Shawn Ryan Show - #72 Tony Cowden - CIA Operator's Real Life John Wick-Style Gunfight in a Warzone | Part 1

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

SRS is honored to bring Tony Cowden's story to the show. Tony is a former Green Beret and CIA contractor with an impeccable career having served in multiple combat deployments. In part one of this two-part series, we cover Tony's upbringing and how his father helped fuel his capacity for resourcefulness and an unmatched work ethic. Tony recounts his experience in the "Red Cell" Program where he was tracking and surveilling assets on American soil and how he barely made it out of a sticky situation alive on the day of the September 11th, 2001 attacks. Don't miss the harrowing story of how Tony single-handedly held off wave after wave of attackers when he was cut off, alone and outnumbered in the streets of Iraq. 26 bodies of enemy combatants were recovered from this firefight. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://hvmn.com/shawn https://babbel.com/srs https://shopify.com/shawn Tony Cowden Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tony_cowden Twitter - https://twitter.com/TonyCowdenNC Training - https://www.capableincorporated.com Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@capableinc4861 Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the Sean Ryan show this week we have a former green beret and CIA operator who worked over at ground branch we cover his time and service extensively to include a specific gun fight where he single-handedly killed 26 enemy combatants once again six enemy combatants. Once again, he killed 26 enemy combatants

is a solo gunfighter. That event actually revolutionized all of training over at CIA. You see previous to that event, we never did one man close quarters combat. After that, everybody started training one man close quarters combat, which was previously strictly prevent. After that, we go into his run for Congress, and what we wind up covering or actually uncovering is all of the corruption, I guess I shouldn't say all, a lot of the corruption within the Republican Party,

which I think you'll find very alarming. Ladies and gentlemen, I wanna thank all of my patrons, because of you, you are what makes this show happen. If you can't support us on Patreon, please head over to Apple Podcast and Spotify. Leave us a review, tell us what you think of the show. Like, comment, and subscribe to the channel. And last of all, we see a lot of you taking our content from these shows, making your own

and release it on social media. We love it. We absolutely love it. In fact, we love it so much, We wanted to make it easy on you. So if you go in the description, there is a link. It has thousands and thousands of raw reels from all the episodes that you can download for free. Turn them into your own creation. Monetize it. Make money off of it. The only thing we ask is that you tag the Sean Ryan show in your creation because we love seeing them Ladies and gentlemen without further ado, please welcome Tony Cowden to the Sean Ryan show in one last thing

For those of you that don't know and he might not even know this. This is coming from 10th group SF people today SF operators operators, green berets, current ones, call them Uncle Tony. Let's get on with it. Tony Cowden, welcome to the show, man. Thank you very much. We've had this on the schedule for like six months Thank you more and Finally here we're making it happen. Yeah, but

Spent an entire career in US special forces and then moved on to CIA believe correct and then Spent basically another career over there. Now you're teaching tactics, shooting fundamentals, advanced shooting, all kinds of stuff. Ran for Congress, unfortunately, didn't make it. I can't wait to dive into that segment. But, man, we got a lot to talk about. I want to talk about, you know, this is basically your biography. So I want to head childhood, military career, contracting career, teaching, Congress, and let's put a lot of mental health in there because a lot of guys from our former background,

you know, they get a lot of wisdom out of this podcast. And it's important, it's helped a lot of people. But so we got a lot to talk about. But before we do, everybody that comes on the show gets a gift. I'm pretty sure the only reason you're here is to get this. But I'm excited about it. There you go. There you go. Man, good stuff. Now, I'm going to go ahead and predict who's gonna eat most of these. And, because, you know, Melissa, even though she's a dentist,

Chick loves junk food. And now she doesn't eat much, but when she does eat, quote unquote junk food, it's like what a four year old would choose, you know, like sour patch kids, it's stuff like that, it's hilarious. When four year old would choose. You know, like, sour patch kids and stuff like that. It's hilarious when people see Melissa eat something. They're like, aren't you a dentist? She's like, yeah.

That's her answer. And what? So I brushed my teeth. So that's awesome, man. Thank you very much. This is very cool. I just wanna say, you know, I told you, but two listeners, man, I'm proud of A, that you invited

me on, one, but just what you're doing. And you've had some amazing guests. And I joke, but it's not really a joke. Man, there's a couple of those. I didn't really want to follow. I'd like to go before a couple of these these cats you'd had on. But I think it's amazing the depth of your podcast. Some of the folks you've had on, it's not just the knuckle-dagger, tell me about your war stories. It's so much more in death, man. So, and again,

from everything with Trevor and Marcus and all the different mental health conversations you've had on here with guys and there's been some I mean frankly some bad asses You know here and open up and and that's a good example especially for the younger guys who are unless face it man America day young men in America. They're confused and rightfully so I mean they're being told that It's okay to be a girl or you you know, to say that everything that makes men men is bad And luckily, I think we're seeing some of that pendulum starting to shift But what what happens in the meantime to our brothers, you know, I don't mean just soft guys I mean in a lot of ways we have a slightly better community, you know, you're talking about like

talking about like, thank you again, man. You're welcome. You know, so many of these infantry Marines, let's face it, Marines, man, even like at Marsock, you know, the Marines will eat their own in a second, you know, Marine Corps is destroying guys, right? Marsock III, Danny and Eric and those guys, you know, man, here there's a, it's so frustrating, you know, and for guys, yeah, they, they, guys,

they need, I don't want to say they need help. They need good examples. Yeah. Right. And we talk about, I mean, there's those taglines and phrases in the military leadership models of, you know, setting the example, seating standards, all that stuff, things we throw around, words we throw around, they just don't mean anything, but man, it's important. It is really important.

When I started this, it's always been frowned upon. The whole, let's talk about our service afterwards and the cool guy shit that we did and and a lot of people You know consider it Chess pounding and and so what I you know what I wanted to do is I want when I started this is I wanted One I wanted to document history. I wanted to talk about mental health I wanted to get guys that you know that have the courage to come out here and be fucking vulnerable and talk about their struggles and inform the public, you know, kids that are coming in, people that are coming out like this isn't.

I guess I'm not going to say it's not everything it's cracked up to be, but there's so much more that comes into a job like this that people don't think about. They don't think about what it's like coming out. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to paint a life story in talk about the reason I go into all the combat stuff is one, it's documenting history, which is fucking important, because we don't do that shit enough anymore in this country. Two, it qualifies you to talk about the mental health stuff because nobody wants to hear you talk about mental health

if you haven't walked through that far. It is, I've made posts on social media and there's very few things I do that aren't meant to help people. Very few. I mean, whether it meant to help people. Very few. I mean, whether it's a how to chew the pistol better on, you know, video or mental health or exercise. You know, I post a lot of workout stuff. Well, it's an integral part of my own maintenance of my own mental health. And I have had people say, clearly you don't know anything about mental health.

When I say things like You need to get outside These drugs that they put you on these mood brain altering drugs, you know SSRIs and all these powerful drugs They don't cure anything. They don't have a Well-buterin deficiency, right? You need to address your diet well-buterin deficiency, right? You need to address your diet. Let's get to the root cause. And then if you've addressed and checked all those boxes, you quit drinking. I think developing, I know, let me rephrase that, I don't think. I know that being spiritual, in my case, being connected to God, I'm a Christian, is part of that. It's a package deal. So if you've checked all those boxes and you still need an SSRI or anti-anxiety or any of these other powerful prescription drugs, hey, so be it. That's not what we're seeing. Right. I can go to the doctor, probably to an urgent care, to tell him I'm feeling down and get a drug for a prescription for a drug that will change me as a human being.

Yeah. All right. And so I've had people say, well, clearly you don't know anything about mental health. I'm like, whoa, I am not formally trained. But I have since 2001. So it is at 22 years of in and out of combat interacting with guys who needed help And I have somehow Maintained a pretty even kill level of mental health

It's not to say I don't have days that I'm sad You know, there's always those anniversaries that you know, yeah And I will tell you man like everyone has a gift and I always say I have a pretty good gift of being able to convince myself of things. And it was a long time ago, you know, when it came to mental health, my mother died of cancer after four, four and a half year about a cancer when, you know, I was a kid. Damn.

And, you know, I don't think, like, it doesn't go through my head like, man, I wish my mom had been here to see me do X or Y or, yeah, I mean, don't get around, I wish my mother was here, but I don't think like that, right? She's dead. And when she died, she taught me the greatest lesson that I could, she could have probably ever given me. And that is you need to appreciate what you have and who you have while they're here because everyone you

know is going to die from something old age combat a car rat cancer name it man what age were you when you thought you that what's that what age were you when that 16 16 you know so 12-ish when she was diagnosed. And I'll tell you, man, you know, it wasn't a cool thing, you know, but I was like, a baby, I was a kid, I was an immature child. Not even close to being a young man. And, you know, some people joke that I was mama's baby boy, you know, I got two sisters and older and a younger.

So, I'm, what's that quintessential of the rose between two thorns. My sisters are, my sisters are awesome. And, you know, like I said, my dad wasn't a hugs and kisses type of dude, but he raised three pretty successful people with three very different personalities. But, you know, a different parallel, like my sisters will still, they, it took them much, much longer and in my younger sister's cases, I don't think she's still over her mother's death. You're talking, it was 30 years ago.

Literally coming up on a 30 year, now that I think it was a 30 year anniversary of my mother's death here in a couple of weeks. Now, if I could go back and redo it, right? And this is what I share with people. I'm like, imagine from their point of view, right? When I hear people like, oh, you know, my grandfather has cancer or my mother has cancer,

my whoever has cancer, I'm like, now put yourself in their shoes. Because if I could go back and put myself in her shoes, I would have been a much better son. In other words, can you imagine how horrified she was? She knew she was going to die. She had three kids that she knew she was going to pass before any of us were mature adults, even close to being mature adults. Older sisters were four years older than me, so she was already in college. And so anyway, like I said, man, she taught me that.

And in unbeknownst to me at the time, it would prepare me better, I wouldn't say fully, but prepare me much better for losing, I hate saying that, for my friends being killed in combat. I didn't lose them. I hate saying that. For my friends being killed in combat. I didn't lose them. I hate that work. I attended a seminar 10 years ago for PTSD. And it wasn't combat PTSD necessarily. And this PhD lady, big brain lady, she was talking about one of the biggest problems

and one of the things she hypothesized was that PTSD and mental health is so horrible in America around death is that we do a horrible job preparing ourselves for death. We don't celebrate life. We mourn death. We're other cultures, you know, and our culture, not that long ago, celebrated life. Right? We celebrate their lives. And we do an okay job and soft, we talk about it,

we get together and we celebrate at Funeral's. We were talking about Seth Farwell before we got on, you know, dude, there was 150 operators at his funeral. Oh man. Right, Cortalaine was either the most dangerous place on the planet or the safest, according to how you wanna look at it. Yeah.

And hardly enough, no one got any bar fights in downtown Cortalaine and there was some some wild child there, you know Most of those days haven't talked to since so for two years. Yeah, you know the name is like yeah, we celebrated him and then we moved on So anyway the mental health piece, man, it's a board. Like I said, I'd maintained good mental health through a few practices. I made a post about it yesterday on the drive up here, some do's and don'ts, my do's and don'ts, right? I don't talk to people from a place of judgment or a place of authority when it comes to things I'm not an expert on and like even when it comes to things that I might even be an expert on

I'm still open to further learning, you know what I mean? Like the way I used to explosively breach a door 20 years ago is much different than what I used today You know, I'm always we have to and it's a cliche right always learning always a student But in all seriousness, I'm always we have to and it's a cliche right always learning always a student But in all seriousness I'm open but It was just some do's and don'ts my do's and don'ts right on this no judgment It's this is what I do and like the do's were You know physical fitness go outside. I kind of made a joke

Take up hunting because it's outside. Pick up new hobbies, preferably ones that are outside. And I'm like, you know, down in the bottom, like, did I mention get outside more? We weren't designed to be interior people, man. We didn't evolve to be interior people. Yeah, you want to find me happy and peaceful and chill.

Find me in the woods. I want to tell you about this business venture I've been on for about the past seven eight months, and it's finally come to fruition. I've been hellbent on finding the cleanest functional mushroom supplement on the planet, and that all kind of stemmed from the psychedelic treatment I did. Came out of it got a ton of benefits. Haven't had a drop of alcohol in almost two years. I'm more in the moment with my family.

And that led me down researching the benefits of just everyday functional mushrooms. And I started taking some supplements. I found some coffee replacements. I even wrapped a brand. And, you you know it got to the point where I just wanted the finest ingredients available no matter where they come from and it got to this point where I was just gonna start my own brand and so we started going to trade shows and looking for the finest

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see a lot of people taking care of their bodies. I do not see a lot of people taking care of their brain. This is the product, guys. And so, we got to talking and our values seemed very lined. We're both into the functional mushrooms. And after a lot of back and forth, I am now a shareholder in the company. I have a small amount of ownership, and I'm just,

look, I'm just really proud to be repping and be a part of the company that's making the best functional mushroom supplement on the planet. You can get this stuff at layeredsuperfoods.com. You can use the promo code SRS that'll get you 20% off these performance mushrooms or anything in the store. They got a ton of good stuff. Once again, that's layeredsuperfoods.com. Use the promo code SRS that gets you 20% off.

You guys are going to love this stuff. I guarantee it. You know, if I'm on the side of a mountain looking for elk, you know, like, just find me sitting on my front porch. There's, I do 99% of my work on my front porch. I hate it inside. Doesn't take me very long for it. I gotta get outside, man. I'd rather work out outside. I'd rather run outside.

You're not catching me on a treadmill. I can't do it. I won't do it. Yeah. I do get do it. I won't do it. Yeah. I do get on the stair mill, but just because where I live, there are no hills. And to prepare for the mountain walks that I like, I gotta get on that stair mill. But yeah, you know, some of the don'ts, you know,

don't drink alcohol. If there is one thing I can share with guys, and let's face it, man, when I see these, these influential guys, potential mentors in our community, you know, posting their stuff about drinking whiskey and stuff like that, you know, this is a fine whatever whiskey. Like, oh, man, it's poison. Yeah. Like by definition, alcohol is poisonous. It can kill us. There are some medicinal uses of alcohol, but having a nightcap to settle down to go to sleep, that's not a bit of nistle use, right?

You're potentially an alcoholic and that's different. You're poisoning yourself, you're poisoning your system, you're poisoning your brain. How do you expect, you know what I mean, you don't put diesel fuel in a freaking Ferrari. Yeah.

And that's what you're doing. How long have you been sober? Almost 13 years, I think. 13 years? Yeah. And I used to drink. Congratulations. I used to drink like a considerable.

I would say I was in the top 10 of drinkers in our community. I was pretty good at it. Yeah. I had a good time with this. You know, I was right up there with some of the best of us. You know, my favorite drink for the longest time was Tequila on the rocks. And I would drink Tequila shots and chase it away.

Tequila on the rocks. You know what I mean? I was like, what were you doing, man? Yeah. You know, we come home from a trip. There were three or four of us all living in Wellington. And we would stay on the Rackie time zone. You know, get up, go to bed at seven, eight in the morning, get up four, five in the afternoon,

go to the gym, eat, pick up beer, start drinking, ending the lap every night, every night while we're home for, you know, two or three, four weeks, whatever you're home for. And when you're young and single, that might be an okay lifestyle. Doesn't mean it's healthy, certainly not, especially sleeping around, risking that, risking having unwanted pregnancy or risking an STD. And honestly, it's just not healthy for us, right? Yeah.

And so, yeah, Melissa came along. And we have a pretty funny story about how, you know, of course, I always tell it that she stalked me for like three years, not finally gave in. It's my story, I can tell it however I want. She's not here when she watches this, which she probably will, you know, see the one, listen to me talk.

If she watched this, she would be like, you're so foolish, you know, like, one that listen to me talk. If she watched this, she would be like, you're so foolish, you know, like, no, she stopped me. But no, we kept bouncing off of each other, and we finally got together. You know, she was drinking a little bit, she's a complete nerd. She was top of her class and, you know, junior high, high school, she was calling her ships. I was smoking weed and doing blood, drinking a lot in high school. She would have never hung out with me, right? I was just a misspeed kid.

And you know, was I misspeaving? Cause my mom died. I mean, I'm sure it didn't help, right? And looking back, like I can see where like, you know, teachers cut me breaks. They felt sorry for me and stuff like that. But me and Melissa got together, man, and she was very fit, like to do outdoor stuff.

I mean, before I met her, she was hiking in every national park. And she had been ice climbing, love the climb. She's a monkey, man. She's got legs that are this long, and like a wing span, like a, she's got like a spine and torso of a six foot tall person, but her legs make her five two. So like, I mean,

the chicken do 25 dead hang pull ups. So she loves the climb. I don't like the climb, not technical climb. So our compromise was we were going to, we started, we were doing a bunch of the 14ers in Colorado. We'd hop up on a flight from sea level. And in two days, that one on top of a 14er. So we started a relationship out with some suffering. And it just kept going from there. And next I know we were, you know, whatever ironed trathlons and ultra-marathons and just name it, right? Powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting. She was very much into the CrossFit competition, stuff beginning, she went into the CrossFit games and stuff like that.

But because of all that physical fitness stuff, it was hard to maintain a drinking problem. That's why I sobered up. It wasn't necessarily like a, I need to stop doing this because it's interfering with my life. Actually, it was just part of my life. It was part of our community's social thing. It was the old joke where the healthiest alcoholics on the planet,

which is completely not true. Two things can't exist together. We might be physically fit alcohol, all this. it's different. So anyway, yeah, she came along in and, well, this is not like a, she's not like an angel in the sense of like soft and nurturing. I mean, don't give me wrong,

like, Melissa can be soft and nurturing, but she's a hard ass, you know, she's more of the, hey Tony, pull your head out of your ass. You know, I picked up a little bit of that at breakfast this morning. So, yeah. You know, and then like I said, people don't realize, like a lot of people think I'm like kind of a, you know, aggressive personality and I'm not even close to her, dude. Not even close.

She is, she is talking, you want to talk about target focus, man. She gets something. Let's get to that. Let's do this. I like to do things in chronological order. So if you don't mind, let's start with your childhood. So where'd you grow up? Yeah, so I was born in Newburn, North Carolina, which is central, North and South, but almost as far east as you can. Pamela Co. County, it's right on the Pamela Co. sound, and then, of course, the outer banks are off the sound. My dad had moved before I was born back from Indiana,, I guess we can back up and give you there, there a little bit of their story.

My mom and my dad met in Wilmington, same place me in Melissa Met. Weird. Kind of funny. My dad was at Fort Bragg, and my mom was going to school in Raleigh, and they met at the Ezele Festival. It's a big springtime festival in Wilmington, Parade's and all that stuff.

And they met my dad, I remember him saying he was like, I couldn't sleep. I needed to be with her. Like he was like, I met her, I fell in love with her. And that was kind of cool. And I was like, you know, that's not a whole lot different than Melissa. Even though I tried really hard, I really thought Melissa was just kind of a punk. You know, and my feelings for her when I first met her, it was weird. Like, I was just drawn to her

and I had never felt it before, so I was a little weird about it, you know. And it's kind of funny that, remember what my dad would say about my mom, how he just fell in love with her. And that's kind of cool. Because I wouldn't say either he nor I are necessarily like hopeless or a man to expi any means, but you know, loves a real thing. And so it's kind of a parallel there as well. So anyway, they wound up getting married, but they moved to Indiana where my father was

from. Well, I thought it was from Western Virginia, and then coal mining fell apart in the 50s. His family moved up like all the coal miners and went to work for General Motors or Ford or whatever. So he was his father was working in plants for General Motors outside and around Indianapolis. So anyway, my dad went to after he got out of the army. They moved up there. He started working for Delco Remy, which was a subsidiary or whatever of John Motors.

And twice he got passed up for a supervisor job, to do affirmative action. And he was really frustrated. He's like, here I am, busted my ass, working my ass off. And I got passed up two years in a row for promotion because of affirmative action. And in his mind, he felt like he was more qualified than the people who got put in those positions, and he was frustrated. So he decided to leave

that world, which was a good thing overall, moved back down to North Carolina, and it went to work for a seafood company, and he ultimately bought it. And we went from being, you know, a trailer park kids, a true limited trailer, white trash red nacks. I watched my father, I participated, right? He didn't have health, so I was his labor. As soon as I was old enough to be his labor. And he, I watched him build that business. I watched him work, you know, and talk about set the example.

I mean, that dude left before I got up and got home, you know, we did dinner at six o'clock every night and he would come in, eat, and get up and go back to work, you know, and I watched that. And then, like I said, as soon as I was old enough, big enough, or in some case, I don't know as I was old enough big enough or in some case I don't know that I was old enough, but he still needed help and So I went to work with him and I got to see it. I got to experience it and the man worked. I'm talking non-stop no breaks Breakfast lunch were optional and it's funny because like

I'm so much more like him there man. I thought I was gonna be. I like to think I got a good blend of him, man. My mom, he was a little more hot headed. She was a little more chill. My aunt's told me that she was actually pretty hot headed, but not with me, because I was the favorite. I was the boy. You know, I don't know.

So I never got to really see my mom lose her temper. I mean, like she would give us a spankin' her something, like with a fly swatter or something, and I'd be like, ooh, our mom, that hurt so bad, you know. Like a spankin' from her was like more of a principal thing than something that you were even gonna learn a lesson. But then when dad got home, if it was bad enough for mom to tell him,

you're gonna, you're gonna total a decent ass weapon, not abusive, a spanking. My dad never physically abused me. And don't get me wrong, and I got arrested one time. We threw hands, and I lost. My dad was a good size fellow. He was about, I graduated high school at about a buck 65,

and he was probably about 200 pounds, he was full, I graduated high school at about a buck 65 and he was probably about 200 pounds, he was full grown and I wouldn't. So anyway, yeah, they got in the seafood thing, he grew, it's called sound, like Pemiko Sound, packing company, and bring the product in, scallops, shrimp, flounder, crabs, blue crabs. They were all processed at his facility, package, shipped to restaurants, sold to restaurants. So, you know, I could on any one day be picking crab meat or filetting fish or loading a truck with a fork lift, whatever. And then he and my uncle got into, developed a subdivision together. So they bought like a backhoe and a small bulldozer and then they bought a bigger bulldozer

or a D6 together. I mean, I was running those things before I could reach the pedals. In some cases some of the stuff we're doing, like putting tiles, big concrete tiles with the backhoe. So if you ever see those concrete towels on the side of the road, there's a male and a female int. So when you lay them in, the big end being the female end, the little end, you put them in with the excavator,

you drop them in and kind of snuggle them in. Dude, my dad would be in the ditch. Me running the bulldozer when I was like 11 years old or the excavator backhoe, he's in the ditch, and I'm got a thousand pound concrete culvert and he's guiding it in and he's trusting me with that. Wow. I look back, I'm like, there's not an eleven year old on this planet. Oh, did I would get anywhere near them if they were running a backhoe and he had me doing that stuff, which ultimately carried over into my,

you know, adult life. Like, I never once questioned whether or not I was gonna pass selection. It's just had something to do. I was gonna go do it. I know we're all right, but we're drawing from college against everyone's better advice. I just wanted to be an army, man.

You know? What did your dad do in army? Yeah, so he was an 82nd airborne. He was a ground pounding infantry dude, and then a heavy mortar man, so maybe the 120s I believe, yes, 120s. And then on his last bit, he was on the house, it was like a 105.

So, deaf. You know, we're out here worried about shooting in floors with suppressors with air pro. They were setting off cannons with no air pro. He was deffering as he could be, man. Couldn't hear a thing. Freaking, you know, hearing aids and all that stuff, but he never wore them. Which was always an advantage because I would be like, well, I told you.

Anyway, I told you, I told you I was going to do that. And he's like, oh, I told you, and you're like, all right, I told you, I told you I was gonna do that down. He's like, oh, I was like, you must not have heard me. Of course, now I might play that game a little bit myself with Melissa, you know, I'm supposed to, I'm like completely deaf and variety, or I'm supposed to wear a hearing aid in my left and whatever. So I always say, I didn't hear you say that, and she's just like,

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Man, yeah, partly, but also, I can trace it back to the fact that he let me watch Rambo first blood when I was like nine. You know, running around the mountains, freaking running from these mean old police guys who were mean to veterans, you know, it was like, man, this dude is awesome. And then, you know, the Colonel spill about green brains being real bad asses and all that. That had a lot to do with it, you know, frankly, which sounds kind of funny because I will catch myself sometimes saying, well, you know, part of our,

you know, this generation watched a couple of cool movies and decided they wanted to be seals or Rangers or whatever. And I think back I'm like, wait a minute. It was part of the reason why I did it too. You know, so I can't really be up on the guys for that. You know, it's like, yeah, you know, but that was part of, that was a huge part of the motivation between the fact that, you know, he did it, and then that movie. But I also, I mean, I feel like, you know, hunting and war is a lot of hunting. If you look at it like that, I just feel like it's part of my nature, part of my genetics, whatever you want to call it.

Like, I am, you know, I don't want to say for the sake of silence, I'm crazy psychopath that I wanted war, but before the war started, that was part of the thing, man, warriors wanted to go to war. We all hear about the Ranger prayers and that kind of stuff where you pray to the cons of war for the opportunity to test yourself and combat and all that stuff. And then they really got into anything like that, but I think it's part of it. I think there are just simply some people are genetically cut out for certain types of work or whatever, and I was drawn to it. And then, I mean, really, when I joined the military, I couldn't afford college.

Dad was trying to, you know, he was still really trying to recover from my mom's death, man. That poor guy, I watched him for two years, come home after work, sit in his recliner, in his chair, whatever, and stare at a TV that wasn't on. I would come in at 11, 12 at night, on a school night, he lost control. And he didn't have that energy, you know? I was just doing whatever I wanted and staying out,

and he misbehaving, and I would come in, and he'd still be sitting in that recliner. You know, the next morning, brushes teeth go to work. He was lost. He went from 200, 200, $5 dude to work. He was he was lost. He went from 200 to 105 pound dude to 170 pounds, not eating just morning. Morning. And so yeah, man, freaking he wanted me to go to college. You know, so I tried and I went to NC State and I say that I was enrolled there. I'm really a 10 class. You know, I got there and I was, man, you know, there's like 10, maybe 30 attractive girls

in Pamela, Co. Now I'm at NC State University and there are so many distractions everywhere. You only got a class, you know, eight o'clock in the morning, I got stuff to do, man. Girls to chase and stuff. So, college just wasn't working out, man. I was trying to pay, you know, and help us with college funding and all that.

At this point, my older sister's looking at medical school. And I was like, you can't afford it. There's no way. So, I went through and joined the army. And, you know, so my sister's got to finish their college and all that kind of stuff. I fully intended on going back, oddly enough, I wanted to be a doctor.

And my sister became one. And she actually quit practicing and has become more, she's in the business side of biotech world now. She's got a master's in business and all kinds of stuff, which is weird. She went to become a doctor. And then ultimately, before she became a business side,

I was the business guy. That's definitely a genetic pastown. My dad was a businessman. An entrepreneur always hustling, always into something. And was successful at everything he ever did. Because he was pretty methodical, an entrepreneur always hustling, you know, always into something. And it was successful and everything he ever did because he was pretty methodical but also worked really hard. So, yeah, man, freaking, I was drew from college

like my second year, second semester, on like a Tuesday and signed all the paperwork, went home and she stayed to the house, was about three hours, got home, he wasn't there. Shit, there's some money, she was only going for a run. Sure enough, right into him. He's like, what are you doing here? Like he knew, he knew something was up. He's like, what now, that type of thing, you know?

And my stepmother, he remarried to an amazing woman. Turns she turned out to be one of my best friends. Sadly, she died of cancer. Oh man, my dad just took it in a gut. But she was awesome. And you know, so I went up to his truck and he's like, what in the, are you doing home? Like he just knew. And I was like, um, I enlisted in the army. He's like, you what, what?

You know, I never forget, uh, Carol, my stepmother, she just reached out and put her hand on a shore and she said, let's go in home. And when he gets here, we'll talk about it. Let's see what he has to say. And he just went, all right, I'll see you at the house. You know, because he was lucky man, an amazing woman with my mother, and then an amazing woman, an amazing wife, with my stepmom. And she was cool man, my stepmom was like,

Martha Stewart on steroids man, like, Jess, I could come home and she'd throw together a dinner and there'd be like, you know, like, why did you do this whole layout? And she's like, it's just what I do, you know? And, but not prissy, you know, not a prispotter, anything like that. Hell, she was in Afghanistan in the late 60s.

Oh, nice. New friends with the hippies. Yeah, smoking the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the that stuff, dude? So I met this Green Beret, I named Jason McKenzie. He was doing a Green to Gold program at NC State. And he told me about the National Guard SF and how he is like the bus kept secret in the military. He was a third group guy and then the 19th group guy and what I can say was getting his commission and ultimately he went on to be

in, uh, over at the unit and I talked to him in 15 years, should definitely reach out to that guy and see what he's up to these days. Um, but yeah, because you know, I met him, he's like, yeah, bro, let me tell you about this National Guard stuff. So I enlisted with Second Battalion and 19th Group up in West Virginia. And it was before the 18X Ray or the 18 baby SF baby program, which you may have heard is usually kind of, or can be a derogatory term. But it was basically an SF baby program

where I came in through the guard. It was kind of a back door and that was why some of the back then, the National Guard, SF guys kind of got looked at because on active duty, the whole idea of being able to try out for special forces, you had to have done time somewhere else in the army, whether you were a mechanic, a ranger, didn't matter. You had to be an e-for-promotable to go to special forces selection. So you've already spent three to four years in the military. And you were bringing that to the table and that was important in special forces. But the card had figured out a way to backdoor that stuff.

So we would go to basic, AIT or whatever MLS, airborne school, typically to like a little career promotion, progression school, they used to call it PLDC or whatever, it's basically to get promoted. So you were eligible to get a promotion from E-405, little curve. So you did all that stuff and then you go to selection. If you pass selection, strike the cue course. So zero to hero. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it was the beginning of the 18 X-ray program.

And like I said, I have to do you guys look down their nose at us. Damn, I thought that program was in, I mean, what years is this? So this is 97. Shit, I didn't realize that program was in the whole. For the guard. Oh, duty had no none of this program yet. And that's why when I active, Dooty put it back in place, because it, 18XR Air, 18 Baby

program, SF Baby program was a thing in the 80s, and then it went away. So when they brought it back in what, 2003 time frame-ish, like, what would do? Everyone's upset. Of course, I'm over here going. I mean, you could with me, right? And don't give it all. There's exceptions to every rule. I would say, you know, I already knew how to do a lot of things, you know, when I got to my first ODA that definitely qualified.

And when they looked at me in selection, I had to go to the board like three times because I was young. I was younger than any other candidate. I also was not an E4. So, you're supposed to be an E4 promoter. One of my buds from the unit got hurt before you suppose to get an S or a S. So, I get a phone call, hey are you ready to go to selection? And I'm like, I'm not, yes, but no, I hadn't been rocking or anything because I've been in basic training in airborne school

and that no time to really go rough March and get ready for selection. And I'm like, well, we got a slot next week. Do you want a mean being afraid to say no? Like I might not get another chance, being young and dumb, said yes. And I went, like I passed. But at the end, it was kind of funny

because I got caught into the board and they're like, what are you doing here? I'm like, well Sergeant Major, I don't wanna be a bad-ass green braver, whatever you know. He's like, that's not what I'm asking. How and why are you here as an E three? Like, you know, I suppose to be here, how we didn't catch you all the way through this class and boot you. I don't know.

And I'm like, Roger, Sergeant Major. And he's like, so why should I allow you to continue? Why should I pass you? That's like, what else, Sergeant Major? I get it. And I understand. I understand that you need to bring something to the table. And that's why the rules in place. So I gave him a kind of a brief,

kind of like, hey, here's my capability to the things I've done in life. You know, I ran my first business when I was 13 years old. You know, on and on and on. And you know, and now he's had, he was like, all right, get out, get the fuck out. Roger on there, an hour later or so, get back in here, you know, go back to the board. They grilled me again and they were just looking to see if I was mature enough. And I guess I rated it. Graduation ceremony, the captain, the company commander over selection. He's handing out the

diplomas or whatever, the certificates, and he's like, you know, captain Smith, congratulations, staff sergeant, whatever, corporal sergeant, sergeant, sergeant, specialist, specialist, specialist, private, for, hey, looks at the first one, the first one goes. You know, and he's looking at me and he's like, is this right? You know, I mean, there's, you know, 40 dudes left. We're in a small room out there, you know, we're all dirty nasty and, you know, no fancy ceremony. And they're like, yeah, I guess, well, all right, then, private first class count. Welcome to the regiment.

And I'm like, Roger, well like I say, man, I think that was what? And so I'm 20, 22 years old. So I wasn't, you know, 18 year old right off the street private either, you know, so luckily, you know, they picked me up. Yeah. And let me go to the queue course.

Real quick. Just backtrack. And you said you ran your first business at 13 years old. What was that? Moe but not like lawnmowering I would I had to I rented my dad's tractor and heavy bushhog and I would go to the realtors and Say hey, this is what I do. I clean up your property. I'll you know bush hog Clear out the species of property

to undergrow so you can see the property. You can be able to see all the way to the water. And then I'll take my heavy duty weed eater and clean around the trees and you'll be able to see it would be beautiful on the cell. And at 13 years old, I was charging $100 an hour for mowing and you're talking what? 88, 89. It's a lot of money for a

day on 13, 14, 15, 16 year old. And by the time I was 16 year old I would go work for a couple hours, you know, heck I could go work for four or five hours on Saturday. That's four or five hundred bucks. Knock off, go to the beach. You were making a hundred dollars an hour. Yeah. It's 13 years old back. And I was 88. You said I was cheap. Other people doing the same jobs were $152 an hour. So I was cheap. And yeah, crazy insane money, especially back then, especially for a 13, 14 year old.

But here was the deal, right? I didn't have driver's license. So I would drive the tractor down the highway to my job sites. You know, so I like it when I say I watch my dad work in hustle, I don't even know, right? So I had cost. I had to maintain the equipment, keep it greased, keep the olds changed, if something broke, I had to fix it. So he, while he helped me, obviously put it in motion,

he made me run it like a real business. You know? He made you rent the tractor from, huh? That's awesome. And it was like $18 an hour. So now here I am already, not $100 an hour anymore. You know?

Yeah, he was smart, man. Looking back, looking back, I was like, you know, like when I was a kid, I was like, man, he's just an asshole. But you know what? Like I said, he prepared me, you know, and like I said, by today's standards, you know, not lovey-dovey-huggy-kissy, you know, father, but not abusive, not anywhere near what I would call abuse. I mean, he set me up for success, and just because. And then of course, you know, while I didn't bring it up to the Sergeant Major, the board,

you know, it didn't take me long to figure out, you know, the exact same hustle for mowing grass, also kind of work for selling grass. So yeah, man, as a bad kid, I was a little weed and then started selling a little cocaine because of return on investment. I mean, I learned that shit quick, man, freaking, you know, the money on weed versus the money on a little cocaine was big time difference. And I was bad.

I just needed a couple of my bodies, man. We were... What age were you when you started selling drugs? Sixteenish. How long did it take you to move from Wade to cocaine? A few months. That's it. Yeah, it was quick.

How did you get... My cousins were going to go to cocaine. My cousins. My cousins were all... And still are. Well, the ones that are drug addicts are fucking hurts, excuse my language. It was just readily available. Rule North Carolina, nothing else to do. And it didn't take a genius to sell that shit.

I mean, it sells itself. There's no market to get involved. You know what I mean? Like, there's supply and demand, and that is it in that market space. Back in the days. I got arrested. I got arrested for producing. You got arrested? Yeah, how did that got lucky?

You're honest with you. Did you sell a little under cover? No. They had been basically watching. It's a small place, man. Everybody knew everything. But they were watching and then they, I'm not sure it's actually 100%.

But they knew me and my buddy went to the supplier's house that night. And they set up on us, they set up a little roadblock because they anticipated us going from here to our other buddy's house. But instead of going to my bloodthouse, me and the main roads, we went through the hunting club roads. I mean, we're drinking, you know what I mean?

So we don't get on the pavement. And you could drive, you could drive from one end to another and never hit pavement, you know, across it, but hunting club roads, you know, gravel roads. And so we went to my bloodthouse through this back way. We left and went through their roadblock, the opposite direction. So they like, they had no clue.

They were like, well, wait a minute. Blue lights, you know. And so what I dropped off at his house would have gotten me four to six years first offense. Wow. And all I had was like a little bump or whatever you're to call it. Like just enough for me and my bud to get how and away home, you know, nothing.

Less than one gram is what I was charged with. Reds to do almost. But any amount of cocaine in North Carolina is a state felony. It upset a lot of people, man. You know, my dad was well respected as an honest, hardworking dude in the community. And here I am, I ain't like an asshole. And people would basically like, hey man, you've gone too far.

We get it. You're still reacting from your mom's death and all that stuff. I will never blame my behavior on that. Was it a factor? Of course, because nothing is two plus two, it is everything's an equation. So was it a factor, certainly?

Did I manipulate an exploit a little bit? Probably. I knew people felt sorry for me. I knew if I missed a few classes here in there in school, I could probably get away with it. Because people loved me. It's a small place. And the people that I went to school with in the 11th grade,

the same people I went to school with in kindergarten. It literally didn't change. Graduated with 100 and like five people. All right, small place. So anyway, I was lucky. My neighbor who used to be my babysitter was a new attorney. And I'm been to ask her me, while she was in college, she probably pretty hard. And she came and picked me up.

She came in kind of a scolding. And then she also explained to me, like, came in and shit happens. And now you have a choice. You can fix yourself or you can continue this path and you will go to jail. Right? She actually went on to become a superior court judge in North Carolina. She's still one of my very best friends. Her name is Karen Alexander.

I'm mentor someone I trust like through and through. If I needed someone to tell me what's up, I can call Karen Alexander and she will break it down for me. She was a really good, a really good judge, a fair judge, but a hard judge if you cross the line as far as the law goes. She had a lot of... It was a letter of law and then there's the the spirit of the law and she had a good way of knowing the difference. I mean, but luckily between her, the sheriff, right, everyone knew everybody. You know, they all basically got me together and they were like, hey man, you don't get another chance, right?

Here's what's gonna go down. You're gonna do a bunch of community service and we're gonna delay this case, right? And then, if you don't get in trouble for the next year, we're gonna reevaluate a year later or so, they put it down to paraphernalia, but suspended the sentence. So for another year, I had to continue to behave they put it down to paraphernalia, but suspended the sentence. So for another year, I had to continue to behave. And so I didn't get any more trouble.

I didn't touch drugs, again, didn't touch them. Didn't use them, didn't sell them. Still saw some of the same dudes and friends and stuff. Cocaine's a hard drug to come off of. I, you know, I'll tell you man, I was never, ever even close to being addicted. and stuff. Cocaine's a hard drug to come off of. I'll tell you man, I was never ever even close to being addicted. Really?

Cocaine was fun and that was about it and it was a business, right? And you know, you don't get how in your own supply. The party was fun because, you know, I mean, for lack of better saying it, right? Like when... Girls, you know, he's in cocaine. It's a fun party.

Yeah. And I was a young in and a lot of my customers were adults. My partner in crime, and I left with a cue course. He got rolled up. He got busted. He got six years first offense. This is just a good old redneck boy. I mean his hobbies are deer hunting and selling cocaine.

Six years man, in a medium security facility. Well you know who's in medium security facilities? Nonviolent, freaking cocaine selling, buddy of mine. Just dude who likes to go hunting, and dudes who are martyrs that are in there for something else. Right? Medium security, they got real bad dudes in there. Do got stabbed a couple of times, man. And he did four and a half years of that six-year sentence as a young person.

Some blood. Yeah. It would have been me. I would have no doubt been with him involved if I had been there. So the army unbeknownst to me saved me from that. And you know, there's no coming back from that type of stuff. Man, you're a felon. You go to federal prison prison, what are you gonna do with the rest of your life if you're a felon? You can't have a gun, you're not gonna get hired at a good job, et cetera, et cetera. So, the special forces, the cue course on that, I mean, it saved me from myself.

And I was like, I'm gonna go ahead and make an assumption that you were probably the wild child kid who didn't pay attention in class and stuff. You know, we were a stereotype. We fit most SF or soft guys, not just SF, right? Like soft guys, really kids who didn't pay attention in class, we were bored. Right? Let's face it. I mean, if you got a GT score of 110, which we all do, it's a requirement, right?

You're not an idiot. And I was bored. I was just weren't challenged. And I have a little dyslexia. So you think Pamela Co. County public school system had any clue on how to educate. I mean, I was in like the fourth grade. I was already a great ahead and math, but could barely read. Because the words didn't look like what they were saying, they were supposed to look like. So I basically had to teach myself to read. And I don't know that I even read that well until probably in high school.

And even now, man, when I read stuff, it's weird. Yeah. It's self-taught. Some words just look backwards, you know? And sometimes I write them backwards, even still. And if I'm talking and writing on a whiteboard, I might write EHT instead of the weird stuff. And every now and then people pick up on it,

but you know, kind of learn how to get around it. But yeah, man, I was lucky. And you know, this is, I had no problem saying this, and this is controversial. People saying white privilege doesn't exist. I don't know if it was white privilege. It was good standing in the community privilege of my father.

Had I been some son of someone else, who, or I didn't have a father. I mean, I'll break it down. Let's say I was a poor black kid in the trailer part selling crap, or selling the same charge. I had gone to jail. A few years ago, I had this crazy idea that I wanted to sell. Vigilance leak gummy bears online, and I had no idea where to get started, and then I heard about Shopify.

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Go to Shopify.com slash Sean to take your business to the next level today. Shopify.com slash Sean. Introducing Rich Valdez, America at Night, the podcast. Welcome to the conversation, family, a perfect blend of news and entertainment, interviews and insights. It's really just an expose on how messed up things are.

America's nighttime town hall whenever you want. It's a huge problem that deserves a lot more attention. RichValdez, America at night, follow the podcast, wherever you listen. So it wasn't necessarily a privilege on my part, but it was a privilege, a consideration. Maybe it was not privilege, but the way my deal was handled, because my dad was so well respected. And people like Karen Alexander, my attorney at the time, Marcus Chess, not these people, the sheriff, Billy Sawyer, they

all saw potential in me. And they'll tell me, they've all told me, since you had potential of being good, we also knew you had potential of going the other direction and we knew we were gambling on you. Luckily for me, they took the gamble. I am All I will always be in debt to those people I just mentioned and many more that and some people I probably don't even know We're involved, you know and making sure I got out That's an interesting take that I wasn't expecting and Yeah, I know when he put it like that.

Yeah. Like I said, it wasn't right on time. Anything on me. And luckily they saw a little bit of potential because they all knew me since I was born. And with my older sister clearly doing awesome things by this point, they were like, man, he might, he might turn out to be halfway decent. So that's why I like

the cue course and military type stuff, right? It just fit for me. You know, I grew up hunting. No, you're going to give me guns. Cool. And I'm going to get to play with explosives. Oh, this sounds fun. I said, maybe play with some PVC pipes, some smokeless powder when I was a kid. You know, yeah, we have reload PVC pipes, some smokeless powder when I was a kid. You know, yeah, we have reloading supplies. You know what I mean? I was a young and, you know, so I was like, okay, this sounds cool.

You know, and if it wasn't for that stuff, dude, who knows where I'd wound up? Did you go to, did you join the national card to get into the SF baby pro? Straight in. Okay. So you knew, so was Rambo. Rambo brought your DSF. Straight to it. Never wants to entertain any of the other special

operations. So what happens when you, what happens when you go through SF as a national guard person? That's only one weekend a month. Right. So SF National Guard is nothing like regular guard. So when you pass selection, you go to the Q course, you get put on activity. You go on to the National Guard anymore. You belong to first special warfare center at Fort Bragg. Right. You are now your own active duty. Okay. And you don't belong to the guard. And it's for the cue course. And whether it, like for me, it was back then, it was the cue course.

Wait, yeah, cue course and then language school and then sear school. So it was an activity block for that entire time. So almost two years. Oddly enough, I was actually supposed to go to the medical course. Like I said, I wanted to be a doctor. So I'm like, I'm going to go take the 18 Delta course. I wanted to be a medic.

And I broke my femur, the weekend before I was supposed to give report for the Delta course race and motor cross. And so it took me almost a year or about seven months before I could say, all right, I'm ready. Well, because of that seven month delay, they were like, you might consider just, you know, because they wanted me on a team, you know, needs of the army, needs of the unit. They're like, hey, man, your next, like,

your next Delta course won't be for four months, but there's a Charlie course starting next week You want to go to the Charlie course which engineer explosives? Again being young I'm thinking I better not turn this down because They might look at me next time you're like oh, we gave you an opportunity and you turned it outside So yeah Roger that so next thing you know, I'm in the engineer course, which is you know much shorter than the 18 Delta course But it was still stimulating for the most part. You know, calculation in placement of explosives was out of the way. A lot of guys struggled with that, but I've had

already taken trigonometry and all kinds of stuff in school and like I said, I was good at math. So the Charlie course was not hard for me. Me and a couple other guys, both National Guard dudes. We called our own problems with some of the National Guard or some of the active duty guys, especially like the E6 Rangers, who already didn't like us, you know, because we're National Guard. We were all three PT studs, so they gave us respect. We went through the SUT phase and we did well, and they're like, okay, maybe these little National Guard punks are okay, but during the course, right,

they were, we were going in partying, well, Fort Bragg's in North Carolina, I grew up in North Carolina. I had friends at every university. Girl friends at every university. I was like the damn tour guide. You know, where y'all wanna go this weekend? I talked to such and such at ECU, you know, UNCW party schools, right, Chapel Hill.

And so while guys were like doing study groups, me and Ben and Jake, those three national guard guys, we're partying, we're going places. All three of us had had more math. So we weren't struggling. We didn't need to go to study hall on that kind of stuff. Like I said, calls problems with some of the staffs origins and sergeants. We got know, we got smoked in shit, you know, because back then, right, there's cadre. Well, our cadre is not looking the senior guys, and of course, you up. When the three of us got promoted from E4 to E5, we were in the Charlie course, and the cadre rolled up one morning and they were lined up, putting them stripes

in our collarbones and our chest. You know, the cadre was like, oh, good God. They just turned around and laughed. They're like, we don't know what to do with this. Right? My students, we were the lowest ranking. Everyone in the class was higher ranking. So everyone got a hit. We covered in blood, man.

I remember Mario Volpe. Mario was built like a gorilla, still is. He was the last one in line. He was the most senior dude in the class. Man, he hit me and I took a knee. And I was just like, I mean, my CNS is shot from just getting, you know, 25 dudes pounding my break-year-old plexus, you know, putting a E5 rank into my chest, you know, and he hit me and I was just like,

ugh! Had I had, if I had to do one more man, I don't know what I finished the ceremony. Funny story, man, freaking. I'm running for Congress a couple years ago. I had not seen Mario Volpi since the day we graduated the Q course. So 20 years later, someone said, Hey man, a friend of mine's son is about to go to army, but it's interested in helping you out at the range working

Boba Blah. Look okay, cool. Yeah, you know, tell him to punch me in text. Hey, good afternoon sir. My name is Jake Volpe. Boba, you know, I'm getting ready to join the army next year. You know, I was hoping that punch me a text. Hey, good afternoon, sir. My name is Jake Volpy. Bob-A, you know, I'm getting ready to join an army next year. You know, I was hoping that I could help around. Maybe you'll help you with classes and learn some stuff.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Kids shows up and I'm looking at them. I'm like, do you know Mario Volpy? He's like, yeah, he's my dad. Small world, bro. Wow. Small world. So now it's, son helps me a little my dad. Small world, bro. Wow. Small world. So now, son helps me a little bit for you to join our army.

Now, he's, I think he's in Rasp as we speak, Ranger selection, Ranger training, whatever. And yeah, small world. But yeah, you know, that route into SF was still kind of unique back then. It was a well kept secret. And even to this day, I'll tell guys, I'm like, hey man, if you go active duty and you go to slashing, it's just like, what you guys at butts, if you don't pass,

now it's the needs of the army. And you're going to the 82nd Airborne, you're going to 10th Mountain, and you're going to pick up trash. You know, I'm pretty like for you guys, I know it's like scraping boats or whatever. So, you know, I only think I think I was like, God was just looking out, man, because it wasn't me. You know, I wasn't smart enough. I didn't have the way I thought. I didn't have the essay, whatever you want to call it.

I didn't have the bandwidth to understand the totality of my situation and how things just lined up and happened. Like meeting Jason McKinsey at NC State. I had never met Jason McKinsey at NC State. I would have continued on through college, maybe, or not. And maybe got in trouble, maybe became a daughter. I don't know. All right, I don't want through college, maybe, or not, and maybe gotten trouble, maybe became a daughter. I don't know. All right, I don't get into that.

I just know that these things happened in this amazing, you know, a sequence that put me in for a break. Now don't get me wrong, man, I wasn't 100% better at what I was at the Q-course. I mean, I was still chasing girls around and hell, so one of those guys I mentioned Ben Bettner, he got killed back in 13. Dude was a stunt. He was better than everybody else. You know what I mean?

And he, he knew it. And he had a special way of rubbing it in. You know, you go do a rough march. He'd be sitting there when you got there with a dip in and an empty mary. Just to kind of show you he's been there a while. Yeah, you know, if you did 20 pull-ups, he'd do 25 and be like, man, you're getting, you're doing well, man, you'll be at 25 for you know that guy. Just a stud. He and Mike Glover were on a team together. So we always joke about him. Like Ben was just the greatest asshole you ever met. You know? And he was a stud, man.

Name something he could be good at. You know, he was just better than everyone else. And how many got smoked in a baited ambush in 2013? Damn. And I'll tell you guys, 13, right? We'd been at war for 12 years at that point. Kind of few friends, gik-smoked. When Ben died and I got the news,

I'm traveling down high 40, most of us with me, we were brand new couple. And I was like, wait, what? And I pulled over and threw up and made me sick by something I couldn't... How... Ben? Like he's... and it was that moment I was like, oh, you are not immortal. You know? I had kind of fallen in. I had some pretty bad injuries. I could, you know, broke my back in a five. I've got blown

up good in 2009. And I still thought I was indestructible. I keep getting back into fire after getting scuffed up. And then man, it was the news that he died. I was just like, wow, okay. The bad guys have good days, too. You can sucker that dude and his team into a baited ambush and they did. They set up IDs, shot at them. They set up IDs that the places you would run for cover. Damn, yeah, his medic got blown up and he was trying to evacuate and he hit one too.

Yeah, so anyway, yeah, no, that dude, man, what an amazing guy. But he and I, like, we went to a woman to one time and part in a place we shouldn't have. Now we can come out of the folks who are hanging out with their apartment and the truck's gone. We got to be back at ride for PT in a couple hours. Oh shit. Here we looked up the the tow truck the the tow truck address enough bone book, because you know it's late 90s had The he's wearing out with take us to the tow truck place. They're closed So we hop the fence Pop the lock on the place got the keys to my truck and drove to freaking back to brag and stole my truck back And it's still stealing.

Right after PT, right? Freakin, I go tell the cadre basically what happened. The one cadre I felt like I trust, luckily. And he's like, get your ass back to Wilmington and apologize to them dudes. He's like, he's like, I don't care if you need to go down on that guy, get down there and make sure he's not pressing charges Roger that drive back to Wilmington and

pulled in and a dude was like He couldn't drive in my truck. He just told me a few hours earlier And I was like, hey sir, I just got to tell you. I'm so sorry. By the way, luckily for me Do the former Marine and he was like, hey sir, I just gotta tell you, I'm so sorry, blah, blah, luckily for me, do the former Marine. And he was like, bro, he's like, on one side, I wanna fight you. He was older man, he's like 60, something's like, on one side, I feel like I owe you a half-swip

and put on another side, I kinda wanna shake your hand. He's like, hey, he's like, man, that's just kinda cool. He's like, because I didn't mess anything up, we didn't break into a place, you know, credit card pop on the little crappy door handle or a door knob. And, but yeah, he was like, right on. Get the hell out of here. He's like, get the hell out of here.

And he let me go. Damn dude. I mean, he could have ruined my career. Yes, he could have. He could have put me in jail, right then and there. And so we were always into something, you know, just like everybody else in sophomore and other. Luckily, we passed the QCourse and, you know, the cool thing was how did I go into the

medic course? I'd have missed the first push in Afghanistan. I'd still been in language school. So what year did you graduate the QCourse? 99. 99? Actually, 98. 98?

So we got three year time period before 9-11? Yeah, did some, did a shooting package? Cool. I mean, I got out, went straight to our, it wasn't suffalk yet, like our shooting package is called Special Forces Advanced Urban Convat, and it was SOT, Special Operations Tactics, and they were creating Sephardic, Sephardic was already a thing, but that was, you know, hostage rescue, and really for the direct action companies, you know, they needed a CQB package, shooting packages for

the regular ODA, so they created this, as it was evolving, it was SOT, and then it became so far. And it's mostly standardized, and the proponent is, you know, the unit, and the unit certifies range 37 or Sephardic, and then Sephardic is the proponent for the rest of the, you know, regular white or conventional special forces. So I went to this this course and it was great. Never. I didn't know anything about CQB, man. We were just shooting all the time, blowing doors up. I was like, man, this is exactly what I signed up for. And luckily the team that was running that package liked me and brought me over and brought me on as an instructor for the next course even though I had no real experience

But not many people did late 90s who had Combat experience. Yeah, some unit guys and some Rangers from Mogadishu So they let me as a baby help teacher. I was a I was Wouldn't really teaching anything. I was just kind of there helping and then it Evolved and I went to that ODA and I got lucky like again. I was kind of a keep getting lucky My warrant was Definitely a like an ASO guy like love the source operation stuff and so he hooked myself and my echo up with this program with fifth group and Fifth group and tenth group were basically on it, but it was a red cell

Against the in-truple C nuclear command and control Do you want to explain red cell to the audience? Yeah, yeah, so red so is basically like where Like in this case we Play the bad guys and we were trying to infiltrate and interdict national assets. And that type of program is all over the place. And it's typically, though, those use special operations, I know Silents have played this in the same program. And basically, we had to play the role of terrorists.

And basically, we had to play the role of terrorists, or, and, or like Russian infiltrators. And the goal was to cause a couple of second hiccup in our nuclear defense. And that was all it would take for Russia to win a few seconds. So it was a pretty amazing thing, a pretty amazing program eye opening. It got me at TS clearance as an E6 baby SF guy. And that was huge.

Back then, TS clearances were team sergeants and team leaders only. Nowadays, more guys on the team seniors will have them and etc. etc. But back then, E6 with a TS client, that was a big deal. And it was like six months that we were following, surveilling, chasing these assets. And it was worldwide. And I didn't even know this till we were done. For six months, I didn't see any of my teammates. I didn't know them. They were from only dead drops.

Only a few text messages, but mostly communicating through dead drops. Old school tradecraft. Old school tradecraft. So the first month was like a school put on by ASO guys at fifth group to get us tuned up and ready for it. I had no idea about tradecraft, right? So it was eye-opening. And the reason I think that they like me and they, you know, I didn't look like an SF guy. I'm still a skinny little runner kid, you know, and I was so young that I

No one would have ever pegged me as an SF guy back then and Of course, it was a project team so you know, relax grooming standards and all that so you could you know I just went back to playing a part. I always knew you know about some cheap camouflage from Walmart went back to being a redneck, and my cover was solidified, but I'm talking about chasing these assets all over the country. There were days where I thought I would like compromise by their security guys,

and I would just leave the rental car for you to call the rental company. Hey, the car broke down, I'd go get another one. Two or three rental cars a day, and I mean, doing things to gain access to military bases that you know, no ID card We had to give out a jail free car when we got arrested or rolled up by MPs or something But it was an amazing program. I opening it. I had no idea How did nuclear command and control work and it was eye opening in all the different assets and planes and trains and trucks and things

in this hierarchy that if we did go to nuclear war with Russia, how it worked. And even still, it was very compartmentalized. So what I learned was only a portion of the big picture. But it was amazing. Like I said, didn't know my teammates. I finally met them on the morning of 9-11. We were playing Red Cell against national assets.

The day we were attacked. Shit. So, even more funny, it was also the day we were supposed to interdict. So my target was an Air Force General. All I had to do was take a picture of him inside of 400 meters and it would have counted as a sniper shot. And I had actually lost them. And I was, oh my God, I was the only one on my team that had followed them out of like

Missouri in an Nebraska What is it off it air for air off at Air Force Base Followed them lost them there and I just kind of camped out. I got a hotel room and you know Pretty much just stayed up for three days watching the gate and all of a sudden the convoy left I was like, sweet got him. And another time I lost him and in the middle of nowhere, flat lands, like Nebraska or Oklahoma. And I was just like sitting on top of a,

like an off-ramp. So I could see for miles and I was just sitting there. I was like, man, damn it. I'm gonna have to let him know I lost him. Then I went, do like 50 miles away. I see this truck convoy in the middle of the night. And these aren't like black trucks, these are regular trucks. You know, any, but I could see them.

And I was like, look at my map, cause there was no Google maps. Get my maps out and I start looking at my national guard base on the road there on. I just went weighted. And so we got the orders that, hey, we're going to interdict on Saturday morning or whatever. Sorry, 9-11. And it's like, okay, how many get closer this dude? I crawled on my belly, through the concrete little drainage ditch thingy, like all night long, trying to be always, you know, sniper crawling your belly. And sure enough, man, the sun comes up, I'm watching, I get a glance of the generals,

he moved from where he was staying to their little command post or whatever. And all of a sudden, man, like everything started changing. They got busy. And I'm like, what's going on? Can I get a little flip phone vibrates? And it was like a board, a board move to such and such motel, IVO, whatever. I'll text back. I am not compromised. I'll text back.

I am not compromised, I'm good to go. Text message said, I say again, abort immediately, do nothing else but come to this place. Do not make me like the warrant that was in charge, it was him and he was like, do not make me tell you anything else again. I'm thinking, I'm fucked up.

I'm like, what'd I do? I mean, do anything wrong? They don't know I'm here. But as I'm watching them in the Marines, they had like a, I don't know, maybe two or three squad detachment of Marines in all of a sudden, they got magazines in their M16s. The Raven, Air Force security guys,

they're doing patrols now. Shit. And I'm in the freaking grass, dude. You know, freaking wearing real tree camouflage and pair jeans from Walmart. Like I'm not gillied out, nothing like that. Like I'm not even taking it that serious. I gotta get out of jail free card.

No, dude, they got live ammo in their shit now because 9-11 had just happened. And you don't even run? No clue. So what took me like five hours of crawling took me only about an hour. I was all scuffed up from crawling on that little concrete stuff and get out

and go get the rental car and haul us back and do that. There's just like, no roadside, little 1960s, 50s, one story, motel, you know, and there's like 40 rental cars in the parking lot. What in the hell? I pull up, there's the chief, he's like the program manager or whatever, he's like, come on, Roger that. Get in there, dude. And this hotel room is packed full of people. Clearly some are operators, there's females, there's like, what in the hell is all this?

Dude, tell me that compartmentalization? I've been working with a four person cell for six months and never met them. Unbeknownst to me, this entire 30 some people had been on that target the whole time. Wow. So we even talked about redundancy. It was amazing. What a cool program. Learning a lot, like I said, and they're on the TVs, the towers, man. It's like, and they're like, yeah, man, we're under attack. And I'm just like, my knees would have killed me. Yeah.

Or at a minimum beat beat my ass really well. Yeah. You know, who knows what gel I'd have been put in until they finally found my call chrono such and such. So it was pretty spooky, man. Kind of a cool story of how 9-11 happened in it was like, okay, what do we do now? Flight's her, canceling.

We've got unit guys that need to get to, Brad, we've got 10th group guys that need to get to Colorado. Fifth group guys to get back here. What are we doing? Some people getting their cars to start headed to brag. The asset, right, clearly they all made contact. I said, hey, where are the people who have been on you? We're all still here and available to help if you need it.

In the Colonel basically said, hey, we are in route to the Cheyenne facility in Colorado. Could you escort us? We're like, yep, so we all, or most of us went to Colorado. Then they, C-17s came and got us, took us all back to wherever we needed to go. So I'm back at Campbell with the fifth group guys and they're like, what do you want to do? What do you mean?

I'm like, we're going to Afghanistan. What do you want to do? And I was like, I want to go with y'all. Yeah. And again, lucky for me, how it all played out exactly, not 100% sure, but my company, Charlie Company, second and 19 Special Forces, we were aligned with fifth group. So Arabic speakers, all that stuff. Do they just take me to took my whole company?

So we were the luckiest natural guards on the planet. We got to go to Afghanistan on the initial push No, shit. Yeah, yeah, and so we my team was lucky to be one of the first of our companies to get to go and play we wound up in jalabad and so actually jalabad in oh one and After tour borough of early oh two they love just you know there was no FOB at the airfield right a lot of guys when they think jelalbod they think that big FOB yeah who do we have a safe house us in the grandbratch guys what so this is this is

oh one yeah yeah damn yeah it was real cool real cool. Yeah, but we were children. Yeah, we were children. Every time we get to resupply at the airfield, we had to go clear the airfield. Make sure there was nothing on the strip, amazing, you know, so it could land all that stuff. It was not a secured airfield. We lived two miles away in a house, you know, and husband, I Lee, was the warlord.

Zaman was the warlord that the agency picked to be the warlord of that area, but Zaman had been in Britain for 10 years. He was not a real postulated, but he spoke English, so the agency made a bad call and said, oh, he's going to be our guy. Well, how sorry? He's like, yeah, but I live here and I'm in charge. He's got a hundred people for his army and I've got 8,000. Who do you want to play with? So you know, in Torbora, they got a fight. And while they were fighting with each other,

this one, been lined and escaped. No, shit. I didn't know that. Yeah. Anyway, it was, it was pretty bad because you're talking about like, guys on the same team Now look at each other and these two you know, there some guys over here with some moms guys and some guys are with

Elise guys and those guys are fine each other and we're all like whoa Yeah, yeah, that's that's because they were fighting with each other We had to stop fighting in Torbora and killing all the IK to people there were there and then lying that out. Yeah. I had no idea. Yeah. Yeah.

It sucked. And like, we knew, everybody knew. And right now we had left. Like a helicopter left Torbora, dude. Who would be on that? Yeah. And then after all the damage assessments and the DNA and all that stuff taken out of there, I hope you wouldn't there.

And of course, they found them a few years later hanging out over in Pakistan. Yeah. On that note, let's take a quick break. Cool. And then when we come back, we'll pick right back up with that deployment. Cool, cool. Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes, and leave the Sean Ryan

Show review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. Like I said, I know I've said it how many times already I got lucky I got lucky. I did. It was just one cool thing after another with my career that just kept putting me in cool places. And into my first Afghanistan tour it was kind of screwed up because the fifth group was in a hardy get home.

Because they thought we all thought we were going to the Horn of Africa, right? We're on tour. Iraq wasn't on any one's radar. And so third group comes in. There was a brief moment where the 82nd Airborne, the 18th Airborne Corps was in charge. And of course, they were like, everybody has to get

uniform. And we're like, I guess you guys are going to have to come to Jalalbad and make us. Oh, by the way, you can't land here unless we go clear the airfield. So, buck off of that, you know, so we're going to continue where our cutoff DCUs and where our beards and be weird SF dudes running around dressed like Afgani's and doing whatever we want. dress like I've got these and doing whatever we want and so then third group comes in and they took over start ripping teams out and For whatever reason they wouldn't let us go home

So the FOB the main FOB was still up in K2 Carchie Kanonabad in Uzbekistan so they hadn't really moved all operations to Kandahar and in Bagram at that time. And so, wound up back up there and my company commander, I'm like, well screw it, semi-backed. I'll go help another team. Semi-backed is down with my buds that are in a soda-bod. You know, like, I don't wanna sit up here and do nothing.

Yeah. And I was getting me to go do that and luckily, my co-manor, he's like, hey, I got an assignment for you. You're going to Tash Kent. You're gonna be the assistant LNO for Cegisodif. I'm like, I don't know what any of that means, but sounds cool, Tash Kent. Part of it's amazing city.

Where is that? So it's the Capitol of Uzbekistan. Okay. We may or may not have named it Tash Kitty. I'm young. I'm single. So I was supposed to, I was supposed to go help the LNL because now I'm the assistant LNL. Well, I get there. He is a 10th group guy, boy named Ray is in Ukraine. Came to the States when he was like 14, so speaks fluent Russian.

10th group guy retires, goes to work for like the organized crime task force in Miami-Dade. Working Russian. Constantincus. This dude isn't much less of a criminal than probably most of the people, but they had stopped lost him. They brought him back in for his language skills and his cultural skills and all that.

This dude was friends with everyone. I mean, the president's daughter. She had a cool nightclub, so we went there, pretty much every night. And my duty station was in theory, supposed to be the embassy. Dude, I went to the embassy one time. Got my badge and left.

And then Vic, I just leave his name out, right? It's the LNO. It's time for him to go home and leave. And he's like, all right, so just be cool. If you get any trouble, you get arrested, call these numbers, or you can, I'll be back in 30 days. I'm like, Roger, that was like $250 a day per demon. And I spent every dime of it, every dime of it. And you're talking about a beer cost 20 cents. Yeah. We, I mean, I've been in Afghanistan at this point for seven months. The only women I had seen were, you know, wearing Afghanistan at this point for seven months.

The only women I had seen were, you know, wearing burkas, except for Haasar Ali's grandma. And let me tell you, an 85 year old Afghani woman is not a lot to look at. So I find myself, and this is the silk trade route, right? So every flavor of extremely attractive woman is in this town. Asian descent, blue-eyed, you know, blonde-haired Russian girls, and then the freaks, the black-haired blue-eyed,

whatever they were. Interesting, interesting people. I was just young, dumb. And like I said, somehow in a place where you could pretty much live for $1,000 a month, I was blowing $250 a day. I didn't make anything off that trip. I couldn't go to breakfast without getting picked up. You know, they were like, you're American? Da. You know. And I mean, baseball cap, you know, and I always say it was probably the closest thing

I'll ever know is being David Lee Roth. And it ruined me. You know, you can never go back to that unless you go back there. So anyway, that was kind of cool. How long were you there for? Like 42 days. How'd they get you out of there? Well, it's like, okay, we're going home. So hot to fly back down to K2. And basically my company commander looked at all of us and said, okay, we've got no real exit plan, but fifth group says we can go,

or third group says we can go home. And he's like, last one home's a rotten egg. And literally dudes got up and like started running. And so me and my buddy Charlie, Charlie Withers, and we used to call it a nickname Charlie, we would call him Charlie, Charlie Withers, and we used to call it nickname Charlie, we would call him Drunken Charlie Withers. You know you've got to drink a lot or in that name in this crowd. Charlie was a stud, man.

Is a stud. He was my senior Charlie and learned a lot from him and he was just an even killed dude with a good perspective. And numerous times he'd be like, come here. You know, he was a West Virginia boy. Well, he was originally from West Virginia, but had been a third group guy, got out with a National Guard, always would have dipped in.

Sometimes with a cigarette and a dip, he'd chew my ass, he'd be like, come here. But like, in that wise way, and he knew he wouldn't, he wouldn't like, he was very old, early 30s, but I was a baby. They all seem old to me. And I come here. I was lucky to have him and a couple other dudes, like, hey, bro, come here.

I'll do that again. Nothing crazy or anything, just, you know, it's just young and wild. And then the whole bunch was, too, you know, it was like, hey, you know, I got this left and right limits. Stay away from them. Just keep it in the middle. You're going to have fun. We're going to have a good time. None of us will get in trouble. So I was lucky to have those guys, man. And, you know, so, yeah, I mean, Charlie starts figuring our way how to get home. We're jumping plane to plane and we fly to Germany and we get on another plane and we wound up landing at Dover Air Force Base.

Somehow another hitch to ride on a C5 galaxy with the C-Sit face backwards. The thing before the C-17. Yeah. And got home and I'll never forget, from there we hopped on civilian planes to our home of record, not back to the unit. I mean, we just say this point, man, we're just doing whatever we want. And the orders back then were for the GWAT, but our orders were the original program, right, with the code word on it, you know,

the cover word for it. Yeah. Which a lot of people don't know. The initial code word for the hunt for Ben Laden, um, Mr. D. Classified now is or was Elkund. I didn't know that Elkund. I don't know many people that do it. It just happened to be it was like the initial code word early on for The hunt for him That was his code word no shit. I did not know that yeah It's kind of kind of cool or whatever and our orders we could do you had a beard and Those orders you could do whatever you want you know any airplane any helicopter how

At one point in my trip to Afghanistan, myself and my echo flew to Bogrum for him to get crypto and me to get money. I'm looking at the flights out of Bogrum back to Zalabad and it's only he loves bad weather. We can't get in there, we're like, okay, but what if? Fixing.

What if we fly to Interlick Turkey and then from Turkey back to K2 and then we get on the C130 that flies to a lot of body to Resupply us holy shit. We don't tell anybody we went to turkey and Partied for four days a wall as Partied so we get yeah, like I said, you had those orders in a beard, you could do whatever you want. So we got our full battle rattle, right? And back to anywhere, there's big like,

there'll be V's and stuff, you know, a bunch of mags and a bunch of frags and pdms. Do you ever mess with those things? They'll pursue deterrent munition? No. It was this little triangular freaking thing. You pulled it and like six or eight wires popped out of it. And if you tricked those wires, the way it was designed, it had an explosive charge in the middle in a sealant in a sphere and a propellant. So no matter which way it landed on the ground, when it knotted that

propellant would kick it up in the air boom, go off like a bounce and betty and it wasn't catastrophic less Comp me than a frag grenade, so not okay But still yeah to the Air Force guys an interlick that we were just dumping our stuff on You know and saying hey, we're gonna lock this in your stuff. We'll be back in a couple days They're like what wait what who are you? What is this stuff? What is this thing? I'm like, we'll be careful with that. They're stable as hell.

And they're like, well, just lock it up guys, we'll be back. And they're like, yes, sirs, you know, we're just pertinent fraud, like we're, you know, important people. And they don't know. And so sure enough, they're like, you know, the base was locked down, couldn't lead to base. We went to the gate, walked right through the main checkpoint.

This is a pretty big, secure gate with MPs everywhere. And they're like, Hey, guys, you can't lead posts. And like, yes, we can. And they're like, okay. We went to the Mediterranean and partied for four days. And I've even heartied. I'm pretty sure that's probably the only time in my life. I was like, had a decent level of alcohol poisoning.

It was pretty bad. So we get back to Insurelick to the base and sure enough bump into a guy from our company, from the B team, the command team. And he's like, fuck are y'all doing here? And we're like, fuck are y'all doing here? And we're like, you doing here? He's a match of shard, we're two e-sixs. And he's like, no seriously, guys.

Don't tell anybody you saw me either. No seriously, don't tell anybody. We're like Roger. And so Dan, I didn't tell anybody about us doing that for probably 10 years. We kept it that kind of safety. Like, because you know what I mean? Like, what I mean, we could have gotten in some trouble. Probably nothing big.

We didn't, we weren't really a while. Right? No one told us we couldn't do it. But it was kind of like we kind of screwed our team. We're in the Med party and having a great time and they're in Jalalabad. And it was only four total days. I think we only party for two nights, maybe three nights, whatever it was. And we get back, like I said, we ran into that guy and this thing was Mike.

Mike was like, I don't tell anybody. So we get back, like I said, we ran into that guy, and this thing was Mike, Mike's like, I don't tell anybody. So we get back, and we did, we finished our route, flew in on the 130, and never told the team. So we kind of were, you know what I mean? Like we kind of were screwing the team. You know, but at the same time, everyone on that team would have been like, good for y'all, man.

Now tell us how you did it. You know, if we had told anybody, there would have been all kinds of dudes going AWOL into insure. But yeah, we get home and I never forget that Charlie had pen flares in his backpack and Air Force didn't care. But when we got to the airport and it was a BW a BWI Baltimore. Uh, he gets water for those pen fairs.

A whole strip of them. And, uh, I'm like waving at him as I go get on the plane to North Carolina. Good luck, bro. I know what he said. Last one home's right. Yeah, I get home at like, finally, like at midnight, the girl I was dating at the time, like, she wasn't home. She was head gone and was staying with her mom or whatever and like it's midnight. What am I gonna do? You know, it's not like slept in my truck. I was like No one knows I'm home. No cool guy. Welcome. I don't know where the rest of my team or company is and I'm at my home of record in North Carolina I was just like whatever man, but that's that's National Guard Shit. Yeah. Like National Guard SF is just so different.

And Lord knows it was it was quite the trip. Of course, you know, Iraq is now on the pipe. And everyone's I mean, everyone's a little confused about it. Wait a second. I thought we were going to Somalia. What about Yemen, where the terrorists are at? Like no Iraq, weapons of master's function. And we all knew better, man. Did you know better background?

For sure. And I think it really boiled down to the fact that no one was inilling with mocked gear. Like conventional forces, even Ranger regimen, all infill with their mocked gear. For folks who don't know mocked gears, are Kim Biosuits, gas masks and all that stuff. But there, it was pretty darn clear. There was no weapons of master's destruction. I mean, they had like some old canisters of mustard gas.

Well, you know how you defeat mustard gas. When it goes off, move. Just settles. Which way is the wind blow? Go the opposite direction. That's mustard gas, right? And the desert is not effective. Now, you know, obviously it would suck in buildings or something like that. But it just didn't exist. So I mean, like, we went to war when I arrived.

Man, I had, I mean, I was young. I was 19, just, just maybe 20, just getting into the team and I had no idea. I was all about it. Oh, I was still all about it, even though, because they were bad people, and Saddam was a horrible person, and I didn't understand geopolitics at all at the time, and how toppling a dictator, right? Dictators are predictable.

They care about their power. So, they're predictable. They're not horrible enemies. I mean, if they go, I guess slaughter and their own people and stuff, yeah, step in and, hey, stop doing that, which we did, right? Of course, after the first go for, we left the Kurds, you know, to him, brutalizing them, which was, I mean, that's just kind of our emote, right?

It's kind of sucks. But, and they still don't trust us. Yeah, I work and live with the Kurds for almost 15 years. Love and trust me do not trust our government. And they would say, hey man, there's a reason why we're not against Iranians. There are Persian brothers, and when y'all leave, they'll be our only friends here.

Yeah. You know? So yeah, Iraq and all that. And then my second trip to Afghanistan, one of our Afghanis, oh, back up, one of the cool things we did in Afghanistan was stood up the Murph, mobile reaction force. It was all CIA sanctioned, all the least away came from them, and we stood them up, company sized, but I think it was just three platoons. And the Merf evolved into the Commandos.

So that's kind of cool, you know, if I had to look back and I would have notable things in your passport, like the Commandos, every S.F. Marsat guy worked with the Commandos. You guys stood up. We stood up the Merf. That is pretty fucking amazing. Kind of cool. Yeah.

Like I said, it was, I'm sure my team's aren't and warrant and the agency guys, you know, all conspired to create this thing with no idea that it would evolve into the Commandos. Well, why don't you elaborate on exactly what those Commandos did? Because nobody is not very many people listening that'll put this together. So the commandos were the Afghani special forces but not just like their national police special forces, the commandos were the guys were a lot like our range of regiment, you know, the shock troopers, you know, going out, going after targets, going after the high-value targets, and for folks who don't know when we say target in that context, individuals, people, or if there are target compounds, and then there are individuals that are target. So HVIs, I think we started calling them what high-value individuals instead of high-value targets. So, you know, they would go after individuals. And

those are the same dudes that like, after my second trip to Afghanistan, I didn't go back on state and Iraq and you know Yemen Africa etc So pardon me For all the other like third group guys a lot of seventh group guys who were the Afghanistan teams You know they lived and worked with those commandos So when we pulled out of Afghanistan, you know, those commandos were surrounded in their bases and systematically eradicated the Taliban. These are the people that we abandoned that were shot in the back of the head like dogs and we left stood up stood up.

Line 20 years working for us with us alongside us. Yeah, and we just left them. And you know, there there were guys that went back. There guys that left went AWOL. Go back to Afghanistan to help. And you know, I was with a seven group of mine when one of his old guys called him begging for help, begging and you guys are coming,

right? I mean, he held it together until he got to finally just started crying. You know, these are dudes that he had worked with on like five deployments and brothers, you know, it's bullshit. No matter what your stance on the war was or whether or not, right? Like, on our level, it's brotherhood, you know? And I try to separate that type of connection and feeling in that kind of thing with the overall big picture and an understanding. And, you know, it was understanding and it was acceptance. It's two very different things. Like I understand why the United States government does so many of the things it does. But also I have a good understanding that it ain't right and we can do better. We need to do better.

You know, we act like we're this beacon of freedom and then we do what we did to the Afghans. Yeah. You know, like what we did to the Kurds, like what we do to the Mottanyards, like what we did to the South in the means, et cetera, et cetera. Our last successful war, if you wanna call it a success, was in Korea, bro. You know?

Do you think desert bad guys? Just honest question. And I think there are a lot about this lately. I think there are a lot of bad people in our government. I mean, if you look at this from a, you know, whatever, 60,000-foot view, I know. I know. And you look at the world, and you look at all the shit that the US has intervened in. And now, you know, with the way the internet, and the access to information we have, it's starting to paint another picture.

And I think, you know, for the longest time, we stuck our nose in places that we needed to. Right. There is some responsibility that goes along with being a world superpower, right? One of the greatest examples of that would be Alexander. He didn't enslave, he subjugated and supported and won the hearts and minds, right? Yeah, we don't do that, right?

I mean, and let's go to the opposite side, I rat. Let's say we were pumping the oil out of I rat right now. As fast as we could pump it out, we're paying a dollar a gallon at the pumps. At least then we could say, hey, we're an Imperial power on a conquest and we won the stuff, it's ours, we're taking it. Yeah.

I could respect that. It's not what we did. We shut their oil production down so prices would go up and all the oil folks, BP, British, Protova, Petroleum, Exxon, Namom, they all got rich, really rich because we turned their oil off. And a lot of folks don't realize this, right? Like Iraq and Iran, in China and Russia, in that timeframe. We're already talking about replacing the

dollar as the standard for trading oil and creating a petro dollar, making the dollar obsolete in that world. And so there are a lot of folks that say that's why we went there. Of course, I think General Wesley Clark did an interview in 2007. Maybe a whatever. If you, YouTube search, General Wesley Clark, seven Nation War, I think, will get you to the YouTube. Right after 9-11, about 10 days after 9-11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld

and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs, just to say I loaded some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me. And one of the generals called me and he said, sir, you got to come in and talk to me a second. I said, well, you're too busy. He said, no, no. He says, we've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq.

This was on her about the 20th of September. I said, we're going to war with Iraq. Why? He said, I don't know. He said, I guess they don't know what else to do. So I said, well, did they find some information collecting Saddam to Al-Qaeda? He said, no, no.

He says, there's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq. He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments. And he said, I guess if the only two you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail. So I came back to see him a few weeks later.

And by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, are we still going to war with Iraq? And he said, oh, it's worse than that. He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper. And he said, I just got this down from upstairs, meaning the Secretary of Defense's office today. And he said, this is a memo that describes

how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran. I said, is it classified? He said, yes, sir. I said, I said, well, don't show it to me. And I saw him a year or so ago. And I said, remember that?

He said, sir, I didn't show you that memo. I didn't show it to you. I didn't show it to you. I'm sorry, what did you say his name was? I'm not gonna give you his name. So go through the countries again. Well, starting with Iraq and Syrian Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and then back to Iran.

So when you look at Iran, you say it's not exactly a replay, but here's the truth that Iran from the beginning has seen that the presence of the United States in Iraq was a threat. A blessing because we took out Saddam Hussein and the Bathas. They couldn't handle him. We could take care of it for them, but also a threat because they knew that

they were next on the hit list. And so, of course, they got engaged. They lost a million people during the war with Iraq. And they got a long and unprotectable, unsecurable border. So it was in their vital interest to be deeply involved inside Iraq. They tolerated our attacks on the Bathas. They were happy we captured Saddam Hussein, but they're building up their own network of influence. And to cement it, they occasionally give some military assistance and training and advice either directly or indirectly to both the insurgents and the militias. And in that sense, it's not exactly parallel because there has been, I believe, continuous Iranian engagement. Some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate. I mean, you can hardly fault Iran because they're offering to do eye operations for Iraqis who need

medical attention. That's not an offense that you can go to war over France, but it is an effort to gain influence. And the administration has stubbornly refused to talk with Iran about their perception. In part because they don't want to pay the price with their domestic, our U.S. domestic political base, the right-wing base, but also because they don't want to legitimate a government that they've been trying to overthrow. If you were Iran, you'd probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we've asserted that their government needs regime change. And we've asked Congress to appropriate $75 million to do it, and we are supporting terrorist

groups, apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iran. And if we're not doing it, let's put it this way. We're probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So it's not surprising that we're moving to a point of confrontation crisis with Iran. My point on this is not that the Iranians are good guys, they're not, but that you shouldn't use force except as a last, last, last resort. There is a military option, but it's a bad one.

I wanted to get your response to Seymour Hersh's peace in the New Yorker to two key points this week. Reporting the Pentagon's established a special planning group within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a bombing attack on Iran. That this is coming as the Bush administration and Saudi Arabia are pumping money for covert operations into many areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, in an effort to strengthen Saudi-supported Sunni Islam groups and weaken Iranian-backed shears. Some of the covert money has been given to jihadist groups

in Lebanon with ties to al-Qaeda. Fighting the shears by funding with Prince Bandar and then with U.S. money not approved by Congress, funding the Sunnis connected to Al-Qaeda. Well, I don't have any direct information to confirm it or deny it. It's certainly plausible. The Saudis have taken a more active role. You know, the Saudis...

You were just saying, sorry, you were just came back from South. Yeah, well, the Saudis have basically recognized that they have an enormous stake in the outcome in Iraq, and they don't particularly trust the judgment of the United States in this area. We haven't exactly proved our competence in Iraq. So they're trying to take matters into their own hands. The real danger is, and one of the reasons this is so complicated is because let's say we did follow the desires of some people say just pull

out and pull out now. Well yeah, we could mechanically do that. It would be ugly and it might take three or four months, but you could line up the battalions on the road one by one and you could put the gunners in the humvees and cook and load and cook their weapons and shoot their way out of Iraq. You'd have a few roadside bombs, but if you line everybody up, there won't be any roadside bombs, maybe some sniping, you can fly helicopters over, do your air cover, you probably get safely out of there.

But when you leave, the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the shears. Who they going to find, Al-Qaeda? Because the groups of Sunnis who would be extremist and willing to fight would probably be the groups connected to Al-Qaeda. So one of the weird inconsistencies in this is that, where we to get out early, we'd be intensifying the threat against us of a super-powerful, Sunni extremist group, which was now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in an effort to hang on to a toe-hold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.

The worstly Clark talks about how he's walking through the Pentagon, and bumps into a general friend of his, I think he was a chronological time, like, hey, we're going to Iraq. He's like, what? What do you mean we're going to Iraq? Yep, powers the beast that we're going to Iraq, and there's a whole list of countries that we're going to topple in the next couple of years. We're going to Iraq and there's a whole list of countries that we're going to topple in the next couple of years. Iraq, Aleppo. They're on the list and that interview.

We didn't go to Iraq. There's no doubt in my mind. We did not go to Iraq for good reasons. Yeah, we went to Iraq. I think partly for a bush vendetta. But like I said, hopefully viewers don't crucify me for saying this, but if you took that 60,000 foot view and you removed the photographs and the names from the behaviors of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. Who's the war criminal? I mean, maybe both of them,

but George Bush fits that fucking profile, man. And I mean, a lot of civilians killed in that right. A lot of US military members, a lot of Iraqi military members, a lot of terrorists killed the shit. I have a bunch of bad dudes, which is probably a righteous thing. But I mean, we fucked up Iraq for the next 100 years.

Now, and some people say, but we got rid of a dictator. I'm like, you know what? And again, these are all my perceptions based off of experiences. And one of the experiences I had is one one day I was in Dahook, Iraq But you know it's a nice city and there's a lot of money there. It's not a lot of time there. Yeah and we're at That Lebanese hotel or the it was a Lebanese owned hotel and Lebanese restaurant and bar We're just sitting there and these two huge mofos walk in I'm'm talking to the biggest dudes I'd ever seen.

I was like, you know, white dudes. They sit down at the bar next to us, what's up, mate, or whatever they said. And I'm like, I didn't pick up the accent. Like, hey, how's it going? We start chatting. Where you guys from? I would South African.

Okay, it's like, yes, yes, yes, yeah. Well, come to find out, bro. These dudes, so South African. Okay, so you guys, yes, yes, yeah. Well come to find out, bro. These dudes, so South African, if you go do contract work and you're a person and I grind it back in that country, you lose your citizenship to go do what they consider to be mercenary work. And these guys were both South African SAS types, but they were rugby players. That's why they were so huge. I mean, both these dudes were six foot four, 280 pounds. It just monsters. They're rugby guys. But we start

talking and they're like, yeah, you guys totally just place up. And they're like, what? He's like, yeah, he's like, we've lived here since 97 or whatever they've been there for like five years. And they're like, this place was awesome. Bagdad was the coolest place in the Middle East. I'm like, what? And I'm like, yeah, everybody thought the buy was cool. No wear near it. I read it.

Bagdad. All the hookers in blow you ever wanted, freaking. It was awesome. Nightlife is better than Vegas and I was like what are you talking about? Well no one ever told us how Iraqis lived daily. They weren't a Muslim extremist right they were very secular right the government was not an Islamic state and the people practiced numerous different religions Christians were

free Zidi's were free, right? Yeah, there was some scuffle between Sunni and Shia because of Saddam being his back. And I remember having that conversation and that was like the first time I was like, huh, huh. So you mean to tell me, all right, was much different than what the news media told us? Well, what like anyone from Fox News or CNN or MSNBC ever went and visited Baghdad to get the scoop? But yeah, these dudes were mad at us for ruining their Iraq. Damn. It's spooky, man, but as far as us being the Baghdad, in many cases and from many people's perspectives. I mean, there were there were there were Christians being persecuted from what I understand.

Certainly. You know, and I mean, even into hook. I went to one of the sites and I've had I had a in-depth discussion with this guy, Chris Van Zand about it. But I mean, looking at everything that encompassed it, I mean, also there's the KBR thing with tuning. And, man, people got mega rich off that war. Yeah, they did.

And that's okay. And the reason that's okay is that's been the number one reason for going for war since the beginning of time. There has never been, not ever, not a single day in human history that we haven't been at war with each other. There's never been a time where there was peace on earth. Ever. There's always been someone fighting someone.

And it's always been over the expansion, you know, the spools of war. And I'm okay with that. Like I said, if we were pumping Iraq dry right now, I'd be like, man, all right, well, at least it makes sense that we're now in imperial power that, you know, takes things. At least it would have paid for the war. Let's not what happened, You know, like I said, so many people got mega rich in it. And I was a contractor, you know, I made good money. I was part of the problem too, or at least I was part of the machine. Yeah, man, I don't know that we are the beacon of freedom and hope

that we once were. And I mean, let's face it, the people who are running this country are just a bunch of spineless puppets. Yeah. You know, I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat, there aren't, but about three dudes on Capitol Hill that I think, you know, are going thanks

for the right reasons. Yeah. And I'm concerned for them because they're new and that place, I mean, they're outnumbered, right? Like Eli, people I must feel completely alone up there. Yeah. Cause he's like the only good dude, you know. Let me know, give me a roll.

Dan Bishop from North Carolina votes very conservative. And I like him a lot, but he compromised and voted for McCarthy, for a speaker. McCarthy is a Californian, bro, right? And a career politician, He's not a conservative. He is an opportunist. And until Americans get off their lazy asses, and maybe go vote, you know,

I don't know, there's gonna change, man, it's only gonna get worse. I don't think it's gonna change. I mean, 250 years, man, that is the life expectancy historically speaking of, you know, democratic republics. I mean, I'm going to just we're going off on a tangent here. So we're right. Let me let me remember that we're in Iraq right now. Right. Right. But when we go off on, I mean, when we talk about, when you talk about, you know, trying to wake this population up, it's, I mean, I'm in media. And I saw being in media after research, kind of, you know, what's work and what trends

are. I used to look at that shit. Now, I don't care. I do what I'm interested in, I'm interested in your story. I'm in there, there's all kinds of things that I'm interested in. I love uncovering corruption, dig it into finding truth and all this kind of shit. And I'm always, you know, I look at a show like this, you know what I mean? We dig into, we're talking about mental health.

Where a lot of people, what I'm getting at is a lot of people can't even fucking comprehend the subjects that we're talking about here. They're mind doesn't compete. I don't know if it's IQ level or what it is. But if you look at like some of the most viewed content on YouTube, I can't even imagine.

When you look at shit that gets 100 million views, 50 million views, 20 million views, I don't even want to know. 10 million views. I don't even want to know. It's watch my, watch my wife come from another country review American cereal. 20 million views. You watch, you watch, let's set up a dating game where we have a competition where we bring on a bunch of 16-year-olds to date this popular YouTuber 16-year-old.

And let's make it a reality. This is the sh- cardashans. All the shit that's this mindless, that's what gets people's attention. Bubblegum for the brain. You know, then you got, even the last election, what was it, a hundred and fifty million votes? Less than half fraction.

Less than half the population votes. And that was the biggest election of all time, right? Biggest turn out ever. You know, I don't think it's changing. And you look at the content that consumes people, and you start to realize, you, you start to realize how fucking easy it is to manipulate an entire population of 366 million people. It's not much harder than hurting fucking sheep or goats or or. In the 1930s, there was a law passed that the United States government shall not participate

in any type of misinformation propaganda campaigns directed at its citizens. And in 2012, the Obama administration and the freaking Congress that sat then repealed it. It is legal for the agency, the sister agency, the FBI, and the rest of them to put out intentionally misinformation propaganda to American citizens now, and has been for 10 years. It was last time you heard any Congress person. They didn't fuss about it back then. It was last time you heard any Congress person.

They didn't fuss about it back then. They're not fussing about it now, just like the Patriot had. Patriot had greatest pull of our freedoms in history. Signed by Bush too. A lot of other people don't know this. There's only two presidents, US histories, to suspend the Rida habeas corpus. The right to do process. George W. He was the one that created the situation that allowed for locking up

January 6th people with no process. George Bush did that. The other one, even bigger lie, Abraham Lincoln. Really? Oh, honest A, probably the most closest thing we ever had to a Caesar in our entire history. He's suspended the Rehabilis Corpus now. At least with George W, it was directed at terrorists.

Abraham Lincoln was locking up political opponents, representatives, senators, governors. If you disagree with Lincoln, he would send generals to your house or military to your house, put you in prison. Were you sat for the rest of the war? If they let you out of the war. Lincoln, bro. One of the Republicans, greatest leaders of all time. It's a fucking lie And you know, they're like oh he breathed the slaves man

There's like 20 different letters that he wrote himself saying that he wouldn't if he didn't think It was the only way to win the war He basically said he was like if I didn't have to free the slaves, I wouldn't. He's like, but this is how we win this war. I didn't know that the latter. Yeah. One of the best letters.

How do you know that? Are you history buff? Yeah, yeah. Pretty much anything I watch, like YouTube, it's always history stuff. Like I spent the last couple of months watching thousand years of Mongol stuff, all the wars in Europe, you know, BC wars and stuff. That's what I've been interested in lately. But, um, you know, I never did. I

never, I didn't care about politics. Never cared. One bit. Oh, there was plenty of elections I didn't vote in because I was deployed or whatever. You know, um, and being a military type guy, I'm like, Hey, man, I work for the boss and the bosses who the people elect. If that's a bomb or a Biden or whatever, that's the rules, man. That's what I signed up for. So I kinda just stayed out of politics until I jumped in, face first.

And it was just so eye-opening, dude. A lot of this stuff I learned during that time period. And the really bad thing is, is how available the truth is. It's not like you're gonna see it on Fox News. That's what I'm saying, Tony. That's, there's a lot of truth out there. It's just nobody fucking takes the time to look.

They're too busy watching foreigners review American cereal. busy watching foreigners review American cereal. And they're too busy watching reality shows of a 16 year old's meetup for a dating game. And that's just how it is. They were, you gotta give it to the powers that be in. And if you wanna say liberals cool, but if you think it's just liberals behind this whole pandemic and the push to take over to subdue an entire

the entire world's population right? It's not just liberals. It just happened to be because I think people forgot the vaccine was actually approved while Trump was still in office. And it's like people forgot that. I mean, he's supposed to be the guy that's going to save us all. I don't believe any one man is going to save this country.

And it's sad that people raise a single human being to almost God like sadist. That's scary to me. Right. That's how Caesar became Caesar. So glad you're saying this. Yeah You know, I watched Donald Trump interfere in elections in the midterm elections He used his influence to interfere in elections and in some cases didn't go very well Right, he did not have this big crazy was it the red wave?

Yeah, cuz he very well, right? He did not have this big crazy. Was it the red wave? Yeah. Because he endorsed Dr. Oz. How he endorsed Dr. Greg Murphy. The guy I was running against. Tiny. This goes Greg Murphy. He'd him for the end of the endorsement. Everybody asked like that one. Oh yeah, Donald Trump's endorsements are not free. Oh no, not even close to free. How much does it cost to get a paid endorsement for Donald Trump? Any idea? I heard 1.6, but do not quote me on that.

I'm not gonna. We're just a couple hundred thousand child. I was a little child. I was a little child. And you know, it's just for sure. How did you know that? I'm, so I had friends at work for them. Okay.

You know, which was sad because like, you know, he, Joe Kent, you know, Greenberry, it was running out in Washington State. Joe and him, he worked for him and, and Trump backed him big time. But I, I couldn't really get looked at. I didn't have that kind of money. And I think Trump backed him on Goodwill. I don't think Joe had to pay Trump anything. But it was funny, if you watch when Trump never really announced that he endorsed Greg Murphy. Greg Murphy had announced that Trump endorsed him.

When he came to an event, it was like this cold handshake, because Greg Murphy missed the vote for impeachment. Trump said, he's a loyalty type of guy from what I understand. The Murphy spoke out against him and some of the January 6th stuff and then didn't show up for the vote for impeachment and all that kind of so. So typically speaking, you would be like, I was almost confident that Trump was going to endorse me. Or at least stay out of it, which would have been my preferred option. But like I said if you watch the way they are, it was cold. It was a ball made for endorsement. And it made a difference, made a huge difference. Because if Trump says something, people just believe it.

They love that guy. And I'm not, I'm not saying it. I mean, clearly if you give me a choice, I got a vote between him and Biden. I'm voting for Trump. I think Trump is mostly You know cares about correcting things mostly or at least to his the way he sees it But I don't know man reelect no one That's what we should be doing reelect no one. That's what we should be doing. Reelecting no one. Yeah, I don't care.

Right? Like if George Washington was reincarnated, he shouldn't reelect him either. Yeah. You know, these folks are just standing power and they're coming back and their power just gets more and more. And, and, you know, we can talk about like every tailoring about my, in my run. We'll get into that. We'll get into that. Let's get back to, let's get back to Iraq. And then, and then we'll get into that. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, so I break my back in Afghanistan. Um, and I thought my career was over because I had just been going orders to orders project the project in with the guard. Hold on. You broke your back in Afghanistan? Yeah, how'd you break your back in Afghanistan? I've gained a trip

to a couple catch up steps and bumped into me not me off cliff took a couple of catch-up steps and bumped into me, not me off the cliff. We're kind of, we're on a, it was a racquet mission and kind of a little switchback and he was middle of the night. He didn't have his nods because they're heavy. I don't know that wearing nods would have helped him but he tripped and he bumped me. So, you know, I was carrying 80-100 pounds a gear and went off the cliff and the rug sat just smashed me for you. And it was basically a compression fracture of L5. And so it split my spine part of the bone when I cut my spinal cord a little bit, not all the way. When people say, you know, you say your spinal cord, you can't fill your legs, that was not what happened to me.

It's shit hurt. Not a little bit. Like I said, when I was racing motorcross, I broke my femur, two ribs, my arm and my collarbone in one crash. And that didn't come close to the pain of breaking up that fresh and that vertebrae How fall how far was that fall do you think 12 15 feet? How far but enough to get crushed You know to put it perspective the average ceiling is either eight or nine feet in America, all right, so fell that far ah In a brace and a wheelchair,

ETS state was coming up. I didn't wanna file for any disabilities because my plan was to get healthy and go back. I had a flight packet in, I wanted to fly. So I was supposed, I actually already had, I was waiting on orders, I had been approved. I was going to warrant course and was gonna on orders. I had been approved. I was going to warrant course and I was gonna fight helicopters.

I thought my career was over being young and dumb, scared to ruin opportunities. We've all been there right. You don't want to claim that injury or whatever. I embrace in a little chair. They said if you walk with crutches one day, you'll be lucky. Like you're like your right legs always gonna be fucked. Okay. He said, if you walk with crutches one day, you'll be lucky. But you're like, your right leg's always gonna be fucked. Okay. I think it was like eight months later, I was running a sub six mile again. Nice.

Now it hurts. It still hurts. It was 05 or a bit, almost 20 years later. I have to be careful. There has been numerous times, probably five times over that since then, that like, oh God. And it like, oh God. And it hurts, bad hurts.

Last time that happened, I was out bat laying in the prone, zero in a rifle, and I went to get up, and I was like, oh my God. Crawled to my truck, cause my phone was in the truck, got myself up in the seat, but had to lay the seat back because sitting up hurt so bad.

Well, I can't see you to drive, so I put the truck in reverse and use the reverse camera to drive home. Oh my god. Call my buddy to come get me because I couldn't get out of the truck. He got me out of the truck and into the door, and I mean, I pulled the truck up to the door of my house. I opened the door of the truck and pretty much there was the floor mat, you know, the wipe your feet on. He got there 30 minutes later, I was still sitting in the truck.

He gets me out, gets me out of the truck. We got in the door, he shut the door, and I threw up from the paint. I mean, it hurts, man. But I wouldn't hear it, you know? I mean, since then I've gone on to do some pretty cool physical stuff, but it reminds me, it'll bite me every now and then, just as a reminder, like, hmm, careful budding.

Yeah. Be careful, yeah, or we'll put you down. Gotcha. All right, I have to pay attention to it. But yeah, all my crew is over. So I went ahead and let my ETS happen and got out. ETS, termination of service, right? Just let my contract with all of crew is over. So I went ahead and let my ETS happen and got out. ETS, a termination of service, right? Just let my contract with all of me play out.

I initially worked a few months for Triple Canopy and then waiting for my clearance to go through with the agency in GRS. And so I did a few trips up there, met some cool people. What were you going for? Triple canopy with a state department stuff. Of course, they lost that contract.

They were holding on to two parts of it, I think. They'd already lost most of it to black water. And they were still holding on to two parts. And because I was a most old guy already had already worked into another night rack, wound up on that team, had some really cool dudes, actually became one of the shift leaders. And then they lost that contract too. And it was like okay, but luckily myself and three guys from that team had already put in for GRS. And so when over there, that was with MBM at the time,

I think it was at Black Order and MBM at the time, I think was it black order and MBM. What time period is it? Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, shit. So you started contracting early. Yeah. Yeah.

So did a few trips with GRS? Sock USA took over from MBM. MBM had a good way running it. Like, as we would go in, get gear or whatever, like there was no operator type dudes in the office. It was like the admin girls. And you would go in and whoever walked in and like, look through the resumes,

you could go through them and if you, oh, definitely, no fucking trash can, shredder, Look through the resumes. You go through them and if you are definitely No fucking trash can shredder, you know, and that's how J.R.S. was stood up, you know, at least with the MV inside, you know, it was it was self-correcting You know, it like oh all it took was one dude to say this dude was a POS and he ain't getting hired You know? So, J.R.S. in the beginning was hitters, you know? Like, I was surrounded by studs, you know, Delta guys freaking, dev group dudes.

I was like, whoa, I am, you know, low on this totem pole. And then it didn't take long before a lot of those dudes were rotating out to cooler, better stuff, GB, SAD, and then there were some cool high-paying jobs like, was it SAKE or US? There were guys who took the national police and all that. There were some good, those jobs were paying good, and they were out not just doing protection work, era, advising, job, they were advising assist.

So a lot of those initial super studs went to those projects. And so then that sock took over or won the contract out from underneath NVM. We were in country when it happened. So it was like the NVM people showed up, took our gear one day, I'm like, we don't, we're kind of any body armor. We're not right.

We need your guns too. I'm like, what do you just say again? Next day, sock rolls up with all new body armor and guns and stuff. It was like, what is going on? That's just so weird, but it was, the way it handled, it went pretty flawless. But sock, the people sock putting charge,

like, IBM had these administrative females. They knew they didn't know a damn thing about what we were doing, and they were cool. So they would take our advice. Sock put in these freaking dudes who were not qualified. And we're not qualified to manage soft dudes or a project that soft dudes were running. And some of those dudes are still running that program from what I understand are still involved in that program. I was outspoken. You know, kind of a, I don't know, borderline arrogant, you know. But at this point, man, you know, you're talking like 07.08 now, got lots of trips, quite

a few fights. My attitude was, I'm not getting killed because you're all Right, and so I had no problem voicing my opinions and I was a quote unquote senior guy at this point, right? I've been a contract T.O. for a long time or a few years at least in Mosul most of the time so we weren't running green zone, you know, you're getting we're getting chewed up here and there Anyway, I bumped out. Can you go through some of that? Oh yeah, man. What are the coolest ones?

Cause you always, you know, I like telling people the dumb funny shit that happened to me. All right, like one time I was running to a target, fast I could, I wanna be number one man, Tripfell and breach the door with my face. And my knot. Right?

Just, you know, fastest I could go. I'm a young stud, trip fell wound up in the foyer of this building with my nods, sideways, my home, and all choking me out, and my buds run by, and you're like, get up, dude, you know. All right, I'll get up now. Breach her up. But yeah, I was sitting in traffic one morning,

getting me to cross over bridge one in northern and most bridge, high-rise bridge in Mosul. Traffic's the can't get anywhere. And I'm like, you know, talking to the helicopters who got the old Kaya was supporting us on our way out or headed, I think we were going to Dehote, maybe her bill. Dehote, because we were going up that bridge. And there's like one exit that goes down in the downtown before the river.

And I'm just, we're just sitting there, sitting in traffic. And sometimes when you tell Americans like, yeah, we should ride around by ourselves. And we were in low profile cars in civilian attire and just chilling, sitting in traffic. They're like, what? And typically speaking that low profile is what kept us alive, but that morning we got made. And so it was like a late 97 series, the boxing one, not just by shuttle looking on, you know? And luckily it was 11th level seven. And I'm talking to helicopter, checking text messages,

doing comms blah blah and all of a sudden my bro goes, and jumps, and I look at him and his eyes are this big and I'm like this, and right next to my windows and AK muzzle, dudes had pulled up in a red Opal, what other kind of car is there, for you can pull up next to us, and the dude in the back seat is leaning out of the window and he's pretty much, he could have tapped my window with his AK and he went full auto. And I would love, I would love to be able to tell people that my reaction was cool, tough,

badass. I mean, this is, I've been shot up before. You think I'd have been cooler. No, I went. And through my hands up, look, I'm going to stop those balls. And he chewed about half that glass out and his driver floorboards it. So like about half his mag went it right here. It would hate to kill us both, you know, for armor. And his driver punches it. So some of the rounds kind of hit the windshield and went down to hood of the car.

And you know, unless you were suicide bomber, you need an exit plan. They didn't have a good one because the exit was completely stopped up with traffic. They went about 30 meters, bro, and were stopped. They had one AK and one magazine. Nice. And they had just impede it.

I got out of the car, calmly, cool, we basically walked up to them. And well, anyway, frickin' they didn't shoot any more Americans. That's the kind of goofy stuff, man, that happens, that I don't think a lot of us want to talk about, you know, like, I don't care. I'm like, look, man, for the 20 funny stories I have, I have 200 missions that went awesome or, you know, that would probably be a cooler war story to share I don't know man. I mean, I mean, yeah, so I went in and we breached this door and went into this room shot a dude I had all the time. Yeah, that's that's just what we're doing

but it's the funny stuff like Yeah, I better not say that. We like trying to put my head in my bro's shoulder and was gonna stop bullets with my hands. But it just shows us that you're still gonna react. We can't help it. Stupid stuff like that, man, goofy stuff. I mean, I enjoyed Iraq because you know working with my

Kurds and stuff. After I left GRS, got to do a lot of amazing missions. Them dudes became my brothers. You know, they were awesome. A little Pech Merger special forces. It was a putune, a silver putune's worth of Kurds and stood up by Dev. CIA Sanctuary thing, Dev Group guys stood it up and then handed it to us as contractors. And it was cool because it was trained by the advise and assist. Where did you move to? Up in the palace, Barzani's compound from GRS to Oh, oh, so over to SAD, um, which I guess now they're calling himself the director at ground director at ground branch. Um, so I went over there and SAD stands for special activity, which is the umbrella for the directorates. Um, and like I said, last I heard, Jaros was still underneath, I say D, not sure.

But yeah, man, I mean, you know, one time we had a dude run out in front of us. And my butt just floorboards it, you know, drive, drive, drive. And this dude had that trigger panel in that A.K.A. even when he was underneath our car. We had a suburban. And one of his rounds hit the brake reservoir and the computer shut the vehicle down.

So, follow vehicle comes up, pushes us. And we had suburban's all taxi out, you know, Hodgede out or whatever. And for the folks listening, basically we would just take armored vehicles and then make them look like you would. And there, people don't know this, there are American cars in Iraq. And so like the suburban's, you know, you put little tassels and you'd Hodgite out, put chrome on it.

You really want to get Hodgite out, you got to put chrome angled, you know, shiny things all over your suburban's. And yeah, and a student, man, God bless his heart. He was committed because underneath our truck, he was still pinning that trigger. And the guys that were pushing us were like, dude, you guys drug that guy for, you know, 500 meters before he popped under our vehicle. I think we're drugging for another 300 meters, you guys drug that guy for 500 meters before he popped under our vehicle. I think we're drugging for another freaking 500 meters, you know, just creating a slick down the pavement with this poor guy. You know, I had a fight in Iraq

where I wound up by myself. Because one of my guys got killed. And it was just the two of us doing surveillance stuff. And how did he get killed? Round. Kind of sucked, man. We got made. We were pretty low profile.

Thought we were pretty good. But as we were leaving this neighborhood, one of the lookout type bad guys or whatever definitely made us, man. he did the double take and it was like, we got slowed down as we passed in and it was like, oh shit, like we're made. And made the call, hey guys, just FYI guys, we're compromised for RTB and returning to base,

all school. We pull out, went up, made a U-turn, and this dude comes running out with an RPG. And I'm already on the gas. I was driving. And I'm probably 55, 65 mile an hour and RPG. And I swored right into it, you know, took it in the hood, took it in the grill. And I swored right into it. You know, took it in the hood, took it in the grill. Um, that made the steering not work. And we went into one of those big metal light posts, you know, and the median, the median was just all up in that way.

And, um, you know, of course, on all those vehicles, we had to air bags to say, what and all that kind of stuff. And I ate the steering wheel pretty good. And it was days and confused. And my guy's like, we got it, man, we got it. And I'm gonna get it together and he's like, we gotta go that way. Roger, yep, hard point over there, got it.

And it's like, ready, ready. Let's go, pop the doors. And I moved around to the hood and started giving the guys a, and they were pot shot mess at this point. They were 100% sure what they were dealing with. And so the bad guys, it was three lanes. And then, so full six lanes there of road. And then the sidewalk and then kind of an alleyway

that they were kind of, you know, shooting at us from. And it didn't take much to back them up. They were just real uncertain with what they were dealing with. You know what I mean, they're like, what are these guys? You know what I mean? They knew that big bearded dudes in humbys and in wraps were not to be messed with. Those are scary guys.

But they didn't know what we were in this sedan. So anyway, they didn't take me but a few rounds into that fight to realize he had not come around the other side of the vehicle. Fuck. Yeah. And I'm like, I just kind of looked and I could see his legs still in the car. His door was open. So we're on around there and yeah he was he was done. The round that went through him hit me in the back. The only reason I know it was that round is because I had blood on my back and I had no other time in this fight that I could have gotten blood on my back. Yeah, I went through him and hit me right in the back plate. Freakin, so I ran around and grabbed him,

and he had a Mark 46, and I'm dragging him, and as I go around the car, his foot catches the muffler, because I rounded the corner a little too short, and so I slip and fail. So he's basically, he's in my lap, and I'm looking, and here comes these dudes are like, oh, opportunity. So I'm just like, you know, trying to give him a little love, push him back a little bit. I get back up, turn around and, you know, was just grabbing his arm and ran. Had to drag him over that median, which he was all hung up on across the lanes. There's traffic, man. There's people.

Bullets are flying and like people, you know how, sometimes people would scatter in fights in Iraq, and sometimes they would just go on about their business. Gunfight people, leave. And so I'm trying to drag through traffic and stuff, and not a lot of traffic, just a couple of cars in my way trying to get to this one little storefront. And I'm pulling them up on the diagonal sidewalk, on the other side of the road, I slip and

fell again. And at this point, I pulled up his saw and went on like a 200-round burst. I sounded almost an entire drum with like three bursts, just figure eight. And that was very helpful, because now I've said in these dudes, and like, you know, they've got a couple of their buddies that ain't fighting anymore, so I was doing okay. And at this point, like, I'm like, okay, I'm still okay. My buds are on the way, right?

My buds have got to be on the way by now, right? I've been asking for help, contact, contact, contact, ask for help. They know. It wasn't until three or four buildings later that I realized I had also been shot in my fucking in-bitter. Oh, fuck. I'm talking on a radio that doesn't work.

And I left my cell phone on a Velcro patch on the dash of the car. It's an I got no comps. And like I said, I'm still talking on the radio asking for help, you know, freaking, you know, trying to give updates on my movements and stuff. And I get him in the store owner basically, yeah, in English asked me, you know, can I help you? And I'm like, please just leave. Just get out of here, bro, you know, can I help you? And I'm like, please just leave. Just get out of here, bro.

You know, and he, so he took off. And I rolled up his dude in a carpet and stuck him underneath the stairwell. And I tossed a PDM in the doorway. For folks that don't know, a PDM is a pursuit deterrent munition. Well, little mine, if you will, that you pull a little string, pull a pen on it and I can't remember six or eight wires pop out of it,

little trip wires. And so when someone comes after you, they trip it, it goes off. And I, and I, I dealy, it, it turns them for pursuing you, pursuit deterrent munition. And, um, through one in the doorway, took a couple more shots, took off, and sort of bound it back, right? That took everything I could off of him. His pistol mags, he didn't have any AR mags. And he had like a hundred round nut sack, it's a smaller sack for the saw, took a saw, a songman for my, at this point, I'm like, okay, right?

I'm gonna get up on the roof, make a call. Helicopter will be here in a minute. And so I went up on the roof, and it was a flat roof with no knee walls. Had my VS 17 panel out and died. That's when I discovered my radio. It was making a lot of, it had some radly pieces. And what it was, you know, there was,

there was radio, holders that you fold down, you know, like hinged. I was like, man, I must be on the wrong net, something's wrong. So I'm like, I'm going to a different net and I open that up and I was like, k, k, k, k. And I was like, ah, a shit.

The screen was blank. Funny thing was, the AK round is still in that embedder. I have it at home. I still have the radio. And the AK round is in the embedder. It did not go through and hit my plate. Wow. Who would have thought?

Our radios were ballistic. Or at least in this case, mine was. Stupid stuff, right? I left my PSF and team panel on the roof because I started taking fire. And I was like, oh, I went jumped off the roof. It was like, basically, the roof I was on, second story, first story, roof that was like this, but was it here? story roof that was like this, but wasn't here? When I got up there, I didn't make a mental note that this, that part of the roof didn't exist. So I went running and

jumped off thinking I was going to land on this and missed. All the way to the dark dude, two stories. And I was just like oh my god that hurt. You know got myself together and I remember as I stood up dude came running around the corner like I mean maybe double the distance me and I'm just I'm like oh my knees I'm starting to get up and I look and he runs and looks and he looks right right through me. He's mid-twenties. Looks, looks. It takes off and I'm like, his buddy runs up behind him, keeps going, past the little

alleyway and I hear him hitting the right, he saw me out of the peripheral vision and he came back and put his head around the corner. So I dumped him. His buddy sees it happening. I start to move to the corner and we almost run into each other. He comes hauling us around the corner of the weekend and I'm like, it was kind of weird because it was like, pow, and he hits my muzzle and I'm like, kind of, you know, kind of pushed him out of the way with it. It's weird as shit. Back, back up, went into the building so I was like, I need to stay off the streets.

And it was getting to the point now, right? Where like, I'm okay, you need to manage your ammo. And I'm like, okay, what are we gonna do? No one knows where you're at. No one knows this is happening. Crack, right? So I'm like, okay, I'm going to the river. How'd you can't swim?

If I can get to the river, I'll swim down south, freaking get out the river, and walk to the freaking air base. I'll be fine. That was my best plan I come up with. It was not a bad plan, it would have worked. Had I ever gotten to the river. And so this goes on. This is June.

It's hot. And I don't have any water. I got bad enough probably probably about just over an hour into this that I drank water out of a sink in our act. And I was like, well, hopefully I'll be home before this kicks in. I got new. I was going to have the shits, right? I was like, well, but I was bad dehydrated. And um, less in learning there. I got new I was gonna have the shits right I was like well, but I was bad dehydrated and

Lesson learned there Camelback when your body armor. I found like a One-liter camel back and put in my back plate in my body arm in the back as a reserve, you know emergency You know, I wouldn't drink off of it. It was only there for an emergency We've been nice to have that day. I never had to really use it since. You know, that's probably less of a learn. They always apply to that thing. And then they never happen to get shit anyway.

So I have that camel back still in my back plate. But as I got less and less ammo, when I went inside, I transitioned to my pistol. All of a sudden, man, well, I got to the marsh and a kaiwa screamed by me and I was like, please don't shoot me. And he looked, they were looking for me. No, sure. I got to know my guys knew.

Right. I was posing to the phone. No, we didn't hit the tracker or nothing. We had the blue force trackers. They get shot up and I was facing views. And I partner get shot in and in. Blue force tracker. Didn't think I hit it.

Yeah. I mean, I thought about it. I didn't know if it was on the whole time or, you know, did the RPT- So they found it, right? Because, you know, the Blue Force trackers admit all the time, but I didn't hit the emergency. So they knew IVO, right? They knew the CTO.

And, but I mean, I'm at least an hour and a half now. And they, the guys had come. My guys were out looking. And they had gone and got the ODA. I think it was the seventh group ODA. So everybody was out looking for me. They just weren't sure where. And so they were getting little ticks as well. And they could hear the gunfire they said here and there, but gunfire and all that. Yeah, very common. Right. I was managing my Emma, man. I was no shit using my pistol inside

and switching her iPhone outside. I threw two PDMs, both of them went off. I heard them both go off and I just laughed. I was like, hell yeah. They're not very devastating. Like the reality is if a PDM went off right here between us, they probably wouldn't kill either one of us. You know, they have less expos explosive in them than a frag grenade.

And, but I remember hearing them both going off and I just laughed, I was like, yeah, motherfuckers. You know, like, ah, like you're gonna kill me today, but I ain't going alone, you know? And that's kind of where I was at. I was like man I just don't know if I'm gonna get out of this one Um, and I never got rowed up or any of that stuff is just like I only just keep me as they showed themselves. I'll shoot them and

I lost to a short man. I got to the marsh and That kaiwa screened over and then he hard-banked it freaking up Settle back down came out up on top of me and freaking waved and I was like I just kind of sat down in the marsh. It was Sitting on my butt. It was about that high but I could see and He sat there for a minute and kind of pulled off just a little bit. And have you ever heard the 50 cows on the coyotes? They're not like, boom, boom, boom, boom. They're like, do do do do do do do do do.

They're turned up. They're a cyclet rate of fire. It's totally different than the ones we put on the humbings. And I had never heard one before, and he's right there. And he's just like, ah. Man, I've never heard that. Yeah, I never, I was like, what is he got?

You know, it's a 50 cow, but they're just much higher, almost double the rate of fire, those are the ones that we put, shoot on Humvee's and stuff. And I was like, holy shit. He had, I think, is it three? I think they only had three, 2.75 rockets, and he shot two of those, if I remember correctly, maybe three, and peeled off.

And I kept popping up, you know, anything present itself, take a shot at it. And maybe a couple minutes later, an Apache came out of the river. Like he was screaming up the river, popped up off the river, came right over, waved at me. I could see the rivets in the bottom of the helicopter.

And I was kinda like, we get a hold of one in tires. Get me out of here, dude. And I'm sure enough around the corner rolls in a striker. It's the Rangers. And I'm like, cool. You know, the Rangers, they only do one thing. You know, I'm like, yeah.

Rangers, they only do one thing. You know, I'm like, yeah. I had nine, nine millimeter rounds and 14, 556 rounds left. Nine millimeter rounds. How many? Nine, nine, nine millimeter and 14, 556 rounds left. Holy shit, man.

I had thrown my three frag grenades and his two frag grenades and two p.m.s. One of the frag grenades I literally threw in the room I was in. How many combatants did you face that day? They picked up 26 bodies. Jesus man. It was nuts. Yeah.

And it definitely, remember I said I didn't realize I was immortal until Ben died. That day made me think I was immortal. You survived something like that. You know, it was like, and it's all wrong. I should have, but I was yelling and done, right? I mean, just yelling and cocky. And I mean, I just spent just spent you know almost two hours fighting by myself and made it through it, you know, with no training. There was no training I had ever done in my life to set me up, there was no single person CQB classes, right? How many people did take to do CQP? Two, period. And we were still in that phase, like, no one was doing single-ten work. No one was doing single-person CQB.

What year did this happen? So, well, that was 2011. Yeah. I think that's about the time we started doing single-man CQB. It wasn't my chance, because there was other instances of other guys. We all got together and started talking about it. What was the place over in Maryland that JRS used to use to train? Oh, I don't remember the name. I'm talking about your talking about. The place other hooded boxed drills and all that stuff they do.

So we went over there to use their indoor rangers, our CQB Outs and tested all kinds of crazy John Wick type shit. Like, hey, I'm breaking out of a room. I'm talking shooting in all kinds of weird angles behind you as you ran through a shoot house. We tried all kinds of stuff and just, and I bought it. You know, it had to test it on force on force.

And then we just basically kind of came back to, okay, single person CGB needs to be kind of just like pointed domination only by yourself. So you can do anywhere you want. And that's an oversublication of single person CGB. But that's the essence of single person CGB. So you're the one that developed the program? Not by myself. No, it was like, you're nine of us up there

when we were doing it, but I was at that instance that that's what's called part of the field of development of it. Yeah, myself, handful of other dudes, not to mention way more single-ton operations going on out there. We had females running around and then needed to be a solution

to this problem. Because like with GRS, it was like, okay, the tough guys are going to sit outside the meeting while the case officers inside, sometimes they'll go get him a her, well, in GB, you got PMOs, so they're not rolling with GRS, they are by themselves. So you know, try all kinds of stuff and came down to the basics that, hey man, it's not the tactics or the techniques that make CQB by yourself different. It's the speed. The situation is going to dictate the speed. Am I leaving?

I mean, go back one time where I literally just ran. I left a 760 in a bad neighborhood. I'm going to go back and get it that night because apparently I can't just leave $1 million cars laying around Iraq. But I did. I mean, that's why. That is why I've always maintained or tried to maintain a six-minute mile. As big as I got or not that I was huge or anything, but as I got bigger and put on more weight from lifting, I still maintain my six-minute mile. Because I ran 1.2 miles in the Mosul mile, trying to get away from a bad situation.

Didn't even pull my pistol. I mean, Carbine was in the trunk, pistol, plane clothes, ran. So when people talk about like, oh, running breeze, cowardice. Well, but it also can save your life. Or it can get you to the fight before everybody else. So yeah, man, that was some pivotal shit, but at the same time, like I said, it's still, it was just another day at work.

It wasn't a profound thing in my career, even though it was, looking back at the time it was just, hey, let's get back to work. You know, it's not make a big deal out of this, let's get back to work. Because they wanted me to, hey, you need to go home and take a couple of days off, man. I'm like, for what?

You're just doing my job, bro. You know, but I will tell you this, I've been one other time in my life. I was more dehydrated than that day. They've made your boys freaking rolled up, dropped that tailgate. They grabbed me, it grabbing kind of helped me, because I've been sitting for a minute.

My legs were getting tired. They were already pretty smoked. They drove me up in that thing, handed me a water bottle. I drank it. I remember it, my stomach hurt. I was like, ooh, that hurt. I was like, I'm gonna need an IV.

I'm gonna be like, hey man, we're going, we'll be back at base in five minutes. If you're going straight to hospital. All right, cool. And going home, looking out and you're going straight to hospital. All right, cool. And, you know, going home, looking out and you're like, you're out here by yourself doing this. Like, I don't purpose fellos. You know, I wasn't supposed to be doing this,

you know, it just happened. So that was kind of nuts. You know, freaking, it changed my perspective about so many things. What guns we choose, what gear you have. I mean, it was a 416 with a EOTEC on it. Yeah. And a Glock 17, you know, nothing fancy.

You know, it got the work done. So when guys are like, you know, latest greatest guns and gear and stuff, things like that throughout my career of just using whatever was issued or whatever we could buy. That's why I don't care about gear. Yeah. It's, it's, you know, I don't know if we can say this anymore, but it's the Indian, not the arrow. You know, that's a, that is a very factual statement. A good somebody that's in a good, and don't give me wrong, man.

Like I sometimes joke that, you know, I'm only still here because Scott likes me. There's really not much other explanation for it with all the close calls and the injuries and all that. I must still have something to do here. Why was what I still be here? It's got to be something else. And one of these days I'll figure it out. It'll follow my lap and be like, maybe. You know, maybe like, yeah, this is what God wanted me to do. You've been asking. Have you been asking?

Yeah, yeah, you know, we were talking about this earlier, off camera, you know, I'm a Christian. I was raised in the Methodist church. My mom wanted me to go to church, so my dad made me go to church. I've read the Bible twice. I need to read it again.

I need to start reading instead of like reading it, cover to cover, like I did when I was younger. And I need to start reading more often. And we're going to Melissa just bought us a Bible study for couples, like a guide to help you go through the Bible where it's very specific to couples and relationships. I'm looking forward to that. But as far as asking, specifically asking, I'm like, what's the point, what you got me

here for? No, I haven't. And I probably should. I really thought about it. It's weird, I, that you said that. I don't know that I've ever asked God for much of anything. I mean, there's been times where like, and I'm probably sure that day I probably begged for help. You know?

But as far as like that type of conversation, I don't know that I really have it like that with God. I think Him for all the things and blessings that I have. And I'm usually kind of more like, whatever you want from me. I'm here. Yeah. So yeah, that answer that question.

I guess no, I've never specifically asked, what is your plan for me? I guess I just trust that I'm living it. Well, why be a good time? Yeah, I just trust. I've never questioned my faith. Some people say when I lose their buddies, like, why God, or you lose your mom, why God?

I've never done that. That once. My faith has never been compromised. There's been times I wasn't very faithful, very different, right? Misbehaved and sinning. Yeah, I had a lot of that. But never once have I questioned my my faith. I've always believed And it's cool because like We had some Jordanian SME you guys they're they're I don't know I don't know if you should say Delta Force equivalent, but they're tier one unit Came and and helped us and work with us with the Kurds and You know there's sort of major stud seems I-ish. And dude, just stud.

Do it a bit more like more wars in places. I was like, you did what? You know, like, and of course, sometimes we use our allies to do things that we can't get away with. And that unit was definitely one of those units But it was an amazing conversation I would have with those guys are like it's the same God man You know And you know Americans can be right like

Muslims you know as if Muslims are all bad clearly not the case I've spent many of the time on my hands and knees on a prayer row. I still have it, it's on my front porch. That was gifted to me by those guys. So I would pray with them. Next on the Sean Ryan show, we're in a sedan and we are the lead vehicle and we were leading Ranger to a target. Target too big for us. So, you know, Platoon Plus, Worth of Rangers and

Strykers, not far behind us, we were supposed to pull up and when we stop the gate prior to us and to the left, they need to just drive through that gate. That's the target house. We didn't get there. We got to stop at a light, in traffic, and we just happened to part next to on the FP. That was meant for a striker. And then the video shows it never happened.

Two very different stories, so we put it all together and launched it. Local media wouldn't touch in. Hello, I'm Tony Cowden, and I'm running for US House of Representatives. I was fed up. I was fed up with the government. Not doing the right thing. They're just not doing the right thing. Mix a little sports analysis, pop culture and great interviews. And you've got the Rich Eisen show podcast. The jets are bracing themselves into doing hard knocks this year.

Impraising themselves. Look, the coaches want to control the controllables. They don't want to have a camera crew in the building. You know, I know that they want to lie low. This is what happens when you go and swing for the fences and get out on Rogers. Are you kidding me? The Rich Eyes and Show Podcast.

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