Navy bomb technician named John Asbury went out to clear the area where the original bomb had gone off. This is pretty common as you want to check an explosive area for secondary explosives. The Taliban is very, very, I mean, they've been fighting us for nearly two decades now. They know what we tend to do when we get hit with a bomb. So they like to put a bomb in a secondary area where they know where we might go next time. So John Asbury, or Petty Officer Asbury, was sent out to clear the area. He stepped over a dead tree near where the man or the white robe had gone off to and exploded. His left leg was torn off at the knee, but he survived.

Two days later, Bales and a group of soldiers went out to the scene of the second bombing where Petty Officer Asbury had been wounded. Of all the things he could do, Bales directed his rage at that dead tree that had contained the bomb. He screamed that it was a security threat, and he demanded it be removed. He grabbed a nearby chainsaw and attempted to cut it down, but when the chainsaw broke, he wrapped the entire thing in detonation cord and blew it up. He just had a chainsaw nearby? It might have been in a truck or something.

Okay. Now, after he used the detonation cord, he used the detonation cord to blow the tree down. He dragged it with him back to base. As terrified soldiers looked on on bale spent the next three days virtually uninterrupted uh with without sleep sitting in front of the tree and staring at it he wasn't eating he wasn't sleeping he wasn't working he was staring at a dead tree that sounds like a tell to me finally he got up grabbed a small axe and attacked it for eight hours without rest until

he finally chopped into small pieces in which he set on fire so he very clearly had survivor's guilt from not shooting he very clearly had a mental break right well but from not from seeing the person who potentially planted that bomb not being the one to take care of that and then somebody dying as a result of it john asbury did not die all right i'm sorry somebody being gravely injured right and it doesn't feel good it doesn't i mean i'm sure that doesn't feel good um but also he didn't the the idea that man planted the bomb is kind of weird because why would he just be carrying a radio you know yeah but i mean what that's not what goes through your head no no but i mean he he was already a paranoid mess yeah uh this probably was just enough i don't know um now a lot of this information is coming from an interview from prison, which Robert Bales conducted with a journalist from GQ.

Now, during that, the journalist's name was a guy named Brandon Vaughn, by the way. Vaughn notes that while he, which is a completely actually illegal interview, he was given a court order to not give any interviews to journalists. Vaughn notes notes in the interview bale seems totally detached from his actions just during that part just when he's describing the

tree um but no other part of the story does he seem detached so what what's to come he seems fully engaged with it he seems like he remembers remembers it all very vividly. Okay. That night, Bales went to a friend's tent and he began to get drunk on some smuggled rum and watched the Denzel Washington film, Man on Fire. Good movie.

Good movie. You know, Robert Bales and I share a strange connection with that film because I lost my virginity to it. That is weird. What? Forever ruins a memory now uh afterwards here to move right past that

afterwards he returned to his room he got dressed he put on his helmet where his um his night vision goggles had a mount and he loaded his army issue 9mm pistol and M4 rifle and exited the base through the only exit nobody knows he was leaving because the Afghan army soldiers at the gate were fast asleep which I can attest is pretty god damn common yeah but okay so we had

Afghan army soldiers on our bases but we did not have a single entrance or exit or any kind of weak area that was guarded purely by them. We were overlooking everything. Yeah, it seems like a pretty big flaw in their plan. This is at the peak of what they call blue-on-green attacks.

This was exactly when we were there. Yeah, we were getting blue on green attacks all the time where Afghan police or Afghan army soldiers would attempt to kill us. So like, it's really weird

that that's how they, they had the gate set up like that. Yeah, because even our, our second base that we were, we were at,

the first one was fully guarded just by us. The second one, a whole half of the compound was Afghan army. Was it Afghan army or Afghan police?

It was police. It was Afghan national police. But all of the guard towers were guarded by us and them. There was not a single area that was guarded purely by Afghan forces. And yeah. Now, Afghan soldiers are a little bit more

competent than the Afghan police, but the Afghan commandos are on point. That's not who these guys were. These are just Afghan soldiers. Now, he already knew what village he was going towards, a village named Ali Kozai. He knew what house he was going to,

and a village elder named Sayed Jan. Now, there's a story behind this, which is also most likely bullshit. Robert Bales insists that he watched Navy SEALs raid the village and pull weapons out of it. Now, they had not previously been attacked in or around these villages. And when he reported that he saw people smuggling weapons

or suspicious lights going into the village, everybody thought he was nuts. So, yeah. After walking about 20 minutes, he snuck into a compound where his intended target, Jean, lived. But he was not there at the time. Instead, Bales found 12 sleeping people. Now, for people who are not aware, it is really, really common for an entire Afghan family going back several generations to live in one compound. There'll be three or four houses within one walled compound. And your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your uncles, whoever, will all live in there with you.

So that's why there's so many people in these compounds. Yeah. The first person Bales encountered was John's wife, and he herded the woman and children into a back room. When John's wife refused to move, he knocked her to the ground and beat the shit out of her. As he moved through the house, the women and children in the back room

tried to make a break for it, and Bales chased them, shooting Kudai Dodd, a farmer, he's a farmhand for the John family, multiple times at Point Blake Range and killed him. Dodd never once attacked him or threatened him in any way.

As he chased the kids, the family dog attacked him, which Bales also shot dead. Now, in the GQ interview, Bales insists that the fact that they own a dog meant they had to be in the Taliban. What? Right. Now, this is dumb for multiple reasons. One, he thinks it's because they had to be in the Taliban. What? Right. Now, this is dumb for multiple reasons.

One, he thinks it's because they had a guard dog. And only Taliban members have guard dogs, which cannot be further from the truth. There is family dogs in Afghanistan. They normally work fields and stuff. Yeah. But they're not like that. Now, guard dogs are obviously still a thing.

Because if you put a dog outside, he's going to bark when people come close. Right. I mean, Americans are not the only ones that have thought of that. Right, right. Now, he operates in the really dumb belief that since Muslims believe dogs to be unclean, they would never own them as a family pet.

Afghans definitely have family pets they definitely have dogs um they even have cats like they're just people um and robert bales is a fucking soul to school um now he said this saying well they must be taliban because they have a guard dog despite fully acknowledging that people that he is chasing were women and children. A man named Nazir Mohamed confronted Bales, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and why all the women and children were screaming. So Bales began to beat the shit out of him. Seeing her dad getting kicked,

three-year-old Gulalai came out running to her dad, screaming and crying. Bales turned, without a word, shot the three-year-old girl dead. He then went back to Nazir's house, killed him too. After that, the restraint Bales seemed to show up to that point since he showed up in Al-Khawzai was abandoned. He began to hunt through the compound, eventually coming to a room where 30 people were now hiding inside. He began pumping rounds into the room without aiming. After that, he began to walk back towards his base.

This is where people will start to say that it was the PTSD or the TBI or just some fucking crazy mental break to make an excuse. At one point, his defense attorney claimed that it was a certain malaria drug that made him crazy named mefloquine. Maybe he blacked out.

Maybe he had a flashback. This is where I can tell you absolutely it was none of those things. Here's a quote from the GQ article. The article is called Robert Bale Speaks Confessions of America's Most Notorious War Criminal.

Now remember, so quote, months after the attacks have happened. And maybe he could have had time to change his story or to like evolve the lie to make himself sound better. But I'll just let his words speak for him. Quote, I was so angry. These guys were putting their families in harm's way like that. You wouldn't make HME, which is homemade explosive in your house. You wouldn't have terrorists running to Blame them for him killing their wife? End quote. Blame them for him killing their wife. Okay.

This entire thing is based on the fact that he believed that the people he killed, to include a three-year-old girl, were members of the Taliban. He did not believe that. No, he does not. He did not fucking believe that. Nope. No fucking way. It should be noted that at no point did Robert Bales ever take fire in defense of the village. There were no Taliban in that village, and he knew that. Everybody knew that. Around 2 a.m., Bales walked back to his base, giving a friendly greeting to the Afghan soldiers who

are now awake because they were hearing gunfire. An Afghan soldier panicked upon seeing Bales because, I probably don't need to explain this but it is very uncommon for a single soldier just to walk back into the base and the Afghan soldier pointed a rifle at him demanding that he stop Bales simply walked right past him

the Afghan soldier didn't do anything now I don't blame the Afghan soldier for not shooting him dead on the spot but like maybe you should have shot him dead on the spot. No. Come on. I mean, I don't blame him. But like, in retrospect, I'm chair quarterbacking this guy.

Yeah. But knowing that that's not how military operations go, that one soldier is not going to be coming back in the middle of the night and everything. I still don't think, and knowing the Afghan- How does he know that he's an American soldier? It's just a single guy walking near a base carrying a rifle. He could see him. I mean, it's in the middle of the night.

There's no way he could have told he was American, except the fact he spoke English. There's lights around military bases. Not that one. I mean, there wasn't a lot around ours at the main gate. There wasn't a ton of lights, but there was at least a spotlight. We had a light in the motor pool. It's just telling because it's obvious

that they're terrified to act. They're just scared. And I don't blame them. The Afghan soldiers have a shitty life. And I'm not going to blame the guy for not gunning down somebody in the street. But, like, I wish he would have. Maybe he should have. I understand what you're saying, but I also understand why he didn't.

No, it was probably some scared 16 to 19-year-old Afghan guy with an English-speaking man approaching him. Yeah. But, like... In American man approaching him. Yeah. But like... In American soldier garb. Yeah. Well, he was wearing traditional Afghan robes. Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay, that changes things. I didn't realize that. He was wearing... Now, he was wearing a helmet with night vision attached to it, and he was carrying an M4. And he was wearing camouflage pants, like multi-cam pants. Oh, okay. But he was carrying an M4 and he was wearing camouflage pants like multicam pants.

But he was wearing like a robe over it. Yeah. After that, Bales walked into the room of Sergeant McLaughlin, who happened to be the guy he was drinking with earlier and said, quote, and now this is Bales' words, quote, Yo man, I just killed some military-aged males

in Elkozai And I'm gonna go to Najabian and finish it off Take care of my wife And kids Take care of my wife And kids He thought he was gonna die Okay

Yeah Um Which I don't know why Because uh He had yet to be shot at Right McLaughlin didn't believe him Because alright

I I wouldn't have either We said weird Fucked up shit To each other all the time Now nobody's ever Come and woken me up like hey bro just killed a whole bunch of Afghans take care of my wife and kids but like

I wouldn't have believed him yeah like if you woke me up in the middle of the night in Afghanistan and said some off the wall shit like that like no way in hell I would have fucking believed you no not in a million years everybody every soldier deployed to Afghanistan has a super dark sense of humor.

I mean, I never joked about massacring a village, but like if somebody would have made that joke to me, I wouldn't have believed that he did it. No, but you may not have joked about massacring a village, but you definitely joked about killing people. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I was an unwell human being.

I wrote an entire book about it. Yeah. As were everybody that we were deployed with yeah but like if somebody came to me and said hey i just killed the elkozai or you know whatever sub-district what we were around in afghanistan i wouldn't have believed him nobody would believe him no because you wouldn't have believed that he just walked off the base by himself no i wouldn I wouldn't believe that you could. Now, because McLaughlin didn't believe him, Bales jammed his rifle barrel under his nose and told him to smell it. So he

really wanted to hammer it in there. Yes. Do you think that he was trying to get somebody to stop him? It's possible. I mean, he went back to the base because he's out of ammo. Yeah, but... But, uh, so somehow McLaughlin still didn't believe him and went back to the base because he's out of ammo. Yeah, but... But so somehow McLaughlin still didn't believe him and went back to sleep. Now, this could have been something to do with the fact

that McLaughlin had been drinking with Bales for hours, but... Yeah, and he was in... I mean, wake up in the middle of the night, you're like in some kind of weird fucking haze dream. Yeah, yeah. I get it, I get it. It's definitely not his fault. So Bales grabbed a grenade launcher

and more ammunition and left his base again, this time heading for the nearby village of Najab Bien. Bales kicked open the door to the home of Mohammed Dawood, drug him out into the middle of the courtyard and shot him in front of his family.

He then went to a neighbor's house where an entire family was huddled together in a room for the warmth of the cold Afghan night. A boy named Isa saw him coming and attacked him with a shovel. Bales overpowered the boy and beat him to death. He then went about beating the gathered eight people or so in the room so severely that when investigators got to the scene a full month later, they still found skin and hair stuck to the walls. full month later, they still found skin and hair stuck to the walls.

He then set his M4 to burst and fired into the family, killing all of them. He then dragged two more people into the room and shot them before setting the room and everything around it on fire with a kerosene lamp he found nearby. While he was leaving, he ran into an elder woman

of the family who was easily in her 60s, probably in her 70s. His rifle was now at ammunition so he beat her to death and stomped on her head picked up her corpse and threw her into the fire that he had started now this is where Bales claims he put a pistol in his mouth

and was going to kill himself but he couldn't do it so he simply walked back to base um excuse me for a second here uh huh he murdered all of those innocent civilians and was too much of a piece of shit fucking coward to kill him fucking self glad he didn't glad he didn't i i mean got it but what the fuck yeah yep this is i also believe this is bullshit the only way this drives is if you um if you compare it with his statements he made to Sergeant McLaughlin about taking care of his wife and kids.

But I don't buy it. Just like I don't buy that he claims he did not set the fire. And this is why I believe he should have been executed. Because he was obviously competent enough mentally to attempt to cover up his crimes. They fire. Now, if he did accidentally start a fire, why would he carry bodies back to the fire and throw them inside? He was competent enough mentally to plan this whole thing. Like if this was if this had happened in the United States in this exact sequence of events, this would be first degree murder.

This would be a planned thing that he... Just like the United States, he would have been taken alive without any problems. No, understood, but I'm saying competence is not an issue here. Mental competence is what his argument is. And that's why I take issue.

I agree. I agree. Fuck that is the right answer. I totally agree with that. I don't buy it. I don't fucking buy it. And I understand that PTSD and tbi come in different waves and in different forms and different shades of whatever but he showed very very clear attempts to cover up his crimes if you're if you're also sd and tbi comes in that wave you don't deserve to be a fucking

alive free man like you just murdered a whole lot of fucking people you should be in a locked box or in the ground also um several of the bodies showed stab wounds yeah um now uh that his bullshit suicide attempt was called off he began to walk back

to base now here's another thing the base is unsure what the fuck was going on, but the whole thing was captured on an aerostat. Now, for people who are unaware of what an aerostat is, it's a giant fucking blimp

with incredibly detailed and advanced cameras attached to it. Oh, the thing that our ops NCO used to use to turn inward. No, no, no, no. No? No. The aerostat is a huge blimp.

He had control of a camera on a stick. Oh, okay. Now, the aerostat can see for miles around. Okay, sorry about that. Now, I have not seen the aerostat footage. I have only heard second and first-hand accounts from people that I know who have. They recorded everything.

But since the AeroStat had no fucking idea what it was watching, they just didn't know. Now, if you were controlling the AeroStat or watching this footage, there's some kind of level of reality you have to detach. If you're a regular American soldier, if you see someone shooting inside of a village by himself, very rarely, you'd be like, that's probably an American soldier. There's no instances of that. Absolutely.

No, if there's no scheduled patrols, if there's no like- Right, right. He's by himself. Our missions and our patrols, they're all very well planned. I mean, is a strong word but relatively speaking and thought out and scheduled no i would never ever comprehend or put that to put two and two together like that and because of the shooting at the base or the shooting they could hear from the base um balling by they started firing off flares

um because they wanted to figure out the fuck was going on is this attack coming closer to us now bales remarked every time he saw a flare go off he dove to the ground and covered one eye now that's standard military training to preserve your night vision when flares

are going off so he was actually trying to make it back to his base without being detected. Now when he got there around 4.47am, the men of his unit, Sergeant McLaughlin included, had him at gunpoint. Bales looked at McLaughlin and said

quote, are you fucking kidding me? And accused McLaughlin of ratting him out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then he was remanded to the custody of some special forces soldiers. He went back and forth between confessing to his crimes,

openly saying that he killed at least 20 people, which he did not, and obstructing the investigation that he knew would be coming. At one point, he asked if he could use his laptop, and for some reason they gave it to him. As soon as he got it, he broke it in half and began stomping on it destroying tons of evidence

I mean I never thought I'd say this but in the defense of the special forces soldiers they weren't cops but like also don't give them a fucking laptop why does he need a laptop they're not trained for this sort of thing I guess I don't know I also don't give him a fucking laptop. Why does he need a laptop? They're not trained for this sort of thing, I guess.

I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know, Joe. Now, Bales is immediately evacuated out of Afghanistan, further enraging the Afghan people. The U.S. further pissed off the citizens of every Middle Eastern country that he happened to transit through temporarily to include Kuwait before finally throwing him in Fort Leavenworth, the United States military's main prison barracks. Yeah, so he was in Kuwait for just a little bit, but the Kuwaiti government heard about it. He's like, what the fuck? Get that guy out of my country.

Fair. Yeah, fair enough. Once there, his lawyer quickly began to work to attempt to put the army itself on trial, putting the blame for Bale's snapping on post-traumatic stress and his lingering TBI alongside relentless deployment schedules that saw

Bale's in combat for multiple years at a time with only a small break in between I might sound really stupid right now but isn't there like laws against like putting the army on trial during wartime now he you're not going to ever put the army on trial during wartime? Now, you're not going to ever put the army on trial.

What he was trying to do, because hypothetically, even in the military justice system, you have to prove without a reasonable doubt that this man is guilty. Now, if you can get a pinky of doubt in there and be like, well, maybe it's not all his fault, he won't be... Now now this is when he was getting ready for the trial uh which did not end up happening but he was like well i need to try

to save his life um because when you hire a lawyer for this kind of court case you're not trying to be found not guilty you're trying to you're trying to escape the hangman okay and that's all he's trying to do now it should be noted that this lawyer john henry brown uh of seattle was also arrested uh once himself back in the 70s uh for uh protesting against the my life massacre and the lenient uh sentence given to will Colley, the lieutenant who escaped with very little punishment. Ironic. Yeah, so he was not trying to attempt to argue Bale's innocence. He was simply trying to save his life.

I would argue that that is too much. Just let him die. Yeah, just go for it. Bye. I think I've had to point out on a couple occasions, we don't often call for violence in this podcast. And I'm not a pro-death penalty guy. I'm not either.

I'm really, really, really not. Fuck this guy. But like, okay, go ahead and give, or I'll say I'm not pro-death penalty. I am pro giving him back to the Afghan government. If they happen to do that, okay. They're a sovereign nation. We support them. I support the

Republic of Afghanistan and all of their Robert Bales lynching attitudes. I'm just saying the crimes were committed in Afghanistan against Afghan people. Their justice system should take care of it. That is one of the reasons why we left Iraq when we did.

The agreement that we had between the United States and the Iraqi government was for a long time we'll take care of our soldiers. If they break the law they'll be punishable under American law. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The Iraqis, I'm like, no, if a soldier breaks the law

he's going to be punishable under Iraqi law. Which is just like normally just the death penalty. Like if you if you break a law in Korea or Germany, don't you get punished under Korean or German law? Absolutely. Yeah. Like that's that's a thing. Like if you if you break a law in another country against their citizens. We shouldn't have diplomatic immunity.

Right. We're a bunch of shitheads who fucking invaded your country. Obviously, the Afghan and the Iraqi judicial systems have so many flaws. Oh, yeah. I'm not saying that they're perfect. But like I'm saying,

if someone storms through a couple of villages and massacres eight people, you'd be like, all right, buddy. Yeah, do your thing. Go to Kabul. See you later. We'll pick up the corpse

when they're done. I've heard that Kabul is nice. Yeah. Now, Brown eventually got acquainted with the military justice system and quickly came to accept that under no means

would six military jurors who had likely deployed multiple times themselves buy his fucking bullshit. So Brown cut a deal. Bales would plead guilty if the military took the death penalty off the table,

but not before months of legal wrangling, which also include a pretrial hearing where Afghan eyewitnesses and family members would Skype into the courtroom and give horrifying first-hand accounts of Bales' massacre. Now, if I was the military, that should be enough for me

to take this plea bargain off the table. Unfortunately, that's how our entire justice system works. Yeah, I understand that, but I'm mad, so... Everybody, like, that's the thing. Everybody in America should be mad about this. Don't worry, I'm about to make you much, much madder. Well, you always do, Joe.

It gets fucking worse. Finally, the two sides came to an agreement. Bales had plead guilty to 16 counts of murder, six counts of attempted murder, and escaped the death penalty. The only thing that he'd have to sit through is a sentencing hearing where the jury would decide if he would ever be eligible for parole well all this is going on so you know how before i brought up bales's wife by name and i

originally actually felt kind of bad for doing that was it caroline or something caroline yeah i felt kind of bad for doing that and i'm sure there's a lot of people here like why did joe say her full name this is why uh bales and his wife's jailhouse phone calls were recorded. I bring this up because, you know, she's just a wife. Maybe she's just trying to, I don't know, look out for her husband. Dependa. Yeah, whatever. I almost felt bad that she ended up in the media spotlight

because her shitty, psychotic husband killed a ton of people. Turns out, she kind of sucks too. During one phone call where Bales was arguing about his charges while claiming innocence and still insisting the people he killed were Taliban, they both had a good laugh about the idea that he might go down in history as a mass murderer. A laugh? They both laughed about it, by his possible infamy. Like, you could be a famous mass murderer. A laugh? They both laughed about it. By his possible infamy.

Like, you could be a famous mass murderer. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. What? They both had a good giggle. What? Yep. It's like if Ted Bundy's fucking significant other was like, you're going to be the most prolific serial killer of women.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, he also claimed his innocence until the day he died, so maybe they have a lot in common. I don't understand. Yep. She also did a media tour defending her husband, who I should point out again,

killed multiple children and set them on fire. She also refused to cooperate with army investigators and deleted multiple emails between the two of them. While all this is going on, they had to sell their house

to escape foreclosure. Now, I'm normally not on the side of big banks, as you can imagine. I'm a socialist, but in this case, like,

cool. I don't care. They shouldn't have a house. Fuck them. I don't give a shit. Knowing the property market in Washington, they probably fucking made out

on it, so fuck them. No, they lost $50,000. Oh, good. Yeah. At bail sentencing, he was once again confronted with his survivors or family members of the survivors that did not escape the massacre.

This is the first time that he apologized for what he did. Before he quickly followed up with an emotional plea to the jury to think about his wife and kids before sentencing to him with to life without parole. The judge, Colonel Morse almost immediately began to mock Bales for daring to bring up mercy when he had shown none.

It only took 90 minutes for the jury to come back and since now private Robert Bales to life without the possibility of parole, ensuring that he would die behind the walls of the United States disciplinary barracks at Leavenworth. Did they discharge him? So they can't until a sentence is complete. What? Yeah. For life? Yep.

He'll be still getting paid. No, of course not. No. Is he still getting paid? No, of course not. No. So how this works is what happens is you'll be sentenced to, one of the things you'll be sentenced to is a reduction in rank and forfeiture of all pay and benefits.

Okay, okay. So he will die a civilian. Okay, so it's only- But he is sentenced as Private Robert Bales. It's only up until sentencing that they still pay you. Yes. Okay, got it. And that's because technically he's innocent until proven guilty.

Right. Technically. Now, you're probably wondering what has happened to Bales and the years that he has been since behind bars. He's trained to work as the prison barber where he makes $1 an hour

and finishing his college degree. So I want you to think in your head that there's a very good possibility that Robert Bales cut the hair of Malik Hassan, the guy who massacred Fort Hood. That's a situation that very possibly could have happened, all while getting his college degree. Every year, his family flies to visit him for an entire week, and they visit him three times a day. for an entire week, and they visit him three times a day.

So yeah, he gets to visit his family as much as he wants and finish his college degree that he'll never get to use. That's nice. He's living in socialist paradise. Now, in the meantime, we'll talk about his victims who managed to survive.

Rafi Hula, who was shot twice in his legs, struggles to walk and is forced to beg on the street in order to survive his sister is paralyzed from the wounds that she received that morning none of them receive any government assistance health care or housing they'll most likely die homeless but nobody cares because they're in afghanistan and and and fuck those guys right yep now uh they did receive what is known as a blood payment from the United States government

in the amount of tens of thousands of dollars. Now, the vast majority of the people were all from one family, to include one man who lost eight generations of his entire family. The people who were wounded received, I believe it was about $50,000 from the United States government,

which was then stolen by the Afghan government, embezzled, and they received a very, very small penance of that. Meanwhile, every year, the United States government spends three times that much housing, educating, and employing Robert Bales, who will die 50 years from now, much better off than the wounded people he left behind. Absolutely. Now, I think the reason why this is important,

and actually I have been trolled by one of his defense attorneys about the idea that methloquin has driven him insane. That was immediately disputed by the courts and thrown out and so far uh all of his appeals have been thrown in the garbage um so yeah fuck robber bales uh that's the end of the episode um i think that this one impacts me a little bit more than the other ones, even though I know it shouldn't. Haditha was awful. The Blackhearts incident and the Mamoudia rapes just fucking got awful.

I don't know why Robert Bales bothers me this much. I think it's because he was literally five miles away from us. Yeah, I think it's just so much more. I mean, have I been on an episode that's this fucking recent and relevant in our lives this is the most recent one that we've done because this one really like this is supposed to be kind of i mean i know it's a terrible fucking storyline most of the time it's supposed to be kind of a funny podcast and this was not funny it was hard to like and i think that's important i think all this is important because and um mostly because the secretary of the army is a fucking idiot and once retweeted a picture about veteran

resilience that had a picture of robert bales on it that was like a year ago yep uh and it is we need to keep these things in mind because when you don a uniform, regardless of what the uniform is, and you go to another person's country, you represent the country. You wear an American flag on your sleeve. How well we treat Robert Bales is indicative to how American psyches function in the era of forever war. And I understand that I'm supposed to make dick jokes and I'm supposed to talk about fucking dumb shit. I get that. I understand why a lot of people tune into this show, but the fact remains is a lot of people don't know who Robert Bales is. We have tens of thousands of people who listen to this podcast every week that might not know this man exists. And he massacred generations from two different villages while wearing your uniform, wearing my uniform, five miles away from

us, or how far away it was, representing the United States of America. And we like to throw him into the United States disciplinary barracks at Leavenworth until the day he dies and never speak about him again, because this is how America processes crimes committed by soldiers. We like to throw them away in a closet and pretend they never exist. And we are the champions of freedom and democracy and all these other things. This is what we've done. As we record this, the security apparatus that we train, funded, and led in Iraq are massacring hundreds of people in the streets with machine guns and sniper rifles and rocket launchers. This is what we've done. These are important things that we need to learn and we need to accept and we need to understand this is what we've done. And I know that people tune in to laugh.

And I'm sorry, like, there's a lot of battlefield failures that there's no joy in. And those are no less important than the ones that we like to giggle at. I just feel like it's easier to look back and find some levity in situations when it's years and years and years ago. And it's definitely history. And this was literally, I mean, not only in our lifetime, we were actually in Afghanistan at this time. And I also think that it's,

especially with the tone of America as a whole right now, it's really easy for a lot of people to say, well, they were just Afghans. Like definitely versus, versus this American soul, this decorated American soldier. as a whole right now, it's really easy for a lot of people to say, well, they were just Afghans. Definitely. Versus this American soldier, this decorated American soldier. These are just civilians with families,

with children. They were just people. Who were just trying to live their lives the best way that they can. It's just not a fucking K. Even if you buy the excuse of Robert Bales, and you absolutely shouldn't because it's bullshit, that they were Taliban,

that what he did was still a crime. If every man, woman, and child in those compounds was Taliban, what he did was still a crime. I'm sorry, I didn't know that you could be Taliban when you're fucking three years old. Depends on how diseased your brain is. Yeah, that's like killing killing killing fucking women and children and innocent civilian men just because they're brown it doesn't make

it okay yep i agree uh i wish that was i wish that um saying war crimes are bad was not dissent, but in the year 2019, it makes you edgy. It got me on the fucking news, for God's sakes. This is not okay. The attitude that something that you do here would be illegal, but if you do it in the streets of Kandahar or syria or iraq that it's different it's fundamentally different because that that that makes them the less than dead that makes them less than people that makes you a racist it makes you xenophobe makes you a fascist makes you every other horrible fucking word i can think of you other than the fact that you're a human being and you're not. And I don't know how I can square because I think the thing that really

fucking bothers me is I can put some distance between myself and the people at Haditha and I can put some distance to myself and the people at Mahmoudiyah. I can't put any distance between myself and Robert Bales. Robert Bales and I are on the same timeline. I wrote a book about the time that Robert Bales was in Afghanistan. I did not mention him once. And the reason for that was I did not know how to write it. And that's kind of a cop-out. And I understand that because I wrote about a whole bunch of other stuff that was incredibly uncomfortable. I didn't know how to approach this. And it took me a lot of years to be able to tell Robert Bale's story because it is very, very personal. And it should be. It should be personal for every single person that is in Afghanistan during that time.

It should be personal for every single person that has served in Afghanistan. It should be personal for every single person that serves at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. It should be personal for every single person in serves at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. It should be personal for every single person in the United States of America. That man committed his crimes in your name, and you need to own that. It doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it good.

Not seeing this as an egregious war crime, I mean, you have to be able to differentiate between the good and the bad. You have to like, why are we even fucking over there right now? Which I know we're over there for no reason. But why are we even over there doing this hearts and mind bullshit and doing all of this fucking standing up their government and everything if there's not a good side and a bad side, if all of them are just fucking there for the killing? The cruelty is the point. And Afghanistan will never be at peace

as long as there's an occupier there. They never have been. No. It's not Afghanistan's fault. But I'm saying for our own mentality and for our own conscience and everything. Our brain is diseased. How do we not how do we not

think like that like if if he can just go through a village and kill anybody and he's not in the wrong for that because they're just afghans and they're they're all the bad guys then why the fuck are we even over there which i'm not saying that that's the right answer that's not no they're not the bad guys there are plenty of civilians there i mean hundreds of thousands of civilians there tens of millions i'm sorry i don't know their population but who are just who are just trying to live their life like people just want to do what's right and and and make money for their family and survive and to say that that he's not wrong for going through a village and killing them just because like i mean because it because it's the disconnection.

All of the Afghan kids that we met and all of the Afghan civilians that we met and the interpreters that we served with. A good example is Hamid, who I wrote a lot about in my book, who we know personally. He was an incredible fucking person. He was there when the Robert Bales incident happened.

Hamid has been fighting with American forces since he's been, what, 16, 15, something like that? I don't think he even knows how old he is. He came, because we were good friends, even in Afghanistan. He came to me and said, why would you do this? Why would I do this?

Because Hamid, who knew me personally, knew me by first name. He knew about my girlfriend at the time. He knew about my mom. He knew about, like, we used to laugh at each other's childhood stories. He looked at me because the uniform I was wearing and said, why would you do this? And I think that's something that a lot of Americans simply refuse to understand. We like to do, and I guess we'll close out the episode with this.

We as Americans like to have mental gymnastics to get away from all the societal ills that we have. You don't have healthcare because you didn't apply yourself, you didn't get the career that you wanted, whatever, fuck you. If you shut up a hospital or a school or a mall or a country music festival or I'm losing track of all the places people get shut up a hospital or a school or a mall or a country music festival or i'm

losing track of all the places people get shut up at anymore um i got schools um you you just need mental health care um this is an america thing this is a you thing robert bale shoots up two villages wearing your uniform and your flag on his sleeve using your weapons using your training using your multiple deployments, while his wife sits at home and collects your benefits. Well, this isn't an America thing. This is a Robert Bales thing. We have a disconnection. We have an intense disconnection because it requires us to look in a mirror and realize that we are diseased. We are a broken, horribly diseased people that need to be unplugged and replugged back in again to see if it will

function correctly ever again because the forever wars have broken our society to a level that is just unconscionable not even that long ago Eddie Gallagher ended up in court because he stabbed a teenager to death

who is a child soldier? I'm not sitting here defending fucking ISIS, I'm saying he was a child soldier. But America all rallied around this man who almost certainly killed dozens of innocent people because the person he stabbed to death happened to really not like America or was much more likely forced into service by ISIS. But America gathered around and said, this isn't an Eddie Gallagher thing. but America gathered around and said this isn't an Eddie Gallagher thing this is an America thing so they'll pick and choose their battles

and as long as that goes on we will never be okay this will never be okay what should have happened maybe not right in the sense of national morality or ethics

but what would have been okay is giving robert bales to the government of afghanistan we should have given eddie gallagher to the government of iraq we should have done that it's the only thing that ever make this right and uh no never will happen it'll never happen robert bales will die old and and very well taken care of within the walls of Leavenworth Prison, while his victims, of however many still survive, will die penniless, uncared for, and poor in the streets of Afghanistan.

Or they'll be killed in one of our drone strikes. Or maybe another soldier will kill them. The sky's the limit. Options are endless. Yeah, as long as they're bad, it's endless. I'll stop making everybody sad now but thank you for tuning in to this episode thank you Rich for joining me

I would like to say that it was good to be here but it fucking wasn't Joe I didn't like it and I think that's why I made sure you were here and not Nick and that's because you had a personal stake in this. Nick has never been to Afghanistan. Nick's certainly not there when Al-Qazai and Bien got shot up.

I would like to only be invited back when there's some levity and fun to be had. Thank you. I'll only bring you on for puppy episodes. Thank you. Puppies, bears. Yeah. We do have a question which we will use to

to lighten the mood a question from the legion if people are unaware of what that is if you're new to the show you donate to the patreon even one dollar you get to ask a question on patreon this one is from someone named ironically unqualified

question why do we still have an officer corps anyway This one is from someone named, ironically, Unqualified. Question. Why do we still have an officer corps anyway? Because we need to cushion the idea of really dumb, backwards, racist military academies. Because we need to fetishize the Confederacy in one way or another. And somebody needs to make really bad reading lists every year, year after year. Also, tradition,

the same reason why we still do fucking DNC. Yeah, I look forward to being able to fold all of my training through eight years of service into marching everybody slowly into the direction of musket fire. It's dumb, but also like the entire concept of the modern military is broken and backwards but um thank you for for supporting

the show if you think what we do is worth a dollar uh because i know after i listen to an hour and some change of war crime drama i'd really like to just like that was great honestly if you guys made it through this entire episode without just shutting it off and crying to yourself, fucking more power to you. I'm happy for you. Yeah. I can promise that our next

episode won't be so depressing. Now, if you think what we do is worth a dollar, you can throw it to us on Patreon. If you donate to us on Patreon, you get access to our communal Discord. It's the hell of a way to die, boys. you get access to our communal discord. It's a hell of a way to die, boys. You get access to one bonus episode a month for $1 or $2 or more for $5. You get free books, free stickers. You can ask us questions and make us answer them awkwardly on air after talking in depth about war crimes.

Yeah, all that stuff and more. So thank you for everybody. But for people who don't want to donate, that's fine as well. So thank you for everybody. But for people who don't want to donate, that's fine as well. Our show will always be free. We just simply ask that you share and review it because at one point, we were the 150th highest ranked comedy

in the United States of America on iTunes. I think we just tanked that rating. We're coming for that ass, Joe Rogan. Until next time.