Julian Dorey Podcast - [VIDEO] - Special Forces 'John Wick' on Killing 18 Insurgents in 1 Ditch | Danny Hall • 217

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

My Other Episode w/ Danny: https://open.spotify.com/show/5skaSpDzq94Kh16so3c0uz (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Danny Hall is an Army Ranger, Green Beret, & Silver-Star Awardee. He served many tours of duty on multiple continents over the span of 3 decades. Ryan Tate is a former Recon Marine who served in Iraq & Afghanistan before retiring to become founder of VETPAW, a military-led anti-poaching organization in Africa. - BUY Guest’s Books & Films IN MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952  EPISODE LINKS: - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/ - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  - Support VETPAW (Ryan Tate's Org.): https://vetpaw.org/ JULIAN YT CHANNELS: - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips  - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily  - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Origins of Iraq War; Saddam’s WMD (Evidence?); Sarin Gas 8:11 - CIA WMD Spy Jim Lawler & Iraq Nukes; Saddam’s Terror 16:12 - Danny first invades Iraq Story; The “Purple Heart Plane” Story; Staging in Romania 21:36 - Bags of CIA Cash; The Kurdish Peshmerga; Erbil Citadel 28:58 - Iraqis Lives Pre Invasion vs. Post Invasion 31:16 - What happened when first Special Forces hit Iraq; Battle of Dubeka Pass 41:16 - Bush “Mission Accomplished” was wrong; Dropping Bombs; Iraqis Surrendering 46:13 - Vibes in Iraq early on; Al-Zarqawi; “We got a problem” 51:09 -  Special Forces working w/ CIA; Al-Zarqawi was a “ghost”; Danny talks w/ Iraqis 57:38 - The Iraqi Child story; Creating t3rrorists 1:01:55 - When Danny knew Iraq went bad; Burning w33d field; “Patriot” movie scene & toy drop 1:07:58 - The days before Danny’s Silver Star Fire Fight 1:15:57 - The Battle that earned Danny his Silver Star 1:40:58 - PT*D Dreams & True Crime; Danny’s daughter’s “shot” 1:53:32 - How Danny got Silver Star 2:02:06 - Al Zarqawi’s Death; 2007 Iraq; Fear of engagement; Blackwater 4, Politics & Military 2:10:51 - Danny’s last combat tour in Iraq; Bosrah; Working w/ British SAS 2:25:41 - Danny decides to retire from Special Forces; Osama Bin Laden; Scumbag politicians 2:38:18 - Danny gets into military government contracting 2:45:02 - How Danny started working w/ VETPAW; Anti-poaching is dangerous warfare 2:51:33 - Forever War; Danny’s faith; What God thinks of War 2:58:13 - Danny’s regrets 3:01:32 - Danny’s story is now out there FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY: INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/  INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realjuliandorey  CREDITS: - Host, Intro Editor & Producer: Julian D. Dorey - Producer: Alessi Allaman: https://www.instagram.com/alessiallaman/ ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 217 - Danny Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's a house up on top of the hill way off over here that has, I guarantee you, 60 cars parked around this thing. And it's just all by itself sitting down in the middle of a pasture. That's weird. That's anomaly. Okay. I wasn't in charge of this part, but we staggered them and we're rolling. Then all of a sudden, the gunner I'm in the truck with just goes, it's an RPG. And you look up, you see this RPG spinning. It's going straight up, though. And then all freaking hell breaks loose. There's a hill going up there, and we knew there was something on the other side of the hill dropping mortars.

So we called in an F-18, and it dropped a 500-pound JDAM on it and blew that thing to crap. So we back out. Okay, that's good. Let's roll back in. Roll back in, kicked it off again. There's machine gun rounds hitting the sides of the freaking vehicles. Lucky you know they're all bulletproof. They're coming from everywhere. So I was in this vehicle, and I're all bulletproof they're coming from everywhere so i was in this vehicle and i said

i'm not gonna sit here and get shot this vehicle and i had this s3 guy that was doing a ride along he's like a office guy regular army so whoever but he was just doing a ride with us for fun welcome to the jungle yeah welcome bro and he had m16 that's okay when we get out open that door jump in that big assass ditch right there. See something, shoot it. I'm going to run around the back. I'll jump in there with you. I'll shoot down the left side.

You shoot down the right side. Let's just jump in the ditch. You're lucky a little burnt. How many guys did you say at the time you think are coming at you? 57. 57. Yeah. There's 57 dead bodies left.

I know that. The next morning. So we get up there. We engage them. One of the reccees gets popped. This guy runs out to drag him back. He takes two rounds in the side. The guy who went to drag him. Yeah, the National Guard guy.

Two here. His name's Kennedy. Two here and out here. So that's a straight line. And he drops. He's not dead, but he's looking back like he's got his hand out. Like, crap. And he's looking, looking.

I was like, gosh damn it, man. I'm sitting there looking at this dude laying here. And he's right next to the thing. He's kind of wearing me out and i was like gosh dang it so i just went frag out frag out frag out just threw a bunch of fast i'm going out he lowered his weapon i jumped out there and grabbed that dude and dragged him back and i'm working on this guy and i'm far too i got all this stuff going on i'm decompressing his chest i mean i'm thinking there's probably no chance you know because it's a it's critical wounds somehow or

another i'm coming and going back and forth doing stuff and it's like 20 minutes and he's still alive and i'm like wow if i if i say this dude he's gonna be incredibly impressive i mean i'm gonna be so happy i got him out of this and i'm like what's your deal man what are we doing this day he's i just can't breathe because he kept coming back conscious and i had to pull a tube out of him and so the last time i was okay okay let me decompress this and decompress this again i'm doing both sides i was about to put the tube in again and i'm looking dead in his eyes because, you know, I'm looking at it from his head down. At that split second, I could just see that he wasn't there anymore. And I was kind of like, f***.

So I put him on a litter, wrapped him up, you know, put him in a body bag and all that stuff. I mean, we're still in the midst of this b**** now. It's still f***ing getting. Yeah. And now these other guys are shooting at us from this other side. And so it goes, goes, goes. Before it's all said and done, ammo gets low low and there's still a bunch of dudes down in these

ditches and so uh you know at some point you got to get in there you get to put an end to this bull so dude what you and your boys have done for this country you know the greater good of the world is very appreciated i appreciate it but the thing that you're you're actually doing this and convinced me to just to open up about a bunch of stuff and so did ryan uh like i was telling you all ago and i was like it's kind of cleansing to go through this and yeah piece by piece you know and just kind of get it out get it out of my mouth for a minute you know what's up guys if you're on spotify right now please follow the show so that you don't miss any future episodes and leave a five-star review thank you i was talking with ryan off camera about when you will demonstrate like with the sniper rifle and do the whole thing

like you were even doing it towards the camera in the last episode we did. And it's crazy. Sometimes when I sit across from a guy like you or Dale Comstock or Joe Tedai and you guys have these movements with your hand where you go into mode and you start loading the gun and I see you do it. I don't know how you feel over there, but I'm looking at it and I'm like,

he's feeling the gun right now. He can see it. He can see the scope. He can see a fucking old target that he used to shoot at. It's so you're it's so cool because it's like you're taking me there i never even thought about it actually so yeah you do a lot yeah wow yeah that's crazy it's very cool to watch probably living it i guess yeah that's whack but we said we're gonna talk all about iraq so let's do it we got two guys here who spent a significant amount of time in Iraq, not together, totally separate. You're a Marine. You're Special Forces.

You won a Silver Star or were awarded a Silver Star for things that happened in Iraq while you were chasing down Al-Zaqawi there, among some other things, which is pretty cool stuff. Had a good ending. It did. It did. It did. Your boys did it, though. But when did you, I guess let's start at the beginning here. When did you first find out that Iraq might be a thing? It was a thing before Afghanistan was.

So it was a thing people discussed because somebody had a big mouth that was running the country and uh kept on testing testing testing and then they finally said they made a threat and once you made a threat it's boot to ass and so now it's just a matter of coming up with a reason to go give you some boot to ass now i'm not a politician so this is all what I gather myself. But invading Afghanistan, it's a good time to invade Iraq, too, already. Why not? We're already there. We're already over there.

That's good. Then we just do rotations back and forth to keep everybody fresh. Daddy will be proud. That's right. And so he ran his mouth a little too many times. But you know the funny thing is about weapons of mass destruction and all that stuff? Depends on what kind of weapon of mass destruction you're talking about. They're there.

What do you mean? I have evidence of a NBC-style nuclear biological chemical disbursement unit that's disguised as an ambulance. Two of them, actually. Disguised as an ambulance with a telescoping sprayer. It comes out of the middle of it. The whole computer shit right here and all these tanks sitting right over here. They could disperse a nuclear, chemical, biological agent of some form or another.

I have pictures of it. Wait, wait, wait. Those are all different things, though. Nukes, chemicals, or biologicals? Yeah, it could do anything because it could be pushed through this system right here so it's it's more of a spray it's a vapor uh but that wouldn't be a new could be for a biological weapon though right yeah like so what well i'll just say it's the the abbreviation for mbc so it just falls into categories understood yeah okay so you're saying it fell more on the chemical biologicals.

I'll tell you flat out because I really don't give a shit. I have personally picked up barges on the Euphrates River stacked with sarin gas. No shit. Yes. There we go.

I'll say it. I believe that. I mean, I have the pictures to prove it. I would believe that because, I mean, we know Assad obviously eventually had that in Syria. It's something some of these countries did have. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely a lie about nuclear stuff, whether or not it was there and they moved it. I don't know. I'm not going to get into that.

Do we find that? No. Unless – I don't know. I didn't find that part. However, sarin gas can kill masses oh yeah it's horrible and so that's the peshmerga yeah so we freaked out that syria had it but now all of a sudden it becomes political and listen i don't think that we should have been in iraq you know i i don't but you know i just been in Iraq. I don't.

But I just love how the politicians allow or enable the public to pick and choose and whatever goes in their favor. And it's like, well, you bitch and moan and complain. There were no weapons of mass destruction then. But then you were like, oh, they've got syringe gas. Let's go F up Syria and al-Assad. It's like this isn't Burger King. you can't just have it your way i did find it curious that was good i like that i did find it curious i had this guy jim lawler in here who was i mean i guess you never really leave but he was in the cia for a long long time and from 1980 to 2005 he was there was an official title for it but basically he was

one of their undercover spies covering the territory of anti-mass weapons of destruction proliferation so all the stuff fell under his purview it's interesting to talk with you because your expertise was in the field undercover with nuclear arms deals and things like that and it's like the whole reason we went to Iraq was because they had WMD and that turned out to not be true that's exactly right people ask me about that sometime and it is it is true that Saddam Hussein had been working on nuclear weapons before then he had used chemical weapons against the Kurds the Kurds are an ethnic group there in Iraq. Killed thousands of them. In fact, one of his cousins was known as Chemical Ali. And Chemical Ali used...

I'll probably give you this clip to splice in here unless you play. But in the podcast we did episode 129, I asked him. I said, okay,aq was 03 you said you were 1980 to 2005 and by the end you were like their most or if not their most one of their most senior anti-proliferation spies so it's fair to say when we entered iraq and in the build-up to, you were at that level? He goes, yes. It must have been, I think, some poor analysis, some other things, you know, maybe a bit of pandering. We know Saddam Hussein's a bad guy. So we pandered to the White House and we just, we're going to go in and clean house. Maybe, I don't know. I was not involved in the Iraqi WMD issues. I issues i was absolutely focused 100 on the uh on other nuclear weapons issues the iranians the aq con operation things like that i never actually

participated in any of the iraqi wmd ops that is weird to me that's really weird to me that i didn't see an op to participate in so still like that was again at this point you're when this is all going down after 9-11 you are a very senior officer successful this is your expertise is what you've been doing this was the only not that you don't have a focus everywhere on nuclear weapons at all times i know you do and when the average person thinks about it they realize well of course they do at the time, like you listen to the media, you listen to everything, all the focus is on one country with nuclear weapons, and we're deciding whether or not to put what's going to end up being billions, trillions of dollars into a war there. Right. And you're not involved?

I'm not involved, no. That's a CIA mistake right there. Well, it could be, but I would have been looking for nothing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, okay, and it's hard – Yeah, the tinfoil hat just got on my head, I'll tell you that. It's harder to prove a negative than it is a positive, and we had no telltale signs there.

And I said, okay, so our lead anti-nukes guy was not investigating Iraq for nukes ahead of the war. Now, even biological weapons as well, he wasn't investigating that. And you said you found that. But that was one of the more shocking moments in the history of this podcast when I heard that. That was interesting to me. I would find that peculiar, actually. Because as far as the biological and chemical stuff i mean you know some have tested that stuff on people all the time i mean they went to northern iraq and

dropped on a village and killed 10 000 people then they drove to another village one time and loaded up every every male from 11 years old and older and they disappeared off the face of the earth and that's another 8 000 i think it was we went to a warehouse one time we're just going around searching we kind of had everything nailed down we're just going around searching warehouses and i walked into one that had caskets uh homemade looking caskets but they're all numbered and they're probably uh they had shells built and all this they probably were about i don't even know 20 high i don't know how many deep uh size of half a football field just as far as you can see there's stacked everywhere and we cracked a few of them open this net was just skeletons you couldn't really tell oh my god well we turned

them over to other people that know about how to do all that stuff to figure out who's who and this net and uh they assume it's the ones from the northern area up there, the village from the Kurds that they tore up and did all that. Oh, what's their names? Oh, man, he jacked them up. Yeah, not the Yazidis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, he did something to them too?

I'm almost certain he did. Because ISIS was the ones who. They were, but, I mean, there's a reason why they were outcasted and, like like just pushed i don't know anything about that and the turks didn't like them either so nobody liked them that's crazy yeah it wasn't very good and then i walked into another another warehouse this is really disgusting uh at this point somebody else is in charge of some sector of iraq or or this city or whatever at this time time, we're in Mosul.

And somebody, Marines had a part of it, Army had a part of it, and I don't know if the Navy Pac-13 commander or somebody had a piece. I don't know. But went there, and this place was completely filled with boxes of RPGs. Like, not the firing mechanism, just the rockets. And I called back, and I said, we need to put this place down now, right this minute. We're talking the initial invasion time era in 03. And they said, well, we'll send some people over.

And I said, we'll sit here and wait then because these need to go away. We need to do something with them. I don't know what. We're talking, I can't even conceive how many 20 30 000 maybe rpgs guys if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button please take two seconds and go hit it right now thank you uh nobody ever showed up calling back hey do you want to start pulling these out blowing them in place i mean because we just do that what we can put them in a big long line we put them in a stack you know right in the middle of nowhere generally anyway we'll just start blowing this

shit up and then once we get down to a certain spot we'll just level the whole freaking warehouse you know and be done with it because they got to go no no no blah blah blah then we're ordered off just leave them we'll we'll send some people over here we'll get it all done so uh it calls back next morning because we're out all night doing stuff running all over the place doing things calls back up and goes hey when's the last time we were at that warehouse? 8 o'clock last night? Well, we sent our guys over at 6 o'clock this morning. It's empty.

I was like. Awesome job. Real nice job. What a mess. It feels like when people like you tell the stories of this, there was just constant messes, right? Like almost like there was some disorganization because there was so much shit wrong there. Like it should never get lost in it.

Saddam was a horrible guy. Did a horror. I mean, you just laid out something. But he did horrible things to his people. Yeah. You know, when we talk about, I think that gets lost in the conversations. Like, oh, we shouldn't have been in Iraq. And obviously I've expressed that opinion before.

But it's not like, oh, Saddam wasn't that bad. He was terrible. The devil we know versus the devil we don't. Right. And how we handle it. And that's a hypothetical. But I mean, I wouldn't say the mess is so much. Yeah, I mean, when you say mess, it's from a higher up standpoint and the politics that go into it because, you know, you're talking what these guys do, organize as hell and just cut and dry.

Yeah, yeah. I'm talking about the whole operation, like the entire military, not some of the pieces of it. There's so many egos trying to, you know, from different nations, internationally trying to pull this. And then you've got the tribes and the regional rivalries that go into there. And it's just nasty, like you said. Danny, when did you first drop into Iraq?

Were you there right at the initial invasion? Yeah, I was on the airplane called the Ugly Baby. It's actually in a museum now. I think it's the only C-130 to ever get a Purple Heart. A plane got a Purple Heart. Yeah. We flew in. They wouldn't let us fly in from Turkey, so we had to fly in from Jordan.

There was four aircraft originally. Mine was two, second one. And they actually flew an F-15 pilot from England to fly that plane in. And that was a former C-130 pilot. He's like the best there is, supposedly. And we were talking to him in Romania, first of all of all he said how bad do you want to get there and we said bad like now because at this point we'd already loaded the plane in romania about 25 freaking times we're sick of doing it and uh uh he said uh the first plane is going to wake everybody up

second plane is going to be getting some and Second plane is going to be getting some. And third plane is probably going to get some too. And those were flying right down the border. He's right. We're all sitting there asleep, rolling down this thing. And it was rolling, doing what we did. And all of a sudden, the plane just drops out of the sky. And you can see out the little window over here, just a wall of tracers coming up like this.

And this guy's just flying it right underneath the tracers like this. Oh, my God. And we got 18,000 pounds of munitions piled in the middle javelin missiles c4 all this stuff piled in the middle and there's 14.5 millimeter bullets going through this thing and we're just like it's over and we're all just sitting on rucksacks you know not even seat belted in woke up just like hovering in the air and he put that thing down on the airfield in their bill basher airfield that's not that's not baghdad airport no no it's way north yeah yeah okay totally different and uh he hit that thing and it bounced like 15 times turned sideways it wasn't pretty and we jumped out and jumped i jumped out the the and I jumped out and turned left. I'm trying to remember which way I was facing.

I was trying to think for a minute, but I didn't jump out and do port side. So I jumped out, but that engine was on fire. And I was out there, and I didn't know it was on fire. And I'm standing out there. There's smoke. I'm just like, God, this is rough, dude. And I turn around. There's this fire popping out of this freaking engine right here.

And it turns out one of the other side was burned up too. And somehow this thing got on the ground. And he took off in it. He left with it. Dude, C-130 pilots are the coolest dudes on the planet, right? They really are. Coolest or craziest? They're not mutually exclusive.

I've never met a C-130 pilot. I don't know about you, that hasn't been the coolest dude. Oh, they're awesome. Yeah. Wow. 30 pilot i don't know about you that hasn't been the coolest dude you're awesome yeah wow look up uh ugly baby infill iraq and they should have it on there yeah oh there you go task force task force viking and the ugly baby the ugly baby infiltration was the key element that opened the northern front in operation ir Operation Iraqi Freedom was incredibly significant to the overall campaign in Iraq. While small advance force elements were on the ground,

in the KAZ, they lacked the combat power to accomplish the mission of fixing 13 Iraqi divisions, two-thirds of the Iraqi army, to prevent them from interfering with the main invasion forces' drive towards Baghdad. The audacious air maneuver successfully inserted the bulk of two battalions of Green Berets and convinced the Turks to allow the subsequent overflight. The U.S. and its coalition partners began planning Operation Iraqi Freedom months before actual D-Day on 19 March 2003. The strategic plan for initial invasion called for a two-pronged assault from the south on Baghdad by coalition forces coupled with a simultaneous northern attack by the U.S. 4th Infantry Division supported by U.S. SOF partnered with Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

So, yeah, the 4th Infantry Division thing, that didn't go as planned. It didn't? They did a parachute jump in, combat jump, and we had already landed, you know, and all that. I believe they did theirs the next night, and it was supposed to be a combat jump. They're all ready to rock and party and get it going. I pulled DZ coverage for them as the medic on the drop zone so they could do their jump in. Pissed everybody off because they were supposed to be jumping into a tactical environment. It was combat zone, but they're like, well, you're already there.

Let's do some easy covers do the medical care i'm not doing the flashlight don't shoot don't where's the party don't shoot y'all don't shoot and so how far in advance were you were you told you were going to be doing this not necessarily this exact mission but like hey we go to iraq it's going to be you um we knew from the second we got there. We just didn't know how many necessarily and exactly who. What do you mean the second you got there? Got where? Oh, I'm sorry.

We got to Romania first. We staged out of Romania. When was that? That was like February. Okay, so not that long before. About a month. We sat there for about a month. And then the initial invasion by the tanks and artillery and all that stuff had already started before we hit that because it wasn't.

Pre-Iraqi freedom. Yeah. Plus the Turks wouldn't let us use the airspace. And all of our vehicles were in Turkey too. All of our Land Rovers, all that stuff. Why weren't they letting you use the airspace? Well, we did something to piss them off. I can't remember what it was now.

I feel like it was something with fighter jets or something. I could be talking out of my head. They thought we scooted them over something. I can't remember what it was. There was a big argument about it. But they had all of our damn vehicles sitting there. So we had to go buy vehicles off of people in local populace and all this other stuff.

It's a Green Beret way, man. And they're swapping them. But once you break them, then you're kind of out there. Nice big bags of U.S. cash? Big. Cash is what it was. Who hands you that cash?

Is there like a person whose job it is to be like, I'm here with the CIA. Here's your cash. There's a place you go and you get it issued to you officially. And it's not Iraq.

And it's Europe. And you walk in and while I'm sitting there waiting to get the money oh I know where and then uh I'm standing here there's a safe open up right here and there's like blocks of million dollars cash sitting in this thing god bless the Swiss man god bless him and uh I was like is that a million dollars he's like yep that's a million bucks you want to pick it up hell no I don't want my damn fingerprints on that thing. No, he's like, pick it up. I was like, dang, all right. I pick it up.

Hold on a second. Just get a pic. My boy's with me. Took a picture of it. And then he handed me all this big old pile of money. And I had to wear like three fanny packs to put it all in. Because you ain't setting it down. It stays on me at all times.

You loaded fanny packs with millions of dollars of cash not millions that's probably yeah you couldn't fit millions it's like 25 pounds for a million dollars cash i could fit a million something like that is that what it weighs i have no idea i've never had a held a million dollars well a million and hundreds is running non-profits yeah yeah but uh i think uh i think i had a quarter million but each and there was like, I don't know, 40 of us. We each got a quarter million apiece. Love that. So I got my quarter million.

I was like, stand by. Got me another photo. Got me another photo. I was like, I ain't never held a quarter million dollars. Are you kidding me? I never held a stack of hundreds that much before that day. Then we got over there. We got to our infield, which we had to carry it the whole damn time,

which is, you know, if you want to get sick of doing something, walk around a quarter million dollars strapped to you in cash. I'll do that for you anytime, man. Knowing you're giving it to somebody else. And so we finally consolidated it all and gave it to some other cats. Wait, what was that look? There was a lot to that look. One of them was a captain.

They let him decide what vehicles we're getting, so we got all the people to come on to the Peshmerga compound, Kurdish Peshmerga, whatever, and where we're staying temporarily right after the invasion. They had all these people bring their vehicles in, and he's going to look at them and decide how much money he'd give them for their vehicles and we're up here in the command headquarters with the president and stuff just trying to chill and look i'm looking at the one i was like is that guy buying vehicles because he had got this briefcase open this i mean the

amount of money dude and i'm like he's the only one out there here's all these freaking lines of vehicles and people and all this shit and he's not even on the compound he's coming in the driveway going out towards the highway. I was like, is he buying shit? So I walked out. I was like, what are you doing?

He goes, yeah, we're buying vehicles. I already bought those over there, blah, blah, blah. Are you trying to get shot? He's like, no,

I got this covered. Yeah, do you? Where's your weapon? Because I don't see a weapon. I mean, you know, it's broad daylight,

dude. And so you bought those vehicles over there? It was Range Rovers and shit? Yeah. For curiosity, what'd you get for that Isuzu thing with Jiggity sitting right there? I got that thing for like four grand. Stop.

Stop what you're doing. I don't know what's going on. It's a raggedy piece of garbage, you know what I mean? Quit. Let some people come over and give you some advice. What do you know about cars? I just know I got tasked with this shit. That's all I know.

And you're the car guy. You know what you're doing. I'm i'm a car guy so i was like let's just untask shit for one sec let me go talk to somebody because we need to get some guys down another shit because you're paying way too much money and they're telling each other so when you come up here now they're going instead i'll take 200 bucks he knows his buddy just got four grand he's like man i'll take four grand and he's like, nah, I'll take four grand. And he's like, all right. Just shucking out hundreds, boy. So we shut that down. This was at the infill spot, you said?

Yeah, because we landed in Basher Airfield, which is in Erbil, just right on the edge of it. And then we were south Erbil at the Peshmerga compound. We're staying with them until the rest of the stuff kicked off. We keep saying it. Would you mind just giving some background for people out there who aren't very familiar with the Peshmerga? a compound we're staying with them till the rest of stuff kicked off we we keep saying it would you mind just giving some background for people out there who aren't very familiar with the pesh because like the the kurds who they're a part of it it's really fascinating to me they're this enormous group of people can we google how big they are unless yeah i forget maybe it's like

20 million or something who don't have their own country, but they do have their own army. Yeah. And it's called the Peshmerga. But can you explain your dealings with them? Well, they're fairly fearless, and they're tough suckers, and they love America. I mean, they love it. If you go into Erbil proper, the city itself, and you go in there like a military uniform, like we did, because everything kind of calmed down for a minute. If you're in Erbil, we never got shot at or anything.

There's a war going on and you still go to a rebuild and we just walk around free. Wow. You hit the fourth one down? I had a, I had a, you know,

U.S. flag on Velcro. Almost cars, almost cars, the freaking huge fight amongst all these kids. They, one of them snatched it off my sleeve

and they're over here fighting for it. There's like 20 or 30 kids wrestling for it and this and that. I was like, dang, man. Tomorrow I'll bring you some more U.S.F. patches. So I brought out a box of them snatched it off my sleeve, and they're over here fighting for it. There's like 20 or 30 kids wrestling for it and this and that. I was like, dang, man. Tomorrow I'll bring you some more USF patches. So I brought out a box of them, and there's that palace, which is the oldest castle on earth that still people live in.

It's the oldest one there is. In Iraq. In Erbil, Iraq, yep. So I went up there, and I just got on top of it and started spinning those US flags off of it to those kids. Who had lived there before Operation Iraqi Freedom? Oh, just villagers. I guess they must have been family members that had years after years after years.

I forget how old. It's thousands of years old if you look it up, too, in a minute. Yeah, a castle. By the way, the Kurds' total world population was around 31 to 32. It was even bigger. I think I said like 23 or something. But, yeah, I mean, that's crazy. I love the curse.

I mean, you can count on them. They don't screw you over. They do some silly stuff sometimes. They're funny, but they're brave. Herbal Citadel? Is that the castle? Yeah, that's it. So this is in, uh-oh, Erbil.

Yeah, it's in Erbil. So the 6,000-year saga of the Citadel of Erbil. Yeah, 6,000 years old, dude. Wow, it's like up on. So the 6,000-year saga of the citadel of Erbil. Yeah, 6,000 years old, dude. Wow, it's like up on a... That's the highest point. Wow. They built that hill. All that dirt that that thing's parked on top of right there

is from digging the trench from there to the mountains to provide water to the city. Oh, so this is some ancient civilization. So they literally had water running, I don't even know how many miles, hundreds, to pour into this frickin' city, and they dug the trench by hand. Whoa.

And all that dirt, supposedly, is from those trenches. Because there's no reason for it to be there. It's just there. It's really high, too. And it's just in the middle of this regular Iraqi city. I was picturing you throwing American flag patches. You get a flag! You get

a flag! It was a big-ass driveway, and the reason I did it is because last time I was coming out of that place, and the kids saw us, and they just kept running around us. We had guns on and stuff, so I took my gun. I was stuck in front of my pants like this because it's in a holster. And then somebody, they figured out that it was Velcro.

And I mean, there's like, I don't know, there's 50 kids running around us. And they got that thing off. Man, it started up. Now they're knuckle sandwiching it. They're little badasses, dude. Yeah, they're tough. So you come in on initial Iraqi freedom March 19th.

What date is this happening? Like the 21st? 22nd? Were you flashing these out? No, the war's going on a minute at this point. This one, the war's over. When the president said it was over, which is what, April? Mission accomplished.

I think it was April or something. We've won the war. And I mean, we just literally jumped in there. All I had on was a pistol. Just drove in town, blah, blah, blah. Which is probably not brilliant, but did it. But everybody there, I mean, you try to walk down the street they try to bring it. We had a guy bring us to the Discover the exciting action of

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That's cool. It's crazy when, I know Frontline, I think it was, did a very interesting, like, social look at Doc, at the history of this, where they talked to a lot of Iraqis before, what they thought before and after. And when we first got there so many of them were like so excited this is awesome and then when we pushed out the bath is from government and basically removed the Sunnis opened up the vacuum for as a call we to do his thing and suddenly have a whole tribal thing yeah it started to turn into this hellhole where people were getting bombed all the time and suddenly maybe some of those same kids who were so

excited to get the american freedom badge were suddenly like wait a minute are they are they the baddies yeah second and third order effects man iran syria all these guys were sending their scumbags i mean it mean, how many Syrians did you come across? Oh, God. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. And then they had all these people coming from Iran down these secret roads, call them rat lines and stuff, just bringing money in.

I mean, we caught bunches and bunches and bunches of those guys. Wait, they were giving money to the Sunnis? No, no. Giving to the Iraqi insurgents, whoever. But they're Sunnis, no given to the iraqi insurgents whoever however they're sunnis right and the iranians are shiites they didn't seem to care they didn't care they're killing americans so that's primarily all they cared it's like the bloods and crips thing where they're holding yeah it's ironic how war brings you know these criminal elements uh or these uh social rivalries together what when when

you first got on the ground after the c-130 landed and then took off what was your what was your order of business right there so you've been being shot out why while you were in the plane by the tracers from saddam's army but like how many battalions landed total? Two originally. Okay, so how many men are on the ground for people out there? 1,200, I think, probably. What are you guys doing at that point? Funny enough, we thought we were in the middle of a combat zone, too. Well, we are, but we thought we were ready to step out and get some right this second. Well, we already had like five dudes on the ground

a few weeks, a couple weeks before that that had made friends with the Peshmerga and done all this stuff. And so they had coordinated and they knew we were coming in and all this other stuff.

So we landed, got out of the plane. We got tons of crap. They're flying up, dumping this stuff out. And all of a sudden, out of the pitch black darkness, I see vehicles

coming at us with a bunch of dark skinned guys coming at us armed running down the frigging airfield and we're all like holy crap okay here we go and then they ran up and all of a sudden our guys jump out same thing I did on the drop hey boys what y'all doing touching and blinking their lights and stuff and they're like what

and they come up and they're like here let's load all this shit up and go. I'm like, oh my God, dude, I thought we were about to get some right here. But turns out we didn't get some for like another week. So, and where was that? Where did that, what town did you say that landed in again? Erbil. So it did land in Erbil, the C-130.

It was in Bashur or Bashur Airfield. So Operation Iraqi Freedom happened in multiple cities at the same time, right? So we had Baghdad. We had Erbil. Did they land in Mosul too? Mosul they drove into. Oh, they drove into Mosul. I don't know if they landed in Mosul or not. I honestly can't remember.

Okay. We drove into Mosul too. We all kind of consolidated on it. And what was the strategic decision to have have or be all be one of those spots friendlies for one and we had the curtis right there with us and they had their compound and all their guys and so we like literally loaded a thousand with each team or whatever else you know and we took them with us and they knew the terrain and they're also highly motivated to move south and west originally

because that had been taken away from them. They'd been bumped out of power. If you go down further south, there's a place called Makmar out of Erbil. South like over here? There's Baghdad in the middle.

Probably not as far as Crete. Baghdad's right there. Erbil's right there. I know. Jesus. Kirkuk. Kirkuk. I haven't looked at an Iraqi map in a long time.

It's called Makmar. No, that's not it right there. Makmar to the left. To your left. Up, right there. Okay, so what was this again? They ran that place at some point. The Peshmerga did.

Yeah, and we went out to... We're in it now at this point, before this. We went down to DeBeca Pass, which is down there on the way to that it says the baga right there yeah we went down there and that's where uh the american jet accidentally bombed dropped a bomb on our team who wait what american f-18 accidentally yeah somebody accidentally called it yeah he's there wait that-hmm. Can we pull that up? That's not going to work. Pretty gnarly.

You all right? Did I see it? Yeah. Is that okay? It's all right if you're not. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah, we don't have to play it.

It's okay now. All right, so what should he search? A bunch of our Peshmerga friends had almost stirred up a serious problem for us because no Americans got killed, and it killed a whole bunch of Peshmerga and it didn't almost go well to the president Barzani got out there and said get over it was it on first it should we hit the first year something is that well it's also the Battle of the Becca Pascoe there's a battle of the Becca Pascoe BBC yeah try to spell it phonetically. Maybe I'm... Debeka. B-C-K-A or B-K-A.

How do I say it? Pass. Iraq. Yeah, let me put Iraq in there. That might help. The events that led to the war in Iraq, in the front line take that A off of past the Rebecca Pass there you go bud

battle of the Becca the second one that's one of them alright so so this it was an F-118 accidentally dropped F-15 accidentally got called in.

We believe maybe another Special Forces team called in on us accidentally because there was a big hill between us and another team. And there was a T-72 tank sitting out in front of us that they had recovered. And they saw a bunch of brown guys running around it from distance and heard tanks in the open and looked over and saw this tank with a bunch of brown guys running around with uniforms on. And I think they saw that thinking it was another group of people. And here it came.

And he just dropped a tank. Go back to bomb on it. Go back to like 16 minutes. Let's see. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Yeah.

See the bump right there. I think it shows like it. Yeah. Hit that. I think this is where it shows. It's like an animation. Yeah, this isn't like the actual. Yeah.

But I saw like a bomb go off at some point here. So who are we looking, who's firing there on the right side? This is obviously before this. It's a remake. Yeah, this is. Oh, that looks like US. There goes a javelin. This is from. So there's the. Oh, that looks like U.S. There goes the javelin. This is from... So there's the bad guys

on the left right there. Chipsy. I go back to that search page. Yeah. Accidental bombing at Debeka Pass or Battle of Debeka Pass. What's that?

Keep going, keep going. Keep trying to search it and see if we can find it. But anyway, that happened. Blew up a whole bunch of stuff. People, things, keep going. Keep trying, Serge. Let's see if we can find it. But anyway, that happened. Blew up a whole bunch of people, things, all this. Put us on bad footing with the Peshmerga for a minute, and the President Barzani got up there.

Oh, and President Barzani's brother got seriously wounded with a chunk of steel in the base of his skull. He was standing there. He was up there. That was personal. There it is right there. Second one. Second one.

All right, let's hit the second one. A scene from hell. Yeah, there's the British guy that got bit. He's bleeding all over the lens. Wait, was this during the day? Yeah. All daylight. Oh, so it's about to come.

Yeah. Oh, no way. Oh, shit. Unless, I can't tell if it's aftermath. I see a bunch of scorched on the asphalt there but there's a crater where it is

check the preview just to see see if something drops I can't tell if it's after or not oh wait let it keep going yeah I think this is it

you'll know when you see it there's plenty of stuff there you go that's right after that's when he stands up that British guy was just talking he stands up and videos this you'll see our white range rover standing there somewhere oh that's crazy that's like that's like dystopian there's my interpreter right there with a helmet on the right. So you're in this video somewhere.

I'm in the back of a truck throwing out bandage wrappers for his cameraman. Are they going to show it, I guess, now? Probably. Or no, it looks like this might be the aftermath. I think this is after. We get the picture. But, yeah, it was bad. Well, this is after. We get the picture. But, yeah, it was bad. Well, I guess they're flashing back, too.

How many of your guys did you lose in that? None. None of yours? It was just Peshmerga. I think it was 27. Oh, look at that. So, needless to say, American Jet bombed and didn't kill any Americans. So you imagine they're a little bit pissed off.

Yeah. Conspiracy brains are tingling on that one for them, I'm sure. Our vehicle's in there somewhere. There's a white Range Rover sitting there somewhere. Luigi Barzani, he was a big deal. He got seriously injured. But President Barzani's like, hey, you guys get over it. America's here to help.

Don't be pointing fingers at nobody. And we just drove on. And Barzani, when did he get power? There's our vehicle right there. That was you? I'm in the back. Is that you standing up? I don't remember.

Maybe. Maybe I'm BBC. He's got the only video of the after. There's a video before it. Yeah, it was whack, dude. But luckily nobody got in severe trouble over it because it proved to be an accident. But we went on down and went to Mark Marr

and took that town. And people poured into that place. They poured into it. And you said that was on the way to Machmar. Yeah. So the end of the mission was to get there. Yeah. And this was just...

Yeah. Let them do what they did. Went down and cleaned that place out. Let them jump back into office they want to take their offices back and they're the peshmerga what what what month are we in now are we still in march probably march yeah probably still march early april march i can't remember for sure probably march oh no it says right there that's april 6th all right so beginning of either way it's like two three weeks into the invasion.

When did Bush... Can we type in Bush mission accomplished speech Iraq? What date that was? I think it was April 2. Like when you were making that, before that accident happened, when you were making that trip at this point, you felt pretty

in control. You felt like there's not really much fighting. His army's running. Saddam's, you know know there's a point where we got down to the becca pass i wasn't there when they first got there but third group and some other guy another team of ours was there and there was a big mountain range out there i don't know 1500 meters away it's like a huge valley the road just straight down. There's a four-way intersection right here that had a bunch of mines in it and stuff. So somebody went out there and cleared the mines. But they're rocketing over here towards these dudes all the time and blowing up stuff and this and that.

And finally one day somebody came over to the radio, and I was standing here when this happened. Somebody came out of B-52 out of Heathrow said we're coming we got 27 2,000 pound JDAM bombs we need somewhere

to put them anybody got any place? And I was like we got a place. Put them right here. And here's the whole mountain range so they said

put them right inside that mountain and just drop them until you run out. And he went, doop, doop, doop, doop. And I have a video of it, and all he sees is blue arc. I'm like, remember that scene in Iron Man where he stands up and the mountains just blow up? Yeah.

And he's like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Well, imagine this. Supposedly, there was 45,000 people, bad guys, or Iraqis on the other side of this mountain top right here. And the only reason we were so worried is because when you drive, once you get to the mountains, it's like 100-foot walls on both sides of the road, just like this. They're cut out. And I mean, perfect ambush position, dude.

And so we all hopped in our vehicles the next day and just like, here we go. I had no idea what to do. Drove down there and drove, and there's smoke and shit going everywhere. And we came out of that thing, not a gunshot, nothing. Boy, and as we come back, you can look back like that. It ain't nothing but scorched earth. I mean, don't tell anyone. I mean, I don't even know, man.

That was brutal. Can you imagine being at this end, and they start hitting down there? You're like, oh, that's bad. Yeah. I never see. There's nothing for me to compare that to in my mind. A movie doesn't count. A documentary doesn't count.

I've never seen a B-52 strike before. B-52 is the coolest damn thing. What does that sound like? It's a Vietnam era. Yeah. Call it Arclight. It had a bunch of old school Rolls Royce engines or something on it. Yeah, Merlin Rolls Royce engines in it.

Two, four. But when it all hits like that, like the ground thunders and whatever, you're far enough away, though, it's not like blaring your ears. You can feel it, though. You can feel it, but you don't really hear it as bad. Right.

And then before this happened, though, a bunch of recusers, because they're giving up all the time. I mean, they're always, I don't blame them. They didn't want to be there, some of them. And a bunch of them are coming down the road, giving up all the time. I mean, they're always, I don't blame them. They didn't want to be there, some of them. Yeah. And a bunch of them

were coming down the road, giving up, waving their t-shirts and stuff, like 20 of them or something. Soldiers, you're saying? Yeah, soldiers.

This is 2003? Yeah. And you remember, they're just like giving up. I mean, they're giving up right and left. And so, we're not going to shoot dudes

who are giving up. So here they come down the road, blah, blah, blah, okay, keep guns on them, you know, blah, blah. Okay, keep guns on them. You know, blah, blah.

You've got our frigging Mark 19 sitting there, 50 cal, and all this other stuff. And all of a sudden, this dang vehicle, four-door SUV, I think it was Land Cruiser, comes running down the road, stops. Four Iraqi officers get out. They occasionally just gun them down. Right on the side of the road. Just innocent, unarmed, everything. And they're laughing about it.

Because somebody's looking up to this big spot and scope. That's not going to be it. Another dude, I'm not going to say his name, doesn't like it. And picks up a freaking javelin. Sends them straight down. Do not waste that $18,000 missile on that freaking vehicle and they're going

back blast area clear point ting and just shoots off and this thing's hauling that stuff yeah that's sweet

wow hits this thing and just it's over I mean it's cool taxpayer money right there but it's just like, it's over. I mean, it's cool. Taxpayer money right there. But it's not wasted at all.

Yeah. But it wasn't me. It was somebody else. Okay. We have that for the record. I will not even claim that one. It was very cool. That's not mine.

So once it, because we, by the way, we looked this up. It was May 1st. George Bush gave that famous mission to the company. Oh, it's flight suit. was may 1st george bush gave what an image like you want to talk about just like what's it the freezing cold takes account just the image of him in the flight suit on a boat with a giant mission accomplished that one right there that's that's a meme for for the for the history books but at this point are you thinking to yourself that's the vibe like hey we got this or are you seeing different things

I didn't feel like it was over yet I mean I think we I felt like we kind of accomplished to do a lot of the stuff that we planned to do but I wasn't really in charge of a whole bunch at that point either you know what I mean but I was like there seems like there's a lot of bad guys left to run around out here somewhere. But as you said, a lot of soldiers are giving up.

But now it's like kind of a no man's land in a lot of ways. There's a lot of, like you said, insurgents. Well, the cool thing was there was a green line in the beginning. What do you mean? Like, here's us. Here's a line of what we own, and here's all the bad guys over here on this side. You're talking about the green zone?

Well, it's the same kind of deal that runs through it because that's the area that's inside that green line, in other words. Okay. So everything in here, we've already shot them or did them or whatever else we're going to do. Everything outside that line is, you know, no man's land hadn't been conquered yet. At this point, most of it's still outside that line, you know, man's land hadn't been hadn't been conquered yet at this point most of them still outside that line you know and all this by a long ways and uh we call that driving to that place uh escape from new york because it's so freaky i think

flusion ramadi were were um they might have been in it yeah they weren't friendly but they were teetering it's where the infestations within where was alza call we at the beginning he got there like right before the war right am i gonna make that up no i think it was after it had kick-started i think he i mean correct me if i'm wrong i think he he you'll have to look this up, because if I speak out of my ass on this... No, I feel you. He's a master of counter-surveillance, I'll tell you that much, man.

Al-Zaqawi was. Yeah, you don't... Could not track his butt, boy. And by the way, for people out there, just context, we're talking about Abu Musab Al-Zaqawi, who was known as the godfather of ISIS, who you will get to it, but you guys killed before ISIS was officially began.

But he was the guy who kind of started it. Joby Warwick, that's what his book Black Flags is on. You were on the missions that Joby wrote about in there. You were as well. But he was mentioned in that speech by Colin Powell at the UN. He spent like 10, 15 minutes or something on this guy, Al-Zakawi. And I guess maybe he was talking about his network that he was setting up in there. So he was at least setting up the network in Iraq before you guys got there.

So you got 2004. So it was, yeah, it was essentially where he had basically kick-started, once the region became unstable, kick-started the new uprising in Iraq of insurgency. And when you guys were coming in, did you lose on the initial drop into Iraq, did you lose any guys within the battalions? The initial? No. So to this point then, we're still in the beginning of April now,

whatever, beginning, mid-April, it's been, it hasn't necessarily been bloody for you guys, but you feel like because some of those major areas are still very much no man's land, whether or not the Iraqi army is still around or not. You're thinking, I don't know about this thing, W.

Yeah. We may have a problem here. Yeah, because we already had a smell of Fallujah. Yeah. Already starting to stink over there a little bit, like something's going on. Because a lot of bad guys are running there. That's the thing. Once they started tracking where all these bad guys are going,

then we started getting a taste of, all right, there's more stuff going on that we are not in control of like that right there you see it says preceded by it it just says position created you know i just tell you right there he's like ah i'll be good right here so are were you working at this point like are you working with the intel community? Oh, yeah. So what does that look like? I don't know. Yeah, at this point we did because when we went to Mosul,

we took over the airfield and then we built a – well, not built. We took over the – what do you call it? The flight area where you come in there and wait for planes and all this. Whatever the hell you call that thing. Hangar. Not a hangar. Whatever. Terminal.

There you go. So we took that over. We put a medical thing in there. Marines were there pretty heavily. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. And they let me come to the gate.

Even though I came through this crazy looking car one time smoking and all that. They still let me come in. So we had medical there we had intel there and those are agency profitable type of deals for technology and for us anyway and all that kind of stuff

stuff we didn't have and then they would just feed it to us on intel reports and things like that. Some of it was good. Some of it wasn't as good. What do you mean? Because, well, especially him.

You get all this stuff on him and he's already halfway across the country doing something else. Yeah. So many dry holes. Dry hole being you hit and there's nothing. That guy, the dry hole master. You go where he was just at 10 minutes ago. Oh, he's like the ghost.

I'll tell you how squirrely he is. There was a contact looking at him that knew him, knew exactly where he was and everything, was watching him, had a cell phone, a sat phone of him,

and he's looking down. They got all those vehicles parked in between this alley. This guy's looking down live with a special forces team and delta and he's watching him watching him watching this guy's got all his guards out there and everything else and just as they're about to he's about to get in his car he comes walking out he goes yep there he is right there about to get his car he's going to tell us which vehicle not me tell a bunch of people which vehicle is in you know the white one gray one or the third

one from the front or whatever, because they jump out and disperse, you know. So as he's about to get in that car, one of the guards looks up and is, like, looking dead at him. And he goes, oh, crap. And he leans away from the window, and it peaks back up, and everybody's getting in the vehicle. He says, okay.

And they drove off, and they ended up blowing that freaking car out of shit on top of a bridge, because they started shooting at the helicopter, and blew that thing all to hell, went over, and he wasn't in there. car all the shit on top of a bridge because they started shooting at the helicopter and uh blew that thing all to hell went over and he wasn't in there turns out later they found out that as he's getting a car a dog ran up bit him and so he just turned instead of getting the car he turned around went to the hallway and went out the other side to this medical clinic and got looked at so sometimes it's just like you're lucky not even good good. Yeah. I mean, I'm stunned. I mean, that's secondhand to me, but I'm pretty positive it's true.

Did we have any kind of, like, decent drone technology at this time? I mean, it was kind of new, wasn't it? It was pretty new. I mean, I think we had enough, but it's helped me. But I will say I've had to go and recover quite a few of them here and there. Oh, the little ones especially. Yeah. Yeah, I had one swat from me.

I was flying it, and it just flew off one day. Somebody intercepted my signal. Oh, they intercepted the signal? Yeah, and it took off and just left. Whoa. Ryan, when did you get there? What month did you arrive in a rat or in um oh four and then again in oh five okay that's with this and that's why yeah it's once he's like fully yeah got it okay so you're

not there like right at the beginning when we're talking about no no no i was not there for the invasion so you when did you first danny when did you first go to Mosul? You remember? That was the initial invasion. But like, is this, are we in May? March or April. Okay. Probably April, probably.

We were there pretty quick because we moved over there really fast. In fact, I'm trying to remember if we went down there before. I kind of, I lose track of what we did first. I can't remember if we went down to DeBeca first and then went to Mosul. Because I think we went to DeBeca Pass and then went down to Mach Mar, came back, went back to Pest and Meridian Compound. Yeah, we did. And then went over to Mosul because it's kind of like a go here

and then went that way. How's the traveling with that? I mean, I assume you're worried about Ieds the entire time no no i use nothing nothing gunfire if somebody catches you doing something we rode in a muscle uh convoyed up civilian vehicles almost all civilian vehicles matter of fact i believe and uh that's what we call it escape from new york because there's tires burning people shooting in the air and all this. But they weren't shooting at us. They were just shooting in the air, acting up.

They do that at weddings and stuff. Oh, God. You know, you're on a foot patrol and all of a sudden you see a bunch of shots in the air and you go in and raid a wedding and you're like, oh, shit, I just screwed up this person's wedding day. Or they just won a soccer game and you're standing outside minding your own damn business. And like 15 dudes jump out and they start

blasting the sky and you're just like, Jesus Christ. Have you ever seen the video where they're all doing that and the one kid goes, yeah, he comes in and does it and starts firing everywhere. And they go grab him and they're like, no! No, you shoot like this! And they're all shooting. Danny's used to it.

I mean, they do this stuff in Texas. I mean, the last time I stayed in Dallas, it's just. People are having target practice in their backyard in inner city Dallas. I'm like, what the piss is going on here? Like, I'm hearing shots fired and I'm like. You got the Florida guy a little cracked out. So my boy Chris Corpus is like, no, that's normal here. This is what we do. Yeah. Well, so my boy Chris Corpus is like, no, that's normal here. I'm like, this is what we do.

Yeah. I was asking my neighbor, I said, does it ever get on your nerves that I'm out here shooting all the time? Because that's why you moved to the country, isn't it? I was like, yeah. He goes, whatever I got to say. All right, then. Sorry for your nap.

When you were going through Mosul, though, and stuff, and even if you thought it was kind of no man's land and stuff like that, this guy wasn't a thought yet, though wasn't they weren't really talking about him no i don't even think even close to me no not it nothing i don't even think i knew who he was at that point maybe because it seems like looking at the history of it based on what i've seen from being reported but you were on the ground so you could tell me better like you know we were focused on trying to say like like, yay, freedom.

We're going to set up a democratic government. And it's more like trying to communicate with the people. No, while we're trying to find Saddam, wherever he may be, but his army's given up. So did you get to talk with a lot of local Iraqis along the way? Oh, yeah. What was the vibe? They couldn't believe it was all true, for one. I mean, they're very appreciative in this, that, and the other.

As far as I could tell, they loved us. I mean, in the beginning. I think one of the crappy parts of all of it, and I really, really regret, is I feel like we just created a lot of terrorists along the way. We didn't know how to handle ourselves with them, how to deal with them. To us, if everything's nil and i'm a hammer you know

that's what's gonna be yep just keep on hammering them all the time i don't think you should regret that though i mean that's probably why i'm here because i never got my guard and why a bunch of my friends are here you know because but sadly you know some people got treated like along the way yeah uh i didn't trust anybody i mean you know i'll play along but you know stay where you're supposed to be and don't come over here like any quicker than i like or stuff like that you know i keep forgetting to look this up ryan keep forgetting to go back to your podcast because i feel like i've told this story on probably six or seven different podcasts since then but i can't remember you talked about the story of the door-to-door where you know you when you had to to go door-to-door and get people on the ground and check to see if there were insurgents in the house. Where there was a whole family, and I couldn't remember if it was one you did or if it was a story McChrystal told that you then told. seven-year-old kid with a thousand-yard stare who just looked up at whoever the soldier was,

whether it was you or the soldier in the story, and went to lie down on the ground with his hands on his head. And they're like, no, no, no, you don't have to. And then he just got up and they're like, you can leave the house. And he just looked at him dead. And the context of what you were saying is that that kid is going to remember me and people that look like me or whoever the soldier was if it wasn't you and be like bad and that's where a terrorist can be born at such a young age and then it's hard to it's hard like i don't want to say like oh we empathize with terrorists that's not what i'm saying but it's hard to not to not see how that's going to happen. Terrorism is created.

You're not born with it. That's not my story. But, yeah, I mean, it's like I always say this because Len Westover drilled it in my head, but second and third order affects everything you do. Everything. And that's most important in a war zone, combat zone. How do you feel about that, Danny? Because you're there doing your job, trying to do the right thing, right? There are dangers. You have to do things like this sometimes.

Yeah. Right? But then do you grapple with what that creates sometimes? Imagine, like he said, second and third order effects are instant, like throwing a rock in a pond, you know? Throwing a rock in a pond, know throwing a rock pond goes over here makes frog jump off lily pad frog makes the freaking jumping off lily pad makes the bird fly away blah blah you see what i mean like that so for instance say you're in a nasty ass firefight in

the middle of town uh doing a hit and you're outside there's there's dead people laying around out in the road and stuff and uh bad guys are coming and they're shooting and rpg start flying suddenly and you're loading up your vehicles and the only way out is over all them dead bodies are sitting right there or you can sit there and get rpg they're dead you just run you got you got to leave but what do you think that puts into their head like oh really he's gonna just run over my people my wife you know who else who knows all is out here? Because everybody's game. I mean, you carry a gun, you get what you get.

I try to think of the world about intentions all the time. What are people's intentions, right? But the problem with it is that when we don't know each other, on the average, humanity assumes the worst intentions in people. And then that is the attitude they form with that. And that's a prime example right there. In your moment right there, it's like stay here and be killed or drive over people who are already dead. That's very mean.

Very sorry about that. Let's get on with our lives so not everyone dies. But then the people who watch that are like, yo, fuck them. Yeah. They like doing that. Let's say the problem is, too, is that if you're in charge, you're making the horrible decision, and I'm doing it to save my people. That's right. But I'm making a piss-poor decision that's going to have a vast effect on everybody.

So see what I mean? It's that second, third order effect, man. There's no way around it. You can't do anything about it. You have a shoot-through. You know, shoot a bad guy who's about to shoot you with an RPG. It goes through, hits a kid behind him in the head 100 yards down the road. You did it on purpose.

That kind of thing. You're not going to outlive it. All you can do is try to do things better, make things more happy, show good faith and all this stuff. But it's super difficult, man. We messed it up in the beginning. Emotional pain is irrational, man, always. What kind of pain?

Emotional pain. Emotional pain. It's irrational. Yeah. It really is, especially in that landscape. Yeah. And do I blame them? No, probably not, because if you put yourself in their place,

I'd be freaking pissed off. Yeah, we mad at everybody. Yeah. In hindsight, even if you didn't realize it at the time can you point to a moment where you realize oh this is going the wrong way i was interrogating somebody one time and me and three or four other people were interrogating him and i was like man we're just we're doing this wrong way because i could tell i was like he's not he's not gonna say shit anytime soon and i don't remember we weren't beating him or anything like this wasn't this wasn't an abu grave was it no no no no no that's derelicts this this is actually this is actually a really bad guy a real bad guy and he had some stuff we wanted and i knew he knew it we saw him do some stuff i mean

he knows what i want to know. But the way we were doing it, I was like, you know what? We're doing this entirely wrong. We started talking about it. So we need to take a different angle and figure out what it is he cares about and start working on that and all this. And at some point while we're doing all that, it kind of came on me. I was like, you know what?

I might have been doing a whole bunch of different. I was laying in bed later, and I was like, I'll be taking this approach the whole wrong way all the way around, the way I'm asking for people to do stuff. Rolling into a village, you know, snatching somebody up, slapping them around a little bit. Hey, you know, I said, because I don't care. I want that guy, and that's what I want.

You know what I mean? Not beating anybody, but I assume you're with him. You know him, blah, blah. Give you a little smacky smack here and there, throw you around a little bit. I said, get over there, you know, and do it and uh that's the way things are done you know not damage them but just you know scare them but you don't know meanwhile that guy's like you know that terrorist organization wanting me to come help i can make me an extra hundred hundred bucks

you know a week to helping out i think i'll just go help them excuse it my son's there yeah i'll take them too so then there you are. You're stuck with that. So then you come up with a better way to do it. Win the hearts and minds, which Special Forces, one of our big things is winning hearts and minds and going on and just kill them with kindness, the ones who deserve it, that is,

once they've proven themselves worthy of the kindness, and going on and digging them a well, helping with their animals. This, that, and the other. Like we had one, we accidentally burnt down an abandoned marijuana field. Oh, that's such a sin. Because we didn't realize

that all those stalks that were left over is what this village used for firewood. And we burned them all. So they had no firewood period and it's the village up way up in the middle of nowhere it gets cold they don't even know there's a war going on that's how far away it is they're like in the mountains are you saying yeah way up and we ended up not me but we coordinated to uh i forget how many how many tons of firewood we put on c17 and flew it

over there and gave it to them? That's awesome. That's cool. That's really cool. Guys, if you're enjoying this current episode with Danny, I did another one with him right before this. The link is in the description below for you to check out once you finish this episode right here. But I mean, you don't have to talk about it being a complete, because you know how our thing is,

big marijuana field, burn it. Poppy seeds up, burn it. And all of a sudden, this guy's like, what are you burning our shit for? Yeah. And all of a sudden, you're like, damn, up, burn it. And all of a sudden, this guy's like, what are you burning our shit for? Yeah. And all of a sudden, you realize, damn,

dude, pay attention. See what people are doing here. There's a, there's a scene, you ever seen the movie, The Patriot? Yeah.

Love that movie. But there's a scene towards the beginning where they walk out of the meeting in South Carolina where Mel Gibson had said,

I don't really want to go to war, but everyone else wanted to, and they agree. And so the whole crowd's waiting out there, and then a kid runs out and goes, the vote passes, voting for the war. And everyone goes, yeah, right? And so there's like a little bit of dialogue, and then it comes back to the crowd, and everyone's celebrating, kissing, hugging, whatever.

And then the shot shoots to a time lapse and suddenly it's dark. There's ominous music and there's the British Army controlling that same spot and it's like nine months later or whatever. that when I see imagery on a parallel universe here of you passing out all the American flag pennants to all these different kids and whatever and stopping on the street and talk with these people who are viewing you as a hero, and righteously so in a lot of ways, and then I don't know when it is. Maybe it's six months later. Maybe it's nine months later. Maybe it's a year later. Some of those, if it's not the same people, some of those same types of people in the same places, maybe six months ago you could have stopped and talked to, they're now like, fuck you. Do you remember being like, whoa, the vibe here has completely shifted like that?

Well, I remember we did a toy drop and went to a school with all these toys that Americans had shipped to us. And we'd go into a place and lock it down and have all these kids. We'd put it out on tables. We'd bring snacks and all this stuff. And we did a toy drop in a place in Deala Province, which is the same place we got in a really ugly firefight about a month later. So May. So they weren't friendly. Yeah.

They weren't friendly. And gave all these kids toys and soccer balls and all that. We even flew over to Blackhawks sometimes. We didn't have time to do a whole bunch of stuff. We just started pitching them out down the road and let soccer balls bounce down the road. Little kids just loving it, man. Just pelting kids with toys. It's like, remember when Trump was throwing the paper towels?

Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. It was fucking hilarious watching that. This thing bounced like a hundred feet, but you had to make sure you didn't get,

you had to do it before you get into town. You just make sure they're looking at you first, you know. But we came back the next day and little kids are, you can tell they've been

slapped around all their toys and paper and pencils and everything are gone. There's a big pile over here where it all got burned and all this. And the teacher's sitting in there.

She wouldn't even come out of the building. She's like, I'm not allowed, I'm not allowed to talk to you. She told the female interpreter, because we always take females for that kind of stuff, you know, and she came out and she's like, she's not allowed to talk to you. If she talks to y'all, they will kill her dead. Was that pressure, though, from the mafia of the local insurgency? Yep.

So those people already hated you before. Oh, yeah, they hated us long before. Right. But we didn't make things better by getting up in their stuff. Right. They're like, oh, you're up in our area now.

So, little they know, shortly we're going to be way up in there and we'll be doing all the burning and all that. So, and we did. What do you mean about, what do you mean by that?

Well, you know, a month later or so, we're up there freaking piling them up like cordwood out the middle of the road. So. Can you elaborate on that? That firefight that we ended up getting into, that ugly one. It happened like a month after that.

So these same people are probably the same guys who showed up. It's like May, June. Yeah. Whenever that was, the firefight was April 6th or April 10th. Not me. Fuck, I don't know. Wait, the one where the accidental bomb bomb got dropped. No the Silver Star. Oh This is your Silver Star. Yeah, yeah, that was I didn't realize it was in oh three. I thought that was a little later

Oh, no, this is not oh three my bad. I'm talking about this is one of the points of turning points That's how bad it was steel Okay, in other words like see we'd already done all these things and that's the way up into 06, and we're still getting this kind of shit. Okay. Because your Silver Star, I was looking at that earlier. I think that was 05? 05. It is 5.

I think April. All right. So what was the context there? What happened? And this is now Zakawi, to put us on the right timeline here, he is firmly in Iraq, firmly in power. 05, 06, those were some nasty years. Guys like you are now brought in to chase him.

You've been chasing him, working with intel to do it. He's going after Zerqawi a lot harder than we are. What was your day at that point, like a year and a half, two years into the war? What's your day-to-day? What's your main mission at that point? Pulling intel and hunting down dudes. We also had about 100 and something Iraqis. So we had to take

them around and do stuff with them. Two or three of our guys were training them all the time. So we had to take them out on missions and confidence missions. I didn't realize you had that many Iraqis with you. These are going to be like their new army that you're training some of their special forces? That kind of thing? Eventually. Can I just say

how, man, my grandpa used to have this saying, hey, you're either forces that kind of thing eventually but can i just say how man my grandpa used to have this saying hey you're either dumber than shit or you got bigger balls than i do time to tell right he said that to me when i started vet paul and when he passed a couple days before he passed said hey definitely got bigger balls than i do you're still dumber than shit you going out and you green berets usf boys definitely got bigger balls than i do going out with that many iraqis in a clandestine environment doing what you do um wild to have the patience that you have to teach well i mean i just i have the utmost respect you have all my respect it's you always have it's almost well have. It's almost, well, thank you.

It's almost a narcotic thing you need to take to deal with them. I'll give you an idea. I wasn't a primary trainer of our 18 Bravos, which our weapons guys are. They're the primary trainers. And so they've been out here teaching them how to do the shoot house and do all the stuff that they're doing and everything. And every now and then we'd go out there, other team members would go out and see if we could help, get the shoot house with them all the stuff that they're doing and everything and uh every now and then we'd go out there other team members go out and see if we help you know get the shoot

house with them because you know these two dudes run the show there's at least a hundred and uh they weren't special ops yet we had the isos that we did on different deployments that are the special ops guys but these guys are trying to get to where they will be someday and um so we get out here we get the shoot house and they call up hey man we got people just pointing guns at each other all the time we need get some help out here so we get out here and we get to the shoot house and they call up and be like, hey, man, we got people just pointing guns at each other all the time. We need to get some help out here. So we get out here and get in a stack with them. No, put ammo in it, but not around chambered.

And then run them through the house and we just get in a stack with them. So you can't shoot anybody. And so we run through there. And, I mean, we're standing outside the door. I mean, I'm standing right here and this guy just puts his weapon right behind this dude's head. We didn't even go out the door yet. He's already pointed right back at us. He said, finger on the trigger.

I'm like, index. I said, hold on one sec. And I told him, come over here, bro. Because I got a bad habit of walking around with a dang finger on the trigger, dude. All safe. I mean, it's an AK. I mean, it'll go off. Oh, yeah.

And so I come over here, and I was like, you got my interpreter. Hey, bro, finger is not on the trigger until you're about to shoot something. You're on target. You're, you know, blah, blah. Yes, yes, yes. I know, I know. Okay, have it on safe and all this. Okay, okay, yeah.

Get back to stack. Let's go. And go. Stop. Get out of stack. What did I just tell you? Don't put it on the back of the dude. And I don't know how many people are doing it behind me.

I'm like the first three dudes right here. Get out of the stack. And it's like 125 degrees. You know what I mean? Is this a lot? Is this like this is just practice? Yeah, practice. Okay, gotcha.

But we're out in the middle of a damn flat desert, you know? Where are they getting these guys from? These like volunteers? Wherever. Yeah. Wherever? Yeah. Wherever? Yeah. We actually have a selection for the ISOF guys.

So we take all these guys, run them through selections, and most of those guys end up being Peshmerga, Kurds, because that's their thing, you know what I mean? They're meaner and tougher. So you're getting more Kurds than you are, like, native Iraqis. But we have them together in the same freaking organization, which is pretty fun to watch sometimes. That's interesting. But so I pull him out of there and I'm like,

how many of your magazine? How many of your magazine? I said, see this round right here? This one. If you'd have loaded their weapon like you're supposed to, if we told you to, this round would have been in that barrel, right? Yeah.

Your fingers on that trigger, if you'd have punched it, that bullet would have went through the back of that guy's head, right? Yeah. Your finger's on that trigger. If you'd have punched it, that bullet would have went through the back of that guy's head, right? Yeah. Come out here. Keep your eye on this.

As far as I can see. Sit, sit. There it is. Get on your belly and go get it. That's a nice way of doing it. Snell trailed it too, boy.

I mean, face on the dirt and his sergeant major was just all up in his ass now. He's like, you messed up dude you're making us look stupid so he ran right next to him

the whole time don't raise your hand that's why he didn't have to launch his ass off I didn't have to do anything because he had his own sergeant major to do it had his own sergeant major

standing there and he didn't look like an asshole and he's pretty squared away plus he's a like one of the country's top martial artist guys

for competitions and shit so he's tough oh he was and he's curd too of course he is so he gets out to choose this dude's ass he brings it back all right you got it put it back in there get the exact same spot everybody stack up again you know and my boys are doing all this shit and i'm just standing there you know and go stop come here hand me hand that round out there. Flick.

Do it out there. By the time he came back this time, he's throwing up and crying. Put it in there. Do not put your fucking finger on the trigger again, bro. And that's it. That ended it. That dude never pointed that thing into nobody's ass. Never pulled his lesson.

It took about four or five mofos. And then finally everybody's like, I don't want to do that. Well, quit pointing at everybody. Anybody that watches this and thinks that that's irrational or outrageous, whatever. No, you're talking about

your ignorance can take somebody else's life. I think about that all the time for you guys because it's like all it takes is one split second of sleeping at the wheel dude i lost my uh people are dead he was essentially you know i love my dad but from a military standpoint he's a father figure to me from uh getting shot in the back of the head by an iraqi uh soldier oh yeah this shit happens gunny merckerson yeah. This shit happens. Gunny Merkerson. Yeah. Figures.

Shit happens more than we know about. So you're training these guys and you're then at some point you're like, okay, well we're literally taking you out in the field with us. Oh yeah. So what we do is we do confidence targets. Let me make it very clear though. I had very little

training because that was somebody else's mission and I don't want to take any of that. So, cause they ended up doing pretty good on some other stuff, but I don't want to take any credit for that. We're just down there helping and we're just offering a new approach, you know? And so anyway, we're, we try to find confidence targets for them, let them go out, find something and build their, you know, their confidence. So somebody found a cache of ammo, and we went out and took them to this place. And we had, like, two cops, Iraqi cops that knew a bunch of stuff, too. Turned out they weren't very good people. You don't say.

You don't say. One of them tried to blow me up and stuff, and he ended up in prison. But he hanged. So, but we took them out and found this thing. Let them dig hanged so uh but uh we took him out found this thing let him dig all this stuff let him take pictures with all this stuff they dug up who knows i mean how long that shit's been there it's been there since you know then back in their war and uh all this other stuff and that's where all these 155s are coming up because they know you go over the iranian border over and it's just laying everywhere everywhere so take them out there do

some targets then we find another one take them to that one and try to get them out and do stuff so this one day we got there broad daylight we go down to this objective but there's there's waterways everywhere i mean all these some are concrete some are you know they're big you know they're deep too and some of them only have this much water but they're 10 feet deep from top to sides, you know, 10 feet, 10 feet. And so we're down there and we go to this big radio antenna, huge. And it's supposed to be stuff buried at the base of it. So we can't get to it because the damn waterways are, and we're like, well, crap. And when you're trying to get around these waterways, sometimes there just, there is no way to do it.

I mean, you drive here, here, you got to go way over here somewhere to try to get around this stuff. And so we're like, gosh, here. You got to go way over here somewhere to try to get around this stuff. And so we're like, gosh, dang. And at some point we're standing here looking at it, and I look up and I see this white car hauling ass over here. It's probably, I don't know, a quarter mile away, but it's getting it. And I say, he's got to be on pavement. So let's work our way over there, and then we can get – let's go down here and see if we can catch that pavement.

Because I can see it's going at an angle. So this road here has got to lead into it at some point. So let's go over there, and we'll hit that, and we'll come up and hit it from the other side. Okay. So here we go, and there's about, I don't know, 100 of them and a couple of trucks, Iraqis. And there's eight of us, like four in each vehicle, Humvees,

a 240 on top of one, a saw on top of the other one, machine guns. And we said, y'all stay here we'll run down here and recon it real quick as we go drive down there there's a waterway a big waterway on the left side of us all the way down and over here is like a big ditch it's kind of wooded and it goes another waterway splits one goes this way one goes this way there's a little bit of goofy bridge that will not hold a humvee going over it no way somebody just handmade out of sticks and stuff and uh as we drive down there there's a house up on top of the hill way off over here that has i guarantee 60 cars parked around this thing and it's just all by itself sitting out in the middle of a pasture like that's weird. That's an anomaly. Okay, cool.

So it was like stagger. I wasn't in charge of this part, but we staggered them like this, and we're rolling. And we don't look out. Let's pay attention to what's going on. That's what all the words are going across the radio. Then all of a sudden, the gunner I'm in the truck with just goes, it's RPG.

And you look up, you see this RPG spinning. It's going straight up, though. So I'm assuming a signal. And then all freaking hell breaks loose. And they say, by looking at aerial footage and all this, because there's a jet flying. Oh, sorry. RPG initiates.

We duke it out a little bit. Then we pull out real quick. That's what happened. Because we're getting it out a little bit then we pull out real quick that's what happened because we're getting it from everywhere all around so we backed out and we knew that there's mortars laying in the road there's a hill going up there and we knew there's something on the other side of the hill dropping mortars so we called in a f-18 and it dropped a 500 pound j-dam on it yeah and blew that thing to crap there's a flat turns out, with mortar plates welded in the bottom of it. I mean, it's loaded with munitions and stuff.

So we back out. Okay, that's good. Let's roll back in. Roll back in, kicked it off again. There's machine gun rounds hitting the sides of the freaking vehicles. Lucky, you know, they're all bulletproof. And there's a ditch over here, a ditch up there, that big long ditch there. And they're coming from everywhere.

And RPG skips off the hood of the damn truck one time one skips off his chicken plate over here he's behind the chicken plate just taking you know

the guard plate on the machine gun and I mean it's coming from every place now and if somebody described it in a movie I'd be like

bullshit that never happened dude I mean it's like it did and one of those times you're like well damn these guys got some ammo

and they're being pretty accurate with it. Yeah. And these guys in the ditches are throwing them up on the road with grenades. And they're just going to the taxi changer. Is there a thought going through your head like, all right, this is it? What's that? There's a time where you hear me say it. Somebody has a video camera on.

And I was like, hey, man, we might have rolled into some shit we ain't going to roll out of on this one. Because we had a combat camera guy with us. And he's videoing. I don't remember what cd's in but you hear me say it i said we might have rolled in so we might not roll out of them that's when you get our together we own it you know kind of uh let's get it we need to really be on our game now so i was in this vehicle and we said screw it and i said i'm not gonna sit here and get shot in this vehicle and i had this s3 guy that was doing a ride-along. He's like an office guy, regular Army, whoever,

but he was just doing a ride with us for fun. Welcome to the jungle. Yeah, welcome, bro. And he had an M16. I said, okay, when we get out, open that door, jump in that big-ass ditch right there. See something, shoot it. I'm going to run around the back.

I'll jump in there with you. I'll shoot down the left side. You shoot down the right side. Let's just jump in the ditch. We're lucky a little berm. We jumped over. There was a guy standing right there. Not right here, but he's got a mortar tube.

He's shooting them literally straight up, and they're coming back down. I was like, how did he even know how to do that? So this guy smokes his ass right off me, burns him down. I'm like, all right, his game's on. Here we go. We take off. Do a whole bunch of other shit. Running down here. People getting go. We take off. Do a whole bunch of other shit. Running down here.

People getting shot. Shot one guy. He fell in the water. He's got a grenade with a pin out of it. But it just kept holding it. He's just laying in the water. All this cool shit's going on. Cool shit.

Go around the ditches. Everybody's shooting. Gunners up here doing what they do. We get out of the ditch, climb over's shooting. Gunners up here doing what they do. We just, we get out of the ditch, climb over, go to this other ditch. We're standing there.

That's the one with the waterway behind me. Mm-hmm. Elevated. And this, by this time, a couple of National Guard guys who've helped train them,

their recce's are coming. And a few of the recce's have bled down here. The rest of them, here's the bad thing, they're up here hiding in a ditch. They dismounted and just jumped in a ditch and didn't want to come down there. They didn't want the smoke on them.

No. We're sitting there looking at this thing, throwing frags in this ditch and stuff. Fragmentation grenades. How many guys did you say at the time you think are coming at you? 57. There's 57 dead bodies left.

I know that. The next morning, for sure. And so these National Guard guys are helping us. One of them's over here with my other part of the team. We've got an L-shape going, trying to hit this ditch right here. Because we're not sure where the damn, where it's coming from. Oh, before this, though, we get out. We think we kind of knocked it out. I was like, well, it's just a few dudes over here, but maybe the other guys took off.

We're standing on top of the road. I walk over to that waterway, and I'm looking into the waterway, and there's that ditch behind me. And we're standing there, like, as I look down, I see this big pile of links from a machine gun piled right here. And I can see the bipod spot on it. And there's this big long line of tree line over here. And I'm like, okay, here we go. I guess, I don't know, I guess he took off. We're just kind of looking around.

Guess the party's over. And all of a sudden, here. Here. I was like, okay, here we go. I guess, I don't know, I guess he took off. We're just kind of looking around. Guess the party's over. And all of a sudden, I hear, I was like, what the hell? And I hear another one go by. But when a round goes by, you can't tell if it's close or far away. You can't really tell. I said, somebody's shooting something. Where's it coming from? And I hear, I hear another round go by.

And all of a sudden, one hits like a foot from my foot. It was like, pow. I was like, oh. What the fuck? Okay, I know who's shooting that now. Snap. And I took off running and that's when we got

engaged with these guys and before you know it, turns out there's 10 dudes in this ditch right behind me the whole time and I didn't even know we were in there. So now you gotta go down

and... Yeah, but they could've shot me in the back of the head and been done with this way back and didn't even know it. So we get up there,

we engage them. National Guard, one of the reccees gets popped. He was actually doing something pretty brave he's running towards ditch trying to get some you know some guys this guy runs out to drag him back he takes two rounds in the side the guy who wanted to drag yeah the national guard guy two here his name is kennedy two here and out here so that's a straight

line and he he drops uh he's not dead, but he's looking back like he's got his hand out like, crap. He's a big boy, big guy, strong guy. He's like, oh man. He's looking and I was like, gosh damn it. I'm sitting there looking at this dude laying here. He's right next to the thing. He's kind of wearing me out. I was like, gosh dang it. I was like, frag

out, frag out, frag out. I'm going out. My buddy Mike's right here shooting it right into my damn ear, too, the whole time, which is unbelievable. But he lowered his weapon. I jumped out there and grabbed that dude and dragged him back. And the whole time dragging him, I'm like, oh, crap. This is going to suck because we're like a foot away from this thing, man.

They must have either didn't see me or something. I don't know how. You're scared shitless, maybe. Maybe. And I'm just holding my helmet down on my body. I'm like that because I didn't want to shoot me in the bottom of the skull. Yeah. And so I dragged him back, and I'm sitting on my knees working on him.

And it wasn't looking so hot, you know. And that's when that other dude, Iraqi, accidentally shot rounds down between us. And my warrant went up there, took his weapon away from him, and sent him about his way. Then I said, this ain't going to do it. I need to get him up there to the truck. And so loaded him up on a litter. Me and another guy came down there.

Tracy came down there and helped me. And we ran up there and put him on the tailgate, and I'm working on him, working on him, working on him. Meanwhile, this firefight's still going. One of the lieutenants from National Guard runs down with a 12-gauge down the ditch and was tearing shit up. He gets shot in the shoulder.

Doesn't stop him. Keeps killing stuff. Gets done. My 18 Echo's calling in fire and medivacs and all kinds of crap on the radio. Got a headset in each ear. He bandages them up while he's doing it. This guy gets back in the game.

He gets back in and starts doing some more. Oh, my God. And I'm working on this guy, and I've probably tubed. I've got all this stuff going i'm decompressing his chest i mean i'm thinking there's probably no chance you know because it's a it's critical wounds and uh somehow or another i'm coming and going back and forth doing stuff and it's like 20 minutes and he's still alive and i'm like wow if i if i say this dude he's

gonna be incredibly impressive i mean i'm gonna be so happy i got him out of this and i'm like what's your deal man what are What are you doing this thing? He said, I just can't breathe. Because he kept coming back conscious, and I had to pull a tube out of him. And because he was gagging on it. And so the last time I was, okay, okay, let me decompress this. I decompress it again. I'm doing both sides.

And I was about to put the tube in again, and I'm looking dead in his eyes because, you know, I'm looking at it from his head down. And I'm looking dead in his eyes. And at that split it from his head down and uh looking dead in his eyes at that split second i could just see that he wasn't there anymore nothing i mean nothing changed pupils didn't dilate or get smaller or nothing it's just i knew he wasn't there and i was kind of like fuck and he's like oh it's water just kept pouring out of his mouth like his stomach contents you know i was like gosh damn it and so his mouth. Like his stomach contents, you know. I was like, gosh, damn it.

And so I put him on a litter, wrapped him up, you know, put him in a body bag and all that stuff. I mean, we're still in the midst of this bitch now. It's still fucking getting. And now these other guys are shooting at us from this other side. So we drag him over there. This is that nearer medevac's in route. I get back in the game while we're waiting on it.

We actually know the guys flying the helicopters too from this base we were at. We get back in there and start shooting some stuff. Get up here on this ditch here. There's a lot of ammo being shot so ammo's getting very low for a whole bunch of folks. How many of you are still in this fight at this point? All

special forces are still in it. So right now, there's eight special forces. There's probably about six Iraqis dead, maybe a riot that came with us, and probably 10 injured at this point. And where's the rest, like the other 85? Hiding in a ditch. Still, they ain't coming down there yet.

They're not coming down. They're not coming down. How many of the bad guys are still standing at this point? 30? If I had to guess, I'd probably say, yeah, at least 35. Maybe 40. Because I hadn't really got to evaluate how many are dead. All you got is kind of a, you know, they quit shooting

and we got to get over there and look at it at some point. So we do all that, get all the Iraqi bodies lined up down the field. It's night. Medevac comes in. I'm standing out in the middle of the damn road, broad daylight, calling a Medevac in. Here's the whole gunfight going right here. And I'm sat there.

The boy's just flying past me. I was like, yeah, this is awesome. Come on in. And I'm just like walking forward and backwards. Like, maybe they'll miss me. I don't know. You're like the Southwest guy. Right here.

Facts fly free. And so they come up there there and I know the pilot. He burns it in there now. He comes in. He's a Vietnam vet pilot too. A Vietnam vet pilot flying in like 05?

Yeah, he stands this thing straight up. My dog just like ripping a J and falling in. It's pretty damn awesome. Pelting me a gravel

and he lands that sucker and I was like, you coming out here? Hey, you want a switch? Fuck yeah, brother. And he's just he's just like i'm good right here so we load them all up and a bunch of recces tried to jump on that weren't wounded uh stop snatching them off trying to put all these bodies on and they're mad because the americans went on first because that's just the way it goes there are aircraft and

whatever you know i don't know tell you bro i'm not trying to be a dick about it, but it's just the way it is. And so it goes, goes, goes. Before it's all said and done, ammo gets low, and there's still a bunch of dudes down in these ditches. And so, you know, at some point you've got to get in there and put an end to this bullshit. And that's hand-to-hand when you do that. Yeah, that part right there is ugly.

And so that got some stuff running down ditches, doing all kinds of filth, and put an end to it right there. Team effort. Yeah, team effort, by golly. Gotcha. Team effort, and put an end to it. And by that time, though, I had called in six medevacs. And it's like 2 in the morning.

Oh, when this happened, it was pitch black. Yeah. 2 in the morning when I did it. How do you engage guys in the morning oh when this happened it's pitch black yeah two more two in the morning how do you how do you engage guys in the pitch black dark close you just like what are you even aiming for i have no concept of this obviously i've never had to do that well you're not vision so freaking kick-ass at that point you know it's yeah but oh so you have that fully on still no i don't have any nods on but you you're, you're so used to the dark. You've been out there for this whole time. your eyes adjust

pretty well. Yeah. So, and it ended. Some of our guys finally got out there. Oh, another,

that other group, I don't want to take away from them. The two more, two, two of those National Guard guys died. Kennedy and Deal.

They named National Guard Armories after them in Tennessee. And, doing brave stuff. And both critical. I mean, there's no way. I mean, one of us did a subclavian artery. No way to fix it on the spot anyway.

And the other one, you know, obviously through all critical organs. God bless them. Yeah. I say prayers for them all the time. And call their wives and everything. And so these other National Gu Guard, they end up walking. They park their vehicles and negotiate all those ditches. And I was like, all right.

And their lieutenant colonel was in front of them, leading them in there. Like, whew, wow. So he's like, go that way. There way there's bullets flying dude he's out there doing his thing and uh so we got put into that our guys got the schnook got out there to us relieved us so it's pitch black dark at what point do you know they're all dead do you not really even know they quit shooting shooting. That's about it. I mean, you're searching, which is not fun. You guys had, I mean, for... We had some thermal stuff, but...

Yeah, but for aerial reconnaissance, that wasn't possible because I assume... Well, we got a little wet with the F-18. We had some video from him, but he's high. Oh, yeah. And we had one, what do they call those little dudes? The little styrofoam freaking, little silly ones for like $45,000. I can't think of what it's called. Most expensive toy airplane you've ever seen in your entire life.

Yeah, I was so pissed the first time I had to pick one of those up. We lost this in your area of operation your a.o and i'm like yeah i was like oh sweet it's a drone let's go let's go get it and then we pick it up paper airplane shitty man i could have just bought this at walmart instead of camera on it yeah it's got a forty thousand dollars worth of cameras on it so that's the crappy part but they videoed a bunch of stuff and then they wouldn't let us have it dang it so you So you get to see a lot of it, and we all got to see it once, and then we never got to see it again. Oh, you got to see the overview up from that drone. The replays of this.

Yeah, I had the F-18 coverage, but you can't see a whole lot. You can see bombs. You can see explosions, but that's about it. When you guys finished, though, and you lost two. I mean, it's horrible you lost two guys in there, and you lost a few Iraqis too, but all things considered, you took out 57 guys. Yeah.

80 of you. I mean, that's some light work right there. And didn't lose any special forces guys somehow. I mean, that's a blessing to them. I mean, it's. But what do you, like, you have to go down and do a ditch, and you've done this stuff, because, like because this is what you're trained to do, but there's a human element to this.

You finish close range, you and your other guys there, team effort, everyone trying to take these guys out. You guys finish close range having to kill bad guys, and there are bad guys. Yeah. But, like, there's 57 dead people right there. Is there, like, a feeling that comes over you? I don't know what the emotion is, but is there something different that descends upon your soul when you finish that moment and your body comes back to, in a way?

Pretty happy. Yeah, somebody's got to do it. Yeah. There's a picture of me sitting in front of a Humvee that somebody took the next morning, and I've got this crazy 1,000-yard stare. I don don't even know who took it i'm just sitting there staring off into the distance i got blood all over me and crap and uh but i do know i woke i woke i fell asleep on the hood of a humvee when our guys came out and took over full insecurity and i woke up in the morning i was thinking about everything that happened i threw up like three times because i

was like man that was stupid i was thinking about some of the stuff i was doing i was like man that was dumb that was stupid that was dumb. I was thinking about some of the stuff I was doing. I was like, man, that was dumb. That was stupid. That was dumb. You know what I mean? And it actually scared myself. Dude, I just want you to know, man, you know, as somebody that's been over there and served and you're one of my best

friends, I got to tell you, man, I'm very grateful for you. And I hope you never feel any sense of guilt or – I know there's a lot that you carry. I know it's not easy. I'm always here for you, bro. I appreciate that, man. Dude, what you and your boys have done for this country and for the greater good of the world is very appreciated. I appreciate that. No matter what state this country may be in right now.

I'll retweet that right there. Not as a veteran, but 100% I agree with what he's saying. I appreciate it. I'm glad somebody feels that way because no matter what the state of it is, that doesn't change our jobs. No, and I know that I speak on behalf of you guys too, man. We'll help you carry that, any burdens that you may carry i appreciate it yeah i done for me you just you just said it a few seconds ago too like when it when it comes to the ugliest places

and and the ugliest situation someone's got to do it and someone highly trained and highly capable has to do that and we don't i don't have to sit here and and think about my role in that because i don't do it you know and everyone listening chances are pretty much everyone listening to the same kind of thing but it's it's a heavy thing and you know the people that that carry that responsibility you want to see people like you who carry it well and and do the job and you know don't you know don't take advantage of what they do you're there to do the job and you know don't you know don't take advantage of what they do you're there to do the job well you know with you uh nobody even know i did it if you didn't say something so yeah there you go because i mean people know i got a medal and they can read that i suppose but i mean that's

i don't do it i mean obviously we don't do any of it for any of that but i mean it tells the story of something at some point and i'm not i don't give a't give a shit about that kind of fame or anything else, especially when there's dead bodies involved that are my people. You know what I mean? That's shit, dude. If you take credit for that kind of crap, then you're a fucking butthole. You know what I mean? But the thing is you're actually doing this and convinced me to open up

about a bunch of this stuff, and so did Ryan. Like I was telling you a while ago, I was like, it's kind of cleansing to go through this piece by piece and just kind of get it out of my mouth for a minute. Because we sit around and tell war stories to each other, like silly stuff, but we usually tell it

where it's funny, like something dumb. Yeah, and there's still shit like that, but like you said, you gotta you kind of gotta mesh it out. You spent so many years doing so many different things. Obviously, Iraq seems to be the one that was the biggest, the longest. But this is the 80s, the latter part of the 90s, the 2000s before Iraq. Like you've been so many different places and I think it's the best compliment I can get, by the way, when people say that.

So I really appreciate you saying that. I think it's important, not just for you to mess these things out with civilians like us and everything, but also for all the people listening to this. I think that this is why I really appreciate what my friend Sean Ryan does. He's kind of got an oral history of the global war on terror from so many different people who had different roles in it. And I've always enjoyed on this podcast over the last four years, talking with the military guys and doing our own oral history of it as well, because I think people, and we all have different audiences, Sean's got his audience, I have mine. I think people need to hear that because again, we can argue about political decisions made in Washington, D.C. and how that affects things around the world.

That's fine. But I don't want to lose in it the stakes that we put people through and what people have to then not only see but do and then deal with later. And we don't got to deal with that. We just sit there on Twitter and bitch about it. Well, I do like the fact that I think there's a very purposeful tool to just let the American public and whoever else that listens to it know what our military does. Even if it's me sitting there talking about myself, which I hate to go into this kind of depth

and talk about my own experiences and things, that's why I want to pull other people into it that are there for sure. Because I was there. I just saw some of it. I didn't do crap. Maybe. I don't know. I just heard there's 57 dead bodies that would disagree with that.

How many of our boys now from hearing you will be inspired to just open up and get out of that cage? Open up and maybe not find a place that's not where they need to be. Exactly. Because that's the part that terrifies me. Bro, I'm so proud of you, man, for just, I can't even imagine. I mean, dude, I've done my own stuff. I'm scared of shit.

I ain't going to lie. I'm scared of shit of me doing this. I was even telling my wife, I was like, man, I can't believe I agreed to this crap. When it got down to yesterday, I was just like, man, I'm terrified. You're doing great. You're doing amazing. And that's great that it's happening like this.

We've been talking for four and a half, five hours now because, you know, that, that's what I want to do. I want people, I don't want people to say things they don't want to say. I don't want people to tell stories they don't want to tell. I want people to be comfortable to share what they're going to share here. My job is not to be fucking CBS or CNN or Fox or some shit. My job is to have a conversation with people and it just like i told you it goes it goes where they want it to and what questions they want to answer are mine they'll answer but i again i i think it's really

helpful for you to put at least some of these experiences out there so people can see it and understand what happened like even me like all the different guys i've talked to about iraq this was such a complicated multi-year campaign that happened with so many adjustments that i learned 12 new things every time i talk with someone different because they're like oh no i was here i'm like well where even is that like you know i haven't talked with guys who were in or in or appeal or anything so it's very cool to get that because you know again we can we can have arguments over whether or not we should have been there or what what the overall goal or motive was but it did happen let's talk about yeah yeah let's talk about what went down and

let's let's see what we can learn from it too yeah yeah and plus this is a comfortable environment you know i mean it's like you don't feel like you're being under pressure about doing anything unless he's casual yeah yeah he's over topping away making those things happen you know he's drawing uh it's easy devil ears on your face it's like live tweeting like you are not gonna believe shit. This guy's out of his fucking mind. For real. Oh, lordy. Do you ever deal with any, and you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, but do you ever deal with any PTSD type things from the stuff you've done? Yeah, I get a pretty good bit of a disability for that.

I've been looked at for different times and here and there, but to verify that it is something. But I'm not sure if part of it is due to traumatic brain injuries or whatever else.

I mean, maybe. Because I don't know what you get. And more. It's the people who died that bothers me. The people on my side that died. Those other ones, I don't give a crap about them. Yeah. Because people who died that bothers me. The people on my side that died. Those other ones,

I don't give a crap about them. Yeah. Because I've never killed anybody accidentally. You know, like I didn't accidentally shoot a child or shoot a woman

or something like that. I've never done that. Yeah, that's heavy. I don't have that on my conscience and I'm glad. I pray to God that's nice, you know. Not to say there might not

have been a bomb that did something. I don't know because that's possible from every aspect of war, you know. Sure. I'm sorry I got to cough. We'll take a quick break for a second. All right, we're back.

We got your story all good now. You were talking about, though, you didn't have regrets about you never killed an innocent civilian by accident or something like that. So it was bad guys but some of the guys you lost that's that's what you struggle with yeah when i was retiring the psychologist talked to me and you know she's like what what's your thing do you have bad dreams and all that stuff and i was like yeah i have bad dreams uh but who don't and uh weirdly enough uh mine are rarely my bad ones are rarely have anything to do with combat whatsoever

they might have something to do. I did have a string of them one time about a serial killer, and it was a dentist, believe it or not. Don't ask me why. It's the most unusual thing I've ever heard in my life. It's not unusual if you ask me. I mean, there's a lot of things. Killer dentist, man.

It was freaky, man. I actually talked to this psychologist in Iraq that we knew that was around close to our unit. And I went over to just tell him. I was like, I just want to know what's going on. And he's like, because I was talking to him over lunch or something. He's like, man, you need to tell me more about these. These are crazy-ass dreams. And it all stems back to, it's about mutilation, stuff like that.

But I tell him, well, in the dream, whoever's about to get killed in the dream has black flies flying around their head the whole time they're walking around. The dentist looks like a surfer, blonde-headed dude, young guy. And I can't involve myself in it, but he knows I'm there. And the first thing I ever see is he somehow gets me to go in his room, gets me to search this stuff, and I follow this lady with black flies flying around my face. I go in this room, and those curtains remind me of it. And you go in this room, and I pull the curtains back, and there's nine faces nailed to the wall with, like, nails.

Then there's a perfect rectangle cut out of the eyes like this, like perfect like this. And that might be the special ops thing where you photo and you take that piece out. And I mean, there's all kinds of reasons these people come up with stuff. Then there's an old lady. He nails her to the wall.

You know, it's foul. And then at some point he's got this girl in a dental chair and he's got this thing. He's got her knocked out. You know, she's about halfway in and out in this net and he's about to cut that rectangle in there.

And he just turns around, looks at me and gives me a big grin. Like, what's up? And then I woke up. And he just turns around and looks at me and gives me a big grin like, what's up? Then I woke up. And once I told this guy, I hate to spread all that with everybody, it's foul. And it always smells terrible.

And I can even smell it and it's color too. And once I told this dude about it, he went back for like two days and looked at it in Iraq. He came over and he goes, I got it. He explained all this stuff to me. He goes, he tells this, this,

this, this, this. I never had another one. They went away. Oh, shit. Wow. Yeah.

Completely diagnosed it and they went away. So, totally impressed. But, oh, he said, write them down

when you wake up in the middle of the night. As soon as you wake up, write it down real quick and bullet fact, bullet, bullet. My therapist tells me

this like every week. Well, I end up doing like 15 of those and this is really, this is actually hilarious., I end up doing like 15 of those. And this is actually hilarious. But I gave it to him and he's like, shit, that thing's scary. It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors.

So, what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. You're fucked up bro years go by and my oldest son is digging through something in the garage and he's looking for something and he comes across this folder

with all those letters in it and he comes walking in the house this freaking pail and he's like 14 maybe he comes in and the hell is this? And he's like 14 maybe. He comes in and goes, what is this shit here? And I was like, what is that? And he's like, this is terrifying.

And I get in and look at it. I was like, oh my god, these are dreams. He's like, my god. He goes, I thought you did all this. And I was like, I'd be in prison if I did all that. That's terrible. It scared the crap out of his head. He's like, dad, he's calling if I did all that. That's terrible. It scared the crap out of his head. It's like, Dad, he's calling up the FBI.

My father's just here. We're going. Dude, you should sell this as a script, maybe. No kidding. And honestly, they're... I'll tell you what. Dream's got some good stories, man. Makes money.

It was terrifying, but those stories are scary. And I still have them at home stashed away. So my youngest daughter didn't find them. Well, she might think it's kind of funny. She's a little badass. She's a beast beast women love true crime so i'm sure that's about the blood and guts that is true my wife loves true crime she loves uh 2020. what is that dude that's all she wants to watch our hulu account it's just suggested for you and it's always true crime i'm like dude what the hell where's the hockey what i want to know is why

i watch it for an hour because I get interested at some point because I can't help it. It's like a train wreck. You just can't walk off. I got to see the end of it. Are you standing for the whole episode too?

Like, damn it. I'm over trying to nail something. I'm like, damn it. What happened to her though? Who? What an idiot. It gets to the end and he's like,

and the case is never solved. Son of a bitch. Where's my pistol? I'm going to shoot that frigging TV, dude. Oh, my God. And she'll get pissed off, too. I'm going to do homework. She'll just take off.

You know, just like, whatever. But like I said, when I talked to my psychologist and all that stuff, look at that. I did like you. I came right back to the story. That's unusual. Yeah, it was good. I don't usually do it.

I didn't have to do shit there. My Agent Orange starts acting up and I can't pull it off. Your Agent Orange? Yeah, I'm just kidding. I don't have to do shit there. Usually my Agent Orange starts acting up and I can't pull it off. Your Agent Orange? Yeah, I'm just kidding. I was like, alright, there's another story. That's a big story. Back in NAMM. Since I was two years of being born. I love the smell

of napalm in the morning. That's a really great line, by the way. And a kick-ass movie. Real Robert Devon. Stuff's blowing up. He's out there. Get out there and surf. That's it, baby. She, Robert Duvall, especially, man. Stuff's blowing up, he's out there, get out there, surf. That's it,

baby. But, she was telling me all this stuff, you know, and she goes, well, do you feel bad about this, bad about that?

And like I said, I said, no, I don't feel bad about it at all. She goes, well, you should feel a little bit bad about some of that stuff.

And I was like, but I don't, at all, as a matter of fact. And I told her I was at the World Trade Center and all this other stuff. Oh, she didn't know that. No, she didn't know that yet. And so, and I told her I was at the World Trade Center and all this other stuff and you know I had oh she didn't know that

no she didn't know that yet and so once I told her all these things she goes I get it is this the daughter who was sent back with the aunt no

different one yeah this is yeah this one's only 13 this is my youngest daughter and she's the beast she's the one that's she's 13

the beast yeah you know she's 13 and great great shot great wicked shot you hand her any gun man she'll make you feel bad about yourself i'm not kidding you if you go into his house yeah unwelcomed it's her that's gonna get you yeah she'll get you 357 magnum's waiting for you oh Oh, baby. And she can drive stick shift. Yeah, she drives stick. Wow. I have an F-250 Super Duty diesel four-door lifted, and she's been driving that since she was seven, I guess. That's not legal, right?

Well, she stays on the property. But she just hops in it when she wants to. I mean, she can go out there and get the keys and drive. You know, whatever. I don't really care. Goddamn Texas. Talk about that. Different world down there.

But she's deadly with a gun. I bought her. Her cousins are coming to visit, and I bought them. She always shoots 9mm or bigger. And so she's like, well, I'm tired of my wrist hurting all the time. You know, she's like 7 or 8. And so, of course, I waited until she's 12 to buy her something that didn't hurt her wrist. And then I bought her a.22 long rifle, little assault rifle i can deal it looks like a hk

and a little pistol looks kind of like a makarov or something and i gave it to her and i said okay we're just standing right here by the backyard and i told my wife okay here you go iron sights she don't like red dots she don't like scope she don't like nothing she wants the iron sight and that's it and she'll rain on you with it and uh i said okay here, here you go. Got a beer can, threw it out in the yard. Ten rounds, see what you can do. She's like, I've never shot this before. And I said, well, I don't care. Go ahead.

Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang. Just walks across the yard. Didn't miss once. And by the time the last shot, you know, this is probably 40 feet away or something. And our neighbor's standing there, and he's like 16. And he's like, oh, shoot. That's terrifying.

Because he can't shoot. Does she want to go in the military yep she does but she also i think she wants to be a vet do you want her to go in the military are you against it uh i wanted to go probably if she wants to go depends on the situation in the world yeah i want to do great things but do i want to subject her to iraq or afghanistan type of situation i don't know maybe for a minute she could be an astronaut or something instead but for anybody like listening to i just feel necessary to clarify this i understand how people can get phobias about kids with guns it's always but green berets are among the greatest shooters out there, especially pistols. And this dude is among the most responsible shooters out there and parents.

So it's also in Texas. It's like a, I mean, yeah, it's part of life. So just don't criticize someone else's culture, especially somebody that's being responsible. Funny.

Put that disclaimer out. Yeah. No, you know, you have to today's day and age, you know, and I, no, it's fair. I get it. You disclaimer out. No, you have to. Today's day and age. No, it's fair. I get it. We're gaslit by politicians all the time.

I mean, I empty out that.357 and everybody can say, well, you used a dummy gun to practice with, all this stuff. Well, she's done the dummy gun and I'm pretty sure I'm smart enough to know when a six-shot pistol revolver is empty. So I go through it, clean the lane,

I walk outside and I have her standing there with me. I go one, two, three, four, five, six, one,

two, three, four, five, six. I mean, we're looking, cause I want,

I'm the one to get shot at if this thing goes off. And, uh, we have, we have a tactic cause our bedrooms are this side of the house and the rest of the house, you know, there's a long hallway from one end to the other. one end to the other.

And, uh, her room's here. Here's our room over here here so she has to come out and go like this i want her in this room my room because this i mean hers you can see straight down here but it's not real good cover so 357 sitting over here on this this nightstand and the bed sitting right here so the rule is something happens i come we play it out and she's sitting in her bedroom playing on the game

doing something and I open the door and as soon as she hears something she'll like pick up and be like she'll turn she makes sure her lights are off turns the light off

doesn't step out listens and she creeps out and sees it and when she knows she has a chance she runs in jumps to the other bed

grabs 357 sits down on the wall behind it and just sits on top of the bed like that normal household very normal house. Very New Jersey. Prepared.

Very New Jersey. And so when you come around the corner, you only empty half. Three rounds for that guy and wait in case there's a second one. So you do three into that one, dun, dun, dun, and then you just sit there and wait. And so somebody would be like, well, damn, 357 for a 13-year-old. And I said, well, she started shooting them. She's like eight. So I don't know.

Maybe I'm really bad. She's bad at this point. She wants a 44, but. Baby steps. Baby steps. She's tough, man. But she's learning about your teaching her about your career a little bit and some of the past and the places you've been.

I try to teach her the responsibility part of it, too. I mean, we make jokes like I do with y'all, you know. Sure, yeah. Just kidding around. But in all I can tell, I have a feeling about all of it too. I mean, we make jokes like I do with y'all. Sure, yeah. Just kidding around. In all acts of value, I have a feeling about all of it. I teach her all that stuff and how to deal with people in general, I think. I mean, most of my people that I hang out with tell me I'm intense, and I'm not really sure what that means exactly in all aspects,

but supposedly I'm pretty intense, but I'm also comical at other times. Right. So I don't know if there's a halfway spot for me or, but I'm also comical at other times. I don't know if there's a halfway spot for me or not. I'm just one or the other. I think you kind of mixed both, getting to know you today. You are an intense guy. It's just the nature of the shit you've done in your life. But you're loose about it. You're not like,

let me tell you the shit I did. Shut the fuck up and listen. It's not like that. Thank me for my service. Thank him for your service. That's right. Thank him for your service, Larry. Yeah. So I hope so. And if she ends up watching this, which I'm assuming she will,

I want her to take away the same things. Yeah, absolutely. That's part of it. But like we're saying when we're off this thing, I want to make sure that everybody knows that I didn't do all these things by myself. I want to make sure I give credit where credit is due those 57 dudes, I mean there's 8 of us there team effort

they all did killing and they all got medals for valor because they all did something badass every single one of them how did you get the silver star how long after was that it took I think I got like September, October.

Same year. Yep. And that was a cool deal, too. Somebody, they were talking about, we're doing our after action review. This tells you what the fog of war can do to you. We got done with that. We went back to our hooch. Everybody went to bed.

And we got up the next morning and we had to write our after action reports you know like somebody's got to know what happened so we all write them

individually nobody talks about anything on the objective talk about whatever you want but once you're off of it it's like let it go

everybody do your own thing because you'll miss stuff if you talk back and forth amongst each other like getting your story straight so we went back and we all wrote all of our own stories in great detail uh probably i don't know i mean it's 10 pages probably you know just at least uh but i think it's important and the outcome of it was so good to us to the military that it was like it was like a uh it was a thing that

hadn't been done a whole lot you know was absolutely successful, except for two National Guard guys dying, those recce guys. But, I mean, the objective was met, and it could have been a lot worse. Oh, the other thing I didn't mention was the place where we were getting shot at is where they practiced doing ambushes. That's where these guys, they practiced working this. Oh, the bad guys did. So we literally drove into the spot where they were practicing.

You drove into their home field. And they're already sitting there already sitting there ready to go whoa so that's how bad that was but uh so i mean i was just like well uh the way it came out is it turned out good so you know you want to make sure that everybody knows that you know all these people do these great things and odds are against you whatever else i mean you know anything can happen if you just need to drive on to the range objective pretty much at this point what was the post-battle protocol so obviously my common sense i guess i don't know if this is giving myself too much credit but like i hear battle happens 57 bad guys die we lose a couple of our own of course there's going to be an after interview with IC, whatever, doing

stuff, but is that any time anyone dies anywhere? At this point, they were doing that? So if one bad guy dies in a shootout, they're bringing in the IC to do the after report? Everybody should talk to somebody. As a Greenbrae, you're not going to talk to anybody most of the time in the beginning. You're going to wait for it to catch up with you,et you're not going to talk to anybody most of the time in the beginning

and you're going to wait for it to catch up with you and then it's going to catch up with you hard at some point and then it gets to the point where it's like alright dude, get your ego out of the way like I said, I will never take this ability I think it's weak, this, that, and the other I'll never do this, I'll never do that

and all of a sudden you do this crap for a long time and all of a sudden you're like, I don't know. Seems like it's not that bad of an idea after all because my body's been through some hell, you know what I mean? So maybe it is kind of worth it. But the only thing I was going to say about that extra action report is we all read each other's report, and I didn't recognize a third of the shit they were talking about.

I mean, there was stuff happening in there I never even knew happened. Yeah, I mean, you're in the middle. You were medivac-ing a guy. You know, you're going back and forth on the battlefield like there's a million things happening. There's a guy

got on a podcast. It's called Someone You Should Know somewhere. I don't know where it's at. I can't find it, but it's written somewhere. I think it's in Boston

or something. But one of the guys is from Boston. He gets on there and he sends me a thing. He goes, hey, listen to this podcast. And I listen to it and I was like, okay. And he's telling about was from Boston. He gets on there and he sends me a thing. He goes, hey, listen to this podcast. And I listened to it

and I was like, okay. And he's telling about the firefight and I'm like, wow. Wow. And he goes, yeah, at this one point, you know, we're doing this, that, and the other.

And Danny Hall picked up two grenades and threw them back. And I was like, what? I believe that. I was like, are you shitting me, dude? That don't sound like me. See, I don't even remember.

If you did, you don't even remember. I don't remember. I believe him. But I called him up, and I was like, dude, this whole thing about me picking up grenades and throwing them back and shit, now what's that all about? He goes, remember we're in this hole, and they just come bouncing up, and you grabbed it through it, and then another one bounced over it? I was like, I do not.

And I don't remember the hole either. What hole are we talking about? Oh, Doyle rules! And I don't remember the hole either. What hole are we talking about? Oh, Doyle rules. And then I'm back. Yeah. And the grate doesn't even go off. It's just the impact of me throwing it back kills them.

You know what I mean? But, I mean, the thing is the fog of war of so many things happening, adrenaline just rocking, boy. Because, I mean, you're up there now. And when you were off that thing, because that firefight lasted 11 hours straight, nonstop. Oh, wait, it was that long? Yeah, it was 11 hours constant. 11 hours. Yeah, and I forget how many rounds of ammunition and munitions and bombs.

Can you imagine doing this podcast twice over, but we're getting shot at the whole time? And shooting. Holy shit. Imagine that. And so, yeah's just it's astonishing to me i mean the whole thing just i mean just blows my mind and like i said if somebody put half that crap in a movie i'd just be like call them out i'm like no that's not true dude especially initial engagement when we roll back into it i was like there's no way because it was so it all happened exactly the same time with all these different facets of

things happening but it turns out that's what they did you know because we're like how did they do that so effectively because they're they're not usually good at this kind of thing we're like that good and man then all of a sudden uh intel later on you know it's like that's where they trained dude that's their place that house up there's their gathering area to plan to do this because when firefight was over a bunch of those cars had gone. And a bunch of them got off the battlefield. But we found them. We didn't find them.

Our contacts found them in aid stations and hospitals and stuff, wounded. Because there was more than 57. 57 were dead. A bunch of them ran over that. Because you get over that hill, you're out of a firefight. They're like, wait, this Danny Holm motherfucker's crazy. We're out of here. Maybe, because I was mad.

There's definitely some dudes going back to the village in broken English saying, Danny Hall! Danny Hall! They're shooting themselves in the legs just to get the hell out of there. Well, when I was getting the award, I was standing up here and I didn't give a speech. He just said,

say a couple words. Where was it? Fort Carson, Colorado. Okay. He did fly my mom there, though. That's cool. And treated her like royalty. And let her actually pin it on. Oh, that's awesome.

Which is awesome. That's really cool. And framed it and all this other stuff. And he's like, what's funny is Colonel Tovo, who is an awesome dude, he gets up and he goes, all right. He goes, Danny Hall is like the worst garrison soldier I've ever had

you know like on base he's like he's the worst and uh he won't he won't cut his hair won't shave right

won't wear his uniform half the time won't do this won't do that and he don't like taking orders and everybody's just looking at him like

why the fuck's he here wait Wait, isn't this like a celebratory speech? He's like, so here's what I decided to do. I'd rather what did he say? I'd rather I'd rather ride a stallion up a hill that beat a mule's ass of it. So I just gave up.

Oh, I gotcha. So he goes, here's what I decided to do. We deploy. I put him in his box. We get in the took a minute. So he goes, here's what I decide to do. We deploy. I put him in his box. We get in the country. I just break the glass and let his ass out. Nine months later, I put him back in the box.

We break him back. I was like, that may be accurate. I don't know. Possibly. You're like, thank you? Thanks, I guess. And the whole time I've been lying to my mom my mom knew that I was doing stuff

but I never would tell her exactly and you read that narrative it's pretty descriptive you know oh yeah I'll pin that in the description so people can read it

well I told them I told them don't read it all out loud but my mom's in there everyone's googling it so they got up there and started reading it I look around my mom's in there. Everyone's Googling it. So, they got up there

and started reading it. I look around and my mom's crying. I was like, God. She comes up to me, okay, I knew you were doing it

the whole time. Yeah. I was like, well, shit. I mean, it's war. Yeah. You know, this is the kind of,

unfortunately, this is the kind of shit that happens. This is awesome, though. It's cool that it's awesome shit to get. It's not what you do, it's what you get to do. It's war. It's fun. It's awesome shit to get. It's not what you do. It's what you get to do.

It's war. It's fun. All the way up to 07. That's funny. 07 was Fallujah, right? Or let's make it 08 because Fallujah was still going well. Real quick. 08 is because all the officers showed up and then all the fun was gone.

708 is Ramadi. Before that, though, if you don't mind because I don't want to overlook this, you had said this earlier and you and I didn't fun was gone. 7.08 is Ramadi. Before that, though, if you don't mind, because I don't want to overlook this, you had said this earlier, and you and I didn't talk about this. You were chasing down Zaccali, but then you said the Green Berets got him? Well, I said that, but it was an attack. I mean, he got annihilated from an airstrike.

Right, right. It was an airstrike. So were you around the chase at that point? No. It wasn't the wasn't a green beret it was it was it was a joint task force that did the surveillance on him or something yeah yeah and zeroed down his location yeah and it was who the hell will even know i mean he's got a better shot i guess that that not a buck close lady at the cia was like running the investigation but then there's people who were actually doing it. She wasn't doing it on the ground.

And it was a house, and it was a bunch of people in there. Yeah. And they're all bad. And he was still alive when they got to him, and he died in the arms of whoever was on the ground there to recover it. Supposedly. I don't know. I've heard different stories.

I don't know. I think when you get nailed by an F-16, you're... Yeah. There's a big point. I don't know who's in charge of... I was going to say, because I've heard this story supposedly, and I don't know.

I didn't seem to be Might be some urban legend there. Yeah, maybe. It's a very cool ending to a movie, I guess. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. All right, so 07, 08, like you were saying,

where were you going with that? Because 08, 07, and 08 is... Well, especially 08. No, 07, the end of 07. I think that's when my last trip, I was coming out of Bosworth at the very end of 07 because I ended up going to Yuma, Arizona as a free-fall instructor in February 08. So, yeah, it was the end of 07 because then it got to the point where every time you'd shoot somebody or do something, you had to do a 15-6 investigation on your butt.

What's a 15-6? It's to see if you should have shot them or not. And it's every person. So it kind of kills the will to shoot somebody. If you don't have to shoot them, you try to figure out a way, which makes it very dangerous. Because if you're threatened, your life's threatened, you should be able to shoot them. And if you can't, you're scared of getting thrown in prison. There's a bunch of people in prison right this minute that shouldn't be.

Yeah. From those investigations. And who gets to dictate how somebody feels with their life? I mean, there's blatant ignorance and just... This is what I mean. Washington, D.C., and their postulant offices make some mistakes mistakes as we have to go to war for God and Halliburton. And then they get in there. Their guys go in there and do the job.

And then because it starts to go south on their ass on Tuesdays and Novembers back in America, they suddenly say, okay, we got to appease the population who's upset about this fucking war. And we got to show them that we're not these nasty Americans out there doing something. So let's tell our boys that here's how we're going to do war. There's no such thing as fog of war anymore. You have to make a better decision than everyone else in a split second. And by the way, when we determine after the fact, when we weren't even there, maybe don't have any camera evidence of anything, we're going to tell you whether you were right or wrong and throw you in jail

if we just decide like, oh what's this what's the statistics have we said 90 of these are okay that's too many we need it down to 85 you know what fuck that guy is going to jail imagine what it comes down to imagine going to war as not even a danny hall but a young infantryman very young infantryman not an sf guy right you're going into a fallujah or ramadi ramadi especially like 07 we'll say 060708 and you're under fire automatically your senses are so heightened oh yeah you are ready to go everything is a threat and then on out of nowhere um you know you see a car that is coming at you you're flicking lights whatever you're told oh You're told, oh, there's no more warning shots. There's no more firing at the grill to disable the vehicle.

You will shoot flares instead, right? Well, guess what? Your life feels threatened. You automatically go to that gun, disable that vehicle. A rickshaw happens, hits the bottom of that windshield, deflects up in the guy's head, and he's dead. Or you use a flare. The guy doesn't stop and blows up your whole freaking convoy i'd rather go with the previous it happens you already ruined my life because i'm gonna have to spend my own money which i do every day or every week to do out of out of network tricare to pay

for my own freaking therapy i I've done it for years. Spent thousands of dollars a year. Imagine that. So you're going to fuck these kids over already by sending them to war. And then if they fuck up because their life feels threatened, you're going to dictate if their life was threatened enough to take a life. That's crazy. And if you deem that it was not threatened enough, you're going to destroy their life even further. It's disgusting.

It does make me – like when I see the story about even the Blackwater guys who were contractors and I'm not going to sit here and say they were the most competent in that situation. But I know how that was sold in the narrative. And then when Sean did his podcast, of course, it's from their perspective, so it's a little biased. But once you actually research some of the things they said about – I'm going to forget some of the details now because it's been a while. But like the drone footage for 15 minutes suddenly being pulled and how they sold this in the media to offer them up to be like okay see we're being hard on people when you see stuff like that and how hard they push that in the literal international media it makes you question all this because you're like okay i know once in a while you do get a bad soldier does a bad thing sure and you should punish those guys i'm not

saying i don't want to like whitewash all that. But then how many times are you getting good guys and you're just nailing them to a cross because it's politically expedient to do it? And that pisses me off. But it protects your ass. Yeah, of course. Like I told him not to do that. Right then. Did you tell him? I can't prove he did or didn't.

Can you believe that though? They were going to – they tried to fry some of my gunners for shooting warning shots with a 240 up top even a saw what oh shoot flares first so we so hold on a second we're on a we're on a bumpy ass road you want me to pull the cap out you ended up happening once with a flare they went to pull the primer off and stick it on to hit it and it fell into the fucking truck oh and and lit a kid on one of my best guys on fire oh like it's just crazy i haven't i haven't been a humvee riding down the road at night with headlights off dude it's war is not a rose garden no again i'll use my burger, man. You can't just have it your way. Nope.

It's perspective too. At some point, politicians need to sit here and say, hey, yeah, we're going to take flack. And that's part of it. No, they never will. They don't really have power. They're all bought off. None of them have spines either. Yeah, they sit in their office and pretend they have power and get excited about the pretend power they have.

Danny loves this stuff. It it's a constant battle to the next election i mean i could sit here and start lecturing people about fucking term limits but most people already agree you know it's like it just it it really annoys me when it gets to when it gets to like people who are like sacrificing their life for the country and stuff like that that particularly pisses me off well i've heard the thing about uh they're to people who are sacrificing their life for the country. That particularly pisses me off. I've heard the thing about everybody's bitching and whining about things

and they're like, well, Trump's not a veteran. Well, okay, hold on. Neither was Biden, neither was Obama. I was like, this is him. Who's not a veteran that's the closest to being one? Trump. He loves the military. He loves the military.

Dude loves the military. He does love them. I mean, we had some of the best military stuff we've ever had when he was in office. He put mad money on us. The only thing was people were like, well, he dodged the draft. My whole thing is just call it equally on both sides. Yes. So did Biden, for God's sakes. Uh-huh.

All right. I don't care who you vote for, but just. Call it even. call it even call it even i'm with you 100 i'm so sick of that shit well number two uh trump was a young rich guy during that time too young rich guys did stuff yeah i mean his daddy was rich and i said young rich guys like am i gonna get shot at vietnam or i want to stay here and be a millionaire and do what i do muhammad ali Ali, he dodged it too. That's how he became Muhammad Ali.

That's the thing. That's his tale all his time too. Yeah, we just pick and choose what we, but anyways, that's a whole other rabbit hole.

We got off on this tangent though from 07-08 because you were saying, no, no, no, you're good. It was the last, that was the last tour you did? Yep, that's my last tour you did? Yep.

That's my last combat tour in the military. And the reason I say it sucks, too, is like those 15-6 investigations and this and that. I mean, it's just, I mean, a bunch of guys going to jail for silly crap, dude. And like, for instance, I know of a story we taught with me and Lynn taught. Remember that guy, still that guy laying down? I don't know if you remember it. You're talking about Lynn Westover. Yeah, that behavioral thing we teach.

And it's talking about how all these dudes almost got burnt down because all these guys, these insurgents got smoked by these Marines. They couldn't find the freaking guns because at some point in there, somebody ran through there and grabbed all the guns, and that's where the other guys were getting their guns. And they ended up shooting all of them, but not all of them had guns. They wanted to burn them to the ground. And luckily, somebody had some type of footage or something.

I forget what it was, but something saved them. But you know how many people have ever shot somebody and couldn't find a gun? And I guarantee you, if it's a sniper especially, the guy had a gun. Snipers just don't shoot unarmed people. I don't give a crap because they're not just dirt bags you know what i mean right so that and everybody wants a combat action badge of some form combat infantry badge cab whatever combat action ribbon oh combat action ribbon too and uh so then once that happens uh oh seven ish uh everybody who's anybody who's hopping in vehicles are special ops guys or guys who do big convoys,

and they want to get close to some bullets flying at somebody. They want to get shot at. They want the bullets to land somewhere near them. I think there's actually a measurement. You have to be within 35 feet of the impact of the bullet or some crazy crap like that. You have to be within inches as far as I'm concerned. Like slice his hair off of you

like arm hair yeah so they started jumping in vehicles everybody and that way you can come back and verify it and they could get their combat action badge and ribbon and i mean it's just zero respect for guys like that it's just ridiculous we refused it 90 of the time uh there's a few that did a pretty good job that rode with us, but we knew who they were. I think I told y'all that... Even at your level, though, too. Yeah, and we had a female captain that worked in S4, her and her husband, which is like supply.

And she's Puerto Rican, and she was pretty good to go. She seemed like she was a pretty big head to it, and her husband's a pretty cool dude. And I worked in the same unit with us, 10th group, and we were over here. We grabbed all these people and we had them in a building. There's a whole bunch of women in there. And we don't like to search women

because, like I said, it just stirs up trouble. There's no point in searching Iraqi women when you just get a female to come do it. Put them all in one room and let them do it. I don't want to. I just don't. Not because of any other reasons. But

she's in there doing what she does and this and that and when it's all said and done, they're like, hey, man, she wants to go outside and do her thing. Okay. She didn't say she went to get a combat action ribbon or badge or none of that shit. She's just, I want to go outside and see what's up. Okay. Went out here. There's a four-way alley sitting right here.

Hummer's sitting right here. Building's right here at the gate. Four-way intersection right here in the alley, pitch black. And it's white. It's all painted white, as everything else is, on those alleys and stuff, walls. And as we're leaning out here, I'm just like, okay, dude. You're awesome. Crack.

Like two rounds hit Robin's concrete right in front of her. And she's like, crap. And she just stepped out, took a knee. Dunk, dunk. Two rounds. Throwing down. Hell yeah. I live for this. Two rounds, dude. down. Hell yeah. I live for this.

Two rounds, dude. Just tap, tap. Dropped that dude to her dog. Oh my God. Hell yeah. What a badass. I was like, all right. That wasn't that in the news.

You can stay. I was like, you can stay. Get in the truck. Get in the truck. Get in the armored vehicle. All right. Where did you drop in when you came back in 07-08 initially? Drop in.

07-08? Yeah. Y in, 07, 08? Yeah. Yuma, Arizona. You're talking about? No, no, no. When you went back to Iraq. Basra was seven. And then I got back right before the end of 07.

And then I was back till February. And then I went to Yuma, Arizona to do my school. All I was got to do was school instructor time. And so I chose military free fall school. So you weren't in Fallujah? 08, no. Okay. But what was Basra like at that point?

Basra was the cowboy days now. Can we pull that up on a map, Alessi Basra? It was wild now. And we stayed on a British base, and you could see the town. It was like a half a mile right over there, and the road was parallel to the town, so they were always catching us coming in the base and coming a British base. And you could see the town. It was like a half a mile right over there. And the road's parallel to the town, so they're always catching us coming in the base and coming off the base. We had to look at a little bit of camp called Camp Harper on this British base. And the SAS guys lived with us.

And, yeah, it was gnarly. Because before we showed up there, the Brits were patrolling through there and doing all the stuff that they do. Oh, it's right by Kuwait. Yeah. But they weren't pissing anybody off. They're just riding through town, you know, like show of force. Then we show up.

We don't do ride through town, show of force. We come to catch people. Well, that didn't go over great. After hitting about two or three targets, then we got mortared every single night oof and they blew up our port-a-crappers

uh they we've had them shake the flat the fluorescent light bulbs out of our little our little

trailer houses we had and uh all kinds of stuff I mean they're shooting all kinds of stuff at us at this point though is it

is the vibe pretty much everywhere you go off your base, any civilian territory, it's just assumed to be hostile. In Basra? Yeah. The second you're outside the gate. Yeah.

That's where I told you that EFP took the back of that warrior off the back of that warrior armored vehicle. It was at the gate of Basra. And we're talking, that's right there. Ten feet away from going in the base. How long at the gate of Basra. That's right there. Ten feet away from going into base. How long were you there? Nine months.

That's a pretty long rotation. Nine months, 152 missions. All direct action. That's also where we caught the top four off the top ten list, but we caught the top eight off the top ten list, but we caught the top eight off the top 15.

What happened there? The Brits, there was three of us went ahead, like advanced party, me and two other dudes. And our commander was there and us three, and we organized what we needed to do. Well, the SAS guys came over. They're like, hey, man, we're going on a mission. You guys want to go with us? Hell yeah. Hell yeah, if we got all our crap, let's go. So we need to do. Well, the SAS guys came over. They're like, hey, man, we're going on a mission. You guys want to go with us?

Hell yeah. Yeah, we got all our crap. Let's go. So we went down there. And here we are. We're shuffling down. You know, they got all armored vehicles and stuff. Because their army comes with them.

I mean, they roll deep. They bring all armored everything. And we jump out, run down the road. There's like this building. They're tracking it with a weight. I can't really talk about it on here, but they got their weights doing shit, the same as everybody does, certain stuff. It's down to two buildings. I personally would have picked the other building,

purely because it's four times bigger, and it just looked like somebody that has a lot of money to live in. But the guy was positive it was this one. Big steel gates everywhere. He put four blocks c4 on this thing now that'll do and it blows the hell out of it well they said it and they sold us they said everybody stay back here we're gonna send this guy up to initiate it and then he comes back on time you know i don't know if it's time fuse or what and it goes i mean it goes boom now

enter the house we're in the back we're not primary breachers or anything with these guys this is their gig they go through search the whole place they're throwing six and nine bangers everywhere

and it's loud as hell you're like sound like a gunfight going on in there turns out it was not it uh apologize to the guy told them we paid

for their door because they breached they breached well they blew the gate and then blew the door so then we go to the next house do the same thing to that house. I mean, it's literally separated by this one wall.

Blow that big-ass gate, breach that door with like a triple wrap of charge and a deck cord, and there's eight dudes asleep on the floor. After all this. Just knocked out. And everybody reaches like. What, they got like needles in their fucking hands nope they're just not wanting to get up

and uh so my boy I can't say his name but it's this guy he's standing in the doorway here they all stand like he's like telly ho

he's like come here come here smoking dope he's like he's like come here look at this would you and we come walking up there he's like what in the hell

hey huh what what's going on what's what's what's? Hey. Huh? What? What's going on? What's happening? And you look over the shelves. There's all these computers, laptops, and bags of money. And they're all $100 bills and guns, mostly Glocks, which are probably ours to start with that we gave to the Iraqi forces.

And they stole them from them probably. And we have a picture of a dude we're looking for. So they gave it to us. I got mine in my thing right here. So pulled out and it's like okay up against the wall put the flashlights on going ding ding ding ding ding ding ding seven i was like none well shit that's not great we mean none that none of them matched it he wasn't this picture and this guy built a bomb or uh i don't remember if it was a bomb or EFP, I mean some kind of explosive device, and it blew the legs off the gunner and the warrior, the armored vehicle, and they're pissed about it. I mean, the Brits are like, that's it, dude. We've been nice to you, and now you did this,

now we're going to come burn you down. And it's really funny stuff, I'll tell you about that later, that the Brits did, because they're just fun to work with, SAS guys especially. I've got to work with. SAS guys especially. I've got to have one of those guys in. Keep hearing about them. It's fun. So my boy's in the back and he goes, Dan, you come back here, bro.

Just come back over there. Come back over to that damn picture. And there's papers and shit laying everywhere. There's all these passports with no pictures in them, but the passport photos are laying all over the place and there's passports because my boy's knocking that shit out. And this guy's hidden in the closet. Pulls it out.

I said, okay. Put a light on him. Ho, ho. Look here. We got us a winner. Ching. Load them up. Everybody goes.

And then the other seven were still winners. It just wasn't that guy. Yeah. They were all associated well enough. But I only had one photo. And it turns out one of those guys in there was his brother, and another one was like his cousin, and another one was his cousin. And the other three or whatever it was were associated in other stuff.

Were they Al-Qaeda? No, they were just bad guys. They were supported by Iran, though. Supported by Iran? Yeah, they were supported. They were being funded by Iran later on, we found out. God, Iran's everywhere. They're everywhere. And we're close to Iran in a lot of these places. supported they're being funded by iran later on we found out uh god iran's everywhere they're

everywhere and we're close to iran uh in a lot of these places once we run out and start doing stuff i mean not as close as uh boz was not as close as we were when we're like up north uh at uh kmtb or anything but still boz is close enough i mean i've heard some stories off record of guys who monitored the Iranian border. They can't talk about that shit on a podcast, but like during this era. Yeah. I was like, whew. We took them in, and everybody liked to crap their pants.

I mean, the Brits were just ecstatic. And we started going through all the photos. I was like, dude, this is like eight of the top 15 most wanted dudes in the entire freaking area. Hit the jackpot. Everywhere. Top three off the 10 list at least. And so I said, one, two, three, hanging. Okay, next.

I'm not sure about the rest of y'all, but you three are going down. Not up to me. I'll give you the other rack of gum. That's the judge. Your judge will decide that. And he did. And at the end of that, I don't know what happened to the rest of them. But as we're driving back, we're riding in them.

They have this vehicle. It's called a Snatch. And it's a Range Rover with like fiberglass-ish something bulletproof. I say bulletproof. I don't even know if it's 7.62. But we're riding in this thing. And all these regular Army guys are riding in the vehicle. And Dave, this guy sitting across from me, he speaks normal British.

So I can actually understand him. But I'm not kidding. I'm not even trying to be fun of him or nothing, but these guys are country boys over here. They all speak in Cockney and shit. Yeah, and he said, these guys are from the country, son. They're out there.

They're not across. And so I was listening to them, and they're in a circle, you know, where they're on the side of the road talking. I couldn't understand shit what they were talking about. And so we're riding down the road, and I'm sitting here by the back door,

and here's this guy rolled up right here and the gunner's standing on him. I didn't realize he was standing on his neck the whole time. But I went down to pull over and drag this dude out and put water on him and shit. I was like, quit standing on his fucking neck, bro. I don't want him to die. Because he's the guy. And so this guy's like, Hey,

I was like, I'm sorry. You talking to me? Yeah. I look over at Dave and he's like, he's just laughing, nodding his head like, well, I'm sorry. You talking to me? He's like, yeah. I look over at Dave. He's like. He's just laughing, nodding his head like, yeah, you got it. And I was like, I'm not trying to be an ass or anything, bro, but I don't know what you said. I said, I got a country accent.

People don't understand half the shit I'm saying if I'm speaking quick enough. I don't get it. Can you say it closer? Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah. I don't know. I got nothing. He closer? Yeah. Yeah. Blah, blah. I don't know. I got nothing. He goes, he said, turn on the heater switch.

There you go, bro. Did he literally say that? He goes, yeah, he said, turn on the heater switch. I was like, there's no damn way that came out of that dude's mouth. Are you fucking kidding me, bro? Don't even start. You need a British translator. I mean, seriously. So we came back and we gave all the bad guys to the Brits. bro don't even start so we can't you need a british translator so we can yeah i mean seriously

so we came back and we gave all the we gave all gave all the bad guys to the brits it was their leads first of all and we just kind of helped and helped identify them so we gave it all to them though but then from then on man we had the best relationship ever because we didn't try to point shit on them they got it all they got to get the win i'm loving it how did you coordinate when you like worked with the brits or another ally country versus when you were doing shit alone? Did that happen more naturally? Like, oh, we're sharing intel, so let's both go in on this? Yeah.

Or was it like, oh, you're here, I'm here, let's work together? We shared it all. We know we're going to be there together. And the SAS, they like to be with special ops guys. They don't like being down there with the regular infantry guys or army guys. Because, I mean, they're highly trained yeah like at that time i don't know about nowadays i haven't researched it but in the back in the day in 07 unless i'm completely wrong there's only 220 sas operators on the planet at any given time current sas operators Now, I call that elite. That's pretty damn elite.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So there's 220 in a battalion easily, you know what I mean, of us. I mean, damn. So if you want to become a SAS operator, you got to wait until somebody quits. You literally just can't have the job until you quit. Yeah. And our selection is based off their selection from way back in the day.

I mean mean we got a lot in common a lot a lot of overlap yeah yeah they they think like we do we think like them we like the same type of ways of approaching things you know if they don't go on our goofing around they don't goof around at all so it's really fun we had a good time was bosry your last time in iraq last time as time as a military member. What was later, as a contractor? Yeah, a contractor for Triple Canopy, for the American Embassy.

I went over there for about a year. When was that? I retired in 2011, so it was 11 to 12. So what made you, because you were in since, what, like 84 you went in, and then you went out for four and a half years, 87 and 92, and then you were in. Yeah. So 2011, 2012, what made you say, I want to stop?

I think I'd hit it because the first time I missed it, I didn't do everything I set out to do. And now it's 11, 12, and I'm having a baby born, my last little baby in like a few weeks. The killer? Yeah, the machine. And actually, she was born. Oh, I was on terminal leave.

I wasn't even out of the Army yet, but I was on terminal leave, which means I'm never coming back. Like they give me 60 days just to go do whatever I want to until they finalize me. Because my final was May 1st, and she was born April 14th. Bin Laden day. So there you go. We got them. Wait, was that literally May 1st, 2011?

Yeah. Yeah, she's... That was prophetic, bro. She was born on a good day. Danny, you are sick. I planned it. I planned it all. That was a, bro. She was born on a good day. You're sick, Danny. You are sick. I planned it. I planned it all. That was a fun day.

I remember that. Well, her actual birthday is April 14th, so I hate to take that. Son of a bitch. But I retired May 1st. You should have just lied. It was a good story. We were doing well. But you retire the day Bin Laden gets hit.

Yeah. Isn't that awesome? It's amazing. Prophetic. And my buddies all text me pictures. Here's your gift for graduating. The guys that were on the site and stuff, they got it and sent it to me. I wonder if, and this is sad, I've got to wonder this, but sometimes it's a little weird celebrating death,

but he was such a bad guy who did the worst thing to us, and we couldn't get him for the longest time. And I remember watching, I was watching the Phillies and Mets. I't get them for the longest time and i remember watching i was watching the phillies and mets i think they're playing the mets on sunday night baseball and they're and they're they're like we have to talk about this on the broadcast but the united states has just executed a mission where they killed osama bin laden yeah and there's motherfuckers going usa you people are lining up outside the white house holding up flags and shit oh but and and like that was an amazing when when when Obama came out he like oh you saw him like borderline like fist pumped on the like everyone's like on team America

and I wonder if today we'd be like that for something like that. That's a good question. I think a good portion of the country would be. I know damn straight I would be. Yeah, I would too. I think a big chunk would. But you also have people on TikTok reading the letter of Osama bin Laden from when he was 20 years old talking about, oh, he's an empathetic figure. Okay, yeah, you go over there then, dumbass. Sorry.

Yeah, go ahead and try some of that. I'm all about believing what you want to believe. It's your life. But, hey, when you go against the principles of this country and you think this is a shitty place to be we can always do better but take your ass over oh experience what he was just talking about and and then come back and let us know how it went do you get annoyed when when people lecture about how society here should be when you've seen the shit you've seen. Yeah, because

there's no greater nation, period. And it don't take but one trip anywhere, honestly. It's American privilege. Like Paris. Paris, France. Beautiful place. Love it. You know, beautiful everything, blah, blah, blah. French people don't like us. I mean, they treat us like crap when we're there.

Likewise. And it's their country, so when they treat us like crap when we're there. Likewise. And it's their country, so when they're over here, it's all good. Return to favor, I suppose. But I have some French friends that aren't buttholes. But those guys don't really care for us. It's beautiful in this now. You think I'm going to move there? Hell no, I'm not going to move there.

I almost moved to Republic of Georgia for a year. Like not the state, the country. Yeah, the country. For a contract, my buddy had a big, big, huge contract over there, training all them to be special forces guys and do all this stuff. And that is one wonderful place now. I live there. I mean, that place, they love Americans.

It's just a great place. Crime's real low. Their parliament just got in a fist fight yesterday. Oh, they did yeah we have video of this oh yeah that's great georgia parliament fist fight that's what ruined our contract with parliament got in a fist fight that time because somebody got paid more money than the other guy did and they quit on us so they fought it out that's how we do it you know no guns just well the first time i read it i'm like wait because it wasn't stated like georgia parliament it was like georgia politicians and i'm like come on georgia all right here we go oh shit he just went he went all for it haymaker right over the top i love how he

paused yeah and then drop go go back go back to that initial shot let Leslie. Let's get this. Watch. The guy's literally just talking. Play it. Sucker punch. Boom! Boom! Rocked him in the temple. Speaking of situational awareness, you didn't see that coming? No.

Wait, are they beating the shit out of the guy who did it now? Yeah. That's his getting beat. He's like, still don't care. He's getting his ass beat for doing that oh my god great place wonderful place yeah so anyways georgia so yeah imagine like like pelosi's talking about her latest trade and like some other chick from congress comes in there and goes fuck you and you're trading i'm out i don't want my kneecaps broken.

That would have been funny, though. That would have been whack. Yeah, like Pelosi. Who's the guy with the eye patch? Dan Crenshaw. These people are the greatest traders of all time. They just know what a stock's going to do almost before it does it. Weirdly.

That is so weird. And how does somebody like Obama get in the presidency worth like half a million dollars, I think? I think like five. And what's he worth now? When he walked out? That makes sense, though. Because they get paid 500k to go talk for a half hour somewhere

after you're president. Maybe. All the presidents leave, they get rich on that. I think he's probably worth like a hundred million or something. I haven't looked at his net worth recently. His wife All the presidents leave, they get rich on that. I think he's probably worth like $100 million or something. I haven't looked at his net worth recently. Oh, he's worth like... His wife's worth a lot too. All them stupid books,

above $100. That's what I'm saying. He's worth more than George Bush. They've sold a lot of... They do a lot of speeches. They're both good speakers. She's written books. She did a podcast.

I don't know if she's still doing that. They've monetized. And I'm okay with that. They've monetized and i'm okay they've engineered a personal brand yeah i get upset when people are actively in office and are doing things that if i did it it's a felony yeah that's where i'm like that's where people want to go out and make money on the work they've done that's fine do that but don't make money on shit that you throw everyone else in prison for. That's bullshit. Yeah, I can think of some people like that.

Females that almost became president. Kamala. Sorry, it's just Kamala. I can see it. Well, Hillary, I mean, how many people see that put down? I don't even know. That's why. I think we lost track.

Yeah, there's certainly some interesting two shots to the back of the head suicides. All I got gotta say is just call it the same on both fucking sides that's it i'm just calling it like i see it i don't give a damn what party you're in i don't like you um i really don't i just i'm sorry you may have the best intentions to go into politics but once you become one yeah that's when your spine just disappears. Who wants those jobs? No, it's just, yeah, you're a sociopath on an X level, and I don't know how they live on themselves, exploiting people the way that they do.

It's the best paying job to have right now. Shit. Being a politician, hey, dang, dude. Never worked a day in their life. They don't read those bills. Say intern, give me the first three pages. Let me know what's in there. Exactly.

I'd rather go to sleep at night and die eventually with a clean conscience. Oh, yeah. And have all the money in the world. I do care how I make money. Yeah. I do. I want to make money on things that I believe in and that I add value for. Yeah, because you're

a good person i the thought of like oh i could go make money fucking someone up no that's just not in me life ain't long enough to either to make it for the time that you're gonna pay for at least in my mind the time that you're not on earth uh for doing all the stuff that you pull while you are here that's not literally just had feinstein she's worth like 300 million yeah die in office she refused that was like it was pathetic remember her face is like hanging off yeah and they're like wheeling her it's not what they did do i mean she her face was hanging off it's like you know it's i it's part of me is like you know i shouldn't laugh that but at the same time no you did this to yourself it's funny and you're worth a ton of money while

your constituents just suffered something like we are i don't feel bad we are living in in such a like cartoon society with some of this shit now that like i don't even care if i'm laughing at some of it it's fun it is it is darkly funny you have men like this going over doing what they do putting their their personal well-being that's right at you know i mean it's it it you know it's just the truth you know we're gonna suffer for the rest of our lives we're gonna do we have burdens to deal with that's just just no question calling it like it is yeah It sucks. And we're going to spend thousands of dollars of money that, you know, it's not like we're both multimillionaires. Thousands of dollars on our mental health and well-being

and on our family's mental health because it takes a toll on our families as well. And, you know, you've got these politicians that just make so much damn money. You're just a casualty to them. Yeah, we're collateral damage. We're just numbers, man. That's it. And it sucks to say that in front of you, especially. I hate saying that.

I'm sorry. It's just how they are. It's a shot at them because that's how low some of these people are. They don't care about any of it. Like, one day they need to wake up and realize they need to be leaders and come together and quit all this bullshit. No, it's – I hate to be a cynic.

I'm a Christian man, so I got to have some faith. What's going to suck is – what's going to take is one catastrophic event in politics of some form, like stop paying retirement vets or retired vets their payments, like no disability, no more retirement checks or anything else. Something big, like where it hits a big chunk of the economy. Oh, God help you. And now you're dealing with something,

and all of a sudden 10 million people show up in Washington. Oh, yeah. And they're like peacefully going, we need this fixed today. Like now, now. You quit, you start, now. You quit. You start. That kind of thing, you know. Yep.

But they're not going to charge the Capitol or anything. I mean, they didn't charge it last time. Yeah. And I remember when I was working on Wall Street, like we'd have some of these like social security experts come in and talk with us as far as guys who studied like the legislation around it because we always wanted to know where that was going and they used to say they're like look i'm not saying that this is good for the long-term viability of the u.s dollar

and how things are but he's like politicians need to win on tuesdays and novembers and so if you want to guarantee that you're going to lose vote to defund social security so it's not going anywhere anytime soon and like i'm like i don't want to defund that either but like we've put ourselves in such a bad position with some things and that's just one example where like we have now gotten to a point where you know you have to make decisions that'll continue to fuck you maybe overall with the long-term viability of the economy, which is what matters for what we do, that the same people who control it are the people who are just trying to win the next election. So they are ideologically captured on their own outcome to do what the most people who come up and say, you got to do this, like you said, are going to tell them to do. And that's what's so hard about society because everyone has their needs.

Yeah. Right. And someone's going to lose. Yeah. Like it's not, it's not, it's not in that way. It's a zero sum game. Yeah. But anyway, so you, we were saying you left the military in 2011, 2012.

You felt like you had 2011, you felt like you had done everything you needed to do, but you did get into contracting. Was that like your own company right away? No, I contracted with some other people first. I did a little bit here and there, and then I went to work for Triple Canopy as security for the ambassador. Then I came back. Then I started my own company in Colorado teaching mountain warfare. Mountain warfare.

Yeah, for special operations in general as Air Force, Special Forces. And I did it at this ranch called MLAZC Ranch. And back in the day, like a lot of the stuff in Afghanistan,

like pack horse, pack mule, where you learn how to, you know, put all the harnesses on, do all these things. It was all taught at that ranch because that ranch, they knew how to do it all. Special Forces started training there a lot.

Before you know it, he's building ranges and doing all kinds of stuff. He's got tower, rappel towers, beautiful on the edge of like 900,000 acres of super badass land. You're at 8,500 feet, so you do halo drops up there like that. It's just a really good place to train. We just started doing that and then i started training the air force eod out there a lot a whole lot and then uh went on for a pretty good while and uh so they're about to sneeze for somebody though you're good and uh went on for a pretty good while and uh i finally got done doing what i was doing my wife was doing what she was doing in colorado i was like, it's time to get back to the motherland. And I packed my shit and went back to Texas.

And that was the end of that. Hell yeah. And I just kind of walked off from it and left it with some other people to do if they wanted to do it. But you still have your other one, you were saying? I stopped that one. I stopped using it. And it'll stop being in existence in like four months, I believe. Okay.

And there's some stuff, there's certain projects you can't talk about on camera that you're involved with. But I think, correct me if I'm wrong here, broadly, one you can kind of talk about is, you can finish my sentence here for me, but you do some training for parts of the U.S. military on certain things? Are you allowed to say who? Yeah. It's for Rangers Special Forces. There's a company that myself and two other guys have started working on.

We've been working on it two years, but it's a very large project. Very, very big. Started off being based in Oregon. We're still looking at properties to use, like gigantic properties, really big properties for Wyoming, part of it in Texas. But we're dealing with a lot of the chunks of Africa, which is where we're going to get to that with him. But it's a lot of the leadership in Africa.

And it's going to have high-end security, executive security, all that kind of stuff, back and forth there to Dubai and to all these other different places. There's some stuff about it I can't talk about that is really high, and it kind of cruises with it. We're going to have static guards. We're going to be training. We're going to build a gigantic monstrosity of a freaking

range system a range system? yeah like it's going to be this huge every type of shooting you ever heard of man pretty much shooting up to

two and a half miles and all that sort of stuff and we got two guys who build guns for a living from scratch and we got guns that'll shoot two and a half miles easily

easily prove it yeah yeah no kidding and uh but uh like 408 shot tech you know is a good mile half gun that these is like it's like a 422 and a 418 and a pop gun you know like a real slender and just made to shoot that way fast. And huge guns as far as like that goes. I mean, it's just so – and then we got aquaponics. Then we got – that's going to be built in Africa to help them with their whole deal with vegetables and all that kind of stuff. Aquaponics? Is that like hydroponic gardens, that kind of thing? Yeah.

Oh, wow. And so we'll have them – it's going to be Yeah. That kind of thing? Yeah. Oh, wow. And so we'll have them. That's not what I expected you to say. And we got all these things. Some of them are pre-built and some of them we're building ourselves. And he probably knows something about what I'm talking about, too. And then we use the Sierra Land containers, you know, big metal containers, stuff like that. And that's all going to grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

And they have requested that to help with their economy and their vegetation and all that kind of stuff. Then we're building creameries for taking milk from sheep. Those are big. I remember I think the last thing we were thinking about was like 7,000 head of sheep, something like that. And then also we have beef cattle and then the dogs that's another thing with him because he does that oh you're setting up the canine thing yeah and uh because we like we like us some malinois and stuff like that a lot and uh that's just a that's kind of the tip of the iceberg for all that right there but it's just so massive and then uh we're we're

gonna take a bunch of guys like we were working on uh rangers that are getting out of the tip of the iceberg for all that right there but it's just so massive and then uh we're we're gonna take a bunch of guys like we were working on uh rangers that are getting out of the army retired or just getting out and trying to have the ones that are are already there you know second range of time and just pull them straight over as firearms instructors and personal security guys uh obviously the high-end executive security you know pays more money just depends on what your calls are and what you want to do and maybe you're tired of running around all over the countryside and you want to just shoot teach people how to shoot every day right and uh so that'll happen there um a lot of stuff with uh dubai uh uh some some countries in south america uh we're gonna be traveling to to do different things. For old times sake.

Belize, oh yeah, of course. A little friendlier, Belize, Guatemala, some places like that. We're about to go and we're going to have hit probably seven countries in Africa to do some reconnaissance for some stuff and sign a bunch of documentation and things like that.

When you do these jobs, you're bringing in a lot of contractors, right? Oh yeah. The 1099s. This is also going to end up being an 18-series call-out at some point. What do you mean by that? Man, if you're an 18-series anything and you're looking for somewhere to work. Bravo, Charlie, Delta. Yeah, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Alpha, whatever you want.

Sign on up, baby. Yeah, holler. And I won't be in a hiring mood position and all that stuff for another probably two or three months. But if somebody wants to do it, let me know because it's going to be a good deal. Okay. Good to know. So I just totally plugged the hell out of that. Marines too, though.

Oh, yeah, Marines, everybody. When did you guys first meet? Because we're in the second episode now. We talked about your background with Vet paul in the first episode ryan the one after this is going to be an episode with you that you and i are going to record tomorrow so people check out that podcast look for that coming next but just as a refresher for people who didn't see the first episode that paul what is it veterans power to protect african wildlife We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We're U.S.-based, but we are full-time in South Africa as our headquarters,

and we travel all throughout Africa, combat veterans, training, advising, and assisting in wildlife protection. And this is an organization that's near and dear to my heart. But what you do, we talked about this when you were first here in episode 117, what you guys essentially are trying to educate people on is that there are these international poaching syndicates that are funded by foreign governments in some cases. And they are often executed by quite literally terrorists, be it ISIS-K in Africa or – I want to show what my signal was. What were some of the other ones? Some of the other terror groups in Africa? The names are getting away from me right now. Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, but they both pledge allegiance to ISIS.

Okay, so it's kind of all one and the same. There's cells everywhere. So you guys have done both overt and covert work, be it undercover or just also unknown patrolling to protect animals and i also want to say vet paul is literally responsible for the white rhino still existing there were 15 000 when you got there in 2013 very close to being declared extinct there's i believe over 30 000 now that's amazing well thank you i i gotta say we're just a small slice of the pie, man. Conservationists as a whole, just all their sacrifices are what did it. You know, I can't say that Vet Paul is solely responsible for that at all. But, you know, we're proud to just be accepted in conservation and be a part of it.

Well, that's awesome. And we're going to talk about it in the next episode. But how did you guys, how did you get involved with Vet Paul, Danny? Five years ago? Yeah. You'll have to ask him because he contacted me. I don know oh no I didn't I didn't oh see I just mysteriously showed up you know and I don't know how did I or was it not was Lynn Lynn there we go common denominator so Lynn Westover who's vet paul's former director of operations he's still on our board now he's's a force recon scout sniper. He runs a company called SLC Square, which stands for Six Layers Consulting.

Square. Square, yeah. So it's SLC2.com. And they teach human terrain mapping, behavior pattern recognition but he had a whole um list of qualified uh potential cadre members to come and teach and do our selection course for veterans i couldn't just do it by myself and my my staff of guys they're qualified they're great but we needed more help we needed subject matter experts to help in different territories testing or different um curriculums to test and make sure they're qualified and then teach them other things. And Danny came in, taught the human terrain mapping behavior pattern recognition with those guys, and then also taught our medical side of things

and helped with the shooting. Did you have familiarity with the poaching before you got in touch with them? I've touched it from the outside. I've never gotten to do it. I've been around it a little bit. I've dealt with people who did deal with it. I guess is a better way to put it. Because military, we deal with the guys who do approach that kind of stuff,

the ones that pursue it. I've never got to do it at the scale that they're going to. We're always trying to not cross paths so I can go do some of this stuff with him, but I'm always doing something when he's doing it. We have a hard time doing it at the same time. But, I mean, I barely touched it. I just know a good bit about it from being around people who do it over there. He's taught a lot of the guys that are with us now.

Oh, yeah. I've taught a lot of people how to do it. Oh, yeah. He makes our guys better. That's awesome. Yeah. It's great to have guys like you. Anti-poaching is dangerous.

You can get yourself messed up pretty quick doing that. You've got to stay on top of your game. So all those dudes that are doing it for him, they passed a rigorous selection process to even be there. It's not boot camp, but you're going to be as tired as boot camp. But we'll sure send you on your way if you're not doing a good job. Well, not that you're doing a good job. You don't show you have the the ability to do it correctly or you don't adapt to the environment you know that kind of thing because that's one of those things that we're not being

mean to anybody if we send you away it's you don't belong there because you're going to get hurt possibly right it's one of those things like you don't send you don't send just the average person to basra to run ops door kicking you know i? You find somebody who knows how to do it. Fuck yeah. That's the people you put in there to do it. Because otherwise you're going to start piling up dead bodies. You got to get somebody that knows, that's in it for the right reasons too. I don't want somebody that's coming out there to drop bodies.

Like, hey, been there, done that. We're not here to start a war. So, yeah, we've gotten some of those guys that have come out we've picked them out real quick um you better show me that you're passionate about this and you have the ability to learn more than anything yeah that's why i've played it on the podcast on different episodes we've done but the video when when discovery was following you around and you you guys caught those poachers and you diplomatically talk with them and kind of brought them onto the team the way you did that. That's the way to do it.

The way Paul does it in the Amazon saying, hey, man, what are you making doing this logging? Because they're just trying to make a living in that case, right? Yeah. And that's not always what you're doing with poaching, obviously. But like that kind of thing, that human side side of it that de-escalation if you will winning hearts and minds that's the way to do it i think that's why that's why i i like that approach because like you guys have never had to in being out in the bush there going against like some of the poachers sneaking in the bush you guys have never had to i believe even shoot at somebody

or i think you've shot at someone but you you never had to kill anyone doing that right correct yeah i mean that that's that that's as important of a stat to me as there can be too because it's some de-escalation but stopping a horrible thing because they'll fucking shoot at you they'll kill you no questions asked oh there's no doubt about that and when you got a character you gotta get carrying a 600 nitro uh you don't want to get hit with that yeah a stack of dimes doing ridiculous amount of speed and when you got a character you gotta get carrying a 600 nitro you don't want to get hit with that yeah a stack of dimes doing ridiculous amount of speed and yeah you don't want any of that action and you ain't gonna be very accurate oh yeah so do you think there will always be war danny absolutely why because it's the human nature uh there'll always be war in

your house and you're fighting with people you love. So the average household, I mean, my grandma and granddad never got in a fight ever, but my granddad was 25 years older than my grandmother. And I think it's surely because he's kind of like, she just looked up. He's a big-time war veteran, did all that stuff. And I think it's because she just looked up to him so much.

She just didn't defy him. And he let her have her opinion. He had his opinion. They just kind of went about their way. If you take people to similar personalities and this and that, you're going to butt heads at some point. There's just no way around it. If you're dealing with people that want the same thing, they're going to both

go after it. Not even counting marital stuff I'm talking about. I'm talking about anywhere. Two countries, we want this. China wants Taiwanwan we want taiwan for instance if we did we're gonna both something's gonna happen and we're gonna get it if we want it or they're gonna get it if they want it we're gonna find out real fast uh what the deal is and there's always gonna be greed and there's always gonna be selfishness and there's always gonna be i don't give a shit about you it's all about me i just don't think there's ever a way to grow out of it now if we're talking a thousand years from now i don't know about that but in the next 100 ish years no chance there always there

will be war i heard you i heard you mention earlier talking about like praying for some guys you've lost and stuff like that so So are you a religious guy? Very. I'm a spiritual guy. Spiritual guy. Yeah. I'm not as much of a – I'm not a real big church goer so much because I don't really have a – I hate to even say because it's going to make some people mad, but I grew up Southern Baptist.

Obviously, ritually going to – I mean, even on my own, I rode my bicycle to church, you know, stuff like that. I used to mow the yard for them for free and all that kind of stuff. But I have since a spiritual, and I'm a diehard Christian without a question, and I believe what the Bible says. I have a problem with people's interpretation of it sometimes. It makes it hard for me to sit and listen to it. I'll still go.

My wife's religion is different than mine is. But I'll go to church with her if it doesn't bother me. I can go easily because I'm not so shallow that I can't listen to the word of God. Come for somebody. But I have to believe what you're saying. If you're saying something I don't buy, then I just won't because I have my own belief. Sure. And like my dad used to say, he goes, all that time everybody spends in church, whatever else, I spend my butt out here on my knees in the backyard in the woods

two or three times a week. I was like, shoot, man, that's pretty powerful too. Yeah. So that's kind of what I am. I spend a lot of time praying about things, quick prayers. Like my daughter gets on the bus, I take like 30 seconds. Okay, make sure she's good. Keep her right.

Keep her safe. If something ever does happen to my family, make sure I'm there. Let me take care of it and do it correctly. Make sure we always have the money to buy all the things we need and some of the things we want possibly if it's all good.

Or obtain them or however we need to do it. You know those type of things. Not praying, please make me rich. Please help me win the lottery. I don't ever say that kind of crap. Please save my life during this. Like even going to combat, a lot of times we're getting ready to roll out. We got our Humvees just sitting right here, for instance, you know,

and they're idling, ready to roll. I'll just take a knee right there because I don't care who's looking. Take a knee and I'll just be like, hey,, please help me do what I'm supposed to do. Please help me react to what I'm supposed to react to. Let me take care of my boys. Let me help all those around me. But I never have ever said, please save my life, ever. I mean, never, ever.

It's always the people around you. Oh, yeah. I mean, please help me make the rock-solid decisions because I've got to make them this quick. And if I don't make the right one, I get all these people over here killed, you know, or I get this family killed or whatever else. So I think that's the way you should pray. Don't pray that all these great things should happen to you. Pray that they'll happen to your family, to your loved ones, you know, that kind of thing, you know.

I pray that his vet ball thing will be productive. So, yeah, I mean, go ahead. That's awesome. Do you, and this is kind of, this is one of those questions that's like impossible to answer. It's more of a hypothetical, do your best with it as you can. But like, what do you think the God that you believe in with the Bible that looks up over all of us, what do you think he thinks of war? And your opinion that like, it always gonna be around i think he knows it's inevitable too and it's all part of a test uh most likely i

mean that's just kind of a shot in the dart but he knows it's inevitable he created us and this is all stepping stone to get to another spot now if there's going to be an end to it uh it's because we have developed over a period of time, a good long period of time. Because, I mean, we've had thousands of years so far and we haven't fixed it yet. I mean, not even kind of. Not even any better. None. And it's actually worse because our weapons are better.

You know, more destruction. I mean, you know. And fistfights are no less than they've ever been. You take away all rifles and guns away from your base, somebody will beat your head in with a brick. I mean, it's the way it goes, or a stick. I think it's all a step in stone. It's all a test. And it's a matter of how you handle the test.

Yeah, it's kind of like it's always a test of what are my people doing. He knows what you're going to do. He has control of it entirely. But it's free will. So he wants to see what you'll do. You know what I mean? So he's just watching and here's this. I'll give you this guidance.

You know, you might not even know the guidance, but you're getting it somehow, some way. Like it's one of the things I'm thinking for my blessings, even the ones I don't see because there's a bunch, but I don't see them, but they're pretty good because I'm doing all right. You know what I mean? I'm not poor and I'm not poverty stricken and starving.

And I'm smarter than I was, know what I mean? I'm not poor and I'm not poverty stricken and starving. And I'm smarter than I was, you know, six months ago or something. You know, I've learned something somewhere along the way. And I think he just goes, goes, goes. And maybe he saved my life through all these events that probably I shouldn't have lived through, honestly. Some of them for one event, for one two-minute thing somewhere. That's right. Might matter. And the guy I save will be the guy that keeps us from ever having war again.

Who knows? I mean, it could be that extensive. That's stupid. That's just how extensive things could be. You just don't know. So what you do is you pray, go about your way, and spread the word, show everybody your faith, and be thankful for what you've got. Well, there's so much from your career and your life and how you've lived it to be proud of and everything and it sounds

like obviously you got away without you know acts like you said accidentally killing someone you didn't mean to kill or something like that but are there things about your anything in your career that you regret? I wish I'd spent more time with my family, but it wasn't my option. But I believe I'd be a lot closer to my kids, a whole lot closer, if I'd spent a lot more time with them, a whole lot more. You're around the world, though, too. Yeah. You're doing the job.

Yeah, and it's one of those things. It's like, what's most important to you? It's like, should your kids be more important now? I don't know. It's hard to say. But at the time, it seemed like it was very important for me to be there, and I felt like I was the guy for the job. Somebody spent a bunch of money teaching me how to do it,

and I went after it to do it. But you don't really understand the effects they're having at that time. And so now my kids, my oldest son especially, he's adapted and came back because they both, my two sons especially,

but they held it against me somewhat. And as they got older all of a sudden, especially my oldest one, doing all kinds of deployments and stuff like that, he's like, man, I owe you an apology, dude. Because he knows now.

Yeah, he's like, I know you can't come home Christmas just because as he knows now yeah he's like i know you can't come home christmas just because you want to so i'd like to hear your part of it though no i i just want to say that i to you and your your family that on behalf of everyone that we're all and this is as somebody who's gone to war We're all very grateful and privileged for your sacrifices, not just yours, but your family's. Thank you. Because people just don't understand.

No, I don't think so. Hopefully they hear some things like this, and maybe they get a small understanding of that. That's the other thing we were talking about earlier. If this helps anybody who's ever done what we've done at any extent if it'll keep you from doing something

I really don't want to hear about or it'll guide you and let you know if I've done all this and I had a big ego at some point

in the midst of this because you can't help it everybody does if you're good at it you have a big ego that's just it you know you don't find

pro football players that are awesome that don't have a big ego but I had a big ego at some point. I don't remember exactly, but I'm sure it is. And, but look at yourself internally and realize you're screwed up and go see somebody about it. Because I went and got looked at, you know. I didn't do something that's going to keep me from carrying a firearm or anything like that.

But if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. But it didn't require that of me. It required somebody bringing it around to let me know what the hell is going on. You had self-awareness. It would get me figured out. I was getting off the path. And get you back on. If this helps them, if it proves that I can get over there and get looked at,

and you can get looked at, go get looked at, dude. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. Nothing. And it might make your life ten times better you know just talk to somebody if things suck pack your crap

and move somewhere else that's it you know if you get divorced find somewhere else to be go somewhere else move to Europe for a while do something different

I mean just do something don't take the easy way out you know that's the shit that's the shit it's a big loss amen to that amen to all of it

amen to what you said as well. Your whole family and generations of this. It's an amazing thing. But this has been absolutely fucking awesome. We did two episodes. So if you're watching this, you're at the end of the second one. The first one's link will be in the description. We got the full oral history of what you've done.

It's a beautiful thing. This will live forever too. It's on the internet. Your kids will be able to see this. Your grandkids will be able to see this. That's the best part of what you've done it's a beautiful thing this will live forever too it's on the internet your kids will be able to see this your grandkids will be able to see this that's that's the best part of what i do been a blessing man i mean i've been i've been treated good i mean it's been a good time ate good we got some good food around a condom out of two meals in case y'all wondering a little bit of free beer so but i really appreciate you doing it i appreciate you asking me to do it and i I appreciate you referring me up here, man, thinking I was good enough to be on this thing.

Hell yeah. But Ryan, you're going to be up next, so people stay tuned for the next episode. Come give me a hug, dude. We're going to go on your stuff. Let's hug it out. Everybody else, you know what it is. I love you. Give it a thought.

Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. Before you leave, please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. It's a huge help. And also, if you're over on Instagram, be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory Podcast or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally, if you'd like to catch up on our latest episodes, use the Julian Dory Podcast playlist link in the description below.

Thank you.