Chapo Trap House - UNLOCKED: 549 - Naval Chapo Investigative Service (8/12/21)

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

We liked this one from last month a lot, so we're unlocking it today. Subscribe today for access to all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse We do a deep dive into the history, culture, purpose, and various crimes of the Navy SEALs.

So, Eddie Gallagher, retired Navy SEAL. This isn't a political book. It's pretty much about what happened to me in my last two years of service. This isn't for the right or the left. It's for everyone because if this can happen to us, it can happen to anybody. I mean, everything is in this story. It's a story of grit, it's a story of loyalty, it's a love story, a story of perseverance and a story of victory.

Hello, greetings, everybody. It's Chappo back at you, Will, Matt, and Felix as usual. For this episode, look, we've been talking recently. We've discussed Navy SEALs a lot on this show. Their position as the heroes of the war on terror, the best of the best of the military, and the wellspring of books, movies, popular culture, and now political candidates that have all come out of the Navy SEALs. So I thought, for today's episode, we thought, why not take a look into a bit of the history

of both the recent history, but also a larger overview of who are these Navy SEALs and what are they really up to? And the answer to that question is doing drugs, probably trafficking them, lying for media clout, and doing a shitload of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. But I think the broader question here is, how did the Navy SEALs evolve into what they are today, which is, like I said, basically a gang of elite drug-fueled killers who carry out assassinations and spying on their own, essentially, as a military within a military. And what are some of the consequences of that?

I mean, just off the top of the head, guys, what are some of the examples of Navy SEAL culture that we've discussed or parodied on this show? I mean, from the beginning, the operator thing has been very funny to us, because we've long identified the operator as, in a world where you're needing to show increasing returns all the time, if you've made sort of a social cash out of being a troop, you run out of that after a while. You get diminishing returns. And we identified the operator phenomenon, the cultural phenomenon, as how many guys

who are killing potatoes can you cry and give your first class seat up to? People aren't going to care about that past 2006. Who are the baddest guys? Who are the scariest guys? These guys are so cool, they can wear whatever they want. They can look like a biker gang. And it is a very noticeable phenomenon since the end of Bush, start of Obama, the lionization of the guys who get to have beards and wear stupid vests and shit.

But we've always identified that their culture is kind of funny, because it's like, part of it, part of what makes them cool to people is sort of their independence, right? In Black Hawk Down, you remember how they talk about Eric Bannon's character, how cool he is, that he just goes into those Somali marketplaces and just blends in and walks around. He doesn't care about anything. No one can kill him. And it's funny because he's not blending in at all.

No. He's literally, he looks like Conrad the Singer. But also, it's weird because they have all these superficial independence things. And have this other independence that we've learned about, their drug use, their probable drug trafficking, having fucking parties where they get in the shower with their homies and shoot Antivar into each other's asses. But at the end of the day, they're there because they're the tip of the spear. They're the most, like, they're not expendable in the sense that you want to lose any because

it takes a lot of time and money and selection to get one of those guys. But you send them kind of the most dangerous places to do the most unrepeatable things that you want the least amount of people to know about. And they're the opposite of independent. This is who they are until the end of their lives. Yeah, I mean, I think it's that point about being the tip of the spear as part of like an imperial society and an imperial war machine. And certainly, it was largely the hunt for al Qaeda and the eventual of the killing of

Osama bin Laden that I think really like solidified the Navy seal in the popular imagination as being synonymous with like the utmost, like the absolute apex of heroism and American patriotism after 9 11 and then also like, you know, like, but like, not just not just them flag waving, you know, duty, honor, things like that, these guys represented all that. But as you alluded to, looks, they also could like look like a biker gang and do drugs. They were there kind of outlaws as well. I mean, they're a sort of, you know, we as Americans, we love the idea of like someone who lives by their own code that is sort of like outside the bounds of of polite, everyday

society and even law and order. And this is an image that they in their own sort of mythos and symbols and patches that they all love so much. This is something that they cultivate among themselves as well. I mean, it is a culture that is accountable only to itself. And I mean that like literally in that, like, you know, when I'm reading these articles, I mean, like JSOC is technically in control of everything. But for the most part, these guys are accountable only to themselves and to the extent to which

we even know about certain like cases like the Eddie Gallagher case, it's because he was so fucking evil that it's seven of the guys in his own fucking unit were willing to testify against him because of the horrible shit they saw him do. Yeah. And I do, I, we're going to get deeper into it and deeper how the SEALs actually work and specifically DevGru, SEAL Team 6. But what I found very interesting when I was reading about DevGru, you know, in preparation for this episode is did you, it was in the intercept article that they typically, there

will be an officer who's always college educated, who is technically in charge of a team or unit for three years, right? And they always rotate out after that. The operators, the guys who aren't officers, they stay there for a decade or more. So while the officers are like, yeah, officially in charge of it, like the way the military works, they are sort of, I think like purposely set up just to be this figurehead because to actually do the dirty shit that the SEALs do, you can't really just have like some virgin who like, yeah, went to college and can do a lot of pull-ups and that's why he's

in the SEALs. It has to be kind of de facto run by the guys who are cutting people's heads off and canoeing people and fucking trafficking drugs and like snorting their own cap to gun they make in a toilet. And the further up you go, the more you see that replicated. Like yeah, technically a lot of people are in charge of them, but the way, I think the way that this is sort of like specifically marketed to people who can join the SEALs and specifically SEAL Team 6 is it's not that we're going to turn you into this psychotic

killer who like operates on his complete, like his own like battlefield morality and can do all this evil shit. It's like we kind of want someone who is already that person, right? We want to make sure they have the physical fitness and the mental aptitude and we want to give them more training to that they can plug those instincts into. But this is specifically, we want people who have no compunctions over just blowing a fucking civilian away if he's going to reveal their position or sees them, you know, bringing in a bunch of fucking oxycontin from some pier for, for, for, uh, has no compunction

about like, yeah, strangling the green beret, like we'll talk, we're talking about God knows what else because they have replaced with another thing we've talked about before. They've replaced a lot of like traditional CIA work and you need someone who they're sort of, they are kind of acting on their own. Really all these, all these games are like these atomized crime rings that you can send anywhere. Yeah. And that's maximal deniability because, because like they hide things from their pencil

neck college educated officer, uh, and then he, uh, hides things from the people above him. And so everybody, if they get called on any specific thing can, uh, say that they had not been informed about it. I thought it was so interesting when someone above that officer, like someone who's like an admiral, there are multiple instances of like admirals coming down and being like, no, cut this shit out, whether they're like canoeing people or like beating the shit out of each other or other, other service members or whatever.

What I always think is interesting is they'll never disband it obviously. And for even the, even the guys, you know, most sub Eddie Gallagher guys, guys who aren't quite that evil, no matter what they do, they'll rotate them out for a year, then they'll bring them back in because they know guys like Bill McRaven know anyone who's the president knows. I mean, it's like reminding you of something that people got mad at Trump for saying when he was talking about Putin when he said, we got a lot of great killers. Yeah. That's what that's, this is who he's talking about.

Yeah. You can slap, you can slap these guys in the wrist for being like, Hey, dummy, like people aren't supposed to know about this, but you're always going to bring them back in because you need those guys who have that specific mix of like sociopathy, like situational improvisational brilliance and like the aptitude to the, yeah, run like a crime ring, wherever you put them. Yeah. And I mean, I think understanding them as a kind of criminal organization or gang, because I mean, even within SEAL team six, there's like their sub teams of that there's like

they're all color coordinated and they all have their own regalia, nicknames and symbols and then their own like, you know, little, little signature acts of violence that they all love. And by the way, this is going to be a pretty grim episode because I spent the last day reading about canoeing as a fucking, like basically a calling card for the Navy SEALs, which is if you don't know what that is, you will by the end of the episode. But yeah, like I think like the way these, they operate both like in terms of the actual crimes they do and the money they make from it, but also just psychologically at that

point, I think like the way to understand these is like that these are, yes, the best of the best of the military, but like the reward for that is the freedom to do what, you know, men who are very good and inclined to violence, you know, what the best thing you can possibly do, which is, you know, crimes and killing people without any accountability and not just without any accountability, but you know, in fact, be celebrated for how good you are at it. However, I mean, I think it's a little bit of history here would help provide some context because the Navy SEALs were not always like what we're talking about largely is SEAL Team

6, which is like even within the Navy SEALs, like I said, there are these subcategories of like the elite of the elite. And like these are the guys who were doing most of the really grisly war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Navy SEALs just didn't start out like that. It basically just, the Navy SEALs started, they weren't even officially like their own thing until I think like the 70s until like the Vietnam era. Yeah, Vietnam is when they got formalized.

They grew out of what was essentially the US military realized in the 1930s as they saw, you know, the war and the shadow of war in Europe looming once again. They realized that a lot of the war would be fought through these amphibious landings. I mean, like most famous of which is D-Day, but you know, like the original, the progenitors in the Navy SEALs were basically these amphibious scouts that were sent under cover of darkness or like underwater, like with scuba gear, these are the frogmen. And they were basically like, they realized that like, if you're trying to land a whole bunch of troops on a beach and you don't know the terrain really well, like if there are,

you know, unseen obstacles under the cover of the surf and the ocean itself, or like coral reefs, things like that, the tides, like a lot of shit can go wrong. And if one of those little like landing boats gets like trapped on a fucking reef or whatever, the guys are going to get cut up. So they started training for and recruiting soldiers who could do this kind of like reconnaissance scouting work under very difficult conditions. And they did recruit from people who were largely already athletes like boxers and track and field stars.

Because you know, I mean, keep in mind, this is like the 1940s where like the average American man smoked like, you know, 10 packs of cigarettes a day and drank a quart of gin. So like finding someone who was just, you know, had enough lung capacity to like swim a mile in the ocean was a, you know, a pretty rare breed. So they were the best of the best for that time. And you know, like they were very successful in a number of like, you know, D-Day most famously, but you know, Anzio, North Africa, Okinawa, like, you know, this is where it grew out of.

There's basically guys who would just like a PT boat would take them like a mile off the coast and then they would like, you know, under cover of darkness and like one of those like smaller rubber boats, like they would approach a coastline and, you know, assess enemy strength and like, you know, just gather intelligence for like as a forward part of a much larger military force, like to prep for a large ground invasion from an amphibious assault. Like that's how it started. And then if you go throughout their history here, like I'm just, I'm just looking at like,

is it just like courtesy of the history channel, Navy SEALs, 10 key missions, of course the D-Day landings and invasion of Okinawa, invasion of Granada, capture and arrest of Benwell Noriega and Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Thank God. Thank God. Yeah. I want to rewind a little bit. There were like special Marine units for a while, like there were, you know, there was

the SBS, the Special Boat Service in the UK that obviously predates the SEALs and there were, there was SAS, Special Air Service. And we definitely modeled a lot of our guys after that. And we'll talk a little bit about the frogmen underwater demolitions. What's interesting is, you know, we don't want to go too far in the weeds here, but around Vietnam is when we really started getting the idea of sort of formalizing all of this. And in the same speech that Kennedy made, where he's like, we're going to send a guy to the moon, he also committed $100 million to development and training of like specifically

named and like tabbed up special forces. And those are a lot of the guys that we, you know, we saw a lot of use for them in Vietnam. There were the LURPs, the Long Range Patrolmen, Green Berets, obviously that predate that by a little bit. And then the SEALs. The SEALs saw a lot of action in Vietnam. And most interestingly, the thing the SEALs did a lot of was the Phoenix program. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Honestly, I mean, like much of the, much of the, much of the stuff we're going to talk about at least as it relates to Afghanistan is basically how these guys went from being, you know, was essentially like, you know, elite enough, but like not, not, not anything close to like the special, you know, the, you know, knighted class that they are now. But you know, they, they performed their specific thing that related to, you know, SEALs stands for like, you know, SEA, like, you know, like SEA, what is it, SEA, Earth, Air, Wind, Fire, whatever.

Yeah. They're all, they can like, yeah, if you have a Navy SEAL, he can fight any other type of Pokemon. Yeah. SEA, Air, Land. SEA, Air, Land. SEA, Air, Land. Just to make it into a good, a good, an, an anagram.

Searing which is for fire, earth, that's earth type Pokemon, agua, water, and lightning like Pikachu. But I mean like, you know, like the, the frog men of World War II, we're, we're, we're nowhere near what like these SEAL Team Six guys are. And like, yeah, much of what they've done in Afghanistan is essentially what the Phoenix program was in Vietnam, which is just this giant, giant campaign of assassinations where they're given a list of names and then they carry out these capture and kill missions, which just basically means kill.

I mean, they, they just, they hunt people whose names are given to them either by the CIA or JSOC. Like they just, they go out under, you know, again, under cover of Darnix and do these raids and just kill their targets. And you know, in the beginning days of the war in Afghanistan, this was like the list, the names of those targets were like supposed to be Osama bin Laden himself or like his inner circle of like the high level of leadership of Al Qaeda. I mean, but very quickly in that war, those guys all disappeared into Pakistan.

And then officially they weren't allowed to go into Pakistan. But the, as the war, those wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ground on, the political pressure to show results, of course, got more intense. So that like these guys, as, as the word in the articles that we read is up tempo, their operations began to be more up tempo. And the names of people on those lists were like mid-level Taliban commanders. And then eventually just people go into a wedding party and like their wives and children. Yeah, and to, I mean, history doesn't fully repeat itself, but it definitely rhymes.

So during the Phoenix program, the official kill count is something like 87,000, which is fucking a staggering number, a staggering number, even, even with this absolutely genocidal amount of people that we killed in Vietnam. And you know, as Will alluded to, there was a similar thing where often like people who just didn't like their neighbor would be like, he's VC and they would get, you know, capture or kill, they end up just like dragging him out outside the village and just popping him in the fucking head. And there are tons of mutilations, tons of shit like that.

But I do think the Phoenix program for the SEALs is very interesting and our use of special forces gives a new angle to Vietnam for me. And it's that, I mean, it's, we did lose Vietnam. It's undisputable, I think, and we, you know, we pulled out in chain. We didn't do what we wanted to do. But I always think about this line from the book Bloods by Wallace Terry, which is this great oral history of black veterans in Vietnam. And there's a lot of like Navy guys in there.

There are a lot of actually like LURPs or a few LURPs in there who are long range control special forces. And one of the LURPs, like most of the LURPs are like very like sort of jaded and being down about their service, obviously. But there, I remember one guy who's like, yeah, you know, I like, I didn't think we would win, but what we did there was important. We stood up to the communists and said, hey, man, stop this shit. Look how far we'll go.

And I don't think he's quite right in that sense. But I think in another sense, Vietnam and Phoenix program specifically, even I don't, I don't think everyone thought we could win that war by the time we were doing Phoenix program. But for what Vietnam became for special forces, which was like a product testing site is very important. And when they went from being, yeah, frog men underwater demolition guys were definitely a cut above to like, okay, can you do that?

Can you go above and beyond and above and beyond like basic morality? Can you be, can you operate like, can you operate an in country mafia? Can you go into Cambodia and do all this shit? And I think it's, yeah, it's completely reflected everywhere else they've been since. Are you a bad enough dude to traffic heroin? Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, like, you know, the operation Phoenix stuff, I mean, most people don't know about that.

But like, you know, like the World War II, you know, Genesis this, like these guys, this was still at a time when like troops were troops and they were all heroes. And like the world we live in now, it's like these guys, they get a, they get a special level of dick sucking. And it's just, it's not good enough for them to be like fighting for the US of A and have the flag on your shoulder. No, these guys are fighting for their own commando units, essentially. And they want to be treated as such.

But I think what's interesting is if I like, I rolled down that list of like, you know, what are the 10, you know, the 10 most historical Navy SEAL missions? It's like half of them outside of like Okinawa and D-Day, as I mentioned, are like the capture and arrest of Manuel Noriega and Operation Desert Storm and like invading Granada, which are like, you know, not exactly, yeah, they're Okinawa, they ain't. And I think like what comes across in the articles about what they've been up to in Afghanistan is that like for the first time in a long time, they were being used all the time, like going on missions every night.

And as such, for the first time in a long time, they were ending up getting killed, too. And it is that, it's that sense of like, oh, like, you know, we can get our heads cut off as well, or we can be executed after being captured by enemy soldiers that really leads to this sense of like, you know, sort of a grieved revenge and anger and vengeance at like the, you know, the indignity of being killed by something, someone like the Taliban and like that leading to a lot of like, you know, truly a horrific, you know, acts of retribution against, you know, random people in Afghanistan. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, Vietnam was obviously not like a traditional war in the way that the brass thought it would be or hoped it would be. But during Phoenix program, or during all of Vietnam War, for all of the SEALs deployment versus Vietnam, for all those years, 48 SEALs died, a lot of them died, just like they would fight pretty close up to the Viet Cong and the NBA. And typically, yeah, get shot, step on a fucking mine, you know, whatever. For them to, yeah, be caught and like to be made a joke of in the way that some SEALs in Afghanistan were, I think did, it changed the tenor for this thing that was already

pretty sinister, these guys who would already go pretty fucking far. And it revealed a lot of people who like, you know, would be serial killers. What was the only thing stopping like fucking Eddie Gallagher from being like Gary Ridgway is that he can do it in another country to other people. And I think there are quite a few guys like that that we found out about. Well, I mean, before we get into the specifics of what's going on in Afghanistan, I just want to run down just a few recent headlines about the Navy SEALs. Let's just begin here, it's New York Times July 25, 2019, a Navy SEAL platoon is pulled

from Iraq over misconduct reports. An entire platoon of Navy SEAL commandos is abruptly removed from Iraq this week after commanders heard reports of serious misconduct and a breakdown of discipline in the elite unit. Officials did not release any details, but of course, but a senior Navy official with knowledge of the matter said the Navy is investigating reports of the unit, Foxtrot platoon of SEAM Teal 7 held the 4th of July party where some members consumed alcohol against regulations and that a senior enlisted member of the platoon had raped a female

service member attached to the platoon. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the continuing investigation. So that's a whole platoon. Here's another one from July 29, 2020 in Business Intider. It's under a bullshit quote, Navy SEAL was promoted despite allegations he choked a green beret to death. This is a U.S. Navy SEAL was promoted to chief petty officer despite allegations that he

choked an active duty U.S. Army green beret to death only months before. Navy SEAL Tony D'Dolf was promoted to chief petty officer, a rank with the authority of a senior enlisted leader. Even though investigators were looking into the suspicious death of U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Logan Melger, a green beret soldier assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group in Mali. Prosecutors alleged D'Dolf, Navy Chief Petty Officer Adam Matthews, Marine Staff Sergeant Kevin Maxwell, and Marine Gunnery Sergeant Mario Madero Rodriguez, all service members who were living nearby plotted to haze Melger after tensions flared between them by June

2017. Yeah. So that guy, he ended up being charged, pled guilty, they sentenced him to 10 years. This is after he got promoted. And the story that they told eventually is that they were having a static with this green beret that he was not being cool with them just vibing, I guess, in Mali and doing whatever they wanted, which they claim was just sort of like a masculine conflict. There were accusations that he, the green beret, was going to tell people that they had stolen

a bunch of money that was supposed to go to a local informants. Either way, what the Navy Seal and his buddies' claim they did is that they got a local Malian security guard and they were going to choke out this guy to D'Dolf and then film the security guard raping him as basically as a hazing own. That was their, like, frat hijank they were going to do to the guy, choke him out and have this guy rape him and then film it. And one of the guys who was with him was a former MMA guy and he put him in a chokehold and he died.

That's what they say happened. And that's what they say happened and I'm sure a lot of that is true. But like I said, I think a lot of these murders are covering up something a lot more sinister, which, like I said, as I think either just straight up theft, just opportunities to just steal money and rip off people or covering up what I think is the true purpose of a lot of what these people do, which is doing security for our allies in the war on terror, just like our allies in the war on communism, which do tend to be drug traffickers. And also helping the CIA corner the market, basically not directly, but to control all

the choke points that the major suppliers for the international black market for drugs or guns or whatever, that they're essentially not selling to anyone we don't want them to sell to. And then at some point, the CIA is getting a cut as well. And in that world, these are the perfect people to be the sort of the middlemen for this process. It's just guys who are extremely well-versed in violence and have no morality that is recognizable to a civilian or normal human world.

I have a question that may be its own separate discussion, but something that I think's been interesting about in this. We've talked about this forever. We've been wanting to do this episode forever. The interesting thing we sort of pinpointed on the SEALs is these things that they're doing that we've talked about, like the things that are just essentially running crime syndicates. This isn't new for the national security state or anything. But what's interesting is this used to be kind of the province of the CIA.

And what reasons do you think that they kind of replaced the CIA in doing this? They're now the main guys in doing this. I think it's because the job of managing empire changed with the fall of the Soviet Union and then most dramatically with the creation of the war on terror is for the 20th, for post-war era, the imperial management was largely conducted clandestinely through the offices of the CIA. It was coordinating with local allies in governments and in organized crime to move drugs and to suppress communism.

And it was all done through the offices of this clandestine organization in the context of a cold war with another power in the form of the Soviet Union. But with the end of the Soviet Union and then the declaration of the war on terror, you have the empire being brought out into the open basically. Now it's being managed directly through military interventions in not just invasions, but then also these special forces, people being operating in all kinds of countries, many of which Americans couldn't find on a map and certainly don't know we're in, but are doing it directly through the auspices of the military and through this new frontier vision of U.S. military

might on a periphery where there is no other power who can resist or declaim what we're doing and where we're basically given, we have a free hand to shape events as we see fit. And so the people doing that, the point people for that go from being shadowy spooks in suits to bearded operators who come home and then run for Congress and become members of the cabinets and sell fucking operator coffee and write books about how they killed bin Laden. I mean, how many fucking Navy SEALs are in government right now one way or the other compared to when George H.W. Bush, after being a secret CIA agent, was widely thought to have killed

his career when he became director of CIA. Now when we've sort of have owned the empire in a way that we couldn't afford to during the Cold War, our empire fighters are now normalized. So you can have these guys just doing frat parties in Mali and doing epic pranks on each other that resulted murder while also supervising drug and gun running and assassinations because there is no one domestically or internationally to really notice. I think you're right on that. I have two other reasons that I kind of thought of like the first is pretty basic.

I mean, like just because people are all in the same goal kind of doesn't mean they're not competing with each other. And I think to an extent like the military and specifically the Navy saw all the fun the CIA was having and kind of thought like, why not us? Everyone's always competing for what the other department has funding for a billion different reasons. And I think also, I think everything you said is sort of like a primary reason, but I think like, secondarily, it's so advantageous for them to use these guys for this type of thing.

Because if you look at the OSS and then the CIA, and even sort of American intelligence before that go all the way back to the beginning, it worked because there were these networks of people that like basically knew each other their entire lives, right? If they didn't go to the same boarding school, they basically ran in the same social circles and knew everything about each other, because they were all kind of the same people. They were all the same like fucked up, lost or whatever. And it did, it resulted in these funny things like them not thinking Kim Filby could possibly like to be a double agent and you know, all types of shit that you from them look in the

other way, but it also allowed them to maintain this like vales of secrecy, this like kind of America where they're not going to flip or like save their own ass or like give up this whole thing. And these people, they feel this special like ethnic and like social kinship with. And this idea that they're all like destined, you know, knights of this country who've been purposed for that for generations for hundreds of years. I think as that sort of went away, the only thing you need, if you're going to do shit like that, you do need like a level of trust kind of, I mean, I think that's a big reason

why gangs have become so popular in America, like you do need kind of a code and a culture. But like the only thing that can be stronger than like, you know, our great, great grandparents knew each other, our moms know each other, our dads know each other, we fucking grew up at the same time, we've known each other for 40 fucking years, now we're selling all this coke together. The only thing that can replace that is we fought in a war together. If you build those bonds by having guys be in combat like that, for most of what they're doing, you know, prior to, you know, drug trafficking, extra judicial murder, et cetera,

you can replace that bond and it is self-supporting in the same way that the CIA, like Old Wasp Network was. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's really true. But just like, there's only one thing I'm going to bring up as regards drug use, not drug trafficking. I mean, like this is just one article in the Navy Times, Internal Report exposes cocaine abuse lacks testing inside SEAL Team 10. Before they were caught last year, several SEAL Team 10 special warfare operators snorted

cocaine or spiked their booze with a banned substance often defeating military drug tests. They termed a joke according to internal, internal investigation obtained by the Navy Times. The Little Creek Virginia based command conducted your analysis testing on April 9th and April 16th, 2018, nabbing six SEALs for allegedly abusing cocaine and other banned substances. I like one quote here, it says, when I was in Columbia, I was using cocaine. I think the only one of, I was only one of four SEAL Team 10 guys using cocaine there. It was everywhere.

It's like, yeah, no shit. No shit. They're stationed in Columbia and they end up using cocaine. But Felix, you'll enjoy later in the article, one of the guys who, you know, pissed dirty for this said, oh, like, I just like, we were all drinking the same booze and it was just my friend spiked it with cocaine. That's awesome. It's like the MMA excuse.

You're like, I ate a tainted goat. It was tainted with cocaine and look, obviously cocaine is like the perfect drug for people like this. I mean, you know, much has been written about, you know, Hitler's use of amphetamines and the, the Wehrmacht were just basically being given, you know, just like, it was just like rations. Basically, they were given amphetamines to like keep marching and the speed of their Blitzkrieg or whatever was, I think, largely fueled by meth, meth, essentially, and Hitler

himself was as well. I mean, yeah, so cocaine is a, is a, is a perfect drug for this, both as a party drug and just for like the, the personality of these guys to say, stay jacked up, stay fucking, stay on that edge, stay fucking hyped all the time. But deeper than that, because, you know, like, look, drug abuse is pretty common in all aspects of life. I mean, like, there's basically no sector of the American public life or a job in which drug use is not associated in some way or another, or which you cannot find, you know,

people with a habit. And the military is certainly no exception to that. But when it comes to the Navy SEALs, I think there's like another element here that sort of similar to what we're all talking about, like, about the, the ties that bind people and these like elite gang like secret clandestine cadres of like, you know, secret violent men and like the, the world and rules that they abide by, which is very much parallel to our own. I think it's the attitude is like, you know, even if that guy was telling the truth about

like, oh, like I was dosed by my friends because they just dumped like an eight ball into like a keg of Miller Highlight. Yeah, I mean, yeah, seems like a waste to me, but I think, but like, you know, we talked about this in so many other things, it's, it's by doing something illegal or against the rules, but everyone's doing it. It's a way that binds people together in the way like everybody has to have a little dirt on them. So it's like, you know, it's like masking in public.

It's like everyone else's behavior covers the behavior of everyone else, you know, it's just like, like it's a mutual, it's like a shield wall, it's like a phalanx of sorts that the guy standing next to you, like his shield is the one protecting you and vice versa. And the thing with drugs is like, you know, if everyone can piss dirty, then like everyone can be called on it, but if nobody gets called on it or everybody knows about like when the tests are coming or it's just like everybody's accountable to each other because of this like implicit rule breaking and illegal behavior, then what really counts is the shit that goes on in the field, like for instance, when they behead someone for fun, or fucking just kill

someone because they can, or just shoot a kid because they walked into their line of sight. Well, I mean, in that case, this is what it really comes into play because then you know, then you know for sure that the guys who are witnesses to this criminal activity, you've been witness to their much lower grade criminal activity, but such that you are covered by it. Everybody is covered by one another and they're covered by their own illegal actions. That's right.

No, this is, I mean, and what is to put this fully, fully back into the original question, what is this replace? This replaces like what the old CIA guys would do, which is like, you know, steal Geronimo's skeleton and then like all get into the same barrel of molasses and jack off on each other. Like instead of doing like instead of like Americans sort of replicating like British boarding school, like mutual molestation, it's like drugs and all this shit. And murder. It's the same idea.

It's the same fucking idea. It's yeah, we're all a part of this. Yeah. And it's the next and that those sort of the rituals that, you know, it wasn't in the 20th century, it was that the boarding school, mutual masturbation and now it's collective blooding in this ritual violence, those are the way that we initiate people into like rulership like into the halls of power, like the same way that the CIA was a gateway to influence in American governing and business structures in the 20th century.

Now it's become the same thing for the seals. Like there was, remember Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, yes, who who just ripped, who just charged everything that he wanted to the company card, basically like his wife's and would just, yeah, and would, and would like have a government plane fly him to golf or whatever. And he also, and he paid, he spent a shit ton of money to create challenge coins for people in the Interior Department. And then there was Eric Greitens, the governor for a minute of Missouri, the guy who had

the ad where he just fired a Gatling gun into a lake and then had resigned because he did a bunch of horrifying rapes and now is going to run for governor, run for senator next year. And of course, Dan Crenshaw, like these guys are now getting coming home and taking those, the skills they learned in Afghanistan and Iraq and applying them to the tough problems of solving our government issues. See, I mean, like it's, it's, it's both the skills that they learned in Afghanistan, which is, you know, liking shit like challenge coins and patches and little like special little,

little medals that you get. And by the way, the Eddie Gallagher case, Trump granted him clemency after like the case, the literal like the multiple murder charges he was facing fell apart under rather extraordinary circumstances when one of the chief witnesses testifying against him testified under oath after already receiving immunity that he indeed was also a murderer to basically torpedoing the prosecution's case by making their like, their, their star witness essentially admit to do under oath to being guilty of exactly the same things that they were prosecuting Eddie Gallagher for.

I mean, like the way in which that case fell apart is very odd. And I mean, especially considering how completely out of left field, it was that seven of his own members of his own unit were the ones who like are the reason he was charged in the first place. I'll note this only because Trump chose to grant him clemency after he had been acquitted. And the only thing that really gave him was that he never, that he could still wear his trident. He could still wear his Navy SEAL like flair and regalia.

Yeah. I remember reading what Trump said and he said, this guy did, this guy's a great fighter. He deserves his pin. And that's it at the end of the day. It's you've committed all these crimes, here's your special hat will never let anyone take your special hat. And now I'm a guy, I don't even want to go into it, but like the details of what Eddie Gallagher was charged with are so fucking blood curdling.

I mean, you're talking about just like slitting the throat of like a teenager who was already a prisoner of war. You're talking about his own, the members of his own unit fucked with the sights on his rifle because he wouldn't just stop killing children in the elderly because this is a guy who would have like easily been buff and SS. This is like, you know, this is someone who may have been, oh God, I hope I'm saying his name right. It's not Dr. Williger.

Right. I got made fun of her saying that. Sideshow Bob Dr. Williger. I don't know why I can't get his name right. Derrwanger. Derrwanger. Yeah. He's exactly like someone who would like be in that unit.

I mean, this is the exact same fucking personality type. I'm just surprised he has to like come up. Didn't he try to do like a line of operator gear or something? Yeah. He has his own clothing line. I think all these guys have their own clothing and brands now. It's so fucking surreal. Do you want to imagine like if Richard Bissell got fired after the Bay of Pigs and then he

comes out with like a line of t-shirts or like Coonskin caps. No, it's, it's amazing. It's amazing. Honestly, it's the, it's the perfect American thing because yeah, I was reading about all these guys who profited from their service and it's like, no, after doing all these crimes, you have the opportunity to be like just another fucking tacky shithead. Like, do you know that Joker, uh, will neck guy, yeah, he's a little more upscale than Eddie Gallagher.

He's never been accused of like those types of crimes, but his thing is like doing motivational speeches for like computer programmers and being like, if you don't want to get out of bed thinking about all the things that you wish you did yesterday, you could do them today. You know, that type of like bullshit. He's been on Joe Rogan a bunch of times, but that, it is pretty amazing because it's like, yeah, go through this training process that like completely, any residual humanity yet before just strips it away and it makes you into this fucking hardened fucking terminator.

The last thing that people in all these countries ever want to see is you and commit all the shit, run a fucking mafia in, you know, Western Africa, in Afghanistan, fucking wherever, come back and you can be, select your class. Are you fucking annoying asshole, motivational speaker who like teaches CEOs how to be warriors in the boardroom? Do you like make a shittier version of lululemon that has words like honor and discipline on it? You know, do you make like racist coffee?

The world's your fucking oyster. This is like grad school for lower middle class guys. It's true. It's amazing. It's the only grad school that's actually produces returns as the Navy SEALs. Yeah. And it all started, I mean, it's the guy who founded SEAL team six, Richard Marchinko, the rogue warrior.

Yeah. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of this dude. I read, I read his book when I was 13. I read that book. That's what probably caused me to get that knife that my mom took from me. Well, he got bounced from the Navy for doing kickbacks with manufacturers. He ended up going to prison for defrauding the government over like hand grenade requisitions. And then he got out and said that he was actually witch hunted by the government for

all of the awesome shit he was doing with Red Cell and that he, he was just actually like testing military preparedness. That's why they put him in jail. And then when, and then when he got out, he wrote a book about himself, talking about how awesome he was. He became, he became a whole series of like leadership books for business executives. He started doing the motivational speaking shit. He has a conservative talk radio show.

There's a video game. He was a fucking 24 consultants. There's a video game where you play as him that they made. That's like pretty bad and like funny, but also Red Cell inspired much of the plot of Metal Gear Solid 2. I don't know if people knew that, but his book, his book is like, it's very obviously ghost right there. I remember loving it when I was like 12 or 13 and I was still like a big lid, but I was

like, what if I could be this guy, but liberal, it is like, I mean, it is crazy because it's like, yeah. That was the most 9 11 dream. Yeah. I remember when Wesley Clark was going to run against Bush and everyone thought for a second, oh my God, this is it. We've solved the problem. They couldn't possibly call this guy gay, but like, that book's awesome.

Yeah, because he does, yeah, he does tons of kickbacks and all this shit, but he's like, I was completely railroaded, you know, and he doesn't say this to accord it to him. He did nothing wrong and like they just, I don't, he basically implies that like, actually Bill McRaven and others like fuck with spreadsheets to make it look like he was stealing, which is hilarious. But you know, it is kind of like, well, everyone's doing it in the military. Everyone's kind of doing that. He just did it in a dumb way.

I'm a hard-bodied, hairy-chested, rootin', tootin', shootin', parachutein', demolition, double cap, crimpin' frogman. There ain't nothin' I can't do, no sky too high, no sea too rough, no muff too tough. I've learned a lot of lessons in my life. Shoot a large caliber man with a small caliber bullet, drive all kinds of trucks, two-bys, four-bys, six-bys, those big motherfuckers that bend and go, when you step on the brakes. Anything in life worth doing is worth overdoing, moderations for cowards. I'm a lover, I'm a fighter, I'm a UDT Navy SEAL diver.

I'll wind, dine, intertwine, and sneak out the back door when the refueling is done. So if you're feelin' froggy, then you better jump, because this frogman's been there, done that, and it's goin' back for more. Cheers, boys. Everything that we've just talked about will come to a head in all the shit I read about the two guys who both say that they killed Osama Bin Laden and let those two guys out. I love those guys. It's so funny.

There's everything about being an American liar and psychopath, and all the money you can make, if you're good at either of those things, is borne out with these two guys. But before I get into that, I mean, a lot of this, there's a long article in The Intercept by Matthew Cole that came out in 2018 that goes pretty in-depth into both the culture of the Navy SEALs and the culture of war crimes and atrocities that became basically a calling card for SEAL Team 6 and their various subdivisions. But it begins with an account of this raid called Operation Bull in which two SEAL teams and Chinook helicopters attacked this convoy of people that they were, I suppose, believe

were high-level Al Qaeda commanders. One of the guys even said he thought Osama Bin Laden was among the people that they were shooting at because they saw some grainy drone footage, some sort of slightly taller guy in flowing white clothing, and they were like, that's target number one right there. I mean, so it would surprise you to know that this is a convoy on the way to a wedding party, and the Chinook helicopters just sprayed this convoy with bullets, killed everyone they got out, finished off the stragglers who were remaining, and what they found was like a car full of families, essentially.

And yeah, the cars had guns in them, but this is Afghanistan, and it's sort of similar to American policing, what comes across in these news accounts is that, yeah, in a war, it's kill or be killed, but these guys are doing nighttime raids in which many of their targets are asleep when they get their throat slit or get a bullet put in their head. And so it's a little bit shaky, a little bit to just say, oh, well, it's the fog of war, and it is truly kill or be killed. The way that it's justified is that if they have a gun in the home, then it's legit. But this is Afghanistan, much like America, you own a rifle if you have a family.

This is basically everybody has a gun, and it's a normal thing. It doesn't mean that they're militants or part of the Taliban or al-Qaeda or whatever, but basically, yeah, anyone in country is a target, and this goes back to the Free Fire Zones of the Vietnam War. But interestingly, 48 hours before the attack on this convoy was a famous incident where the first Navy SEAL of the war on terror was killed. He was knocked out of a helicopter, he was captured by the Taliban, and executed before he was able to be rescued.

And when they found his body, basically, it was half decapitated, that the enemy had desecrated his corpse, and that led to a lot of anger and a lot of really kind of a vicious curdling of resentment and hatred against the people, the savages who would do something like that to a fallen brother, even in the context of war. And that led to many of the incidents that got the Navy SEALs in trouble, leading to eventually by 2006, McRaven, who was a Navy SEAL himself, taking over JSOC, and cracking down on a lot of this. But a lot of what went on were these textbook violations of the Geneva Conventions.

But the desecration of bodies by Navy SEALs, the taking of trophies of ears, noses, scalps, things of that nature, there was a famous incident where one of the officers, one of these college-educated guys, gave his unit custom-made hatchets, because they were the Red Squad known as the Red Men, and they adopted for themselves the persona of Apache warriors. And the tomahawk became a key part of that. And obviously, there's no fucking tactical reason to be lugging a tomahawk around Afghanistan. But the officer got these custom-made tomahawks from a knife maker in North Carolina. They go for about $600 each.

This is the guy who was actually the consultant on Last of the Mohicans, who made a lot of the weapons for that movie. But it became part of this unit cohesion and morale that they had these special blades that marked them as their own unit, but also a cut above the rest. And when you know it, he demanded at one briefing, bring me a head on a platter. He of course claimed that he was speaking metaphorically, but when you've already issued your unit tomahawks, what the fuck do you think they're going to do with them? I don't know if you guys know this, but I was also in that unit, and I also came from

a privileged background. I also tried to get gifts for my unit, like this guy did. But I got everyone DVDs of how high, because Red Man was in it, and that's why I'm not in the service anymore. The other signature thing, and the other weird thing is because these are capturing kill missions for quote unquote high value targets, the value of which became dramatically a huge amount of deflation going on here as the war ran on here. Like I said, most of these people were just random, regular people.

If they were in the Taliban at all, they were not exactly fucking high value targets. Yeah, by 04 it was great bargain targets. They really, God, do you remember when they killed the purported number two in Al Qaeda in Iraq every week? Oh yeah, that was awesome. Because the thing is, in 2002, they were put in charge of the Hunter Al Qaeda and the Hunter bin Laden. That was the highest profile, the choicest fucking gig you could get, because right after

9-11, that's all anyone was thinking about. But of course, as we all know, nothing ever materialized with that, because most of these guys just crossed the border into Pakistan, and there was nothing left for these people to really do in Afghanistan as it related to hunting down, capturing, or killing the leadership of Al Qaeda. These guys had this mission that they were all jacked up to do, but then immediately bristled up against the constraints of, well, you can hunt these guys, but not across the border into Pakistan.

Because this feeling of a thwarted mission, and also just like the grinding day-to-day horror of these missions, and the fact that many, or more than it ever had in previously in the past, that these Navy SEALs were getting killed in combat on these missions, that led to this sense of increasing savagery and violence born out against their enemies, i.e. many, many civilians. And it should be noted as well, that as early as 2002, even the government of Hamid Karzai was screaming absolutely at the Americans about how many civilians were getting killed in these nighttime capture and kill raids, because obviously they were supporting the

American government. They wanted these operators like hunting down leaders of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, but like I said, as early as 2002, the Afghan government, our Afghan government, was incensed and raising the alarm about just how many fucking women, children, and random people were just getting snuffed out on these supposedly high-level target raids. The other thing that this article goes into, as we mentioned at the beginning of the show, canoeing, as being a signature calling card of the Navy SEALs. One thing is, of course, when you shoot someone in the forehead with one of these guns in

such a way that it will just basically carve a divot out of their entire skull, it will expose their brain manner, and essentially erase any identity that they had as a human being in life and death. It's a signature V-shaped wound. I'm sorry, it is very nasty to think about and talk about, but this became basically sport for the guys in these units. It wasn't just enough to just tap someone twice in the chest and take them out. You had to add the extra shot to the forehead and just blow apart their brains and just

destroy their head, essentially. It became, like I said, a calling card, and what I was going to say earlier is that the fact that these were all about identifying high-value targets meant that, officially, they would have to take blood, skin, hair samples after the target had been killed to confirm their identity through genetic tracing or all this biosecurity shit. If that's already okay, of course, these guys are going to go start taking, let's just say, more than is necessary for an identification. Then you get these grisly spectacles of this one-upmanship about just how good can we blow

apart someone's brain and just how good can we shoot someone in the head so that we can knew them. It became such a thing that McRaven actually had to crack down on it and be like, you can't do this anymore. In the Intercept article, they get into, like, after that was officially no more canoeing. This is making us look bad, or at least people are starting to take notice of this. He talks about, as he writes, at least one canoeing incident that is quite well-known if hidden in plain sight.

Of course, he is talking about the bin Laden raid. Here I want to talk about this, and I want to read from the article, because I think it's like, the bin Laden raid just figures so largely in the mythology of the Navy Seals, and it's like the apex of their achievement. But the actual accounting of what went down is a fairly squalid and ridiculous matter that only gets even more absurd with, like I said, the competing careers of the two liars trying to cash in on their role in it. It's amazing, especially if you, I presume most of our listeners think this, that it

was basically a pheasant hunt set up by ISI. Yeah. It's like, you're going to that ranch where Dick Cheney shot the fat, like, the fat birds who didn't fly. The broken winged birds massacred. And getting into an argument with your friend over, like, who shot the fat bird first? Yeah. Like, these guys are just running behind, up the fucking stairwell, like, like the three

Stooges getting caught to try to put a bullet in this guy's head at that point, like, oh, man, I'm going to get such a good book out of this. It's one of the most farcical, hilarious events in the history of the American Empire, because yeah, just this sick old man and like his wives and like the guy who gets his male all asleep and all these fucking bozos with their decades of murders and fucking training or running in and be like, no, I'm going to buy a boat. Fuck you. Fucking God, like just roided out of their minds again, like standing over the body of

his wife and being like, no, I'm going to get a fucking lake house. You fucking cunt. I got him. Fuck you. Yeah, listen to this. So it says, by the time Robert O'Neill entered Osama bin Laden's bedroom in his Abadabad compound on May 2nd, 2011, the Al Qaeda leader was bleeding out on the floor, possibly already dead after being shot in the chest and leg by the lead assaulter on the raid.

That operator known as Red inside the unit is still an active duty member of SEAL Team 6 and has never been publicly identified. O'Neill entered the room, walked over to where bin Laden lay on the floor and shot him twice in the face. He then stood above the now indisputably dead man and canoed him, firing around into his forehead and splitting open the top of his skull, exposing his brain. Osama bin Laden had been branded by SEAL Team 6. O'Neill has not been shy about the fact that he canoed bin Laden.

His forehead was gruesome, he later told Esquire magazine. It was split open in the shape of a V. I could see his brain spilling out over his face. He's bragging about this in Esquire. Then it says here, two different SEALs, Robert O'Neill and Matthew Bisonet, have publicly taken credit for killing bin Laden. According to multiple sources, both of their accounts contain multiple self-serving falsehoods. The falsehoods, both significant and slight, demonstrate that when even conducting the most important missions, SEAL Team 6 was unable to rise above the culture of deceit, personal

enrichment, and self-aggrandizement that has corrupted a fighting unit legendary for its discipline and code of honor. Well, I mean, I'd take question with that, the framing of it in that regard. But here's, I mean, when it comes to the canoeing of bin Laden, which, you know, in this article's telling of it, was an absolute breach of protocol that was just a flagrant violation of their orders, and in fact, both O'Neill and Bisonet, on the raid itself, by choosing to go to the third floor where his bedroom was after they hadn't even cleared the second, was like flagrantly putting their, you know, teammates at risk of dying.

And they were just like wildly, wildly, you know, flagrant violation of protocol and orders during this mission. But yeah, like you said, Matt, like the three Stooges all trying to go through the same door at the same time, these guys knew what an opportunity it was to be the guy who killed bin Laden, and they didn't give a shit about anything else. So, and then, okay, then yeah, putting three bullets in the head of a guy who's already dead, little ridiculous, just to like, just be like, yep, we canude him, brother, hell yeah, I did that to bin Laden.

It's like, oh, yeah, he was already dead, dude, big fucking deal. I honestly, I had a different feeling about this, where it's like, all these things about how, oh, it was such, I mean, like this is an example of like just the way they like flagrantly violated orders on like the single most important mission in the history of the Navy SEALs, I don't know, I don't know. The fact that they ruined his face, shall we say, and made it like, like if you showed a photo of the cadaver to be like, this is bin Laden, it would be a little hard, it would be pretty much impossible for even his family members to say with any certainty, absent birth

marks or dental records, whether that was the case. I mean, you know, I'm not saying I believe this 100% way, one or the other, but it does certainly raise my eyebrow about whether that was even bin Laden they killed there in the first place. And just the way in which they dispose of the body, where it's like, yeah, we had to chop it up and throw it into the ocean. Yeah. No, we did it most of the time, like they like, they liked the ocean, they've always

loved the ocean. Yeah. No, it raised new questions for me. I mean, I, when I was reading the article and, you know, previously the Hirsch article, I do think it's interesting that it's a kill mission, right? Like this is... Oh yeah, there was nothing Osama bin Laden could have told us, if you'd briefed him or fucking interrogated him, that would be useful.

Yeah. I mean, they, it's a kill mission for this guy that I feel like we pretty much know was just he was in a permanent ISI Airbnb, you know, he wasn't fucking going anywhere anymore. Yeah, he wasn't doing shit anymore. Yeah. He wasn't going anywhere. They were using it. They, that was like, that was someone's golden ticket.

Some guy made a lot off that and probably a few guys. And for, yeah, for JSOC to be like, you know, orders down from the president, kill this guy. Don't capture him. Very interesting. But now, yeah, the added thing of the canoeing makes it more interesting. I mean, I don't think bin Laden is out there somewhere alive. I think it's like very possible he just like, I remember him, he had a kidney illness.

He needed dialysis. Yeah. It's very possible he just died like sadly, but in his own control, like in a cave, you know, 12 years ago. Not even in a cave, probably just in a hospital or a house, if that was, if that's indeed what happened. Yeah. And that, yeah, no, this is just some guy.

That's always boss. So, I mean, like the official story of all this is very fishy to begin with, but which makes the ludicrous lies told by these fucking, these fucking brand conscious fucking Navy Seal killers even fucking funnier. It says here, the beauty of what they have constructed set a former teammate about how Besson and O'Neill cornered the market on the bin Laden raid is that there is only one guy essentially who can come forward and say they're lying and he won't ever talk. The Navy Seal story.

That's it. Yeah. One guy can come forward. He'll never do it. I love this entire story. I really love this story. Even if it really is bin Laden, which I'm now kind of 50-50 on, I love this story because I mean, from all the way down, you really see like the gears of empire because for the

individual seals, it's like, you know, they kind of could have done this at any point. They kind of could have been given the green light to go ahead and fucking get this done and make their curves at any point. But finally, for whatever reason, whatever happens between like the ISI and the CIA and the president, whatever negotiation took place where Obama, he's like, yeah, go ahead and do it. We were clear. And then this guy just happens to be lucky enough.

There's a big thing about how O'Neill made sure that he was on that specific team at this time because they would be the ones that would kill bin Laden. But then even you go all the way up for Obama, for whatever reason, he gets to be the president who's like, oh, yeah, now we can do it. Now, I do it, you know, luck and history and whatever else goes on and some things that are beyond my control. I get to be the guy. I get to be the president who killed bin Laden.

And at the end of the day, it means nothing. It's just another finger on a necklace. It's just another fucking stupid patch or challenge coin. But that's how Empire works. That's it. And whether you're starting your fucking racist t-shirt company or making shitty speeches or you're making shitty speeches for $250,000 a pop, you're having your birthday party with like John Kerry and fucking Common.

Everyone is kind of doing the same thing, just hoping they get in on the right rotation of the gears on the Empire machine to make their career after it. I mean, as long as you're talking about the bin Laden raid, I mean, like, whether you believe they actually killed Osama bin Laden or not, I've always suspected that, you know, knowing what we know now that it indeed was just basically a Turkey shoot arranged by the ISI who were like technically our allies and the fact that like Osama bin Laden had been living more or less un-molested in a suburb of what essentially is the West Point of Pakistan for as many years as he was, would, you know, lead me to believe that there are

many people who knew exactly where he was for a long time in, you know, the highest levels of the American intelligence community. And I've long suspected that they gave Obama that victory in his first term because giving it to Bush in his second term, the returns on it would just not be there. You know what I mean? When you go, when you got it, when you got something fucking golden. Exactly. You use it to maximize your advantage.

And by that point, Bush was already deeply damaged in terms of his popularity. He couldn't run again. He was in the Iraq war. There was nothing you could do. He couldn't run again. There's nothing you could wring out of him at that point. And like, you know, and it's also like as a Republican, like you're like the same way only Nixon can go to China, like it's just you can go so you can go wait, you can get

way more in return from a Democrat if you prove your usefulness to them. And you know, like, let's be honest, that was a gift wrapped political victory for Obama a year before he ran for reelection. Like that absolutely put to bed, like any of the questions about like, oh, is he tough enough to be president? He was the guy who was president when we quote, got Osama bin Laden. And I think that that was entirely, the timing of that always seems suspicious to me. And it certainly just, regardless of what you think about it, that it ended up like

that the CIA and JSOC or and the Navy SEALs who are, you know, let's, you know, the tip, you know, their guys, their button men were able to maximize the advantage of like, of proving their utility to, you know, who is ostensibly their commander in chief. But let's be honest, in return, he let them do whatever they wanted anywhere in the world without any oversight. That's a theory. There's also a possibility that I've always thought that they did it when they did just so that they could ensure that there would be the greatest television show episode of

all time, the newsroom, when the guy, the guy sees, he sees the, the, the wings on the, the pilot and he tells them that we just killed bin Laden for you or, you know, maybe they wanted to make John Cena's career to a permanent and we have caught and compromised to a permanent and Osama bin Laden a lot of people, if you want to charge his career since that moment, it's just gone up, up, up. Yeah. I mean, like it is, it is funny that he did that. And now his, his thing is like going on Chinese YouTube and being like, I am very sorry for

mentioning Taiwan. I mean, you know, I don't, I don't hate him for it. It's like showbiz to showbiz, baby. Yeah. He's on that grind. Respect. I could not learn Chinese to more successfully kiss their ass. That's awesome.

That's awesome, man. Fucking good work, man. I could not learn Chinese. Absolutely. Gun to my head. Not going to happen. And he's such a grinder. Like, you know, he has that like stupid fucking jock thing where like he looks at it like

lifting weights. Yep. And he's like, he's on, he's on Duolingo every day. Just got a good, got on my grind, on my grind. He's watching like Chinese soap operas and he's like, yes, I understand the fucking plot with the secretary. Let's go. He probably like, yeah, it wakes up every day and like watches Chinese soap operas and

like gets into conversations on like Chinese social media and then he has a cheat day where he can speak English. That's awesome. So, I mean, speaking of show business, back to these, these fucking shitheads, O'Neill and Bisonette, who, you know, as we've established violated orders, even by being in the room in the first place and even by official accounts, who wasn't even the first guy to shoot Osama Bin Laden and probably kill him, that guy, I guess to his credit is still only known as red and he hasn't cashed in on any fucking book deals, probably because he's not a liar.

But anyway, so yeah, they violated orders by being there. And it said here, they had specifically been asked to avoid shooting Bin Laden in the face. O'Neill's decision to canoe the Al Qaeda leader made him unrecognizable, you know, make of what you will of that. I personally think that was probably the orders were to do exactly that for whatever reason. It says, okay, so going on here, it says some of the assaulters on the mission were also angry with Bisonette and O'Neill because they neglected their responsibilities after Bin Laden's son was shot.

Instead of helping search and secure the second floor, both headed to the third floor, hoping to get a chance for the historic kill. Both operators were accused of breaking the standard operating procedure to get themselves in position to be among the first to see or kill Bin Laden. Then it says here, Bisonette, they invented a new standard operating procedure of how to get a book deal. Yeah. So here we go here.

Bisonette's bestselling book, No Easy Day, which is really funny because many of the other people that they interviewed about this particular raid said it was by the standards of these hunt and kill nighttime assassination missions was one of the easiest things they've ever fucking done outside the helicopter crash. Only one guy fired back at them and it was like two shots from a pistol from like a second floor window and no one was hit before that guy was shot in the head. There was only one person in Bin Laden's compound fired a shot in anger back at them and he got off like two shots.

The biggest danger to them was that helicopter. Yeah, their own helicopter. They're crashing. Yeah. So it says here, Bisonette's bestselling book, No Easy Day was published in September 2012, four months after he retired and less than two weeks after O'Neill got out of the Navy. The publication came as a surprise to the Pentagon because Bisonette had failed to clear it as required.

I mean, I love that because like, well, the book's still out. I mean, it couldn't matter too much to them if the Pentagon really didn't want a fucking someone's memoir or account to their activities and war from being published. My guess is the publishing house would have pulled the fucking book. Yeah. I mean, wasn't there a thing where they got to, they took back $6.7 million from royalties from him? Oh, okay.

Well, I mean, I guess he doesn't care about. He got fucked. I mean, that's like, that's such an insult. That's like Bill Gates taking $40 from you. You know what I mean? It's like, dude, they spend that on currigs. That's nothing to the Pentagon. God damn.

Check this out though. They really must have been mad at him. Check this out though. After the publication of No Easy Day, which in one chapter describes in great detail the specialized gear along with brand names Bisonette wore on the Bin Laden mission, the Navy opened several inquiries into Bisonette's outside business contracts. They soon discovered he had violated a series of Navy regulations. A joint NCIS FBI investigation into whether he disclosed classified material in the book

lasted two years. During the investigation, Bisonette surrendered a photo of Bin Laden's dead body that had been unlawfully retained. Yes, you're right. Bisonette eventually settled his legal case with the government agreeing to return $6.7 million in profits from the sale of No Easy Day and giving up any proceeds from the future sale of the book. So I guess they did get him in the end for not going through proper channels.

But how funny is it that he included a chapter that he's like, here's my everyday carry. Here's the everyday carry that killed Bin Laden and just listed all these brands that he had business relationships with. He's an influencer. He's an IG model. Like I'm wearing fashion Nova, you know, leggings, I'm wearing a fucking Gucci oversized T-shirt. Oh my god.

Damn dude. Speaking of... I love that last part too about the royalties because it's like, man, to any Patriots out there, you don't think you're giving enough to the Pentagon? Just buy like a hundred copies of No Easy Day, just going right to them. That's buying all the fucking half a million dollar coffee pots in the world. Speaking of Instagram influencers and fuckboys, this is like Navy seal adjacent. But if you guys have been following the story of that, the Navy sailor who's just been charged

with starting a fire on an aircraft carrier that like injured 60 people and destroyed an aircraft carrier that's going to cost $3.5 billion to repair. No. I didn't hear about this. Okay. Yeah. He's just been charged, but like there are photos of him from his social media and he's like, he's got the six pack abs.

He's got the duck face. Like he is just a straight up thought. But the reason he set the ship on fire was because his girlfriend who is a sailor who had dumped him, but like he broke up with him after he had washed out of Navy seal training. So like he wanted to be a seal and they rejected him. And then his girlfriend broke up with him and he burned an aircraft carrier and destroyed it. And he destroyed an aircraft carrier no longer in commission.

You know, that's kind of cool. You know, I think that's like, you know, if you're going to throw a fit, throw a fit. All right. So the no easy day, Bissonnette, he was, he was goofus, but O'Neill is the gallant in terms of selling your, your spurious connection to killing Osama bin Laden says here, although Bissonnette was able to sell a book and tell his story first, O'Neill arguably got the better deal. And in March, 2013, Esquire's profile of O'Neill portrayed him as a humble, quiet professional

who after 16 years in the Navy would no longer have health insurance and was otherwise a downtrodden American hero. The account did not dwell on the fact that O'Neill had chosen to separate from the Navy nearly four years before he was eligible for extensive retirement benefits. In O'Neill's account, he did not see red fire. His shots had bin Laden because he was looking back down the stairs for reinforcements. When he finally entered the bedroom alone, bin Laden was standing uninjured, a weapon nearby, his wife in front of him like a human shield.

Only interest from his target, O'Neill claims, he shot bin Laden twice in the far head. Bin Laden dropped and O'Neill fired the security round that canoed him. Some of O'Neill's teammates were outraged. He'd been so brazenly inaccurate and self-serving in his account. For many on the raid, including those who had been present in the bin Laden bedroom with O'Neill, it was the first time they'd heard anyone in the command say the terrorist leader was standing, posing a threat of any kind. Now keep in mind, that was the official narrative of when the news broke the story, that his

wife was in front of him and he was using her as a human shield and that he had a gun nearby. By all accounts, he was already on the ground when they dumped three bullets into his head. It's established by these guys lying about it in the moment and then cashing out to get book deals and fucking speaking gigs. Yeah, so check this out. In 2004, O'Neill unveiled himself as the man who killed Bin Laden in an hour-long Fox News special just as Bissonnette published a second book.

The former teammates both hit the press circuit, each telling reporters off the record that the other was a liar. Already a popular motivational speaker, O'Neill now charges up to $35,000 a speech. Today he is a paid-on-air commentator for Fox News and is reportedly eyeing a run for the Senate in his native Montana. He even has his own line of clothing. I mean, shouldn't the account of how these two guys crassly sold out so that they could have a TV gig and a clothing line and also just basically call each other liars in the

media? I mean, isn't that breaking the code of fucking honor and discipline that these guys pride themselves on? I mean, how seriously do they take all this shit to begin with when these are the type of fucking thoughts that are produced by this gang of fucking killers? I think they take it very seriously when they're enriching themselves with each other and running their own syndicates and killing people and all that when it's just them helping each other.

But I think after that, it's every man for himself, just like every other pigish American. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, honor and duty and fucking loyalty means a lot when you're all shooting the ANAVAR into each other and holding these Coke parties and stealing shit together and making trophies, pumping each other up. But once you're out and you're just another fucking American, just like every other American who wants a media career, yeah, there's no honor.

There really isn't. Yeah. And there wasn't any before. It was just like mutually assured destruction before. I mean, but it is funny that these guys are, like I said, the apex of American patriotism and masculinity really is kind of what we're talking about here. These guys represent a rugged frontier vision of like a man who is capable of incredible violence in the service of a civilizing mission or to protect home and hearth from even more

violent and evil people that in the 21st century seems like outmoded or that at least in America, like American men seem to constantly be grasping for this vision. That's why all this operator clothing is so fucking popular in the first place. It's so that suburban dads can wear tactical cargo shorts and be like, yeah, I'm supporting or have some sort of kinship with the operators who killed Bin Laden. It's because our lives have gotten so safe and predictable that at the same time, people feel like this loss, like, oh, we should still be scalping people or men should be able to do that if called upon or if it's necessary, which is fucking hilarious to begin with.

But like, the fact that like, you know, these, that's how these guys view themselves, that like, you know, you have the whole Chris Kyle thing that like, you know, we're the sheep dogs protecting the flock and, you know, you need a prick to kill an asshole and shit like that. But like, when it really comes down to it, these guys are just craven media bitches. No. But spitefully like, you know, sniping at each other and trying to cash in so they can have fucking a clothing brand.

I mean, this is all like, I mean, sorry, like that that is that is female tendencies that lying about your friends so that you can have a clothing label and that like, oh, their book won't sell because they're telling lies about you and people should buy your book is I'm sorry for all of it, like the tough frontier warrior mentality that these guys go for. I'm sorry is female tendencies. And so is there fucking all the challenge coins and fucking patches and medals that these guys love so much.

Well, this, I look at these guys now and I see like boot gang or like, whoa, Vicky, I see someone who will like do anything to get even like a sliver of a media career. It just happens that these guys like do everything isn't like take their shirt off in 711 and cause a public incident. It's like, serve in a war for a decade. But everyone, the beauty of this country is that everyone is that everyone is a messy bitch who loves drama. Is everyone the highest thing you can attain the most desirable thing for everyone is a

media career and everyone, whether they realize it or not is kind of that person. And they just happen to like be in a situation and have the right trappings that they can put out this image of like honor and obligation and duty. But you know, they're just the same as you or I. Yeah. I mean, it's the only. The only alienated labor that still exists in this country is that, is that you can just be yourself and get paid for it.

Yeah. I mean, I, after them, I feel kind of guilty. Like we didn't, we didn't have to murder anybody. Well, we can start doing it now. That's true. Better. Yeah. No.

Yeah. I mean, like, I guess, you know, if you're, if you're a wayward, you know, boy out there or maybe you have a boy's heart, but you're a 46 year old father in Missouri, you sort of look up to, it really like speaks to the values of classic masculinity and like duty and honor. I guess, you know, if you're looking for a man in uniform, I guess like a park ranger would be good. The guys who protect the buffalo or bison, I mean, bison in America.

But those guys, I saw this documentary about these guys in Congo who protect a guerrilla sanctuary. Those guys are pretty badass. Absolutely. Yeah. They're not of like protecting people and protecting things and being honorable and all that. Those guys, those guys aren't even really like, they don't care about being famous or anything.

They're just like, no, you got to protect these guys. We love them. But no, I mean, like, yeah, if you don't want to model yourself after someone who's a messy bitch who wants a media career, I guess like those of you guys are like a mailman or something. I don't know. I don't know. Like the, the Turkish guy who does the ice cream tricks, you know, I'm just trying to think of like, fuck that guy.

No. I want my dad. Yeah, you mean my treat, my fucking ice cream. Settle down. Okay. So in this world, there are wolves and there are sheep and wolves are the people who like take the ice cream for people who rightfully bought it. And sheep need to be protected and there needs to be like another wolf who's like good at

doing tricks with the ice cream. So another wolf can't take it because he gets tired of the ice cream tricks, but a sheep who's a bitch will just stay there and like look at all the ice cream tricks until the guy gives it to him. I mean, I guess like just to, you know, I don't know, like to wrap things up. My final thoughts here is that like the special forces, SEAL Team 6, the operators, these elite cadres of like highly, highly trained killers who are just like men of exceeding skill and familiarity with violence is like, look, it's nothing new in American history, but like

as our empire, you know, expands and now I don't know collapses in on itself, the utility of people like this will become ever more present or like the need to use them to further the goals of the American empire as that shifts and changes because of our own actions is I think going to become like, I mean, like these guys are it because like, look, I mean, this country doesn't want to fight real wars anymore. Like we're in Iraq, like, you know, I mean, I'm sure like there are plenty of people who want to. But like this is a way to project American violence overseas and keep people in line

and control black markets and assassinate people that we want dead that doesn't leave like a footprint. There's not a lot of American bodies coming home. It's just all kind of like it's scary, violent in the shadows, but like carried out with like maximum efficiency and minimum oversight. And I think that's just a function of like the changing American way of war or just not even war, just like our American policy and the necessity for things like this. But I mean, I think it should go without saying that not only do we not need a military even

like one tenth the size of what it currently is, we certainly don't need all of these fucking like special units in within the military itself that like as I said at the beginning are militaries within militaries that are accountable to themselves alone who I mean, like it's just like, I mean, like this, like it's bad enough that we have a military this big. But like there is absolutely no need for any of these super secret special forces units. There really isn't. I don't know. Look at Afghanistan right now.

How can you argue with those results? Oh, what's that? Oh, oh, no, I've just, oh, the Kandahar Arby's has been taken by the Taliban. I love the people who are posting that as like proof that we should have stayed there. And it's like, what would 20 more years? No, I mean, my God, like we were that we were a Vietnam for what half as long and they got a two year interval between U.S. withdrawal and collapse. This is a month, two weeks, just 20 years of nothing.

Just propping up a bunch of child raping opium dealers. And then as soon as you left, they had nothing there to keep them going. Yeah. No, this is like just bloodbath for no reason. We should be humiliating for anyone who wanted us to stay there, even really go there. Yeah. What the fuck were we doing? Yeah.

Yeah. No. I mean, shit, we just talked about what we were doing there. No. Yeah. I know. I know. For fun.

Can't believe it didn't work. Yeah. What the hell? I can't believe these people. We didn't like endear ourselves to all of them. Damn. How? Yeah.

Why can't you guys be chill? Killing scores and scores of civilians, um, allowing ourselves with just about the most corrupt and evil people in that country who aren't the Taliban, um, worse than them, like the local security forces and truck lords and shit. Hey, I mean, if you care about the opiate, uh, opiate overdoses, the guys we allied with are way worse than the Taliban. They actually stopped opium production. And, you know, you know, also, we, we, we named buildings after people who are behind

the opiate crisis in this country. Yeah. Think about like, uh, like the Phoenix program and everything in Vietnam, like, gee, um, the golden triangle of like, you know, heroin production in Southeast Asia exploded. And then after Vietnam, heroin addiction and use in America exploded. And then lo and behold, the war on terror were in another, even worse opiate crisis that like, I think 90,000 Americans died last year from opiate overdoses. Where do you think all this heroin comes from?

How do you think it gets to America? Who do you think's getting paid for all the money it's generating? I mean, ask yourself that when you're like, why were we in Afghanistan for 20 years? Yeah. Yeah. Um, stand down on a lighter note, uh, Will, did you see that, uh, it was like some politics account, uh, politics like news account that's like run by a robot in Macedonia, probably like all of them.

And, uh, it was worded like an academics post where it was like the Taliban and China linked up. Yeah, the Taliban's in the studio, standing fire or trash, that was, that was really getting me. Kabul could fall this weekend, facts or fiction, they should have had academic like, if we were going to do 20 years of that, they should have had the academics covering the war. Like he's better than Anderson Cooper. He gets so many more scoops.

Like he's, uh, academics is awesome. Um, I did, I did see, like in terms of the, uh, the Afghanistan withdrawal, I did see like some Swedish politician who was like, this is like Saigon all over again, Americans are cutting and running. I'm like, send, send a Swedish guy over there, send some Swedish troops to Afghanistan. You asshole. What the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, send the Swedish.

You do it. You're, you're the Swedish government. This matters so much to you. Send your army of like chocolatiers and like professional Lego competitors over there. See what the fuck happens. Like, no, no one's doing this. It's not going to work guys. I mean, like, I, yeah, no, I'm not like, and I've seen this ridiculous like, uh, thing

among, uh, among like sort of center rate people that, uh, it's very reminiscent of, uh, when the same people would tell lefties and people are against the record that they were rooting for the insurgents to win, that people are happy about the Taliban, which is absurd. Like no one's cheering for the Taliban, but it's like, yeah, no, you, you literally like, you can't impose this on Pete. Like you, unless you were there for like 150, 200 years, unless there were like an entire nation of people who knew nothing about the occupation, even then, I don't know.

And you know, when things like the Taliban is fucking cool, but it's like, yeah, no, the countries have to be in charge of their own destiny and like, if we, if we were there that long, just bringing opium back and forth and this is, this is when it's like, like a week after we're gone. I don't know what else you think we, we would have done. Well, I mean, it's like the point I was trying to make, like, close it out is that like people, people will justify the existence of these like highly trained specialized commando units because they can do what no one else can do.

And even if you're justifying that along the lines of like hostage rescue, which would be like, you know, just, just about like the only conceivably like good thing that I could imagine you would need like a, you know, highly trained commando unit to do. By the way, in this article, it contains an account of them killing the hostas they were supposed to fucking save with a fucking fragmentation grenade that they threw like right at her, right at her. So I mean, even that is like, but like, why do these people need to be fucking rescued in the first place?

These like aid workers and doctors and shit is because they're there trying to help the people that have been like fucked over by the war we started. So like all, or like, you know, all these, all these dangerous actors because like, oh, after Al Qaeda, it was ISIS or Boko Haram, and I'm sure it'll be fucking something else like then tomorrow. It's just like, we create all the conditions that like would theoretically necessitate the use of something like SEAL team six to deal with. But like these people don't even deal with it.

Like they are part of it. Like they are every bit like the violence they do is like not in protection of America. If anything, it makes us all greatly less safe. And it's just, there's just, there's absolutely like these units, all of these units should be disbanded tomorrow. And I mean, forget having a military this ludicrously large in the first place. We have 10,000 nuclear weapons. No one's invading America.

But like it's just, we need groups like this to exist because that we need to facilitate things like assassinations and drug trafficking because that is US policy essentially. And the people, as long as the people doing it are going to be no different than the people who like chainsaw people's heads off for the fucking Mexican drug cartels. These are the people who do this work. Well guys, if you want to sign up for the Navy, we're going to put a link in the description. You know, if you like what you heard, you think you want to be a part of this, you know, enter code CHOPPO in your enlistment form for 20% off challenge coins.

The Navy. The Navy. The one on a boat. The one for your own a boat. The Navy. You want to see the sea? All right. Let's leave it there.

That was a brief history of the Navy's. Until next time, guys. Till next time. Bye. Bye.