Jocko Podcast 434: War Crimes, Murder, and Leadership.

this is Joo podcast number 434 with Echo Charles and me Joo willink good evening Eko good evening also joining us tonight is Dave Burke good evening Dave good evening so there are two brutal conflicts going on in the world right now well there's more than that but there's two that are very prominent one in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia and then obviously in Gaza and in in and around Israel as well and the the term war crimes comes up quite a bit and we all now look at social media and the news and there's a lot of speculation about war crimes that are going on or allegedly going on or possibly going on or they could be occurring on the ground in both these wars and I'm not on the ground in either of those Wars obviously right now I haven't been on the ground in either of those places but I have been on the ground in another war and I heard speculations about war crimes in that war and this is in Iraq Dave obviously uh that's one of the reasons I wanted to bring you in today because you are also on the ground in Iraq and so looking at it now when I hear all these when I hear the term War crime get thrown around and used it seems like a good thing to try and understand what that looks like on the ground and I can understand you know where some of [Music] these some of these speculations come about some of these rumors come about um and it's really clear when you look at social media and there's there's pictures images that get put up that are 22 years old or 14 years old or 7 years old from different locations these things are happening but they're really not happening at all and then in other cases there's clear that horrible things are happening so again I don't want to speculate about what's happening on the ground right now in either one of these wars if I was going to come on here and talk about them you know what I'd do is actually I would go there I would go there but I haven't done that um but like I said and Dave same boat is we've been on the ground in war and I wanted to talk through some of those some of those things um one thing that happens and you know on me so if you as a leader fail to do a good job of communicating what the situation is on the ground you leave a vacuum you leave a vacuum of people that don't understand what's going on in the ground and when people don't understand what's happening because I as a leader do a bad job of explaining to them and painting a clear picture H just just like any other situation rumors will start to fill the blanks in their own heads with ideas and with assumptions now fortunately what actually happened in the Battle of ratti is very well documented it is extremely well documented and it was documented real time and it's been documented since then there's situation reports there are operations summaries there there's Commander briefs there's investigations so there on the inside the military you got all those things I mean how many situ how many sit reps did you write while you're over there Dave literally one every day yeah so and that's just the daily sitre not including all the sit reps are WR for all the actions so for an individual action you're writing a sitre everyone uh the opms same thing every day so we had to write every time we did an operation we do an operational summary yes the sit reps the commanders bre all these things are saved you know they're all they're all they all still exist um the commander briefs investigations that happened they all get saved but then it's not just the military that's doing this because guess what else is going on you've got news reports you've got journalists you've got embedded journalists you've got articles then you've got also what's interesting and and I kind of mentioned this you've got academic journals now that have gone back and interviewed people and written books about exactly what happened so there's all luckily there's all kinds of documentation about what it was actually like on the ground there now of course Dave you have all this information in your head you know what it's like I have all this information I know what it's like I I kind I made the mistake of thinking it was obvious what was going on on the ground in ratti I I made the mistake sometimes of assuming that other people understood the situation and look you did you do one deployment on the ground in Iraq one and it was just to ratti just to romat when you were in ratti did you ever go to anywhere else did you go to balad did you go to Baghdad did you go to any other cities any other towns yeah I did Baghdad once or twice went to alassad uh and that's about it okay so the time was so Alis how much time did you spend in allad I took probably three or four trips out there okay not a ton of time but I went out there a handful of times spend the night there yeah absolutely um so you were in Iraq you were in alassad you Iraq you and raditi what was the difference between alad and raditi dude night and day it's night and day it's hard to describe how different it might as well have been like two two different planets they're very different totally incomparable totally totally incomparable so and that was the way a lot of Iraq was so much of Iraq now look you could go to solder City terrible there was certain little neighborhoods in certain cities that could be bad but even you know for my first appointment 2003 2004 we it was very interesting because we went all over the place man I'd roll up on some fob somewhere in the middle of nowhere and they you could tell they were taking it and it was pretty hot and then you'd go to another fob two days later and just like the GU there's nothing going on yeah so what happens is people take their experience of Iraq so even someone that was in Iraq and they go oh I know what Iraq was like cuz they were in wherever but everyone's experience is very different and depending on where you are things are a lot different on the ground so I never really thought through that as clearly as I should have so that people would understand what the actual situation was on the ground it was not the same as everywhere else um news article May 22 um NBC News 2006 one recent Coalition tally of significant AXS that's roadside bombs attacks exchanges of fire indicated that out of 43 reported in Iraq on a single day 27 occurred in radi according to a marine officer who declined to be named because he's not authorized to speak to the media and that he said was a quiet day so you have all of Iraq there's 43 reported incidents and in on that particular day 27 of those incidents were in this tiny city of ratti which is 4 miles across um in one continuing on here in one neighborhood master sergeant Tom coffee 38 of Underhill Vermont gestured to a paved Road his forces would not drive on they hit us so many times with IEDs roadside bombs we seated it to them he said so think about that there's a road the enemy has hit us with so many bombs on it we're not driving down it anymore look I was in Baghdad for 6 months we drove down Route Irish do you ever drive down Route Irish route Irish in Baghdad it got hit there was never a chance that Coalition forces were going to say yeah we're not going to drive down anymore continuing on same article after one neighborhood sweep developed into an hourlong gun battle Iraqi major Jabar Maru Alini returned to base and Drew his finger across a satellite of the a satellite map of the area he just fled Under Fire it's Fallen under the command of insurgents he said shaking his head they control it now again there was no other part of Iraq that I'm aware of where Iraqi forces said yeah that's under the control of the insurgence there's no other area that I can think of that I've heard of where US forces said yeah we're not going to go there anymore because the enemy controls [Music] it summer of 2006 in armatti there was 30 to 50 enemy attacks a day and by the way what counts as an attack because is someone shooting a rifle someone shooting a machine gun at a Humvee hitting the window that's an attack guess what else is an attack a complex coordinated attack where there's multiple elements maneuvering it is that the enemy was good in like I said in 2006 this was very different from other places in Iraq I'd been to a bunch of other places in Iraq in my first deployment I've been to Baghdad been to fuia been to De been to I've been all over enemy contact in those other places now look I'm not talking about the assault on fujia I'm not talking about solder City at certain times I'm not talking about tamim when they went or um alqa or was it al-qaed Al Alim I'm not talking about Alim when the mar I'm not talking about those those moments but on a general normal day there's no there's in those other places enemy contact it you kind of had an anticipation that it could happen but it was unlikely it was unlikely and in radi it was imminent it was actually imminent I would have bet every time we left the wire every time Coalition forces left the wire the odds were they were getting enemy contact period end the story and it's hard to understand that like I said especially if you've deployed to Iraq in a different time um Leif deployed back to ratti in 2000 I think it was 2009 not a shot fired during his six-month deployment so the reason I'm bringing this up is CU if someone had been to Iraq and they went to a different place at a different time or even went to radi at the same time it's it's not going to be the same thing and this again this is something that I failed to recognize um how different it was you know even going back to Vietnam you know when we came back from that deployment I talked to Vietnam guys and it was the same thing there was some some guys went to Vietnam some seals went to Vietnam and they were in significant contact regularly that was a smaller number of seals most of the seals that went to Vietnam they did operations they got three four gunfights I mean I talked to one of my friends who is a machine gunner in Vietnam seal machine gunner in Vietnam and he's like yeah we gotten four firefights I fired like 50 to 100 rounds in each firefight and then we were out good like awesome um it's it was very different it was it was a very different situation when you were rolling in as going into ratti like where were other facts going to yeah so for anglio remember I was an anglio fact so we had I'm pretty close I think either 23 or 26 teams all over Iraq in in all the cities you just mentioned and we were roll up a summary every day of what everybody was doing everywhere and the way you described it is is exactly what I experienced which was and I'm generalizing a little bit because there was always an opport there's always risk everywhere you went there wasn't like oh there's nothing going on ever but there was always risk everywhere just about everything that was happening was in ramati and it was an interesting thing for me because you talked about some of the almost like a leadership failure of of what that perspective was in my mind I I failed to grasp that too because not only was ramati my first um it was my first deployment on the ground and I'd never been to any of those other places in in like non-combat scenarios at all so I didn't have any that perspective so I'm in ratti for however long I'm there I'm like think this is just how it is and I had this first trip we called it biop we go to Baghdad International Airport which we would do like a log run of of supplies or something and what I C what I realized very early on was did you guys do that on hilos or were you guys driving out there driving oh check and what that was was I I figured out very early I'm like oh this is a break and again this is not like Judgment of oh if you're in Baghdad there's nothing going on it just they were getting after it but the environment was such there was much more control the Coalition forces controlled much more and the environment was just very different so if we had guys that needed a break I could put them on a log run to buy up which meant like you're going to go out there for spend the night you're G to get two days and I say often quotes but it's a little bit of a break from the imminence of that and I came to discover very early on my experience in romat wasn't normal it was ratti in 2006 is where I ended up and it wasn't like that everywhere else and so the calculation I had to make of oh I need I need to pay attention to how my guys are going to do throughout this deployment because this isn't normal yeah again anywhere you were in Iraq at that time look is there a possibility of insurgence absolutely guys did incredible things guys were taking risks all the time ratti that was that was intensified and Amplified there were insurgents everywhere that and they were interwoven into the population and they used all kinds of weapons to attack and kill American and Iraqi soldiers and they used the most sadistic methods of rape torture murder to control the population so there was a situation where a local was skinned alive by the insurgents there was a situation where heads uh the heads were cut off and left in the yard of people in the local population the insurgents were they were sadistic and evil and there and they were there and there were targets everywhere and we we really hadn't been in an environment like this before the so the previous so we got there the previous task unit great dudes um and they had been busting their ass working hard G getting things set up they were setting conditions they were building uh relationships with the conventional forces they had some Iraqi forces that they were partnered with they made all the introductions for us they started training them they were a little bit limited by what their Iraqi forces were capable of which you know it's just it's just the reality of the situation on the ground um but they gave their Iraqis their jundi I might use the term jundi uh jundi is just a a term for Iraqi soldier but we kind of used it as a catchall for an Iraqi military person jundy solder so they had done that and they'd conducted some good operations but they were also controlled by the amount of the areas that they could get into so as you you heard in one of those quotes I read earlier there's roads that were just no one's going down those roads and they say oh we'll just jump in our Humvees and drive down there and do a direct action mission was stupid well it's just dumb and and so they weren't going to do that we weren't going to do that there's massive IDs there's ambushes but we show up there and we we start doing a turnover with the with the guys we were taking over for great dudes great turnover um and and that was the environment that we stepped into because there's all these usually the estimates are like four to 5,000 enemy Fighters there that's that's usually the estimate now the population is 400,000 but standing against these insurgents are these soldiers and marines that are putting their life on the line on a daily basis to protect the local populace while trying to hunt and kill the enemy and just look the 228 which was the group that was on the ground when we got there the iron soldiers outstanding and then the 11 ad came in and took over they were outstanding and the the the daily life of those guys was heroic you know why I just I just asked you if you took you helicopters a back you're like no we drove that first seven minutes driving out of ratti sucked totally man sucked Michigan yep yeah you're going out down Route Michigan to get out of there now look you could have snuck up what's the road to the north I forget the name yeah you could have gone to Route mobile and and pushed out that's I hope you did that uh you're looking at let me like maybe you did sometimes I have done I had done one of each at least when you just I know I'm cutting you off the Michigan out of ratti to to biop that was if you got through to the street sign that said like next exit you know you're leaving the town you're heading towards good to go yeah you're good to go uh but the guys from the 228 the guys from the 11 ad These Are Soldiers and marines that are there um every s single thing that they did every single time they rolled out it was them standing in the face of death and this is something that impact us so as soon as we get as soon as task unit Bruiser shows up there immediately we're going to Memorial services for soldiers and Marines and standing there in the it wasn't the chow hall it was next it was a chapel so it was a tent it was a big tent it was a big general purpose tent next to the chow hall and we show up and you know I hear that they lost a soldier lost a marine and so I'm like hey we'll go you know this is these are our guys so we show up and immediately know the seriousness now I will tell you I knew there was casualties happening I did not know that the casualties were happening as often as they were I did not I thought to myself hey if a soldier or Marine gets killed we will 100% go to the memorial service that was not true we went to them when we could but almost every day someone got wounded and people were getting killed a couple times a week and it was an honor for us to be able to support them now there's a little technical aspect when I use the word support so in the military there's two different you can either be the supporting unit or the supported unit and what supported means is everyone is support supporting what I'm doing I'm the supported unit so I'm the one that's the main effort and if you're a supporting unit then you're the one that's helping the main effort you're sort of like oh I know what it's the co-star so there's the star and the co-star the star is the supported unit and everyone else is the supporting actors right well quite frankly often times Special Operations is the star of the movie like hey we're we're going to be the ones that actually hit the target so these other conventional forces are going to support what we're doing we're the you you're going to be supporting role we're going to be the main [Music] role that makes sense in often times what we had here was different we were the supporting force often times meaning that the conventional army or the conventional Marine Corps was the main effort they were the star of the show and we were the supporting actors the reason that's important to bring this up is some people didn't like that some people in the special operations in community in in the Special Operations community did not like that and there's a good reason why they didn't like that there's actually a good reason why they didn't like that there's a good reason why I was uh cautious and if you read the book by Ben Milligan called by water beneath the the walls you'll understand why because sometimes Special Operations when they're the co-star when they're the supporting actor they can get abused and if you don't know what I'm talking about read the book buy water beneath the walls there was times where the Rangers for instance would get used to assault targets that they shouldn't be assaulting didn't have the strength didn't have the numbers they were so highly trained so there were times like that in the history of Special Operations where falling into that supporting role has caused problems now I was like I said I was cautious but it was not like that we we may have been on paper the supporting unit just like you were the you were the supporting unit on paper Dave so many so many similarities yeah we were the supporting unit but I can promise you that we got as much support as we gave and that was required that that was really necessary now listen if we wouldn't have done that we just wouldn't have I mean same thing with you if you would have said listen I'm only going to go out if I'm this the this the star of this movie you wouldn't have gone out really I I know we wouldn't have if the only way to go out well we could have done an alternate set of missions this is true uh but we wouldn't have been as involved as we were and you would not have contributed the way you the impact you would have made would have been significantly less I I was forced with faced with the exact same when I got there maybe a little different because I had an image in my mind which really wasn't based on anything because I had no previous ground combat experience so I had a sense of what anglio is so I show up there thinking how it's going to be soon as I get there I realize if we're going to contribute we are going to have to find a way to support the Army and we are on the Army side of things so you're talking about the Marin Army there's we were covering both but we're primarily in the South with the Army units I was going to have to did you have another anglio team that was up with 38 no because it's a marine Battalion they have their own organic which I know those guys 37 and three I know those guys extremely well we had another anglio team at of Craig with you guys which you know another anglio team but because the Marines up on the North side of the city had their own organic F and air shop they didn't need me I work with them a little bit actually did some missions with them but mostly didn't have to the Army didn't have any so I worked with them to your point though as soon as I got there I realized well first of all there weren't enough of me to go around they needed way more support than than I could provide them but the only way for me to really contribute is I it was exactly what I just said I had to support them not do what I thought I wanted to do for me it's what I needed to do for them yeah yeah I got asked by one of my senior officers that actually came to ratti they're like do you need anything I was like three more task units or two more task units or something like that cuz we there was so much work to be done and one of the reasons there was a lot of work to be done was this was going to be a very tough fight and one of the reasons it was going to be not not just a tough fight but it was a different fight than what had happened in fuia in 2004 so in fuah it was a massive kinetic operation where Coalition forces pushed through they gave warning to the civilians to leave like it was a Siege and assault of fujia just that's what it was and outstanding job by the soldiers and marines that executed that but it was very kinetic like I said there was warnings infrastructure was devastated inside of fuia when that happened and so when Maliki gets elected he wants peace and he knew that a shed Invasion let's call it because that's what is so most of the army so Iraq is made up primarily of Shia and the ruling class had been sunnis that's Sadam was a Sunni so the Army once the Army was formed up now in 2006 the Army consisted of a lot of Shia there were some Sunni balies but it was a majority was Shia so what Maliki knew is if he took his Shia Army for the most part and did a massive kinetic operation through ramadi that would look like Shia versus Sunni and that would you know could obviously um Splinter into a massive Civil War so what he wanted to do was a less kinetic op option he also wanted to preserve the infrastructure yeah so that's what was going on this this that's what was going on and so a few weeks into our deployment it was time for the the 228 iron soldiers out of penssylvania and they're actually out of all over the country because they were National Guard you had to get guys from Utah guys from Vermont guys from all over the place Pennsylvania yes and there was also active duty the 38 Marines was working for them at the time too but it was time for them to go home most of them to go home and general gronsky's been on this podcast talk through what that looked like talk through what his deployment was like uh the now the group that came in to take their place is 11 ad they're led by Colonel now General Sean mcfar he comes in to replace them he brought more combat power too so he has tanks he has Bradley's he has more people like it's a significant upgrade in combat power and that gives him the capability of going into these enemy control territories and setting up combat outposts so when you got there about a month ahead of me yep so what did that transition look strategically from what the 228 was doing to now you get 11 ad rolls in what did you say yeah a lot of how you describe it so I get there I I have I think a month ahead of you is about what it ended up being I'm there a month ahead of you I think at Le a month before you give or take a couple of days uh a lot of work when we first got in with the 228 uh a lot of that for me was figuring out what was going on and I'm not a strategist but really what we were there was a lot of um maybe the best word I could think of is like containment like we knew where we could go and where we couldn't go we and of course we are there as a supporting unit I am there to bring capability that they don't have they didn't have helicopters they didn't have Jets they didn't have ISR they didn't have a bunch of things that I had we also quite Frank like had an extra Chuck and extra rifles and an extra turret Gunner we we brought things that just helped that did nothing but helped them but in the end the operations were somewhat limited to making sure that the enemy didn't expand their reach and didn't go beyond what we knew they currently had we had Crystal Clear maps of what we owned and what they owned and a lot of it was operating inside those confines and knowing what that was clearly the contrast when we swap out we watched the swap out from 228 to 111 that operation that the entire strategic mindset changed and that month maybe a little bit I may have saw some things from an experience wise but you and I saw the transition very similarly from what was going on from a very similar perspective despite I had a little extra time on the ground yeah I do remember when I got there cuz I got there maybe like I don't know a week or something before like tasking at Bruiser like all the boys showed up yeah and the Rumor was we're doing fuia we're going to fuia the place was the did you get that exact thing so so I was when when my guys were coming I was thinking to myself oh it's on like this is going to be we're going to do another fuia and seals operated in fuah and uh that was a good situation for them you know to get in there yeah uh and obviously it had worked because you looked at fuia and fuia was pretty pacified I mean at least from that perspective now are there some negatives of course you know you've got displaced citizens that's a huge thing take 400,000 people and think about that you're in Iraq the infrastructure is already not great now you're going to send 400,000 civilians out into the hinin to try and figure things out that doesn't work but that's what I was hearing when I showed up there oh we're going to do another fuah that's what we're going to do and it didn't take maybe a couple weeks before oh we're not doing a fuia and part of that was the 11 ad coming in oh maybe you remember this I just remembered it there was a moment where what we're going to do is when the two 28 and the 11 ad are on the ground together will have twice the combat power that's when we're going to do the fuia thing did you hear that rumor we've talked about this we've never proved it but you and I were in the same meetings partially because of our role in our organizations we had similar roles in terms of our responsibility Downstream and roles to the Brigade and so all these you're repeating all the exact same conversations I observe to include well if we do this what's the risk what's the drawback the infrastructure piece was always the largest one was like rubbling the city might have long-term impacts that we don't want so all these conversations but we had this window where uh we had all yeah all this Firepower available so I think we're literally sitting in the same rooms having these same conversations as they're talking through these things y The Clincher was though Maliki smart right um Maliki had been elected and he was smart enough to know dude I don't want to Civil War in this country and if I invade ramama with a bunch of Shia army people and they go into a Sunni City we could have a we could have a freaking Civil War on our hands and he didn't want that so the new strategy was to go into these enemy controlled territories enemy controlled neighborhoods and set up combat outposts all of this was to be done by with and through Iraqi forces meaning everything needed to be led by Iraqis they they wanted everything to have and this is the term that was used an Iraqi face here's the problem with the term Iraqi face the Iraqi face is just the face right and ultimately you needed to have more than just the face you needed to actually have some capability and I wrote about this in the dichotomy of leadership we were told when we got there and and the guys that turned over with us like hey they're going to try and make you use Iraqi soldiers to do all your missions you're going to have to take them with you and we're kind of like and they were doing some of it it was definitely challenging for them it was challenging for us but it and again wrote about this in dichotomy they were telling us we needed to have I I forget what the exact ratio was it might have been six to1 it might have been 7 to1 but for every one American you had to had six Iraqis Soldiers with you this was problematic I pushed back against it uh even though I pushed back against it I didn't push back and say no we don't want to take any Iraqi soldiers all I said was hey look the minimum number of seals I want to have is like four five six something like that depending on where they're going but we still 99% of the operations that we did were side by side with Iraqi soldiers we didn't have to take them on reconnaissance missions that's one that we were allowed to do unilaterally and so we did a couple of those we did one we did one that was waterborne and we were really nervous about taking the Iraqi Soldiers with us in the boats because they didn't know how to swim and so we went took the time to get them we had to order life jackets we got them life jackets eventually and I remember I sent that one up the chain of command saying Hey listen we want to do this we want to do these operations from the boats I don't feel comfortable with the Iraqis going with us can we do it unilaterally and the word came back down nope take Iraqis and so what we did was we gave them like swim training and it was more like float testing than it was swim training training but what we did is we got them to make sure that they would float if they fell in the water and then we went and brought them with as a partner force and they like did basically security from the boats as we did the going a Shore part but that that's the type of scrutiny you know that was happening with trying to get these missions done and and that's the way it works and the reason it was was because it if no one is telling you you have to take Iraqi Soldiers with you you're going to say yeah okay then we then we won't it's it's just additional risk that you don't want to have to take and here's another important piece to understand that again through through my fault not everyone understood this our mission from the sieges sodi which is the combined joint Special Operations task force so this is all Special Operations in the country both Iraqi and American and whoever else our mission from them was to train and fight company and platoon sized elements of Iraqi soldiers so why is that important well we weren't being told to train and fight Special Operations units of Iraqi soldiers we were being told to train and fight and by fight I don't know if you know this echo or I just want to make this clear train and fight means we're going to train them and we're going to fight with them like we're GNA we're going to take them out and fight them yeah like sail a boat like we're going to sail the boat that's going to fight the platoon you're going to take them out so they can fight the people that we were training were that we were directed to train were regular conventional Iraqi Soldiers the jundy we ended up scraping together and actually the guys that predated us they scraped together and put together a a unit a special they call it a special Mission Unit that was pretty close to like okay this is more of a special operations type direct action and again the guys that preceded us there from the SEAL Teams they built that unit and did a good job and so we took them over but we also took over a bunch of working side by side with regular Iraqi jundy and out of each time we try and carve out like a scout element we called him Scouts they had their own little Scout element we'd kind of work with them but they were mostly just general purpose Iraqi soldiers which meant they were conscripts which meant they were untrained they were uneducated they were unmotivated sometimes they were unloyal and we didn't have any blue on green we didn't have any of those types of attacks while we were there but we were definitely suspect they had a they the they had a poster of mtata alad in their Barracks you know like the crazy mtata alad looking poster and he has got lightning all around him like the jundy had that that guy was a that guy was a bad guy I had targeted him my previous deployment and here he was a poster of him hanging in in the barracks so there was it was tough but that's that's what we were dealing with it also mean that they were poorly equipped they didn't have night vision for sure they certainly didn't have night vision they didn't have they didn't actually have flashlights so they might have like a flashlight for every three or four guys but they certainly didn't have weapons mounted lights they didn't have any helmet Mount of lights they just have would have like a flashlight and you know what we did we you know everyone every seal probably has three for flashlights and so guys were giving them flashlights so that they could see but this is the this is one of the reasons why we conducted a lot of operations in the daytime because when the mission of the partner force that you've been tasked to train and fight doesn't have night vision and operates in the day what are you going to do are you going to say hey we trained you but now you go out by yourselves you can do that what kind of bond do you form with the forces that you're working with not a very good one does it give the enemy a tactical Advantage yeah here's the thing the enemy did not really go out at night in ratti very much I'd say we probably killed less than 1% of the the enemy that we killed were were at night they came out in the daytime that's when they came out that's their best form of camouflage their best form of camouflage was wasn't wasn't the darkness it was the civilian populace so you know the idea that we own the night which we certainly do but the enemy knew that we own the night and that's why they were very inactive at night they wouldn't do anything at night yeah very similar things and obviously coming from Aviation you know the massive Advantage we typically had back then was we had the capability of conducting daytime tactics at night because of our night capability night vision goggles all the systems that we had we loved operating at night because it gives us a huge Advantage one of the other things that was a huge priority for us as we focused almost exclus we did a lot of stuff at night I shouldn't say we we did plenty of things at night but typically the night missions that we did were all intelligence-driven raids where we knew where we were going and why and we wanted to catch them by surprise because we expected them to be doing nothing which is what they were typically doing so I don't mean to say we didn't operate at night but the night missions had a different Focus behind them our daytime missions one of the things we also got some strategic Insight you've talked about this a lot and it's just something that that I had to reflect back on cuz it didn't quite keep up as much until after I was gone thinking about it was our presence there our existence there was really designed to help the local populace that we decided not to fua we were not going to try to level their city is we wanted them to see us as a better alternative than the insurgents who were really bad evil people and one of the ways we had to do that is we had to be present we literally called them presents patrols they were there to show them hey we are going to stay here and we're going to align with you and and and I want you to see us doing that which meant we were going to operate during the day would I rather operate at night from a tactical Advantage yes I have all this great gear and all this great training and a lifetime of experience doing that knowing the enemy couldn't that did not help us with one of the main strategic objectives we had which was you are going to see me there which means we had to operate during the day and we had to make a big adjustment to do that because just at face value we were had a bigger Advantage at night but that wasn't going to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish and yeah that's exactly with the for instance with that special minute Mission Unit like doing direct action raids which we did I don't know how many direct we did a lot of direct action raids of course we did those at night because we had that small group of Iraqi soldiers that we gave them all flashlights so we could help get to the Target you know we'd have our guys on night vision we could kind of protect the patrol going on there once we hit the target well now they're inside we can turn on lights they can use their flashlights everything's cool yeah we absolutely did that we did a lot of that but when you've got a conventional Iraqi Force that needs to do a patrol or a clearance inside the city they are absolutely going to do that during the day yep I mean it would be Mayhem if they did that at night you couldn't yeah you couldn't do it so that's what we started doing with these Iraqi forces in the lead as again as much as we could get them to take the lead we started to clear the city now the other thing is am I going to have to like push the guys like hey you guys got to go out dude I don't have to push I don't have to push Leif Leif Babin or Seth stone or BTF Tony like hey you better go out there and do this or JP or or Mikey Monsour like no these guys are people I mean yeah Mikey Monsur is the guy that had got cavac cuz he had a freaking ear infection comes back and is like can you get me back to my guys I there's an OP I want to go I want to go like that's just that's just not happening we had 30 plus freaking badass frog men that wanted go out and so do I have to push them no actually what I have to do is hold them back actually would have to say like hey BTF Tony I know that you want to go and do this that the other thing in broad daylight you're not doing that bro it's not happening he wanted to get uh he had all kinds of ideas of things that PTF totally wanted to do um so that's what we did and and like I said do we do direct action raids of course do we do those at night yes of course do we do Recons at night yes of course we did did we often times for our OverWatch positions insert at night yes we did so we did those kind of things but this is what was what was different was we we had to go into a coin a counterinsurgency mode we had to change the mode from just doing direct action to doing these counterinsurgency type operations which is a whole spectrum of operations why are we doing that cuz we were freaking losing at the time yeah we were losing not just in her body the whole country we were losing enemy attacks were up 300% it was going in the wrong direction I know that on my first deployment to Iraq we were targeting insurgents we were targeting really like cell leaders we weren't calling them insurgents yet that's what they became once they got organized once they got LED but we were playing whack-a-mole go out grab a bad guy go someone would replace him go grab a different bad guy someone replace him here's a Declassified study about the war that was released in 2007 about the Insurgency in 2006 it says uh this is from the gamma Corporation body the capital of Alomar was the only city in Iraq where gunfights were still routine in 2006 in late 2004 aqi leaders fleeing the assault from fuia had poured into raditi eventually laying Siege to the government center in the Heart of the City a woefully undersized force of two American battalions undertook a house by housee operation to hold a city of 400,000 in five visits to since 2004 I had watched the American casualties climb Beyond those suffered in the fujia battle 140,000 troops in country and they produced 3,000 patrols a day including close insecurity that's not a sufficient number Force protection had become its own mission even our advisers have to take four Humvees to make one Patrol the senior levels insist on it we're too risk averse we're not taking back the streets the Commanders understand the principles of counter Insurgency the first is to make contact with the people and you don't establish that by staying inside the wire or driving in convis convoys the first technique we'd push as instructors if given more freedom to suggest improvements that's simple we'd argue for more foot patrols with the jundy but this school is not in the business of operations we're here to change attitudes so this was the whole that's one of the Strategic changes that we saw is we got to get outside the wire we Coalition forces got to get outside the wire got to start doing like you said presence patrols but it's not just presence patrols that goes beyond that because what we're going to do is we're going to set up combat operations inside your city so yes we're going to do presence patrols and what are we doing on those presence patrols by the way we're going in a meeting with the families we're saying oh your kid's sick what oh we got a Corman here let's give them some medicine that's what we're doing oh you got a problem with your generator oh guess what we got a a CB that we can bring out here and help work on your generator for you you're doing you're figuring out what this you're doing census as well who's out there what's that human terrain look like yes and doing big clearance operations where you're literally going again we being Iraqi soldiers in the lead you know on on one of these clearance operations we'd probably have 150 Iraqi soldiers Seven Seals 100 army guys the army guys are setting up cordons the seals are setting up OverWatch positions and the Iraqis are moving building to building yeah just just like as a broad kind of overview of what those clearance operations look like there was nothing like like there's no comparison to this you couldn't look at fua than the year prior where where that I I know it worked for a particular outcome but it it would not it was not a frame a not model model to use in fact they looked at the fua model and said we can't do that for that exact reason it was nothing like 03 the March up it was nothing like Desert Storm like there was what we were doing in that time there was no other oh just we're just going to do that everything was different everything was new for everybody it was it was completely complex and it was unlike certainly historically but also unlike what I was thinking or what people were thinking because the frame of reference you have is whatever your previous frame of reference is is if you're on the March up in 03 that's what you remember and then you get there like oh God this is totally different if you were in fuia guys came from fuia or had been in fuia this this is totally different there was no comparison to the complexity and the range of things we were doing and the type of missions we were doing to anything that anybody had done and I mean anybody even the most experienced people that have been around for 15 years there was no frame of reference that oh we did this you know back in Desert Storm or we did this back in O if we were doing things that nobody had had done in a generation and again when you say we you're talking about this broad Coalition of US Army soldiers and Marines Special Operations that would be us the seals that were there it was it was all new and again this is all historically documented this isn't like Dave sitting here saying oh he's saying they did do we did something no no it's like it's it's just it's documented yes hey did it happen in tfar yes it did so had it di dump Yes actually let me throw a correction at you up in tfar which HR McMaster went up and did Seas clear hold and build up in tfar the Marines in Al which I mentioned briefly they did what they did that was outstanding was they made friends with the local populace who were pointing out where the bad guys were so actually now that I think about it people had done this before we were we were capturing those lessons we heard about the guy the Marines in al-qaim going door to door it was a great story it's like Marines are in al-qaim going door to door trying to clear the city and someone would be like hey why are you coming to my house the bad guys are four buildings down oh okay well do you want to help us and they would want to help and then McMaster did this up in tfar and guess who took mcmaster's place McFarland yeah so General McFarland Colonel McFarland at the time rolls in and say oh what' you do here oh I see what you did okay it worked oh yes it worked okay let's go let's go do it in ratti Colonel gronsky didn't have the combat power to get it done he needed more people well um McFarland shows up and he's got tanks which is going to be a huge asset and he's got a uh more combat power so that's why this idea of going in and building these combat outposts so it wouldn't just be a presence Patrol it would be a permanent presence that was another word that got thrown around a lot in those Brigade meetings permanent established permanent presence yeah the cops that's what the combat Outpost were and as we started to come up with a plan the actual like Mission planning for building the combat Outpost I realized one of the best things that we could do in tasking AB Bruiser was support these operations be the be the supporting actor provide OverWatch and look we did some overwatches out of the gate out of the gate tasking to Bruiser and and hey I'm going to correct you again Dave you said no one's ever done anything like this before my first deployment there was a unit that was getting hammered with mortars on the fringes of Baghdad real hostile area at the time and we went out there and set up sniper positions we went out there and set up these sniper positions we did it one time we were ineffective we were ineffective we got mortared you know we we took some really close Morts but we didn't do anything we didn't we didn't engage anybody but it gave me a little glimpse of oh wait a second what if we would have been out there for a few days what if we would have put a couple other OverWatch positions in other spots you know there's there's other things I figured out that we could do and as I saw this unfold as soon as we got there I like oh we could put snipers out yeah and that's what we started doing immediately and and luckily tasking at Bruiser had 13 snipers in it which is a lot it's a lot four four snipers in a in a task unit would be would be sort of probably what the requirement is six is probably normal like oh we got six or seven snipers we had 13 snipers it's just luck luck of the draw look oh you have a chief you know BTF Tony guess what he'd been to sniper school no not every Chief goes to sniper but he so that's that there's an additional one uh we had guys that were new guys that had snuck in and gone to sniper school so we just ended up in a platoon with a lot of snipers in it and so we had a huge tactical Advantage so very quickly like I said I got I got our snipers into the field and and guess what when our snipers going into the field they're not going into the field solo they're going in with Iraqi soldiers they're going in with our interpreters on every sniper OverWatch so the Iraqi soldiers are with us they're helping maintain security they're up on the rooftops they're have they have machine guns in case we get attacked they're helping us deal or manage the deal with or manage the families that are in these buildings and so we put these sniper teams out there and like I said very quickly these snipers are snipers these seal snipers started killing bad guys within days we had these combined Iraqi SEAL Sniper elements that are out there killing we probably killed I don't know six seven eight bad guys within days and this was very shocking this is very shocking to the rest of the seal Community really and Special Operations community at large it was shocking to me as well it was shocking to the guys well look we all knew ratti was bad but we didn't understand how effective we could be you know what else was surprised the enemy the enemy was shocked because they hadn't had someone sne into their backyard and kill them when they didn't expect it in these areas where people couldn't drive well guess what we could do we could walk we could sneak in there we could sneak in there at night we could set up a position when they start in the daytime start doing what they normally do we could take them out when they start digging holes in the road to put IEDs in guess who's going to kill them we are but there was a lot of them and it surprised like I said it surprised the enemy it surprised me it surprised everybody my boss was surprised I was surprised my boss's boss was surprised no one was used to this level of enemy engagement that's why I said raditi was different here's a here's a quote another one after the fujia offensive the Americans tried to quell the Insurgency in ratti with a combination of political Maneuvers and cooperation of tribal leaders to root out foreign islamist Fighters but that plan has spectacularly Fallen apart The Men Who dared to Ally themselves with the Americans quickly learned that the US military couldn't protect them insurgents killed 70 of Rad's police recruits in January yeah that's Glass Factory and at least a half a dozen high-profile tribal leaders have been assassinated since then this was a freaking Terror campaign quote this whole thing is a quote I'm injecting some little quotes like this thing is a freaking Terror campaign that was my interjection back to the book ramadi has become a town where anti-American gorilla gorillas operate openly and City bureaucrats are afraid to acknowledge their job titles for fear of being killed the Government Center in downtown ratti comes under gunfire or mortar attacks daily that's from Megan K stack and Lewis rug from an article called fear of big battle panics Iraqi City 11 June 2006 so yeah go listen to the podcast about the the Glass Factory if you want to know what happened there and this is all fresh when we showed up that happened in January those tribal leaders the shakes got assassinated so the idea that ratti was somehow in good condition when Tas unit Bruiser arrived it let me give you another quote here uh in late 2005 the Sunni tribes around radi attempted to expel Al-Qaeda and Iraq after growing weary of the terrorist group's heavy-handed indiscriminate murder and intimidation campaign a group calling itself the onbar people's Council formed a from a CO formed from a coalition of local Sunni schiks and Sunni nationalist groups the council intended to conduct organized resistance against both Coalition forces and Al-Qaeda elements but undermanned and hamstrung by tribal vendettas it lack strength and cohesion a series of tribal leader assassinations ultimately brought down the group which ceased to Exist by February of 2006 this collapse set the conditions that the Brigade found when it arrived in in late May the assassinations created a vacuum a leadership vacuum in Rat and by cutting tribal ties to outside tribal centers isolated the city for their part the tribes had adopted a passive posture not wishing to antagonize the powerful Al-Qaeda presence in in and around raditi in short as the ready first prepared to move from tfar their new AO was essentially in enemy hands so that that's what was going on the idea that raditi had been pacified was not true raditi was a complete war zone when we showed up uh here's from the same article in the summer of 2006 ramadi by any measure was among the most dangerous cities in Iraq the area of operations averaged over three times more attacks per capita than any other area in the country with the exception of the embattled government center and nearby buildings held by a couple a company of Marines Al-Qaeda related insurgents had almost complete freedom of movement throughout the city they dominated nearly all of the city's key structures including the City Hospital the largest in anbar province their freedom of movement allowed them to imp Place complex subsurface IED belts which rendered much of the city a no-go terrain for us and Iraqi army forces that's the summer of 2006 I'm just gonna use that as a better way to explain what I was saying all Corrections aside my whole point was like this was different than anything when I say we that was my team and the teams were supporting this was a there was nothing like this this was just different y this environment was different and listen if you were in havania or you were in Baghdad or you were in yfia and someone was shooting at you we get it man of course of course the chances of them shooting you were three times greater if you were if you were in ratti so that that that's just the way it was and that's why it was different and that's why I didn't do a good job of making sure people understood what we were getting into because it was so different now as we got there and like I said we started killing bad guys almost immediately we immediately became the most scrutinized unit in the country and I don't mean that in a bad way actually I actually mean it in a positive way my chain of command wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing and make sure that we had the support that we needed so they increased their micromanagement and I was fine with it how did they do that well here's here's a couple examples number one they changed the level of authority required for operations to be conducted so let me give you an example there was some basic operations that I was able to approve myself um if we were going to do uh a a presidence patrol when I got there I could say yep Le if you want to take your guys out and do a presence Patrol go ahead I approve it within a week they said hey Joo we want we have approval for that now I said okay cool fine I wasn't upset by this at all I had a great relationship with my commanding officer we could I think the only the only thing that I was actually allowed to conduct by the end of the deployment but no with not not by the end of just within a couple weeks was like Hey if you need to do a logistics Convoy you can approve it Joo everything else was overseen by my chain of command which I was per perfectly fine with us why did he do that it's because the operations were very risky and he knew it my boss knew it my commanding officer knew that he's the overall responsible if I'm going out there and killing a bunch of people he needs and he wants to know what's going on of course he's the one that's going to have to answer for it yeah hey Joo I'm going to put more control on you great thank you no problem and that's exactly what happened and listen he knew that operations were risky like I said and and and I can tell you right now this might seem strange and I don't know what it's like for you in the pilot world if you want to promote and you want to make rank the shest way to do that is to avoid risk just don't take risk just don't take it even for me like I had a at up to this point in my career it had been an awesome career I mean I had had an incredibly blessed best career in the SEAL Teams and if I wanted to continue on my trajectory the easiest thing to do is not do anything the easiest thing to do is yep we're going to train some Iraqi soldiers that's that's our mission we'll train our Iraqi soldiers we'll stay that that is tempting I'm sure it was tempting for my boss too but here's the thing our fellow Americans were in a fight and needed our support the US army soldiers the US Marines were in an incredibly tough fight and we had some capabilities that we could bring to the table to help them and I knew it and there's not one part of me that looks at a situation where there's Americans that are fighting and I say oh yeah that's not me I'm not doing that these guys are getting wounded and killed on a daily basis and we've got an opportunity to help protect them that's what we're doing and guess what my boss agreed and guess what his boss agreed these were risky operations I I had a conversation with my boss my commanding officer he he he comes out we'd already done some operation we already killed some bad guys we'd already gotten some firefights and he's like isn't this risky and I was like sir yes it is isn't it rky risky to be out there with these Iraqi soldiers in the daytime clear doing clearances yes it is sir it's very risky there's enemy all over he says what are you going to do to mitigate the risk I I told him we are going to kill the enemy before they kill us that's what we're going to do for mitigation that's where that's one of the primary drivers of setting up these OverWatch positions because I had an element on the ground with 40 Iraqi soldiers and I had six or seven seals with that element helping them do the clearance how can I protect them oh I can say I can protect them I can put my snipers in over watch positions where they can protect them and see the enemy maneuvering on them and that's exactly what we did and and again my commanding officer was I had a great relationship with him and he it's his job to make sure we're doing the right thing you know before we even left on deployment I was I was in his office we had changed we were supposed to go to Baghdad we had changed now we know we're going to ratti and he I was in his office and he asked me something along the lines of or he he told me something along the lines of hey before every Mission you need to ask yourself is this Mission worth the lives of one of your guys and I I actually looked at him I said Hey sir I can ask I can answer you that question right now there's no mission that that there could be that's worth the life of one of my guys there's no Mission I don't care if it's Osama Bin Laden I don't care that might be an extreme statement but there's no Mission that's worth the life of one of my guys these are my Bros were you kidding me and I said sir that being said there will be risk on every mission that we do and we're going to mitigate it as much as we can but it is not possible to mitigate all risk it's not possible or or unless we just stay home so we will mitigate risk to the utmost to the utmost and that and that's what we did and then again great relationship with my commanding officer he approved all the missions he had to approve all the missions that we did except for maybe like I said Logistics convoys if we were running a logistics Convoy to bring Seth Stone and the guys out at kraigor some equipment or gear that they needed we could do that I could approve it everything else that we did had to be approved up the chain of command and by the way there was also a level of operations that had to get approved by his chain of command and they were all being very micromanaging of us which was fine which was fine so the idea that I was out there just running unchecked is like completely insane it's complet I had first of all I had my chain my chain of command so my Seal Team commander and then the CJ sod of Commander above him they're reading all these opson they know exactly what's going on on top of that we have the conventional Army chain of command and the Marine Corps chain of command which by the way the Army reported into the Marine Corp that time on top of that we had to get approval from the battle space owner so if you're going to go work in tamim which is a a one of her if you're going to go work in there you need to get approved by the battle space owner you've got to present that mission to him you got to coordinate with them then you got to go talk to the company commander and say hey Captain here's what I'm looking at doing then you got to talk to the platoon Commander who's actually going to be running the qrf for you or whatever oh and by the way on top of all that approval you got to get approval from the Iraqi chain of command so every move that we made every operation that we conducted every time we left the wire it had to be approved and coordinated through all these different elements and then of course on the ground like I said you got to coordinate with every everyone you on the ground for sure it you got to talk to the Battalion company platoon Squad if you fail to coordinate with the battle space owners it's freaking suicide it's suicide they owned the ground and by they I mean like a company Commander owns a chunk of real estate out there you got go talk to him they have the Intel by the way too like they're the ones that know hey there's an ID in that street three days in a row don't go down it thank you they told us the safest route man Leif wrote about this Leif wrote about a asking a conventional battle space owner hey uh spec ops wants to do an operation down here what do you think he's like do not drive down that road you'll lose a vehicle okay cool we didn't go by the way the conventional battle space owners they're the ones that conducted qrf they're the ones that conducted our fire support they're the ones that we relied upon to conduct our casualty evacuation so if we got a guy wounded it was the army or the Marine Corps that was going to come and rescue us if we needed fire support it was the army or the Marine Corp that was going to come and rescue us that's what was happening they're the ones that were going to send troops they're the ones are going to send armor they're they're the ones that are going to send cavac vehicles to us we didn't have the assets to do that we didn't we did zero times zero times well I guess let me not say zero times anytime we did it an operation in the urban area of ratti zero times was task unit Bruiser assets the qrf or the kavac zero times if we did if we did a an operation in the in the hinterland in a rural area like up at MC1 or 1 MC um when is it MC1 MC1 MC1 Mike Charlie one yeah yeah if we did an operation up there it's a rural area we might stage our vehicles and leave an element with vehicles that could actually do the casac but even there most of the time I don't want to say zero because I think a couple times we did act as our own potential qrf or act as our own cavac but 99% of the time it was the conventionals that were doing that for us and so they had to approve what the hell we were going to do they had to agree to support it I had to put in my concept of operations what my C back platform was who it was what frequencies we were going to be on and if we couldn't get the approval and support from the conventional forces we could not conduct the mission period in store we we couldn't conduct operations without them that's why this was such a team effort and we called in these assets qrf fire support and kavac you combine all those three together we called those was in I can't count how many times and God bless the US Army and God bless the US Marine Corps for coming to help us and coming to save us and coming to evacuate our wounded guys and you might think to yourself why why did they agree to do that I can tell you why they agreed to do it because they knew that we took significant risk to go into their areas go into their battle spaces and kill the insurgents that were trying to to kill them and they were thankful and grateful just like we were thankful and grateful for them when they came and pulled our ass out of terrible situations this was a team effort the Army called US army seals the the Marine Corps gave US Marines I had marines that worked in my tactical Operation Center for the entire deployment to coordinate communication there's two outstanding marines that were there 24 hours a day we used the Marine Corps Circ boats on many occasions at Great risk to those Marines and their boats because we had a great relationship the Marines didn't have to do that they did it because we were all part of the same team that's what's going on here's an overview of how things unfolded this is once again uh from Colonel Shawn McFarland the Brigade Commander he says it was clear that to win over the schiks and their people our BCT that's Brigade combat team would have to move into the City and its contested areas thus we decided to employ a tactic we had borrowed from third armored Cavalry Regiment and used success in tfar the combat Outpost or cop this is what I was just talking about that's what McMaster did General McMaster no disrespect sir General McMaster Colonel McMaster at the time that's what he did up at tfar with the proud soldiers of the third armored calav legendary guys legendary deployment did an outstanding job continuing on back to the book our cops normally consisted of a tank or infantry company team based in a defensible local structure in a disputed area eventually the cops included an Iraqi Army company wherever possible as they became emboldened by our presence later we began to establish Iraqi Iraqi Police substations at or near the cops as well at this early at this early stage The Outpost provided lily pads for mechanized quick reaction forces safe houses for Special Operations units that's us and security for civil military operation centers in rural centers the cops sometimes doubled as fire bases with mortars and counterfire Radars that's out like at MC1 because we now maintained a constant presence in disputed neighborhoods the insurgents could no longer accurately trace and predict our actions frequently and random patrols out of combat outposts presented prevented Al-Qaeda from effectively moving and operating within the local populace at the same time the cops enhanced our ability to conduct civil military operations CMO intelligence reconnaissance and surveillance and information operation ations I'm going to continue on here's something that no one wants to hear these outposts also acted as fly bait especially in the period immediately after a new cop was established experience in tfar taught us that insurgents would attack a newly established Outpost using all systems at their disposal including suicide car bombs these attacks usually did not end well for the insurgents who often suffered heavy casualties during the establishment of the first Outpost in July 2006 the enemy mounted multiple platoon assaults the frenzy of attacks on the new Outpost culminated in a city-wide battle on July 24th 2006 in which Al-Qaeda and Iraq forces were severely beaten and sustained heavy casualties by October the attacks were far less with elements consisting of a handful of men conducting hit and run type operations these noticeable decreases in their strength indicated our plan to decimate their ranks was clearly working constant Coalition presence Insurgent attrition and loss of insurgent Mobility freed the people from constant intimidation and sapped any support for Al-Qaeda and Iraq so what that meant was what I just read the fly bait this is what people don't want to hear you when when the conventional forces were building this massive construction project to establish a combat Outpost we knew that the enemy was going to attack that's what we knew was going to happen and so what we did in task unit Bruiser is we pushed out from those combat outposts as they were being built and set up sniper OverWatch positions with Iraqi soldiers along with us with interpreter interpreters along with us with seal elements and would set up these sniper OverWatch positions and when the enemy maneuvered into attack we would interdict and kill them and they did it often that's what was happening continuing on the cops also allowed us to control the infrastructure in raditi and use it to support the populace again during a heavily publicized operation in July 2006 we established a combat Outpost manned with newly recruited Iraqi Army troops and US forces we set it up just outside the radi General Hospital walls while the Iraqi Army secured the hospital within days the hospital providing medical care for was providing medical care for the city the effect devastated and embarrassed Al-Qaeda and Iraq insurgents wounded Fighters brought to the hospital were detained while the general populus received quality medical attention for the first time in a year and yes seals supported that operation as a matter of fact seals went in first to that operation seals went into first seals were the first people on the ground in almost all of these combat out outposts why is that because the Army wanted us there cu the Marine Corps wanted us there cuz they knew and we knew they were going to get attacked they knew and we knew that as soon as we cleared these roads as soon as EOD and the engineers cleared these roads from roadside bombs in would come out and put they have a name for it it's called receding IEDs so an Insurgent would go and put a hole in the ground and put a bomb in there the engineers would clear that bomb it would leave a hole the insurgents would come back out and Reed meaning put a new bomb inside the hole that's one of their tactics techniques and procedures so that was very easy for my snipers to get up on a long AIS Road where a mine clearance vehicle goes by digs out a mine disposes of it there's a hole there the vehicle drives away two hours later Insurgent comes out to [Music] recede this is one of their tactics continuing on from the same article the Brigade staff believed that by offering convincing incentives we could create a tribal Alliance that could produce lasting Security in ratti to persuade the tribes to cooperate we first needed to understand the human Terrain in R and that task fell to an outstanding and talented Junior officer Captain Travis patriquin an Arabic speaking former Special Forces Soldier and an infantry officer assigned as the ready brigades S9 engagements officer Patrick Quinn coordinated Brigade level local meetings and discussions he quickly gained the Sheik's confidence through his language and interpersonal skills and developed strong personal bonds with their families he strengthened these bonds during meetings between the Brigade Commander or Deputy commanding officer and the shakes Battalion and Company commanders also worked on improving relations with the town's people on a daily basis thus the shak's growing Trust of the Brigade officers let LED them to support our efforts to reinvigorate police recruiting so there was interaction on a daily basis almost with the tribal leaders there and much of that was because of a heroic human being named captain Travis patriquin who is at all the meetings Dave was just talking about who is an Arabic speaker who was he was a special forces guy freaking just an outstanding human big ass smile on his face by the way nice super nice guy understood the culture now does this mean that every single marine and every single soldier saw this incredible level of coordination and cooperation of course not can there be someone that might have a different perspective or harbored some kind of animosity or didn't understand H how the team worked together of course look there's 5,600 people there there's people in silos there's people that see one event and judge you know what if some Marine didn't get word on seals using their op or getting fuel from their fuel Farm what what if an army off officer didn't know we had coordinated with headquarters on a resupply of some ammo what might what might one of those individuals get angry and hold a grudge sure that's possible could there be someone that didn't get the coordination that was missed the meeting and seals roll in there and they didn't know about it could that yes absolutely is that possible in fact it's not just possible it's guaranteed you got such a complex environment not everyone's going to see it the same way but the those people are in a small very extremely small minority the vast majority of people on the ground understood with great pride the communication the coordination the camaraderie that was everywhere on the battlefield everywhere now again it if you're on the outside and you don't know this I can see how you you know someone could get the impression that joo's just out there just doing everything on his own that you could you could end up with that it's just so clearly ludicrous to think that everything was checked everything was scrutinized everything was approved through multiple lines of chains of command and that's the way it was and so I got into this whole diet tribe because I was talking about the scrutiny that we fell under here's another scrutiny that we fell under so yeah we had scrutiny from getting our missions approved another piece of scrutiny that we fell under almost immediately was we had to begin filling out two sworn shooter statements for every person that we killed this was not a normal procedure and and as you know within a within probably a week this hey from now on we want two sworn shooter statements for everyone that you kill I was like okay Roger that what was what did Le and Seth and the boys say what you kidding me we got to fill out more paperwork of course they're mad but I knew and I understood why I had conversation with my Jag officer about it he's like listen these multiple forms of document documentation of what happens this is going to means when people make claims in the future if they do we will be able to explain exactly what was going on and that made sense to me war is complex and people remember things differently and it's best to document what happens and that's exactly what we did that's exactly what we did for every single enemy fighter that we killed we have an explanation of what happened why they were engaged any pertinent information around the incident and how the Rules of Engagement were implied and those documents were then reviewed and they were corroborated with other reports and what do I so what do I mean by corroborated with other what other reports in order to do that I have to explain the the human terrain and you heard colon McFarland mentioned the word human human terrain human Terrain in ratti first of all the enemy the insurgents there's really three components of of insurgents there you had Al-Qaeda straight up Al-Qaeda and Iraq aqis is what we called it Al-Qaeda and Iraq you had Sunni extremists these Sunni extremists were not Al-Qaeda they were fighting for themselves for their own control and then you had criminal elements and there's crossover in all three of these cuz sometimes they all had a common enemy sometimes they didn't sometimes their enemy was each other in fact often it was so but but you had this this element of enemy these insurgents okay so then you so you have that then you have American forces well anything what I miss on on uh we could talk the whole day I guess about Al-Qaeda Sunni extremists and criminal elements there and these are the three main there's little fractions with within those cuz cuz the Sunni extremists sometimes different tribes had different elements of extremism in their own tribe so they would sometimes fight each other so it wasn't just a war it was like a three four-way War kind of going on so check this out the Sunni extremist the Sunni shakes at one point fought Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda assass assassinated the shakes this I think it was six or eight I think I just read it it was six six Sunni shakes got murdered by Al-Qaeda that actually put the the sunnis in check they were like all right dude this is we're not we're just going to have to go along with them that's freaking terror terror is supposed to have a purpose in a situation like this where we're trying to control the populace the the al-Qaeda was trying to control the populace what they did was torture rape murder one of the key people or one of the key murders that they can do is murder the leaders of the tribes and that's exactly what they did they did that bomb at the at the Glass Factory who was at the Glass Factory police recruits who were the police recruits they were local sunnis and then you just had straight CRI criminal elements and there's a lot of talk about uh a guy named Shake satar who we formed a relationship with it was actually the conventional forces we included formed a relationship with this guy named shake satar and Shake satar had been targeted in the previous six months as a bad guy MH and as a matter of fact the Brigade Commander Colonel McFarland went to the Marine Corp and said hey we're going to form a relationship with this guy and they're like no that guy's a Target he's like he was a Target six months ago now he was on our side damn all right so so that that's what was going on so that's what you had from the from the enemy but on the friendly side so we had American forces obviously there we have almost 6,000 soldiers and Marines by the way not all these soldiers and Marines are in combat roles look you got Logistics in support but you also have military transition teams what are those military transition teams are doing they're embedded with the Iraqi military they're friends with the Iraqi military they're working with Iraqi military they live with the Iraqi military we have police transition teams what are they doing oh they live with the Iraqi police they work with the Iraqi police they have a relationship with the Iraqi police you also have civil Affairs groups that are going out there and and building infrastructure working with the shakes trying to get projects done for them Paving roads digging Wells all those things uh medcap doing medical civil Affairs oh there's a breakout of some kind of disease or there's a situation going on where kids need better water okay let's get that medical civil Affairs element going so so so you have the military but the US military isn't all people with rifles there's people that are there specifically their job is to rebuild the infrastructure from day one then you have the Iraqi Army I don't know the exact number number maybe 3,000 Iraqi soldiers out there uh they were out on operations with American forces with all of us like I said 99% of the operations that we did other than Recons and Logistics runs there were Iraqi soldiers with task unit Bruiser I don't want to deviate Too Much from the the timeline here and all that um but like when you say criminal elements generally speaking do you know what their goal is make money oh that's it straight up so they're they're essentially fighting a different War than I mean everyone's kind of fighting their own different and by the way if the if the opportunity comes to make money by putting a road in the bomb I putting a bomb in the road yeah for Al-Qaeda they'll make money that way if money comes from helping uh an American can find out where a bad guy is they'll they'll make money that way they're just criminal elements so you have like human Intel sources do you know what that is yeah yeah it's basically like someone that's going to tell you what's going on some of those people like 6 months ago they were planting bombs in the roads yeah now Al-Qaeda is running out of money to pay me oh but you'll pay me to where tell where Al-Qaeda is I'm in let's go it's crazy man makes sense the Iraqi Army is there with us they out on all these operations and they're obviously going to bond and they're going to take care and protect the friendly Iraqi civilians also we have interpreters the interpreters come from a bunch of different backgrounds to speak Arabic but they're going to look out and see what's happening then on top of all this you actually have the interm government of raditi there's a government in this city they have a mayor they have staff they're trying to run run a city they're trying to build infrastructure they're trying to provide services they're trying to build up their political capital right and how do you build up political Capital by protecting and supporting the civilian populace so when someone runs a tank through a freaking wall what happens they go to the government officials and say hey the freaking Americans drove a tank through my wall what does the what does the mayor say oh let me get the Americans out here to give you some money or let me get their Engineers out here to rebuild your wall there's a direct conduit for the civilians to run their Grievances and complaints up the chain of command it's going to go right to the Coalition forces and and so you have that official government of raditi then you also have this entire Shake all all the tribal shakes and they've got all their elements and they're trying to keep their political power and that means the the Coalition forces are conducting what we call tribal engagement te engaging with the local tribes these are the people of the power it's a it's a tribal culture these are the people of the power and there's multiple tribes powerful tribes in the region and the tribal leaders they're going to have power and the Americans what we had to do the Marines the Army the seals we had to build relationships with those tribal leaders and we had to help the tribal leaders protect their neighborhoods we had to help them fix damage buildings help them with their power issues like that's what's happening and guess what else civilian casualties if there is a civilian casualty in ratti it's immediately known to everyone in ratti up down and across the chain of command that's what's happening that's what's happening that's why it's so important to mitigate collateral damage that's why it's so important to to protect the civilians but when I say collateral damage just now I just meant like the walls the buildings the infrastructure but you got to protect obviously the people the human beings I think LEF platoon like cut down date palms because they wanted to improve their field of vision like we had to go pay for these freaking date Pals remember that's the level of like grievances that would get filed so the idea that SEALS or any American or any Iraqi force was out there indiscriminately killing civilians is it's like implausible it could not happen it could not happen every single civilian death which did occur by the way were there civilians deaths yes there were and every one of them was reported was investigated and it was resolved with the local populace it had to be you could not just go out and think that you could go and kill civilians let me give you an example this this let me give you an example of what happens this is from aler 25 June 2006 specialist Nathan Lynn was charged with voluntary manslaughter for allegedly shooting an unarmed man on February 15th Lynn and a second Soldier Sergeant Milton Ortiz Jr were charged with obstructing justice for allegedly conspiring with another soldier who reportedly put an AK-47 near the body in an attempt to make it look as though the dead man was a fighter Ortiz was also charged with assault and communicating a threat in a separate incident on March 8th he allegedly put an unloaded weapon to the head of an Iraqi man and threatened to send him to prison the soldier who allegedly placed the weapon near the body was redeployed and left the Army before criminal proceedings began both soldiers from the first Battalion 109th infantry of the Pennsylvania National Guard are being held in Baghdad while awaiting hearings so you want to know what happens when you kill a everybody knows about it and again who reported these things the locals report them the Iraqi soldiers report them the Americans report them the shakes report them the turs report them everyone is watching you can't get away with things and if you try and get away with things you're going to hurt the freaking war effort this is how through all these different sources This Is How They found out and investigated and followed up on every engagement in raditi it was reported through a citizen Network to the Govern officials and back to the military and like I said if I don't care if it was a broken door a smashed window a breached wall we're going to hear about it and any careless or overly aggressive unit that behaved in this manner would have been shut down immediately would have been shut down immediately any unit that didn't coordinate with battle space owners well they would have been there for one day one day we wrote about one of those elements in the book extreme ownership Special Operations element came in they thought they were going to do their own thing they were gone in two weeks I think they did two or three missions they were gone they weren't coordinating and and certainly any individual who's intentionally or repeatedly behaving in a way that's against the rules of engagement or against the law or against the strategy that we were conducting they would have been arrested imprisoned Court Marshal sent to jail period end the story so so if you hear when you hear about war crimes if you hear about someone wanly killing civilians it's just a lie from someone that has no idea of what it was like on the ground it was not possible and so despite the level of violence in radi engagements were highly visible highly tracked and in task unit Bruiser we did get investigated and when we did I was thankful I this is actually a great lesson I learned very early which was from the Army if something questionable happens immediately get investigation you should invite investigation did you did you have this attitude dude I am literally sitting here and you it's like you're describing my experience there all these things you're saying are same exact things I have so many stories in my head I I was thinking of a story 10 minutes ago as you're walking through this I was on a patrol and listen we worked together a bunch most of my operations were not with you because we were doing so many operations with so many other units I was on a patrol where and I was supporting an army squad or platoon or something we shot a cow we shot a cow a local civilian cow got shot twice and they did an investigation I was interviewed cuz I observed it and in the end like we we conducted an investigation and then went back to that family I could I could show it on a map and paid them bought the cow apologized and fixed that problem over a cow the the level of scrutiny was so insanely high and I don't want to make it sound like it was debilitating where you were fearful of doing something wrong you just understood that every single thing you did was being watched and observed scrutinized and assessed and reported from all sorts of people so even if I was like hey don't tell anybody we shot the cow which is ridiculous anyway 20 other people who I'm not coordinating on that are going to report it to include the owner of the cow the owner of the cow who's who's who's going to go meet with his Shake on Thursday night and he's going to be like hey your freaking American shot my cow that's right and so the best thing we learned we could do is if anything went wrong and things went wrong we made mistakes we cows got shot is we didn't wait for someone to tell up the chain across cross we came home and immediately reported those things and if it wasn't you somebody else was going to do it it was just the life that we were living there so as I'm listening here quietly I am living in my head what went on it's exactly the same thing across all places that we operated there with every single unit you couldn't you just you simply could not do anything out of the of of what was appropriate and by the way if you did you're actually putting your own life at risk too it would have been dumb even if you could but you couldn't mhm that's just how it was and that's what the thing about investigating that's what I learned you know investig the word investigation has a negative con connotation right like oh you're getting investigated and so what happened was I was working with an army unit I was probably two weeks there and he we were planning or something he's like oh I got to go talk to whatever legals here to the J or the N CID Cid's here from Baghdad I'm like oh what for he's like oh we're getting investigated I was like oh he goes oh no it's good he goes That's my attitude come investigate us you want to know what we're doing here come investigate and I was like that is beautiful and that's the attitude I had so you should want to get investigated you should want to have everyone interviewed you should want to have the truth be there the the classic example that like like uh the Blue on Blue we had a Blue on Blue obviously wrote about extreme ownership I came back I was like hey we just had a Blue on Blue let's investigate and find out what the hell went wrong every Kia gets investigated if you enter a mosque they're going to investigate that if an unarmed Personnel unarmed person gets engaged or gets killed that it's going to be investigated and here's the good thing once everyone on the team knows that like everyone knows yeah everyone knows oh any action that you take is going to be investigated so that's what we did and and listen we're there for six months we engaged hundreds of enemy did we have a small number of engagements where military AED males were maneuvering or behaving in a manner that was congruent with enemy tactics and they got shot yes that absolutely happened guys digging holes guys maneuvering in a tactical manner toward friendly forces guys driving past clearly marked checkpoints like there was a there were some cases where this type of behavior was identified by snipers and the snipers deemed that military-aged males were displaying hostile intent meaning this sniper is looking at someone maneuvering running digging a hole driving and decided hey this person needs to be killed they're a threat they're they have hostile intent sometimes there's a warning shot if possible sometimes there wasn't and then once neutralized those individuals that were shot were inspected and if it became clear once the target was neutralized that they ultimately were not a threat then we initiated the investigation yep here's what happened bring someone in from the outside to investigate whether it's the Army whether it's the Navy whether it's the Marine Corps bring their legal teams in to interview everybody and to Rev the pertinent information and debrief with the all the different elements that are out there and then make some kind of a legal recommendation that happened and in each of these small number of individual cases the shots that our snipers took were ruled clearly within the Rules of Engagement and look does that help the conscience of a freaking sniper maybe a little but not really we still got to go out find the family pay the family but this is a tiny number of situations where this took place and like I said all investigated and reviewed and cleared what you have to do is you have to investigate you have to get the truth out there there's a another term that I learned from the Army which is good shot bad result and it's a it's a it's a terrible thing means a sniper or a Rifleman saw something they identified what they thought was hostile intent they took a shot and it ends up having a bad result and that did happen and it did happen with my guys on on on a couple of occasions now look I can tell you no women or children were ever engaged by anyone in tasking a Bruiser ever and the reason is cuz they weren't a [Music] threat they seldom would even come out if there was shooting going on they wouldn't come out when they did come out it's like they were doing things that were not even remotely hostile there were times that the enemy used women and children as human Shields but even in those circumstances no one ever shot a woman or a kid there's one instance where uh enemy fighter was transporting weapons and ammo and was hiding behind a child and that military-aged male was shot and killed by a sniper from tasking to Bruiser documented now you might think well how was this happening were there were were task unit Bruiser the only snipers in rad that were having success absolutely not there were many successful snipers and Sharpshooters in the battle ratti here's here's a an example you probably never heard of this uh this is from an article called marine sniper makes his Mark with swift death this is from AP press writer Antonio C CAD castan Battle of ramati July 30th 2006 when he was when he he was five when he first fired an M16 his father holding him to break Against The Recoil at 17 he enlisted in the Marine Corps spurred by the memory of September 11th now 21-year-old Gallen Wilson has 20 confirmed kills in four months in Iraq and another 40 shots that probably killed in insurgents one afternoon the lance corporal downed a man hauling a grenade launcher five and a half football fields away Wilson is the designated Marksman in a company of Marines based in downtown ratti watching over what Marines call the worst Mo what Marines call the most dangerous neighborhood in the most dangerous city in the world here Sunni Arab insurgents are intent on toppling the local government protected by the Marines Wilson 5 foot6 with a soft face is married and has two children and speaks in a deep steady monotone after two tours in Iraq his commanders in the Third Battalion e8th regiment called him a particularly mature Marine always collected and given to an occasional Ry grin his composure is regularly tested swaths of central and Southern ratti 70 Mi west of Baghdad are dominated by insurgents who regularly attack the provincial government headquarters that Marines protect during a large scale attack on Easter Sunday Wilson says he spotted six gunmen on a rooftop about 400 yards away in about 8 seconds he squeezed off five rounds hitting five gunmen in the head the Sixth Man dived off a three-story building just as Wilson got him in his sights and counts as a probable death Wilson says his skill helps save American troops and Iraqi civilians it doesn't bother me obviously me being a devout Catholic it's a conflict of interest then again God supported David when he killed Goliath Wilson said I believe God supports what we do and I've never killed anyone who wasn't carrying a weapon he was raised in a desolate part of the Rocky Mountains outside Colorado Springs surrounded by national parks on three sides he says he regularly hunted before moving to Fort Lauderdale Florida as a teenager his brother also serves in the military technically Wilson is not a sniper he's an infantryman who also patrols through the span of destroyed buildings that make up downtown ratti but as his units designated Marksman he has a sniper rifle In the Heat of the day or after midnight he spends hours on rooftop posts peering out onto rows of abandoned houses from behind piles of sandbags and bulletproof glass cracked by gunfire insurgents have killed good Marines I've served with that's how I sleep at night though I've killed over 20 people how many lives would those 20 people have taken so that's an example of a one Marine outstanding marine by the way in an infantry supporting his infantry unit and and look at what he's doing so by the way the 38 Marines and the snipers from 38 Marines gave us so much information we we modeled their operations in many ways the way they were doing things Tony BTF Tony Chris went and talk to them to figure out hey what's the best way to get this done but that so there you have a a marine Sharpshooter imagine what happens to the number of enemy killed when task unit Bru Bruiser goes into areas it goes into areas that have eight out which is a combat Outpost that's being built and sets up between 1 and 13 snipers in mutually supporting OverWatch positions with interlocking fields of fire you're going to kill a lot of bad guys and we did kill a lot of bad guys we killed hundreds of enemy Fighters so did the Army so did the Marine Corps but we clearly had to stick to the Rules of Engagement The Rules of Engagement were so perfectly clear I'm going to read them to you here's the rules of this is what this is what Dave your seals your Marines had to follow the soldiers had to follow the Marines everyone there Rules of Engagement nothing on this card prevents you from using necessary and proportional Force to defend yourself one you may engage the following individuals based on their conduct persons who are committing hostile acts against Coalition forces persons who are exhibiting hostile intent towards Coalition forces forces so if someone looks like they're intend that's a Target these persons may be engaged subject to the following instructions positive identification is required to prior to engagement PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed Target is a legitimate military Target if no PID contact your next higher commander commander for ision B use graduated Force when time and Circumstance permit use the following degrees of graduated force from responding to a hostile act or intent one shout verbal warnings to Halt two show your weapon and demonstrate intent to use it three block access or detain four fire a warning shot five shoot to eliminate threat C do not Target or strike anyone who has surrendered or who is out of combat due to sickness or wounds D do not Target or strike hospitals mosques churches shrines schools museums national monuments and other any other historical and cultural sites civilian populated areas or buildings unless the enemy is using them for military purposes or if it is necessary for your self-defense e do not strike do not Target or strike Iraqi infrastructure lines of communication or economic objects unless necessary for self-defense or if ordered by your commander if you must fire on these objects fire to disable and disrupt rather than destroy F always minimize incidental injury loss of life and collateral damage three the use of force including deadly forces authorized to protect the following yourself your unit and other friendly forces detainees civilians from crimes that are likely to cause death or serious body bodily harm such as murder or rape Personnel or property designated by the onse commander when such actions are necessary to restore order and security four in general warning shots are authorized only when the use of deadly force would be authorized in that particular situation five treat all civilians on their property with respect and dignity do not seize civilian property including Vehicles unless the property presents a security threat when possible give a receipt to the property's owner you may detain civilians based upon reasonable belief that the person one must be detained for purposes of self-defense two is interfering with Coalition forces missions accomplishment three is on a list of person's wanted for questioning attent arrest or detention four is or was engaged in criminal activity or five must be detained for imperative reasons of security anyone you detain must be protected Force up to including deadly forces authorized to protect detainees in your custody you must fill out a detaining apprehension card for every person you detain MNC Tac one general order number one is in effect looting and The Taking of War trophies are prohibited all personnel must report any suspected violations of the law of War committed by any us friendly or enemy Force notify your chain of command Judge Advocate CID IG or chap so those are the rules of engagement they didn't change we didn't have you didn't have Dave didn't have one set of rules and I had another set of rules that didn't happen all the rules of engagement are the same and they were fed and and here's another thing that was an undercurrent at the time the Hadith a dam investigation had started so there was uh a bunch of civilians killed at the had the dam the story had not broken yet but the Marine investigation started February 14th 2006 so right before we arrived in radi the Marines knew that there was an investigation taking place charging charging Marines with killing Iraqi civilians and it definitely sent a shock wave through the Marine Corps and that shock wave leaked over to you know everybody else myself included so the 38 Marines were highly focused very professional with this atmosphere but so is everybody else that it was like the first time everyone's thinking themselves oh wait a second oh this this we got to make sure that these things are done correctly and by the way just FYI these these charges were dropped eventually in the haditha dam um the Abu grab prisoner abuse thing freaking terrible terrible strategic impact on on the war nobody benefited more than Al-Qaeda from what happened at Abu GRA with the prisoner abuse and look I just come from being the Admiral's Aid and so I got to see all the I got to see the way this stuff hit Seal Team 5 on their deployment they had some drama with photos they had taken photos of prisoners and whatnot and these got posted in a public forum it was a disaster that's why I was like no more photos you're not allowed to have photos anymore when I got home Seal Team 7 2004 I get home from deployment and you know we put our gear away and then they're like okay go spend the weekend or whatever go spend two days with your family I come back every single one of our computers and we have a lot of computers because our whole system is running off computers all of our computers both classified and unclassified computers were all confiscated by NCIS all of them all every email every image that was on there every briefing that was on there was all in there so even though I had had an a great deployment and led scores of operations and got you know great marks on my evaluation my frit rap received combat awards for that deployment it didn't matter even though I was selected to go serve for the Admiral didn't matter guess what despite an En an eminently successful career and deployment it didn't matter it's like you're getting investigated and this was stemmed from at Seal Team 7 in my sister platoon there was a report of prisoner abuse from someone that had been fired in the pl platoon someone someone stole something they got fired they got sent home and then they reacted to that and made a bunch of claims and this this is this these types of things happen where someone gets disgruntled they get yeah they're mad about something that happened and then they go out and make some wild claims and that's triggered an investigation here you and and this is the thing that I learned you got got to be ready for that you got to be ready who knows what might motivate someone to fabricate claims against you or your troops you got to be ready for that you got to be ready for that you got to even be ready for your own freaking guys telling stupid stories right this happens too guys exaggerate guys are emotional guys let their ego get out of control um I always like to talk about getting mted cuz if I'm sitting here and I'm telling you guys a story and I'm like okay let's say I got I'd say the closest mortar ever hit to me I got one really close in in ramati but I was on the other side of a wall so it wasn't that bad I got there was we were in in Baghdad in the outskirts of Baghdad and we were set up and I I a mortar probably hit probably hit 50 feet away from me right and it was a little mortar too little 60mm mortar or I guess 62 or whatever it is the Russians use if I'm telling you guys that story what am I going to say you know I'm probably not going to say a number but I'm like this thing hit right next to me right next what Echo if I say something right next to me how far away is that right next to you it's one two feet yeah so that's what happens guys tell St Eko have you ever gone home to your wife and be like you know come we we train youru Jitsu m you ever get home and tell your wife like Joo beat the [ __ ] out of me yes sir now your wife understands Jiu-Jitsu she knows what that means she's not picturing me pummeling your head in right she knows what that means uh they caught Leif on a video I saw it the other day Leif saying Joo choked us all the time yeah yeah you know what I mean what's he talking about oh it's like jao's a bully no Joo trains Jiu-Jitsu Le laughing as he says it but if you hear that second hand Joo choc Sal time what he got uh uh here's one dude I was surfing I caught every wave dude I caught every wave yeah what does that mean c a lot dude I want you to know that I caught a lot of waves but what if you're not a surfer what does that mean if you're not a surfer that means oh Joo said claimed he caught every wave now you meet someone else that's that's is a surfer and you say well joo's out there he says he catches every wave and the surfer's like dude that doesn't sound that's not that's impossible no he said it he said he caught every wave yeah I understand so can you get someone from tasking a Bruiser that's like dude we killed everybody yeah 100% 100% oh yeah we shot this dude shot yeah you're G to get people that do that you got to protect yourself from that you got to Pro you're you're going to develop that stuff um yeah I I hear stories about me like my friends would tell stories about me that are totally exaggerated I'm like dude come on man like really do whatever he wanted it's like bro there's an entire I know it might have seemed that way and you probably felt like that M but um do you want to review all the fre concept of operations that got set of the Chic man so you got to be prepared for that you got to you got to be prepared for other people to come at you you got to be prepared for your own people to tell stories that aren't true that get caught by someone that doesn't understand and next thing you know you've got stories that are out of control and what what that means is you got to take the high road you've got to you've got to take the high ground and you got to take the high road at all times you know it goes back to that story of Delta Charlie one of my platoon commanders when we were doing a hydrographic reconnaissance and had that opportunity to not do it and him looking at me and looking at the platoon and saying we we don't have to do this but would that be the right thing to do and it's like yep that's not the right thing to do and I learned from that that was when I was 22 years old it's like yeah you better do the right thing and so yeah got oh came home from Seal Team 7 deployment they take every computer that we have they scrub it all and guess what we're cleared cleared from any wrongdoing had another investigation after that multiple interviews and again it's just people are talking they're hearing things once you sit down and the investigation thankfully it's like oh good got it you're clear so investigations should be conducted and they are conducted and and but I saw what this negative behavior could do to the community and do strategically in the war effort so you got to do the right things for the right reasons and if you don't follow the rules you're going to be held accountable and and you know Le and I did a whole podcast on Rules of Engagement it's podcast 385 and go listen to it uh if you want more detail but but going back to what we were talking about earlier Dave it did the violence escalate when we were there did the violence escalate oh it absolutely escalated and I I mean I kind of covered that from these other sources it's like the 228 iron soldiers from Pennsylvania had to rotate back to America 11 ad came took over they brought in a new strategy new strategy with sees clear hold and build go into these enemy controlled neighborhoods very aggressive strategy building these combat outposts it was taking the fight to the enemy that's what it was doing and we did it in the entire city an intensive and aggressive strategy and you know what did it increase the casualties yes it did and the Brigade Commander sitting in those meetings that you and I were at Dave he would tell us yeah I had to explain this at the chain of command cuz the chain of command's going oh my gosh you're taking more casualties down there like yes sir this is what we're doing this is why here's the efforts that we're making this is why the casualties are happening this is why casualties are increasing when you when you take the fight to the enemy there's going to be more casualties the when you go into the lion's den you're going to find lions in there and there's going to be casualties and it was it was heartbreaking it was horrible but the American Marines and soldiers did their Duty day in day out and got the job done and it was an honor to fight alongside them and it was it was also incredible to see the progress it was incredible to see the progress and that's one thing that I'll I'll always remember that I'll always remember seeing the progress and look obviously I didn't go out on the field in every operation you know cuz I'm the overall commander of the seals and ratti and we had we divided up into five different how many elements did you have we created three elements out of my single element yeah so we created Five from tasking to Bruiser we created Five Elements and they were partnered with we did it originally to partner with the five different Iraqi conventional forces and the one special Mission Unit we did it to partner with them and built those elements you know so everyone every one of those elements had an officer in it and had an and of course I trusted him and trained them and knew they understood the mission and the commander's intent the end State The Rules of Engagement all that stuff and so sometimes there'd be two three four of these elements at the same time going out on operations and usually those were usually those were smaller operations and most of the time if I'm sending a platoon chief a chief and an a lieutenant Junior grade out in the field to conduct an operation with 17 Iraqis I'm not going on that operation you know like plus there's three of them going on at the same time so there's a lot of work that the guys did on their own obviously um but there's also plenty of situations that I had to go in the field and usually like if we're conducting a larger operation like a big cord in search in the city I'm going uh we're doing a direct action I mean I don't know how many days times you and I Dave were sitting in the field together but like doing uh that that big area south of you know I'm going on that we're going into build a cop oh I'm definitely going on that we got all these different we're going on a complex direct action Mission multiple yeah I'm going on that we're supporting construction yeah I'm doing that but in those situations it's if you can provide better command and control from the field you have to see what's going on um and sometimes of course I just go because you have to understand what the guys are doing you have to go out and see what's happening with your own eyes and also the guys have to know that that I'm not asking them to do anything that I wouldn't do myself of course so you got to roll out but going out over and over and over again on that deployment I got to see and I might have gotten to see you know when someone's losing weight Echo Charles sure if you see him every day you don't notice as much yeah so like Leif or Tony or Seth or JP who's going out on every op they look they don't see that drastic difference but if I'm going out once a week it's like oh it's a little bit oh so one of the first missions I went on we were in enemy contact took 32 minutes I was like damn okay wait it took 32 minutes to get contacted yep yep it's like and the reason I know this is because the company Commander was like start your stopwatch oh he's like we got a half an hour and I was like okay 32 minutes it's go time that was in the beginning of deployment in the middle of deployment there was another operation and again these stand out to me because of this time thing one of the one of leif's assistant platoon commanders was going out and I was like you're going to get contacted and this was leaving from cop Falcon I'm like you're going to get contacted and he's like you think I was like you're going to get contacted and he walked out the wire I set my stopwatch 12 minutes later he's in a gunfight so enemy contact coming even faster but then I compare that from a progression to one of the last combat Outpost that we put in and I actually did like the clearance I was the guy that seized with a few army guys seized this thing in central ratti the platoon pushed right past it to set up an OverWatch position and we didn't seals didn't engage anybody so it went from this immediate contact thing or within half an hour 15 minutes you're going to get contacted to this last combat Outpost that we put in no contact and that's when I knew that a a change was taking place that's what I knew that we were winning did you notice that kind of reduction you also you left a month earlier than me right I did the timing of my departure was pretty interesting I mean pick go back I left in mid to late September think about what was going on with you guys in mid late September I mean it was still just it was right at that Apex and I left and and even like the basic sit Reps for the next month were already different that that last cop I think went in like right I mean like right after I left um I completely noticed it too when I got I mean it was busy when I got there things were going on with the 228 and oftentimes like early I would judge how busy it was based on what my teams were doing I had two became three teams there was a lot of times where something would happen and it would frustrate me because I wasn't at where the the engagement was because what frustrated me about it wasn't that I wasn't part of the engagement is that I couldn't help it got to a point that by the middle of the summer and it's it's that's a comparison to the 35 and the 12 minutes was my teams were engaged all the time and it was it wasn't that we were just in the right place at the right time it's just that the that that the engagements it got so much more just like that so again all the things you're talking about I'm listening in parallel to my experience is exactly the same yeah putting in that last combat Outpost I was really surprised because we had the enemy surrounded I thought to myself the enem is going to fight hard caged animal or Corner cornered animal and it was really surprising yeah um I have a picture of myself and and colon McFarland it's one of the I think actually it's the only picture I have uh but and I forget who took it but we were in that combat Outpost like me and him and there's no security set yet like just the just the actual security of the element that took it right so there's probably like 20 guys there or something and we're standing up there but it was weird to be I look at that picture I was like oh I know why we took a picture cuz there was like no shooting going on you know cuz he had come to cop he'd come to all these different where I was out there and it's like oh why do we oh okay that's right cuz nothing was happening and again I that's when I kind of recognized that a change was taking place and again this change wasn't because the the positive change was not just because of tasking briser obviously was we had a tiny role the negative change of what you know the escalating violence that was the strategy and that's what was planned we knew that that was going to happen but the change wasn't from us it was from it was from the entire team and it was a bond a bond that we had with that entire team and we still have it we still have it I mean I've I've gone and talked to I've gone to talk to units that were commanded by guys that we were on the ground with you know I've talked to the Air Force Academy talk to West Point Naval Academy um that's to me when these guys invite me to talk it's like yeah what do you need the they gave they gave some of the guys in task Bruiser got uh valorous awards from the Army that's not normal look has it happened of course it happens joint Awards is is a little different like you get joint Awards good it's a joint group but to the amount of administration administrative effort you've got to take to get a a a Navy guy an an award a a valorous award that's that that show that to me was such a huge gesture of the bond that we had that these guys were actually taking their time to put in and I'll tell you like Stoner dude he had an arcom with a V army accommodation medal with a V for Valor that was his you know he also had two silver stars by the way he didn't care about those he liked that arcom with a V that was the bond and the Brigade Commander Colonel Shawn McFarland now General Shawn McFarland but when we were leaving because when we left they still had a lot of fighting to go and when we left you know shook my hand and he said you and your guys kept hundreds of my men alive hundreds of them and that always stuck with me because look we look back at the war now what you know was it right or wrong what was our reasons wmd all these things we could tear ourselves up thinking about that but what I know that we did was we helped keep hundred hundreds of American and Iraqi soldiers alive and on top of that we liberated that City from those those suffering civilians that are living in ratti in a torturous environment under the reign of brutal extremist insurgents and we were able to liberate them and protect our fellow servicemen and women and and it's not just my opinion that like things got a lot better again this is so well well documented here's a here's an example of that here's an article on point by Andrew Luben October 2007 quote while Al-Qaeda has been driven from the city it has not been driven from ambar Province nor from Iraq but ramadi which the Marines thought in August 2006 was fully under control of the insurgence is the example of Iraqi American cooperation there is an economic boom taking place there are rebuilding projects the porcelain fact is reopening next month shops are reopening and better quality food and goods are for sale in the markets and salaries has have risen 20% in the last 6 months for as mayor Latif oade said to me in April when I attended his third Economic Development conference ramadi is open for business come visit us so when I hear people talk about oh we made it worse no ratti was open for business it was awesome we there was a Green Beret in in charge of teaching counterinsurgency to Junior seals and the example that he used was a battle of ratti that's the model for that type of warfare that was uh very meaningful right you got a Green Beret that's teaching seals and he's teaching not about what Green Beret did but he's teaching about what the seals did cuz it's an outstanding example here's another article explaining the success by Ock thickner the article is called hope and despair and divided Iraq from August 2007 this is news the world doesn't hear radi long a hot bed of unrest a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious Sunni triangle is now telling a different story a story of Americans who came here as Liberty liberators became hated occupiers and are now the Protectors of the Iraqi reconstruction again just a incredible Victory incredible victory for Coalition forces and Colonel Shan McFarland and his major uh Neil Smith said this about the reason for Success here's why the success happened clearly a combination of factors some of which we may not fully yet understand contributed to this pivotal success as mentioned before the enemy overplayed its hand and the people were tired of al-Qaeda a series of assassinations had elevated younger more aggressive tribal leaders to positions of influence a growing concern that the US would leave Iraq and leave the sunnis defense defenselessly against Al-Qaeda and Iranian supported militias made these younger leaders open to our overtures our willingness to adapt our plans based on the advice of The Sheiks our staunch And Timely support for them in times of times of danger and need and our ability to deliver on our promises convince them that they could do business with us our forward presence kept them reassured we operated aggressively across all lines of operation kinetic and non-kinetic to bring every weapon and asset at our disposal to Bear against the enemy we conducted detailed intelligence fusion and targeting meetings and operated seamlessly with Special Operations forces Aviation close air support and riverine units we have now seen this model followed by other Brigade combat teams in other parts of Iraq and it has proved effective indeed the level of sophistication has only improved since the ready first departed in February 2007 although perhaps groundbreaking at the time most of our tactics techniques and procedures are now familiar to any unit operating in Iraq today yeah this was it was a pivotal pivotal moment matter of fact another article I was going to quote I didn't bring it but there's another article that called ratti the Gettysburg of the war the turning point this was the Turning Point um in that same article by Colonel McFarland they share some of the important lessons from the battlefield and they say this the most enduring lessons of radi are ones that are most easily lost in Technical and tactical discussions the least tangible ones the most important lessons we learned were were accept risk in order to achieve results once you gain the initiative never give the enemy respite or Refuge never stop looking for another way to attack the enemy and finally the tribes represent the people of Iraq and the populace represents the key terrain of the conflict the force that supports the population by taking the moral High Ground has as sure of an advantage in counterinsurgency as a maneuver commander who occupies dominant Terrain in a conventional Battlefield so I think it's important to mention never stop looking for another way to attack the enemy he he's not just talking about combat he's talking about attacking in in air quotes attacking the shakes by building relationships with them attacking the economic situation by putting money into the economy like it's attacking on all fronts on all lines of operations and finding another way I I guarantee some of those projects that cost $230,000 that propped up a shake had much more negative impact on Al-Qaeda than some of the operations where were doing clearances but both those were important but the most important thing that he talks about is the moral High Ground having the moral High Ground was critical and we knew that we all knew that and we kept it and anyone that was on the ground there knows this for people that weren't there they might not understand it and that's my fault that's my fault I obviously have done a bad job of explaining all this obviously if when I when I hear things I think it's crazy talk but it's my fault people that were on the ground understood what was happening and that's my job and and I can say thankfully I I did have the opportunity to explain the Battle of ratti to the families of the fallen and they they know they know and understand the efforts and the risks that their sons and we as seals and all Coalition forces in the Battle of raditi took in order to protect the local populace and I hope that the families of the Fallen Marines and soldiers know the same thing that these brave warriors were part of an incredible Band of Brothers who fought and sacrificed valiantly to do their Duty who took massive risk and sacrificed immensely to accomplish the mission and ultimately Liberate the city of Rani and you know he probably I was getting a little choked up choked up earlier talking about Travis patriquin he ended up uh being [Music] killed by an ID after we left in December traveling with Megan mclung Marine another just an outstanding woman just outstanding squared away again Dave you and I sat in all those meetings with those those individuals they're just outstanding and there was such a huge price paid and and listen a lot of that price was making adjustments to make sure we could take care of the the civilian populace doing a massive kinetic how many bombs did you guys drop I I mean between me and the other ratti anglio team the two in anglio in ratti of the 24 units out there dozens like 23 yeah like 42 yeah probably between bombs uh hellfires guns the all all the different quote drops probably 25 mhm that's just amongst the two ratti angos that's six months of heavy fighting and you guys only did 25 drops uh did you drop any 2,000 Pounders yeah I think I have I think I've got got one GBU you know heavy J jdam and I don't I can wait if you want to complete your thought but but there's some context here go that I I can't help but but mention because it's not just your failure because when you hear about an accusation or a story or a perspective that's so outlandish not just because it didn't happen but because it couldn't happen it's not just levied against you it's anybody that got there and my team did had the same exact experience is we got there with a certain set of expectations how things were going to be and very quickly they changed at of necessity and what my team ended up doing is even that that number seems like a small number that is a huge number of drops more than anybody had done before we got there way more there are teams before us that never Dropped a Bomb partially because and this leads into the what I've been feeling listening to during this podcast is do you know how much attention it draws when you drop a bomb from a plane from a $45 million fighter overhead a city and you drop a bomb you want to talk about the scrutiny that you get when you decide I need to employ this piece of ordinance off this aircraft whether it's a Hellfire missile into the building adjacent to Mark Lee or a gun in a type 1 cast era that hasn't been conducted in years and we were scrutinized every one of those drops between the two anglio teams in in a level that had never been never happened that much scy because we didn't nobody had done that much and the firefights when a Ford air controller is shooting his personal rifle you're going to get scrutiny and of course obviously the most scrutiny comes is I lost the first anglio Marine in Iraq my radio operator I lost that first Marine no nobody else me and you were talking about investigation and the connotation that most people have is this negative connotation when actually what it is is when done correctly which it almost always is is they're there to help it's not that much different from like an inspection they're making sure that you're smart and safe and protected so your Marines are and so all that scrutiny was welcomed and I think reflecting on this the biggest mistake that I made and I can feel this now looking back because and I don't want to put myself in the same scale of what you did I worked with you guys a lot I did a lot of my own without you with other teams so not just with t unit Bruiser but I feel all those same things that you're talking about all those same experiences I had is I took for granted the understanding that everybody would have about what we were doing because I spent all my time with people doing it meaning I didn't think about what people on the outside were thinking about what we were doing I just didn't spend any time and I needed to I needed to think about their perspective their misunderstanding their ego their point of view their experience which is totally in congruent from my experience because if you did anything like we did it is nothing like anybody else had done it's it was different and if you don't understand that context you could very easily draw conclusions and make accusations and say things that aren't true and that's because I never explained it it's because I took that for granted when I arrived there and we started doing what we're doing up to the point that Chris was killed and Beyond what I took for granted was people understanding what we are doing how we are doing it and probably most importantly why and so the idea that this is just a perspective levied on on your unit or or or or particular unit it's all of us that were there that had the obligation to make it understood what we were doing the idea that you could do something misaligned with the Rules of Engagement and get away with it the only thing more outlandish than that accusation or that thought is is the realizing you would never do that anyway because it would undermine what you were trying to get accomplished the belief in what what we're doing and it's hard right now a little bit of a hard pill for me to swallow was the failure for me to not takeing it into account everybody else on the outside of that world and the assumptions they were making that was my job it wasn't just to call an air strikes or train my guys or shoot it that was my job and no anglio unit had endured the ups and downs that my salt did because we had a ton of drops a ton of engagements and I lost a marine so who whose other job should it have been to explain what was going on and why did I talk to Kathy Leon yes all the time she knows everything everything but I didn't share or explain or even consider how important it would be to have people outside of that understand in the community and Beyond um and so the failure you're talking about or the fault that you have it's really hard for me to listen to you and and and agree with that without at least making it clear that I was in a very very similar position very parallel very adjacent and during the exact same things recognizing the same obligation that I had in my same mistake yeah the you know you you you lost [Music] Chris and so Mark was the first seal killed in Iraq you know what what what happens to the community when you lose a seal the first seal in Iraq I mean it's yeah everyone Mourns but there's there's guys wait what are you doing y wait why are you doing that and I I heard a little bit of that but I also heard a lot of support yeah like massive support what do you need how can we help you're doing great uh you know again my chain of command which is the Army chain of command the Special Operations that's what what I'm getting is you know hey good job so I I again failed to see oh and you know I'd hear I'd hear someone say what are you guys even doing I'd be like hey man you know like I L I got an email from one of my buddies was like dude what are you guys doing going out in the day and it's one of my friends you know it was a little bit longer than that was B basically was hey what are you guys doing going out in the day you know and I wrote back like hey man this fight is taking place during the day we're working with the Iraqi units they don't have night vision they don't have a he's kind of like okay he's like got it yeah what I didn't think was what about the person that doesn't know me what about the person that can't ask that question yeah what about the person that has a you know has a negative attitude and then sits in the platoon space saying I can't believe these guys are going out during the day yep these guys are taking too many risks that's not a special operation I should have done a better job job of explaining the situation on the ground cuz you you know and we took a lot of casualties as well wounded guys so we have wounded guys we have the first seal killed in Iraq Mark Lee we have the second seal killed in Iraq Mikey monor Ryan job severely wounded ends up dying from those wounds and unfortunately I should have known noticed oh when someone has a qu if one of my friends is asking this question that means people that aren't my friend yep are thinking this and I should have done a better job of explaining what was happening and it's goes beyond the opms because my friends when I got back I I didn't really think about this when I was overseas when I got back my friends said they would read the opms aloud in in in quarters in the morning so like at try at at the team areas they would stand up and say you know last night task unit Bruiser conducted an OverWatch and killed 14 Enemy Fighters and guess what my friends were they were pumped and they were stoked and when we had guys get wounded when we had guys get killed they were heartbroken but my friends who know me knew that I was doing the right things for the right reasons but what I miscalculated was there's going to be people that don't like you there's going to be people that hold a grudge there's going to be people that look at your success and basically accuse you of cheating or whatever the case may be and that's what I failed to realize and it and it's a blind spot so hopefully this type and I'll I you know we can bring on I can bring on Le JP everyone's got their perspective um but hopefully this paints a clearer picture of what we did and how we did it and how we were able to maintain the moral High Ground in Rat and like I said the risks that were taken in the sacrifices that were made to maintain that High Ground that's originally why I asked you how many bombs did we Dro because you know how many DRS you bombs you could could have dropped on ratti all of them yeah all of them yep you dropped 30 maybe 40 whatever the number is every every one of those buildings at one point or another could have had a bomb dropped on it because it was housing insurgence but we didn't do that men and women by the way and I call that out specific cuz I'll never forget a seeing a a casualty evacuation rolling out to go support Iraqi soldiers that were wounded and there's a girl up a woman in the turret so men and women took incredible risk instead of dropping a bomb on that building to go out and and clear that building and keep the local populace safe and there's a huge amount of risk to do that but that's what you have to do and I hope that in these ongoing Wars the same approach is taken and that is what we have to do in every aspect of life you really have to do this in every aspect of your life you've got to do the right thing you've got to take the moral High Ground you can't surrender it you got to do the right things for the right reasons if you make a mistake you own it if people try and tear you down try and understand what their perspective is and try and lift them up by showing them yours and for business for life for combat in tactics and in [Music] morals take the high ground or The High Ground will take you and that's what I got so like I said I think we'll probably get questions about this um we we got Leif we got JP um people I you know people that were there with us in other units so many awesome people um so we can continue to get this the real picture of what was going on so that these people are remembered in the right way Echo Charles yes um speaking of doing the right thing I have a question well let's go what you got how do you dispose of a mind a bunch of different ways yeah okay that's what I thought what are the ways you can you can blow it in place so you can put another bomb on top of it that's actually that's what you're probably going to do that's the main one yeah getting in there with like a pair of pliers and clipping The Detonator you can be done and guys do it but the preferred method is just to blow that thing in place is there like a any scenario where you'd somehow transport it somewhere else and blow it or yeah yeah you could uh funny story we we we put in cop Falcon and the M sweeper was coming down the road and it was like digging and Leif and someone else was like looking over the side of the building watching this thing dig up a freaking bomb yeah and at some point he's like dude this might not be a good idea and there exact the same thing happened to me in my first appointment oh to look over the building at it looking over the building and I think it's about to blow up it's going to blow not a good move in your face I had that I had the same thing happening with my first deployment I'm like my EOD we we were hitting a Target we found a an IED and in this particular case my I just to case point my EOD guy like disarmed the bomb yeah so but I was standing there as he's manipulating it like by him like right by him like watching him and he looks over his shoulder and he goes you don't have to stand here that's what I was thinking and there's two things going on number one he was looking out for my safety but number two like that's probably not the most comforting feeling having someone standing looking over your shoulder and you're going to get him and you killed if you screw this up so those are the yeah you're either going to disarm that thing or you're going to blow it in place and the guys will do both depending on what it calls for damn it's crazy and they're pretty like common ways of making a m or I mean cuz you said sometimes you say IDs sometimes you say minds and obviously they're two different things CU ID is improvised or whatever yeah that's a key component is improvised but you can take a an artillery shell do you know what that is it looks like a big giant bullet yeah yeah and it's filled with explosives yeah so sometimes they just take old artillery shells and they bury they they turn those into the bomb oh they like rig the what do you call the trigger they they make a trigger generally speaking because the trigger that it comes with is not going to work for what they need it for so they'll they'll basically the way explosives work there's the the explosive itself the thing that's going to make the explosion and cause the problem is generally pretty stable yeah but then you have to have something that's not stable that's less stable that's generally speaking a blasting cap this is something that is going to explode very violently very quickly so blasting cap and Detonator or what same thing yeah same thing okay and there's different types of detonators there's different kind types of blasting caps but but generally like the the material like in a in a claymore landmine have you ever heard of a claymore yeah yeah front toward toward enemy the stuff inside of that like it you can play with it like Playdoh yeah was that C4 yeah you can set it on fire and it'll burn like there's there's that's what you can do oh damn but if you set it on fire and hit it with a hammer like you have a problem but I understand but there the blasting cap that you put in there yeah it explodes very fast very violent it's a lot a lot more volatile so when our breachers are carrying their breach they don't have the blasting cap in the explosive charge itself yeah yes so sa so if it blows up it'll hurt it might even take a couple fingers off or like you know but if you have the it connected now you're going to like lose an arm and possibly your life so that's kind of the deal yeah H crazy cool any other questions that's an example of me bro I don't know how this kind of stuff works all the time you know I mean all I see is what's on like MacGyver or whatever you know when he re undo the bomb or whatever that's all I know that's my education so thank you for that yeah yeah you can you can kind of tell you know you'll see but what you got to watch out for is there might be wires going into the bomb and then you clip the wires and then you lift up the bomb but there was a pressure plate so now it still blows up oh they can have multiple different ways of the charge blowing up oh yeah huh I was going to say maybe like a distraction you know like you know they'll be like hey it's this but it's really this saying that's crazy just like my Guyver bro yeah yeah that's all I'd go into that part but I know I know we're off that cool Ral thank you yes we're doing the right thing we need fuel by the way I don't know if you knew that or not mhm just coming off the UFC fights by the way do you have a good time good fights good card yeah we're not mad at that some good people hanging around which was cool was kind of Epic honestly yeah I would say that say that as well I didn't I didn't talk to Tim Kennedy about how he feels about being at the UFC you know like I actually did what what he say basically in a nutshell I said do you miss fighting and he and he said no and I was like oh interesting like what like what do you mean whatever he was like he's like hey let me explain this to you he's like I like violence but like and we were at we're eating dinner whatever and he was like see if a fight broke out over there and they needed me I would love nothing more than to jump in that fight but if you said hey go fight that guy over there I'd be like no he said go f yourself so he doesn't like like hey you fight for this or you fight for that you know kind of thing but if the fight is going down he's down kind of a thing so that's why he so he didn't really you know he said that he wasn't that much into it being there but he was very much into hanging out with everybody that's what he said straight up what what about Andy Andy stum yeah I didn't talk to him about that specifically but you know we caught up which was very cool you know he had the the operation for his scenario he went through that that was kind of kind of scary cuz he said it was random it wasn't like something you know he ate the wrong thing or freaking ran into this you said hey it was just sort of bad luck kind of scenario but he's back in the game for sure him me and Leo was there as well I felt bad because um yeah I saw you know I I did text Andy I was like I didn't even say hi to Leah just like Mayhem going on it was Mayhem going on uh another thing I felt bad about so we had a contest at Joo fuel yeah yeah yeah and I barely like I didn't get the word out good enough and the contest was sick [ __ ] yeah it was sick it was sick like it was the best contest ever yeah and what you won was and this dude Corey freaking great he so the the contest was if you if you won the contest it was a is it called a sweep sticks it was technically not a sweep sticks that's that's technically different what was it called just a freaking I don't know contest okay well you got like a vote for every time you bought something from Joo Fuel and then there was like a drawing and you could also there's another way to enter because you have to give another way to enter because there's all these legal rules and whatnot you got to follow the rules so we did it anyways the winner was this dude uh Corey and what he won was and he got to bring his buddy out Fab Fab uh they came out from North Carolina and so what they did was they got there they showed up they got there Friday they arrived happen stance by the way the same like maybe five minutes after I arrived oh like I was going to leave and they were or the Jocko field guys you know Liam and them they're already there with the sign and I was like oh they got the sign for me and they're like no BR not for you it's for the winners I was like all right we I'll hang around and see what up dude epic so those guys got that dinner that night we had dinner the next night uh we all hung out for good food at the steak restaurant in uh Vegas then we went to the fights had like the UFC Suite hanging out Andy stump Tim Kennedy likeis Chris Pratt like it was really awesome legitimate and then watched Bo nickel fight and then went to Bo nickols after party which you didn't go to by the way I yeah when we give you the low down on Bo nickols Afterparty yeah yeah please they had like 10 bags of In-N-Out Burger yeah and a bunch of Joo go yeah okay solid and some Hulk and so we went there and those guys came um yeah just really cool but here's the thing that I felt bad about was I didn't like we didn't promote it enough yeah to like as how cool it was yes and it was UFC 300 and that's a big deal bro UFC 300 UFC 200 UFC 100 those are big it's a big deal yeah a Monumental moment in time even the way I felt about it when you're like oh yeah we got this contest or whatever and I'm like all right cool like yeah I guess you get tickets and UFC and sounds fun whatever but I never didn't really think about it but when it went down I I hung out with him like kind of a lot like I you know sometimes we'd be a part of whatever but you know just some of it kind of by happen stance as well and when I looked around and I was like bro this is kind of for me this is fun and I'm just me you know I didn't win nothing I I was just there bro for me this is like a kickass time I was like f if I won this and got a bro this would be a really good fun good fun time um but then I compareed that being actually in the experience like the freaking like level 10 fun going on versus what I thought it was when you know before everything happened I was like yeah there there's a total mismatch with like how kind of we promoted it if you will versus how job cuz it was freaking it was epic I was so I was I had like really good seats yeah I saw that I saw I may or may not have had the second best seats in the entire Arena so I'm literally sitting three feet behind Dana White yeah and here's what's awesome Dana White is so fired up that like when something would happen he would turn around and and like give commentary just to like me and the two guys three guys I'm sitting with yeah know I'm just he he was so amped I give you an example so gatei broke his nose with like a second left and like as like in the first round in the first round and as that like happens like for example Dana turns around he's like he's like I just heard gaii he said he broke my nose he broke his nose right there he just had surgery on that thing dude this is crazy and then like turns back around so when you wonder about the success of the UFC mhm man you got to have someone that is that passionate and in to it that he sits there and is totally engaged in every fight and turn around and say that that kick was ridicul like did you see how hard they were like that's what he's saying and again it's just I I mean I'm sitting there like you know just in it and he's that freaking pumped yeah so yeah it was legit pretty cool to see even the way you didn't make the weigh-ins though right cuz you had a I even the weighin were freaking legit like in that like you know how okay and the last UFC I went was Dominic Cruz URI Faber back in the day for the championship dang remember yeah um and I remember thinking oh like they do a really when I was at the event they do a really good job on the hype during the event on TV cuz when you're at the event you know it's kind of like oh wait there's no music I mean there's music but it's different it's like okay cool it's way better live cuz you're seeing the actual fight but the hype all the hype can't be contested cont on TV it's way more um as far as like the the production hype is what I'm saying not the fight hype production hype so I'm thinking oh yeah that's cool that's interesting you know from a production standpoint but BR no now BR every little moment is like you're just on this roller coaster I'm freaking UFC weigh freims freaking main card the whole deal the whole deal was really good yeah and those whs were legit too just to experience the whole deal i' fortunately I've been to a lot of them I've been a lot of UFC's but most of the time I was was quite frankly I was working yeah yeah it's different I was working at 95% of the UFC I've probably been to 40 something I don't know I don't know maybe not 40 but I've been to a lot of UFC's I was working at most of them meaning I had a fighter on the card I'm warming up I'm getting punched backstage I'm you know like I'm sweating it's not it's a different kind of fun the attention is like not even on the show really your attention is on your gig your job yeah yeah it's actually wasn't Fun by the way also this is back in the day like we're all like the fighter you get two rooms the fighters in one room the other nine of us are in the other room piled up on the floor sleeping on towels you know he's cutting weight so we're cutting weight right you know you can't eat in front of him or whatever and then on top of that then we're all poor you know so it's not like oh let's go to the steak no it's hey let's go to the buffet and sit here for two hours and just fill up so we don't have to eat again Dave Super Bowl you went to the Super Bowl this year I did how was the hype it was hype in that scenario it was pretty crazy that must have been crazy it was also in Vegas so this insane yeah it was Insanity my son was overwhelmed did you have good seats we had good seats where were your seats um 45 yard line yeah perfect seats perfect seats they're up yeah they're in the up upper level but like first row so like for him to be able to see everything you know with nobody blocking his he you know young little like it was pretty nor and isn't he a fan he was all he's like all in on the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes so it was like all right this I'm going to take him this may never happen again he's going to go at a good age where it's going to be like a life memory Locked In Forever 10 years old Patrick Mahomes and then of course they like win in overtime it was it was insane and it's Vegas it was crazy dude he's never going to he's never going to forget that that's freaking epices do you watch football on TV with him when he wants to how does the transfer dude it's not even close it's not I can't even yeah there's no it's not worth explaining and in fact like he he's like likes watching football kind of but you know take it or leave it he likes to play but to see it live is is so different um he was pumped it was a it was a life event man for sure without a doubt oh yeah Super Bowl too Super Bowl Vegas that's kind of a UFC 300 in Vegas yeah just freaking hype out of control hype City Big Time Joo fuel good presence yeah you know I've seen some Joo fuel scenarios cracking and origin you know else was fire uh Zuckerberg sitting next to Dana the whole time and like they're they're talking shop the whole time too and Zuckerberg's Talking Shop you know he's turn around like you know yeah well you know's in he's trujitsu jitsujitsu good the Jiu-Jitsu can bring everybody together the fighting it can can bring people together so yes and obviously Chris Pratt was there he was getting after it yep uh Joo fuel yep we bonded over his Hawaii story bubble gum shrimp by the way which I'm very very familiar he was on Maui though okay which you know we love Maui man Maui all day good yeah yeah for sure 100% Maui 100% but yeah all good yeah it was good to see him all right joof fuel Jo fuel if you want some joof fuel we do you can get some joof fuel.com you can get hydro great you can get greens you can get you can get whatever you need man and let's face it the MK yeah it's just a key component of life that's what it's that's what it's that's what it is a key component of life where can you get 30 grams of clean outstanding protein in like moments yeah like zero to I'm good yeah that tastes like that too by the way and also you know on the surface it seems secondary but bro in real life it's a huge deal no it's a huge deal uh so check it out joof field.com you can get it online at joof field.com you can also get it vitamin shop WWA the MK people have been asking about this so the the protein drink ready to drink is in Wawa right now if you recall a little while ago they pulled our energy drinks out of there we got our slots got bought by some of the big um corporations and but there was a high demand signal for protein drink and so in there it's crushing so if you're around a wah wa go get yourself and if it's in the morning time get yourself a sweet cream coffee MK 95 milligram of c are you drinking that Dave no you're nodding your head my wife is your wife is in the game it's like out of control now it's like she is like the least critical person in the world if we run out of sweet cream milk which we have now one time com at she's like coming at me hard like it's not like you know like oh did J the lawn like where's my MLK so it's kind of cool that she's so super stoked about that yeah yeah the thing that's cool about that is it literally two birds with one stone it's like here's two birds here's one stone they're both getting killed yes you're going to get 30 grams of awesome protein and you're going to get your 95 milligrams of caffeine this thing is epic and people are down for it so check that out you can get that at Wawa you can get the stuff at Vitamin Shop you can get at GNC military commissaries APS Haniford Dash doors and Maryland wake Fern shopright HB Meer Harris teer Lifetime Fitness Shields small gyms everywhere jiu-jitsu if you got a jiujitsu gym if you got a CrossFit gym if you got a a powerlifting gym if you had a gym what kind of gym would you have Echo Charles probably like Victory MMA and fitness to be honest with you okay perfect yeah it's kind of got everything we got CrossFit we got bodybuilding I would have the bigger weightlifting gym though like General weightlifting bodybuilding Fitness type I would have a bigger one you'd have a couple one of Cable Crossovers in this a little something a little try more tricep like if there're uh and not to get too you know deep into it but I would I would expand it into you know the old mu Thai room yeah because the MU Thai kickboxing scenario is already huge over there so I'd expand into that that that room for some more weights the little one with the glass yeah yeah yeah yeah okay that's me though but either way you know borderline per well if you have a gym or if you go to a gym where you want them to have jao fuel have your gym owner or you email JF sales joof field.com also origin USA we're making stuff in America we're making training gear we're making Jiu-Jitsu gear GES we're making jeans we're making t-shirts joggers making boots dude I'll just bring it up so the team took a hide from an elk that Joe Rogan shot I saw that and made boots from the hide and the way they did it there's an entry and an exit wound they made it so the entry and the exit wound they used that part of the leather yeah so you can see and then they put red leather behind it on one boot so the the entry wound it's going in on one side there's like a slit and you can see red leather and then on the other side where the exit wound is there's a slit and red leather behind that yeah so it's like the boots have the wound in it it's the best thing I ever seen in my life it might be the most squared away pair of boots that's ever been made ever yep well if you were Joe Rogan what would you do with those boots I know do you wear them do you wear them or do you put them on the wall I don't know bro it might be a special occasion kind of a scar it's a special occasion kind of scenario I got some boards surf boards look we don't like wall hangers we're anti-wall hangers we want to surf those boards but I do have some boards that are like hey there's got to be some Kish some condition other than that they're up there looking beautiful yeah I got some of stoner's old boards yeah Stoner didn't leave me his boards so I could freaking hang them on a wall yeah got to ride y so I feel that way about those boots certain moment in time got to break out those elk boots I didn't feel me apparently they're super super soft yeah so you're like you're describing the whole thing like sounds pretty sick to see him looks more sick in real life it was very impressive did you actually hold them you seen them well yeah I mean Pete opened them and we looked at them but yeah I didn't like try them on or nothing no but you was the leather super soft actually to be honest I didn't feel the leather okay didn't touch them not really in the game cool hey we can't get you those boots The Joe Rogan boots but hey we do got plenty of boots hey check it out origin usa.com this stuff is all made 100% America 100% America that's what we're doing hunt gear by the way sou cam hands yeah you know so fired up and if if you if you're if your test human is Cam Haynes bro you're good you're good you know what I mean yeah I Cam's a freaking Maniac the dude is just hunt hunt hunt that's what he's thinking about you know what he's thinking about right now probably hun hunting yeah oh he just thought about his bow for a second now he's back to thinking about killing an elk sh so check it out he he's in it Joe Rogan's in it actually Chris Pratt's in it too we're all in the game that's what we're doing origin usa.com check it out it's true get yourself some americanmade stuff that that's what I want to say the reason the reason that cam is on board the reason that Joe is on board the reason that Chris is on board is because it's americanmade yeah the these are patriotic people that understand how impactful this is to the country these are all people from working class backgrounds by the way like these are people that understand what it means to make stuff in America and that's why they're on board that's why they're Partners so origin usa.com America check it out check it out also Jo a store called Joo store discipline equals Freedom this is where you can get your stuff to represent that idea which is true by the way um also there's a thing called the shirt Locker subscription scenario new design every month people seem to like that one check it out but yeah it's all on Joost store.com if you like something get something there okay also if you need steak which you definitely do and look this is kind of a bummer five years ago eight years ago bro I was fired up to go out for steak Yeah cuz I was going to get a really good steak that I like that was better than anything I could have at home the the that situation is flipped now yeah it's different because we got Colorado craft beef and we got Primal beef you will get a steak that tastes better than any steak that you can get in a restaurant and I know that's a bold statement but I'm going to tell you right now if you have Colorado craft beef or you have Primal beef you will have steak that tastes better than whatever steak you're getting in whatever restaurant you're going to you go to one of them super fancy steak houses sure we got you yeah so check out colorcraft beef.com check out Primal beef.com and get some americanmade beef also look those beef sticks yeah they're they're they're the new Snickers bar yeah they're the new Snickers bar yeah are you down in those things dude I'm getting screwed on those things I got I get the nine pack shift and my and I'll open up the the pantry and I'll like I'll have to go hunt the kids the like the rappers will be in their bedrooms my kids are just straight up stealing hoarding so the beef sticks are so good at least the meat like it's in my freezer you can't really you can't steal the steaks dude those things are like immediately they catch when that they've shown up on the auto ship they're gone they're gone which deep down like secret that's actually I want that's what I want them eating but there's a part of me can I get one maybe can you at least about some for the old man here they're awesome uh check those out also subscribe to the podcast also Joo underground.com also YouTube we got a YouTube channel hell yeah Joo podcast right official Joo podcast official then there's also Joo fuel us say yeah Orin you say for sure um but Joo podcast we're coming out with a Clips Channel too cuz sometimes people just like the clips you know look at you on that one just saying you know it's effective so you hey bro how long have we had this podcast for anyway like I was trying to say sometimes we just want the clips you know we're on the go all this other stuff you know we may we might not be sitting through you know 3 hours necessarily on that day that's not what we're doing so you know the clips that might be beneficial we say that thank you though for for inquiring right on right on also psychological warfare also flips side canvas Dakota Meyer he's made awesome stuff to hang on your wall I've written a bunch of books leadership strategy and tactics Field Manual final spin the code the evaluation the protocall wrote that with Dave Burke right there good deal discipline equals freedom field manual way the warrior Kid 1 two three four five check those out please get those for the kids that you know just give them to them just give them to them give the give the 9-year-old across the street one of these books right now or all of them and that way in in seven years they're not freaking cranking the music up and throwing toilet paper into your trees cuz they're out there living a life of discipline structure he's over there you know what he's going to be doing coming over like hey can I mow your lawn yeah I'll do it this time for free and we can talk about some kind of a contractual agreement right when he's 9 or 12 sure just do it get the kids on the right path miking the dragons about faced by hackworth extreme ownership dichotomy leadership ason front we have a leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership and if you want to check it out go to ashon front.com we have an event called the muster the next one is in Nashville I think we just rearranged the dang seats so we can get a few more people in there it's 02 to 04 May so that's coming up real quick check it out next one after that is in Dallas 16 to 18 October we just got back from Gettysburg Battlefield amazing we have another event called the council all these things are focused on making you a better leader which is going to give you a better life also the women's assembly September 11th through the 13th in San Antonio Texas for the female leaders out there check that out and if you want to get good at this stuff you need to practice it you need need to continually study it and that's why we have the extreme ownership Academy this is going to help you with business it's going to help you with life it's going to help you dealing with your kids it's going to help you deal with your wife or your husband so check that out extreme ownership. comom also if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families gold star families check out Mark Le's mom mama Lee she got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to Americas mightywarrior33 also mic aink he's got Heroes and horses. org for all those individuals that need some help readjusting getting back in the game he takes vets up into the mountains of Montana so they can find thems and Jimmy May he's got an organization called beyondthe brotherhood. org helping bring guys into the civilian sector and if you want to connect with us Dave is at David R Burke I'm at jco.com and I'm on social uh atjo willink Echo at Echo Charles just watch out for the algorithm and don't get caught up in the in the in the Mayhem that's going on there the comments the response got to be careful got to be careful that one getting emotional about things you shouldn't get emotional about it's a bot um also thank you to all of our men and women out there on the front lines put into very Dynamic s situations where decisions have to be made in seconds where lives are at stake and they do the right things for the right reasons thank you for what you do and also to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol Secret Service as well as all other First Responders thank you all for doing the right things for the right reasons here at home and keeping us safe and to everyone else out there there's decisions to make there's the high road and the mud the right thing to do and there's everything else and it's not always easy but if you do the right things for the right reasons and you do not surrender The High Ground in the end you will win and that's what we've got until till next time this is Dave and eeko and Joo out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 58,435

Keywords: jocko willink, podcast, discipline, defcor, fredom, leadership, extreme ownership, author, navy seal, usa, military, echelon front, dichotomy of leadership, jiu jitsu, bjj, mma, jocko, victory, echo charles, flixpoint, underground

Id: zqVSXsoou-4

Length: 182min 24sec (10944 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024