Jocko Podcast - 315: Draft Dodgers. And Low IQ Men Being Used as Cannon Fodder. McNamara's Folly

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

0:00:00 - Opening0:02:39 - McNamara's Folly. The Use of low-IQ troops in the Vietnam War.2:19:13 - Final thoughts2:44:29 - How to stay on THE PATH.3:02:35 - Closing gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 315 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. 7 plus 14 equals A, 21, B, 22, C, 23, D, 24. A boy buys a sandwich for 20 cents, milk for 10 cents, and pie for 15 cents. How much does he pay for it all? A, 30 cents, B, 35 cents. C, 45 cents, D, 50 cents.

A rose is a kind of, A, animal, B, bird, C, fish, D, flower. Awkward, most nearly means A, ignorant, be dangerous, C, clumsy, D, vulgar. Irate, most nearly means A, irresponsible, B, insubordinate, C, untidy, D, angry. Okay. So those right there, clearly not the most difficult problems. Those are examples from a brochure that was handed out to potential service recruits in the 1960s to explain to them the type of questions that they were going to be asked on the AFQT, the Armed Forces qualification test, what we now call the ASVAB,

in order to qualify them for military service. And I read that from an appendix that's in a book called McNamara's Folly, the use of low IQ troops in the Vietnam War. And this book was written by a guy by the name of Hamilton Gregory, who served in Vietnam himself. And in this book, Gregory explains that not everyone could pass that test. which meant that there were people who did not qualify to join the service. It meant they did not have the cognitive capacity to be a soldier.

But guess what? In order to fight a war, you need men. And McNamara devised a way to get more men into the military, whether they were capable or not. And it is a very sad story indeed. You're going to find out that Hamilton Gregory actually ended up very close with some of these people during some parts of his service. So let's go to the book. In 1966, the U.S. war in Vietnam was heating up rapidly. President Johnson and his Secretary of Defense's Robert McNamara were faced with the problem.

The armed forces needed more troops for the war zone. But there was a shortage of men who were considered fair game for the military draft. There were plenty of men of draft age, which is 18 to 26, in America, but most of them were unavailable. Many were attending college, using student deferments to avoid the draft. Others had found safe havens and the National Guard and reserves, which by and large were not sent to Vietnam. So if you went to the National Guard or the reserves, you weren't going to get sent to war. That's not true anymore. But in Vietnam, if you were in the National Guard, you weren't getting sent to Vietnam.

Still, others were disqualified because they scored poorly on the military's mental and physical entrance tests. How could Johnson and McNamara round up enough men to send a war? They realized they would anger the vote powerful middle class if they drafted college boys. And if they sent National Guardsmen and reservists to Vietnam. So instead they decided to induct the low-scoring men whom Johnson referred to in a secret White House tape as quote second-class fellows End quote on October 1st 1966 McNamara launched a program called Project 100,000 Which lowered the mental standards men who had been unqualified for military duty the day before were now deemed qualified

By the end of the war, McNamara's program had taken 354,000 substandard men into the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy. Among the troops, these men were often known as McNamara's morons, or the Moron Corps, or McNamara's boys. Military leaders from William Westmoreland, the commanding general in Vietnam to lieutenants and sergeants to the platoon level, viewed McNamara. program as a disaster because many of the project a hundred thousand men were slow learners they had difficulty absorbing necessary training because many of them were incompetent in combat they endangered not only themselves but their comrades as well a total of 5,478 low IQ men died well in the service most of them in combat their fatality rate was three times as high as other GIs. An estimated 20,000 were wounded and some

were permanently disabled. There were also tens of thousands of other quote second-class men who were not part of Project 100,000 but were inducted despite medical defects such as missing fingers and blindness in one eye, psychiatric disorders, social maladjustment, and criminal backgrounds military leaders didn't want them but were forced to accept them we don't know how many of them died or were wounded while I was in the army which was 1967 to 1970 I got to know some of McNamara's substandard soldiers and I vowed that someday I would tell their stories and give the historical background this book is the fulfillment of that vow there's the opener that's just the pro

blog. It's very disturbing to hear this. And it also, you know, as we read through this, you're going to definitely think of Forrest Gump. We have all seen that movie Forrest Gump and you think, oh, how did that guy, how was that guy in the military? He's a perfect example and you're going to hear plenty of examples like that. Same thing with full metal jacket, you know, private pile. Obviously, a guy you think, well, how could he actually get recruited? Well, here's how. McNamara's 100k. Here's a note, he says, author's note, I am aware words like moron, retarded, fatso, and dwarf are considered insensitive and offensive in today's society, but I use them because

they were widely used in the 1960s, and it would marred the historical accuracy of my report if I replace them with words that are kinder. Likewise, I sometimes quote individuals whose descriptions are harsh and unsympathetic, but I have included them to document how men who were, Different were viewed and treated in those days Names and certain other identifying features of the men at Fort Benning have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals and their families So there's some language clearly that is considered offensive today and he knows that But he wanted to kind of give a feel of what these guys were like and how they were being treated

What they were being called back in the day So moving into this a little bit getting into how his story he started he says one morning in the summer of 1967 I was seated with over a hundred men in a room at the Armed Forces induction center in Nashville Tennessee at it was the height of the Vietnam War and I had volunteered for service in the US Army sergeant walked into the room and announced that all of us would begin would would leave soon for travel to Fort Benning Georgia to begin our army training then he asked is anyone here a college graduate I raised my hand and he motioned

me to follow him he took me down a hallway to a bench where a young man was sitting he informed me that the young man was named Johnny Gupton who is also being assigned to Fort Benning I want you to take charge of Gupton he said go with him every step of the way without bothering to lower his voice he explained that Guptain could neither read nor write and would be neat and would need help filling out paperwork when we arrived at Benning then he added make sure he doesn't get lost he's one of McNamara's morons. I'd never heard the term and I was surprised that the sergeant would openly insult Guptain. In a few weeks, I would learn that McNamara's morons was a team that many, it was a term that

many officers and NCOs used to refer to low IQ men who were taking in the military under a program devised by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara to raise their IQs and mold them into productive soldiers. He goes on a little bit further and says, I was nervous about the rigors ahead, but I felt brave and stoic and important. I envisioned losing weight and bulking up my muscles and becoming a lean green fighting machine. As the popular saying had it, I looked beyond the eight weeks of hell and pictured myself going home on leave, looking hard and fit. I tried to make small talk with Guptain, but he didn't say much. I asked him what state he was from, but he didn't know.

He spoke with a hillbilly accent and used mountain phrases like, I know, it and sody water he looked unhealthfully thin i was surprised that he knew nothing about the situation he was in he didn't understand what basic training was all about and he didn't know that america was in a war i tried to explain what was happening but at the end i could tell he was still in a fog so that's that's that's what we're dealing with here you know guys that don't even know what state from. And there's a bunch of details in here. You got to get the book and read it. Um, just as he interacts with some of these folks, you know, they have to put down their address. They don't, they don't know what their address is. They can't write. They can't fill out of form because they can't read.

It's, it's very, very sad. When is this book written? He wrote it. I mean, he wrote it now, but it's taken place in 1960, whatever, but this book came copyright, 2015. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. And I actually researched to try and get in touch with Hamilton Gregory, but unfortunately he passed away Here's an example of what we're dealing with. Gupton's new combat boots provided a challenge he could tie the laces but the knot was primitive and ineffective I tried to teach him how to make a standard knot to no avail so I ended up tying his boots every morning He says Gupton was unable to make his bunk to strict army specifications. So Flewellyn was another guy

Flewellyn and I had to do the job for him every morning. Guptain had difficulty distinguishing between officers and sergeants. He goes through all kinds of examples of what's going on in boot camp. And they show up at boot camp and they're doing standard boot camp stuff. You know, I want to go to Vietnam. I want to kill some Viet Cong. Don't call me, sir. I work for a living.

Kind of all those stereotypical things that you hear about, all that's going on. Fast forward a little bit. This chapter is called weaklings, faties, and dummies. One morning as the 185 trainees of Bravo Company were assembled in front of Captain Bosch, he called out the names of 15 men, including me and Guptan. We were ordered to come forth and stand in line in front of the captain. He announced that we had been identified as being deficient. You're the scum of this company, a goddamn bunch of weaklings and fatties and dummies, he said.

From now on, we would be known as the Muck Squad. You know what muck is? That's a shit at the bottom of a sewage pit. That's what you are. Worthless shit. I'm going to run your asses all day long. He said that Bravo Company had a good chance of compiling the highest average on the final PT test of any company at Fort Benning, but that we threatened to drag down the company average. We were still members of our original platoons.

But whenever Captain Bosch asked for the Muck Squad, we had to leave our comrades in line up in front of him. We received physical training beyond what we received with our platoons. It was often given before lunch and after. dinner. So you can kind of pick this up and I forget if I highlight this or not, but the guy actually Hamilton Gregory is not in good shape. And so he shows up and he mentioned, you know, I want to lose some fat and build some muscle. So he's not like an athletic guy that shows up and apparently that's why he's getting called out. Here's another interesting story about what we're doing with. Someone in the barracks discovered that Gupton thought a nickel was more valuable than dying because

it was bigger in size. I saw him being cheated by a trainee who said, I'll give you this big nickel. If you give me your little dime, he says, word of Guptin's ignorance about coins apparently spread to the officers because one day Muck squad lined up. Captain Bosch appeared with several visiting officers,

and the first thing they did was show Gupton a nickel and a dime and asked him what you would prefer. They all grinned when he pointed to the nickel. Did you ever think that? Do you ever remember thinking that a nickel was worth more than a day? Yeah, when I was five. Yeah, me too.

I remember that because it kind of made sense in a way before you. you're good or you knew basic math. Yeah. Because look, you got a penny which kind of segregates itself because it's not made out of the shiny silver stuff or whatever it's made out of something more brown, you know, more brown. But

I actually can remember thinking a penny was more valuable than a dime. Oh, okay. I was going size. Yeah, yeah, size. We're just going mass. But it makes sense. If you just exclude the dime nickel relationship and the penny too, there's other facts. But if you exclude that little relationship, it makes sense because

you go up, you go quarters bigger. And you You got the 50 cent piece, that's even bigger. And you got the dollar that's even bigger back then. Cool, but the point is, what age did you figure out that that wasn't the deal? I know, bro, but I just said I can kind of relate a little bit. You can relate to Gupton when you were five. This guy's in the military. Which paints a picture.

Actively trading coins. Yeah, that's true. It's awful. Yeah. He says, then the visitor stood in front of one man at a time and asked such questions as who's the president of United States. This question was one of the most. Most of the men could not answer. One of the officers looked at me, probably noting my goofy face and asked, where are we fighting a war?

Vietnam, sir. Where's Vietnam located? I replied as much as I could muster. Sir, Vietnam is situated in Asia directly south of China and adjacent to Laos and Cambodia. He looked surprised by my intelligent response and his fellow officers grinned. He's a college graduate, interjected Captain Bosch, but he's badly out of shape. One of the visitors who is a captain, asked Guptain, which rank is higher? or a general gupton was speechless for a few moments and then stammered i don't know drill

sergeant drill sergeant the officer yelled he pointed as insignia and said don't you know these two bars mean captain don't you know what you're supposed to say sir captain boss said can you believe this idiot was drafted i'll tell you who else is an idiot fucking robert macnamara how can he expect us to win a war if we draft draft these morons captain boss's contemptuous remark about Defense Secretary McNamara was typical of the comments I often heard from career army men who detested McNamara's lowering of enlistment standards in order to bring low IQ men into the ranks. So we always, well, no, we always, this is something that comes up all the time today too, right? We're always concerned about lowering the standards for things.

Because when you start to lower the standards, standards are there for a reason. Start to lower the standards and we don't know what's going to happen. I think that's the scariest thing about lowering standards is that you you don't know. You don't know what's going to happen. You just know what has worked. And even when things you say they, quote, worked, you know that those things have been stressed and sometimes they didn't work all that well. And maybe the standards should have been higher.

So now we're going to lower them. It's a concerning thing to do. A lot of times or a lot of times, I don't even know what that means. But the thought behind it is lowering standards because we need. more people. Well, that's what's happening right here. Right. So it's like a, it's like this constant balancing act because sure, you can have more people, but you can't lower the standards all the way down so that more people actually hurts because there are a bunch of people who are incapable or whatever. That's the, that's the point. Yeah. So I see the under, like,

because what if your standards are too high? Kind of like no one can meet these standards. So now you got one guy here for three guys. And they can't do the job because there's only three of them. So let's get some, you know, some other guys doing some other stuff. stuff where sure, you know, one of these three guys could probably do the job of eight of these other guys, but they're over here doing, you know, busy doing other stuff. So let's get eight more guys, you know. But when they start to get each other's way. Yeah. And then we got to, well, I guess the question is really, where do you draw the line? Yeah. And that's what's hard to figure out. Yes, sir. Because. Well, like I said, you have your standards and you think, well, we kind of have survived with these standards. for four wars, right? They kind of worked. And all of a sudden we're going, well, you know what?

We're actually going to lower these standards. That's a rough move to make. Yeah. Especially, and this is very common for McNamara, to just make decisions and impose things without consulting the frontline troops that actually have to train and then go fight alongside these people

that are not capable. A little bit more about boot camp here. Day began at 4.30. Day was filled with exercise, instruction, menial chores, all accompanied by incessant shouting and insults. We were called a variety of disparaging names, including shitheads, assholes, assholes, pussies, and queers.

One verbally clever sergeant would refer to a poorly performing trainee as a sad sack of shit or an idiotic turd. Or he would tell him that whale shit is at the bottom of the ocean and you're lower than whale shit. At night we got little sleep. We were supposed to go to bed at 10 o'clock, but as things turned out, we were up until 1230, which meant we only got four hours of sleep. Some nights we didn't even get four hours of sleep.

If we had to pull fire guard duty, we'd spend an hour patrolling inside and outside the barracks watching for fire. Then we would wake up our replacement. There's a bunch of interesting information about boot camp. And then he says, I learned that Captain Bosch wanted to rid as many of us members of the Muck Squad as possible because they threaten to pull down the company average for the end of basic training test, which is, this is pretty typical of the military where there's some weird rule or some weird goal that causes all these unintended circumstances.

Like, okay, we're going to judge, we'll give a company award for the best PT scores, and then people start running people out of the company and not training and brought. That's unintended consequences in the military is always, I always got to chuckle out of them. But it happens in every industry. So that's why you got to be aware of them. So here's this guy, you know, the commanding general or whoever, the regimental commander probably thought, you know what, I want to see? I want to really have something to strive for. Let's give the best company's PT scores an award.

We'll give them a streamer on their flag. Yeah, that'll be great. So now you just got these leaders just getting rid of people. So that's what happens. Here's a little bit more scariness. For a week or so, a sergeant was assigned. to accompany Guptain at the rifle range. I overheard the sergeant telling other sergeant

that Guptain should absolutely never be allowed to handle loaded weapons on his own. All the sergeants agreed that big trouble would happen in the weeks ahead when we trainees simulated combat with such maneuvers as fire and movement in which you advance in parallel lines with a partner through an assault course. While your partner ran ahead, you provided cover fire.

Then he dropped to the ground and provided cover fire for you as you ran ahead. And so on down the field, the sergeant foresaw disaster. So this guy's not even be able to be capable of the fundamental rudimentary tactic of war, which is cover move. Here, this is where you can see that Gregory's having some issues on one of these forced marches. He's getting called a goddamn pussy. Get back up and run like a man. This continues on after we marched an hour.

I got heat cramps in my shoulders and became dizzy and nauseated at one rest stop. I took a swig of water from my canteen, which made me vomit. Flewellyn, which again is one of his buddies, came over and felt my forehead, which he said was burning up. He summoned Sergeant Boone, who splashed cool water on my face, then to light my load. The sergeant carried my rifle while Flewellyn carried my pack, and we continued our march. When we arrived at the rifle range, I felt sick and dizzy and had, and I was parched. and I walked through a patch of glass lay down and blanked out. Next thing I knew I was in an ambulance headed toward the hospital.

Medic was taking my temperature, which was 105 when we got to the hospital. My temperature was still 105. I was stripped down and dunked into a big hospital tub filled with ice and water. I was kept in the hospital for a few days and then released back to Bravo Company. But while I was gone, Captain Bosch had secured permission to have me sent to special training company because I had missed key days of training and needed, quote, rehabilitation for being recycled to another basic training company. So he's got the opportunity to get rid of this guy that's slow and not the best of shape, and he gets put in this special training company. So let's fast forward a little bit to this special training company.

When I arrived at special training company, I was taken to the orderly room to be interviewed by the first sergeant, undoubtedly influenced by my goofy face. he said we got to fill out some paperwork can you read and write Gregory replies I hope so I said I'm a college graduate he gave me a surprise look he was just one of the many who prejudged me because I appeared to be adult I smiled and said I bet you I thought I bet you thought I was one of McNamara's morons he grinned and said we got a lot of morons here we don't need anymore when I told him I wanted to pass through special training and finish basic as quickly as possible he seemed pleased

and we ended up having a friendly conversation there were about a hundred men in special training most of whom had failed basic training because they possessed one or more of these attributes mentally slow weak inept overweight or psychologically troubled also present were trainees who were convalescing from injuries whereas physical training occupied about 40% of our active in basic training it consumed 90% in special training company we are supposed to get instruction that would help us with the rifle and test and the G3 proficiency test but there was very little assistance

Low IQ men were supposed to get remedial reading lessons, but I saw no evidence of such training. At special training, it was PT all day, every day. After I stowed my gear in a wall locker, I joined the company, which was on the PT field, struggling with the most excruciating physical torment I have ever endured in my life. Intensive log drills. And he goes on to talk about log PT. He actually has a picture of seals in here doing log drills. P-T because if you don't know that's a huge part of not a huge part it's a substantial part of basic seal training

We call it log PT Yeah, it is that the log PT is that mainly Because they're not really exercises right they're just like all we want to introduce this log to your whole thing to make everything hard or is it actual like a program When when you say out it's wow What he says here is the drill is nothing but torture involving no true rehabilitation or strength. That's what he says. So maybe that answer your question. Yes.

But when you do it in buds, it's definitely like it's teamwork and strength. So you have a log. It's basically a small telephone pole. Maybe it's probably 15 feet long or something like that. Maybe maybe 10 feet long. Do you ever take it in the water? Oh, yeah. Do it float?

You take it in the water, you take it through the obstacle course. Like how does it is, because water is not a huge part of it. Okay. And it would have to float like otherwise you would drown. Right, but you know how there's different. Okay, so on Kauai, we have logs too. We mess with or whatever in the water. But sometimes if they're super dry, they'll float, float.

They're like a little floatation. But if they're not, they'll kind of float, but if you get on it, it'll sink and it's a pain in that. It's much more a land device. It's more of a land. Yeah. But you do, like you, you all put it on your left shoulder. Then you do squats. Then you do overhead press and you hold it up there.

And then you do like left shoulder, right shoulder, overhead press. And then you do lay down. You do situps with it. You do scut. So you just any kind of PT, calisthenics. Okay. So there's a little bit of a program there like where it's like, okay. Yeah.

Like you do pushups. You lay down. You do like bench press with it. Yeah. You know, then you do pushups on it. And then you do sit up. I remember doing situps because I remember they said situps. And I was kind of thinking, how are we going to do a sit-up with a log?

But yeah, you just all lay there, put it across your chest and do sit-ups. With it across your chest. With it across your chest. Oh, so it's like a little piece of workout equipment. It's a little, it's a big piece of workout equipment. So do you ever, and I thought it was you who might even have said this. But I don't know, clarified. So have you ever, do they ever say, hey, just bring this log, you guys, you know, like to, if you're going to the, I don't know, what are you called, a cafeteria or something?

No, you would meet for log PT. Okay. So it was pre-specific. And then one, for a while, they had a log that was called Old Misery. That was way thicker than the other logs. And so if your boat crew was doing bad, they'd give you old misery. And I guess now they have an even better log, which is, it's a log, but it's cut up into pieces and tied together with a rope. So each piece, so they can tell who's putting out and who's not.

So you just, you know, you've got your 50 pound chunk or whatever. You know, if there's, if it's one continuous log and I'm under it and you're under it and there's five other people under it, it's kind of hard to tell who's putting out and who's not. Yeah, yeah, that log that's all broken. Yeah, yeah, you're in the middle. Yeah, you're in the middle. You're kind of cruising, right? You can be. You could be.

You probably could be. So now they have this log that's cut up. Yeah. And yet attached. So let's see how you're looking now with that part of your life. sagging doesn't that psychologically then again it might do the opposite because psychologically like if it's all one log and you kind of can't tell who's putting out and who's not doesn't that kind of add to the team building

experience where you kind of got to trust the guy yes but let's say I they didn't have that log they didn't have either one of those logs when I went through we didn't have old misery log and we didn't have this cut-up log but so I don't know But you feel, you know, you should feel peer pressure to like lift. But let's say you were an instructor. Yes. And you're watching this boat crew kind of fail. And you're wondering, hey, who in this boat crew is actually getting after it?

Right. And who's not? Yeah. Hey, go grab this cut up log. Yeah, we're going to see. We're going to find out real quick. Yeah. That's the thing, man, that that training makes you, it figures out what your weaknesses are.

That's interesting because that really illustrates the two separate elements of buds and training and stuff where it's like the instructor's perspective and then the user, the person, right? The candidate. What do you call the cadet? The tadpole. Sure. That's legitimately they call them tadpoles. Like a baby frog. So it really clarifies that those, the difference in perspective, because look, if I'm a little guy who's not very strong and I, and each one of our, and we got the cut up log and everybody, and you know, you got, I don't know, how many guys in a, you're in a boat crew with other guys that are your same height or very similar.

A couple inches difference. Okay, so let's say my strength isn't strength. It's distance running or something like this, yeah. But now the functionality as a team. kind of breaks down a little bit. A little bit. From the user perspective. Here's the deal.

If you're my swim buddy, you're my boat crew, we're together and I know you're a fast runner. And I know that you're not as strong as you could be, but you're a good guy. Guess what? Come on, man, we got this. Yeah. What if you're a turd? And I'm like, hey, dude, you aren't putting out. Right.

So it does help develop, it helps identify people that aren't good teammates. Yeah. Because if you're a fast runner, You might be like, hey, Jocco, you know, let's say I'm a slow runner. I'm stronger than you, but you're faster than me. Hey, Jocco, I'll pace you on this run. And you help me and you push me. And that's the thing.

You're going to have good days and bad days. Or good days and bad days, A, you're also going to have strengths and weaknesses. Everyone is. Yeah. So there's no one. I'm trying to think. There's just about no one that goes through buds that just doesn't have any issues. They're going to find, because, hey, you might be a really fast runner,

but you get cold. Yes, sir. You know, you might be really good at the obstacle course, but you get cold. You might be a really good swimmer, but you get cold. Do you see what I'm saying? They're going to find something.

And the cold thing is funny because I think that's what makes a lot of people quit is just being cold and uncomfortable and miserable. Yeah, and that warmth seems. Yeah, that warmth seems. But it's so temporary. It's a freaking lie. Yeah, I can, I understand.

But there's very few. few people that don't have a problem with some area of buds. You know what, maybe that's strong. There's, there's, there's a decent amount of people that have that are like, oh, I was kind of okay at everything. Yeah. Okay. Believe me.

I'm not trying to say it was good. I definitely wasn't great at anything. I definitely wasn't. But I was kind of okay. And there was people that were more okay than me at everything. So there's people that kind of, but if you're really good, here's, Here's, I guess, where it comes in. If you're really good at one thing, chances are you're not going to be really good at everything.

There were some guys in my class that were really good at just about everything. They might have one or two things that they weren't great at, but they were usually pretty small. I mean, my honor man, a guy named Keith Camero, he was pretty much good at everything. He was a stud in the water. He was fast. He was awesome at the O course. But I will say this. Even the guys that were really good at everything, they would very, actually, it wouldn't be.

They wouldn't be the best at something. Yeah. They wouldn't be like, oh, this guy, we're going to win the runs by a record number. Or this guy's going to do the O course in a record number. There might be a guy that's just, hey, I swam in college, and that guy's just going to crush the swims. Yeah, yeah. You know, we're looking for him on the rugs, though.

You know what I'm saying? Right. But that's kind of what I'm saying with the cut up log versus the whole log. So it's like, hey, you're a good teammate. You want to pick up the slack for this guy and he's going to be, you can't pick up, it's harder to pick up the slack. Oh, it's definitely. Not a lot.

Definitely harder. You'm saying? So look, this poor guy who's great at swimming, great at running, and then, but he's this little skinnier or whatever. Needs help on the belts, boy. And if you got a full log, a connected log, it's like, hey, let's all do this together. I got you. Hey, I'm going to trust you to put out what you can.

And that would be the standard. Occasionally, this is what would I imagine trigger this? Because, again, they didn't have this kind of log when I went through. What I think would trigger this is, you see a boat crew that's now yelling at each other. Oh, yeah. Now we got, now we got a problem. Let's see what's going on for real. Because a lot of times, not a lot of times,

it can definitely happen that the guy that's yelling at everybody is the guy that's not putting out. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. But doesn't that kind of work both ways, though? So like, yeah, if you got, what if I'm weak in the cut-up log? And I, man, I just can't do these reps the way these other guys can.

But if you're a good teammate versus a bad teammate, that's going to show regardless, right? If you're a bad teammate, put it this way. Because you see a guy and he's like, he's pointing out as much as he can. He's physically weaker than everybody, and I start yelling at him. That's bad.

Unless you're encouraging him. Here's the thing I think that people get, what's the jammed up? Jammed up during the seal training is, and the instructors know this. Like, let's say you and I are in a boat crew, right? And we probably would have been in a boat crew because you're 511, I'm 511, right?

So we're in a boat crew and you're sick or you have cramps or you, maybe you're just not strong at, you know, maybe your neck is hurt. And so we're getting told to do something and you can't do it. And you're like, I can't hold this boat on my head right now. I can't do this anymore, right? The instructors see that and they go over and they go, oh, you know what they start saying to you? You're holding back the team. you're holding back the team

the team doesn't want you you're going to make them lose when they lose they're going to get hammered by us we're going to crush them it's all going to be your fault they're getting in that person's head and it works and that person goes I quit

I don't want to be a detriment to the team right so they quit it's a lie it's actually a lie because everyone every one of those guys and buds is going to have a time where they're like oh, this isn't my strength right now,

and I need, can somebody help me with whatever? Maybe they got like heinous cha- there's just things are going to happen. And, well, to a lot of people, to a lot of people, things are going to happen where they're feeling like, oh, my God. I'm trying to think. I don't think I actually was ever

in that bad of a situation during buds where I was like, got to carry me across the line or whatever. But I saw it happen to people. And sometimes they would get in those, and it was okay. Yeah. You know, it's, hey, man, don't worry. We got you.

Hey, just hang on. We'll all, like someone's freezing, all cuddle around them to like, to like get them warm. Stuff like that, you know, that's what you're trying to do. Now, if the person's a piece of shit, you're kind of like, dude, you look a little jelly over there. So there's like a little selection going on. There's a little class selection. Even though it's not formal, like in Ranger School, they do peer, peer evaluations. We have to rank everyone in the class and, like, the last person's getting dropped if they got a couple times.

I forget the actual rules because I never went through Ranger School, but if you, if they rank Echo Charles number 48 again, bottom of the list, oh, there's Echo Charles again. We're getting rid of them. And so they actually rotate through. They're like, okay, rank me last this time, rank Echo last next time. And so if you do it smart, if you work together, you can, no one gets dropped. No one gets peered out. In seal training, they don't really have that except for what I'm just talking about, which is looking at a guy

going, oh, we don't want to help him right now. Yeah. In his moment of weakness. It's handled internally. It's handled internally. All right. Here we go. Let's get back to the book.

Speaking of this, there's various tests. He talks about this test that they have to pass that has, that has a bunch of different components. It's got like a low crawl that you got to make. You got to do these monkey bars. You've got to do this, this sprint jump over trenches type thing. There's a grenade throw. They got, and then a mile.

So that they have a test that they have to pass to get out of this training company. And he talks about the various things and what would make people fail. But one of the things he said is he says to succeed in the mile run, you obviously needed endurance, but you also needed problem solving ability. At the beginning, some of the men would sprint as if they were running 100 yard dash. This caused them to become out of breath and tired. They would slow down and struggle for the rest of the mile. They couldn't grasp or apply what the sergeants told them about the need to maintain

a steady pace throughout the entire mile. For most of the men in special training company, passing the test was impossible. Their low mental capacity doomed them to failure. They could never pass. Under military rules, they were supposed to stay at special training until they passed all requirements for graduation from basic. So what was going to happen to them? Would the army keep them in the company until their service time came to an end?

Or would they be discharged and sent home? or horrible to imagine, would there be cheating of the kind that Captain Bosch had used in Bravo company to send them on to Vietnam? So you got this special training company. In order to get out of there, you've got to pass the basic requirements to get out of basic training. And then you can go back to your company complete. And we already got an example of Captain Bosch. I was like, oh, we're going to get rid of some of these guys. And there's another incident that he talked about where there's various forms of cheating that they did to get someone a better piece.

It's a test so that's happening again. It's an unintended consequence of what of this whole training program Yeah He says here while most of the men did poorly on the PT test because they were limited mentally This was not the case with Charles Lassener who is very intelligent but too weak and clumsy to pass He was about six one had long spindly legs and yet he was unable to jump across the ditch in the run and dodge and jump When he ran through the course he took short dainty steps and he was too uncoordinated to make the leap. There was something about Lassiter that elicited fierce hatred from the sergeants.

They hounded him constantly calling him a queer and a pansy. During the training day, he was screamed at more than anyone else. And in the evenings, he was always given log drills as punishment. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. At lunchtime, one day, he sat on his bunk and declined to fall out for afternoon formation. I tried to coax him into getting up, but he said, I can't take any more of this shit. He seemed deeply depressed. A sergeant appeared and ordered him to join the company, but he refused.

The sergeant fetched the company commander, Captain Brown, who gave him a direct order to get off the bunk and join the company on the PT field. Again, Lassiter refused. The MPs were summoned, and they arrested him and took him to the stockade. We never saw him again. I later heard that he was court-martialed and sentenced to four years hard labor in the military prison at Fort Levinworth, Kansas. Glacters refusal to train must have caught the attention of high-ranking officers at Fort Benning because a few days after the event, a full bird colonel visited the company. Captain Brown assembled us in front of the colonel and said that we were fortunate to have

him with us because he was a combat veteran of World War II and he had important things to say to us. The colonel proceeded to give us a motivational talk. He was a white-haired, distinguished-looking officer and he seemed sincere and concerned. Without making any reference to Laster's deed, he exhorted us to fulfill our duties and fight, to guarantee the liberties enjoyed by our families and friends. Our nation was involved in a conflict between the forces of freedom and the forces of darkness. Insidious totalitarian communists wanted to enslave us and trample upon our rights.

We must be strong men, obedient men, and we must be willing to sacrifice like Washington's troops did at Valley Forge in the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, or like Eisenhower troops did on the beaches of Normandy. He continued in this vein, and as he spoke, I glanced at the men near me. They were looking at the speaker respectfully, but I knew that most of them were not comprehending his concepts. It was a bit comical, as well as a bit sad.

Here was a well-meaning World War II veteran who seemed unaware of the intelligence level of most of his listeners, talking about patriotism and other abstractions to men who had no idea of what he was talking about. Yeah. I probably should have covered. There's just so many incidents that he covers in here that kind of identifies the mental capacity of the people that he's dealing with.

And that's one example, but there's really other obvious ones. You know, he talked about not being able to tie the shoe, not be able to read and write. These guys are, they're just, they just don't have the cognitive capacity to do this stuff.

And that was sort of the, the crux of it. This World War II veteran coming down and delivering this eloquent speech that the guys just don't, they just don't understand it. It just doesn't mean anything to them. Fast forward a little bit. He says, after a few weeks at special training, I took the final PT test and passed it easily. I was recycled to a new company where I picked off, where I picked up where I'd left off

with Bravo company. I finished basic training with my new company. And then I went to U.S. Army Intelligence School. While I was there, I happened to run into a man who had been at special training as a convalescent while he recuperated from a hand injury. He informed me that all of the men I had known at special training had been, quote, administratively passed, end quote, and sent on to advanced training. He said that the company commander had been ordered to certify that the men were malingerers who could have passed the final test if they had truly wanted to.

Just to give you a little bit more of his story. He says after intelligence school, I went to Vietnam, but I had no contact with Project 100,000 men because I served. as an army intelligence agent wearing civilian clothes and using a fake name I posed as a journalist and worked on a team that recruited and trained agents for espionage missions in cambodia a country from which communist forces launched attacks on american forces while i was in vietnam i continued to write letters to members of congress and i had one moment of success and he he started writing letters to congress saying hey these guys do not should not be in the military and they definitely shouldn't be sent to combat he says an aide to

Senator Robert Kennedy wrote me that he was moved by my descriptions of the low IQ men was urging the Senate to hold a hearing on Project 100,000. I eagerly watched the mail for a letter detailing plans by Senator Kennedy, but one morning in June 1968 I heard news that Kennedy had been assassinated. I suspect that my only chance for congressional action had died with the senator. I was correct. A few years after the war ended, I arranged to get a computer printout listing all the names of Americans who died in Vietnam. I skimmed the list looking for the last names that matched the names of

men I had known at Fort Benning. Unfortunately, the death list included the names of two men I had known at Special Training Company, Ernesto Lazano and Freddie Hensley. Lazzano was a man I didn't know very well. The only thing I remembered about him was that some of the sergeants had given him the nickname Retardo. Freddie Hensley, of course, I knew well. I was not surprised to discover that he had been killed in combat with his good looks he probably was assumed to be normal and moved along to vietnam and sent out in the field and i didn't cover that part but freddy hensy was a guy that looked very like a handsome guy normal looking guy and but he was just he just wasn't very intellectually capable he says freddy's death hit me hard i remembered how he was always sighing an indication

of the tremendous anxiety he experienced in special training i remembered how he lacked the mental quickness to qualify with the M14 rifle. I felt enormous anger, which I still feel decades later. He never should have been drafted. He never should have been administratively passed at special training. He never should have been sent into combat. Grasping at straws, I got to thinking that maybe there was another man named Freddie Hensley who died, so I tried to find his family by telephoning people in his hometown with the same last name. I eventually made contact with his mother. And to I ascertained that Freddie, the Freddie I had known, was indeed the man who had died in Vietnam. I told her that I had been Freddy's friend at Fort Benning.

She said that she and the family were proud that Freddie had given his life to defend his country. As we talked, I carefully introduced my belief that Freddie should not have been sent into combat. Before long, she was expressing grief and anger and bewilderment. She told me that when Freddie received his draft notice, she and other family members went to the induction center and explained that Freddie had been a EMR, educable, mentally retarded classes at school and had not been able to drive a car and that it was a mistake to draft him. In response, the drill sergeant reassured the family that Freddie would not be put into danger. He would just do menial jobs such as sweeping floors and peeling potatoes He was a good boy, she said When he was little we used to go everywhere together. He was my little man

She began to sob and she lamented Why did they have to draft him? I want to know why So now we get into the part of the book that answers that question why why was this happening? This section's about project a hundred thousand and gives some really interesting information. And you know, I usually, when we have Vietnam guys on here, I always kind of probe this area of what was it like? What was the protests like? You know, I kind of, and I've never had anybody talk too deeply about,

hey, this was this dynamic environment, this polarized. They don't really, it seems like because there wasn't social media, because there wasn't 24-hour news cycle. If you lived in, you know, Ohio, and you were going to join the Army, you only saw the other people in Ohio and probably the people that you hung out with were like, yeah, well, you know, you're going to join the Army.

You're from Ohio and we're Americans, or we're joining the Army. Oh, you got drafted. It was like, it seems like there was less connection. But it's interesting to hear some of these statistics that he talks about here and the way this all looked and the way this all washed out.

And the other thing is, We have guys that either got drafted and said Roger that or they joined up. Either way. So here we go. Yes, the majority of Americans who served in Vietnam were technically volunteers. Some were indeed true volunteers, such as the idealistic patriotic youths described. But most of them volunteered only because of the way the draft was carried out. Local draft boards or military recruiters told them that they were.

were likely to be drafted soon and they had two choices. They could submit to the draft and serve two years, probably in combat, or they could volunteer and serve three years in non-combat MOS, which is a military occupational specialty like mechanic, cook, or computer programmer. Most men chose the second, safer option. Because the vast majority of them would never have enlisted if the draft had not been in place, it would be more accurate to call them draft. Induced volunteers and he says I was in another category which I called draft influenced volunteer

My local draft board put me on a list of possible draftees But my family doctor told me without any prompting on my part that I could that I could avoid the draft if he wrote a letter to the draft board About a pre-existing medical condition Hyperthyroidism I declined his office offer because the draft board's interest in me woke out of my Woke me out of my adolescent days and forced me to take a hard look at the issues because I was a strong believer in America's fight against communism I decided that it was my patriotic duty to serve so I signed up for three years in the army with a promise of an interesting

assignment military intelligence but I make no claim to be a hero I did not volunteer for infantry so there's got people getting drafted you got people getting told hey you're gonna get drafted bro you might just so they never would have enlisted voluntarily it's like saying oh yeah he volunteered Hey, Echo, you can either volunteer or you can possibly take this job over here, which is going to get you into combat. And if you don't want to go to combat, well, you're going to sign up. So it's draft induced, draft influenced, some different things that happen. Just to run some numbers here, he says, during the major years of the Vietnam era, 1964 to 1973, there were 26,800,000 draft age American males, 68% of whom never had to

serve in the military. They were excused because they were students or fathers or had physical limitations of some or some other disqualifying status. You know, this whole freaking thing, I used to wonder, I mean, when I was younger, why is going to college? How does that get you out of military service? I don't get that, right? How does that work?

Wait, you're going to college and now you can't go fight? Why can't you fight? And then it doesn't take much thinking to realize, oh, because I'm, my parents have money. They send me to college. Now I have to have to go fight. Yeah. And you mentioned it earlier too, right? Where that'll kind of make the general society unhappy where it's like, hey, these are like, they have important roles in our society because they're educated and all this stuff.

Yeah. So if you send them to war, we don't have these people. Yeah. And it's also the middle class. So the middle class kids are going to college. So if you don't want to piss off the middle class parents who are the ones that vote, what do you do? You say, hey, don't worry. Don't worry about Johnny.

As long as he's going to college, he doesn't have to worry about signing up for the draft. Right. I would imagine back then there was a lot less people going to college as well. Yeah. I would imagine. Until the Vietnam War kicked off and they found out they could get out of the draft and they're lining up. He said that left 32 percent to fill the ranks. Some signed up for hazardous duty, but the majority managed to steer clear of the battlefield

field by going to the National Guard or reserves, which in the Vietnam War were rarely used for combat, or by signing up for non-combat positions in the Army, Air Force, Navy, or Coast Guard. Some men spent their entire service time in non-lethal locales such as the U.S., Germany, Korea, and the Panama Canal Zone. So you could have enlisted and gotten any of these non-combat jobs. ultimately out of every 100 American males of draft age in the Vietnam era only 12 were sent to Vietnam of these 12 men nine had non-combat support roles but weren't entirely risk-free they were potential targets of rocket booby traps terrorist attacks mortars the remaining three men

so out of 100 we're down to three the remaining three men served under fire in one of the the following high-risk situations, fighting in one of the hardcore combat arms of the Army or Marine Corps infantry, artillery, army, special operations, close air support, two, serving in the dangerous positions such in the Air Force Navy or Coast Guard, such as combat aviators or patrol boat warriors, or three, trying to save lives in one of the most vulnerable of all battlefield jobs, combat medic. While a few men were eager for combat, most were not. Tony Zinia, a Vietnam veteran who later became a four-star general in the Marine Corps said it was hard to find Americans who'd actually chosen to fight in Vietnam Most who served there had to be forced to go

So that's what we're dealing with 28 million 26 million people that are draft 26 million men That were draft age 68% Never they were they were disqualified because they were students or physical limitations or fathers or some other disqualifying status Then you end up with a bunch of them that join the National Guard or the reserves, which during Vietnam was kind of a way out of going to Vietnam. Then you got guys that joined into non-combat role and eventually you get down to that small percentage of people that stepped up to fight. There's a section here called avoidance. During the Vietnam War, almost all of the nation's affluent youth and a majority of the middle class escaped the draft by going to college or claiming a disability or exemption.

A University of Notre Dame study estimated that 75% of excused men had actively tried to avoid the draft. Throughout the war years, many loopholes were available. One of the most famous cases involved actor George Hamilton, who persuaded his draft board to give him a hardship deferment because he was the sole support of his mother who lived in his Hollywood mansion and relied on his $200,000 annual income, which would be $1.375 million. in today's dollars men in certain occupations such as engineers farmers teachers ministers and divinity students won automatic exemptions fatherhood would could win a deferral so a number of young men felt pressure to get married and start a family

he has a little section here talking about peace children which are basically guys that had kids so they didn't have to go to war a popular way to avoid the draft was to find a doctor who would attest to a medical problem such as flat feet extreme allergies or skin rashes. While he was a student at Harvard, writer James Fallows recalled sympathetic medical students helped us in helps us search for disqualifying conditions that we in our many good years of good health might have overlooked. For $120 a young man could purchase a psychological disqualification. There are reputable, quote, there are reputable anti-war psychiatrists who will put one through a series of personality test to find some tendencies they can distort.

end quote. That's from a Harvard undergraduate. Having a letter from a doctor was a sure way to win a medical exemption. For example, the induction center in Seattle, Washington divided men into two groups. Those who had letters from doctors and those that did not. Everyone with a letter got an exemption. No matter what the letter said, induction centers rarely had the time to contest what an outside expert said. Using letters demonstrated the advantages held by middle class men who had easy access to sympathetic

physician working class and poor men either had no such access or they were unaware that a doctor's letter was an option some men gained disqualifications by contriving to fail their pre-induction physical exams a university of michigan student ate three large peaches each night for six months so that he exceeded the military's weight limit for his height he was disqualified some men jabbed their arms with needles to pass themselves off as heroin addicts he goes on talking about people that were getting or getting braces. I guess you weren't allowed to have braces. So we'd get people,

dentists would charge $1,000 to $2,000, which in today's money is between $7,000 and $14,000 to get braces put on. So now you don't get drafted. I had a neighbor. I had to tell you this before. I had a neighbor who, she was an older lady, you know,

who's like our neighbor's mom or whatever. And she said her brother dodged the draft by drinking soy sauce and getting high blood pressure. Hmm So he was medically exempt or whatever Because of high blood pressure And that was like a thing like And other people like his friends

Or whatever would do that as well Trick So they wouldn't have to do how much soy sauce They had to drink I know right But blood pressure is like That seems like something you can just sort of cure With like even like the weight thing

It's like probably just lose weight or whatever Like we'll do this And or even like blood pressure Like if you change your diet even just a little bit. Like, okay, so I went to the doctor, coincidentally, today, just to get, you know, check up normal stuff, and they take your blood pressure.

And the doctor said, there's a thing called white coat syndrome. You ever heard of that? No. I never did it either until today. And I was like, oh, what is that? It's like people's blood pressure will rise. Oh, because they're in the doctor's office. Yeah, just because they're nervous in the doctor's office.

That's how blood pressure is. So now I'm thinking back, it's like, bro, that's, you can, I mean, shoot braces. this, brother, these are some really low standard medical exemption scenarios. Yep. So on one hand, the bar is really low. Well, that's the thing. It's going to get lower. But it's kind of high in a way, is what I'm saying.

Yeah, this is early though, right? This is also, this is also, they didn't, they didn't lower this part of the bar. Right? They lowered other parts of the bar. Yeah. Right? So they made it so that some rich. or middle class person that access to a to a freaking dentist and the money to pay for braces

could all of a sudden get exempt but if you don't know about that little trick because you're from some place it doesn't have that kind of access or doesn't have that kind of money or doesn't have that kind of information there's no Google how do I get out of the draft there's a lot of that right in a way I mean that's a that's a spectrum too where like isn't that like a typical thing people might say about the criminal justice, right? Where it's like if you can afford a good lawyer kind of a thing, you know? Yeah, good lawyer makes it. Get away with a lot.

A good lawyer, it makes a huge difference, a huge difference. If you have access to that good lawyer. Yeah. As opposed to not having access to a good lawyer. Either because, A, you don't know about it or B, because you don't have the money for it. Yeah. For 100%. Check this out.

Professional football players were virtually amazing. to being drafted. In 1966, Selective Service grabbed only two of 960 pro players, many of the rest finding refuge in the National Guard or reserves. We have an arrangement with the Baltimore Colts, Major General George Gelson Jr. of the Maryland National Guard said in 1966, when they have a player with a military problem,

they send him to us, end quote. The Dallas Cowboys had 10 players assigned to the same National Guard, division at one time. This is a freaking scam. The most sensational football star of the era, the New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath, was excused from service on grounds that his frequently injured knees made him unfit for combat. Yet he continued to play bone-crushing football on Sunday afternoons. By the way, three years after that, he won the Super Bowl. If a young man refused to submit to the draft, he was subject to arrest and imprisonment to escape this fate over 40,000 American youth fled to countries that were willing to give them asylum,

including Canada, Sweden, and France. About 171,000 men refused to submit to the draft because they were conscientious objectors whose religious or moral beliefs forbade them to kill in any war or in the case of Vietnam War, a war they considered unjust. Some of them were excused by local draft boards, while about 96,000 agreed to alternative service in jobs such as medic. An estimated 4,000 conscientious objectors were given long prison terms, usually five years. Yeah.

And what's jacked up about that is if you're honest and say, look, I don't want to go fight because I don't believe in the war. You're going to jail. Meanwhile, someone that's getting braces is like cleared. Some draft avoiders felt remorse over their actions. When he was 66 years old, film and TV actor John Lithgow revealed that while he was in his 20s, he won a disqualification. by wearing urine-soaked clothes and pretending to be insane during a pre-induction interview a sense of shame he said stayed with me for years and has never entirely disappeared some of that shame had to do with the appalling suffering caused by the Vietnam War suffering that I so conveniently avoided novelist Mark Helprin in an address at West Point in 1992 told the cadets that during the Vietnam War I dodged the draft and I was wrong this is regret that I will carry to my grave Former Vice President Dick Cheney who spent the war in college and graduate school sought

and received five deferments from his draft board, four student deferments and one hardship deferment, even though he was pro-war. That's freaking unique, isn't it? I'm pro-war, just not for me. Years later, when he was one of the prime architects of the war in Iraq and was accused of being a hypocrite for sending thousands of men into combat, he justified his Vietnam era behavior in this way quote I had other priorities in the 60s than military service I don't regret the decisions I made end quote hmm okay You don't regret the decisions you made got it their dick

Reacting to comments by Cheney and other successful politicians Paul Marx the drafty in the Korean War wrote the Baltimore son quote for every draft avoider Someone else was made to serve in order to meet the military's quotas that someone else might very well have been killed in Vietnam. Many of America's most accomplished young men were ready to pass the buck and let someone else, someone less sophisticated and knowledgeable, make the sacrifices while they pursued their personal ambitions. End quote. Joining the National Guard of Reserves was a popular option

because relatively few guardsmen and reservists were sent to Vietnam. Again, this is totally different now, and National Guard and Reserve were, deployed all the time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Out of every one million men who enlisted the National Guard and reserves during the Vietnam era, only 15,000 of them actually served in Vietnam. That's a tiny percentage. Alan Vanaman, who served in a combat artillery unit in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, said,

I trained with several hundred country boys from Louisiana and Alabama who were bound for National Guard units. They were, as they gleefully put it, NG. Not going. Some men who avoided the draft would later become prominent leaders such as Bill Clinton and Mitt Romney. But in fairness, it should be noted that a few young men who later became national leaders served in Vietnam and risked their lives. For example, three men who were members of U.S. Senate at the same time, Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, and John McCain were decorated heroes of combat in Vietnam. Says here, although some affluent men suffered in Vietnam, the typical infantry platoon was made up of minorities.

the poor and the working class with a sprinkling of middle-class youth. San Antonio lawyer Mori Maverick Jr. recalled that during the war, my friends at the local office of the American Friends Service Committee placed a cross on the map of San Antonio at the home address of each person killed in combat. On the west side where the Mexican Americans lived, there was a sea of crosses.

In Alamo Heights, Alamo Heights, Almost Park and Terrell Hills, where the rich people live, there were virtually no crosses at all. Most of America's privileged elite seemed unbothered by the unfair burden placed on men on the lower rungs of society, but there were some leaders who were angry and indignant. In 1966, Kingman Brewster, the president of Yale University, used his address to the graduating seniors to denounce a system that had drafted, quote, only those who cannot hide in the endless catacombs of formal education. So, yeah, this freaking just pisses you off.

This is going into McNamara's plan. The year was 1966 was crunch time for the American military because so many middle-cast American males were avoiding the draft. The military faced the prospect of serious manpower shortages. Because most of the men did not volunteer to extend their time. tour of duty, thousands of fresh troops had to be deployed to Vietnam every month to replace the thousands that were departing. To supply extra troops that were urgently needed, President Johnson was faced with a tough choice. Here you go, President Johnson. He could have revoked student

deferments and forced thousands of college boys into the army, or he could have used the one million men in the National Guard and reserves, but either action would have angered the vote powerful middle class, so instead he turned to the working class and the poor. Shit bird Here however he also found trouble rounding up enough eligible men There are plenty of men of the right age in the poorer neighborhoods But many of them have flunked the military's entrance exam The armed forces qualification test

That's what I kicked the podcast off with Johnson and defense secretary McNamara desperately needed them however So they lowered the standards for passing the AFQT Suddenly thousands of low aptitude men once declared unacceptable Because of low AFQT scores were now subject to the draft. Johnson and McNamara tried to make their action appear to be based on humanitarian compassion. With much fanfare at the 1966 Natural Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars,

McNamara unveiled his plan to salvage and rehabilitate 100,000 substandard men each year, hence the official title Project 100,000. Though the men may have failed in these subjects in school, they wouldn't fail now because the military was, quote, the world's greatest education. of skilled manpower and quote McNamara once considered one of the most brilliant men in America he had made a name for himself as one of the whiz kids who revitalized Ford Motor Company believed that he could raise the intelligence of low ability men through a use of videotapes and closed circuit TV lessons quote an a low aptitude student can use

videotapes as an aid to his formal instruction and end by becoming as proficient efficient as a high aptitude student end quote in his starry-eyed belief that videotapes could dramatically transform slow learners McNamara was revealing the same blind faith in the power of technology that diluted him into thinking that he could outsmart the enemy in Vietnam by using calculators computers and statistical analysis according to biographer Deborah shapely McNamara was quote a naive believer in technological mirrors miracles end quote and announcing Project 100,000 Maconair never said a word about combat. To hear him, one of them would have thought men were going not off to war, but off to school.

In his view, the military was doing them a favor. When they got out of the service, they would have valuable skills and self-confidence with which they could get good-paying jobs in the civilian market. It's leading advocate of this program. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist who later became a U.S. senator from New York, whose argument went like this. The best way to solve poverty in America is to draft the hundreds of things. thousands of young men being rejected annually as unfit for military service take inner

city blacks and poor rural whites both groups tending to be lazy and fond of booze and put them into uniform instill discipline train them to bathe daily salute and take orders teach them a marketable skill at the end of the couple years you'll have transformed lazy unmotivated slackers into hardworking law-abiding citizens shit's unbelievable right now there was pushback. There was push back from the from the uniformed military. So so you got McNamara who's the secretary of defense, you know, he's a civilian, but he's presenting this great plan and the the leadership inside the military was going, hey, this shit ain't going to work. And McNamara tells Johnson. McNamara told Johnson that uniformed officers in

the defense department were opposed to drafting low aptitude men because quote they don't want to be in the business of dealing with morons and moron camps. The Army doesn't want to be thought of as a rehabilitation agency, end quote. But McNamara, who's a fucking arrogant guy and thinks he's smart, just pushes this program anyways. Between October 1st and 1966 and December 31st, 1971, which is the dates of the official program, Project 100,000 took in some 354,000 men, 91% of them based on lowered mental standards the remaining 9% because of less stringent physical standards.

Project 100,000 men were on average 20 years old. Half came from the south. 41% were minorities. Some 46% were draftees while the remaining 54% were volunteers. However, as I pointed out earlier, the term volunteer is misleading. Military recruiters would get the names of low-scoring men who were now acceptable to the armed forces and visit them to steer them toward the three-year hitch. The recruiters would tell them if they waited for the draft, they'd only serve two years,

but almost certainly end up in an infantry platoon in Vietnam. But if they signed up for three years, they would be assigned to a non-combat job. There was, however, a big catch. The military did not have to honor any oral promises made by a recruiter. A recruiter might promise a man a job like helicopter maintenance. But after basic training, when it was time to go to a specialized school, The military could decide that his test scores were not high enough to qualify for helicopter maintenance, or in some cases he could be sent to helicopter maintenance school, and if he flunked during training,

he was subject to transfer to infantry. Thousands of three-year projects, 100,000 volunteers ended up in infantry because of this catch. Many critics denounce this fraudulent behavior. Project 100,000 men were assigned to all major branches of the armed forces, 71% to the Army, 10% to the Marine Corps, 10% to the Navy, 9% to the Air Force. brings me back to that one book I mean all this stuff is going on all these people avoiding we covered that one book called

Company Commander and the guys going through Army O.C. Army officer candidate school and they're like where do you want? I think that's what book it was. I think it was the book Company Commander. But you have to write down your three choices of where you want to get stationed. He writes infantry platoon commander,

infantry platoon commander, infantry platoon commander, and all these other people just avoiding fighting. It's hard for me just straight up to understand the perspective. When I read this, and I read that all these 68% of people avoided the draft. Like, I read that.

It doesn't, it's hard for me to compute that. It's hard for me to compute, like, being a man and being like, oh, a bunch of people are going to go fight a war. I'm going to hide over here. It's hard for me to compute that. I've got to be honest with you. Yeah. That makes sense to me that it'd be hard for you to continue.

It's hard for me to understand it, what kind of human you have to be. Now, if you're like, hey, actively saying, look, I don't believe in this war. I actually get that. I actually get that. If someone says, listen, we shouldn't be over there fighting and I'm not going. And you want to send me to jail? Send me to jail.

You want to make me serve in some other capacity? Okay. But I'm not going to go fight that war. If you do that, I'll respect you. Right? If you hide and get braces and get a letter from a psychologist and that's what you do, no. I cannot believe that the numbers are that high. Crazy.

Yeah. And being in your presence for a long time and kind of reading this book with you, that makes sense. But if you think back to, let's say a 20-year-old person who isn't like you. Like maybe they do have money, maybe they're middle class and they got normal stuff, quote unquote,

normal stuff going on. They're not really into politics or history or nothing like that. They're just into normal stuff. and then they hear on the news. Yeah. Hey, there's a war going on. And you know what?

You don't have a choice. You have to fight it. He was like, I don't want to go in the military. Like, that was never my plan. That was never nothing. In fact,

I don't want to just be a doctor. Well, that's a good point. And the good point, the great point that you're making is a point that I've actually been making a lot lately. And I talked about it when I was on with Rogan, which is when you impose something on someone,

they reject it. Oh, yeah. So that's a great point. example. You impose the draft on people, they're going to get freaking pissed off. They're going to get nervous. They're going to run away from it. So that's a good point. And when I take that into account, then I understand it better. So thank you for helping me understand a little bit better when someone says, hey, you're going to war. And that's not part of your thing. You kind of think, wait a second, I'm not going to war. Where's the dentist? I need some braces over here. But even with that being said, so I understand that's a good point. But even that being said, the fact that the numbers are, that large that it was a thing to go get braces. That it was a thing that people were writing home from college going, don't worry, mom, I'm going to get a letter from a psychologist. We have to pay $125 and they'll write up a report of that was a thing.

It wasn't like a rare case. Yeah. And then even then, again, from, you know, our perspective, when it's done with and, you know, when things kind of sort themselves out, like that makes sense for sure to maybe have trouble seeing that. But again, think about how it was probably, like for anything, like, hey, what if your neighbor, what if, hey, look, I grew up on, you know, Fifth Street and, bro, we're not into politics. We're into, we play baseball.

And yeah, I heard about this quote unquote war. I don't know anyone in the military. I don't know anyone, not one single person. In fact, I heard of, you know, my neighbor's cousin that lives in the other side of the country when in the military. I don't know anyone in the military. You know, I want to be a dentist. I want to be a lawyer

and, you know, I want to be a fireman. And that's the culture. And then it's like, oh, my gosh, you know, you hear it on the news, you get in the mail, whatever. You got to register for the draft, which is this. You have to go in the military and you got to go fight this world. You don't know anything about. You don't know anything in the military.

And now you have to do it. Otherwise, you go to jail. So, and it's like, damn, now I got to risk my life for something I don't really know about, not necessarily that I'm against or for or nothing like that. just don't really know about it. I'm 18 years old. I don't know about that kind of stuff right now. And then your neighbor goes and like, hey, I can't go.

My, I got flat feet. We're like, oh, wait, do I have flat? I don't even know if I have flat feet. Let me go to the doctor or whatever. Let's see what up. Oh, this guy. Oh, I had braces. I don't, wait, whoa, let me go see if I need some braces.

Because I don't want to go either. None of us want to go. We never did. And all I have to do is, you know, and then you start to just get that culture where it's not shameful to go get braces. It's not, you know. That's a big piece of it. Those are all great points and it's you're you're you're right and imposing things on people and just like this just like imposing the draft.

That's why people was like, don't you think everyone should serve in the military? I was generally think not really because when you start imposing things on people, hey, would it be good? Yes. Would it be good to do some kind of service? Would it be good to understand what it's like to be in the military or go overseas? Yes, that stuff would all be great. But when you start imposing things on people, so you're right. I guess I was having a little bit of an allergic.

reaction to this. Yes, sir. I was having a little bit of a, maybe a lot of bit of an allergic reaction. Well, that's a bias, right? It's a curse of knowledge or something where you can't, I don't know. Yeah, and I guess it's also, I guess what makes me most frustrated is just, is that it's like the entire chain of command, right? You got Lyndon Johnson, the present, you got the second.

And they're all making these moves that are based on helping people. Hey, well, we're not going to, you know, you go to college, you're good. It's all a scam. Yeah. That's what's pissing me off, I guess, more than anything else, is that it's a scam. And the other thing is, if you are going to go to war, right, you should be able to explain why we're going to war and the people should be able to say, yeah, that actually makes sense. And then you go to war and you realize that people are going to get killed and you realize you're going to kill some bad people and you realize that some civilians are going to die as well, all those things. Talk about that stuff all the time.

All that stuff is going to happen. And also, if you say, hey, here's, we're going to war and you cannot explain why. And the populace goes, hey, dude, what are we doing? As soon as you got people going, hey, I'm going to go get freaking going to go piss on myself so I don't have to go. And now you got a whole group, a whole class of people that are saying we don't want to fight. Maybe we should reconsider what we're doing there because that's a problem. You know, if you're in charge of a company or you're in charge of a platoon, you say, hey, we're going to go over this hill. And the whole platoon or two-thirds of the platoon goes, hey, boss, I'm not so sure about that.

Or you're in a company. You say, we're going to go in this new market area and a bunch of your leadership and a bunch of your mid-level man. say hey boss I don't want to go into that market area what about you I don't want to go what about you I don't want to go okay you have to go into that market area maybe you should reconsider what you're doing you're not smarter than everybody else that's a problem back to this book most project 100,000 men were graduated from basic training even if even if company commanders had to cheat to get them through after leaving basic training project 100,000 men were sent to AIT which is advanced

individual training to learn infantry tactics or if they were lucky specialized skills such as radio telephone operator rTO props called the moron core at fort polk project hundred thousand men were quote pretty damn bad recalled one officer somebody had to help them to get dressed in the morning they couldn't understand what was going on another officer said lots of these guys just weren't fit to do a job i had to help one buy a toothbrush and pack his bags so he could report to another duty station. Fast forward a little bit. Most of the 500 and, most of the 354,000 men of Project 100K went to Vietnam,

with about half of them assigned to combat units, which is just insane. A total of 5,478 of these men died while in service, most of them in combat. Their fatality rate was three times that of the other GIs, though precise figures are unavailable. All of these tallies would be higher if we knew the number of deaths and injuries. of substandard men who were not officially counted in Project 100,000, according to Colonel David Hackworth, and Salute, who fought in both Korea and Vietnam Wars and became one of the most highly decorated warriors in American history. Project, quote, Project 100,000 was implemented to produce more grunts for the killing fields of Vietnam. It took unfit recruits from the bottom of the barrel and rushed them to Vietnam.

The result was human applesauce. he added that for fighting in combat quote 10 smart and fit soldiers are better than a hundred out of shape dummies end quote and that's that's you know your what your comments you were ringing up earlier you know I can get three guys I get eight guys that's his ratio he's given up 10 to 100 is that a hyperbole a little exaggerated maybe yeah but if you're talking about people that can't tie their shoes it might not be hyperbole it might be reality Yeah, nonetheless he's making the point that that's a big deal. Yeah.

One of one veteran who had good reason to be dismayed by the deaths of Project 100,000 men in Vietnam was Leslie John Shellhase, who had been wounded in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and had served as a lieutenant colonel under McNamara at the Pentagon in the late 1960s. He said he played a central role in planning for a project 100,000, which he considered a bad idea from the start. We, meaning the Pentagon planners, resist. Project 100,000 because we knew that wars are not won by using marginal manpower as cannon fodder, but rather by risking and sometimes losing the flower of a nation's youth." Can you imagine being in charge of something and you're getting all this resistance from people that actually do that for living and you force it down their throats anyways? That's again to your point earlier, which is a reference to my point, when you impose things

on people, it's a bad move. Lieutenant Paul D. Walker, who served in Vietnam, oh, and by the way, you know what, you've heard me say that imposing things on people doesn't work? It doesn't, clearly, because you impose the draft on people and they avoid it. They get braces, they piss on themselves, whatever. So you think, oh, well, we'll

just draft it. It doesn't work. It doesn't work to impose things on people. Lieutenant Paul D. Walker, who served in Vietnam as a platoon leader in the armored cavalry of the first infantry division wrote about the worst episode during his tour of duty. We had not seen a single enemy soldier in two days of combat operations resulting in three killed, 10 wounded, and three vehicles destroyed.

He blamed the four Project 100,000 men in his platoon who accounted for more than their share of casualties and accidents. He said that some of the project 100,000 men were, quote, virtually untrainable and never should have been allowed into the military and certainly not sent into combat. Fast forward a little bit. Not only were low-quality enlisted men sent to Vietnam, said Westmoreland, but low-quality officers as well. He cited Lieutenant William Calley, convicted in the murder of more than 100.

unarmed citizens in the battle in the in the in the in the mili massacre of 1968 according to Arnold R. Isaacs the Vietnam War correspondent for the Baltimore son Cali quote flunked out of Palm Beach Junior College with two Cs a D and four Fs in his first year and reportedly managed to get through officer candidate school without even learning how to read a map or use a compass end quote Marine Corps Colonel Robert D. Heinal said that the army had to take Callie quote because no one else was available his own a attorney used Calle's low intelligence as a courtroom defense.

The army, he said, was to blame for the Mili Massacre because it had lowered mental standards. If it hadn't lowered mental standards, men like Cali never would have been commissioned. Richard A. Gabriel, who spent 22 years as a U.S. Army officer says, quote, even the staunchest defenders of the army agree that in normal times, a man of Lieutenant Calle's intelligence and predispositions would never have been allowed to hold a commission. Talking about that pushback. During the early years of the war, when McNamara was campaigning to draft lower-appitude men, wise military commanders and veterans were warning against his misguided idea.

For example, in 1964, two years before Project 100K was launched, an impassioned article appeared in the American Bar Association Journal by Texas Attorney and Reserve Air Force Captain William F. Walsh, who wrote, Warfare is steadily growing more complex. The day is passed when an effective soldier need only the intelligence to point. to musket downhill and obey an order. Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes. Service in the armed forces today requires an alert questioning mind,

simply to master the technology of weapons and tactics. There is likely to be no room for the low IQ soldier, the warm body who cannot or will not cut the mustard. That man is going to get in the way of those who will have to do the job, end quote. This guy was hearing this. Despite such warnings, MacMamara plowed ahead. and the results are disastrous. One of the biggest blunders of our Vietnam experience,

said Lieutenant Colonel Charles L. Armstrong of the Marine Corps was the Project 100,000 folly of taking it on board, marginally qualified individuals under the mistaken watchword of the infantry doesn't have to be real smart. Dumb grunt, however, is not a complete phrase. Dumb dead grunt is. You don't have to be a Fulbright scholar. You don't have to be a full bright scholar.

scholar to be a good rifleman, but you can't be stupid. To survive in combat, you had to be smart. You had to know how to use your rifle effectively and keep it clean and operable, how to navigate through jungles and rice patties without alerting the enemy and how to communicate and cooperate with other members of your team. Sad to say, many low-aptitude men were not smart enough to be successful in combat, and as a result, they were killed or wounded. Barry Romo and his nephew Robert ended up in Vietnam at the same time.

I loved Robert like a brother. up together he was only one month younger Barry served in infantry as a platoon leader in 1967 to 1968 saw a lot of combat winning a bronze star for his courage on the battlefield during his tour he learned that Robert had been drafted and was being trained in fort Louis Washington to be an infantryman destined for Vietnam Barry was alarmed because Robert was quote very slow and had failed the army's mental test but then along came project hundred K lowering standards and making him draftable a host of people his relatives his comrades at Fort Lewis his sergeants and officers wrote to the commanding general at Fort

Louis asking that Robert not be sent into combat because as one relative put it quote he would die but the general turned down the request once in Vietnam Robert was sent to an infantry unit near the border of Fort North Vietnam one of the most dangerous combat areas during a patrol he was shot in the neck while trying to help a wounded friend he did not die instantly but heavy gunfire kept the medic from reaching him he drowned in his own blood said Barry looking back Barry said that Robert really didn't have much luck while others were getting draft deferments he was drafted while Congressional's while Congress and while congressmen's sons were getting four Fs which were exemptions for braces on

their teeth Robert was drafted as part of Project 100 K in a speech delivered 42 years later Barry Romo said that the family had never recovered from losing Robert quote his death almost destroyed us with anger and sorrow end quote Fast forward a little bit here. Mental slowness and extreme anxiety were among the worst enemies of Project 100K men in combat. While training at Fort Benning says Lieutenant Colonel Robert Kimball, a combat veteran of Vietnam War, we had the idea cemented into our heads that there were two kinds of soldiers, the quick and the dead.

To survive in combat, you had to be quick to recognize a threat and quick to respond to it. All soldiers in combat experience fear and fear causes a soldier to slow down. can have a major impact on whether or not a soldier survives war. Sergeant Major Francis T. McNeve said that people who were borderline retarded did not respond fast enough, and that's how people became casualties. Marine Captain David Anthony Dawson said, men who could not understand simple orders or perform simple tasks clearly posed a danger to themselves and other members of the unit. He gave the following example. while serving as a battalion commander of Vietnam, Brigadier General William Wise, watched the squad leader give an order for an ambush patrol.

The squad leader gave simple, clear order, but one Marine couldn't remember any of the crucial details, including the password. That night, this Marine left the ambush to relieve himself without telling anyone when returning, he wandered into the kill zone. The squad leader sprang the ambush, and his squad killed him. The dull-witted soldier said Pentagon official Elliot Kohn. Cohen does not simply get himself killed. He causes the deaths of others as well. According to Chief Warren Officer for William S. Tuttle, a Vietnam veteran, if you take someone

with an IQ of 40 and give him a rifle, he's more dangerous to you than he is to the enemy. There's another fast forward a little. New inexperienced men in Army and Marine units, especially Project 100K men had a high rate of getting themselves and their comrades wounded killed in the first few months of their tours in Vietnam. James R. Ebert found that 43% of army fatalities happen in the first three months. What sucks about reading that statistic is you realize that there's training that you could do to get better to get prepared. And it just wasn't happening. John L. Ward rejoiced when Project 100K came into his life.

He grew up in poverty in a black neighborhood of Glasgow, Missouri, living in a shanty that had no running water. And he talks about John. John L. Ward's situation, he had taken the test to try and see if he could get into the military. Didn't, wasn't good enough. His score wasn't high enough. Then he says, then to my utter surprise, the Marine Corps recruiter showed up and explained to me that I could join them now, despite the low test score. Thanks to Project 100K and the newly lowered standards, I could now pursue my dream of getting out of Glasgow and seeing the world. And this is an example.

He gives this guy, John L. Ward is an example of a guy that couldn't pass the test because he was uneducated, but not because he wasn't smart. So he had what he calls native intelligence, meaning he hadn't gone to school, so he never learned math or whatever, but he actually was a smart human. And so when he became a Marine, he did well. Ward became a proud Marine and quickly won a promotion of corporal. Unfortunately, his dreams were shattered in Vietnam. During the night of August 18th, 1968, enemy troops attacked and overran a Marine. bunker at Fu Law killing 17 Marines and wounding many more. Ward suffered severe injuries and he was returned to the United States for a long and painful

recovery. After leaving the service with rank of sergeant, Ward spent 15 years just trying to survive his physical and mental torments. Eventually, he became a counselor and advocate for Project 100K veterans. In 2012, he wrote a book entitled Moron Corps about his experience as one of McNamara's morons, a term that he hated but nevertheless embraced to remind America that Project 100K was insensitive, morally unjust, and inhumane. He stated that men who were accepted under McNamara's program served their country honorably.

Even with our so-called limited abilities, we were willing to lay down our lives for our country. But the program was carried out in a morally shameful manner. Project 100K men were overrepresented in combat, and they died in disproportionate numbers. Those who managed to survive were, quote, thrown back into the society without scumptych. Dills promised us. Many of the men were homeless and suffered isolation, unemployment, drug addiction, and medical neglect. Many failed to receive the assistance that they were supposed to receive from the U.S. Department of Affairs. Because the National Guard and reserves were relatively safe avenues for military service, they were filled to capacity with middle class and wealthy

men mostly white. You usually had to have connections to get in. Poor and working class men, especially blacks were excluded. In 1968, the Army National Guard was only 1.26% black. In Mississippi, where blacks made up 42% of the population, only one black man was admitted to the 10,365-man Mississippi National Guard. So again, if you got the right connections, in this case, oh, if you're a white dude, you can sneak into the National Guard

and avoid going to war. In 1972, Professor Leslie Fiedler, who knew of hundreds of young people at his college, State University of New York at Buffalo, slowly realized that he knew not a single Vietnam veteran. This is 1972. I had never known a single family that had lost a son in Vietnam. The reason he concluded was that Vietnam was the first war

that, quote, has been fought for us by our servants. The actual fighting of the war has become, more and more exclusively an occupation of the exploited and dispossessed, end quote. During the Vietnam War, Congressman William A. Stiger of Wisconsin said the draft survives as a last vestige of the ancient custom whereby the rich and powerful forced the poor and weak to provide service at substance wages. While it was true that men had grown up in poverty were disproportionately represented in combat, I don't want to leave the impression that only the extremely poor fought in Vietnam

In infantry units the poor were joined by many men from working-class families described by historian Christian G. Appies as quote the 19-year-old children of waitresses factory workers truck drivers secretaries firefighters carpenters custodians police officers salespeople Clerks mechanics minors and farm workers End quote men from lower economic levels poor and working comprised 80% of the combat forces while the remaining 20% came from the middle class half of them serving as officers I think I have my answer next time that somebody asked me about the draft my draft my answer is no because this is the kind of government bullshit that goes down

Yeah, that's and that's another one right another reason well what I mean kind of rewind you back to why Someone would dodge the draft in whatever way Is yet the straight up government is telling You got to work for them. Probably lose your life or whatever. You know, that's in your mind. That's what you're thinking. Right.

You know, or kill other people about, you know, for reasons that you're not completely sure of. And then, yes, it's up to the government now. Not you. Government. That's imposed. It's imposed, man. Yeah. People, humans don't like having things imposed on.

Here's the thing. Okay. So taxes, right? We don't like taxes being imposed on us. Even though the idea of taxes makes sense. You're like, wait a second. The government has to function, you know, all this stuff. And the government needs money to function and do all this stuff.

So the idea of taxes. Yep. But just like the idea of, hey, this, if I pitch the draft you like this, listen, we're at war. We need people. Everyone's going to have to serve. We're going to do a lottery. That sounds fair, right? Because that's what it was.

It was a lottery based on what day you were born. So, hey, look, this is what we're going to do. If we're everyone, we're out of war. We need people. We're going to do a draft. We're going to do a lottery. If you get picked, you got to go. You'd be like, you know what?

Don't really like it, but it seems like the fair thing to do. Cool, I'm down. Let's do the draft, right? Because that's kind of the pitch. But then you go, wait, I don't want my son to go. Send your son to college. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

And then we work around the voting thing. That way we, I'm not work around the voting thing. That way we please the group that's going to get the most out of this scenario. What would be your, okay, let's say, hypothetically, you need a draft scenario. Like basically the draft was a solution to this an issue, right? A problem. We need people or whatever. What would be your off the top of your head way to go about doing that?

Well, first of all, I'm thinking that if I'm doing something where the only way I can get the people to come and fight is to force them, there's something, I'm doing something wrong. It could be that I'm explaining to everyone wrong why this is important. Yeah, which it's hard to explain to someone in 1968 that, hey, this is a threat to us. And why is that? Well, because it's far away. Yeah. And so if you can't explain that, maybe you need to rethink what your strategy is.

People get, people, the ego is getting away. They get addicted to their plan. They believe their own bullshit. You get a guy like McNamara and all the people that surrounded him. It was ridiculous. And Johnson, same thing. like these these guys have Johnson knew that we weren't going to win Vietnam

halfway through and continue to send troops there and continue to have Americans get killed so you would have started just yeah I mean that makes sense you'd say that start with yourself first like if you're in charge of the word like start with the beginning first

like is this is this solution a real solution or is it adding to another problem if I can't articulate to my teen why we why we need to do something then I need to either develop my articulation more come up with those reasons make them clear to everyone start off and goes yeah you know what this is a rough rough solution but it's the only solution we get it we're on board yeah that's why you hear me talk

I don't I the amount of times that I ordered my troops to do something is zero there are all right listen enough debate this is what we're doing shut up I never had to do that because if you can say hey listen here's what here's the goal that we got to get accomplished. Here's why we're doing it. I'm open to suggestions if you can think of a better way. If we can't think of a better way, what do you think of this idea? And everyone goes, yeah, it sounds pretty good.

And there's people that freak out and get all scared. Like, well, sometimes you got to just say, shut up and do that too. You actually don't have to do that. You actually don't have to do that. Now, could we be in a situation in a gun fight where I'm like, echo, go, go, that could happen. And you'll be like, cool, got it, boss. Or you'll be like, hold on, I can't take that building.

There's enemy in it. I'll take this other one. understand what we're trying to do. So the idea of imposing things on people is wrong. It's wrong to impose things on people. When was the era of like the propaganda posters and all that? Always. Even even today.

Yeah, we make propaganda posters. Well, okay. So, but you know how like there was like a very distinct era? World War II is the one you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So to me and I don't know, what do I know? Pretty much nothing.

but that being said, that seems like, I see what they were doing there. I see what they're, it's essentially a marketing campaign. 100%. What do you mean essentially? That is a marketing campaign. I know, but sometimes you go past marketing into property. Okay. Kind of a thing.

And that's what I mean by it, of course, but you're right either way. The, the, it feels like, and it's kind of a different way of maybe, yeah, like, it's a different way of saying what you said, where if you can't convince them, of a good reason to do this and you're not. It's like something's up, right? Yeah, and here's the deal. Like when you're in World War II and you're fighting the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, it ain't a hard sell, bro. These people are trying to take over the whole world and impose darkness on it and we've got to go scrap.

Yeah. That's what's about to happen. So that's not a hard sell. That's why you have freaking lines. It's after September 11th. The lines around the recruiting, Tim Kennedy. Remember Tim Kennedy? He's like, yeah.

I went down to join after Semmelov. There's a liner. That's because it's real easy to see why we're doing this. Well, what happened in the beginning of Vietnam? I was like, okay, we're going to go fight these people. Then after a while they're going, wait a second, what are they doing? Wait, why have we gone through? Because the South Vietnamese shuffled through three, four, five governments.

We're going to help this government. Oh, well, now it's a new government. Now it's another government. Oh, no, they're corrupt. This guy got assassinated. It's freaking crazy. And he started looking over there. What are we doing?

So as that stuff starts to build up, okay. And that's what pisses me off, going back to this whole draft thing. What pisses me off is this. You hear me say this. If someone on the team doesn't like what we're doing, you need to raise your hand and say, hey boss, we don't like what's going on here. So if you're getting drafted and you don't like it, what the proper thing to do is for the country is to stand up and say, hey, listen, hey listen, I am not going to go do this.

Because I don't think this is right because I see we went through four or five different governments. in Vietnam, it seems like it's corrupt. We don't know what's happening. We're getting guys killed. We're killing civilians. We need to figure this out better before I sign up. And if 68% of the draftable populace would have said, hey, I'm not going to go fight, not because I have braces, not because I pissed on myself, not because I'm in college,

but because I don't think it's the right thing to do, maybe someone says, okay, we've got to figure out. We've got to reassess what's happening. So in a way, let's go back to the marketing campaign expression. So let me ask you this with a great marketing campaign can you sell me an ice cream cone full of shit Can you? No sir I don't think I can now so if you're trying to sell me an ice cream cone full of shit I'm not gonna buy it. Yes sir. So what you need to do is say wait my product is wrong I need to put milk and sugar and chocolate in here. Yeah, but you need to make an adjustment

not an adjustment on what you're not an adjustment on your message on your product. Yeah. which I think what the propaganda posters kind of seems like this was their their little approach was some of the ones I seen anyway. It's less about the ice cream cone full of shit. It's more about what kind of person has the strength to endure an ice cream cone full of shit? It's kind of like that. So that's some messaging there for sure. Yeah. So, okay.

But let me ask you this in a straight up direct question. Yes. what would be my chances of convincing you to eat an ice cream cone full of shit by saying, dude, if you're tough, you can eat this. There's very few people that are down for that. Yeah. Now, if I could say, listen, hey, hey, listen, this thing, this ice cream cone, it's got seaweed and it's got freaking clay.

No, clay's not edible. It's got seaweed in it. This is seaweed ice cream. It doesn't taste good, but you got to get some of this. If you're badass, there's a chance I can convince you. Look, we do. stupid men do dumb shit all the time. Yes, sir.

Because we just want to prove that we're cool. We're going to prove that we're tough. So there's a difference between trying to get someone to eat seaweed and someone trying to get someone to eat shit. So what I'm saying is if I'm trying to pitch you and the only thing I've got as a product is shit is not going to work. And what I need you to say is, hey, listen, Jock, I appreciate it.

I'm not going to eat shit. It's not happening. You can call me. a wimp. You can call me weak. You can call me pathetic, but I'm not going to eat shit. Now,

with the seaweed, you can be like, well, dude, I don't really want to be weak. I don't really want to be pathetic. So, hand me the,

hand me the cone. We're going to get it on. So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's,

it's close, but it's not the same thing. Yeah. And essentially, it's like you, you look at the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, easy sell right easy sell ice cream there's a spectrum ice cream cone full of shit hard

so hard sell hard so yeah and then the seaweed world war two world war two easy sell easy sell yeah it's pretty freaking easy sell they oh by the way they attack pearl harbor what's the cell now we got we got this you don't have to sell yeah ice cream's there everyone's taking it we want it so on the and this goes on the spectrum of all things wars whatever where yeah the easier to sell, the less you got to focus on these marketing campaigns. True. The heart of the sell, the more you got to focus and be more clever with it. Yep.

But you also have to be able to say to yourself, you know what? What I'm trying to sell is shit. Yeah, at the end of the day. And if you have that, then you don't say, well, I'm just going to keep forcing it down people. So it. No, you know what you say? Hey, listen, I've got to change my product.

Yeah. What I'm trying to sell is wrong. And that's where people get stuck. That's where McNamara. That's where Johnson. That's where these people get stuck. Because their egos are too big to admit that this was a dumb idea and say, listen, hey, we tried. This was a bad plan.

We didn't realize how corrupt the Vietnamese government was. We didn't realize how strong the Viet Cong were. We didn't realize how much we were going to have to sacrifice to get in there. And we're going to cut our losses. We're going to come home. We're going to observe and see what happens. That's what a squared away humble human being would do. Going back to the book.

William Broils, who commanded a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam from 19. In 1969 to 1971 said it was not a privilege to be able to fight. It was instead evidence that one had failed to understand how to manipulate the system, as if anyone not smart enough to get a deferment or at least to get a job in the rear was too dumb to do anything but carry a rifle. Wayne Johnson, who served as a grunt in Vietnam, 1968, told me that his squad leader assigned, quote, one of McNamara's boys to walk point and justified his action by saying if anyone has to die better a dummy than the rest of us.

Johnson said it was unfair. I know, but none of us protested. While he was with the unit, he added another appointment were injured or killed. Fast forward a little bit, he said. Earlier I showed, and by the way, this book is, I'm obviously just skimming the surface here. This book is really fascinating and informative

about all this, not just around Project 100,000, but obviously about the draft and spills over to leadership as well. He says earlier I showed how tens of thousands of middle class and upper class men beat the draft by employing such strategies as getting a family doctor write a letter attesting to some minor medical problem. By contrast, most low-income youths knew nothing about how they could manage their draft status. In many cases, they had legitimate problems that should have kept them from serving, such as being blind in one eye or only having one kidney, but they possessed no awareness or skills to argue the case. They didn't know that they could go to a draft board or an induction center and explain their rightful grounds for an exemption. Later, if they were abused in basic training or AIT, they lacked the skills to complain to a member of Congress.

After discharge, if they were denied veterans' benefits, they didn't know how to work through the bureaucracy. In my research, I found only one case of a project 100K man or his family using the tools of protest and persuasion that middle class citizens knew how to use. In 1969, a father in Oregon bought the family, bought the army's plan to send, or sorry, fought the army's plan to send his son, whom he described as retarded with the mental age of a 10-year-old to Vietnam as an infantryman.

His mother said, he's just a little boy. He'll be killed, sure. The parents generated publicity in Oregon newspapers and enlisted the aid of Congressman Wendell Wyatt and Senator Mark Hatfield because of all the negative publicity the Army canceled the youth's assignment to combat in Vietnam. and send him instead to Germany to perform clerical tasks. That's only one case.

And why? That's what he's pointing out is somebody that's up in the freaking poor rural area doesn't even understand, oh, well, you can defer, you can try and get out of this. Or someone from the ghettos doesn't understand, oh, you can try, there's a way to get out of this. They haven't heard it yet. Going crazy.

He says this, during my lifetime in moments of extreme stress, anxiety, or panic, I have done things that are dumb and destructive. It is humbling and instructive to remember my own episodes of dysfunction when I consider the insane actions of some project 100K men who were young, typically 19 or 20, and burdened with more anxiety and vulnerability than I will ever experience. That's a freaking great point. You think about the things that you've done when you're stressed out, freaked out, and you've done dumb things, behaved badly, made bad decisions because of that.

And you're a smart person. And imagine what these other people that are. more stress in a combat scenario. In a study of intellectually disabled men at the mental hygiene clinic at the 67th evacuation hospital in Q in a six-month period, two army psychiatrists found that Project 100K soldiers were referred to for psychiatric help 10 times as frequently as other troops. Project 100K men, they said, seem to have lowered stress tolerance and a relative lack of the usual mechanisms for coping with stress.

In a separate study for army psychiatrists concluded, quote, individuals of lower intellectual capacity have greater difficulty in adjustment than persons of average intelligence and thus more frequently become psychiatric problems or disciplinary offenders. End quote. Can you imagine that in Vietnam during the war, they're studying intellectually disabled men in the army in Vietnam in combat? A freaking disaster. Jim Bracewell. A helicopter pilot who commanded an air cavalry squadron in the Mekong Delta 1970 tells the story of Mike Sanchez, not his real name, who was a product of Project 100K and never should have been sent to a war zone.

As soon as Mike was assigned to an infantry platoon in the field, the young lieutenant platoon leader realized that a terrible mistake had been made. He requested that Mike be moved to a rare area. While the request was being processed, Mike, a simple young man who could neither read nor write, remained in the infantry platoon and was asked to perform beyond his mental capabilities. The platoon leader was very compassionate and tried to keep Mike under his wing, protecting him from ridicule from unfeeling soldiers. In return, Mike developed an intense loyalty to the lieutenant. One day as the platoon moved through some rice patties, the men came under heavy fire from the enemy and they ran for cover. As soon as they reached cover, Mike looked for his lieutenant. He couldn't find him.

He frantically began calling the platoon leader's name. One of the other soldiers told Mike to stop yelling that he had seen the lieutenant go down and thought he was dead. Mike tearfully asked where he was. When he pinpointed the lieutenant's position, he shed his equipment, including his rifle, and ran through heavy fire to his lieutenant. He scrambled to his young leader's side and discovered that he was badly hit in both legs.

Mike didn't know whether the lieutenant was dead or alive. He made no attempt at first aid. It never occurred to him. He simply picked up the lieutenant as if he were a doll and ran back to the tree line. Neither of them were hit during the dash to the trees and no one could believe it considering the intensity of enemy fire. They said the pattern of bullets hitting the rice paddy water all around them made seem impossible that they were not hit.

The lieutenant received first aid and a short time later was evacuated by a helicopter. He survived. About a month later, Bracewell said, Mike was sent to the rear area to participate in a parade and receive a silver star for heroism presented by the commanding general of his division. As was customary at ceremonies, the general presented the medal and then chatted with him for a few minutes. It was during this chat that the general realized that something was not quite right. He ordered his subordinates to remove Mike from combat. That kind of rings of like the Forrest Gump scenario, you know? And that section, there's some other good stories in there about, just about guys that did perform.

Like even though they were not quite, didn't have as much cognitive capacity. And he's got a bunch of examples like that. Bottom of the barrel, this section's called. And recalling the day in 1969 when he reported to the induction center in downtown Cleveland, Ohio for his pre-induction exam, Mark Fruitkin said at one point, at that point in the war, they were taking just about anyone they could get misfits, flat-foots, the half-crippled and the half-crazed. And so they had to get more people. They had two ways to get more people. Induction centers had a monthly quota for how many project 100K men they could take.

when they used up their quota they were instructed to continue to take low-scoring men but not count them apart part of project 100k in this way thousands of additional low IQ men were brought into the ranks two recruiters and induction centers were pressure to cast a wider net and bring in thousands of additional men who would normally fail to qualify for military duty men with health problems physical defects psychological disorders criminal backgrounds or and drug and alcohol addiction these second class fellows to use president john term served a political goal they spared healthier wealthier men in the middle class from being drafted many military commanders lamented the skewed priorities that put the playing of put playing politics ahead of creating a high-quality fighting force Adrian R. Lewis a retired US Army major who taught at West Point said the primary concern of the draft was pacification of the American people to disrupt American society as little as possible providing the armed forces with the best men possible was at best a secondary consideration.

It was just about politics, man. As the military grew more and more desperate for manpower, induction centers grabbed every warm body they could find. Even men with serious medical conditions such as asthma, high blood pressure, hearing loss. Carlos Martinez, who said he grew up in the streets and orphanages of Bronx and Brooklyn, was rejected by the military in 1964 as physically unfit for service. But in 1967, lo and behold, he was now fit. We were the bottom of the barely, he said. I was almost legally blind.

But when we got down to the induction station in 1967, it wasn't really about the physicals. It was like you were being taken. The assumption was that the assumption was already made that you were available. Everybody was taken. The only way you don't pass is if you don't have a leg. Fast forward a little bit more. Among the ranks of the armed forces in 1966, 1971 were men who had, been unacceptable because of their body size.

For example, too heavy, too thin, too short, until Project 100K suddenly made them fair gain. 9% of Project 100K men were accepted because of new less stringent physical standards. So 91% was mental. But there was 9% that lowered the physical standards. Because they were different, in quotes, these men were often harassed and given humiliating names. Overweight men were ridiculed with names such as,

Fatty, lard ass and porky, excessively thin men, skin and bones and tiny men, runt and midget. Army veteran John Kettwig tells of a trainee called Fatso at Fort Dix, New Jersey, who committed suicide after suffering horrendous cruelty at the hands of a sadistic sergeant. Once he had been a law student, said Ketwig. He had been called to do his duty. He had a wife and criminals as well. For many NCOs and officers, the Pentagon policy that caused most anger and outrage in the later years of the war was the relaxation of so-called moral standards. Men who had been convicted of serious crimes like armed robbery were supposed to be disqualified

from service, but recruiters and induction centers were given the authority to grant moral waivers to bring them into the ranks. In a common scenario, a judge working in collaboration with the recruiter would give a young offender a choice, go to jail or join the Army or the Marine Corps. When a judge and recruiter worked out a deal, the procedure was known as punitive enlistment. criminal behavior was often accompanied by alcohol and drug abuse. If a man had a police record for drunk driving or intoxicated assaults,

he would have been rejected in the days before the Vietnam War. But after the war began, because of the manpower shortages, he was accepted. That punitive enlistment, how much do you know about that? Like, do they do that now? I heard of that being done now. They don't do it anymore. I would hear guys saying that even when I got in, You know, either jail or the military.

Yeah, I know a guy. Okay, cool. Straight up the judge, that's what he told him. Okay, that's, then still happens. How long ago is that? It's hard to get in the military right now. Yeah, it was before. I don't know.

I don't know. But he is younger than me. So I know that. Yeah, I guess it's a thing. I definitely knew people that told stories like that, but there's a lot of people, especially when you first get in the military, a lot of stories. Oh, true. Everyone was a, you know, drafted.

to play in the NFL, but then they chose this. You know, everyone's a D1 football player or a golden gloves boxer. And like, there's a lot of stories you hear. Or, you know, I was like thug, you know, I was, I was either come to jail or come here. So you hear a lot of stories. You don't know which ones to believe, kind of, when you first get in.

Yeah. I believe this guy, I guess. I mean, yeah, I believe him, but, yeah, I don't know. Who knows? I didn't grow up with him or nothing. If you know the guy? Yeah. And like he seems legit, then maybe it's true. Yeah. Yeah. But they're, I'm just saying when you get in the military, especially boot camp,

there's a lot of people say a lot of weird stories, man. They make up a lot of stuff. Okay. That's trying to sound cool. Yeah. But we know that it did happen. I mean, clearly it had a name. I was, that's the first time I'd ever heard in that name, punitive enlistment. I've never heard that before. Or maybe now it's like less like official, you know, or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's less official. I know it's harder to get in the military. Now like if you have criminal record it's really hard to get in the military now. So check. In the final years of the war men who were violent, angry, or disturbed became a significant presence in the Army and Marine Corps according to many officers

They were responsible for a serious breakdown of discipline in the troops of Vietnam in 1971 Colonel Robert D. Heinal wrote in Armed Forces General this in 1971 he wrote this our army now that now remains in Vietnam is an essential approaching collapse with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers, drug-ridden and dispirited, we're not near mutinous. That's an assessment in the Armed Forces Journal in 1971 from a colonel, a full-bird colonel. According to Basker and Strauss, the most serious symptom of the crisis and discipline in Vietnam was fracking, real or threatened assaults on officers and high-ranking sergeants. The practice got its name from fragmentation grenade, which would be rolled into the area where an officer or NCO was sleeping.

When it exploded, no fingerprints could be found. The target was often a leader who was hated because he was incompetent in leading men or excessively harsh in his discipline or overly aggressive in waging war, putting the lives of soldiers and Marines at unnecessary risk just so that he could gain glory and advance his own career. In addition to thousands of threats that were never carried out, there were confirmed reports of at least 800 fraggings or attempted fraggings in the Army and the Marine Corps. That's a lot. 800. With 86 men killed and an estimated 700 wounded. From fracking.

Yep. That's confirmed. Yep. That's confirmed reports. That's some turmoil right there. But this was probably only the tip of the iceberg, according to his story. story in a West Heider. The true figure may never be known. Many officers felt unsafe simply because they were authority figures. During his second tour in Vietnam, Major Colin Powell, later a four-star

general, said he was living in a large tent and I moved my cot every night, partly to Thorpe, Viet Cong informants who might be tracking me, but also because I did not rule out attacks on our authority from within the battalion itself. Coming from Colin Powell, Captain Thomas, Susson. Cecil, who was stationed at Cam Ran Bay in 1970, 1971, was so worried about attacks on his life that during his last month in Vietnam, he slept in the military intelligence bunker, and only his battalion commander knew where he was at night. Among Marines in 1968, fragging was a worse problem than an illegal drug use, according to a team of Marine Corps historians who wrote that although the number of fraggings was relatively small,

the knowledge that fraggings occurred often had a chilling effect on a leader's willingness to enforce discipline. And again, you know, when your attitude is you're going to impose things on people and you're going to enforce discipline instead of lead and listen and collaborate to figure out how to execute things. And I know someone's thinking, well, how are you going to get him to do it? Well, you got to listen to them. And I've actually done that. I did that my whole career. Most fraggings occurred inside camps while out in jungles and rice paddies a different method was used by infantrymen who wanted to kill quote bad officers according to Robert Nyland the combat infantry officer quoted earlier

Sometimes an errant bullet struck an incompetent fool and made a firefight problem solved During the war army private an army private name Paul Solo was quoted as saying the army keeps a lot of strange dudes off the street The most common example of strange dudes were no in the military as misfits, chronically maladaptive soldiers who are unable to fit in with other soldiers because they were disturbingly different from everyone else. Misfits, wrote Arthur Peter Barnes, tend to share a number of common characteristics. A large majority are high school dropouts who are often slow-witted loaner types who are not particularly attractive or likable.

In civilian life, most of them have been losers many times over. In the military, this pattern is repeated. If misfits managed to slip through pre-induction screening and they enter basic training, their inability to adapt becomes noticeable and they are usually discharged sometimes with a diagnosis of personality disorder. But during the Vietnam War, misfits were kept because of manpower shortages. Most of them were poor learners or slow adjusters. They were unable to make friends and they became targets of their superior's rage and

their peers' resentment. Malcolm Miller Jones, a veteran who grew up in New York City, noted that group cohesion was important for platoons in training and in combat, and a man who failed to work in sync with his comrades and failed to do his share of the chores was often the recipient of a blanket party, in which a blanket was thrown over the man in his platoon mates beat him anonymously with their fist. A blanket party would cause some men to shape out and become cooperative, but it failed to reform others. I mentioned some of the success stories. Here's another success story. There's a chief hospital, Corman Don Phelps, who was in charge of a sick bay, a big sick. Bay and he had an assistant that he calls Elmer here not his real name who was not too bright

quote not too bright Phelps was ordered to take Elmer and he was immediately surprised by the young man's solid performance and eagerness to plead it please Elmer made the sick bay sparkle with cleanliness phelps said I couldn't have asked for a cleaner sharper space if I had a crew of five working for me because of Elmer's mental limitations felb said he never gave me any large amount of detailed work, but in the basic cleaning jobs that he assigned, Elmer took extreme pride in what he did accomplish. He was very polite and developed a highly commendable appearance. The story of Elmer supports the argument made by many educators and psychologists that low aptitude individuals can be productive in low stress, non-dangerous situations.

It gives another example of a lieutenant that has to type letters of condolence's home. And he says, my best typist was a young man who seemingly never should have been drafted or recruited his mental acuity was severely disabled however he was diligent in his duties never distracted and rarely made an error I wish I had more like him a wall amps absent without lead the major illegality in the armed forces during the Vietnam War was absenteeism AWOL which is absence of less than 30 days and desertion 30 days or longer during the entire period of the Vietnam War says basker and Strauss there were approximately 1.5 million AWOL incidents and 500,000 desertion incidents.

At the peak of the war in 1968, an American soldier was going AWOL every two minutes and deserting every six minutes. In 1970 alone, wrote Marine Colonel Robert D. Heinell Jr., the army had 65,000 deserters or roughly the equivalent of four infantry divisions. Project 100K men were more likely to run away than other soldiers. So AWOL is...

Less than 30 days. And then that's desertion. after that yeah and it was absent without leave leave oh because leave is how you go on yeah often their behavior stem from their personality and family history these 100k people that go that run away many of the men grew up in poor families no father present little or no education lots of chaos and confusion for some low IQ men running away was a common response to stress and harassment they failed to stop and ponder the many warnings they had heard throughout their time in the military warnings of the dire consequences of going awall

They were told that AWOL or desertion would cause them to receive a less than honorable discharge, which would make it difficult to get a good job. Unfortunately, the concept of a lifelong stigma was too abstract to have any real meaning for them. The guy who had troubles usually had less intelligence didn't think ahead. Most of these kids weren't bad. They were just dumb. It's coming from a battalion commander. There's a little uprising in the, in the Presidio.

Presidio in San Francisco. They had like a prison there. October 11, 1968, a prisoner named Richard Rusty Bunch, who's described by relatives as high IQ but severely depressed and suicidal, asked a guard, if I run, will you shoot me? He requested that the guard aim at his head, and then he skipped away. He'd gone 30 feet when the guard killed him with a 12-gauge shotgun blast in his back. The killing sparked a peaceful sit-down protest by 27 of the prisoners. Their spokesman tried to read a list of their grievances, but the prison commander, a 25-year-old captain. called in 75 MPs to encircled the huddled men together and order a hold to the protest

When the men refused all 27 were seized in charge with mutiny The charges later reduced to willful obedience Disobedience of lawful order in the following months three men escaped to Canada two are found guilty of lesser charges 22 were found guilty with sentences ranging from six months to 16 years But ultimately none of them actually had to serve service Serve more than one year thanks to the unfavorable publicity the army received that's the you you can influence what's going on that's why I said when you stand up and say hey this doesn't make sense here

this is what no one agrees with this you can actually gain support yeah yeah and again it kind of goes back in a small way actually maybe in a big way to the that like marketing campaign idea for sure where it's a help review yeah yeah all that's all in play right so yeah the government or if you need people to fight your war you better have a good marketing campaign and it's either going to be an easier sell or a hard to sell whatever that's it hey that's on you you know and you got to sell it decisions you make yeah yeah and if you have to if it's hard to sell things you need to think about what you're doing oh shouldn't be hard to sell things bro yeah yeah

yeah what does people on my team not want to win yeah and if they don't want to win then we're not aligned so we have a real problem but most of the time we want to win and then yeah so and the shoes kind of other foot as well if it's like hey government it's not selling me they're trying to impose so Hey, let me market to why, you know, why we shouldn't. Why we don't have to do this, you know. And boom, you get that support. You get an effective, successful marketing campaign. Mm-hmm.

Unless your marketing campaign gets banned. Then you can market against them banning your campaign. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. It's a little tricky these days. That makes it hard for sure. Bad paper.

Bad paper is when you get less than honorable discharge. or other than on when it was time for project 100k men to leave the military men of them received a heavy blow slightly over half of them 180,000 so there's only 360,000 of these people 180,000 of them were separated with discharges under conditions other than honorable a stigma that made it hard to get good jobs because many employers would not hire veterans who failed to produce a certificate of honorable discharge they were often barred from veterans benefits such as health care housing, assistance, employment, and counseling. Some of them became chronically homeless and troubled.

Although some bad paper vets have been guilty of serious offenses, most have been accused of minor offenses related to the stresses of military life and combat, AWOL, missing duty, abusing alcohol or drugs, or talking back to a superior. There was a cruel irony in the less than honorable discharges. Millions of men who beat the draft legally by going to college or getting braces, et cetera, suffered nothing. In fact, they held an advantage over men who served. They got the first crack at jobs, compile, and compiled seniority and experience. Even the draft dodgers who fled to Canada and Sweden got amnesty from presidents Ford and Carter, but not McNamara's bad paper vets. Unlike the

articulate, politically astute war resistors, they had no one to lobby for them. And then he talks about one guy that Bill Daniel of Nashville who'd been an army recruiter in 1967 when he was interviewed 35 years later he was still bitter about the approximately 100 McNamara's morons he had personally recruited it in the slums of Cleveland, Ohio during the war it didn't sit it didn't really sit too good with me he said but when you are told to do what to do in the military you know what you do you do they never should have been in the military many of the low aptitude men that he and his fellow recruiters signed up or either killed in combat when they left the army they were departed with less than honorable discharges for such offenses as going a wall in subordination

or bedwetting you take a man who can't read or write he said he never knew about deferments he comes from the ghetto and he may not want to take orders and you send him into the by the most expedient means necessary into combat that's only going to lead to failure fast forward a little bit several veterans counselors in the 1980s told me of similar experiences with low IQ Vietnam veterans when review boards were asked to change a discharge from undesirable to general, the uniformed officers who were compassionate

toward Project 100K men would approve the change. So you got people trying to get these bad discharges changed and the military uniformed officers like, yeah, we need to give these guys a break. But they would be overruled by civilian superiors. who regarded men who had gone AWOL as slackers who deserve no mercies. In an absurd turn of events, some of these civilians who viewed themselves as upholding military tradition

had been draft avoiders during the Vietnam War. It was infuriating to see these officials kick the very men who had served in their stead. So here is the verdict. Kind of puts out some word on McNamara's plan. At the dawn of Project 100K, Robert McNamara boasted that the program would, quote, salvage the poverty-scarred youth of our society at the rate of 100,000 men each year. First, for two years of military service and then for a lifetime of productive activity in civilian society, end quote. Despite the soaring optimism, Project 100K became known as McNamara's folly. It was a failure, bringing more suffering than redemption.

Though some Project 100K men did well in the service, passing basic training going on to productive military assignments. Large numbers of them had trouble coping with the demands of military life. They were often hazed and ridiculed and demeaned. It was ironic that McNamara in one of his speeches extolling Project 100K said, I have directed that these men shall never be singled out or stigmatized in any manner. End quote. And then he puts somehow his order never worked its way down the company level Some veterans of Project 100k were

Psychologically devastated by the war Dr. John Wilson a psychologist at Cleveland State University Who spent several years studying Vietnam veterans emotional problems estimated that thousands of Project 100k men Who had served in Southeast Asia were so severely messed up that they couldn't function in society When I say severely messed up I mean they can't hold jobs raised families and co-coveau with day-to-day living McNamara had predicted that life after they returned to civilian world project 100k men would have an earning capacity quote two to three times that it would have been had there been no such program after the war however a follow-up study on project 100k men showed that in late 19 that in the 1986 to 1987 labor market they were either no better off or

worse off than non-veterans of similar aptitude so much for McNamara's rosy prediction in 2014 when many Vietnam veterans were entering their retirement years a study funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated that more than 283,000 veterans still suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder which was characterized by disabling flashbacks hyper arousal and sleep problems the key the study's key takeaway is that for some PTSD is not going away said William Schlegler a lead scientist on the study it is chronic and prolonged for veterans with PTSD the war is not over the study found that low IQ

veterans were more likely to suffer from PTSD than high IQ vets project 100 K and McNamara's other failures in the war wrecked his reputation at first admired for his intelligence and analytical prowess author Thomas Schenzer Sticked wrote McNamara later became one of the most hated men in America by the officers and enlisted personnel he had led One officer angry over the abuse of mentally limited men in the armed forces even confronted McNamara in public At a conference in Washington DC as McNamara touted the virtues of Project 100k an army psychologist who was treating psychologically afflicted

Afficted Vietnam veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center stood up and spoke out although McNamara was a although a mere captain Dr. Walter P. Nake, K-N-A-K-E, told McNamara what you're doing is wrong. And by the way,

Dr. Walter P. Nake, I looked him up. He's alive. And if he wants to come on the podcast, he's invited. Did McNamara ever express regret over Project 100,000? Biographer Deborah Shapely

says that to the very end, he refused to apologize or admit error. McNamara wanted to believe that Project 100K was a universally successful program, but his self-congratulation was at odds with the verdict of most scholars and other observers. Christian Appy said Project 100K was instituted with high-minded rhetoric about offering the poor an opportunity to serve. Its result, however, was to send many poor, terribly confused and woefully undereducated boys to risk death in Vietnam. NEP Baker, a history professor at Wheaton College, said Project 100K or McNamara's morons as the cruel joke went was a disaster, benefiting neither the men nor the armed forces.

Jacob Hellebrun of Georgetown University said McNamara's experiment in social engineering had the most awful results, including ridicule and training camps and death in Vietnam, Samuel F. Yeet. A professor at Howard University said that instead of preparing impoverished young men with skills, for a better life, Project 100K was little more than express vehicle to Vietnam, denouncing McNamara for his intellectual arrogance and duplicity. Myra McPherson, author of the Vietnam classic Long Time Passing, called Project 100,000 a shameful brainchild and one of the most heinous acts as the chief, one of his most heinous acts as chief architect of the war. on the last day of 1971

Project 100k was officially ended and in July of 1973 the draft was replaced by the all-f Volunteer Force passing the AFQT was raised from the 10th percentile IQ of 72 to the old standard of the 31st percentile IQ of 92 so they did they shut it down but he goes to point on that this kind of thing still happens he says in 1976 Charlie Wilson congressman from Texas testified

at a hearing about the death of one of his constituents, Lynn McClure, who was a 20-year-old young man from Lufkin, Texas, who had a history of non-success, who was mentally retarded, who weighed 115 pounds, somehow got to the Marine Corps and was severely beaten during basic training and died as a result of those injuries without regaining consciousness.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1976, a 25-year-old man walked out of a state mental institution where he'd lived for 14 years and wandered into an army recruiting station. He had been diagnosed as having what today is called Down syndrome, was labeled severely retarded. Retarded. When he entered the recruiting station, he was promptly enlisted by a sergeant who, a later investigation revealed faked his test scores. He was sent to Fort Ord, California for basic training, soon deserted, came back to Tulsa, arrested, put in the Fort Sill stockade to face

court martial. Psychiatrist examined him and found he had the mental capacity of a nine-year-old, even up to today in the drawn-out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fast forward a little bit beginning in 2001 the US did not bring back the draft but there were many parallels to Vietnam as the military accepted low-performing recruits because it was desperate for more and more soldiers for combat an army private named david detrick of petri peri county Pennsylvania was subject of a newsweek article entitled he never should have gone to iraq before and during his army time he was considered slow in his thinking he had trouble Retaining information and basic training couldn't hit targets on the rifle range even though he was given extra training one superior campaign to have Dietrich sent home on grounds that he would pose a danger to himself and others if he was sent to Iraq But the request was rebuffed by hires up as with Vietnam there was a big push to get troops in the combat zone

Soon after he arrived in Iraq he was assigned to act as a scout in an abandoned building where he was supposed to watch from an open window A few minutes after starting his duty in the window, he was shot dead. That was December 2006 in Ramadi right after we left. 2007-9 Marine Corps recruiters worked in the Houston area. We're punished for using stand-ins to take mental tests at the Houston induction center for 15 marginal prospects who might not have passed the tests on their own. The fraud was caught by an official who noticed the signatures of the test takers didn't match those on the enlistment forms. No one knew how long the frauds.

test taking you've been going on yeah that's 2007 by the way from 2004 to 2007 four major branches of the armed forces granted a hundred and twenty five thousand moral waivers to override the rule against accepting people with criminal be criminal records Stephen Green Stephen Green 20 an angry misfit and high school dropout from Midland Texas who had racked up jail time for drug and alcohol offenses before he joined the army with a moral waiver in two thousand In 2006, Green and four other soldiers in Iraq drank alcohol, changed in the black clothes,

and then raided the home of a husband and wife and their two daughters. Green killed the parents and the younger daughter. Then he and a second soldier raped the 14-year-old daughter, shot her, sent fire to her body to try to destroy the evidence. He's convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to life in prison. 2014, he committed suicide by hanging him. But why is that guy in the military? the closer of this book one of the lessons of McNamara's project 100k is that the low

aptitude individual should never be used in war zone or in a dangerous rear echelon areas putting their lives at risk is cruel and immoral and on sheer practical level it degrades the effectiveness of war efforts the least intelligent among us should never be viewed as expendable units of man powers but as our fellow sojourners on this fragile earth deserving respect and compassion and gratitude for the contributions they make to our families and our society while vowing to never again induct people with intellectual disabilities Americans should also heed warnings by military leaders that it is a mistake to take inductees who have criminal

backgrounds medical defects social maladjustment and psychiatric disorders the armed forces need and deserve the best and the brightest one of the wisest quotations that I recorded earlier in this book comes for lieutenant Colonel Leslie John Shellhace, a World War II veteran who helped create Project 100K, but who was strongly opposed to sending the men into combat. Quote, wars are not won by using marginal manpower as cannon fodder, but rather by risking and sometimes losing the flower of a nation's youth. So there you have it. not not exactly an uplifting book definitely worth buying definitely worth reading but it's not gonna not gonna make you feel any better about things and then this is the the one what what

we take away from it why we talk about on this podcast because what can we learn from it that's the that's the thing what can we learn from it and I think one of the big things we can learn from it is you have to push back. You have to question authority. Authority is not always right. Just because someone is in a position of authority doesn't mean they're right. And in fact, an indicator of them not being right is when they impose things on you. That's an indicator that they're not right. If you have to impose something on someone, it's an indication that what you're doing is not right. And if you're having something imposed on you, that's an indication that whoever's

imposing on you is not right. Or at least they're not confirmed. Because if I have to impose something on you why why if I can't explain to you how this is going to help you help your family help your community help your country if I can't explain that to you and the only way I can get you do something is by imposing on you it's if there's a good chance it's wrong so again back to my earlier emotional reaction to the draft Dodgers right but it's I understand it once I took a step back you used you understand don't look I understand it.

Does it still make me angry that there's people that look, can you imagine watching your, again, I'm going to get emotional, but you watch your neighbor go off to war while you stay at home? There's something wrong with that picture. So from that level, I don't, I can't understand it, can't agree with it. When you start looking at it from a level of, oh, this is being imposed on the country. And the leadership can't explain why it's happening. and they're trying to sell it to us

and they can't even sell it to us. They can't. So they have to impose. So we have a moral responsibility to question authority, to question the government, to figure out what it is we're actually doing. And you take a guy like McNamara,

we should probably do a huge podcast about McNamara at some point. Because all the things that I talk about for bad, leadership he knocks a bunch of them out of the park he he doesn't understand people he only listens to statistics there's a there's a I know you like biases echo Charles yes the McNamara fallacy you've heard of that the McNamara bias that's when you just go off of statistics you just look at the numbers and you make a decision based on your quantitative observations and

that's it based on the methamer Hey, the metric says this. That's what we're doing. It's a fallacy. Doesn't account for emotions, doesn't account for personalities, doesn't account for the human side of things. And it doesn't work. So we can learn about leadership by reading this book. And we can learn clearly that we also have a moral obligation to protect people that are weak, protect people that are mentally and physically disabled. And we need to be empathetic to other people

to understand where they're coming from. Like you read about some of those leaders in this book where the platoon commander took the, the McNamara 100K soldier, took him under his wing, protected him, took care of them. And there's a bunch of examples in there like that. Don't put people into positions that they cannot handle. And I'm not talking about don't push people,

but don't put them into situations, especially if they're gonna be hazardous to them where they can, get hurt or killed if they haven't been trained if they're not capable of doing that thing. Certainly don't put them in danger. What does that mean? It means be a good freaking human being. That's what it means.

Be a good person. That's what I learned. Yeah. Did they, I mean, when they kind of laid that out, like, oh, this program is going to have this, this benefit on these people who otherwise wouldn't have these benefits. They're going to be trained. They're going to be more capable. and all this stuff or whatever. And it's like, you kind of wondered,

did they believe that? Because if you do like a, what's the opposite of a straw man? I think it's called, I don't know, the Iron Man, I don't know, whatever. Steelman. Steel man, yeah, yeah. So the Steel Man argument for that is kind of like,

yeah, like there are success stories and those success stories kind of play out exactly how they're purporting. You know, this is going to apply to everyone. But like I said, Like it's not a vacuum and it's not, you know, people are different. And when you kind of take it as a whole, the reality sets in where it's like, no, man, this is going to leave people straight up dead, confused, freaking, like, worse off,

you know, just because all of the unintended consequences. But you wonder, like, I wonder if that was on purpose, that they're kind of like, oh, yeah, maybe all these other consequences. Or did they really kind of think that? Yeah, that's. you could see that McNamara is surrounded by yes men. So here's the thing. I might believe something,

but I'm surrounded by people that be like, hey, jog, that might not be the best idea. And I'll even say that myself. Wait, am I really, are we really going to take a kid from some rural area that's got a fourth grade education, that's got an IQ of 60,

and we're going to turn their lives around, or take some kid from the inner city ghetto and all of a sudden, oh, the inner city ghetto kid with an IQ of 64 is going to be like, oh, great, I'm looking forward to following orders and peeling potatoes in the U.S. Army. Like, we impose, we overlay our thoughts on the people that we have no idea what they're like. Yeah, and that's the point right there where you have no idea. Oh, yeah, this guy's going to be more capable. Like, well, how do you know?

Like, even, I'm not saying no one's going to, but then you're accounting for like so many people, so many different types of people, by the way, and you're assigning one success solution. You're also assigning your values and your perspective to a bunch of other people. Yeah, yeah. That's the worst part. You're assigning your values

and your perspective to a bunch of other people, which is a freaking massive mistake. Well, of course they're going to get on board. Of course they're going to get on board. Yeah. It doesn't happen. You know, when you see that, you see that with your kids.

You know, like, so many kids would I kill for the opportunity to do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you're like, you're imposing your, your values and your perspective on other people. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work. I'm sure McNamara is like, hey, this is, you know, Johnny from wherever, this rural area in the middle of nowhere, whose main goal in life is to freaking work at the service station.

Yeah. Because he likes cars. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good point with the kids, right? So I remember my brother was talking to my daughter. And he was like doing some math problem, you know, on the thing. Oh, yeah. And he's like, all into it, you know.

And then she's, you can tell she was like kind of bored with it. And she's like, oh, like, let's do something else or whatever. He's like, no, no, no, math is fun. And then like, me and my wife are looking at each other. Like, what the hell is this guy talking? Who does he think he's talking to him, you know? Eight-year-old girl is going to be like, yeah. Yeah.

And there's a small population of the world. that think it's fun. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, exactly. One of them. And he's, and Jay, Jay Charles is not going to be able to impose his perspective. No, no.

On her. Oh, yeah. So that's another good thing to be very careful of that McNamara can teach us. Because in his mind, everyone's just thinking the way he's thinking. And he's surrounded by a bunch of yes men that are saying, yeah, of course little Johnny in the rural area or this kid down in the ghetto. Johnny in the ghetto is going to be just down for the cause. Oh, yeah.

They're going to be capable. Wow, what a great opportunity. Right, right, great opportunity. Oh, you're going to send me to freaking army boot camp? That sounds like a great opportunity. Thank you so much for this educational opportunity. Yeah. And thinking he's all benevolent.

It's a good question that you posed. Did they actually believe that or was that just propaganda? That's a good question. My guess is they believed it. Yeah, they had to believe in the beginning. But the thing is the army guy, the uniform army people saying, dude, no, bad call. Not going to work. then again, think about it

because you could see like one of these people especially if you're used to just like handling people with that kind of numbers you know, we need a thousand guys here we need 10,000 guys here like who are we going to put like you're not dealing with actual human beings anymore in your head. You're like bro get the guys who don't have nothing to live for

throw them in there you know we'll give an opportunity. Yeah they should be happy they should be thankful when I started teaching jiu jiu jitsu to like team guys The funny thing is I thought that every I thought I would have a A rate of acceptance and wanting to train of 100% I thought everybody hey When I show this to you you're gonna 100% I'm gonna well how am I gonna do this

How am I gonna train all these guys all the time? They're just gonna want to train I'm not to do in the morning I'm not doing the morning I do it at night We're training all the time I imposed my perspective on everybody and my values on it. And the reality is I would get probably out of every 20 people, 20 people I would introduce to Jiu-Jitsu, one out of 20 would be into it.

See, and even that kind of, maybe this is my bias, but that to me seems like that's a reasonable expectation. Reasonable. That's how wrong you can be. That's how wrong. I am, and I am an actual seal. It's not like I'm talking about some other group of people. This is I'm a seal

I've been a seal for 10 years at this point And I'm thinking oh well of course Anyone that I show this to is going to be bought in We're able to train all the time You know seals You know how they think? Yeah for sure So

I was wrong I'm wrong And that's one of those things It's saying that UFC tool When I went to Virginia and watched the UFC It's the same thing I realized I'm wrong That's another thing

Teaching guys Shihitsu I'm wrong Not everyone's into it Not everyone thinks like I think Some people think way better than me. Some people think different than me, but I cannot overlay my perspective on people, and neither can you. So don't do it. Watch out if you're doing that. It's a bias. I wonder what that bias is called. When I overlay my perspective on you, I think everyone thinks the way I think.

They don't. In fact, almost no one thinks the way you think. And that's a fun thing. Team guys do think alike. There's a whole lot of group think going on. You know, everyone likes certain stuff. There's a huge overlap for the amount of people that are in the seals, the then diagram of like interests and what we think is funny and what we think is cool. It's a big overlap. And I'll tell you what, in the 90s it was an even bigger overlap because there was a much less culture that you were exposed to because you didn't have the internet. So you, you know, if you were going to get exposed to music, it was going to be from some other team guy. That was going to be, check this band out, Alice and Chains. Okay, cool. Let me check it

out. There was no one introducing you to some random band from Ohio. that you never heard of, whereas now you can just, that'll just pop up on your stream. So in the 90s, it was a much more unified group. And that's why each team had its own little personality. And each platoon inside the team had its own little personality. Now the world is more, there's so many more fractions that you can get into. Which, when you think of it from a global perspective is, Bringing people together because now everyone kind of everyone listens to more music. Everyone sees a bunch of movies

When I grew up Music was a thing of record cost freaking you know 799 which was a lot of money sure So you didn't buy a bunch of records you didn't get to listen to a bunch of different music Not like now what you can listen to anything you want you hear of a band for one split second you can get their whole catalog for nothing Nothing. That's true, huh? Like, think about it.

Remember, even like movies, like you'd have to go buy the tape. Yeah, and everyone in 1985, everyone saw the movie. Because there was only nine movies. Everyone saw. Yeah, it's true. Everyone heard the song. Yeah. Everyone knew that album because everyone had that album.

That was the only album there was to get. 1984 by Van Halen. Every single person I knew had that album. In 1984. That's crazy, right? Every single person knew that. I don't know any hit songs right now. I don't know any of them.

I don't even know what a hit song. Is there such a thing anymore? I don't know, but I'm listening to music. I'm listening to, I'm even listening to newer music that's coming out, but I'm not listening to what everyone else is listening to. So we have a less unified situation. But that makes it even harder for me to impose my little light.

ideas on you and and transfer my vert values on to you. It doesn't work. Yeah, it's true. All right. Well, you know, we definitely want to help people out and let's talk about some things that might be able to help people out. Yeah. We here are doing a few things to help people because we are on this path. And if we're not, we're trying to be most of us. I'm not just going to impose my I'm not just going to assume. It's not what I'm going to do. So here's the deal. What are, what is it that people may need in the world right now? I can tell you one thing that people need from time to time. Sometimes you need a little extra, let's call it energy.

That's true. Energy helps for sure. Because the energy will help you to get through. Maybe you've got to work to do. You've got to work out to do. Maybe you've got the jihitsu to do. Maybe you want to stretch. Maybe you want to get up.

This stuff we got to do. Maybe you've got to just focus on getting done with some work so you can go work out. Yep. So sometimes you need some men. We made some energy releasing projects that were releasing energy into your brain and body. Yes. So if you're if you're into energy drinks or you think you might benefit again, this is me just not imposing my my way. Wait a second. Even if you're not into energy drinks because you might not be there's a good chance. I wasn't in energy drinks. Oh yeah. Yeah. Especially if it's for a reason because the reason I wasn't in energy drinks is because they were made of poison. Yes. And I wasn't going to put poison into my body. Despite the fact that it might give me a short-term gain of like a little bit of hype, then I have a long crash. I have health issues.

I have the whole deal. Yep. So we're not doing that. Nope. We got good news. We got a new era of energy drinks. Jocko, discipline, go. Energy drink, all healthy, no sugar.

It's sweet still. Got that monk fruit. We've got the monk fruit, see. So good stuff, no artificial stuff in there, none. All natural. no preservatives even. So this is a healthy energy drink. Good, good front side, good backside, boom, good to go.

You'll be healthy. Long term, short term. Strategic and tactical. Tactical win, strategic win, boom. So yes, you are correct. You cannot be into energy drinks per se and still be into this. And it's helpful on this path that we're on. So we're good.

So we are good to go. So check those out. Yes, check those out. You know, try one. See which flavor is your favorite? We got powder too. by the way. Yeah.

You can get a powdered form of that. You can get a powdered discipline go pre-workout. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's another good one where the traditional pre-workout, I can see why people are not into that. Here's a thing. I'll admit it.

I was kind of, I got off of them for various reasons for kind of the reason we're talking about where it's like, I know the benefits of a traditional pre-workout. But you got to, you pay a price with those, you know. There's all stuff in them and all this stuff. And you kind of get, there's like this itchy feeling that you get on your, your face and all this stuff from a pre-workout. It is weird. But when it comes with that boost or whatever, you kind of accept it, then you kind of

embrace it. Then it's kind of like, yeah, you know it's working kind of a thing. But after a while, you're like, I don't know if I should be taking this stuff for it. So I kind of stopped. But this one's not like that. So this pre-workout, discipline to go, pre-workout doesn't give you all that weird jittery, all that weird downside, the itchy face, even though some of us might still like it, even though that's not very beneficial in a workout.

You just working out with itchy face, working out with not an itchy face. That's the only difference as far as the itchy face goes, but still gives you the good workout, the vasodilation that we look for. Really good. So you got that. You got the pills, by the way,

if you need to take that quick hitter. And look, then you're going to go blast a workout. Blast it. Yes. And then guess what you need? Some protein. Yeah, you need some protein to recover.

I have some I have an announcement to make to the world You know Elvis Presley I guess the last thing that he ate before he died was a peanut butter Banana sandwich Oh, okay cool now this is the king of rock and roll You know what I'm saying? Yes sir, I know you're saying a king of rock and roll We have to we have to hold his opinions at some level of reverence because he is the king of rock and roll Okay

Now unfortunately for him he wasn't healthy right. The, you know, things got the best of him. Maybe the peanut butter, he had fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, right? Oh, the sandwich was fried. Yeah. Upside taste, real good, right? Downside, just off there.

There's a lot of downside. Yes, sir. There's a lot of downside. So we can actually have an upside upside upside. You want that taste? Take, get some peanut butter milk, get some banana cream milk. Put one screw of each, and you got your side. a little treat I'll tell you if you want to boost that one which that's a good move

right there and I'm literally going to try that it's so good so you get one scoop banana banana cream bomber to be specific one scoop peanut butter chocolate then you put half a cup chocolate milk damn the rest regular milk or almond milk whatever you like and then one frozen banana see what I'm saying oh and one scoop peanut butter but this is untested what you're talking about. This is my hypothesis. Before you do that, try what I just said. Yeah.

Mix your fluid of choice, almond milk, coconut milk. What's the other one? Oat milk, I guess. Yeah. Or dairy milk. A regular cow. Milk.

Just try one and one. And tell me what you think. Before you get crazy. Before you're out there, getting chocolate milk down the store, getting Tulsi's banana out of the freezer. I'm an advocate of getting crazy. Because it's one of those things.

where you have like the perfect base because you don't need anything additional. You don't need you. It's perfect as far as like. Just enhancement. Oh, yeah. A video that you make. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, exactly.

So yes, perfect. Best tasting protein that there is. Really? So boom, that's going to help you out. Get yourself some mobility and joint health, right? That's where we got that joint warfare, the krill oil. Go read reviews of either one of those two. Let's see what's up.

Yeah. It's true. Also immunity Oh yeah you want that immunity You do Yes we do want the immunity So immunity and joints by the way It's one of those things where men

Until it gets compromise It gets compromised We might not we might not think about it all the time But boom you gotta stay ahead of that train right there So yes vitamin D3 and It's a product substance Capsules called Cold War Oh man those will keep you out of a jam

For sure Out of the jam Also you got kids get some more of your kid moke for those kids We don't want to poison our children. Seems obvious. You wouldn't even think you'd need to say that. And yet go to the store and look at what people are buying to feed their children. They're going to feed their children poison.

Don't do that. Get them some warrior kid milk. By the way, they're super stoked. This is the most unified product where the parents want it as much as the kids. The kids want it as much as the parents want them to have it. Because your kid's like, oh, I want my kid to be strong and healthy. Cool. And the kid's like, I want something that tastes awesome.

Cool, where you get milk. Yeah, you might be, you probably are kind of past this. You've probably been out of this game for a while. But getting little kids to like eat their dinner, right, or eat their whatever. And then the kid being like a picky eater or whatever. Right. So that's like a challenge. I'm a picky eater.

I'm still in that game for years. But that can be a challenge with the kids. You just want to get them fed into bed. You don't starve your kids. And then, you know, they're, you're not going to force feed it. So it becomes a thing, right? So sometimes the easy path, right, is to be like, you know what? Let me just get them something.

That tastes good. And get this food down, man, you know, he's not starving, whatever. She's not starving. But here's the thing. So in that battle, because that can be a battle. I'm not saying for everybody, but that's a common battle that I hear about. This is one of those tools. One of those solutions where it's like, yep, they're not going to protest.

They're going to love that one. And then boom, they get. their protein they get their nutrients perfect everything we're talking about you can get it at joccofuel com you can also get some tea if you need some teas and jocco white tea there joccofuel dot com if you subscribe to any of these things you get free shipping that way we can compete with the global corporations that are just shipping stuff to you for for nothing yeah they're they're getting theirs gross me they're getting there so if you want to do that joccofuel dot com subscribe you get free shipping also you can get the drinks at wah wah what what and the vitamin shop you can get all the

products at the vitamin shop so go check those out so there you go also origin USA this is where you can get your American made jeans boots some wallets on there a bunch of goods a bunch of goods jiu jitsu stuff geese no here's the thing they're not just like regular freaking like generic ish stuff you know Do you know Neil Black Belt Neil here? Yeah, anyways, I was rolling with him and I he's he trains MMA and so you probably He trains MMA during the day. That's probably why you don't know him because you don't train MMA during the day, but he happened to throw Ghee on the other day and we were rolling and He like he like grabbed my ghee and then he was all like hey what is this? He started caressing

He started caressing me like stop rolling to ask me about. I go yeah bro. Oh yeah, this is the this is called the rift. That It makes complete sense to me. And that's how all of it is, too, by the way. So I have two pairs of Delta 68 genes. I have the factory jeans. Even when you put those on, you're like, oh, there's a little bit more to these. Just from like a physical presence. Present standpoint.

Yes, sir. So, yes, they, you know, they're origin, USA.com is where you can get this stuff. But this, there's, okay, American made, yes, we'll get to that. But a lot goes into this. from the beginning to the end. And when you put it on, you can tell. And you can also tell it it's made in America. Yes, sir.

You can tell it's made in America when you see people bringing back machines from overseas, which we literally brought back machines from overseas to start making stuff back here and make more stuff back into America. I mean, come on. Are you serious right now?

Yeah, we're serious. Why? We want to help people. We want to help our communities. We want to help our country. How do you do this? that go get something from origin usa.com help everybody you know and be super comfortable oh yeah yeah that's good so i feel like i feel like my um wardrobe is essentially taken over by origin

stuff yeah i've literally seen one of my old favorite sweat or sweater hoodies whatever literally sitting in front of me and i spent 30 minutes looking for the origin one There you go. You want that one? Yep, totally. Orgianusa.com. Also, jaco's the store. You're going to represent while you're on this path.

You want to represent discipline equals freedom. You want a shirt, a hat, a hoodie. That's where you can get it. So yes, jocococ store.com. There's some new stuff on there. There's always new stuff on there. The jiu-jitsu section. The jiu-s section is coming along.

How many shirts are in the jiu-tzu section now? In there, there's one. It's not really a section yet, is it? Well, we're completely, what do you call it? They're in transit to be on. By the time this comes out, tomorrow. Might be on there.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Either way. Always new stuff on there. New stuff. Speaking of new stuff, short locker. New shirt every month.

It's a subscription scenario. You get a new shirt every month if you don't know about this. The designs are a little bit different, but they're very appropriate. Very appropriate. Now you finally found what are you going to say. You used to say like, well, they're kind of. Now you're saying appropriate. I like it.

Appropriate. It's a good space to be. Because that is the way. Because that is the most accurate as of right now. I would agree with you. They are appropriate, all of them. Did you see? Oh, no, you didn't see.

There's the February one, which is, it's not February yet. So you got to wait for that. I think you might appreciate that. Okay. Check. Speaking of subscription, subscribe to this podcast, wherever you subscribe to a podcast, leave a review so that I can make fun of Echo Charles

for what you say about him. Sure. We also have the unraveling podcast with Daryl Cooper. Grounded podcast, which Dean's been hitting me up once to get back to the grounded game. So we'll probably make that happen. Warrior Kid podcast, yeah. You can also join us on the underground, jocco underground.com. Look, were we, are we, are we nervous about people getting canceled and banned and all this other stuff?

I'm not nervous. I don't stay up at night thinking about it. But is it smart to just sit around and not pay attention? No, it's not. You can see people literally getting removed from platforms right now. They removed Joe Rogan had a guest on who's a Harvard doctor. And they didn't like what he said. They removed it from YouTube, which is,

which seems kind of crazy, right? Yeah. I don't know what, you know, what is he saying that needs to be removed so no one can hear it? Yeah, a Harvard medical doctor. Does that and it's just a little clip, you know, a little clip. Oh, we're gonna remove that. So look, am I staying awake? Not staying awake, but am I paying attention? Yes, I am. Do we need to have a contingency plan? Yes, we do. Contagency plan, jocco underground.com.

If you want to help us with that platform, you can go to jocco underground.com. You subscribe. It costs 80. dollars and eighteen cents a month then if anything ever happens this platform will be there We'll be there we'll do we got to do I don't think it's gonna happen but that way we don't have to take on a bunch of sponsors that say hey You can't talk about that we don't want you to talk about that you said bad things about McNamara Yeah right you said bad things about dick Cheney Well who's gonna what are they gonna say? You said bad things about Bill Clinton He's a draft dodger and Mitt Romney. Oh, okay.

Well, maybe we'll just get taken down. No, not on the underground. The underground's ours. So, if you can't afford $8.18 a month, we still would, and you still want to be in the game. Cool. Email assistance at jocco underground.com. We'll take care of you. Also, we have a YouTube channel.

Speaking of adding bananas and chocolate milk to milk. Sure. usually unnecessary some people might want those kind of enhancements that's what I go Charles does with some of his videos sure

explosions smoke fire music I'm making a video with explosions more gunfire than anything

small explosions nonetheless hey that's just a heads up for you bro so there you go you subscribe to that also origin USA has a if you want to know what's happening in America with America

American manufacturing, go to Origin USA, subscribe to their YouTube channel as well. We have psychological warfare. What's that all about? It's an album. An album, me and Jocco, Jocco and I made to facilitate my moments of weakness, and I got a bunch, had a bunch. Jocko talking me through him. Weakness free now, are you?

Weakness free. Well, let's face it, we're never really weakness free. No one is never weakness free. But look, if you ever had a thought of, man, I wish, I wish I had Jocko kind of in my ear just to kind of let me know every once in a while. Give me a little psychological spot when I come across these moments. That's exactly what this is. So yeah, psychological warfare. Get it where you can get any MP3s.

Boom. Jocco got you. Speaking of reminders of staying on the path, flipside canvas.com to Cota Meyer. One of my favorite dudes in the world. It's awesome when your heroes are. your friends Dakota Myers got a company called flipside canvas.com where he's making cool stuff to hang on your wall Check that out. We also have some books final spin read it Explore your brain a little bit see where it ends up take a little emotional roller coaster of a ride

Also leadership strategy and tactics field manual the code the evaluation of protocols discipline equals freedom field manual Way the warrior kid one two three and four get that book for the freaking kids you know please Mikey and the Dragons about faced by Hackworth. I wrote the forward to the new version, Extreme Ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. Also have Eschlon Front, which is a leadership consultancy. Leadership is the solution to your problems. So if you want to solve your problems in your organization, go to Escalonfront.com. It's where you can get details for all the training that we offer, including the muster field training exercises, battlefield.

Next muster is Dallas, Texas. March 24th and 24th. We also have online training, Extreme Ownership Academy. If you want to take ownership of your life, if you want to learn the pragmatic methods to take ownership of your life, you wanna learn how to interact with other people, you wanna learn how to settle down problem situations,

you wanna learn how to detach and not get emotional when you shouldn't get emotional, you wanna learn how to lead, and you wanna learn how to, follow and you want to learn how to move forward in your life go to extreme ownership.com that's what we're teaching there I'm on there all the time live you want to ask me a question come ask me a question there come and ask me a question there extreme ownership dot com if you want to help service members active and retired your families gold star families check out mark

lee's mom mama lee she's got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org And if you want more of my doom-filled diatribes, or you need more of Echo's distracting dialogue, you can find us on the in-webs. On the gram, on Facebook, on Twitter, on getter. Get it. Echo's at Echo Charles.

I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all the military members in uniform right now, doing what needs to be done to protect our freedom and our way of life. The same goes to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders out there. Thank you for protecting our way of life here at home and everyone else out there. Remember to make yourself as capable as possible strong, fast, smart. And remember that there are people who are not as capable as you are. Not because they're lazy or lackadaisical or lack worth that work ethic, but they simply do not have the capacity and then do your best to help those people out, which is part of being a good person and will make their world and thereby our world just a little bit better.

Thanks for listening. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.