Irish Born, American Made with Kevin Owens | Mike Drop: Episode 63

growing up in ireland and graduating high school in like the mid 80s there was no jobs you had a couple of options you you were you went to england you went to america what did you eat growing up i'm just in terms of potatoes is that what you're going no okay i did eat potatoes i didn't get waterboarded in cedar school here i don't know why waterboarding sucks i mean it's not torture but it sucks you gotta hand it to the left they're really good at one thing brainwashing kids in college man because i i can't believe what's going on i grew up with national healthcare and everybody thinks oh national healthcare that'd be awesome free health care for everybody well it's it's garbage everybody in ireland who has a job pays for private health care the anti-gun folks in this country talk about science and stats and like look at the [ __ ] stats you know more kids drown in in private backyard swimming pools that are killed by guns every year by a lot yeah and this is not the same as in america this is military stuff but still what's a a 12 13 14 year old with an ak shooting at you that's not a child that's an enemy soldier welcome to mike drop the podcast where relevancy is irrelevant and we don't give a [ __ ] about your [Music] feelings ladies and gentlemen as always it's both an honor and a pleasure to welcome my next guest to the podcast he was born in ireland and spent seven years in the irish army two of which in infantry and five in irish special operations he spent 24 years after that in the u.s army six of which as an infantryman and then 18 in u.s special forces he's been awarded four bronze stars and he's currently an instructor for field craft survival if you'll recall i had mike glover on of the same outfit here just a few episodes ago and his nut sack is actually a miniature set of bagpipes ladies and gentlemen welcome to the stage kevin owens hey mike thanks for having me on thanks for coming uh holy [ __ ] i uh i gotta tell you i'm excited as [ __ ] to uh to get you on here and and talk about uh both your experiences as an irish special operator and an american it's uh without question one of the most unique backgrounds of anybody i've ever interviewed as well as anybody i think that that has experience uh to that level in both of those i don't know anybody else that does so i appreciate you taking the time and coming on yeah yeah glad to be here i'd like to take a quick second uh to shout out and thank our sponsor for today's podcast origin labs and jocko fuel jaco fuel is a great product uh he's got a ton of products actually within the jocko fuel line the guests and i enjoy them on the show and outside i take a lot of the supplements i've got some of the origin lab jeans boots geez and it's just all around american industry now they do a fantastic job really re-revolutionizing american industry from start to finish it's all american-made all-american sourced everything start to finish is made right there in-house and they really do a phenomenal job creating the products and fulfilling the whole ball of wax they've been a huge supporter of the mic drop podcast for a while now and i really can't thank jocko fuel and origin labs enough for the job that they do for us and so thank you to you guys i'd also like to say thank you to our other sponsor resilience premium cbd resilience is excited to offer all mic drop listeners a 20 off discount on all products for two weeks from when this podcast is live using the discount code mic drop at checkout that's two words mic drop at checkout i'd also like to say that resilience is a great company that works in conjunction with trico cbd and all military veterans and first responders receive 35 off yes that's 35 percent off for all military veterans and first responders and that's uh through the military and first responders program you just have to sign up at resilientcbd.com military first responders discount uh in terms of about resilience generally speaking it's a premium cbd that i use again that works in conjunction with the trichos brand for the everyday athlete that's www.resilientc and resilience was really born with the founders who are military veterans as well personally experience the effects and impact that cbd had on their own mental and physical obstacles their focus was sharper mental stress was calmed fitness stamina increased and their bodies felt less pain inflammation after super intense workouts a lot of times most people and people are able to either wean and off entirely or significantly reduce pain management their pain management therapy this is a shared vision among the founders that this incredible supplement had not only changed their lives but had the power to provide unbelievable benefits to family friends athletes fellow veterans and ultimately the entire fitness community so big shout out to resilience for their product as well as the trico stuff we sure appreciate their support what's the uh what's the dumbest [ __ ] thing you've ever done uh my god that's that's a big list i've done a lot of dumb [ __ ] in my life um does anything pop out when i was when i was like 15 uh i grew up by the by the seaside kind of you know midway between dublin and belfast right on the water and and we were we were [ __ ] up kids but but we uh we were drinking one night and all the cars would be parked along the the show irish kids drinking i know right it's crazy yeah all the cars would be parked along the shore front and there was one parking spot where there was like a slipway where you could uh you know launch boats and we broke into the car and took the handbrake off and pushed the car into the ocean why i don't know boredom just to [ __ ] around yeah i don't know so i've done a lot of dumb [ __ ] yeah uh what what is your favorite gun and you have to pick just one oh [ __ ] um the roux will be our 6'5 uh larue uh sniper rifle that that's a badass gun i really like it i've got two of them and uh yeah i i love the gas gun i i love uh six five as a caliber and that that would be probably my my favorite what separates that from every other great [ __ ] sniper rifle as there are quite a few of them there's there's a lot of them yeah um the gas gun is a it's versatile i can fight with it and i can reach out and touch someone at long long range with it and that that 65 caliber is a good mid-range caliber that's got great uh external and terminal ballistics so i love the bullet love the platform and and i've had larose for years and years and years and they're really reliable guns if you're actually shooting a live target animal or person uh is there a brand of ammo that you like in six five the best burger burger 140 grand burgers um and again i i skipping ahead but i worked force mod for the last couple of years of my career so i was involved in all the testing for the 6'5 bullet and that one came out it just shone for both for external and terminal ballistics yeah rock and roll uh what's the best part about ireland damn sure not the weather the pubs yeah i guess that's an obvious answer but uh everything revolves around the pub yeah and uh you know either the pub or the outdoors right there's two completely different answers right there right so you go hiking in the morning yeah and then you go to the pod in the afternoon that's a good day uh do you have a most embarrassing moment damn mike what are you gonna give me hard questions right off the bat that's that's the uh that's the brain buster a guy what you thinking uh most embarrassing moment uh [ __ ] um trying to think um i don't know maybe taking a [ __ ] in sierra school in front of like 40 other students that standing around in a room and then ripping my shirt off to wipe my ass that was pretty embarrassing without the uh the cover down no cover no power yeah just in front of everybody yeah that's humiliating for sure i know i've i've had well we've all been through yeah to [ __ ] in different spots that were pretty compromising but what is your morning routine on a normal day if there even is one i mean from the little bit of chatting we did prior to sitting down uh you don't you don't seem to have like a routine routine all that much but uh when you're on the road living out of the uh the rv what uh what does the typical morning look like for you yeah um the last since i came to prescott about january full time every day has been a little different you know i don't work out like i used to because i'm so freaking broken now and i have a lot of injuries so i usually just get up and take that guy right there vinnie out for a walk and you know get to the office early and start to start working i don't really have a normal routine we're on the road a lot yeah so it's kind of different every day almost yeah is that [ __ ] with you in terms of uh like almost the i don't know if circadian rhythm is necessarily the correct verbiage for that but just like i know like being on deployments or long training trips where you're living out of a bat like it's [ __ ] exhausting like yeah are you kind of getting to that point being i am it's getting a little old i'm looking forward to getting a roof over my head again you know it is it's like a deployment over that's a really good analogy living out of a bag very very temporary yeah and uh it was fun the van life was fun but i'm ready to get back into a house now yeah i hear you um all right so i'm real curious about your childhood um you were born in ireland i'd love to you know kind of give give us and the listener a uh kind of a snapshot as to what being born there and growing up there was like um ireland back then so i grew up i i was born and raised um about six miles south of the northern ireland border so the whole northern ireland ira british thing was was very much in the forefront growing up um i grew up on a like a little seaside resort midway between dublin and belfast on the east coast and ireland has some beautiful places this isn't one of them [Laughter] um the uh i i was you know i tell people i was a middle child i was nine of 14 kids damn yeah catholic family um we lived in like like a subdivision kind of thing that had 36 houses in it our house was owned by the government very very socialist very government run um country back then it's way more socialist now but back then it was run by the government and the catholic church they controlled every aspect of people's lives and when you grow up there it doesn't seem weird right like like the kid who grows up in afghanistan doesn't know his life sucks because he doesn't know anything different right so we we lived in a small house all 16 of us with uh eight girls six boys and my parents and in a really small house and we didn't have a lot of money we were pretty poor growing up yeah um my mother was a rock star she was super hard um my my father had some alcohol problems and and uh wasn't much of a role model honestly but my mother was super tough she was super hard on us she beat the crap out of us like my mother could beat down some [ __ ] navy seals man i tell you she was a hard ass but she was good and and we loved her for it because she needed to be you need to rule with an iron fist when you have 14 kids oh yeah yeah and uh so we grew up poor uh got a pretty good education um yeah and uh you know grew up back in the days before cell phones and the internet we just went out and played all the time and and uh in my teenage years i was a little bit of a wild kid broke into pubs stole beer or freaking did all the usual [ __ ] that teenage boys do but just never got caught yeah you know luckily was there um i guess between the all of the the 14 of you um is it again kind of like we were talking before kids being all different like are the 14 you're just vastly different or or do you have brothers that you you were are pretty similar to sisters or i was the only for a long time i was the only one that went in the army my younger brother went into the irish army uh years after me and and just did a couple years and get out i my older brothers actually regret never joining the army because they they work in uh i hope they don't listen to this but they work in in menial jobs right and they're like man i should have took that the road less traveled you know and and growing up in ireland and graduating high school in like the mid 80s there was no jobs you had a couple of options you you were you went to england you went to america if you could get a green card or even without a green card or you went on the dole you know and the jobs are few and far between so my oldest brother got a job with the with the the post office which was government run and uh it was considered a really good job because you're you're you're solidified you're locked into that job for a long long time and you'll you'll you'll never be laid off because it's the freaking government right so uh but in hindsight he looks back now and he's like man i took the safe option i probably shouldn't have yeah but um could you call him a [ __ ] and [ __ ] with him no no no i don't he'd be my ass and then most of my other brothers went they they went to america like a big chunk of my family went to america and i had at one point or another but they all went back home eventually except one brother i have lives in new jersey and uh so i i think within the boys were all fairly similar people um but i i just took a road they didn't take yeah so i'm curious i mean having grown up in a socialist environment and seeing what's going on now having raised four kids in a capitalist you know democracy or constitutional republic type environment what is your take on what's going on right now and what seems at least you know i grew up here uh but but to me and i think to a lot of folks seems like it's a kind of a pretty severe internal struggle nationally on on which [ __ ] fork in the road to take yeah whether it's you know because there are a lot of [ __ ] people at this point that i think seem like they want socialism uh or even communism in some cases some of them are marxist i mean like it i would have never thought in my lifetime that i would see a lot of the things that we're seeing i'm sure some of it is influenced by by foreign social media etc but a lot of it's not or or they've done a good enough job coupled with the people here that feel that way you know to essentially condition quite a few [ __ ] people to to want that so i you know what what is your perspective having kind of seen both of them for real and not just theoretically what you learned in [ __ ] college or what you grew up with yeah yeah people don't know what they're asking for you know they've you got to hand it to the left they're really good at one thing brainwashing kids in college man because i i can't believe what's going on i grew up with national healthcare and everybody thinks oh national healthcare that'd be awesome free healthcare for everybody well it's it's garbage everybody in ireland who has a job pays for private healthcare because the healthcare system that the government provide is awful both my parents died on on national healthcare my mother went in for uh she had a blockage and she went in and they cut her open and did a biopsy and the doctor said that she had bowel cancer and gave her like six weeks to live or something like that well no chemotherapy nothing right and then they they took an example of the of the cancer but never checked it because there's no accountability right well weeks and weeks later the um my older sisters were like hey what about the test what about the test what about the test and they eventually went back in and checked and it was ovarian cancer and it was very treatable but we lost so much time by then when they started doing chemotherapy it was too late you know so and and similarly with my father like at a certain point if you're older they're just not going to treat you because it's not financially viable so you you can have national healthcare all you want is the same in england it's absolutely horrible and anybody who um who's grown up with that it'd be like oh my god and anybody with a job pays for private health care so that's one aspect of a socialist government that uh is absolutely horrible you know and then there's the other part you know i've worked for the government the u.s government for 24 years i'm like a libertarian i want the government out of my life you know what i mean because the government will screw [ __ ] up all the time yeah so the the anybody who thinks the government can run everything has never worked for the government oh yeah i mean i i feel that way like the conspiracy theorists you know um i know you know with a lot of different things where you know and you know some of them i think are everything is worth questioning but some of them just give the government so much [ __ ] credit yeah and to me yeah again like i think you know the reason why 99.9 percent of people that have spent more than about six months dealing with the us government scoff at that because they're like dude you're giving them way too much [ __ ] credit being an inside job yeah like the government did that the truck would have run out of gas on the way to drop off the explosives you know well i mean that it's just like you you really think that the amount of people that it would take to pull that off like you would have kept their [ __ ] mouth shut no no there's no [ __ ] way they would have you know like it's just you know whatever i mean but but anyway you know i agree in that you know i mean the the 12 and change years that i spent in the military gave me every [ __ ] bit of nationalized healthcare feeling through the va that i need to know that i don't want that as as a [ __ ] primary system for sure it's it's not uh where it should or could be um but i think i honestly think most of it is just a lack of personal accountability in terms of taking better care of yourself because all insurance i don't give a [ __ ] what formula you use or how you slice it is that you know it all hinges on the same basic principle that any insurance does which is more people are paying into it than are using it you know as soon as that's not the case i don't give a [ __ ] what percentages or or what subsidies like it doesn't matter the fact is if there's more people that are sick and using expensive health care than not there is no system that works you know like it's always going to be too expensive and [ __ ] up you know so to me i don't get why we're not talking more about hey fat ass like why don't you take better care of yourself yeah you know uh drop the [ __ ] the snickers bars for a little while and and uh you know take some [ __ ] personal accountability but uh in terms of the other aspects of socialism and i where my curiosity lies primarily is in the like with the northern ireland stuff and the ira and the you know just the strife between uh england and ireland within the uk and kind of how that all fleshed out as it relates to socialists and and just you know i'm fascinated by by how that went down and kind of the background of it if you could shed some light on that i'd love to hear it sure um the whole northern ireland conflict is very misunderstood by by a lot in the u.s because you know i mean they know a little bit here and there and all that so um you have to really look at ireland as a whole the the the the english invaded ireland occupied it for 900 years you know i mean that's a long-ass time right and did some horrific things let's be honest right i'm not a supporter of the ira i just but the british did some horrific things especially around the famine i mean they let they let people die and and they shipped all the grain to england and stuff like that right and they they basically kicked everybody out of their home and took all the homes and all the farmland and segmented it and all that it goes back you know generations and not hundreds of years but in uh around like the first world war there was a lot of talker revolution and communism and you know russian revolution a lot of countries in europe were kind of going that way and ireland started ramping up the ira and attacking the british and in 1916 they took over big parts of dublin and did like a ted offensive type operation where they took all the buildings and and big set-piece battle for like a week then the british took a a gun boat up the liffey river into dublin just pounded and blew the [ __ ] out of everybody right and then everybody they arrested they executed and but it kind of changed the narrative in ireland and the same way the ted offense have kind of changed the narrative in the vietnam war right so um they gained a lot of sympathy and it brought the struggle to the forefront and then in 1922 the the british pulled out of the southern part of ireland and it became the republic of ireland a sovereign nation but they stayed in the six counties in the north and i think if they had to go back right and if they were able to go back they wouldn't have done that because it's been a pain in their ass ever since um so they were like an occupying army in the six counties in the north um but the reason they stayed there is because the majority population there are protestant and wanted the british to be to be part of the british empire right so that it kind of it it subdued for a long time during the second world war and stuff like that and then it re-surfaced in the late 60s as a civil rights organization because the british were so heavy-handed with the catholic population in northern ireland they were absolutely second-class citizens they couldn't get jobs in the government couldn't be police they couldn't um they were they were downtrodden they were poor they lived in the ghettos and and poor neighborhoods and protestants were attacking catholics and then the british forces were very heavy-handed with catholics so the ira started as an organization protecting catholic neighborhoods from aggression that's how the ira started in like 69 i think and then they started ramping up in the 70s and and they tried all new techniques that bomb in england they did did attack you know soldiers and police and and then the whole catholic protestant thing started happening where catholics would go into across the neighborhood and randomly shoot the first person they saw and then protestants would go into a catholic neighborhood and randomly should do it was absolutely horrible and even to this day it's very volatile and it's under the surface and a few of them go up to belfast there's huge walls separating catholics and protests almost like the wall around solar city you know i mean separating catholics and protestants to keep them away from each other which is insane because in the south catholics and protestants live next door to each other nobody cares you know so when the ira ramp back up in in the 70s and 80s it was really really bad in the 80s when i went in the irish army in 85 and it was really bad and then um like every single day bombings and shootings and killings and at that point what role was the irish military or irish army playing in i mean were they tasked with combating the ira did they kind of play switzerland were they supportive yeah they kind of played switzerland the irish irish government were very very hands off of the ira kind of like you leave us alone and we live you a little type of thing be i like to be honest right so i did uh like i had a car bomb in my my home little subdivision when i was like 12 or something actually younger than that because i was in primary school so i was probably 10 maybe me and my brother were coming back from uh school and they had the whole neighborhood cordoned off because they had found a car bomb um and me and my brother went through the fields and in the back way and when they were house to back way even though the houses were all evacuated and my mother was still in there yeah nobody told her and it was funny because i told mike that i was telling mike that story when i was doing a podcast on fieldcraft's arrival and afterwards my brother called me and he said do you know why our our mother was still in there because the police tasked one of our neighbors to go around all the houses and evacuate everybody and he was having a fight with my father so he skipped our house and left us in there what a [ __ ] bag man yeah yeah that's pretty cruel that's [ __ ] up yeah but the irish army is very hands-off with the british we patrolled the board i patrolled the border for a couple of years and we would stop and search cars and all that and but you could tell that those police officers were the reader on the pro on the payroll or they were they were threatened because when big border operations would happen when something significant happened and did bring police up from like dublin and stuff they would be searching every car and you could see the difference in the mentality because they weren't they weren't they weren't read into the program you know so um the irish army stepped in when the ira or the protestant uh terrorists would come down south and bomb in the south which they did sometimes when the ira got a little out of hand with robbing banks or kidnapping people and stuff the irish government would step in but generally you you really did get the sense that they were somewhat hands-off because they they they weren't getting attacked by the ira yeah i i can only assume that there's probably some level of even if it's almost subconscious of growing up as an irishman of being like you know i'm really not that concerned that some of our countrymen are [ __ ] with these people right is there is that a safe yeah i i don't know exactly how i avoided the whole area thing i i think it was due to my old man and he kept us from it had i been born six miles north of where i was born i'd been knee-deep in it because when you're when you grow up in northern ireland as a catholic and the brits are breaking on your door and preaching coming in beating the crap out of people and pulling them off the jail it's like everywhere else right it's uh you you get you get embroiled in it as a young age you get brainwashed and yeah so i i managed to avoid the whole thing um but there was a like at the end of the day support the ira don't support the ira the british did invade ireland and occupy it for 900 years and still occupy the north yeah um there's a lot of concern right now because of brexit thing because now england's not in the european community but ireland is so the southern part of ireland is part of the european community the north northern ireland is not so the smuggling routes now going across the border are going to com be a huge deal and they're saying that if the checkpoints go back up the guns will come back out and it'll go back downhill and the ira never gave up their guns yeah um they they kept their guns so they hopefully not because we've had a generation now who've grown up without violence and hopefully it doesn't go back down that road because it was horrible i mean to me that like my initial kind of curiosity is is like for for the the british component like why are they still even [ __ ] with it because the protestant population in northern ireland want them there they want to be part of the crown so if the brits pulled out there would be a civil war in ireland between the catholics and protestant and it would be bloody really um that's why they're still there it's a thorn in their side yeah because i mean to me i guess even with that it's still at some point you would say you know risk versus reward or almost like not to reduce it to to business principles but like from a cost benefit analysis like it just doesn't make sense for us to keep [ __ ] with it like yeah you guys are on your own sorry i know yeah it might be time to rip the band-aid off but um could could the ire irish government not control that from happening up there uh yeah nobody really can control an insurgency like that you could you could the brits could not control northern ireland from the ira so the irish government if they took the north over they would have a hard time policing the protestant terrorist groups who are heavily armed and uh were were extremely violent as violent as the ira at certain points right so it would be it would be tough um i i don't know that there has been talk about the british giving back northern ireland because of the brexit thing and how hard it's going to be to police that peace but we'll we'll see yeah um it's it's like the palestinians and israelis it goes back centuries and and it's just a complicated problem yeah it was was there a sense of um when you were in the irish military that that there were guys i mean i can only assume that a lot of the ira and the protestant weapons and munitions and things are coming from the irish military was there like groups of guys that like yeah these [ __ ] dudes are part of the ira or their support there was there was uh there were people that that we suspected in in the government like a lot of the the protestants got guns and ammunition and and all that from the the british army in ordinary there's a lot of collusion going on and you know the the the guard at the base would get knocked on the back of the head and they'd lose 300 weapons right it was an inside job right in the irish army they were very very very conscious of accountability like every bullet was accounted for every weapon was accounted for like two you think it's bad in the u.s military it was like a at a ridiculous level and every time we went out in the field especially in special operations we all carried live ammo because they didn't want the ira pulling up with it with an armalite rifle and taking out all our guns from us right so we carried live ammo everywhere um very very security conscious very very accountability conscious for weapons but they didn't need them so qaddafi sent six ship loads of arms to the ira really yeah when when reagan bombed gaddafi in like 83 or 85 something like that uh they flew out of raf milton hall in england and gaddafi got the ass at the brits so he sent six ships per sip loads of arms four of them i i think got seized and two got through and they had surface-to-air missiles aks millions of rounds ammunition semtex explosives all kinds of [ __ ] on them and that stuff was never found we looked for it for a very very long time and so the early on in the 70s they were very ghetto with guns and all that but in the 80s they had all the guns and ammunition they ever needed yeah i mean i remember you know growing up in the 80s hearing about car bombs and [ __ ] assaults and you know fights between british special forces and yeah and ira guys and whatever and i guess i you know forgive my lack of [ __ ] knowledge base on it but uh to me i guess i just always assumed that um that catholicism was more prevalent in in england and and you know to me it's it's it's surprising i guess to hear that england would put up with that much of a pain in their ass to protect protestants from catholics in ireland [ __ ] with each other like it's just mind-boggling it was mostly like the bombs and all that were mostly um the ira attacking the british security forces police or military right and that was most of the bombs and the ira are very creative with with ieds and i grew up with this [ __ ] and i grew up with these riots and all the [ __ ] that's going on now and i hate to see it here but the uh the the ira tried different strategies throughout over the decades they they bombed in england they bought pubs in england they hit civilian targets and they killed police and military and nothing really ha nothing worked um what you're talking about is margaret thatcher sent in the uh the sas and they they pretty much had to shoot to kill policy any time they rolled up the ira they killed him right and it was kind of fighting fire with fire but nothing really worked for the brits or for the ira until they started bombing the financial district in london they started putting small bombs and every time it detonated even if nobody was killed it blew out all the windows in the in in the wall street of london right and once you're hitting the pocketbook that's what politicians understand and all of a sudden the peace treaty was on and uh in 96 the petrie was signed it failed a couple of times and it it there was breakaway factions from the ira and stuff but it's holding now but it uh it it's still volatile and it could fail but they opened up all the jails and let all the ira out they let all the protestant criminals out who'd murdered lots of people just let them all out as part of the peace treaty so um did it get nasty before it got better letting all those guys out i think so i'm a little detached from it now i know that that a breakaway group from the ira like called the real ira broke away and they did not want peace yeah they wanted to keep it going and keep it going and keep it going and there's still factions fighting in the north but it's nothing like it was when i was growing up yeah yeah that's some fascinating [ __ ] and i i guess you know circling it back to what's going on here you know i can't help but hear hearing the stories about uh you know what it was like in your childhood and then seeing what what is taking place more from uh the why of why people are writing and to me it seems ridiculous i know everybody you know it's all relative like people are out in the streets like if they're that pissed off it just to me like it seems so [ __ ] unwarranted yeah by comparison yeah it's like like when i when when you're telling me or what the kind of you know talking points are as to the the basis with which you're trying to justify these these riots and whatever they just seem like like paper tiger [ __ ] yeah to me i mean what what is your take yeah i i think there's three elements out there i think there's the antifa guys you just want to burn the system down and they are they're so they're communist marxists you know and they just want to burn america to the ground then there's the criminal element who are out there trying to take advantage and hurt people and take [ __ ] and then there's all the sheep there's all the sheep who believe cnn they believe all this [ __ ] and they're out there and they're just going along with the crowd you know like um the narrative that that police officers are hunting down young black men and murdering it's just not true it's just not true there's 330 million people in this country there's hundreds of thousands of police officers and 99.999 percent of them are good decent family men who do a very tough job and every now and again they they they make it a bad decision or they do something they shouldn't do and they'll be prosecuted that's what a civilized society does yeah um if they were freaking the the the the number of shootings that that uh and interactions with police every day they have a split second to make a decision sometimes that will we will burn them to the ground for making and they they work for 40 grand a year they're over underpaid overworked and over scrutinized and i i think it's a very tough job and anybody who says defund the police has no interest in fixing anything they just want to burn the system to the ground if you want to say reform the police and let's train them better let's let's raise their pace so we get a higher caliber people in there i'm on board 100 percent but defunding them no you're just trying to burn the system down yeah no i couldn't agree more the uh you know i had uh a couple of fellow guys uh one was a seal one was a ranger both black guys that i had each of them on the podcast individually last year um or even the year before and then had them both on together talking about about that and i did quite a bit of research prior to doing it uh and agreed i was like you know out of 330 some odd million people there there were nine instances in in 2019 where where unarmed black citizens were shot and killed by police officers and out of even those nine which again is is a fraction of a fraction of a percentage and i'm not discounting those nine people's lives however you know again just statistically when you're talking about 330 million people almost a million police officers where you know it shakes out to tens of millions of encounters with police day in day out like things are going to [ __ ] happen you know i mean accidents happen you know but but even out of those nine most of them were very um you know i guess not calculated but um they were very questionable in terms of them being unarmed or not you know it was like you know one of them had a gun and then dropped it like technically didn't have in his hand you know one was threatening him you know one had shot at him and then dropped a gun you know like one of them had a knife like it was just you know mike i used to run a leadership school for soft and i'm kind of jumping ahead now but um one of the classes that they had to get and these are young green berets psyops and civil affairs and there's 120 of them i think and and one of the classes we had to give was rules of engagement and and law of land warfare and i used to bring a jag officer in and he or she would sit down and and talk to this big forum and they'd talk about you know defense your life protect your all the reasons you can open fire right and you you know you can't shoot kids and you can't shoot unarmed people and all these black and white scenarios right and after they would leave that that jag officer i would get up and say everything that jag officer told you is absolutely true right however the world is not black and white like that the world is gray what what is and this is not the same as in america this is military stuff but still what's up a 12 13 14 year old with an ak shooting at you that's not a child that's an enemy soldier right um somebody running towards one of your blocking positions in combat unarmed in a place where there's a lot of suicide bombers right that's a target right i mean there's so many there's so much gray out there somebody that reaches into a car to grab a weapon and turns on a cop that cop's got a split second to save his life right and yeah so i do empathize with them it's a very tough job yeah i mean even this this latest uh deal in wisconsin um you know like you and i have worked with enough police to know kind of how it shakes down and and that's one of the problems i think is is a lack of knowledge on most american citizens parts uh as it relates to to what the process is of serving a warrant of you know trying to arrest somebody and what their rules of engagement what their pro protocols and procedures are and knowing that like knowing that okay we're going out you know we're responding to a call of a guy being violent who has this as his record you know like they know that going into this scenario now granted not all of them are that way but this one is and they're [ __ ] burning the town down on a [ __ ] bag yeah you know you know base and they knew he was a [ __ ] bag and they called the police on this [ __ ] bag and they were going to to try to stop him from being a [ __ ] bag to a woman you know that that has a 14 or 15 year old rape conviction on his goddamn record yeah you know and and they try to arrest him and he fights him [ __ ] hits one of them gets away from him has a knife yeah and [ __ ] goes into his car reaching into the [ __ ] car and they shoot him and and they're in the [ __ ] wrong like it's it's [ __ ] absurd it is it is you know and we're holding this guy up like a hero he's a scumbag and you know just to me like like i'm all for holding people [ __ ] accountable everywhere you know cops shouldn't shouldn't get a pass even if in a split decision you make the wrong decision like there has to be accountability but like this isn't the [ __ ] case no you know some of them are most of them aren't you know and yeah it's just you know god damn it's frustrating when uh when you see [ __ ] like that happen it's just like i'm at a point even and i know a lot of guys with with our backgrounds you know it's almost kind of like a an unspoken uh thermometer that that's that [ __ ] close to peg in the top where you know there are a lot of people who are very very goddamn capable of being incredibly violent yes that are that [ __ ] close to doing it yeah yeah and and i think that that kid that 17 year old kid that shot those two freaking scumbags um that's going to happen more and more because especially if you're in a democrat-controlled city and they're not allowing the cops to help you then you you've got to help yourself you've got to you've got to protect what you've spent your whole life building so it it's unfortunately going to get worse yeah yeah it's horrible yeah the the thing that uh that i think escapes most of the defund the police and antifa sympathizers and uh and what have you is that that again that there there is a significant portion of the population that is is demonstrably capable of doing some pretty horrible [ __ ] that the and here's the the irony of it i think is that the only [ __ ] thing keeping a lot of those guys i'm not going to necessarily throw myself on that list uh for obvious reasons but the the only thing keeping that group of people from from deciding you know what it's time are the [ __ ] police yeah so if you get rid of them like real that's one of those be real goddamn careful what you wish for because if if nobody is protecting you know people you know the victims from being hunted by you guess what nobody's protecting you from being hunted by the [ __ ] real predators out there that have a lot of experience doing it yeah uh you know and if and if they're shooting each other and getting dropped by 17 year olds and and and you know wait until the [ __ ] varsity team shows up you know like you have no [ __ ] idea and no concept of what you're in for you know and and i also don't think that they realize how goddamn close it is to to happening yeah um anyway we could spend all day talking about that one uh i am curious having been through uh circling back to your time in the in the irish military um what um what are the differences and and kind of the contrast between irish army irish special forces and and american kind of so when i went in the army i went in in 85 and i spent like two i think two two and a half years in the infantry right so our job was to patrol the border we had a couple of jobs patrol the border uh we did cash escorts believe it or not because the cops don't have guns in ireland or they didn't back then and so when a massive amount of cash was moving from from an armored truck then we would put a military escort on it with two land rovers and four soldiers and two cops and a police car we would escort it all around the country picking up cash basically mafia guys at that point well yeah yeah um then if explosives were being used for for quarries we'd have to escort them and watch them being used and watch the whatever's left being being burned um but mostly we did border patrols i did nine 24-hour duties a month right so yeah yeah and we know now that that staying up that much jacks you up right but we would do like a typical week would be i would be 24 hours on 24 hours off monday wednesday friday and sunday and then i do a week of normal duties like eight to five and then the next week i would do tuesday thursday and saturday 24 hour and 24 hours so it was seven duties a month and i did that for a couple of years um checkpoints searches cordons stuff like that along the border and then i went to special ops and i went to selection and i went to lebanon when i was a private as like a u.n peacekeeping deal in 87 and then when i got back and with the selection and when i get into the unit i i did a couple of months of like otc like cube course training and then and then i became like an operator but it was like a uh it wasn't like american special forces it was more like uh gsg9 gign it was like a counter terrorist police force almost right and we had two roles green and black they used to call it the black roll was like the the swat team stuff um high risk warrants and stuff like that extra traditions and then the green roll was like conventional special operations behind the line sniper i went to sniper school i i did a bunch of schools while i was there so that was kind of how it was set up um and so it was a little different than american special forces but a lot of the skill sets were the same like i went to freefall school i went to uh static client jump school i went to uh it's funny because static line jump school there was like pre-jump here right it was um it was like two hours of ground training hey this is what happens if you land on power lines and water okay do some plfs off that bench all right get in the [ __ ] plane let's go yeah and it was fine like i went here and it was two weeks of ground training i'm like dude lord it's gravity yeah you're gonna we we push pallets and they land fine right it's not that good you can't escape it yeah yeah i couldn't believe it yeah so so here's the the big dick measuring question which one was harder selection or yeah yeah just generally explaining it actually was harder there because i was younger i think right when i went here i was older and i was more mature and i knew all the tricks and all the [ __ ] that they throw at you but um i i thought selection there was a ball breaker um and like we had i think my class had 88 people start and like i think we had like eight or ten finish and like four or five got selected you know what i mean it was very very small and and a lot of people got broke from from you know doing freaking mountain climbers with your head rifle over your head up and down the hills all the you don't mean so yeah can you give one example of like a a physical ball breaker that that you did there that doesn't exist in the united states anything anything different like that or so it was a lot of the same thing rifle pt and log pt and all the same stuff we did i went to a uh instructor course there and they wore a board with us with which i didn't get waterboarded in cedar school here i don't know why waterboarding sucks i mean it's not torture but it sucks and i don't know if you've ever been waterproof no i haven't but similarly like in seer school you know some some did some didn't i mean for for our my experience you know which i know the navy sears school is different from the armies but uh it completely depended on your conduct uh you know as a fake prisoner basically which which i kind of like because then it's you know it's it's real world real-time feedback of you're doing it wrong or you're not yeah you know and and so i think you know there's there's a lot of elements of that you know that exist in dog training and should exist in life is that you know if you do something uh you know positive or that uh you know is a good thing it should be rewarded and if you do something that's bad there's a consequence you know your school is mistake based learning you know yeah and i'm a slow learner of mine i just get my ass kicked i couldn't understand what i was doing wrong you know i got the uh the absolute [ __ ] slapped out of me i don't know how many times yeah you know to wear it enough to where it about [ __ ] knocked me out yeah i mean i was thinking before cirrus goes i didn't have much intel i was like i could take a hit you know i grew up fighting i grew up doing martial arts and all that and when they when they rolled us up they had her hands tied yeah and they had that sandbag on her heads and they whipped it off and it was bright so i like i couldn't see it coming [ __ ] hit me that [ __ ] hurt right no no yeah for us it's uh you had to grab the sides of your pants you know so like you have to stand there grabbing this the seam on the outside of your pants while they slap the [ __ ] [ __ ] out of you and it uh yeah it was horrible but selection over there to me was harder because and i think most that i was i was just young yeah and i really didn't know what i was getting into and uh it you know it's the same thing sleep deprivation and patrolling and food deprivation and all the usual stuff you know so i think when i went to the american army the special i was older and uh i i just i knew it was a means to an end i just sucked it up yeah in terms of the caliber of guys that made it over there versus here how would you you compare that to the exact same type of guy believe it or not that you could pick up one of those and put them in on a seal team on an sf team and they're the exact same type of guy you know i mean yeah i mean to me it makes perfect sense and that you know i mean i've worked with enough other you know western uh you know saw whether it's kansov or some norwegian soft guys or whatever it yeah it's like very easy you could pick them out of a [ __ ] airport even yeah you just walk in the way they walk they carry themselves it's like we made them in a factory or something you know yeah they're the exact same type of guy that's good [ __ ] yeah um so you're i have to ask and i'm super curious how did it go from spending seven years in the irish army and being an irish green beret essentially uh to coming to america and joining the army how did that whole thing transpire and why so it wasn't planned i'm not a good planner i just take it and take it six months at a time so i when i was a fairly senior guy there uh another unit member who was more senior to me approached me with this business idea that we were going to start a survival company right i was telling mike glover this and he was laughing because you know now i'm looking for survival company but we're gonna we're gonna start a survival company and the goal was it was like one group a month twice a month maybe and we do you know survival training rock climbing map reading land navigation all that kind of outdoor stuff right now because um because of the northern ireland piece and because we're in special operations we could never ever mention that we were in special operations they were afraid that we'd be targeted and it was very hush-hush much more so than it is here and obviously there's no social media back then so we started this company and we ran a couple of groups through and our unit commander got wind of it and told us that you can't do that while you're in the unit this this started my uh my not so good relationship with officers over the years man so he basically want to cover his ass and he was like you can't do that while you're in the unit and we went back and forth back and forth and eventually i was just like you know what i have a bad temper i was like [ __ ] i'm getting out and back then i don't know if it's the same that but it might be you could buy yourself out of the army based on how much they spent training you yes so sure so i had done three i'd re-enlisted done three more and i'd re-enlisted for three more and i was one year into that so i still had two years on my contract and i said i want to get out i want to discharge by purchase so the the only courses they charge you for are courses that you can use on the outside like if they put you through chef school or something like that it would cost you a lot of money but [ __ ] like free fall and sniper and rappelling down walls and shooting bad guys so [ __ ] ridiculous but i love it yeah it is right so things are different right so um i i paid like 1500 bucks when i was out in like six weeks um just like the irish army was it was what it was it wasn't it's not the same as the american army but there was a few things they did differently there that i think we should be doing number one you don't get punished twice if you get a dui in the irish army the civilian authorities deal with you and the army doesn't give a [ __ ] you know what i mean he or they will crucify you twice yeah they will destroy you right that's one thing um the other thing is there was no move up remove mentality right the american army if you don't get promoted in the american military if you don't get promoted by a certain time and grade they kick you out basically not everybody's a leader you know that guy who's a truck driver who's a private who's awesome at his job if he wants to stay a private his whole career and get a pay raise every year and that's fine not everybody's a leader so i i i think there were two examples of something that was better there than it is here i just don't get some of this because when you have this move up mentality you your career positions that guys just go into they check a box and they move on and commanders do it so our majors do it in sf they come in they get one years companies are major move on yeah and because they're trying to build and climb the next rank which which kind of screws things up i think no for sure it does i mean because it it manufactures uh intent you know and i think you know if there's any way to half-ass something it's manufacture the intent behind doing it you know i mean it's just yeah it's totally totally [ __ ] stupid but so yeah i'm sorry so i got out and uh i i got out with no plan right yeah so i was working this uh this uh survival company a little bit and then i drove a taxi for a while and i [ __ ] hated it man so that was that was my first bout with loss of sense of purpose right i went from being a special operations guy with all my friends and everything till i was in tears leaving that unit like it it devastated me it was it was very difficult and when i get out i work this survival thing but but you know having an outdoor company in in in a country that rains every day probably not the best business model right but you're what like 25 26 i was 25 at the time yeah yeah so um i i at one point i sold my car and i bought a euro pass for europe and you can do that you can get a train ticket in europe and travel anywhere you want in europe unlimited so i just bummed around europe for like six weeks trying to freaking get my head straight you ever go to amsterdam during that time i did of course she did i know that of course i did um that's a wild place yeah yeah so i came back and uh i was like [ __ ] i'm gonna go to america so uh i had no green card or nothing i got on a plane flew into jfk linked up my brother who was there who worked a had his own construction company and and i work construction and you know when you fly in on a holiday visit you get three months i stayed for a year so i was an illegal immigrant for about nine months yeah that's that's [ __ ] that's hilarious yeah yeah so then i um my mother got sick she got cancer so i had to go home so i went home and i burned that bridge i couldn't go back to the states because once you overstay your visa they're not going to fall for it twice you're you're [ __ ] right so at home um i i [ __ ] hated it i i sat there watching my mother die for months and months and months and it was awful like no job and and i wouldn't take the dole i just wouldn't take their [ __ ] money i i just some personal wouldn't let me so i worked a little bit here and there just doing [ __ ] jobs but it was like a really low point in my life it was because i lost i've been a special operations guy i've come out i lost that sense of sense of purpose and then now it's just a [ __ ] bum with no job could you have gone back into the air no no probably not yeah probably not um at that time like when i joined the irish army it wasn't a matter of like here hey i want to join you go in they only recruited every couple of years a very small army very small budget and when i when i went in they needed troops for the border right and i was just right place right time just just lucky but they they very rarely recruited so it wasn't like you could go in any time you wanted and if you'd already burned that bridge i i don't know i didn't want to anyway so i uh i i watched my mother die for for for months and months and months and i was at a really low point and i was going to the french foreign legion actually you know i was gonna go i was like [ __ ] i'm just gonna go to legion and uh a buddy of mine from the irish army from the special opportunity called me up and he was like hey i got a job in somalia and mugged issue for you and uh i was like [ __ ] it let's go i didn't even know what it was i was like let's do it right so um the blackhawk down thing was october 93. i arrived in mogadishu in february 94. so right after it yeah i flew from london from dublin to london london to nairobi and then nairobi in our un flight into mogadishu got met by two brits sas guys handed me a pistol belt and a freaking ak-47 and we went we went rolling right so mug at issue at that time was was probably the most dangerous place in the world it was completely lawless it was post-apocalyptic and after the americans pulled out it got way way worse because you you're left with egyptians pakistanis um malaysians all muslim troops who were not there to fight with their muslim brothers and it was extremely dangerous and volatile but it was absolutely what i needed at that point in my life it really gave me purpose and it pulled me out of a deep dark hole and what so what were you doing there i was a security contractor so i was a they call it a freelance security contractor and i worked for a shipping company in out of london and they had offices in mogadishu at the uh at the american embassy compound which is a big huge compound there and they had shipping assets and stuff and what they would do is they would um when when let's say the american military need to move a hundred tanks and democrat issue the american military does not have ships for that they contracted out to civilian ships so um once they put that out for tenure they um all these companies would bid on it and our company was one of the companies there now because we had staff there and shipping assets and we had interest there they needed security for the for the people that work there and that's where i came in i was a security guy for them and so the the group that you were with um you mentioned being met by two brits was a kind of a hodgepodge of all different types of [ __ ] battles there's all brits and one irish guy who got me the job and me right so it was brits and irish and like to the somalis if you're white you're american right they did so they shot at us regardless of what we did but because we weren't part of the un and we weren't part of uh we were kind of contractors we were like redheaded step children right we couldn't get you in assets they didn't provide security they wouldn't even let us on their helicopters most of the time so we we would have to drive from um like the airport in the seaport kind of connected but to get to the american embassy compound was like all the way down through downtown mogadishu through like a hell hole freaking gunfire or you could go that way or if there's too much fighting in the city you could go out into the desert and hoop who kind of hook back around and come in the back way so if you went through the city you were dealing with uh militia gunfighting we had our own endage that drove for us and and were insane and they were part of that somali national alliance that owned this city it's generally deeds people but when you go out into the desert and come in the back way you're dealing with bandits who are just trying to stop your vehicle murder you and take your [ __ ] right so you'd be in a run-and-gun fight the whole way out into the desert all the way back and firing at anything that moved uh bullet holes in the car or freaking brass all over the car by the time you got to the other end and then you do your business reload all your ammo and you'd go again you'd be like all right let's do this so thinking back on it now is like insane right and and i would have went for free if theta said hey i got this job but we're not paying you i still would have went for the adventure yeah but i got really well paid you know on top of it so it was uh it was absolutely the adventure of a lifetime yeah but small team like that with no qrf and no medevac procedures and none of that it was extremely dangerous and more dangerous than anything i've ever done since how long did you do that for nine months nine months yeah was there any element i mean i know you're all on the same team and when you're getting in gun fights i'm assuming probably not but was there a little bit of the british sas and irish guys kind of pissing match not at all no they were good dudes man they were good dudes and they were good in a gunfight and um they'd all worked in northern ireland but i i don't care yeah we're on the same team now and uh we had at one point six of us there and then as they started whittling people down as as the mission started closing at one point there was just two of us there me and this big guy um ken from england and uh like we did some stupid [ __ ] that we shouldn't like when i think back on it like we we drove up one time we had to go into the mug at issue port authority and pay a bill we pulled up and there's like 500 somalis outside in a riot with sticks and [ __ ] and we're like oh [ __ ] maybe come back later we went back to the house we're drinking tea and cam was like [ __ ] those [ __ ] let's go so we get the car we pull up and we push our way through a mob with sticks and [ __ ] and i have like a mini uzi and i was like i'm just gonna start spraying [ __ ] you know so we get all the way to the door and they won't let us in they won't open the door so then we turn around and we have this [ __ ] mob that we have to walk back through like just balls of [ __ ] steel or maybe not that smart you know and we push your way through and when we got to the other end we're like that was really [ __ ] stupid and unnecessary like we do we did a bunch of stuff like that and at the time i i i was a [ __ ] loose cannon and um like we we did other stuff like we we uh we had a house in mogadishu when i started working there so i got there i i got picked up by those two british sas guys and we moved to this house which is a big massive house in mogadishu like downtown like [ __ ] stupid right so i i get there i get my my rules of engagement brief which was very very brief like it wasn't uh and then i'm exhausted because i've been flying i've been traveling for two days so i go up into the bedroom of one of the guys who left on the same plane i came in on he's gonna leave i go in i put my guns down i climb in the [ __ ] sack i lock my door because we had endage there that would murder you in your sleep if if if it became more profitable than protecting you and uh about three in the so this guy uh whose room it was had all the windows blacked out completely like sandbags blankets so you could see nothing i didn't realize so when i went in i i turned the lights off went to sleep about three in the morning a huge gun battle started right outside our window and there's two rival somali factions and our guards who are on the roof started firing at at the rival so brought all the gunfire in our house so we're embroiled in a massive gunfight the first night i'm there i rolled out of bed in this pitch dark room that with all their light black and i can't find a light switch i am literally walking around the wall for like 15 minutes trying to find a life switch while my boys are up on the roof in a gunfight you know i can run it up there and it's all over i'm like i'm so sorry and then from that day forward you never had you never went anywhere without having a head lamp shoved up here that was a valuable we could do a whole podcast on market issue it was such a [ __ ] up place it was a post-apocalyptic people were dead on the streets uh we'd drive through the city with our ended driving they'd be hitting people with the car like life was cheap there and um they had a prison the only prison that was there the only court system was they had somewhat of an islamic court in downtown and we drove past it once and they had a hand stuck on all the railings all the way around i asked our terp and he was like yeah people steal they chop their hand off they stick it on the railing you know people would go to prison there and they wouldn't feed them it was up to the families to bring food to them or they die you know and it was just it was insane like people were still stoned to death there and probably are to this day but such a backward [ __ ] up place it was just insane but it was uh yeah it was quite the experience to me that that experience would uh would pay huge dividends for so many people in this country to even if they spent an afternoon yeah yeah in a place like that yeah we used to uh ships would come in from like uh tanzania let's say and our company would be tasked with unloading the ship so we'd bring in a poor captain and he would supervise the somalis unloading the ship right so once it's done let's say you had 50 workers and they're all like cat you know they're all chewing cuts they can work like crazy with their their eyes are like two pistols in the snow you know yeah but when you're done you start with 50 workers and now you have 40. yeah and the other 10 are stowaways on the ship so now me and ken got to go through level by level in this ship and roll these guys up because they're trying to get out of that that city and go anywhere in the world to get away and it's a horrible place it really was i mean it sounds like uh yeah when you like some [ __ ] out of a movie honestly i mean you know it's just um all right so you do that for nine months and then from there did you go did you come to america or did you so i went back to ireland when the mission ended the the un said look we can't [ __ ] help you we're done and they tapped out so the mission ended so i came back to ireland while i was away while i was in africa the my green card came true i'd applied for a green card for america through a lottery system and it had come through and i'd missed a day to go to dublin and get my interview so i went up there and i pleaded with them i told them i was doing volunteer work for humanitarian work in africa and they bought it yeah they bought it yeah so they gave me an exception and i did my interview and i got my green card which now i'm legit right so come back to america fly in um all good to go so i worked construction for a while worked worked for a moving company for a while and and just again once once you've been in the military and done all that cool [ __ ] it's hard to sand paper [ __ ] walls all day and do [ __ ] i i i was getting well paid but money has never been a motivating factor for me ever so i was like [ __ ] i'm going back in the army so when in the army private e1 you know you get these kids to go to rotc in high school come in as an e2 or an e3 i i had all this experience and i came in as a private e1 in 1996 yeah so we came in the same year the second time yeah yeah my second time yeah 1996 clinton army yeah a lot of cutbacks uh went to base come in as an 11 mike no 11 x-ray which is yeah they can pick and choose where you go you can either go 11 bravo which is light infantry 11 mike which is mechanized infantry 11 charlie which is mortarman or what's the other one the other one is uh i can't remember what the other one is but you come in at 11 x-ray and they decide where to put you so i didn't understand anything about the army so i came in as eleven x-ray and they made me eleven mike which is mechanized infantry bradley's which sucked right so when i graduated they sent me to fort hood texas um fort hid texas at the time was a horrible place to be because i think it still is yeah because of the cutbacks and everything not a lot of training very fake very risk-averse training like i remember doing squat attack and they'd have a base of fire and they'd have officers standing over every single person and they'd have cam lights laid out where you had to do your flanking maneuver it was just canned and at that time excuse me officers were getting burned for people getting hurt and stuff like that because it was a peacetime army yeah so super risk averse and just all he did was sweep the motor pool and repair vehicles and it was [ __ ] it was horrible i was like i made a huge mistake because i came in the american army thinking [ __ ] the americans are always fighting with somebody man let me go get some of that right because uh because being well you had to go forward and then hit somalia and i was like [ __ ] i'm gonna go in but i didn't know much about the army so i was a recruiter's dream i was like i just want the infantry that's all i want right because i had a green card i couldn't go to specialize so i joined with a green card when you do that you have eight years to become a citizen or you have to get out right so it's much easier now but it took me six years to get my citizenship and so i did two years in fort hood and i went to germany and i spent four years in germany germany was much better unit first infantry division and the training was more realistic it was it was much better we trained up to go to bosnia we end up going to kosovo so i am spending nine months in kosovo uh 99 to 2000. so i was there for the millennium the whole y2k you know we were joking like if the whole world collapses you won't even notice in kosovo because it looks like it's like 100 years ago all right it's so backward anyway right yeah so um did that and then eventually my uh my clearance came true my oh i'm sorry so i had to go back from germany uh you can move me along if i'm getting too long yeah so i had to go back from germany to interview for my citizenship and then i had to go back to germany and come back like months later and actually get my citizenship and it was a guy from uh somewhere in colombia i think in my platoon he was like going class a's and tell them you need to do it right there and then right because i was waiting to go to selection so it was um right after 9 11 so it was january i think 2002 and it was in it was at ground zero in new york city that i went right and i went class hayes and i was in this huge line in the immigration office in new york city and the security guard saw me from like 100 meters away and he walked down he's like sir can i see your id and i showed him my id he said you're a federal employee you don't stand in this line come at me and he brought me in the side door right upstairs man yeah i'm right upstairs they put my packet right on the top they did my interview and my swearing in i i walked out that day as a us citizen it was badass it was really cool they really took care of me so went back to germany dropped my packet came back and went to selection for sfn02 and uh the uh yeah went through the q course and became an athen bravo uh special forces weapon sergeant 03. yeah so i'm curious both in in boot camp uh early on and also in selection like were were the other guys in the class and even the instructor cadre were they kind of looking at you like this dude's a [ __ ] irish special forces yeah who's this mother you know they were especially in basic because nobody had combat time back then right and i'd had combat time and i i had quite a bit of combat time so i went in the basic training thinking i'm just going to keep my mouth shut and be a gray man but as soon as i open my mouth they're like where are you from you know and i was telling mike like the drills are one time we were filling in paperwork and uh there was a slot on their prior military service and i was like is that u.s military service or any and he was like where did you serve and i said in the irish army and this big drill sergeant said i could beat them with my big toe [Laughter] so i i i i quickly became they put me in charge in basic and they kept me in charge the whole way through yeah i mean to me i like trying to put myself in their shoes like i i would respect the guy especially if i was a drill instructor with no combat experiences like i you couldn't help but respect a guy and and probably treat him a little different in in a good way they did but they did they like i remember everybody doing low crawl and all this crap and i was over talking to the drill sergeants tell them more stories man they love that [ __ ] right so they did they give me a lot of leeway and they uh they were really cool with me yeah was it that way in queue course too no the good cars is different the kickstarter didn't give a [ __ ] man so i almost got kicked out of the kill course like yeah so when i was on the weapon sergeant course i was in e6 i was a staff sergeant in the infantry when i went to the q core so i was a really senior guy so like the first day of the of the 18 bravo the weapons portion of the course the the instructor government said hey if you're an e6 move to the left side of the formation and i moved and they're like you're squad leaders now you're responsible for all these guys right i've been being in charge as a student is [ __ ] because you have no authority you're just somebody to blame if something goes wrong all right so i was uh like it was one of the first classes of 18 x-rays which are young kids to come straight off the street they go to basic ait airborne school selection they go to the q course so they've been in the army for a year year and a half they have no idea what they're doing they have no clue how it is to be in the army so one morning for pt like 6 00 in the morning he was missing this young kid was missing and i report him hey one one man out of ranks so later that day um one of the instructors tony yost so tony got killed uh like two years later in iraq man great dude [ __ ] solid guy but he he pulled me aside and this kid and he said he said to me did you wake him up this morning to come in to work and i was like [ __ ] no i was like is his teams aren't going to wake him up but he's on the team so tony got the ass and he was like you you will come in both of you will come into this compound you'll go home and get your sleeping bag and you're confined to this compound for three nights or a week or whatever it was and uh the the the young atheist x-ray was like roger sergeant and i was like no not gonna [ __ ] happen i'm stubborn as a [ __ ] right and it's stupid because when you're a student even if you're right you're wrong you know don't rock the boat and i've people have asked me for advice they're like just play the game man don't be a dick right so he was like what'd you say i was like i'm not doing that i'm an e6 you're an e7 you can't confine me it takes like a a like a lieutenant colonel or something you know no and he lost his [ __ ] because they're not used to people telling them no so they pulled me out of class they put me in the corner and they left me standing there for hours and i could hear this instructor talking to the ncoic who was a master sergeant um and screaming this [ __ ] thinks he could do whatever he wants they're going back and forth back and forth and i was like [ __ ] them and i was getting the longer that kept me there the matter i got so eventually when i went in to see this e8 i burst through the door like waiting for a fight like that and he was like hey man what's going on take a seat you want a coke or something and i was like whoa he completely disarmed me like i was like what's going on right now so he he started talking to me like a [ __ ] grown-up and he was like hey check it out man here's the deal and then he was like where are you from and then i started to turn my whole background like the stuff we just talked about and he was like [ __ ] man we need guys like unsf you know and he was like uh but i can't take your pla i can't take your side over one of my instructors and i was like i completely understand that i've been an instructor i get it he's like so you'll do the punishment i was like no and at one point he put his head he put his head in his hands and he was like what am i gonna do with your stubborn irish ass and he said see that paperwork right there that's the paperwork to relieve you from the course and send you to the 82nd airborne he said you're you're forcing my hand and i i [ __ ] eventually gave in and said fine i'll do it so me and him just sat on [ __ ] for hours i came back the next night the place was locked up so i did one night of punishment and i thought it would be targeted after that by tony yost who who never targeted me it's completely professional with me and then unfortunately tony got killed in in iraq like two days two two years later i was in in iraq in the same city at the same time you know um but that that's you know if you're a student be a student man play the [ __ ] game just yeah be the great man yeah so i wasn't great at being the gray man yeah uh one just out of curiosity the uh the food right the u.s army versus the irish army what's the difference between way better in the american army yeah way terrible the food was awful in in the irish army it was terrible yeah like uh like what it was like i remember it was just like um when i was in when i was in the range wing and special operations we ate at uh so the american excuse me the irish army when it was stood up it was it took everything the british army did because the british had been in ireland for so long so when they stood up they took kind of the same rank structure the same uh the same drilling ceremony uh the words of command were in gaelic or in irish but but the drill is the same right so um you had a very class-based system over there and it's still the same officers were officers non-commissioned officers or non-commissioned officers so if you were private you went to the mess hall you lined up with your trade the same way we do here right if you're an nco you sat down and a waiter came over to you and said what would you like these are the specials you know if you're an officer you went to a completely different mess hall and you white tablecloths and like ridiculous like class level [ __ ] so but the food was horrible over i don't know what was going on but the food was awful you come to the american army man good lord man the food's great i wonder we're all fat asses [Laughter] i do like to see like sweet the special warfare training center they get food like they have a chow hall and the army provide millions of dollars and then they pump millions and top of that to get better food and fruit you know um salmon a couple times a week and really nutritious food for kids that are training who are just devouring calories every day so yeah a lot better here what did you eat growing up i'm just in terms of potatoes is that what you're going no okay i didn't eat potatoes we eat the same food over there like chicken and lamb and and whatever i mean we we didn't have any money growing up so um i i ate a lot of freaking potatoes and uh rice and chicken we hunted growing up so so my old man was a hunter and a poacher and he used to net the river and all that and we used to this makes it sound so medieval but we hunted like we had dogs and we hunted we had a shotgun on 22 rifles very difficult to get guns in ireland because of the northern ireland thing um but we'd had him for so long and we would hunt rabbits we'd hunt pigeons hunt pigeons we'd shoot pigeons and eat them we'd eat everything right so i remember sitting around a big round table as a kid one of my earliest memories and we're all eating a pigeon each because my old man shot like a dozen of them and we're putting shot from the shotgun in the bowl in the middle you know um we hunted with ferrets believe it or not like we eat a bunch of ferrets and you just put them down in the rabbit's borough and you'd even you'd either put a net on the on the burrows and when the rabbit would come out it would get caught in the net or you'd stand there with a shotgun and the rabbit would the fur would chase the rabbit out and the rabbit would haul ass and you'd [ __ ] smoke him as he's leaving and then sometimes the ferret would uh he'd catch the rabbits or he'd get a uh a nest a young like i literally young and he he chow down and fall asleep and that [ __ ] that [ __ ] wouldn't come out no matter what so you we we'd block all the burrows and we'd go home come back the next day open up all the burrows and bang on the ground with a crowbar and that [ __ ] come out all sleepy with blood all over his face you know but yeah we hunted with ferris i was at a medieval festival one time and there was there was a girl there and all the all the medieval dress and she she had a ferret and she was like in medieval times people in europe hunted with these [ __ ] yeah i did it that's very awesome did you eat a lot of uh like organ meats growing up organ meats yeah like liver heart we did we had everything yeah yeah the um that's actually a dish an irish dish is a steak and kiddie pie and stuff like that yeah yeah i mean my mother did she did her best to feed 14 kids man it was tough but we went through a lot of food and and i think back about it sometimes we we no car right so she went on the bus to get groceries for 14 [ __ ] people man so yeah well yeah so i'm curious like from a a socialism standpoint being like were grocery stores slim [ __ ] pickings at that time no they weren't they were they're fairly well stocked and i worked in them when i was a teenager at school at christmas and the summer and stuff but it wasn't that bad but it's just we didn't have money you know we were very paycheck to paycheck and and that's why people have so many kids or at least back then is that government paid you for every kid you had so you got a children's allowance so it's like encouraged to have a lot of kids and it's it's it's been that way with with uh poor people since the beginning of time there's a lot of kids to take care of the parents when they get older and stuff like that so yeah going back to um you know kind of your time in in special operations here in the united states and kind of the contrast between ir special forces just if you could kind of walk us through the process of you getting through the q course what the comparisons are and then ultimately uh the start of your career in american soft yeah i uh i went to the selection in 2002 and i went to after selection i i came from germany went back to germany then came back for for airborne school and uh the q course so the q course back then it's all changed now but it started with small unit tactics for six weeks then it went through the mos phase which i was an 18 bravo a special forces weapons sergeant then it went to uh robin sage the culmination exercise then language called then search school and then you graduated and when you went you went to your unit so i i went through pretty quickly because i'd already done all the leadership stuff because there's leadership schools you have to go to before you start the q course but because i was an e6 from the infantry i already had all them done so i came in and i went start to finish in like 10 months which is unheard of now like somebody i mean i i think it's ridiculously long now at this point and uh so once uh once i finished and and bear in mind that afghanistan was going on the invasion of iraq was an 03 right i know you were part of that right the um so we were we were like super stoked and we want to get to our team and get get uh get into the fight but i graduated the the q course in i think the summer of 03 and right finished year school finished everything going a third special forces group which was not my first choice but uh they're sending me a third group and third group were heavily involved in the fight in afghanistan and uh getting ready to go and then they pulled six or eight of us into a room and said hey you guys have an infantry background because they pulled so many instructors from the q course and sent them back to their units because we're involved in two wars you guys are going to stay for an extra year and be instructors on the q course no way so the way your your lip dropped like that's the way mine dropped like the worst like i was just devastated right because the last thing you want to do is go back to camp mccall at the end of the [ __ ] eq course and all the [ __ ] you went through for for a year or more and now you got to go back and be an instructor right so i'm special forces qualified but i've never been on an oda right and it took eight of us and they blew smoke up our ass they were like you guys were the best guys we could find and it was all [ __ ] right it was funny because we had to go in and talk to the command store major and charge a training group and he started blowing smoke he was like you guys were the best guys we could find and one kid put his hand up and he said i failed sut when i went through the q course right and he's their summer major said well this is a good chance for you to brush up on your skills so i had all these arguments like racked and stacked and i was like there's no point in arguing that if we're the best shouldn't we be going over there like it's [ __ ] ridiculous right the other thing with that too though is that was there ever any uh lack of credibility in terms of like students that you're putting through like dude you just went through this yeah i i mean mike glover went through when i was a uh course instructor and sort of johnny primo yeah i remember mike like he looked like he was 12 but i think um any lack of credibility was quickly number one they didn't know or just we looked like another sf guy because we didn't have a combat patch or cib but nobody did back then or very few um but i think any lack of credibility was quickly made up for by your ability to teach in your knowledge of the subject matter right and the other part is because i just went through it and we had like i i've said this many times going through the q course i had some of the best instructors i've ever seen i also had some of the worst there was some [ __ ] bag instructors and what happened was because afghanistan was going on and and uh iraq they pulled a lot of guys from teaching sent them back to their units and augmented it with national guard guys and civilians and some of these guys had no [ __ ] clue what they were doing they they thought the way to teach you was to smoke the piss out of you all day every day so because i didn't do that and because i'd just gone through it i i guys were more willing to work for me because i treated them like [ __ ] like like leaders and i i tried to teach them and so any any lack of credibility because you'd never been on a team plus i was the only one that had combat time from all the instructors right so uh i personally didn't uh have that and i only stayed there for about eight months because we went into the summer and they wanted to send us back while uh well kids because guys were pcs and while kids are off school right so i end up doing about eight months i think i did two classes and it was actually a good experience for me um i they we initially went out there to be ais they put me in charge of my own squad once they knew i knew what i was doing so i was able to uh i actually gained a lot from it and uh but i didn't want to be there i i wanted to be on a team yeah so when i when i got to my team my team was already down range you know four in afghanistan so i i i in process got my [ __ ] and i flew to afghanistan and met them there yeah and so what uh what was that like boots on the ground you're [ __ ] getting after it you know yeah so all four in afghanistan was a little different it got a lot worse the taliban were still somewhat on their heels from being smacked so hard back back in the early days but there were still ieds and it was still hits and we we developed a lot of our own target packets and stuff like that uh we moved from oregon e out to skin skin is like seven clicks from the packy border and we took over there was six of us with about a half maybe a dozen indige and we took over from like two companies of infantry and they left and we took the firebase and it was good sf stuff because we built up an indigenous force from nothing we put it we put word out that we're recruiting an army and come tomorrow for your interview and bring your own ak because we didn't have any aks for you you know so all these like peasant soldiers come and we interview him and we we built up an army and then we hit targets and then we do battlefield recovery and then we hit targets and get battlefield recovery we built up like a battalion of troops with like six of us it was really good sf stuff that's did you ever kind of think to yourself or or come to the realization that your time in the irish army special operations in mogadishu did did that help you out oh it really did it really did i got to the team and you know um young guys and i used to try to mentor them when i ran that leadership school young guys get to a team they get bullied by a strong person you couldn't bully me man i was 35 years old when i went through the q course man i've done a ton of [ __ ] so when you try to um when you try to kind of talk down to me then they're not gonna happen right so i was already more experienced than most guys on the team it was a little frustrating if there was a lack of leadership on the team because i wasn't in a leadership role initially um but it absolutely stood to me that the somali thing i've been in a lot of gunfights at that point before i even went to the american military and uh i'd been in leadership schools and i'd already had all these skill sets but i didn't have the paperwork like i i've been a sniper narcissism i hadn't been the sniper school in the american army yet been to free fall school hadn't been the free fall school yet so i had all this background and i was older and more mature and able to make decisions plus i was a sqt instructor which helped me because when we took over that that in-digi army it's basic stuff it's it's squad attack react to contact you know raid ambush very seven nash eight basic stuff so yeah did you guys have any of the uh kind of legendary comedic experiences with teaching them how to do jumping jacks like just you just holy [ __ ] how are you guys even alive yeah so i i think later on i work with seals i think seal team eight i think and they had a hard time with that like they wanted to hit targets and and see americans and see very very fluent cuv and all that but expectation management man hit the house shoot the bad guys don't shoot me everything else is a bonus at that point right so you're taking you're taking uh indige who can't read or write right and and um teaching them very very basic cqb and uh you know very very basic battle drills and and trying to you know fight an enemy and and we had some some uh some some rough times at the start but we built them up enough that we could hit targets and we we could we could do ssc and we had a real good commander who was a freaking awesome guy who ended up being like one of the top commanders i was back in afghanistan in 14 and he was like the top commander of the afghan army and they killed him since they tried to kill him a dozen times he was a little crazy but they eventually got him you know so we we built up we built up our indigenous force we hit targets we hit a couple of confidence targets first and then we built them up and we we equipped them with with cold weather clothing and vehicles and all that and this is before the afghan national army really stood up um we got in some gunfights we we we had a particularly bad one that that two americans got killed on they weren't on my team they were on the the sister team on my firebase um that was horrible we we hit some ieds we actually drove across 14 artillery shells on the road one time we drove across the top of them and we went into the village and we talked to the elder and the elder was like did you see the bomb on the road and we're like that road that we just drove on and uh we went back with eod and that the battery box was in low ground and it rained the night before and it didn't fire they tried to fire it while we were on it and it didn't fire so um yeah probably should have died then we we we the ieds were getting more and more prevalent back then a lot of rockets because we were so close to the pakistani border they'd rocket us from pakistan every single night pretty much so with that deployment i'm assuming that was kind of the the general gist of the of the mish if you will it was training industry it was training and train train assist and advise and accompany and and build your your white space right there's got to be a fancy [ __ ] acronym for that right uh fade i mean it's it's fade right it's foreign eternal defense i figured the army of all people would have something no acronyms yeah but it's yeah train assistant advising the company and it it was a good mission like i went to the [ __ ] which is the crisis response force later and it's a jsoc unit and all that but to start right there that's the way all green bridge should start they should start with that living on the back your truck for weeks at a time working with an indigenous force teaching classes in two different languages you know being because was your language arabic no it was french french french because third group africa right so and again i wanted french because i did french in high school yeah and i wanted to get through the q course as fast as possible i never spoke it again i went to iraq and afghanistan for years and years and years never spoken again and i was like fluent coming out because i really tried how would you be like if you went to france now i mean in a couple of weeks yeah and a couple of weeks i would i came out with a two plus two plus in in the test which is really good and i was right there at the cusp of fluency but when you don't do it you lose it you know so that's the truth um yeah so teaching to a terp with half learning half in pashtu and half and dari and all those problems you have with cultural barriers and all that kind of thing it was a very interesting trip yeah how many deployments did you do with uh sf uh seven i think seven yeah well you see i so i always get there but i got pulled to be an instructor right at the crucial time you know it actually helped me a lot i didn't want to go i i went kicking and screaming but but to go back as an instructor yeah they sent me once you're a senior guy on a team every year they pull instructors they pull senior guys to go back to the queue course or back to an advanced skills company to be an instructor right and and it's almost impossible to get out of once you're at a certain like some guys manage to escape it but it it it's very difficult once your name is pulled out of the hat you know so uh during all seven of these deployments did you um did you ever run into any irish military guys no no no no no once no no uh all right so you do you did that first deployment and then did you go back to the weekend we came back no no no we came back um we came back to the states and then we ramped up to go to iraq and it was funny because we we had all our vehicles for long range patrolling with fuel all over the sides of it and you know what i mean i'm like this this ain't gonna work in the city man that we're just adding to the ied let's take all that [ __ ] down right and and get some up armored vehicles so you know five my team went to iraq and we went for like nine months straight uh or five into oh six and which was a really hot time it was yeah it was and we went to mosul which is a really hot city and uh we were in the big army base there in mosul and we got there right after the chow hall was blown up do you remember that happening yeah yeah so we were working with the iraqi infantry basically and we were trying to get ahead of this thing and we were starting to lose the war in iraq at this point we were starting to take a lot of casualties a lot of ieds they've been very well armed and so we we would take an iraqi infantry battalion and we take one company and we train them for like two weeks and then we hit targets with them for like a week i think and then we we take out the company and then we take bravo company and then we take charlie company and we just keep doing it but we were issuing them weapons and trying to rebuild the iraqi army which we never should have torn down we should have just kept it in place and anyways hindsight right um so it's funny because you'd get alpha company and the americans were still paying them at this point right so you get alpha company and be like 100 soldiers right and you train them for two weeks and you do cqb and shooting and all these things with them and then you do operations with them for a week and then you put them they'd go do something else and you get bravo company and you look and you'd be like he looks familiar and he looks familiar and he looks familiar what they were doing they inflated their numbers so much to get the money from the americans it'd be the same [ __ ] people i'm like son of a [ __ ] man yeah and we'd issue them like brand new aks and everything like all all this american taxpayer money and they'd go on leave and come back the next week with this piece of [ __ ] aka they had at home because they sold the one we gave them like it's just it's so part of the culture over there it's very hard to to uh kind of manage it right you have to understand that that's just part of the culture right like even with the iraqi counter-terrorist force we'd hit targets later on and they'd steal everything on the [ __ ] target and i'm like i don't care steal the bad guy's money i don't care don't steal his phone or the intel that we need you know what i mean like like come on work with me you know yeah so i did nine months in mogadishu or not market issue in mosul and hit a lot of targets did a lot of ids a lot a lot of very very hot trip right there but i was with a regular white side oda kind of thing right so when i came back i uh sophotic which is the hostage rescue school that is a requirement to go to the sift company um or the [ __ ] company they call it now the crisis response which is there's five active duty groups in sf and each one has one company dedicated to hostage rescue and direct action and it's funded by jsoc and it's it's organized different it has different weapons and trucks it is kind like but it's it's not cag right um but it is a it is a better place to be so when i came back from the o5 trip i had some problems with so many guys on a team and i didn't really bond with that team that much i wanted to go fight fight fight and they wanted to go drink drink drink right so my personality just didn't sync with them right so uh yeah when i got back i went to sephora um i got a slot i went to sephardic that's where i met my global game mike was in sephora with me so that's a nine week cqb hostage rescue breaching phenomenal school best school i've ever done in my life just just fun as hell right vi you know vehicle introduction all kinds of stuff so at the end of that i went over to the because the the the [ __ ] company was starting to rotate into iraq and started to get a lot of kills and i went over there looking to get in so i get in they accepted me i got in and then i deployed an 06 to a baghdad with b23 which is the [ __ ] company in the sift company in in third group um we initially worked with the iraqi counter-terrorist force for a couple of weeks and then they sliced off six of us to go down to work with seal team three i think maybe i can't remember but the the seals were running the emergency response unit of the baghdad police and they pushed six of us down there to augment them and help them out and mike lovell was one of those guys even though he was on a different team we got pushed together as a team there and six of us went down and we worked together for that whole rotation and that was a very very hot trip because you know oh five it was bad oh six it was worse oh seven it was actually completely at the peak like like of of fighting so we did that that was like six months i think and then we came back and went to sniper school went back to iraq and oh seven mike was now on my team and we worked uh unilateral ups with with task force 16 with us the british sas and and delta force and we're after high value targets and that's when mike told you that story about vinnie the dog got killed on target by a suicide problem we had massive gunfights with almost every every night we were out on that whole trip and it was very very hot trip would you say that was the the most intense deployment was it absolutely was it was the pinnacle of my career like it's very hard to come back from that you know when you're flying in a little bird sitting on the skid with fires coming in from a specter gunship and you're like i did boat missions and bag that i mean like like i kind of like boat missions like like we were hitting where the [ __ ] are the seals we got so that we got those swig boats you know i mean me and my buddy we're like this is [ __ ] stupid right so they took some helicopter to an island and we got on those boats and those boats are badass dude they have mini guns and two four e's and freaking everything on them and then they took off real quietly and then they just once they get into the water they [ __ ] hauled ass and then we cut the engines and crawled up and hit a bank climbed up hit a target back in the boat back and we were like that was pretty badass man that was fun but yeah um so but having all those assets and having like we never went out without specter gunship with our apaches with our tanks um having all those assets with you is under the intel was phenomenal and i've said it before like the job we did in iraq compared to what those kids and the strikers were doing they did 18-month deployments they drove around every day getting blown up and fired out and very difficult like our job was so much easier and of course we we hit targets with pipeliners left and right right the whole time very well trained guys we stacked the deck in our favor um their job was just so much more difficult than ours you know it really was yeah no i mean the the so much of the conventional story of iraq is just [ __ ] heartbreaking that's horrible because it really is i mean it's just like you know fire by patrol you know or file fire by bait really i mean it's like hey just go drive around until you get blown up or shot at and then do something about it look for ieds with your vehicle right yeah we're in a chow hall and then we're on civvies and in in baghdad in the big army tahoe and these infantry kids come in they pull up their striker and they walk into the chow home they're covered in head to toe and dusted [ __ ] right and this female cook comes down and kicks them out because they're they're dirty right and one of the guys on my team dave went over and he just detonated her and he was like you should be ashamed of yourself you're hiding in here in the chow home they're out fighting every day who the [ __ ] do you think he just [ __ ] lost it i'm like that's awesome yeah uh are there any other ops on that that deployment that you can share kind of in detail almost like it's like it's a movie scene like walk us through yeah there was so many gun fights on that i i remember one like other than lidonia that mike already told you about but that was a massive gunfight but we we uh again we stacked the deck we we landed in the desert i'm not going to talk about any ttps obviously but we would move in and one night we moved into this village and i was the snipes we put the snipes on the roof we put blocking positions and all the avengers were approached and as soon as the breach went off what we what we think happened was like an al-qaeda unit came in like maybe 14 50 20 guys came in and they the high value target we were going after went into the house that was our target house and the rest of them spread out throughout the village and um once the breach went off they all came running to the breach point uh with their guns and their right their chest racks and their suicide vests and we had every avenue of approach covered and we [ __ ] slayed them like we shot so many [ __ ] people i remember being on the roof with my sniper rifle and looking i saw flashing lights and i'd shot two people down that road and i was looking and it was iraqi police coming with a pickup truck picking up bodies and putting them in the truck right our jtac and normally jtag jtec is joint terminal uh air controller the air force guy who controls the aircraft normally he's not a fighter right he shot a guy like he was in the doorway on the radio and at al-qaeda guy ran right past him with an ak and a chest rack and he just stepped out and smoked him you know when we x filled off that target i remember coming down from the roof and we shot a lot of rounds but we came down from the roof and we walked out the front door and there was bodies laying everywhere we were stepping across bodies to get to the hlz we brought the birds into the soccer field which was like 200 meters from the target house and nobody took a shot at us man they had enough at we that point lot of people on that target but there was a lot of that we we'd hit these safe houses uh we hit another one where we we were we had an l-chip perimeter on it and when when we called out the the main guy he came out with a weapon got shot and then the guys on this side and i was on the front but the guys on this side they i could hear gunfire in the back and what happened was that there was five bad guys in the back of the house and they all came running out one at a time and of course we have nods and lasers and we're just like bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang and i went around the back later on there's like five bodies stacked they didn't even know he was shooting them you know but there was a lot of like the surge was very very effective in iraq and you had you had combat arms in every street in baghdad you you you you know intel would give the enemy nowhere to go but the people forget that there was pipe hitters out every single night just cutting off that cutting the head off al qaeda every single night and i remember being in briefings at jsoc and they'd be like this is the head guy in al qaeda in iraq i went in a couple of days we'd kill him and then to be like oh okay this is the new head guide i'm like where are these guys coming from that's a [ __ ] job right there yeah but you gotta think that uh the the psychological impact that that has has to be devastating oh it has to be you know i mean even if you're you know all about being a martyr and down for the cause and all that like yeah you know if you see seven [ __ ] dudes yeah over a few week period that are now the leader and a few days later they're killed you see that six seven eight times in a row you're like dude [ __ ] that yeah i i will tell you american special operations is a devastating force once you take the leash off yeah and the leash was taken off in 0-7 yeah we got briefed and said look we're losing the war go kill as many of these [ __ ] as you can and and bring the fight to the enemy and we did every single night we had targets and sometimes we'd hit multiple targets all night long one would lead to another lead to another lead to another lead to another when we come back in the morning exhausted but we'd sleep for a couple hours and we'd do it all again and the intel was fantastic every single time and uh it really did tip the scale you know seven it was a great deployment it was the high point of my whole career in two different armies it was freaking great but when i came back i was spinning up to go back in 08 and i was supposed to work with the iraqi counter terrorist force snipers and i came down in order to go to switch to be an instructor right so uh i tried to get out of it i i screamed and and fought and bartered and and but nothing worked so um i got sent to sniper school to be a sniper instructor at range 37 which is a fantastic job in in the special operations community um it's a great job and generally the way it works is once you know you're coming on swic orders guys like me will go find a job because you have all the skills that are necessary and you have a good reputation so you can kind of pick and choose where you go so guys a little free fall school they'll go to robin sage or they'll go to to sniper school or sephardic and then all the guys who don't do that end up with the [ __ ] jobs in in sweat like small units you know small a tactics instructor or being attacked for students so is that usually a one year stint or it's three years three years it's a three years yeah yeah it's a three-year stint and here's the good part right in in the grand scheme you have guys every year coming back from the fight bringing back new ttps and modernizing the courses right if they're the right guy if they're not they'll just chit back out and do whatever the last guy was doing right so it's actually a good template and it's a good way to keep fresh bodies now they have civilians that work at all those schools too who are the long-term continuity who are all retired sf guys but you have new guys coming back every year with new ttps so at the time i'd been to so i went to sniper school in the irish army in like 88 and i went in the american army in like 2007 nothing had changed it was still it was still the same minutes of angle and mills and milling targets and same ttps nothing had really changed but at that point things were starting to change funding was available and then ballistic calculators were starting to come on board and horse radicals and and i'd been to todd hodnett's place already at that point and then i was just in the right place at the right time and me and a couple other guys we modernized the sniper school while we were there so as an instructor for two years and i was the ncoic i ran the sniper school for a year and i started shooting competitively while i was there because i had unlimited ammo in unlimited range time and and uh well and i was bored and i was bored yeah and i wasn't on a team anymore so um yeah it was a three-year tour and it actually was really good it was a it was very rewarding i got the train a lot of guys got to meet a lot of guys it did take me out of the fight but in hindsight that was a good thing because i've seen guys who just go back to back to back-to-back cad guys are bad for i sure seal team dev group guys are bad for it too and so many times it just tears you apart and i've met guys who never took a knee who are [ __ ] up now man and i think you know people ask me like i was not diagnosed with ptsd when i get out i have tbi like a [ __ ] right but uh ptsd because i i think three things helped me number one um i took a knee right at the height of back to back to back deployments i took a knee for three years against my will that helped me whether i i i didn't know it at the time number two i don't drink right i grew up in an alcoholic father i i've seen the bad parts of drink i don't condemn people drink but i don't personally drink and uh that's another thing that helps me irishman that doesn't i know yeah when i'm back veteran irish worst irish guy ever right you eat it you eat instant potatoes too don't you [ __ ] tear some tear some spuds up all right so out of the box that was the other piece and then the the last thing is i had a job to go to in field craft coming right out the gate yeah no no taking a year off no because these guys go at a thousand miles per hour yeah and then all of a sudden boom stop and then they're sitting at home watching netflix and then they start drinking beer and it [ __ ] with their head they're not used to it they're not bred for it right so those three things helped me going to freecraft right out the gate was fieldcraft's like being on an oda man it's a [ __ ] bunch of [ __ ] pipehitters man and [ __ ] having fun and and teaching [ __ ] so the the they're the three things that really helped me but going to school for three years um really did you know kind of reboot my brain and i cannot because that even though it's fun and you love it that combat back to back to back to back we'll we'll jack you up especially when you're killing people yeah well i think uh well there's two things man i just did an interview yesterday actually i was i was being interviewed but um we were talking a lot about you know purpose and and guys that go down that road and why and whatever and i know for me and i think for most most of the guys that i know well enough to to be able to kind of make this assumption or ascertain it is when you get out if there's something that legitimately gives you purpose you know that you're no [ __ ] excited about doing whatever it is i mean i don't care if it's being a [ __ ] painter like but if you're passionate about it that's number one and number two is that you know i think the human brain because it you know whether it's [ __ ] narcotics whether it's sex whether it's you know whatever that floods your brain with dopamine and serotonin and whatever is that combat does that for a lot of guys and no different than drugs is that you know your tolerance for it builds yeah and and you need more to satiate it you know and so yeah to me like the the deadliest [ __ ] combination is a is a combat veteran that gets out and now loses his identity as being a [ __ ] war fighter coupled with lack of purpose doing some [ __ ] job that he could give two [ __ ] less about and then also does nothing that blows his [ __ ] hair back yeah i mean that that is is a [ __ ] road guaranteed straight to [ __ ] really is a bad spot yeah a lot of guys get out and they think well i was an operator and people are going to train people and they're going to come bang and nobody gives a [ __ ] nobody [ __ ] cares man yeah i mean they don't there's some there's there's so many of them out there at this point 20 years of suspicion in combat like [ __ ] you got some competition yeah like you do and even if you're good i mean it's kind of like a musician right yeah you know like some of it is who you know some of it is right place right time [ __ ] lucky break whatever i mean there's enough really good [ __ ] operators and instructors out there to where like trying to to get out and go do that like it's a [ __ ] uphill battle there's already so many well-established guys that have been doing it you know so yeah and you got to be good at social media yeah i'm good at marketing you've got to be good at all that and a lot of guys won't do that right because they lived that way i had no social media nothing up until a year ago yeah um but i i had to make that decision that this is where i'm going and uh it was a difficult transition for me but but you know nobody cares right nobody [ __ ] cares yeah um so that that taking a knee for three years really did help me so i went back um i actually got to go back to ireland that my old special ops unit ran an international counter terrorist sniper course wow and i got a slot when i was a sniper instructor and i went back for three weeks it was awesome yeah it was pretty cool yeah was there any uh like did they give you any [ __ ] about no no no no no about well about leaving ireland and now fighting for america no no they didn't care they were glad to have me and those guys from france and italy and germans and and there was a bunch of different guys it was fun it was a lot of fun yeah um but then when when my three year tour was over i uh i went back to the cr the if company as a team sergeant in charge of a sniper team so i was a sniper team sergeant for two years deployed again a couple of deployments um to iraq or afghanistan no i went to uh i went to a couple places i probably shouldn't mention but yeah um yeah we can talk offline yeah i have a feeling i know where um yeah the um but when that was over like they only give you two years i tried to do a third year and they're like oh no you need to keep you know you need to get a first-time job to be a sergeant major and at the time i was like i'll be a sergeant major i don't care right so um so in my two years try to do a third one they would give me and then then the the stepping stone to sergeant major and sf is to be a first sergeant a first charge in charge of troops it's it's the equivalent of a master sergeant but it's a guy that's in charge of troops right and it's usually uh they're pretty shitty jobs or tough jobs and it really does groom you to be uh a leader like a sergeant major right so i was like i'll be at first turn so i looked at a couple of jobs and i took one at the nco academy and i was in charge of the warrior leader course which was it used to be called primary leadership development course pldc when i went but it was young junior ncos and it appealed to me because it uh if you get these young ncos early enough and you teach them what an nco supposed to be you can really set them on on a good path for their career so i took that job and i did it for two years and i was in charge of all 18 series 37s and 38 so uh 18 x-rays young sf kids coming out of the cuckoo off the q course um they would actually not even the coup course they'd go to selection uh they go to basic training airborne school selection then they'd come to me for like a three-week course right so and then i had all the psychological operations and civil affairs piped in there so it was just for soft 128 students per per class i had about 14 instructors mostly sf guys and uh we we taught them all the army curriculum that we had to but then we tried to mentor them and and teach them what the cue course would be like and kind of set them up for for success going to a team yeah so very rewarding uh i was out of camp mccall so i was away from the flagpole and bragg and i did a lot of pt and and uh it was a pretty good job i enjoyed it i don't know if you want to talk about it or not and in terms of your personal life you know family life whatever what where were you during this entire time with that so um the army i the army the military that life takes a strong toll on you on your family it does and and i i think a lot of us don't even realize until later it's it's like combat right you see people die and you you you put your buddies on a helicopter and you patch them up and they die in the helicopter you don't process that you put it in the back your mind and you deal with it later and it's coming back whether you like it or not it's like that with family for me and uh like my daughter was born my youngest daughter was born in 04 well i deployed all 405.06 and i was seven you know what i mean and she was four years old and then even when i was home i wasn't home i'm a little bit of a workaholic still and and when i was at sniper school i worked all the time you know when i went to sniper school we only did one night shoot well i just came back from deployments where everything we did was at night so i i implemented freaking tons of night training and i was always always always there so i was gone a lot and it it it ruined my relationship with my daughter it took me years to rebuild that relationship you know i i don't talk about my family that much but i i will say that this life does take a toll on your family and and sometimes you don't even realize it until later on in life and i i've tried to rebuild some of those relationships but um i have four kids two boys two girls but um so i guess looking at it now obviously you know knowing the ages that they are they've been through most of this yeah uh how would what would you say about your relationship with all four of them would you say it's good it's good it's not as close as it could be but it's uh i i'm trying the thing about social media right the the thing about instagram and all that i've never ever told my kids anything about war or combat or anything i did and now it social media is is a it's a mechanism for me to tell some stories right that i just have never told them i always try to keep them separated from that world because it's it's a nasty world and but at least my daughter my 19 year old daughter is very interested in what i did in the military now you know and and she can go into instagram and she can look at some of the stories i've posted and get get a sense of some of this stuff i've done you know um i i will tell you like i remember i remember remember that movie mel gibson was in we were soldiers once and young call was in that movie was he yeah i remember one time that one line in that where the guy says how do you how do you reconcile being a soldier and being a father and his answer was i like to think that being good at one makes me better at the other i kind of the opposite i think being really good at one reduces your ability in the other right and i put more emphasis on my career and i did on my family and i do regret it now yeah i really do and uh would you have done anything different looking back on it i mean because the here's the the thing that i think i know i would struggle with i mean my kids were born uh the last couple years i was in the military as an instructor and then i got out so i you know they they didn't really have to deal with uh with all of that but but thinking of it that way that was a large part of my decision to get out was that i i've seen enough guys sacrifice their families yeah you know just out of the pure simple you know fact that you have to prioritize that as a job because you and a bunch of other guys lives depend on yes yeah you know so i i don't know what i would do differently i'm i grew up you know i grew up in ireland and and um my like i've never been like super i i don't know i think i put looking back on it now i put my family on the back burner while i concentrated on my career at the time you don't think that way a time you think i'm being a good soldier i'm doing what i need to do and i'm i'm revamping this course and i'm fixing it and i'm doing this or i'm downrange i'm fighting you know for the for for the freedom of america killing these [ __ ] scumbags that that you know i mean at the time i think you get so focused on it and so surrounded by it that that something has to give you know i mean i i i think that um there are regrets and and there's i'm not as close to my kids as i'd like to be and i i'm i'm close to them like i talk to them all the time my daughter's actually going to work for frillcraft which is great for me because i get that i get the to bond with her and i drove out to uh arizona last year this time last year for a month with her specifically to rebuild that relationship that had been damaged over years and years and years of not being there you know so um i i don't know it's not too late my kids are still relatively young you know um my daughter's 15 my oldest son's 24 i think yeah i try not to talk about it too much because it is hard to talk about but well here's the thing you know take it for what it's worth whether it provides any solace or not uh but you know to me there's a strange duality or maybe contradiction would be a better uh word to use in terms of you know i hear what you're saying and as it relates to putting too much focus into that thinking you're doing the right thing or whatever but i also think a large part of being a good parent is is inspiring your children to [ __ ] do something yeah you know and and being passionate about something and having purpose ultimately like if you want your kids to be happy from from my perspective of course there is a happy medium like you can't just completely kick them to the curb and whatever but i also think if if they watch you as they grow up being passionate about what you're doing and what you're doing [ __ ] matters yeah you know to me i think there's there's a noble element of setting that example for them yeah even if they don't understand it at the time i think they will or they they should yeah um you know and again because because there's there is a another side to that coin i think in that and this is not a knock on you know parents that sacrifice every [ __ ] thing to to spend a certain amount of time with their kids within reason uh just like with everything i think you can overdo that as well but um you know if i think of kind of the big picture of do i want my kids to see me sacrifice every [ __ ] thing for me to to spend time with them well that i think there's some harm in that yeah i think so you know and i think that there's there's unfortunately as a society we have conditioned ourselves to think that that kids come before everything and they [ __ ] don't and they shouldn't no you know because i think that that's unhealthy you know and i also think that that sets them up for being an entitled little prick uh you know if their parents put every [ __ ] thing aside to to do everything for them and so you know again there are extremes of the polar opposites at each end of the spectrum that that are equally unhealthy yeah but but i do think you know again whether it provides any any level of comfort for you or not uh that that there is some some benefit to being passionate and putting the work in and doing something that [ __ ] matters to to demonstrate to kids growing up that that's kind of what life is about yeah and my kids are great they i i just personally think i could have struck a better balance yeah i mean then but that's hindsight yeah you can always do that you know i mean same here like there's plenty of things i could have done and handled way [ __ ] better with my kids than i did but yeah um you know i just i think i think sometimes and i'll just say people i'm not even saying guys like us i mean i think just parents uh a lot of times are too [ __ ] hard on themselves you know with their kids in terms of of of being it's almost kind of like the demasculization of a lot of men in this country and in a lot of western society is that um you know that there there's there's an element of things that uh that gets so over corrected to the point where now it's actually counterproductive and i think that's one of them but yeah yeah um anyway so all right so you finished your time there at the sniper course and uh was that your last duty station or did you go so when i finished the sniper course i went to the the warrior leader course to be the first sergeant and then when that was up those two years i was like where am i going to go now so i could have went back to range 37 and taken sniper school again but i got offered a job in force modernization which is part of the g8 and first special forces commands so um i looked at that and it was dealing with target engagement it was dealing with guns and bullets and optics and nods and it really interested me and back to what we were saying earlier on like i was thinking when i retire i can be a sergeant major and be like all the other hundreds of guys getting out with no special skills but i knew that if i get out with this g8 force mod acquisitions knowledge i'd be much more marketable on the outside i was thinking that and i called i called some people i i respect and todd hodden it was one of them and i was like what do you think and he's like look if you go to sniper school you can affect a small group if you go to force mod you can affect the whole force because you really do have some power to modernize and make really good kit there so i took the force mod job i worked for a year in target engagement and then they made me the ncic of that shop so that shop deals with eight different commodities they deal with target engagement which is guns bullets optics nods rifles all that stuff mobility all the vehicles soldier systems which is body armor uh helmets uh uniforms all that stuff they have a rep for the the [ __ ] the crisis response force then they have a robotics drones counter drone all that psychological operations communications and tech and intel tracking devices and all that so it's a massive shop and i had two green berets in every every commodity and then i had some some people in psyops but i i i hadn't been the nco i see of that which meant i could i could hire and fire i could hire the right people and fire the wrong people and some guys are just not suited to that and then i could kind of drive programs the way i wanted to based on the need and it was great for a while and then it just started getting more and more frustrating and i started getting angrier and angrier to the point where i was [ __ ] screaming at people every day and i wasn't screaming at the people that worked for me i was screaming at like colonels and lieutenant colonels and and you can't do that in the military right and there was a couple of times people were like dude what the [ __ ] are you doing you know and when i when i when i was going through my transition i i talked to a shrink as part of the va thing and she was like uh this kind of made sense to me she said anger is an acceptable emotion in our community right empathy and sadness and depression not acceptable anger is the acceptable so every feeling you have gets funneled to anger and you [ __ ] fly off the handle all the time so i was getting more and more frustrated i was dealing with to me i was there to help the guys on the team the guys in the gun truck or the guys in the hilux that there's driving around africa or afghanistan guns bullets nods radios drones stuff like to help them but it was more and more pushing me towards helping these group commanders who like i i i i have a bit of a problem with officers like senior officers i've always gotten along with junior officers and guys who are on my team and stuff but we've created this monster in the army that if officers don't get um they don't get a certain oer they kick them out right and it sounds like a good way to get rid of [ __ ] bags but what happens is it becomes very cliquish and if you're not one of the boys like if you push against the grain and you're you're a hard officer who wants to fight for the guys they'll drive you out right so now we have these this whole batch of officers who kiss ass try to get along to keep their job so i was dealing with all those group commanders and all those [ __ ] exos and all these [ __ ] guys who didn't give a [ __ ] about the guy in the ground all he cared about was their next rank and i was getting angrier and angrier and angrier and i was like [ __ ] and so i i the good thing about working there was i had guys that were up there as a civilian like brian edwards who was the command sergeant major in charge of every green brand the planet who could mentor me and say hey you need to get your physical stuff taken care of before you retire right so at 19 i took a bonus from the army to give me a big chunk of money to to go six more years right and i shouldn't have taken it because it's at the end of your career and it's staff time and staff time sucks for guys like us right so i took that money and it was a huge mistake but um as i started documenting my my injuries because i hadn't been to a dock in 15 [ __ ] years you know on the team you just suck it up you take motrin and you drive on right so i started documenting all my injuries and and all the things that was wrong with me and as i i looked under the hood and they started finding all kinds of shits so it got to the point where they're like hey you meet the criteria to medically retire if you want to wow and because i [ __ ] hated that job so much and it became such a nightmare and i was pissed off all the time i was like [ __ ] it let's do it yeah so around this time i uh people i had no social media whatsoever right so people were telling me oh my glover's on the internet and he's all over the place you know i mean so um i google my glover and i look him up i don't know what what made me google mike but um this is actually before i started medically retiring and uh i shot mike an email he called me and we talked for like two hours we hadn't talked in years we shot a sniper competition in 2014 together i think that was the last time i saw i mean this was like 2019. so um immediately he was like hey i want you come work for me i want you to run a long gun program for me and i was like okay so um i i i i went in and i have two bulging discs in my neck i have a stress fracture in my back i have uh torn rotator cuffs but my rotator cuff i have lists unless you know you know the way like the va you have to get 240 to get 100 yeah well i have like 400 percent it's just built a lot of the things are small but it's just built up over the years and years i've pulled a fragment on my hand i've my knees are shot my feeder shots so as i as i started looking under the hood all these things started coming up so they're like hey you meet the criteria to medically retire if you want yeah so it's like [ __ ] it let's do it so i i put the paperwork in to medically retire yeah and i i got out i actually only got out in april of this year so about five months ago i've been out of the army so it was just a little shy of what that six-year enlistment was right yeah yeah yeah it was yeah yeah um but i i i came out to prescott last year for a month with my daughter and i hung out with mike and then i uh i ran a london course and then i i came out a couple of times and ran some long-range shooting classes and then um i uh i came out in january of this year and i've been in prescott since and i've been all over the country training people but um yeah you know it it i was at a very low point like when i was getting all that anger and i was dealing with that [ __ ] staff job and i was pissed off all the time that was that loss of sense of purpose that we suffer from yeah that i had no purpose i was i was spinning my wheels i was answering the same questions every day from [ __ ] people who didn't didn't want the answer i was giving him it's hard to be the only adult in the room when you're sitting around a table full of kernels and they're saying we want this and i'll say that's 300 million dollars you don't have that money it's never gonna happen and then you have civilians in there who are they they know that that that group command will be gone in a year so to tell them whatever they want to hear oh we'll do our analysis no you [ __ ] won't we already did it and i was just getting pissed off so that to me was that loss of sense of purpose so that that depression that people go into and to get out of the army i went through that while i was still in yeah in that shitty job right so at that time i reached out to mike and mike kind of saved me man he [ __ ] pulled me in and then when you start listening to podcasts which i never listened to a podcast and you hear guys like mike or you talking about struggling when they get out of the army it really does become more relatable because you think you're the only one right you think you're the only one that's [ __ ] suffering from depression or suffering from loss of sense of purpose and [ __ ] up and kind of lost but then you hear guys that you respect that they say that and you're like oh [ __ ] man it's it's much more widespread yeah than we think it is and uh it's easier to talk about once somebody else has talked about it right and uh you're not the only one right you're not and i've never been suicidal i've never been that guy but i've i've gone through points where dying just didn't [ __ ] bother me not even the slightest bit you know um but i i heard chad robershaw say you know um suicide does not take away the pain it just transfers to somebody else somebody you love you know which is it's really true yeah no it is it's a it's a tough tough demon i know uh i know we both know a number of guys who've taken their own lives and similarly like i've that's never legitimately entered my mind interestingly i would say there's been you know numerous points in my life where i felt that exact same way where like i have no desire or even legitimate thought in taking my own but if i if i did die like it didn't [ __ ] bother me one bit not even slightly yeah yeah and to me that's not a good good mental [ __ ] spot to be in especially as a father it's not it's not it's not healthy right yeah it's about one step above suicide right it's i'll never do that because i would never i'm stronger than that but hey if it happens it happens you know which which is uh there's something going on there that shouldn't be going on but yeah i mean to me if you're at that point then that means uh you know your priorities are are misguided and that you know you've got to work on making yourself happy you know because if yeah because nobody else is going to and that's one thing that i think a lot of times people are are uh misguided on or mistaken and that they they're trying to depend on somebody else for happiness whether it's a spouse or a relationship with kids or whatever and it's like you got to find your own purpose you got to you know do what makes you happy first because if that's missing yeah your relationship with anybody is going to be [ __ ] miserable i i find teaching very therapeutic i like to teach i i i get a lot of pleasure from it when i worked at forced mod job we were we were on a floor with the so first mod had three elements right it had force modernization which was all green berets right it had because we have the expertise it had a um first structure which is like the number of people here and the number of people here and they're army people and then it had the finance people and those other two not fortunate had a bunch of civilians in there and we went through a period on that floor where they were looking for money from the government right so user sock has a policy and i'm going to put this out now because it's been pissed me off for a long time you suck as a policy if you if you claim hostile work environment they'll just pay you off they'll pay you thousands of dollars so there was there was an old lady who worked and she she had been in federal service for 50 years she was like 75 or something right she applied for a job she was just 12. she applied for a gs13 job which she would have been awful at and she didn't get it they hired a retired lieutenant colonel who was in that he was really good at right and she put in a claim of hostile work environment for sexism and ageism and they paid her like [ __ ] i i've heard the figure thirty thousand dollars to turn on because they're not admitting guilt they're getting it off their plate and they don't want to deal with legal fees for years and years and years so that makes sense the problem is now you incentivize it right so those other people on that floor who used us as a way to make money and every time one of my guys said [ __ ] every time they said anything it was like wow hostile work environment hostile work environment and i was dealing with that [ __ ] like i am the worst person in the world to be the pc police but i was like i was sending guys home i'm like go work from home because i don't want to give these [ __ ] any more ammunition against us we're not moving all our guys out of the building to another building because they wouldn't protect us like they claimed like just the most ridiculous [ __ ] you've ever heard in your life you know um and i was dealing with all that [ __ ] and that that that toxic work environment [ __ ] destroyed me for a long time when i pulled out of that and i start retiring and i get out and i get out here so much better off so much happier don't have my anger problems near as much as i did before i have a little bit of an anger issue but it takes a lot for me to lose it but um yeah you know mike kind of pulled me out of that that toxic environment and really did help me a lot so i really appreciated it yeah no he's seen i mean i the only time i've met him uh was was when he was on this show and but great episode seems like an awesome dude yeah for sure yeah uh ultimate respect for him no doubt about it uh if we could take one step back i'm curious he shared the the story about canine vinnie uh losing his life on the planet are there any other combat stories related to canines that uh that you have from from any deployments no just that we use them a lot we we'd use them a lot for uh flexing from one target to another and we put them up front with eod to search that they um you know the route and stuff like that the the a lot of people wanted the mouths because they're they're multi-purpose right the actual like the labs and the the dogs are just there for sniffing bombs or better at sniffing bombs right when you when you make a dog do too many things that that he he's not as good at them you know so a lot of guys didn't want the the labs and the snoopy type dogs but a lot of times they were the one to have if you're looking for ieds man they were really good um now we we just we use dogs a lot the dogs we used i don't i don't think third group had their uh canine program up and running at that point yet so we used dogs from delta and uh when when vinnie when vinnie got killed on that that was horrific and and i i was listening to the one with mike and like when we came back we landed and uh like the whole delta force and sas lined the route coming off and they all saluted us we took the dog off on a stretcher you know years later i was in them and again you you i i've i've patched guys up i've put tourniquets on them i put them in the helicopters they've died in route i've you know but but that that you you put all that stuff in the back your head years later i was at the um special ops museum in prague and uh there was a i was on the phone and and my kids weren't looking around there's a memorial there for all the dogs and my daughter come back she was like hey there's a memorial for dogs and i'm like is there a dog called vinnie on there right and i went over and i looked and i started telling the story i tears running on my eyes when i was telling it i'd never talked about it before you know there's just something about that story it's just horrifically like horrible but yeah you know they did they serve a purpose right and in combat and well well before he went in and got killed i i we were back and we were hitting the target with with the 105s from the spectre and 2.75 inch rockets and mini guns we were a massive gunfight and that dog was jumping up and down and i was like what's wrong with your dog and that handler was like he's just excited he wants to get in you know he wants to get in he knows what's going on yeah um i i've ever and when i got vinnie there that that mal right there i i told the lady i said look i i i i have a special place in my heart for malinois you know because of the combat time i did with him and i was super stoked to get him he's a big baby man he freaking roll over and let you rub his belly he's easy he's awesome yeah yeah he's low-key it's a nice change of pace because yeah i was telling you earlier that all the dogs i typically work with and and are training at the time the three that i have right now as a matter of fact are you know they're about exactly the opposite of that yeah it's just it's kind of constantly trying to get them to to settle the [ __ ] down but so we used them a lot but that was the most high-profile mission or that was thank god that was the only one that we lost i could kill you know but but finding people in spider holes and stuff like that which they got smarter as the war went on because we killed all the stupid ones and they they're [ __ ] burying themselves in spider holes behind the fridge and you ain't feeling the dog man the dog will find you we will find you but he'll find so were there instances where dogs got good uh good bites oh yeah oh yeah is there one one story you can share of a good bite um i remember one where it latched onto this guy's back and was tearing at him and the handler was trying to take him off but he wasn't trying that hard a friend of mine actually retired one of those dogs from kag it was a working dog and he took it home with him and he said it killed every cat in the neighborhood he can't be eight feet up in the tree thinking he's [ __ ] safe and that dog would just jump up there and snatch it out of the tree you know but uh yeah love those dogs yeah was in the instance where he grabbed that guy in the back was that a false false wall or floor type of scenario or what no i was just a guy running it was escorted from a target they let the dog snatch him yeah and uh you know we've learned over the years like we we don't chase quarters man because in o7 we had a guy in our team and our company we were splitting two half of us were walking with jae sock unilateral and then half of working with the ictf and one of the guys chased the squirter and the squirter ran around the ied and he ran right into it and killed him you know i mean and we don't chess quarters anymore yeah um seems like a good application for uh close air support yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah um all right so in terms of kind of what you have going on now before we get into that i i would love to get just kind of your take from a foreign policy standpoint second amendment uh growing up in a country where i guess you know more so than foreign policy that's really its own podcast but uh from a second amendment standpoint kind of going back to the way it is in this country versus where you grew up uh obviously you're a huge [ __ ] gun guy that's what you do for a living i suspect i know your answer to it but i am curious with the contrast of it being so difficult uh in ireland to get firearms what what is your thought process on how we handle it here in terms of how available they are versus people that scream about background checks and whatever what what's kind of your overall take on on the second amendment as a whole yeah i i mean obviously huge supporters second amendment and people are always like oh you don't need 30 runs to shoot a deer the second man has got nothing to do with hunting nothing to do with hunting it's got to do with keeping the tyrannical government in check which is brilliant i mean the founding fathers were brilliant right and ireland you couldn't get a firearm it was very very difficult like i said we had a shotgun on a 22 rifle i remember my brother went to the police station to apply for a license the police sergeant looked at him and said no go away and that was it you had no recourse you had no way to come back he just didn't like the look of you so he said no [ __ ] off right so um to be able to and i think people take it for granted to be able for me to be able to have a firearm with me at all times and protect my family is huge i mean it's just such a great thing and it's almost nowhere in the world can you do that and i would hate to see it be infringed upon anymore and that's my problem with the republican party like that you know i'm a conservative and you know i've often said i don't agree with everything the republican party stand for but i agree with nothing the democratic party stand for like they've gone so far left that's ridiculous but i just don't think the republicans fight hard enough against this incremental infringement of of basic constitutional rights i mean it's no argument if it's in the constitution it's in the constitution you want to [ __ ] change the constitution then get the votes to do it but until then abide by the constitution and you and me and everybody else took a note to uphold the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic so you you keep infringing i i i am i'm nervous for the future right because let's face it if joe biden wins um there's going to be a gun grab and that's going to end badly for a lot of people there's also these riots are not going to stop you can't appease a mob they're going to keep they'll burn portland the ground they'd burn seattle to the ground they'll just keep going and and biden will never intervene because he's [ __ ] and he's he's there to land his own pockets that's he was the vice president for eight years all he did was line his own [ __ ] pockets right so if trump wins they're gonna burn the [ __ ] place down if biden wins they're gonna keep burning the place down there there's some bad times ahead but in terms of the second amendment absolutely supported it's a fantastic thing to have in your constitution and um all these [ __ ] stats that they put out about oh you know you're more likely to have a uh an accident if you have a gun in the home that's [ __ ] that's like saying um you're more likely to have a car accident if you drive a car you're right you know if you never leave your house you're less likely to have a dr you know if you don't have a gun in the house yeah but the number of people that are killed accidentally or or you know mass shootings are they need to start putting out the stats of the number of people who defended themselves against murder and rape and robbery and a home invasion with a firearm that happens all the time and when they took away guns in in australia murder went down property crimes skyrocketed because people couldn't defend themselves well i mean in most places it doesn't seem like even murder goes down that much it's just how their murder goes down you know gun murders maybe go down yeah yeah crime goes way up and the overall murder rate is is largely unaffected yeah you know and to me the thing that i you know find myself uh explaining to people on that other side of the argument on a regular [ __ ] basis is that you know imagine this table and you got a baseball bat a [ __ ] chainsaw gun a ball peen hammer a [ __ ] machete you know whatever like i can kill somebody with every one of those things you know and so the to me where anti second amendment problems are so misguided is is that it's not the the tool used it's the intent yeah you know if you're intent on killing somebody and now you've got 300 different options to do that and one of them is taken away you're just going to use something else you know like i mean and that's it just baffles me that that that is is so lost on on such a large [ __ ] group of people in this country and i know a lot of it is politically motivated and and brainwashed and just mentally conditioned but jesus christ like i mean i just i find myself regularly like mouthing what the [ __ ] and and and wondering like how can you be that goddamn dumb yeah you know um yeah it's i i think it's um it's the media right and it's it's an attempt to subdue the population because you can do when when you have citizens that are armed the government can do a whole lot more you know yeah and people talk you know the anti-gun folks in this country talk about science and stats and like look at the [ __ ] stats you know more kids drown in in private backyard swimming pools that are killed by guns every year by a lot yeah right yeah there's no campaign to well you don't need a [ __ ] swimming pool you selfish murderous prick like where are those [ __ ] bumper stickers yeah nobody's screaming about filling in every [ __ ] swimming pool because how many you know and a kid drowns you don't see every [ __ ] news outlet with the exception of a rare few saying how many more kids have to drown before we fill in all the swimming pools like replace gun with swimming pool or [ __ ] you know anything else that kills more kids than gun uh you know guns every [ __ ] year and it's preposterous you know i think with all these riots going on that to me that that gun control argument's over yeah because the cops aren't coming if you live in a democrat controlled city the cops aren't coming yeah we used to say when when seconds count cops are minutes away well maybe the cops aren't coming at all because the bearers so you're on your own yeah so yeah you need a firearm and firearm sales are at an all-time high now because people are scared yeah and they're like [ __ ] man i need to get a firearm and learn how to use it because the cops ain't coming you know yeah yep the second amendment yeah i love it no it's it's to me again it's great to hear but it's also i think you know somebody with your background and perspective and experience is a very valuable and valid perspective that more people should listen to you know because if you're if you're from here and you're on either side vehemently it kind of gets drowned out in the well [ __ ] you're just a rednecker well you're just a liberal [ __ ] you know whatever yeah where it's like you know no different than i think policy should be should be heavily influenced by people with that experience i.e special operators [ __ ] you know anybody in the military [ __ ] anybody in law enforcement you know anybody that's carried a gun for a living yeah yeah that that should be that the main people influencing policy decision on firearms yeah they have the most experience and the most well-rounded perspective no different than you know um the the board of directors at a [ __ ] hospital isn't made up of people who aren't [ __ ] doctors who haven't been in the medical health care system for 25 [ __ ] years like you don't grab some [ __ ] off the street that sells [ __ ] car insurance yeah and ask him what you know what policies doctors should be should be legally uh bound to adhere to like there's a reason for that yeah and that's one of the biggest problems i think with our our nation's politicians is that most of them are making high-level legislative policy-driven decisions on subjects they know absolutely [ __ ] all about why i'm calling it an ar-14 yeah you know like his advice of i just grab a [ __ ] shotgun and pump a couple of rounds like you [ __ ] morons yeah like anybody that takes that guy serious i mean first of all he's a [ __ ] pedophile i mean he is like all of these videos of him [ __ ] with kids like replace those six-year-old girls with his secretary and tell me he isn't losing his [ __ ] job that fast yeah yeah like so why is it acceptable that it's that it's some some guy that you're standing next to his seven-year-old daughter like that's that's joey she just loves kids [ __ ] you he loves kids so creepy it is so creepy you know and it's [ __ ] wrong you know and the fact that you know what is it probably 40 50 55 million people in this country are willing to just look past that yeah is [ __ ] scary oh it is you know yeah you know i'd love to i'd love to get some of these people who live in minneapolis or something like that and you've been voting democrat your whole life really you're going to vote democrat because this is your life now this riot [ __ ] and this looking the other way and and pedophiles and all that that that's what you're voting for right now and you may not like trump but by god man there's no choice in my head no i know you know no i'm right there with yeah i'm right there [ __ ] with you uh what do you think of conor mcgregor [Laughter] i know how's that first person really i don't know him you're from ireland it's like i had a buddy that was in the navy do you know i know yeah yeah you know there's a i've had that before i was exchanging money one time in europe and uh i went up and i i'd irish money you know before the euro and and the lady called some guy who'd exchanged money before and and he walked up and she was like oh you're from ireland he's from ireland and i'm like hey how's it going and she was like oh you know each other and he said do you know everybody in [ __ ] sweden [Laughter] i don't know conor mcgregor yeah i think he's a badass spider apparently but i guess i'm curious from you know the representation of you know him being arguably you know one of if not the most famous you know person from uh from ireland at least you know right now or during the last [ __ ] 20 years if you had a kind of an impression of uh i i've actually never even seen him fight yeah you know i uh i just know he's he's he's yeah he's a badass fighter like but he's he's he's cocky and loudmouth but they all are all those ufc guys are you know it goes with the territory yeah yeah um all right last uh stereotypical irish question is it celtic or celtic it's actually celtic but i think everybody says celtic that's it i understand it i understand it the other way is that you know people in america use celtic but it's actually should be pronounced celtic and it's one of the most mispronounced [ __ ] words you might be right i told you i'm not a very good irishman that's what i read i'm an american yeah god bless you i'm glad you're here uh the [ __ ] the amount of work that you have put in on behalf of both countries is [ __ ] astounding yeah i don't see it that way you know people are like it's just the way things worked out you know what i mean there was no plan it was just but either way every every day you know no matter who you are whether you me [ __ ] anybody i mean every day that you wake up you have a choice you make a choice yeah as to what you're doing you know and you chose to do that over and over and over uh you know and put yourself in harm's way well either way i think you're a little overly modest maybe but uh i i'm i'm uh humbled to be able to sit here across the desk uh and and hear hear your story because it's fascinating i could i honestly i could sit here and talk to you all [ __ ] day and ask you a bunch of dumb insensitive questions we barely scratched the surface now we just did wave top stuff so yeah um in terms of what you've got going on now where people can find you um give give the the listener a heads up as to you know if they want you to come run a course or get you know so i started running uh long gun for mike so i i've somewhat like i've run pistol around carbine i've learned bugger courses but mike is kind of pulling me away from that now and he's putting me in charge of survival mobility medical training and we have a ranch montana we do some stuff in so like mobility in itself is is off-road driving it's defensive driving you know jay turns pitman over all that stuff um it's going to be horses snowmobiles anything that moves yeah that's fine we're very diverse like we're all over the place so raul martinez is going to run all the gun stuff and i'm going to run all the other stuff um and i'm back to managing people which i've been doing for the last like 15 years of my career so i'm on instagram kevin.p owens and uh i have a youtube channel but i really don't have much on there right now i don't have time man i did one land up class and i'm like good lord i am swamp but i like to be busy so that's good so um fieldcraftsurvival.com is where all our courses are we probably have about 80 or 90 courses posted for the next four months which is and about 80 of them already sold out wow people are uh people are really wanting training yeah especially right now i mean yeah people are scared yeah so like last year like a year ago if you said bug out people think you're a crazy conspiracy theorist proper [ __ ] now yeah prepper like nut job right now it's like [ __ ] i got a bug out cause i live in minneapolis or i live in new york city and i got to get out of this [ __ ] [ __ ] because this democratically elected [ __ ] mayor will not enforce the law and i'm on my own so i'm gonna go to a better place so i run all that piece we just ran a week-long bug out on foot course which was phenomenal um we are moving to salt lake city next week we're opening a second office and a store in salt lake city removing all the shipping and receiving there we're going to try to open a facility there but we do a lot of satellite training we're all over the country because like if you fly into prescott to take a long gun course um you got to fly in you got to get a hotel and a rental car now now a 500 course cost two grand right so we try to come to you as best we can but we are all over the place and our mission statement has never changed it it's preparing citizens to be their own first response and preparing them for it for the worst case scenario natural or man-made i mean to me like i don't know that there's a business model that's more uh appropriate right now right than something like that you know i mean right time uh right message and i i gotta say like the the the guys that work there are are phenomenal yeah and uh we we you know you need money to run a company but money is not the most motivating factor for us it's giving back to the community and and you know i've seen i've seen mike take you know he did a toy drive last year and then he gave all the toys to charity and then he got more money after the toy drives over he just put hundred dollar bills into envelopes and went to the va and handed them out to vietnam veterans like he's not a money guy either and he's a very um he's a very motivated educator and he works his ass off you know so it's a really cool company to be a part of no i i mean you and he are the or the experience i i have with it and i'm uh um absolutely blown away by the caliber of the guys that both of you are and i'm assuming the rest of the cadre is so amazing company awesome organization and you guys are doing doing great [ __ ] um anything you want to add as we as we wrap up no just uh you know all the veterans out there as you as you get into transition even if you're if you're 10 years in get your medical [ __ ] lined out properly don't [ __ ] yourself when you get out because guys get out they're like oh i don't care and then five years later they're going back trying to get what they earned you earned that money you earned that disability payment don't don't leave don't uh leave yourself short you owe it to your family um you owe it to your kids and you line that [ __ ] out you've earned it man the army is the military is very hard on your body like 20 years will [ __ ] you up 35 years has [ __ ] me up like most of my injuries are free fall parachuting like when you're going free fall you're going 120 miles an hour you pull your shoot you go to zero all of a sudden yeah that's bad for your neck who knew right turns out yeah it turns out that [ __ ] is hard on you but i would say you know you're people are very stubborn and especially soft guys and proud yes and proud so go there tell them everything is wrong with you get it all documented and even if it doesn't hurt you now in 10 years later it might hurt you and if it's not documented they're not going to pay you for it so even if you get zero for your disability payment as long as you have that injury yeah like if you [ __ ] your neck up any time in your career it's going to come back that [ __ ] just doesn't go away so get it documented get get uh get everything lined out and get it done before you get out because the va is a nightmare to deal with yeah yeah amen and if you're a problem reach out man i'll answer any question people ask me sweet i appreciate it's a good good piece of advice no no two ways about it so uh again awesome story fascinating uh life you've lived thus far and uh i appreciate the hell out of you taking the time to come share it with us yeah thanks for having me on appreciate it i'd like to take a quick second uh to shout out and thank our sponsor for today's podcast origin labs and jocko fuel jaco fuel is a great product he's got a ton of products actually within the jocko fuel line the guests and i enjoy them on the show and outside i take a lot of supplements i've got some of the origin lab jeans boots geez and it's just all around american industry they do a fantastic job really re-revolutionizing american industry from start to finish it's all american-made all-american sourced everything start to finish is made right there in-house and they really do a phenomenal job creating the products and fulfilling the whole ball of wax they've been a huge supporter of the mic drop podcast for a while now and i really can't thank jocko fuel and origin labs enough for the job that they do for us and so thank you to you guys i'd also like to say thank you to our other resilience premium cbd resilience is excited to offer all mic drop listeners a 20 off discount on all products for two weeks from when this podcast is live using the discount code mic drop at checkout that's two words mic drop at checkout i'd also like to say that resilience is a great company that works in conjunction with trico cbd and all military veterans and first responders receive 35 off yes that's 35 off for all military veterans and first responders and that's uh through the military and first responders program you just have to sign up at resilientcbd.com militaryfirstresponders in terms of about resilience generally speaking it's a premium cbd that i use again that works in conjunction with the tricos brand for the everyday athlete that's www.resilientcbd.com and resilience was really born with the founders who are military veterans as well personally experience the effects and impact that cbd had on their own mental and physical obstacles their focus was sharper mental stress was calmed fitness stamina increased and their bodies felt less pain inflammation after super intense workouts a lot of times most people and people are able to either wean off entirely or significantly reduce pain management pain management therapy this is a shared vision among the founders that this incredible supplement had not only changed their lives but had the power to provide unbelievable benefits to family friends athletes fellow veterans and ultimately the entire fitness community so big shout out to resilience for their product as well as the trico stuff and we sure appreciate their support for you the listener as always i appreciate your guys support without it i wouldn't continue to do this so i'm continually humbled by the growth of the show uh and the unwavering support from so many that that tune in show after show so if you don't feel free to go choke yourself and until next time this is mike drop [Music] you

Channel: Mike Ritland

Views: 374,496

Rating: 4.8895988 out of 5

Keywords: mike ritland, mike ritland podcast, navy seal, mike drop podcast, mike drop, dog training, joe rogan, shawn ryan show, jocko podcast, mike glover, mike glover podcast, kevin owens, irish army, irish border, irish republican army, green berets, green beret vs navy seal, mogadishu, special forces, us army, army sniper school, army sniper rifle, iraq, us marines, special ops, elite, k-9, navy seal podcast, kenosha riot, jacob blake protest, trump 2020, joe biden, republican

Id: pxrR27fGrwI

Length: 162min 17sec (9737 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020