The Team House - The Team House Ep. 18 w/ special guests from Civil Affairs and PSYOP: SOF's red headed step children

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

On this week's episode Dave and Jack interview two special in-studio guests. Josh is a veteran of Civil Affairs and Zack served in PSYOP. These two units are a part of Special Operations Forces, but are unfortunately regarded as our red headed step children. But on this episode Josh and Zack explain what their jobs entailed from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria to the Congo. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MurphysLawstream The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five,

with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. All right, guys. We are streaming live episode 18, the team house. This is our first time. Dave, is this our first time having in-studio guests? I think it is.

No. We've had Jim Westchair. We've had... That's right. We've had Jim and Clint. But it is our first four way. It is our first four way. It is our first four way.

It is our dungeon in Brooklyn. Yeah. Yeah, but a really nice dungeon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. And we're all worried. I mean, we...

Oh, we afforded it at those people. Yeah, don't we... I was telling me, don't we look like puppeteers at like a Jim Henson set up now? We're like the background people, like stage hands, all wearing black. But I've been calling this the red-headed stepchildren of special operations show, because our two guests are from Josh from Civil Affairs and Zach from Sciop. We're not allowed to call it SciOps. It's Sciop.

Because you guys are just doing one Sci-Op at a time. No, we're not allowed to say that either. Wait, whatever we're allowed to say? It used to be nice. For a little while, they changed it to MISO, which was military intelligence source operations. Military information support operations. Gotcha. Yeah, but MISO runs it stuff to way too many jobs.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think that's why they had to change it. I'm just posting our stuff. Yeah, so, I mean, before we, like, I want to get into, like, your guys' personal experiences in the military and all of that. And some really funny stories. Before this, we were talking about, we had, I was doing, making a video recording with Josh

telling a pretty funny story about Congolese hookers. And that'll be, that's actually going to be like an exclusive story for people who support the stream. But before, wait, wait, wait, wait, you have to tell them how. If you support us on Patreon and welcome everybody, Team House episode 19. 18. 18. Team House Episode 18? Yes.

The link for that if you want to support the stream, get some skin in the game. It's down below. That's right. And there's a bunch of exclusive interviews that I've posted with Special Forces veterans I've interviewed. And now Josh, you're the inaugural Civil Affairs bro on there telling Congo stories, more stories, if you will. So I wanted to first get into what is CA and what is SIA for people who are like, yeah, I know what green berets are. I know what Rangers are, I know what seals are. But these are two components that they're both under Usasak.

Well, yeah, kind of. So Yusufakak is the parent support, or what did you say? It's weird. It's like a weird kind of one-all encompassing Yusa K-Pak, civil affairs and and Saifes fall underneath it, and that's it. originally civil affairs and siap all across the board act of duty reserve all fell under use aside for a long time doctrinally they still do reserve split off for their funding purposes only to reserve command and then CA has now grown out into brigades all throughout the country

reserve special operations still too or? Stockeringly. Because Sciop is not. It's not. I believe it's doctrinly. I don't know. I mean, I've been out for a long time, but, uh, oh yeah. So civil affairs is a, it's a weird thing. It's, uh, it's probably one of the weirder units in the military because it's like

a unit that has a lot of different resources at its disposal, um, kind of doing the hearts and minds things. After 9-11 in Afghanistan, there was a lot of units, the CIA units that were deployed there, going into formerly held Taliban areas to provide support where they're going to give them like fresh drinking water or some shit like, you know, just bringing in pallets, MREs or whatever stuff. People are like in dire need, which is where civil affairs makes money. But in the last couple of days I'm going back and looking at a lot of stuff and the capabilities, the Civil Affairs, if used properly, can be a combat multiplier for the ground commander

from a conventional unit or the Special Operations Forces Unit because they have the capability and the training to go in and work with the local government, the local tribal government, the local police, the local military. They kind of work all around and they kind of make up their mission as they go. And that's kind of like really what I saw firsthand. in 2004, 2005 when I was there. Because before 9-11, civil affairs kind of deployed to places like peace operations in Central America. I mean, I have wartime operations in Central America, like Panama and Grenada and Haiti. But for the longest time, all they really did was like Kosovo and Bosnia.

And that was really, what I got the impression, I knew guys that were on those missions. but what I got the impression was that was like a one year excuse to go and get fucking drunk. That's all it was. I didn't know any dude that was on any of those fucking missions that took away any knowledge

or real life you know takeaways. Not a lot of yeah, not a lot of kind of passed me down information from the next generation.

Like, oh yeah, if you want to have the best meal you gotta go to Kosovo and they bring in their house and they got lots of vodka and fucking beer and I'm like,

that doesn't really sound like a mission that just sounds like my house on the side of it. Right. Yeah. But there's Pardium, right? Yeah, there's per diem. Tax-free. Yeah, and these guys, like,

you know, for years, got away with doing those kinds of missions, but the 9-11 happened, and then I would have to say, probably for both, for, like, and not let Zach speak for himself for SIO, but for my experience is, after post-9-11, really is where the book starts to get written on the capabilities of CA and SIOP, and really how

it morphed from like one fucking thing that was just in a book. Like it was like some guy down at Swick wrote a book on how civil affairs and Saip operates. And it's probably like an outdated FM where you just look at it and you go, that's not how real life works. And I think the best example of how you saw that fucking change and that book had thrown out the fucking window was Iraq. Because especially Iraq when I first got there. The intent, correct me if I'm wrong, behind civil affairs is

you know, civil engagement that, I mean, the view I've always had of it is that you guys go out and you build schoolhouses and wells and things like that to help the civilian population. Yeah, but for, it's not just for that purpose. Like, so, like, if we were going out into an area and do like a, like, a big thing back in 2004-05 was like a vet cap or a Metcalf. Yeah. Well, that was one big thing. Yeah.

You're doing a service for your battle space owner maneuver Where you might do that in some shitty fucking area So what exactly is a med cap for? So med cap would be a situation where you bring in doctors, PAs, even just medics in like a shitty area where people wouldn't have Any access any real access to like many medical facilities or anything like that. Right.

And ironically, where I remember doing Medcaps lot in 2004 and 2005 was on the back side of the green zone outside. Like I was saying to Jack earlier, like a lot of people don't realize that in Baghdad, there is like farmland and there's villages. And it's ironically right next to the green zone. So we did a bunch there where I always found it interesting that the people that lived literally 10 minutes outside the heart of what Baghdad is. didn't have access to any kind of real medical stuff.

So what they would do is go in there and you get like, you know, whatever maneuver element you have there that's a battle space owner, send in a company of infantry or armor or whatever and cordoned off an area. And then create like a choke point where local nationals would come in with whatever animals. You see people come in with cholera or fucking, you know, women that just gave babies, like have babies in the dirt, had no way to, like give them nourishment or anything like that and individually treat them one by one. It's like a band-aid on a bullet wounds.

Yeah. But if it works, then that local group of people that might, before you got there, that want to, they may not like you. Right. And like they might be more inclined to support whatever, you know, insurgent element that would be in the area, especially in an area like that, that would be so close to a high-value target. Right. That might change their mind a little bit.

Like their kids dying. Right. And then all of a sudden they come in and you get them a Z-Pack. Right. It's dying of something that you shouldn't be dying of. But the local national doesn't know. Right. And you give them something like the magic bullet or the magic pill and then fucking, not the magic bullet.

That would be nothing get. You give him like the magic pill and all of a sudden the baby stops having a fever. You didn't mean the magic bullet. Stop. Stop tweeting. Well, Zach, then I'd like to hear on the sciop end, you know, if you can introduce you that topic a little bit of what SIOP is. Is that mean hot? I'm hot. It's a little awesome. If you want to turn on it, you see, go for it. Yeah. Yeah. So like

sciop, I think the best way that I've come up with to describe it is like if you picture like a conflict area within the conflict itself, you have a need to try to influence people's behaviors and that that would be like tactical sciop. And then outside of that area, you want to kind of shape the narrative of it at the local, regional, potentially international level, and that would be like strategic level SIOP. And it's another thing, I mean, like similar to CA, it can be a great force multiplier, but it's often not integrated early enough into the process.

And then, like, you get there and it's like the op-order is written, like the annex has written the SACP ANX and like you're so limited what you can do that like you're often like playing catch up right when you get there. So the battle space has already been developed. Yeah. Yeah. So you mean like big army has already figured out like, hey, we're going to be. invade Iraq and then you get tacked down after the fact like you got in at the last minute

you find it you find quite a bit of it and is that why you guys kind of like I feel like you know on the outside looking in you like often see you guys who like drop leaflets and I mean yeah you can do that but I mean yeah so you get a little of that so um Iraq last time I was there it was a lot we had a lot more freedom of maneuver and we can do a lot more the way we did do a lot of leaflets We know we'd see them on the news every so often. Yeah, but when I was in Afghanistan, like 2015, we were extremely little over what we could do. And so most of what we did was like by with and through, advise and assist locals. So like no one really knew what we were actually doing.

Advise and assist locals in psychological operation? Yeah. Okay. So like, and by that, I mean, like mainly what we would do is so you have like the action. and the police and you're basically like if it's I work in marketing now you're basically trying to like build and shape their brand and like advise them how to do that um which realistically comes down to a lot of uh stop making social media posts with dead bodies that's like really yeah you guys should work for the shoes that's yeah oh i'm sorry we're gonna get some down

votes for that i know i'm gonna get some down votes for that oh wait i'm gonna watch because that's when Well, that was like that, I mean, that's, I saw that Afghanistan and Iraq, you see the same thing. No, you're right. You're right. Like, that's just like South America. That's common. Yeah. That's so common.

I think of Russia. We're doing that all the time. Yeah. Dragon bodies. Yeah. That's really like, half the meetings with them are like, you guys got to stop. So like, yeah. Yeah.

The same thing. I mean, even, you know, some of the guys I knew in Iraq, I mean, when ICE this came to town, it's about, what, 2015? Yeah. 2014-2015, they just like machine-gunned all the people that were holding in their prison and Tlopher and took a picture of it and put it on social media

and then booed out of town because ISIS was about to overrun them. It's like, oh, guys. Yeah. Not a great look. Yeah. Not a great look. Yeah. And it makes it difficult for all of us to come and work with those partner forces

because it's like, you're committing mad war crimes, bro. Like, there are a lot, like, the Leahy Amendment prevents us from working with you if, you know, you're engaging with. I think, can you imagine if, like, the Iraqi army guys now or the Iraqi police had fucking social media back in 2004? Right. The shit you'd be fucking seen. Like, fucking, like. So, do either one of you know sort of the history of your organizations in terms of, how did they fall under, when they were, when they were stood up, when they were created, were they immediately conceived as special operations forces?

Or did they eventually? Interestingly, Psiops predates special forces. Yeah. and it was like first psychological operations command or something like that. Yeah, Leaflet loudspeaker company. And I think SF was actually like nestled underneath it initially. And then it later became SAC command. If I remember my history correctly.

Now it's going to eat it. Because SF was initially conceded out of the OSS, which was a person and multiplied. Yeah. I think CA was actually specifically designed as a post-World War II thing. To rebuild like Germany. Really? Yeah, and all that. And then do you know how it came to be like a special object?

I think it was just a fucking weird thing. And it was like, doctrinally, it kind of, the hearts of minds thing was, you know, that's obviously a cornerstone of the SF thing. Sure. Sure. And maybe it was kind of like perceived to be the kind of like unit that could, which it ended up doing like compliment them. that if like if you had to put the fucking

the iron fist then you didn't want to have the velvet glove you could use it to be the velvet glove on top of the other. Well it also seems like in with special forces like with their perceived role

or their intended role as you know a FID or something like that you know I can see how civil affairs particularly going in you know going into you know SF setting up an A team

and saying you know like there engineer can only do so much, only knows how to do so much stuff, right? I mean, ideally he's supposed to be able to build a well and, you know, do all this stuff. But I can see how that would come in and be a force multiplier in that sense. Well, if you think about it, right, so like, it's a total weirdo unit, like, because it's a, and I don't mean that in a bad way. You mean it in a way where it's a unit that's got, like, all these guys with different talents, right? different backgrounds where you have like you know you're talking about on the way over here you

get a vets in those units like because that a vet cap is the same thing as a med cap except it's for veterans yeah yeah not veterans but a veteran yeah yeah and so like you have to have this group of people that have all these fucking skill sets and then also have to be able to fucking operate and operate like so like so like let's say for instance you're going to take somebody with the specialty outside the wire and you're going to provide security for that person, right? In that unit, you're just doing it on your own. You know what I mean? Especially if I go back to like in my first deployment, which was the weirdest fucking deployment

and a very dangerous and fucked up deployment in 2004, 2005, there were times... To Iraq or Afghanistan? Iraq. I never did Afghanistan. Iraq, 0405, and then I was in Iraq 08-N. But in that time frame, in 0405. and but in that time frame in 0405 I was in Baghdad and it was you know you were you were there then right not in Baghdad I was in Massool I was in bagdad yeah I mean ever how like it was just so I remember

mayhem I was thinking about it a lot like talking to him or whatever and I started to go back and started to remember a lot of stuff and look at paperwork and I actually talked to my colonel today for a while who was like I'm very close with he was in my wedding and we started to go back and we started talking about stuff and I was like oh shit that's right we fucking did that and like we when we showed up in Baghdad there was teams there like the team that I replaced was living in a safe house they had been there for the year before and everything kicked like a safe hot outside the green zone or inside it was in the green zone but it was like their fucking safe house like it was like I knew guys lived in safe houses prior to that outside the wire by themselves but then there was like

a collective sure yeah this is fucked top yeah yeah

yeah but I remember fucking very vividly because I was like young and I was 24 and I was

getting there and I was like fuck I'm going to Iraq and I remember getting to fucking Baghdad and seeing

these fucking guys and like they had just been there when everything just went and we got there

in September and so you had Sadr City had kicked off in August right that was

massive yeah and And we got there and these guys had just like, it sounded like everything had just went like haywire in a minute. And they looked like fucking zombies. They were like shell shut. Yeah, is they're getting mortar every night? That was probably the least of their problems.

I think that towards the end, they didn't even really want to do a bright seat left seat. It was just, I mean, it was a lot at the time outside. Yeah. Because I've never been to Baghdad in my life. Like, I was all up north. So if you're familiar with Baghdad. That area there. Yeah.

If you're familiar with Baghdad, that area there. was Kark, Haifa Street, like Talia Square-shaped Maroo. Yeah, yeah. And they didn't even want to do a fucking right seat left seat. They were like, fuck this. Yeah. And so then like that's where... Well, especially if they were going out without like...

Going out in Hodgey Armour, Humvees, with six people in a turp. Yeah. And then we did that for a long time. Before they could say you couldn't do that anymore, like because we didn't have any. The weird thing was that maneuver, and we could... You talk about how... how back in a day there was never any mixing between these types of units and, you know, big army.

Like maybe your paths crossed in fucking Desert Storm or, you know, these guys all sit down at a table together in Bosnia and had a fucking, you know, big meal and a bunch of vodka. But on a tactical level on the ground, they never crossed paths. So big army and at that time it was first cab, they didn't know what the fuck. So they were like, you go do your stuff. I remember my colonel telling me that he had a general asking him to create a Manhattan project once. Like, give me a Manhattan project breakdown of what CA does. And he's like, I don't even know what the fuck that means.

I know. That's what he wants. So they were like, when we got there, it was really, I would say probably was a good like five, six months of just figure out, you know what you guys do. You have enough guys by our standard at the time to get outside the wire. you go do your shit and maybe send us an email and report will keep you connected with a targeting a non-kinetic targeting officer from you know whatever I think at the time it was like four six four third ID and you let him know what you guys are doing so did um how did like is there one singular civil affairs school I know that you bring on people from all professions

but how did civil affairs how did how did they prepare you guys to be self-sufficient when it came to security when it came to you know combat operations? I went to SWIC. We went SWIC.

Okay. And with SWIC for the special warfare center? Same place that... The big red building. Yeah. Yeah. They'd green parades go there and yeah. Okay. So you were you were trained in and it's a long course. There's

you know they mixed tactical with you know a school house. Right. It's all displaced up. Why don't we use that? Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children.

That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit Child and Family Resource Network. being a parent can be really challenging child and family resource network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey everyone deserve someone they can turn to for help with parenting

visit child and family resource network dot org today that is a jumping off point then for each of you to talk about how you came into the army and why you chose the path that you went down and get into that training pipeline yeah yeah so uh i got in late I didn't join until I was 28. Old man. Yeah, yeah. So I graduated college, got a real job. I was bored.

And, you know, I came in as an 18 X-ray, which is the Special Forces program where they take people off the street and you go right into the selection in the Q course. And I was in the Q course and I got hurt. And, you know, they were kind of laying my options up before me. And I think SIP had a need for people.

And they were like, you can just jump into the SIPC. Up Q course and I was like that hell's a sciop you know and I don't know I said yeah so like the the sci-up course kind of runs a little bit in parallel you go through language school together and then you go through like a basic like book this is what sci-op is this is how you do it you literally go over the FM basically page by page and you go to language Then you do like a tactical portion and then you do like one of the things big things in siop is the miss teams They go and they advise and assist at embassies and you do like a mock embassy level part and then yeah there's a A culmination exercise and then you're how long it was the actual

Sciop Q course um so if you went in if you went in siop from if that was your intention of the beginning It's about, it's a little over a year. Okay. But six months is language. That's quite a course. And what about Civil Affairs? So, first off, your story, yeah.

Yeah, no, so I came in at 23. I had gone to military college early on, and then I went to Valley Forge Military College, and then I graduated. It's a two-year college. Actually, they're one of the few schools that has an early commissioning program. At the time, I thought about it, but then I didn't want a commission, and then I went to finish my last two years at a school called Montcala. state up in North Jersey and I was doing ROTC at, I decided maybe I'll go back and I'll think about it.

And I was doing ROTC at Seton Hall. And then 9-11 happened. And, you know, I was in North Jersey the day it happened. And it was always kind of like, I was always going to join. And then, but I wasn't sure which path I wanted to go down. And, you know, I could see that the fucking, the war drones are fucking beating. and I had a I never fucking beaten back in 2003

Oh yeah And I had a mentor at Valley Forge Who was this like old school Really I don't even describe it like you would like him Like he was just like an old school that stuff He wasn't like a paper tab s-f guy He was like a

Just a cool Kind of squirrelly Like guy And he was like Josh He goes I would tell you that if you want to go to the latest, greatest unit, that's going to be on the forefront, you should go civil affairs.

So I was like, all right. And then, ironically, there was a unit in Deft Dix, the 4-4 Civil Affairs Battalion, which was a FIDUW unit. It was like the only one. And so I went down there and I talked to those guys, and they were in the invasion. So a lot of the guys were not there.

They actually went in, who came into the north? Was it 10th group or 10th group? Yeah, so they came in with 10th group. They were there on the ground when 173rd jumped in and all that stuff. Really? And I was like, you know, I talked to these guys and they're like, yeah, this is what we do, this is all this shit, whatever. And I was like, cool. And I knew a guy down at Bragg.

And I decided that I was going to go and I talked to recruiter. And I passed my ass fab and all the stuff. And I went in. And I went in as I was a 38 alpha at the time. Now it's a 38 problem. And so 2003 I was in, went to SWIC. And what exactly is the 38 Bravo? It's civil affairs.

Okay. So it's a 30-A-a- now. It's the officer 38 Alpha. Okay. And I went in as civil affairs and thinking I was going to be like this like cool reserve guy or whatever. And then I immediately like got, like went through SWIC. Swick then was long.

And then I graduated and then stayed on the attitude for a little bit. down there and then came home, didn't know what my status was, then all of a sudden, at the time the orders came to use of suck, but they put me with a unit up in, I think it was the 4.43rd, which is a unit at Rhode Island, and then got sent all fucking, I guess what is the word is TACOM, whatever, back down to Bragg, and then we're there for a while, and then we're like, I was like, yeah, I'm going to stay at Bragg and all the stuff, and then all of a sudden they're like, no, you're going to her back. and you're going to a rack with like all these fucking dudes.

And then it turned out, I was, I was so pumped. Like, that was the thing. Like, you remember, like, back that day. And I was going with, like, two guys that I graduated SWIP with. And we ended up staying together, the whole entire deployment with, like, my best friends. And then we ended up in Iraq. And then we got there in September 04, and we were just totally inundated with how bad it was. And that was the deployment you were talking about when you got there,

and the guys were, like, all, like, glazed over a thousand, fucking zombies, man. Like, I mean, it was like, it was like, I'd never seen some, my wife, I could be away for fucking three weeks, my wife would never be that happy to see me when I walked in these guys. Like, I couldn't even describe what the fucking,

like, I'm pretty sure a lot of these guys want to hug me and kiss me. He was like that scene in a band of brothers when he gets to the fucking concentration kiss to the fucking concentration kiss. These guys are all going up and hugging him. I'm like, what the fuck is going on here, bro? I was like, I just get me relaxed to be like,

and, yeah, and that was, yeah, that was it. And then I'll get it to stories later about the progression of my experience with CA in that deployment. And probably the only reason why we were successful enough and only lost one guy was because of leadership. That's a pretty fucking awesome leadership. But yeah, that fucking deployment, like that was like they were put it in perspective. When I got back to Bragg after that deployment, they were looking to grab guys from, I guess the guys are from SWCC, looking and right, start putting down pen of paper lessons learned because I realized like that was like, because you had CA teams from, you remember that was like, oh four, so you had

CA teams in Baghdad, you had CA teams in Al-Aibar, Fallujah, like fucking Muslim in North, fucking like there was like shit popping off everywhere. Now it was CA, uh, were they very active in Afghanistan also? Yeah. And there's actually, I don't know if I ever saying this, there's a really good and I know the guy, Colonel Gardner, who was in it, is a really good 60 Minutes story about it. Okay. And it was really early on, I think it was like a February 2002 that they did a thing about him. And it's good, but it also shows that like whatever they did was so localized that like it had no, like major impact. Like it could be like in a small fucking place and you can go two miles away. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on. Yeah, I was, like, in sort of a different capacity, went with a couple like medcaps and things like that in Afghanistan.

And also, you know, there were also just the going out and passing out like cricket bats and cooking oil and stuff like that. And in Afghanistan, you ran into the issue of the tribal elder always coming in and beating everybody back and taking everything for himself. and then like deciding how he was going to parse it out. But medcaps are good because you know you bring in female doctors especially in a place like Afghanistan

where it's sort of segregated. Iraq's not so much like that you know because it tends to be more advanced in terms of you know being secular but in Afghanistan you bring in the female doctors and you know female interpreters and you know

and there's a lot of good intelligence you know, work that can be done in that capacity because the women never get a chance to really talk to anybody. Yeah. You know, so. What was that unit that they had that they stood up down? The female unit?

CSTs. Yeah. Yeah. CSTs and they've been known as a couple of days. That program got shut down. Yeah, those are gone now. And there's a couple of it. And then there's the FET teams, the female engagement teams.

We had those, oh, see that smile. Yeah. You know. Oh, is there some stories about Yeah, the fat was, were they Marines or were their army also? There was Army for a little bit and then I knew some people that tried out and I don't know what happened to them. Yeah, I mean, I know a few, I've known a few CSTs over the years, so it's super good. But at the same time, yeah, there's the subcontext, I mean CSTs and the Fets, I mean a lot of times they ended up.

getting used as a harem for ODAs. Yeah. That's not politically correct. You're not supposed to say that on YouTube, I guess, but that is how it ends. We're not on it. I mean, we don't make any of any. Yeah, I know. It doesn't matter if this video is demonetized.

Jokes on you fuck. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, I completely acknowledge there's a role for women to provide these female soldiers to provide these types of capabilities. I mean, I even think that there's a role for one. women to be on an ODA doing those sorts of things. But, yeah, maybe our whole approach to it kind of needs to be overhauled and rethought. It's challenging because I remember we went out and did an operation where we needed a,

we needed a female on an operation. And so we went to the Army to the MPs and said, hey, you know, like give us your most fit, you know, person. Your most fit female. and we went into a village and hit a target in a village and then the person we were looking for wasn't there so we had a follow on it was like three miles four miles away you know and wearing all the kit and everything it was freezing cold outside so uh was it for yeah it's probably about four four miles away so we started we started moving out and by the time uh we got to the next objective her nods had fallen off. They were dragging it on a dummy cord. You know, she was like, she'd fallen back.

We had a security element. And this isn't like banging on her. She wasn't trained for this. Right, right. I mean, we had to commandeer a car, you know, at the next objective to get,

to get back to the HLZ, you know, in a timely manner. So we get there in a timely manner. So there's definitely a place for selective women who are mission capable. It's just, It's difficult to determine how, you know, do you make an all-female unit and pull from them?

Do you seed them with male units where there's only sometimes a limited use for them, not a limited use, but, you know. Well, being the troglodyte that I am, I actually think, yeah, it should be all-female units. Yeah. Like a whole, like, have like a platoon of them. Yeah, I do too. I do too. And just eliminate a lot of the bullshit.

One hundred percent goes along. But I don't think you can even do that legally because, you know, You know, there have been like Supreme Court rulings? I don't know, man. I mean, not only have until recently, you had all male units. Like, had... I know, and look at what happened. Yeah.

Then they crashed the party. Well, the CST was a whole female unit. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. I don't know. I mean, it does, like, I... See, what you're saying. Like, I don't know.

I've never been in Afghanistan. But even in Iraq, there's certain times when you're dealing with local nationals. Like, you have to have a female. Yeah. Yeah. It's really... People just won't fucking talk to them men. Right.

Well, and that's the other thing that's like when you're on target and if you're separating people on target so they can't hear each other's story, it gets, you know, it gets very, it gets very risky in terms of just PR if you take a woman alone in a room to question. Just to ask her, you know, who's here, who are the people who own this house, who are the people who live in this house, you know, things like that. You know, because then if the men start, you know, it just gets really risk. So yeah, I mean, there's always like that need in those environments, you know, well, probably in any environment. I mean, we talk about Iraq and Afghanistan because that's our experience. But even if that were to happen in, you know, a Mawese officer here in New York City. 100%. Yeah, 100%.

Even as a bartender, like, fucking sometimes I run into situations where there might be a fucking woman in the bar calls in a scene. And like, I don't want to fucking throw her out, like, put my hands on it. You can't manhandle, right? Yeah. Right. And I'm like, looking around the bar to see if like, as a combat multiplier, looking around the bar to see if there's a fucking female that I can grab and say, get this fucking bitch out of here. Yeah.

It's just fucking crazy. Yeah. That's always in South America where people are like, yeah, you know, it'll be an ODA with a CA guy and side of guy and they'll run into like women and they, they're that are aggressive and like nobody knows what to do. Right. I saw it. Everyone just shuts down. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I've seen that on target too. Yeah. Oh yeah. In Iraq, taking this, uh, Iraqi SWAT team. on target and these guys would just like freak out around like like these women would come up to them on the objective and like grab yeah grabbing their gun oh yeah yeah it's like wailing and everything and these iraqi guys supposedly a bunch of badasses we train just frees up the like yeah they know

they will the iraic guys i mean most guys from any culture well from our culture or the iraq or the iraq afghan will shut down but i would have no problem put a palm in the face at that point and like you over there. Yeah. Yeah. It gets difficult because I've seen that on target too with both Iraqis and Afghanis

where if a woman comes out and grabs them and it's particularly tough in Afghanistan you know, if they're wearing like a full burqa. So you don't know who's under there.

You don't know who's under there. You don't know what they've got. You don't know if they're rigged. Yeah. You know, but your guys will not, they will not take aggressive action to keep them at bay. Right, right.

Even with the Iraqi women. Like, didn't you have the, there was multiple occasions where you had no, Rackie women blowing themselves up everywhere. Oh, yeah. I'm like, not the, not the stuff to the burkas, but the big black fucking, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's bad news, man. I mean, I don't know, maybe things will change and, you know, 20 years from now,

10 years from now we'll have these, like, you know, Ranger, seal chicks, you know, seal women who were, like, highly trained. I mean, I'm not trying to be a smart ass about it, but, I mean, just right now, we've had a difficult time trying to figure out how to integrate. women into these these formations yeah and you know maybe we'll just be in a different world in in ten years yeah um that you'll have of Caitlin Jenner so like I still don't think like the so they've changed the PT test now the leg tuck is causing some consternation yes yeah but I think they're at least moving in the right direction in that it's like the sit like there's one standard scale on a

male scale there's one scale right because I like I have worked with some women like a He's a girl, cat, a smaller girl, but she deadlifted like 270 pounds. I've probably worked with like guys that are that strong. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so like, I think there's definitely women out there that are capable and we just don't give them the opportunity. Right. So like, I don't know.

I don't know how to like integrate better. If you open up the doors, maybe they'll come. Well, and it's tough. And it's tough because, you know, you may have a female who's operational capable, but, you know, they're, you know, having moved several, you know, 15 clicks under a full combat load under 60-pound ruck, it might be a bridge too far, but that doesn't make them any less. Yeah, capable on target. I had, you know, Mark Boyot told me he was the commander of third group, and he was like,

we have got to figure out how to get women on ODAs somehow. And like, maybe they're not green berets, maybe they don't go through the entire Q-course, maybe they can't do everything you can do carrying a rucksack and shooting and all these sorts of things you expect a male green beret to do but there are all these other things they can do that we can't right um so we just got to figure out how to make it work and unfortunately there's like all this politics and gender policing all this other bullshit right right you can't you can't get an honest assessment because because politics involved too much you know and it's one of those things that like if you have an exceptionally qualified fit female who you know does make it through acute course it does make it through ranger school it does you know make through budget one of these things then then there are there are certain people go oh well you have one woman so you need more so make sure make sure there are more yeah as opposed to just going okay like this this you know these are the women that made it the politicians just make it like so much more difficult it's like man just like tear the band-aid a lot

and like if they pass the standard they pass like it'll happen right you know they'll come right eventually right like stop trying to like force a square peg in or round hole just stop trying to make it right you know and what's crazy is I think the most of the the most vocal people about the injustice of the whole system have never even serving them like they're not even willing to do it or or they were I'm sorry the pogest of the pogues who were like somewhere way way They were working at like the super jock on bag room. What did that mean? What the fuck did that mean?

I don't want you to take offense at, you know, that's short-of-bode. You can't define Pogue for us, please. Yeah, and the fact that you think Josh to take a fence is kind of offensive. I wasn't that. I'm going to point it out specifically to Josh. I just don't want anyone to misinterpret my words. Pogue is a person other than grunt. So anyone who is not, anyone who has a GT score above 110 would be.

Right. Yeah. Hey, Alex, thank you very much, Alex. Alex gave us on a super chat. And, um, yeah, Alex actually started a subreddit for us. Yeah. It's a Reddit backslash hard or backslash the team house. Is it? Is it team house or the team house? I don't know we're on subreddit. I have been to the subreddit though. That's why I have one. I upload everything. So, Zach, on your end, deviating away from all the gender politics. You were active duty sciop because you came from the X-ray program. What units did you get assigned to? What was your first appointment with SIOP? So I went to 5th Battalion, Cyclots, Sciop, obviously. And that's what's called the Regional Battalion, Folks on the Payton.

region, so Asia, and like that battalion is supposed to do, like, mis-rotations. So, supposed to go to embassies and, like, support, like, regional and strategic objectives. So I went there, and that wasn't really what I wanted. So there was an opportunity nobody wanted to go to Afghanistan. So I volunteered for that. And, like, that was my first deployment. I came back from that. Where were you in Afghanistan?

Kabul. Okay. Okay. Bounce out a little bit, but Koppel. Okay. I came back from that and I got invited to try it for a use stock unit and like I don't know like it kind of went my way like I did all right and then I got orders to like J-Soc and then I stayed in J-Soc the rest of my time to the command to the command or to a unit assigned to the command? I was at the command for a little bit and then I briefed some stuff and then a unit just grabbed me. Okay. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about like what the Siyat mission is because like so many of us I mean, a lot of people in the general public have no clue whatsoever,

but even us like special forces guys, you guys are like weird mind fuckers. What do you guys bring to the table? We don't even know what your capabilities are. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents

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It's a totally misunderstood branch. No one really knows how to utilize you. Yeah. So like I said, like I mean, at the tactical level, you're really looking to try to influence people to do something. And like sometimes that's like embarrassingly obvious. Like we work some stuff in Iraq. Like the leaflet drops or the obvious.

Or it's like you put all the leaflet drops to like civilians in one area to tell them to do something. Would really go evade from someone else. Right. Deception. And somehow that works every time. Like it's really like it's like the most embarrassing stuff is like, you know what I mean? You know, like people think you're like really clever. And you're talking about it later.

You're like, no, we're really not. It's very obvious what we do. Yeah. So like you do something like that. You just try to get people to do one thing so that you can take advantage. You look at patterns and you look for things that you can take advantage of. I think, like, a lot of people are dismissive of sciops, but it's like if you think of in the context of a war,

if you guys through your psychological operations get 5% of the enemy army to desert to throw down their guns and surrender it, that's huge. Oh, yeah. That's huge on the battlefield. Yeah, or I mean, like, we're the, I mean, like, Afghanistan, like, red on red, was a big syaup push. So like Taliban

versus Taliban. So like giving up a little bit of information to talk about you know like basically you just want to accuse them of giving each other up

constantly. Snitching. Yeah. Yeah. Because they hate that because it does happen. Snitches get stitches. Get stitches.

And we made huge games in that. Because then they start smoking each other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which in a place like Afghanistan

because it's so regionally and tribally concentrated, it's probably a little bit easier to do just because they're already preexisting rivalries. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But that was thinking so, like, that was a push in Afghanistan and then commanders were like, but like, we can't attribute that to you. Like, that just happened all the time anyways, you know? And so like, you know, they're always looking at like, what's your

KPI? What's your key performance indicator? and like for a little bit we were working with I was working with a local and we was he was telling us like old like old school Peshmerga like insults and we would like sprinkle those in that are like out of favor and then like our KPI would be like if that came back into favor or if they use it again in some way of shape or form so I used to have to report like these there was this much red on red violence and then people started using this work.

And that would be like my report. Right, right. In an ideal world, like, if, for instance, before an operation started or before, you know, the battle space was sort of solidified, an ideal world, like, what are some of the operations that you would have liked have seen done or? So it really comes out, it really comes out to like an Intel, like, like, breakdown of the area and of the people and the key players in it. And then you need someone that can like take that from like the SIAP perspective and then like

tune like help shape the op order to give you like good left and right limits. And that's like that's something that's we're still working on. But I mean I think your point earlier was that SIA needs to be brought into the the planning process way earlier. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean there's other things too. Like the speed of information now is so fast. Like, is this live or is this? Yeah, this is live. Can't do that.

It's not up world. Right, because it has to go through approval. Yeah, and like our approval process, if you're at the strategic level, it can take weeks. Right. So, like, something can happen or, like, your enemy can put out propaganda, and it can take you three weeks to respond. I mean, never, like, you're gone by that. Yeah, and I mean, never mind the 24-hour news cycle. I mean, what's the lifespan of a meme or a, right?

A lot. The daily outrage. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. What is, I mean, can you talk about, like, does your final approval at a strategic level rest at the DNI or is it an army level? It depends on what you're doing, where you're at. Okay.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we were talking about earlier, you said some of that stuff actually needed congressional approval, right? Yeah, yeah. So, like, social media internet is huge. That's how most people are most of their information nowadays. And there's a lot of hesitancy of the U.S. government to let Siamu use that. And that's, it's justified. The big fear is that, like, somehow will influence the U.S. population.

Right, which is, like, super illegal. Yeah. Like, if you were to do it intentionally, but there's still the fear it could happen unintentionally with anything that goes on the Internet. So, like, I get it that's, like, perfectly understandable, but you're working against... And that's a Schmidt Mund act, I think, that governs that? I don't know. I just know.

I just get shut down a lot of my comments. I think it was Schmidt Mund that was shutting you do. But you'd look at stuff and like Russia has the ability put out something like 100 million unique pieces of information

today using Bob. Zero Foxgiven. Yeah, there's like zero freeble process. No laws, no nothing. And then like we'll fight it and like we have like some Facebook page and some other stuff but they all they're all US government attributable.

Like they all say like sent com somewhere out. You know what I mean? It's like the, the Operation Inherent Resolve website. Yeah. So, like, I spend a lot of time, like, mapping how, like, other governments or how other entities can spread misinformation and just, like, how many tweets and how many

things of information they can put out. And then, like, you look at our approval process and what we can put out. And it all says U.S. government, and it's, like, six things. And, again, it's, like, 30 million. And then, you know, like, people come down and you're, like, why are you guys losing? You're like, oh. Yeah, why do you think? Yeah, I can map it.

I can literally map it out for you. I just can't do anything about it. But, like, I get it, too. Like, I get the hesitancy to, like, let any government organization just go wild. Sure. On the Internet. And I have an acquaintance of mine who did stuff like this for the CIA back in the 80s. Yeah.

Targeting Libya, actually, and was, like, on VHS tape. And they were, like, distributing, like, VHS tape and rap videos and stuff like that. Yeah. And it would be interesting. get you two guys together in a room sometime to talk about this subject. Yeah, really interesting, Kat. So those are some of the limitations on SciOps. I mean, actually, the one Sciop story that is not nothing I experienced myself,

well, okay, part of it I did, which I thought was really interesting that a lot of people aren't aware of. I went and saw a film premiere in, or Bill one time, because I knew the director. who's a Kurdish guy, Kurdish film director, and he produced this film a very, very pro-Barsani film. Barzani is the head of the KDP. KDP is a Kurdish political party that encompasses or build a hook

in that general area for people who don't know. Very, very pro-Barsani and about Barzani's fight against ISIS. And, you know, Barzani is the hero. Boom, boom, F-16 strike, all this stuff. It was presented by the, what is it, the American Kurdish Friendship Association? What the fuck is that? I've never heard of it.

That sounds amazing. A-Cab or something like that. American Kurdish, anyways. And then I went down to Fort Bragg one time, and I was talking to the SIEP unit down there. And one of the guys mentioned to me, one of his most, he felt his most important experience was he was in Indonesia. And they funded a anti-extremist film, anti-Jama Islamia. And it was produced and created by Indonesians and premiered in Indonesia. And it had zero fingerprints on it from America at all.

And he was like, yeah, I was really proud of that. Because they were like family members of people who had joined J.I. And they were like in the audience crying and stuff like this. And he was like, it was just so important, meaningful to him. And as I was walking down the hall with a couple of the Psiops guys, I mentioned this Kurdish film I had seen like the year prior. I'd been at the premiere and I was like, you know, I always had this feeling about this film and he was like, oh yeah, that was one of ours. That's beautiful. But, I mean, that's how it's supposed to be, right?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah. You're not skirting the rules, but you get a lot more leeway by with and through. So that's always, like, that's always the better way to. No, I wasn't implying that it was hurting. I mean, I think it's completely lawful on what they were doing. Yeah. Yeah. Advise and this is great.

It's the best part of the mission, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I do think SIOP has a lot they can bring to the table, you know? But as you said, they need to be utilized correctly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think both units, like they, from the beginning, not really well utilized at all.

Well, before we get into like some, I want to get into some particulars with both of you guys, some war stories. but maybe address, well, this is the elephant in the room for us. I mean, I haven't been doing you for like six years. But I think more than that. There's like some major like anger and animosity between SF and y'all. Like, what the fuck is that about? It's like, I honestly don't know.

I worked, I didn't really work with sci-op guys overseas. I didn't work with a, what are the, you call it tactical CA teams? Yeah, cat teams. Cat teams. Cat teams. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I worked with a tactical CA team in Iraq. I had a good experience with him.

I like those guys. Like, what is the big, like, drama? What's the beef? What's the beef, man? Like, what's dish? Why is SF always throwing shading? You're hearing it here first. What's that about?

I mean, I don't know. Like, I, these guys, I remember back when I'd see, like, we had a sci-op team that was with us. When they were operate, they were pretty useful for things like med caps and bedcaps and stuff like that. But they couldn't stop this one team, I don't know if it was their slogan or it was like the broad slogan of the fucking of all SIEP was, we kill you and make you love us for it. And they couldn't keep stop telling people that that was their fucking slogan. And I was like, you're not doing any fucking favors. See, that's, see, I always thought the beef, see, Jack said the beef is between SF and, uh, like, like, side of civil affairs.

I always thought the beef was between Civil Affairs and Sia. That's always been a thing, I think. I think there's a little competition there. Yeah. Yeah, it's... You said it right at the beginning. Like, we are kind of like the red-headed stepchildren

and soft. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so two red-haired stepchildren are fighting for supremacy. I actually almost kind of want to say it's like the red-headed stepchildren in the Army. Yeah. It's like the one fucking unit,

like these units that, like, nobody understands. Like, now, now it's different. Like, back in the day, like, Yeah. I'm like, what do you do? Yeah. I just feel like SF guys were always looking at you sideways. Like, who fuck are you?

Yeah. Yeah. What the, what fuck are you doing here, Josh? Yeah. I remember like, so, there's spent a lot of time between, like, where I was and there was a base in Baghdad called Headhunter, Mathana Air Base, right? Mathan Air Base, right in shaking the roof right inside of, like, Haifa Street.

It was small. There was, like, a couple ODAs there. There were sealed snipers there, but there was, like, probably one of the true... Stop joking. tested fucking units. The most battle tested fucking units, I will say this for the rest of my life, there was a fucking company,

and I always felt the first cab was really fucked up for doing this. They didn't want to use their own fucking guys out there. So they had a bunch of different units attached to them. They had a couple companies from the Arkansas National Guard. The Arkansas fucking National Guard. Those guys hooked and jabbed. Dude, fucking... I'm not kidding.

Those guys fucked it up. I think that there's only a few, fucking units, like I say, at least in my fucking experience, this Arkansas National Guard unit saw more fucking combat than like any unit in Iraq. Like, it was just crazy. And they were going out every

fucking day onto Haifa Street and like just getting ripped apart and they'd come back and do it again the next day. And it was just because first captain didn't want to put their own guys out there. So they were just using these like National Guard guys as proxies. Let me tell you something about those. We, there was

were you, was, was you, was, was your house? No, so we ended up, we took over that safe house for about a couple days, and then we ended up going on to one of those smaller bases inside there, and then we split our time back and forth going back out. Was your house like one of like nine? Our house was a, what do you mean, like a... Were there, were like nine houses where you were at? No. Okay, I didn't know if you were in like a, kind of a separate area or whatever.

I know exactly what you're talking about, though. So there was an Arkansas, an element of the Arkansas National Guard, their armor, like, what was it a mount, mounted or armor or whatever? Yeah, they have Bradley's. Yeah, Bradley's. Who were there to support some of the, you know, some of the other units and whatnot. And they would help us with our vehicles because we didn't have any mechanics. and one of their guys came like one of their guys

that was really I was friendly with and everything came over one time and he just like covered in like like soot and everything like that and he's like when we had conics it's full of like stuff you know and it's like hey dude do you have any shot

acog and I'm like yeah I can get you an acog you know so I go and I open up a conx and get an acog did you did you lose yours or what he goes no I got shot off I'm like yeah dude take two

those guys were in the mix all the time I'll tell you what there is some group of guys somewhere down like Little Rock or wherever that are fucking like blood brothers that got more kills than cancer oh my god man maybe when a history books are written they'll go like look at this fucking you know but these guys were like tough as a fucking cough in there 100%

unreal like fucking like and they would go they would like they would go empty on operating like they you know and then they would like go back to base refit go back and roll back out it's like jesus yeah like they can't like they can't get enough man was this was this the unit uh the death blossom unit there's just some national guard unit no everyone was talking about the death blossom well there was at the same time do you remember uh the louisiana national garden they got a lot of trouble like fucking like because they were doing all kinds of morbid shit oh why they like

fucking strapped the deadline to the fucking hood of a Humvee. Oh really? Even underpass on a fucking MSR. Just like fucking saying like this is who we are. Jesus. Yeah, I mean Cajuns, man, what can you say?

Cajuns. Like fucking like I remember going out with these fucking guys. Like so we like I remember the operation specifically it's called Operation Naji Sunrise and they were going to go out

to Hyva Street to Tilea Square and they had this fucking He had this fucking dude that was like, he was picked up on a battlefield and he had some information about somebody that they wanted. Somehow it got rolled into this whole, this is what I get to like the whole weird CA aspect of it all, where they're just writing a book. They're going to go into this horrible neighborhood right outside of fucking Talea Square. And they have this fucking guy hooded with like eye slits handcuffed to another, to an interpreter. We roll out at fucking 4 o'clock in 5 o'clock in the morning in fucking Bradleys. Never been in a Bradley before my entire life.

It was fucking horrible. Almost zero fucking description of what we're going to go do. And I have two cat teams, my team and another team. And we're in back in these vehicles, and it's going br-hr. I'm like, you can barely see out the windows. Dirty as fuck. Yeah. And I know where we're going.

I know where we're going. I'm sitting there. I'm going to like, I know exactly where the fuck we're going. And this is not good. And it's like 5 o'clock in the morning, these things are fucking loud. Yeah. And all of a sudden I hear not so far in a distance,

like, fucking, was a 25 mic mic on top of that? Like, do-d-d-d-do-d-do-and I'm like, what the fuck? The ramps go down. You know what we were there to do? We were there to do a fucking sewage assessment. As these guys are going to do a fucking read. So you're talking, go out of this fucking vehicle, and the fucking ramp comes down.

And I said, where we go? And we go, oh, we're going. And they're running, and everybody's fucking running, and I'm standing there in the alley, and I'm watching this interpreter come running down the street with this guy fucking attached to his fucking arm, and the guy just points at the door, and every swinging dick kicks the fucking door down.

Some commander starts yelling about combat mitigation, which is a fucking CA thing, apparently. So now these guys are all following him into the fucking room, and then they pull a guy out, and then this colonel over it, he goes, take your fucking pictures for getting the fuck out of here. So they're running. I was like the sewers?

something so Kavika-esque about this story, yeah. And it's like, after I was like, I'm back and I'm like, what the fuck was that? And even if, and I looked at the blurry pictures of this fucking green shit, because you know what the sewage looks like, bagged at.

Even if we can formulate a plan to fucking put somebody in there to fix it, nobody's going back in her to fucking fix it. And it's a fucking, like, door's like the lion's day. Like, fucking like, and it was just a terrible waste of fucking time. And I remember sitting there

these guys were like, well, we got some good combat mitigation. I'm like, the fuck does that mean? You're going to go to an underground. You're going to go back there and buying a new fucking refrigerator? Like, fuck off. And that's where it was like the world's colliding where they're like, we don't know what you do, but if you tell us you do this, then come with us and do this.

Yeah. And it's like, that's bad. And then the weirdest thing was as they write the book, you're letting the move right to book, you're going, we got a good vision for you. And like, I mean, I mean, at the end of the day, I was... You know they're trying to sell you something at that point.

So, if you remember the Greensome, you had... Would you have 15 different checkpoints around the circumference of the Green Zone? Yeah. So you could get there from, if you were a headhunter, you can get there. If you're in the Green Zone, you get there, or whatever. And then, like, clockwork in 2004 in fall, almost every fucking day, V-Bid would go off. Yeah. Like, Assassin's Gate or Northgate or whatever.

and like you could you could fucking put it on in like a calendar and you sit there you'd be drinking your coffee having a cigarette you're going wait for it wait for it and then boom yeah and so maneuver goes C a would be really good at uh QRF for mascal so fucking like because so a quick reaction for it so they're saying that sylophers would be late as a quick reaction force to a mass casualty event yeah which was like a daily thing yeah so like you show up and everybody's spaghetti and fucking like everybody's losing their fucking minds run around. And then my team leader had an Arachna cell phone.

Remember Arachna? Which was like the old school fucking that was an Egyptian company. Yeah. They put it in there after the invasion. For some fucking reason was the only guy that had an Arachna cell phone with like the local IP commander with like the local fucking first responder fucking like ambulances. See you'd get there and then everybody's going nuts. Everything was disgusting.

There was just people like fucking bleating. out and whatever, call the fucking IPs and get them to come over there. So like you'd have to call them every day and that this is our fucking mission. We're sitting there just in panamonium, wait for the IP guy to get there and bring his crew with their pickup trucks, then maybe a couple of ambulances. And just hanging out outside the wire. Well, I mean, yeah, outside the wire all the time. But fucking like wait for the ambulances to get there, wait for fucking KBR's fucking do you ever see KBR's fire trucks? Back in the KBR did the fire. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise

healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to

for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Fire response for over there. The 50-Cal on the top of the fire trucks is a That I never saw. Then they would show up, then they put everything out, and then fucking the Iraqis used to sit there with their shovels, and they throw everything into the back of the fucking truck, like all the dead people, and then whatever one or two people that lived

would go in the back of the fucking ambulance, going down to hospital city, and that would be like an everyday thing for like a long time. And that was like our mission, because the Iraqi police were incapable of just showing up on their own. And the commander who knew nothing about CA, it was like, you guys, you interface with fucking local military. Yeah.

This is a job for. you. I remember like, morning is it sitting here and you're boom, and I'm like, I don't want to see this again. And we just show up and I'm like, Groundhog Day. Yeah. Like, and that's it.

Like, that was. Jesus Christ. That was the total, that was like where the heart of the misuse of CA was. Because you couldn't figure out a mission. Like, we go on like missions all the time that meant nothing. But for whatever reason at the time, the Battlespace owner thought that that was the good mission for CA. Right. And then they had a scyop going there too.

And Syops' only mission, that was they'd have to show up and see the horrible shit. And they get on their fucking speakers and go, you know, Yala, Yelamshi. Yeah. They put the turf on the fucking monster. Tell them all the Iraqis to the fucking get out of it. Yeah. It's weird. But that was like, talked about total misuse by the commanders.

Yeah. By the Battlespace. And that's probably more than anything, just, I mean, one, the Battlespace commander not knowing who else to send us. Like, okay, well, we've got these people who aren't doing anything right now. But also, too, just. just a lack of education in terms of how to best employ and deploy. You have any stories like

that, Zach? Like frustration out on deployment? We're just like why are we being used to do this? I don't. I've heard a lot of stories from like other like sci operas mostly attached to ODAs. We're like people to

No. Come on. Maybe the ODA commander doesn't know how to like Masters of Chaos? Missusing assets? No way. We're like maybe like you know and we send we tend to send some junior guys on on missions that Maybe they're not totally ready yet for you and so you've attached with ODA and they're not good like their elevator speech like their case brief one thing we're into the table and they spend six months in Afghanistan as gate guards Or something like you know or like something not really in line with yeah. Yeah, yeah, so we get a little bit of that But it's been getting better, but...

Yeah. Well, what were some of your more memorable missions that stick out in your mind? You know, I know you can't necessarily get into specifics, but saying you were in a country working with a element doing... A thing. A thing. Afghanistan was good. Like, that's where I cut my teeth. But it's challenging because, like, you look back and, like, what progress did you make?

Like, what did you do, like, for the good of anything? Well, that's all of us, though. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, ah, nothing, you know? You know? But Iraq working with the Kurds was good. Like the SDF and the YPG, YPJ, I felt like we did some good work and cleared a lot of ISIS's, you know? Doing counter ISIS, you know, propaganda, if you will.

Yeah, yeah. countering their narrative or trying to like shut down their narrative or just you know like a lot of brand building and like promoting the sbf how do you go about doing that on the ground so a lot of what i did again was like advise and assist um we did have a lot of issues in the beginning with them using inappropriate social media posts um i've seen them i know yeah yeah but um So then we go, so you start from there and then you start trying to like build a narrative in a brand of like who they were and then try to spread awareness. And it was one of the things where like the world kind of cared. We're talking like 2017, 2018.

People were a little sick of ISIS stories, but like SDF stories are YPJ, the female Kurds. People were still very interested in. So just being able to like tell their story and like spread awareness was a good thing for me. You know, I got to go and hang out with a YPJ sniper unit back in 2014. Yeah, yeah. Spent a few days with them. It was early on in the war before, like, we had any, you know, America had any, like, official presence over there. But definitely a very eye-opening experience.

Yeah. Yeah. Really. Well, awesome unit. Yeah. And from your perspective of what you do, I mean, on paper, it should be easy because these were young women going out and slaying some really bad people. Yeah.

You know, like on paper it should be pretty easy. Yeah. Keeping them in the news and like, yeah. Yeah. People just get like, it just gets saturated and people to stop caring.

The 24-hour news cycle is hard to keep people to like be interested in what the story that's going on. Right. Consistently for years on end. Yeah. So just getting it back into the news and getting it, getting people to care consistently is a challenge. But you're talking like internally in Syria and. and Iraq?

Or are we talking to the world? No, I'm talking like, regionally like, Middle Eastern, yeah, Middle Eastern,

Western, you know, that was our biggest challenge by far. So you would help them stand up like social media platforms and things like that? So they already had all that in place.

They're actually pretty social media savvy. They're just, you know, it's more glory in war. Right. Than like, we're actually helping the people. people. So like just trying to shift their narrative from like look at all the ISIS as we slayed

to like holy shit school books and rocka, you know, which is something else that they did. And it was just like getting the narrative to shift a little bit. That's interesting here because they struck me when I met with them. They had a much, much stronger ideological bet than like we ever went to United States. Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. And that they were very much all about like we're creating a new community, a new type of government. and it's interesting to hear that, you know, from when you were there, that that's not the message they were putting forward. So the official message has always been pretty on brand and pretty good.

But if you start looking at it a little bit and start pulling out the individual members like Instagrams and Twitter, that's where it starts falling apart. And that's where you've got to start like... You're trying to get into... Curated a little bit. ...put out policy and things like that. This is where, you know, you get into that notion of the strategic corporal. like you're trying. Yeah.

Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. It's weird how social media kind of like drives what's going on now where you can basically see everything that's going on. Oh, it's crazy. Yeah. Like, you know, if you want to see the video from the Battle of Raqa or whatever, you can find that.

Like, you know, can you imagine if they had that 15 years ago? Yeah. You know, you have snippets of video that are out there that came from different battles. Yeah. You know, I think maybe the battle for. When they were retaking like Baghdad, that was like the first time you saw more footage and that would be because like CNN was there and all that. But it wasn't due to social media. Right.

Now, I mean, I can't even tell you how many Iraqis that I knew that I was friends with on Facebook. Yeah. Instagram. Like, you know, I get these friend requests from little squiggles and I'm like, what the fuck is that? Yeah. I've been speeding. I've been speaking in 15 years. Yeah.

He found me on fucking Facebook. Yeah. Yeah, it's it would have been better if he had social media back then because the way to document the war Seems to be through between social media and drone footage like when everything's declassified like this these words are gonna be Better documented than anything in history Yeah, both the good the bad and the ugly like it's all gonna come out in the wash I feel like Yeah, well I think that the other thing too is that it would have been very detrimental if they had social media back then Because like you and I were talking about this at the Legion last time like

the amount, and I was talking to the colonel today, the amount of, like, civilians are killed by us. Like, you talk about what's happening now with Trump pardoned these guys and, you know, with that guy, was the 82nd that was in Leavenworth, the lieutenant. Oh, yeah, it may have been. Yeah, and then, like, you know, what these guys did. And I remember very vividly, and we were talking about it today, do you remember, you ever get over the term called salacia payments? No. Salatia payment was a CA thing.

and salatia payment was when we would have to meet up with like a local nationals family if somebody was killed and it was blood money yeah yeah but i totally forgot so i called that was one of the things i called him about today so he didn't remember where the money for salation payments came from it wasn't serp funding serp just went out the window everywhere else like just fucking you know the way they handled serp funding was it's illegal as fuck yeah no way that was handled because cert funds were issued out specifically for the reconstruction of iraq congressionally mandated yeah and like when congress mandates funding it's not like any other types of funding that like the unit has discretion it's like no it's for that one thing yeah and the way that

these commanders are paying off mullahs is illegal as fuck oh the awakening councils i'm like yeah holy shit but the salation payments like fucking like i forgot about this like i kind of i texted you about it and And like, so I wanted to call him because he was at the forefront of doing this, right? So a slation payment would be, we would have to meet up with a local national. It would either, if it was, if you were lucky, it would have been a representative of the local national's family. Right. 99% of the time it was like a local nationals actual family.

Slation payment for a male, like a military-age male that was killed accidentally or whatever. Like, basically they pulled a 5-5-6 slug out of a fucking dead guy or whatever. And they could tie it back to the coalition. It was $2,500. That's what they got. They got $2,500 U.S. dollars. But I forgot about this. So if it was a woman, it was more.

Really? Yeah. And if it was a kid, it was even more. And if there were multiple kids, it was a multiplier, and it was more. But apparently, if it was a, if you weren't killed, but you were, like, fucked up. Like, if you got shot up and you survived or whatever. it was more than anything else. And so, like, they would sit there and you would have to sit down with these fucking people

and almost negotiate what you felt would be fair. Like, so, like, if you got shot in the neck and you went to hospital city at Yarmouk hospital, and you ended up getting out and you were paralyzed. I mean, it's basically like insurance companies in the U.S. now. Yeah, and we were doing that. Yeah. And, like, you were sitting down, and that was a big fucking deal. And you were having these fucking local nationals come on.

I remember fucking have local nationals walk on. to a cop or a foe and sit down there had to be a JAG officer there that was a big fucking there's a big part of it so you have a CA guy maybe a maneuver unit guy or you know an OD 18 chief or whatever but I had to have a JA guy and then you have to sit there and then you have to barter and JAG is a military law enforcement or attorney you know sit there but I forgot that there was different prices for different people so I remember like very vividly like fucking multiple multiple occasions where like fucking like civilians are just fucking wasted for no good reason like they drove

a little too fast behind a convoy or fucking whatever. See that that gets I mean that gets so hard though because after you know what was that freeway that ran from the green zone to? Rhode Irish. Yeah Irish. So after you know as when you're a maneuver element you get pretty testy. You know, like after two or three cars, you know, with, you know, VBIDs ran into convoys, you know, that. And then you put, you know, then in these, especially these conventional units, you put these 18-0 kids on these 50 cows in the back of the Humvee.

And they've got the signs of say, you know, stay at least, you know, 100 meters back, 50 meters back, whatever it said. and you know I think that the threat to civilians was always highest right after one of those because everybody was on high alert everybody was like well look I want to go home I want my buddies to go home and here comes his car

like ignoring the sign because they ignore those signs all the time you know they ignore those signs all the time even you know I don't know I like That was tough, man. I mean, be very candid about it. I mean, I wrote about it in my book in 2005 in Missoule, you know, as great a job as I think the guys I worked with did.

One of the things I really disagreed with was that these guys, a lot of the gunners were just lighting up cars left and right. Yeah. Like anybody who got too close to us. And I mean, we're talking like fucking families of five just fucking hoased. Yeah. Hosed down. And there's some people. got to live with that shit. Like, I'm not going to fucking, like, call anybody out my name or anything

like that. I'm just saying that there were some things that, in my opinion, happened that shouldn't have happened. And I didn't say anything about it because it actually was within our ROE. Right, right. If the vehicle gets too close to the convoy, you know, we don't know what's a VB, IED, we don't know what is it. See, that's the thing, you're either, you're either a hero or a zero in that case. Right. And chances are, nobody's ever going to know. But there were some guys who were like just sadistic. And they just wanted to fucking hose down. Yeah. Well, that, I mean, I think at that point it becomes a commander's responsibility to be able, you know,

or through his subordinate leaders to be able to identify these people and keep them off the guys. Well, it was really interesting because the Pink Team, which is a conventional Army helicopter unit, aviation, the Kiwis, they were seeing all this stuff from the air. They were complaining about it. And I remember my squad leader calling all of the crews from the strikers into the conference from one night. And he asked us, he's like, okay, so like if you're driving down the street and you just like fucking are shooting up like families, you know, like cars full of families, who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in that situation? And I was, I looked at him. I was like, we're the bad guy in that situation.

And there's another team leader in my platoon. And he was like, I don't give a fuck. It was straight up. I don't give a fuck. And my squad leader was like, really, you don't give a fuck at all. And on one hand, like maybe he should arrange. him in, but at the other hand, it's like he couldn't counteract the ROE. Right.

There's nothing a squad leader can do to say, you cannot fire. Right. So how does that play out? How should have that played out? It's also that weird, like, especially in that time frame is that weird two-port thing. Like, people didn't take into account that, like, Iraqis didn't fucking drive, like, before the invasion. Yeah.

There was, like, remember how many cars were on the streets and, like, 04, 05? Yeah, and the other side of that is, like, you'd be driving in a convoy of, like, five strikers and that car with like family of six would pull in between two strikers and like doing like why are you driving like that right because they didn't know how to fucking drive and then you had a multitude of motherfuckers out there uh specifically probably like platoon leaders or whatever that would give that old that edge what was it like fucking uh it's better to be judged by nine and carried by sex right right yeah and that was the thing that would always go around and so these young kids would be there and He'd be like, yeah, man, like, that car gets too close.

Like, this is my fucking thin red line. And if he gets close enough, boom, I'm going to let it up. I have one of my privates who was on the gun and the striker. We had a car try to charge through our blocking position. And so he followed the ROE, and he lit up the car and killed the guy. And it was a civilian just being a dumbass, just running the... He can't take that chance. He didn't know.

He didn't know. And I knew this guy. He was in my squad. I mean, good dude. Yeah. He's still a good dude today. Really good guy. And I remember when I wrote about it in my book, I asked him because I was like writing about him, not by name, but I was like, what you can think about this? And I specifically recall him being asked, one of the other privates asked him like, how do you just killed him, how do you feel about that?

And he said, you know, I recall him specifically saying, not so good. When I ran that by him and asked him, he was like, oh, I don't remember saying that. I think maybe even a little bit of shock Yeah But I mean this is kind of like the nitty gritty of war man That like doesn't get talked about so often Well it's the same thing I mean it's the same thing as squatters off the target

You know are they are they are they are they a squirder Or just some dude that's scared Are somebody who's scared who's running Or are they a maneuver element Are they running to a cache You know to grab you know to grab something And then open fire because I mean that's happened You know that's happened to

me and it's like yeah I mean I'll give you full disclosure I mean I'm not gonna like I was involved in an event where we had a couple California National Guard guys attached because we were so short-handed it was right around the time when guys were not leave and I was involved in an event with a local national taxi and you know accidents happen cars part too close to part convoys on the side of the street and you know people misjudged and the Iraqis are looking one way and their tunnel vision or things happened like fucking like it's just it was at the time in 2004 I think it was happening a lot because I remember when the directive came down for command and that would have been like January of February like I remember what happened when fucking the

82nd Airborne came in the elections were a big deal yeah it was a huge vote it was a first Iraq election yeah and CA was in charge of we played a very big role with the polling sites and all that shit So they sent the 802nd, I think it was 1.505 came in to Baghdad and they put a group of those guys out at Headhunter. Dan Rather flew in to Baghdad. They were all there, but Dan Rather went to Headhunter. They walked out at Headhunter and they walked down the road and within like fucking 15 minutes, somebody from fucking 80 seconds smoked a guy and completely unarmed.

And they caught it on camera. It was on the fucking CBS even news that night because of the day. because the tensions are so fucking high I think that after the elections and all that the command was like and I mean when I talk about the command I mean probably command back in the Pentagon

was like this is way out of control and they probably started looking at paperwork of salation payments and the amount of civilians that were getting wasted because there was complete disregard for

like they were like disregard for civilian lives or whatever I think I remember one of the big things was that there was a woman smoked on a bridge bridge and they made up some excuse on why they did it. Yeah. And then after that, directives came down.

I think I'll remember that. Yeah. And it was like, then all of a sudden, probably the first memes that ever came out were pictures of, like, lower enlisted guys from fucking, was a,

fourth ID that came in, or, no, third idea that came in, of, like, taking fucking, um, all their fucking PT belts and all that shit, wrapping themselves up like that and,

like, putting the fucking flashlights on their helmets and stuff. and like, you know, having a bullhorn, like, you know, war in civilians. Like, you don't too close. It gets tough. It's the same thing when, you know, when you're rolling through a solder suit or, you know, rolling through some town, you know, village in Afghanistan or whatever. And you see somebody sitting there watching you with a cell phone in their hand and not

talking on it, but just with it, it's like, you know, like you. What is the, what is the call to make here, you know, you know, what is the call to make here, you know, Because you have no idea what they're doing. And if you make the wrong call, you're killing innocent person. If you make the wrong call, you know, somebody blows up your convoy. And you just... Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children.

That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Lost a couple buddies because you didn't pull the trigger. So like it's a very, I mean, it's a very, very challenging environment to operate in. Yeah, because the enemy's not wearing uniforms. Right.

You know. You know, and the thing is, is, like, how many of the V-bids, you know, the rolling V-bids that hit convoys and took casualties, how many of those got to the convoy because the gunner didn't shoot? Because I thought, well, I've seen this before. It's probably nobody. And I'm not, you know, I'm not going to light him up. You know, so it just, it, like, gets to be really, really challenging.

When you tell people to stay back and they don't stay back, like, you know. it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Yeah. I didn't pull the trigger or this happened last time, so now I have to. Right. And if you have a sign written in their language, you know, how are you supposed to know that that person doesn't know how to read? Yeah.

Like, you know, and like he's probably seen that sign plenty of times. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that he knows what that means, even if you can't read it. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's also like common sense should tell you that, you know, you're driving with your wife and kids, probably you don't pull between these two fucking 12-ton strikers. Right.

And also, look, if it had never happened that somebody with their wife and kids in the car hadn't blown themselves up, because I'm sure it has, right? Yeah. Then, you know, then the gunners would see a car with a family and go, okay, well, that's, that's just, you know, that guy's no threat. But you can't even take that on Faithfax. Yeah, no. No, I understand.

I understand. I understand. I feel like, you know, like a gunner position on a, you know, on a tactical vehicle, it's such a low-ranking position. It's like the shit position, you know. You put your cherry up there a lot of times. But it's really the position with the most responsibility. Good.

You know? Yeah. I remember the J-Soc commander and command sergeant major coming up to Missoule from the Crit and like lecturing us. Well, not lecturing this, but it was like, I guess it was more like they were checking the block. They like came up there because we all these people we were killing and they came up there and like sat us all down the conference room like, we're sure to make sure you guys are okay. We're all kind of looking and like, what the fuck does that mean? Like, why are you here?

You know, like we couldn't really piece it together. And I guess it was just one of those things they got enough complaints from the conventional army guys. They felt they had to come up and check the block. I don't know. Yeah. Just weird, you know? You want to ask you some questions? Yeah, man.

Let's take a brief interlude from all this morbid war talk. Yeah. You want to talk about what's being drank tonight? Yeah, so Jack's about to drink some Jameson. At I am. Yeah. Zach is drinking... I drink all Jacks, Lefroy.

You finished the Lefroy? You got, you have to present the... Oh, yeah. So that's what Jack, uh, Zach drank. The Lefroy? Yeah. And now Jack is going to... to drink this.

Jimmy. Because every time Jack and I hang out. And I was drinking the New Belgium Tripel. That was good. Now I'm drinking the Oaks Fire Bourbon Barrel ale. This is not really my thing.

It's a little too sweet. Yeah, so I'm having that sweet thing right now. I wanted to see the... It's got smooth notes of coffee, vanilla and caramel. It's the toffee that does it for me. And the caramel also, yeah.

Yeah. Save the Lefroy for our guest tonight. Thank you. Cheers, cheers, guys. Thanks for having us. Green, our blue plastic cups here,

we'll have to do a little bit better for next, but we're on a budget, all right? Which brings up our Patreon. Thank you for joining us tonight, or if you're watching this video after we put it out. Please remember to like this video and subscribe to our channel if you haven't already. and if you click that notification bell

you might get alerted when we go live or when we put out new content you might, you might not, who knows, it's up to YouTube and we have a Patreon channel the link is in the description in the video. It's in the description if you want to check that out. If you join, there's already exclusive content on there.

There's also an awesome welcome video. Yes, sir. We got it in one take. You'll probably be a hotel. You'll know we got it in one take. And there's more exclusive content coming. What was the exclusive? We're going to get into his... So Josh deployed to the Congo with Civil Affairs. But we can't tell the story here because.

We're not going to tell the story about the hookers. That's going to be on the patron page. We can talk a little bit about... We'll talk about the rest of the... Some of the other stuff. Let's look at some questions. All right. Let's take some questions from the audience. Oh, Andrew wanted a vigorous debate over Brays.

Oh. Talk about the new gray beret? Siott. And here's the things. Civil Affairs thinks they're getting the gray beret also. Oh, we're both gray. Wait, so Saab's got a gray barret? That's the one of the pipe.

It's in the works. Okay. Yeah. There's a push for it. Because they're the gray man. I don't know. I know. Man.

Yeah, they are the gray man. Yeah. Like, when I was in, that was a rumor. So I got out in February. And then like, some people were fired. up about it. Some people didn't really care. I'm kind of the latter, can. I mean, wouldn't it be more appropriate

if, though, if Sioux and Civil Affairs got, like, like, carrot red, or, you know, bright red berets, you know? Not the maroon airborne berets, but the bright red for the red-headed step-sheldered. You know, kind of carrot, carrot orange

or whatever. Yeah, berets are always fun to talk about, since they change every we will have to fight how shaped was your beret did you shave it and bathe with it and the whole deal

did you go all out with your berets he was a black beret I'm always black beret oh yeah yeah our berets was it like baseball cap and flop or was it like straight up it was straight up it was straight up and flopped like hard

it was shaped shaved I always love the guys like the baseball no that's just like it goes forward it shouldn't be straight up but you're saying you had it flopped over like the ear of the ear of the little. Did it cover the eye

just slightly? Just just off the corner. I'll bring my Burry Ant sometime. I still have it. She put it on the wall. I should. I should. But yeah, no, mine we had a kid in shaped and shaved went to a vanilla ice concert and he stole the silver skull

off the drum set and we packed it up and our squad A.O. We put a, we put a tambouret on it because I was a tambouret guy by the time I got there. Cherry. Yeah. New school.

But I did take the brass out of my DUI and fucking rubbed it until it's all silver and got the gold off of it. I wasn't that new. And we ended up taking some shoe goo to glue that beret on there

because there's always some fucking formation that's like, oh, I forgot my beret. And they'd go take the beret off the silver vanilla ice skull. So we ended up taking shugoo and sticking it on there. You should bring him pictures of that. We'll have to show them sometimes. I don't know if I have pictures of it or not.

You know, this was pretty social media. I'm not that new school day. Yeah, yeah. This is 2000. I was in range of battalion from 03 to, I left in 06 when I went to the Q-Corps. So we had, we had my, my, my, face. What was it? MySpace.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, yeah. We all were. That was a big MySpace guy. It moved on from there. Yeah. Oh, right. So do you have a MySpace music account now?

Because that's what they are in there. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see here. As a former USR 38 Bravo, we support conventional now. This is Jacob King. So this kind of might be for you, Zach.

Oh, I support both of you. So this is Jacob. He's a former 38 Bravo. He says, do you think that the effectiveness of civil affairs as a Saip has been less effective as a result of a lack of policy? So there's a, do you see that group on Facebook? Are you going on Facebook? No, I'm not.

Simple Affairs Sciop group on Facebook. There's also a Sciop meme page, which is fucking hilarious. I bet that's great. You always say you're going to afford me these things. Because I'm not on social, you know, I mean, I am on social media. I just never do. Well, you should be on social media so that you can promote this fucking lives. I did.

I sent it out tonight. I meet you on their 24-7, like, non-stop stream of self-promotion. But then I'll become all. right because all because social media like creates alt right people embrace it just embrace it just embrace it all right shameless self-promotion shameless self-promotion i've just been shameless i forgot about the self-formation right i think that like uh from what i'm seeing now what people are putting on that is that they're talking about use of k-pop cutting the cord with usa-sac and the respect that like yes there is like some it's it's not it's a big drawing

because SF wants to absorb you guys. Yeah, because they see you getting the cyber mission. And honestly, it's all about money. They just want the billets and they want the funding that comes with the cyber mission. Yeah, I mean, with everything else that happens at SWIC and Special Forces Command, it's all like... Everybody else says sweet, sweet, and I say money. I think we're limited. Like, I think size is more not limited so much by policy where I think it's more like people's expectations.

of what we are. Like we're seeing as like this weird dark art like mind control group, you know? Like there was that- MK Ultras. Yeah. You know what? That was that that accused us of, it was like 2009. Do you know what I'm talking about?

No. A group of senators were going out to Iraq and like the command of time was asking Scyop basically to create like talking points for him to like talk to them about. And like all these senators came back and they were like, we got Siyop, I don't know what's real anymore. And like it's a list of talking points. Like come on. You know? So like I don't think it's really a positive.

I think it's more like SIP needs to be more like open about what it is and what like the capabilities are because people think it's like some weird black magic and it's like it's not at all. You know? So I think it's people's perception of SIOP that like limits it and people are like, we gotta keep this box or it's gonna get real weird

and they're gonna control us. And it's, you know. Is it ironic that SIAF has a branding issue? I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, completely, yeah. All right. So MedCap is like when the Navy sends out of our hospital ships to make port calls in poor countries. Yeah, basically. Kind of.

Kind of, but I would say the only thing that would be different is that if you were to send the Navy to do like a port call for a mission like that, it would just be like a impact mission. where if you're going to do a Medcap and you're on a sustained, like, long-term mission in a certain area, you would do more than one. Okay. You would do follow-ups. So it would be more, that would, where the arts and minds would be, you'd be trying to correlate a whole mission that would encompass an area where you can get the guys to all be on your side,

where if you show up into Haiti after our fucking earthquake, that's a humanitarian mission. Right. Yeah. Okay. And, Zach, there are multiple people here. referring you to as a fabio here. So yeah, my last day was January 31st. I just haven't cut my hair signs. It's just where I'm out now.

Nice. That's okay. It's a lifestyle. Yeah. It's a lifestyle. Embrace it. Gary Garcia says, I know S-Fabs are new and all, but how is CA supporting S-Fabs? I actually don't know that. I would assume that there are... I don't know what an S-Fab is. The special of... They're kind of stealing the UW mission. Well, they're not stealing. I'm sure Green Beres are hanging... They can't...

They can't... They can't... Yeah, that's basically... Yeah. The SFFab is General Millie's baby, and basically what he saw was that SF... So, like, Fid is huge.

It's a huge mission now. And SF can't possibly do it on their own. I mean, that's why in Iraq you had a conventional army units doing Fid missions, let them right. They were doing more Fid than we were. Yeah. So he's...

He had this idea. It was like, SF trains foreign special forces units, so we will have a conventional FID unit to train conventional. SF trains conventional units too. Sure. His thesis is kind of bullshit from the get-go, but I understand his point, really, it's like, like this mission set is too big for just SF, but now we need no people. So that's what the S-Fav does.

Well, I specifically remember trying to hand over. a large border control point to an SF team, like a fully trained, fully equipped, like, border control point to an SF team, and they're like, we don't do that, we're direct action. Wow. Yeah. So, I don't know if it's as much, because SF is a, it's a large, there are a lot of dudes in SF. way more than Rangers and I don't know if it's as much as

as SF can't do all that work or if they just don't want to now when the wars wind down if the wars eventually wind down and goes back to like the 19 it goes back yeah then SF is going to be clawing for that stuff back because that's where all the funding is going to be

oh J-Soc too I mean they like when things wind down They go looking for fit dishes. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, everybody, you know, everybody's going to take the top of what they can get. But, like, when they're doors to kick in, nobody wants to do fit. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

You know what I mean? I want to be number one man. All right. S-FAB to, I don't know, by the impression that I got, like, a year ago, or, like, from people that I knew that had, like, gone there, or, like, people that were trying to stop people for going there, was, like, so S-Fab was a little bit cannibalistic, and that it was like a quick route to like promotion if you were like B6, E7 and any of the soft MOSs they were like fucking come on quick path to promotion this way

and that was like their big recruiting yeah oh okay yeah so they were seen as like the cannibal in the room for a little bit so do they fall under conventional or do they fall under Socom or you saw it? I think they have a different color hat they do yeah and there's a big fucking shitstorm about that because one of his first released, it looks suspiciously like a green beret. So it changed the color

from like a baby puke green to like an actual brown. Oh. So is C is civil fair supporting SFVs at all? I don't know. I can find out and let you know the next time

you guys are on. I would assume so. I mean, there's not a lot of people on the ground in Afghanistan. Yeah. And like the units that are on the ground in Afghanistan right now would be Like S-Fab, I believe, like, what they're doing, obviously, is, like, making sure that fucking S-F guys are not getting shut up by a bunch of fucking Afghans that are training to become Afghan army. The CA would be right in the middle of that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not for any other reason than just to be on a base where they can be safe enough. But there wouldn't be a lot of CIA, like, floating around Afghanistan. I don't know if there's a lot of anybody flowing around of Afghanistan. Does Contractors?

Yeah. Yeah. Does the mock embassy part include a cocktail party? No, but it's true. So I can imagine if you were sent to, is it at MIS?

MIST. MIST. I can imagine if you were sent to a MIS unit that nobody at the MISD, it was seen as like a cake job. Like to do the embassy stuff and no, What do you wanted to go from there to Afghanistan?

Oh, there's definitely, yeah. I mean, there's definitely guys that just want the missed jobs. And then, so, like, when I got to that point of the course, there's also guys that have, like, I don't know, clearly never worn anything but, like, sweatpants or ACUs in their life. And they're, like, day one, it's, like, dressed professional. And so many guys wore the, um, oh, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, the 11s.

No, what are the, like, the plastic shoes, like the, Oh, yeah, the corcorans or whatever? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So many of them showed up in those. Wear what? The corkrant.

It's like your dress shoes. Yeah, you dress shoes. Oh. The ones who are in the boots. Yeah. Like somebody guys wear those. They're like, well, I have these. And you're like, no, you can't wear those in the real world.

Do they give you a clothing budget at all? Not for the course. Okay. Okay. But if you run amissed then. Yeah. Yeah. But like nobody ever gets it.

Yeah. You submit for it and like three years later, you get a quarter of it somehow. Yeah. Nobody ever actually gets it. say it's not a real. Yeah. But for the course, it was just like just show up business casual and then for the final presentation like there's a professional. Yeah. Adrian wore like local. Andrew wants to know has Sciop attempted to mimic some of the structures of political campaigns such as having a dedicated rapid response communications personnel? Yes and no. The issue again is like the the military approval process is just it's very slow. So like you'll have a lot of go-getters with it. iop that'll have all these ideas and like again like i don't necessarily disagree with it because people

are so afraid that like somebody get influenced the u.s population that there's all this red tape implied and like we kind of joke from afghanistan that we were the the i.o information operations quick reaction force yeah because it was like a joke because it was like people want us to do stuff and i'm like yeah i'll get it to you in three weeks yeah right you know so it's just really like it's the process involved yeah yeah but people have had similar ideas yeah so Andrew uh he said So let's say Fabio was hypothetically in charge of Psiops as part of the invasion of Grenada. How would he have gone about that? I don't know.

I mean, that's a tough one. Like, when you're not, like, tactically on the ground and, like, getting people, like, trying to get people to move where you want to do, that, that's simple. It's, it's the bigger picture stuff that Saup tries to do or that they do do, that it's just, that's where it gets tricky. And it really is, like, I don't disagree. with like the laws in place where like you can't influence US citizens or like non-combatants but then how do you segregate that how do you like get that done right right and that's so that's so

tricky especially like the modern world right because i mean modern day influence operations are online and anything online has a propensity to be seen by yeah anybody anywhere yeah and like I mean, like, I mean, I don't know, that's something. You guys were just talking about, like, people being a little bit trigger happy. We had an incident in, like, what, it's 2015, 2014, where, like, Syop dropped a leaflet where we put a Taliban flag on a dog. I remember that. Yeah, and it made international news because there's a, it's a Kranverse in the Taliban flag.

And, like, offended everybody. And, like, the commanding general had to, like, everyone had to apologize up to almost, like, the presidential level. and like I knew the guys that were on that team and like their careers were ruined. Yeah, they were done. Yeah. And like, Van didn't fucking know. Yeah.

They're just like, we put their fucking flag in a dog because we were killing them like dogs. Yeah. You know, like no one, like there wasn't that much thought put into it. It was like we needed something right now and we made something right now and now we're all fucked. Yeah. So, yeah, like I don't know, man. Like, well. Yeah.

I mean, like you said, I mean, when there's like, you know, 2,000 people a day in Russia or Iran or or China or wherever it is, making memes and stuff like that. And like none of them are going to be held accountable if something's like a little bit offensive. Right. Yeah. And like we, I don't disagree that we shouldn't match that. But it's also like we, I don't know, like, we got to be in a fight. Yeah.

It's tough, man. It's real tough. Like, I don't know where to, I don't know what the Ogun solution is. Do you, like, do you feel that, right? I don't know if this is part of, like, do you feel like the, like, Gen Z? tends to be more media savvy in the sense they're not as easily influenced because they've seen it all or

I don't know I think culturally it differs depending on where you're at I think like if you go to Afghanistan like the sites and stuff that the Afghans pay attention to they have a lot of faith in way more than like we would yeah you know like we might look at

you might go to BuzzFeed or the chive and be like yeah it's kind of funny Like, they put a lot of faith into, like, the posh to websites that are dedicated to Afghanistan. Okay. That's tough. So, it really depends. That's interesting. Sean Hastings asks, generally speaking, who usually ends up joining civil affairs in Saeop?

Soft units like Rangers and Special Forces or people from conventional units? So I think that, like, from what I saw, in my tail-end time, in the army like there were a lot of guys coming off of active duty or thinking about coming off active duty who came from like ranger regiment or whatever it's a nice transition like so there was a guy named um you might actually know him do you know a guy named joe roberts mate i think so uh what did you look like is it like body bill yeah yeah yeah yeah so joe was uh he was a ca guy like he was ranger made it to go CA. Yeah.

I think it's like a mixed bag. I don't know about, like, can't speak to SIOP, but I think that, like, for a lot of these guys, like to come out of that unit and go into a CA type of unit, you can still operate, you can still, you know, go out and do missions and all that kind of shit. You go away from that high opt tempo.

It's still a decent opt tempo, but it's not anything remotely close to that kind of opt-time. Right. Well, all I would add to that, to caveat off of that. a lot of special forces officers end up in civil affairs because, like you experienced coming from the X-ray program, is like they want to keep you in Socom if they can.

So you will have special forces officers. And as they get promoted and the pyramid becomes more narrow towards the top, there's only so many places for them to go in SF. So if they're not immediately able to go and become like an SF battalion commander, they would go over and be a Psiops commander somewhere or a civil affairs commander. Yeah, you see the commanding officers when it comes to, like, use K-Poc. They're all SF, you know, Ranger Regiment guys. Yeah, so I think it's a natural transition.

It's a nice transition for them. Because then you get to do, like, more different shit, you know? Yeah. I don't think you see a lot of vice versa. I don't think you see a lot of guys coming out of CA or SIOP and going into, you know, special forces or whatever. I think that it's the other way around. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a good way to finish your career. Yeah. Yeah. I think for Saab in general, like on the implicit side, I mean, you get a lot of, like, conventional forces. Guys that want to be in a smaller unit and then like they looked into it a little bit and they wanted to do something a little more like cerebral. On the officer side, though, because you need to, it's like SF, you need to be a first lieutenant promotable to apply. We did seem to have a lot of like Ranger officers.

Really? Yeah. Yeah, guys that... Which is completely counterintuitive, like some fucking Ranger running a unit. Ranger Tabder or guys from the... From Italian, from Redmond? Yeah. From Bell, yeah. Like, I worked with one that was great guy, Tony, who's one of the best houses we had.

Yeah. Who, like, he worked with some SLAP units, and he just thought they should have been, like, better utilized, better integrated. And he just had... He came in with an idea. Yeah. And, like, that was fantastic. He was great. So he was able to sort of like kind of have his vision and then put that in action?

Yeah, that's great. I mean, that kind of like cross-pollinization probably would help both units quite a bit. Oh, yeah. You know, and even even having permanent CA or sci-ups people at like regiment or at the battalion level, at, you know, not maybe at the group, maybe at the group level or, or, or, or. I don't know, in SF to where you get used to knowing how each other operates. So you can, you know, you can say, hey, this is where we can help you. Like, you know, it can be more plug and play because you have a better idea of each other's, you know, operational parameters. It's one of those things.

This is like one of the criticisms I would have special forces is that there are some ODAs that like bring everyone into the team. Like, hey, we're all working together here. And then there are others who are like, oh, you're not SF, you're a piece of shit. Like I was saying before, looking at you sideways, like, who the fuck are you here again? What are you here? What are you? What are you? What are you? What are you? With an ODA, I mean, so much of what happens there depends on the personality. Sure. Yeah, sure. And even when in a squad and Ranger Battalion, it just depends on like the group of guys you get in with. Like some are just like they get it and some don't. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, Siam has like plan of positions with every other soft unit and like most conventional units. But it's one guy. Yeah. Like the one guy at first group, do you think he actually gets out to the A teams or like, you think he just sits there and like helps rights annexes? Right, right.

Like he's not. And has he ever even really been operational on that? Well, my, with Siam is a little bit different. Yeah. Hopefully. I mean, he could have been like, realistically, he could have been a guy that did two missed rotations to fucking. Taiwan or somewhere like Cherry and then they go as the first group and they're like what would you bring it right you know that that Realistically could be the thing yeah. Yeah, yeah

Let's see if what else we have we have um okay so that asked me oh Clint hey what's up Clint Dave did you have any C or sciops guys attached to your unit in Iraq? No no I mean like I mean we I mean we no we didn't um like i'm sure they'd be there if you needed yeah like we'd work with we'd work with different people uh based on on mission requirements or based on if like we found out like like like like we've been on med caps and we've been on some you know some CA stuff that um you know

that like big army was supporting or whatever and then we would go out because you know there were There might be a mission there for us or whatever. And it's a good way to get in. Well, it's also, you think about, like, with the MedCap, one of the bigger CA takeaways of that is passive intel. Right, 100%. Passive Intel is a massive part of society. 100%.

So, like, we had a guy, this guy, Harry, they kind of just hung around with us all the time. He was an SF guy, former SF guy. And I'm pretty sure he was definitely an OGA guy. I'm not sure which A was. Yeah. He glommed on to us. He likes CA.

He would come out with us. Yeah. And he would ask us a lot of questions about initially when he first started coming around, he would go, and this was in 2008, what's the price in the door market for a bag of potatoes or something like that or a bag of rice? And, you know, we go out on a mission or one of the teams who go out on a mission, they would get the price and they'd come back and give it to him. And eventually this guy, Harry, would come out with us, with his turf. And then, you know, whenever team would go out to the door market, he'd kind of split off. And he'd go and talk to some guy. Yeah.

It was clearly like his way of going to meet some guy or whatever. But he would use that as us generating passive intel that he could feed back to whatever agency he was from. Right. And that's a very common thing where you would have guys use CA for something like that because in the doctrine of CA, passive intel is a big fucking deal. Right. I mean, that's... You write a report. And there's more than one guy reading a report.

Right. And you'd write a report after every fucking mission. You'd come back and like, it didn't matter what the fuck you were doing. You were like to see a generator or like a power plant or a fucking school or whatever. And you'd write a report and come back. And then for whatever reason, something that we wrote, he took interest in that. Right. And then all of a sudden.

Well, both passive intel and it also gives like military intelligence units or whomever, you know, you know, d. Whomever else, it gives them a cover for action. Yeah. You know. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Is it gives them a reason to be in that village.

And probably, excuse me, I think probably one of the reasons that the CA was under the spec ops sort of, or one of the benefits, if not a reason, is that the CA mission to be directed, hey, we want you guys go to this village because we're prepping, because we're prepping, this area or like we have a mission two villages over or whatever and you know when you like it was different in ira i imagine because i didn't really c a operate in iraq but in afghanistan when they would go out to do to a village like a med cap or whatever people would come from my from villages where would get out so fast and people would walk miles and miles and miles from other villages to come see, you know, an American doctor.

Yeah. You know, um, miles. I mean, the lines would just be massive. Yeah. Um. And a security fucking nightmare, too. Oh, it's 100%. I mean, it's just, 100%.

There's only so much you can do with that. Like, I mean, you can bring in local national, like, local military, local police or whatever, do outer cordon. But like, at the end of the day, if you have intercordon provided by like maneuver or an ODA or whatever, or CA or a sci-up or whatever, because they, at that, that time it would be a hodgepodge, you still have to rely on that fucking, that IP unit or that Iraqi army unit on the outskirts to pat these motherfuckers down. 100%. Yeah.

Because we're coming through. Yeah, 100%. It is a huge security risk. And not only on site, but then you've got to pack up and leave. Yeah. And that's when you're really like, that's when you're really vulnerable, I think, is like, because even though good tactical process is never take the same way out. as you take in.

And a lot of places in Iraq and a lot of place in Afghanistan, there's one way in, one way out. One egress route. And so whichever way you went in, they know where you're coming out, you know. And it's like, oh my God, like here we go. Yeah. So we are like an hour and a half in. So if anyone out there has any questions, make sure you get them in. But in the meantime, you know, I want to get hit up some more of the deployment stories.

I think that's what people come for. So can you tell us a bit more, I mean, maybe that's what you were talking about with Dave before I came back, about being deployed to the Congo, because that's kind of a little bit different than Afghanistan and Iraq. No, so the Congo was a weird mission. Like, I always wanted that mission. I was not specifically Congo. I wanted a non-Iraq Afghanistan mission. Sure. And it was to be my last mission.

And obviously you'll find out other stuff about that. I'm not going to get into that here. So it was a small team and there was different elements there. You had a medical element. You had, it was a National Guard medical unit. And there was some Marines for Como. And there was a cell that set up for communication for everybody. like a headquarters cell.

We weren't given a very good mission going into it all, but we figured it out. Congo was a weird place. It was a, I don't think I realized before I got there how many Chinese were there. I mean, massive amounts of Chinese, like in my hotel. And we were in a hotel in Kansas, which was our base of operations right outside this like consulate embassy area, which was the safe zone. And we go out every day. We had a local national turp.

And we kind of filtered down from the top of mission where we could go to, like, so in Iraq you have Mohales, which are like neighborhoods or, you know, municipalities or whatever. Congo has the same kind of thing, but I don't even remember what it was called, but it was controlled almost by warlords. So every part of the city in Kinshasa had different people that might call themselves mayors or whatever, but they were not mayors. They were like fucking strong arms. Yeah, a little local warlords.

And ate enough hearts of their enemies, and then all of a sudden now they can show that number. So there's a big thing in CA that's called Atmospherics, and I think Sciop does the same thing. Where you go around and you just collect as much information about an area. You have meetings with local leadership, local security, local health facilities or whatever. Congo

was so inherently fucked up that I can't see how that country will ever come out of being the worst third world world country in the world. It was really just like I remember the first day I was there when we got to the hotel and it's right by the side of the Congo River and a barge going from

Kinshasa to Brazzaville overturned hundred thousand, like a hundred between eight hundred to a thousand people like fucking spilled over into the fucking river oh my god they rescued as many as they could and then everybody else died and everybody's like yeah you know what happens the value of human life is very low yeah and uh and so I come I came to learn throughout my time when I was there that it's a very disease-ridden very heavily divided place where you could go from like one Mahalo to the other

and there was like a blood feud between the two mayors. Like, it was interesting. It was a real true CA mission. I got to see the bonobo monkeys. The coordination was so poor that we actually took a fucking four-runner, or a high-lux, and drove fucking 40 minutes outside of Kanshasa just to go see these monkeys one day. We could have been kidnapped, and it could have been a good thing. It was a good time, and the weirdest mission I've ever been a part of.

What was there a deterring factor? that like separated the different neighborhood was it just geographical were they family or tribally like affiliated like like how how did that break down so i think what it was in those neighborhoods was that like everybody that was in charge of the neighborhoods and if a lot of them were in there were women that were running the neighborhoods um came from older families in the area and now with the patriarchy yeah really well the thing is that like so kinshasa's fucked up because the rest of the country is way fucked up so all the people that are leaving the jungles to get away from the war, the civil wars in

Goma and out by the border, were coming into Gushasa to find safe haven in just a horrible place, but yet it was so much better than where they came from. Right, right. And so we would like find that there were people that were almost Johnny Cum Lately's in these neighborhoods, and they were so low on a totem pole that if your family had been there for at least like 60, 70 years, you might be top-revellinger. in that area. Really? And then really hate the people in the neighboring little area. Really? Yeah. And then you tack on like this, it's a very Christian country, like evangelical

Christian. And so if your kid has like autism or ADHD or anything like that, you take your kid to the local minister. They speak in tongues? No, it's even crazier than that. So the local minister goes, yeah, this kid's shay gay. Shagaye means sorcerer. You have to kick the kid out of the house and now the kid is living on the street and the street is filled with fucking like 15 16 year old kids guys that have men and women and they're drinking this thing called petexia which is a mixture between gasoline and glue and they just walk around like zombies and that's what shagate means and they just fuck on the side of the streets and they walk up to you and touch you and like really really weird they're not even looking for money they just want to they see a white face

and they come up to you yeah like Oh my God. Get the fuck. Like, fucking, like, spraying fucking antiseptic on my face. Gasoline and glue. I mean,

so Patexia is, yeah. Is there any liquor in it at all, or is it? It's as fucked up as you would think it would be. It's like, it's like, it's so fucked up that I wanted to taste it. But then I was like, I'm not going to drink gasoline. I'm good,

especially because this, his mouth was on it. And it's, they just shake it up in a bottle and drink it. Zach, you got any crazy-ass deployment stories? Like, now you've got a one-up, Josh. So I got a one-up that matches gas and gluten.

Like, I don't have, like, I don't know. I don't have any really good, like, individual stories. By the way, that's what we're drinking right now, gasoline. Beautiful. But, like, I think, so I was only for seven years, but I think, like, my biggest takeaways from it were, like, the difference between Afghanistan and Iraq and, like, Afghanistan, it was, like, everyone was, like, was, like,

tunnel vision on their mission because like the overall how do you make it better like nobody had any fucking clue and like if you look beyond like i got i got to achieve this it looked hopeless as hell and nobody like nobody wanted to deal with it right where like i was in iraq for the invasion i was there for clernicis yeah and like cleoninicis was like well yeah you should fuck be rid of them yeah yeah which invasion so i was only i was in iraq in 2018 a little bit 29 So like when you say invasion, like we're thinking like 2003, yeah, yeah, so I'm in pretty bad I have no idea. Because I was like, where were you, kids?

But I was here today. But this also raises an important question. Okay, there's an important takeaway from this in of itself is that you know, a couple, a year and a half ago, everyone was talking about oh great, Missouil is liberated, Missoules liberated, and like, who the fuck cares? That city's going to change hands another 10 times in the next decade, right? Oh yeah. So like you say invasion and like you see how we're overlapping with each other.

Oh yeah, hold on a second now. Yeah. No, because that's what I literally thought you meant 2003. Yeah, so I wasn't there for that. I've only been Iraq to like clear ISIS. And like I said like leaving Afghanistan, like there was a little bit of like, everything that left was like we did our thing. Everything's kind of hopeless.

Yeah. I did my job, bitch. Yeah. That's kind of how everyone. And then like dealing with like people that like helped like clear ISIS, everyone felt like we were on the side of right. But we literally did some shit. And just like how different like those groups of people that I worked with like and like Yeah.

Experience it is like the craziest experience I've had in the army by far. Like what why? You know, you get deeper into, you know, what that was like to actually be there with those people. I think it's just like a sense of purpose where like Afghanistan it's like that's rough. Like I don't know what I don't know what the exit strategy is. I don't know how you make that better. You know, and you know, like people are talking like we're. cleaning their poppy fields, they should grow saffron.

They're like, saffron doesn't grow here, and you're like, grow saffron. Like, nobody has any fucking plan. Nobody has any clue, you know? Where, I don't know, we've probably, five years from now we'll probably find that way to do. Did the commanders in Afghanistan even bother to try to articulate to you, like, what you're doing here? Oh, no, everything's super soft applied to when I was there.

It was like, when I was there, it was like, influence these people this way. And then... When I was there, you know? Did you even know what... what the sort of strategic or even the tactical impact of your missions were? Or did you just kind of like throw something out there? Like I'd like for me like I'd have to pay into like the information environment.

And like you and that was like where you'd be like, oh like nothing fucking matters here. Like everything's just the same no matter what we do more or less, you know? Well, yeah. But also like how do you pull out? If you pull out this is a power vacuum, then it's even fucking works. Yeah. I don't like. It is.

I mean, you know, we should we should learn from the Russians there that. Because, you know, you get down near like the Afghanistan, Pakistan, border stuff, and people who have been living in those villages have been living there for hundreds of years in the exact same way. And outside of having, like, short-rate radios or whatever, they're not, they don't want to change. You know, they don't want democracy. They don't want, you know. They don't even know what that is.

I mean, no, right? There's a study done a few years ago where it's like only like 5% of the population even knows what 9-11 was. Right. Yeah. I didn't know my idea. Right. And the other thing is like, it's when you, when you try to appeal to any type of nationalist idea with them or national idea, like they don't, they don't see Afghanistan and Pakistan.

They know it exists. They know there is a border. Yeah. But it's all tribal territory. It's like, you know, if their tribe's territory, you know, extends across the border, that's their tribe's territory. Like, it has nothing to do. countries. They don't care what happens in Kabul. They have nothing to do with Afghanistan. They have

They are a country amongst themselves. I don't like I don't even think they care about Taliban even like the Taliban units. Yeah it's more like like Taliban is more like a blanket term for like New York street gangs. Yeah like they like they're like they're like their own little thing and they don't really give a shit about the guy over here and they're maybe they'll kill him tomorrow. Maybe they'll be his partner. Right. Right. Yeah. That's the thing. I mean it's crazy. When you get in I mean, just the blood feuds have been going on. It's like Hatfields and McCoy is almost everywhere. Yeah, down there.

You know? So, yeah, it's fascinating. And it's a very challenging operational environment in order. If you're looking, when it comes to looking at, like, how do we win? Like, how do you define victory? Right, right. You know? You know, we cleaned out the Taliban, you know, and the AQ elements.

Was that enough? I mean, Taliban isn't really. anything that we can affect. Taliban is a cultural movement. You know, like, that's something that the Afghan people are going to have to deal with, because it doesn't matter if you go in and take Taliban territory. If you don't hold that territory, Taliban's going to creep back in. You know, when you get down around Kandahar and things like that, there's nothing,

any time there would be a pause in our operations, every game we had made would just disappear. Yeah, we'd sit in briefings and they'd be like, you know, there's 15,000 Taliban in this region. We killed 3,000. The next month it'd be like there's 15,000 Taliban in this region. We killed 3,000. Like, you're just killing people all the time and like the net number of them isn't going down somehow. And the numbers don't even add up. It doesn't make fun.

No, and you're just like, what the fuck is this? What is the same thing in Iraq in 2009 where shit. I mean, this is the entire global war on terror where it's like one unit would roll in and they'd be like, okay, our host nation partner is red and we need to train them and then by the end of the deployment they're green and they're trained. Then when the next unit comes in they're red again. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's like we're just playing the same fucking game over and over again. Yeah. But by comparison to Iraq, you were saying that it's like you were actually clearing cities. Like you guys cleared through Vermont, cleared through Missouri. Yeah, I've never felt like a huge sense of accomplishment. That's a big problem. There's a political, there's like political issues with like SDF and like turkey and whatnot.

But like you felt like you were on the side of right. Right. Right. Where Afghanistan, you were just like, fuck, man, I don't know. Grined in your years. That's a big fucking deal. I got this to do. Yeah.

To have a sense of accomplishment. Like, yeah. I don't, like, I mean, when we left in 05 and then when I left again in 09, I don't, I don't feel like we had a sense of accomplishment. I don't think that like, I think that, like, the old adage was that, like, Iraq, we were winning when we left. Yeah. Like, fucking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, we were up at the end of my shift. So, yeah. I got you here.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I mean, since, since like World War II, you know, we, we know, you know, I mean, this is the same thing like the soldiers of Vietnam went through. It's like, there's no armist, there's no surrender. There's no, there's no formal declaration of victory. There's no point in time. when we can say we won. Yeah. Let's get everybody home. Bring the boys home. We won. What was that thing that the Taliban used to say? The Taliban leadership, they used to say,

the American generals have all the watches, but we have all the time. Yeah. And it really made sense. Yeah. And it's held true. Like, they can just wait us out. Yeah.

Yeah. We're Iraq, I'm not so sure. Like, I don't know what Iraq's going to become. I can give you a hint. Yeah. The little neighboring country next door has a lot of influence over there. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the governments are just going to completely like continue to roll over, I think, in Iraq for the next 25 years. Well, until they get another strong end in it. You know, until they get another strong end. You know, another, I know, another, I don't, I don't mean somebody as horrible as Saddam, hopefully. But another Saddam, another Tito, another, another somebody who, you know, basically takes the reins in it. I mean, Iraq is kind of like this country that was cobbled together by the British Empire. Right, right. It's very different than Afghanistan, but in the same way, like, is there such thing as like an Iraqi nationalist movement?

No, I don't think they're. I mean, look at fucking southern Baghdad. Southern Baghdad, you have, like, you have Christians that speak Arab-Mag. You have Shia neighborhoods. You have Sunni neighborhoods. All cold-mingled. Like, they're all right there. You're going to tell me that these people are going to live peacefully amongst each of them. other after all of our influences out of there. No fucking way. The only unified people in that area are the Kurds and everyone else hates them. Yeah, yeah, right.

They're a stuff about the Jews. Even the Kurds, even that's a misconception, though, because even the Kurds are not unified. They look unified to Americans, but internally they're not. Yeah. You know, they're divided between the UK and KDP and from there it goes off and like a dozen different factions. Honestly, I hate to say. But much better than the Arabs.

Yeah, for sure. I hate to say it blows my fucking mind, but. like maybe somebody like Macuad al-Sadr, who's apparently very fucking prominent in the Iraqi government now, like spending time in fucking Riyadh, which I can't fucking believe he's broken away from

Tehran. I mean, I'm surprised that he didn't get killed back in 2004. I am too, you know. But the thing is, he like every time, I have no idea how he survived in the sense of

every time like U.S. forces to get a beat on that guy. All of a sudden, we had another peace agreement with him. And, you know, like, it was always like, you know, it's always like, you know, he punches and then when you go to punch him back, goes, no, no, I'm sorry, like, let's make peace. It's like, okay, let's make peace. So you turn around and he punches you again. It's like, what is going on here? You know, fucker. Well, it's similar, you know, there's a very well-understood dynamic that, like, Western

states, particularly America in this case, like, we have. like to address and talk to other states. And that goes to what you guys were saying about Afghanistan, that we wanted to turn it into the state, the nation of Afghanistan. Right. Yeah, right. Like, we wanted it to be like a mirror image of ourselves that we could then relate to. Right. And it's same thing in Iraq. Like, we wanted, I mean, there was a policy in 2009. Like, we have to hold Iraq together as a state. And I mean, yeah, ideally, that would be great. But maybe we should just pull the fucking Band-Aid off and accept it. Like, look, this is going to become through state. And, yeah. And I mean, I mean, yeah, ideally, through states. Like, it is what it is and like we can control it.

I mean, it basically, if we're set up into a system of tribal territories with, you know, the, you know, based, you know, on languages, on everything else. Like thousands of years. They would be, you know, there would be much higher. It's really interesting. There's an explorer and I, oh shit, a European guy around like 1500, I can't remember his name offhand. He traveled to Iraq amongst other places, like during the Middle Ages. And if you read his accounts, it's fascinating because he records that there was like 200 mosques in Missoules. Or I'm sorry, not mosques, synagogues. Yeah. Like there was a prevailing Jewish population. There was a huge population. Yeah. Yeah. And like there is this, um,

this sort of prevalent opinion or view of the Middle East that it has always been Sunni and Shia at war forever. And there's never been these other dynamics, this sort of diversity of Jews and Christians and like, no, that's not the case. Like, it was very diverse. Well, I mean, not only the Middle East, but, I mean, Afghanistan, too. Think of the Buddhists, the Bombian statues. And the fucking Jews. Yeah.

Do you remember that dear, you ever heard the story about that last Jew in Afghanistan? Yeah, yeah. And, like, the last thing the Taliban did was he took his Torah and they burned it in front of him. And they killed again. And he was like a 90-year-old guy. Like, fucking, like, crazy shit. And the Jews have been around. Like, I mean, the Jews are everywhere.

or they were everywhere. Tons of Jews in fucking Iran, Syria, Iraq. And like, it's, you know, these were, I hate to say it, they were like somewhat diverse countries. Yeah. And like, even up to Bashir al-Assad in Syria, the Al-Wites. Yeah.

The Al-Wites have a lot of power. This apocalyptic vision we have, really it's ISIS's vision of the Middle East. More so than ours or anyone else is. It's sort of ISIS's vision of the Middle East. I mean, that is not necessarily the truth of Arab history or Middle Eastern history. It is, in some ways, it is a contemporary development. Yeah.

I mean, the Christians were big-time fans of Saddam Hussein. I met a bunch of Christians down and made some of the fact that they fucking were really upset when we took Saddam Hussein out. Well, because he was secular. You know, because he didn't, he didn't, you know, like he was an asshole and he was a murderous, horrible human being. But he was equal opportunity. He was an equal opportunity asshole. You know? I mean, that was the thing.

When I would talk to Iraqis in 2004, I used to think that, like, they really meant this. I'd go, like, oh, yeah, what do you think about Saddam? Oh, fuck Saddam. Saddam. And back in, when I got back to her in 2008, 2009, I asked the same question. They go, yeah, we miss him.

Yeah, you know, that's a bad. Yeah, we had. I mean, like, you have to think back in time. And the massive criticisms about George W. Bush and not to legitimize some of the, in my opinion, bad decisions he made. But in Iraq, I mean, maybe like 70% of the people there supported us. Trusting Saddam. Sure. I mean, he was not well-liked.

Right. Right. But then everything that came after that, they were kind of like, why are you guys still here? Right. You know, I think obviously the invasion was not. well thought out. When you know, when you go into a country like that and remove a leader and disband the army. And disband the army. And the

bathus, like our bathus purge was so misdirected like that. You take all these sort of educated, influential, you know, all these people. And yeah, the army, I mean, we should have just, I mean, dropped leaflets and said, stay in place we're taking over your payroll. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. They, you know, Paul Bremer. Yeah. Paul Bremer is the fuck.

like the guy. Guys like him and the people he surround himself with, like we're going to disband the bath party, we're going to disband the military. You create an insurgency overnight. Yeah, overnight. And not one person in the State Department, not one person in the CIA,

you can sit there and go, dude, do you realize what you're doing right now? Right. All these guys tomorrow are going to go home and they're going to be pissed off because they don't have a job. Right. And they're going to take their guns home. And they're going to have to figure out

what they're going to do next. Yeah. And what they're going to do next, is start targeting you because you fucked their life up. Look, this is like not widely understood by like John Q. Public, but those Bat Party people became the nucleus of ISIS. Right. Like it turned into ISI, the Islamic, fuck, what was it?

Well, it was ISIS, no. No, before it became ISIS, it was like the Islamic or the fucking... It was that guy, the breadheading guy. Yeah, it was Al-Durie. Yeah. And it was Saddam Hussein. daughter and it was a few other people. It's only something of Iraq. I-S-I. I-S-I. Yeah. Yeah. And they, that was the group we were fighting around like 2009 as we were pulling out of the country. That,

that entity became ISIS. And like, you don't have to take my word for it. You can go look at like the Brookings Institute, uh, white papers that they wrote about it and like the whole leadership cell of ISIS. They were all bath party people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, well, And then, you know, we can't learn our lesson. I mean, obviously, we didn't because we should have learned in Iran, you know, when we took out the Shah. Yeah. Not the Shah, but the king, right? And then, you know, and then Obama and Hillary turn around and do it with Arab Spring, you know.

They did it with Gaddafi. Yeah. And they just, you know, it's like, when are we going to learn our lesson? And it doesn't matter. And now that's the most dangerous country in the world. You know. That nobody wants to fucking talk about it, except for him. Yeah.

Fucking Libya is a fucking basket. Well, there's an active, there is an open air slave market in Tripoli. I mean, come on, you know, like, that's Hillary's legacy. Yeah. No, it really is. 100%. Yeah. 100%.

And if you say that, you're, you're being political or whatever. It's not true. Like, that's just facts. Right. It's facts that, like, they decided to support the Arab Spring instead of, like, seeing it out and not taking a sigh. Yeah. And then you have, you know, this whole ridiculous thing. where we got to support democracy.

We have democracy in fucking Egypt and who gets elected to death. Right. Yeah. A bunch of military dictators. The Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood. Yeah.

We don't like that. So what's even funny is, you know, we have an ongoing arms deal with Egypt. We have like an order in process. It's like, oh, are we still shipping them these things? Those military assistance programs,

the Egypt are like so complicated. I don't think we could turn them off who wanted to do it. It's nuts. Who's the guy? El Cici, the commanding general of the fucking Egyptian military. Shaky as fuck. And this is the guy, but it was so clear cut

and go, have to have democracy in Egypt. For the first time. Yeah. Muslim Brotherhood gets elected. Yeah. And we don't like that. So we're going to jail them all. And then we're going to have a special election. We're going to have a special election. We're just going to have a military dictatorship.

Yeah. Because we can't have a Muslim Brotherhood and fucking Egypt. Yeah. All right, guys. Get your questions in, if you haven't already. Chris wants to know, what are your opinions of battle space owners? Like in Iraq or? You didn't specify, I guess, just in general.

I think it's situationally dependent on where you are and who they are. Yeah. Who's the space owner? I mean, in my opinion, if it's Fourth ID, not so great. if it's like third ID or 10th mountain not so bad Andrew asks would it be useful practice for sciops to give them the opportunity to demoralize say like an ROTC unit or a civil air patrol wing like the prep like red team your own guys

but honestly I don't think the U.S. military really needs Scyops to demoralize them I think we're pretty good at it all on her own. I like it. How did you guys like working? How did you guys like working with the State Department? I can't really answer. I never really worked with them. I got one quick great story about the State Department.

So one of my big failed missions that I put the guy Bosch on was a place called Gas Cane Village in southern Baghdad. Right outside of Favlvan, there was a whole entire village made of Gasch. village made of gas cans. And there was really hot chick that worked for the fucking State Department. It was the teams that they had put together, where they took military guys and like anthropologists. Oh, fuck. Yeah.

What was that? It was like short-lived because it was a total debacle. Yeah. Oh, I can't remember the name. I didn't even hear about it. Yeah, it was controversial. That was a big fucking CA thing. And that was like 2008.

So the State Department put together a team I think they actually had one CA guy in the unit, or on the team, and then it would be like an anthropologist and a cultural, was it a cultural support team? It was something like that. Yeah, it was a cultural support team.

And so there was one chick, in a rack, she looked like Laura Croft. I don't know if she would look like that. And fucking, I wanted to fuck her so bad. And so, like, my fucking commander was like, you go work with them. and figure out what you're going to do. And I got a bit of it like that I was going to create something really nice for Gascan Village.

These people were literally living in huts made out of gas cans. I got a picture. I'll send it to you. Yeah, I'll see that. And so everybody from all the teams had to go up to Biop to learn how to drive fucking MRAPs because they were coming in the theater. And me and Cahill stayed a fucking Falcon. And we locked ourselves into fucking talk because we had our own little compound on the backside.

and I got some whiskey for my interpreters and we drank all night long watching Goodfellas and Godfather and all this shit and the next fucking day I had to take her out to Gas Cane Village and she was so in love with the idea I was like yeah we're going to bring fucking water in here we're going to get a well in here we're going to fucking get electricity I'll get generators or whatever and she was so excited and I'm like I'm totally going to fuck this chick and my commander and everything was like all about this out every great great thing project that's not. This would have been the greatest

CA fucking mission ever. And my commander, the Colonel Joe's and Major Brockway and these guys were all behind it. They're like, do it, get it done. Do you fucking her? No. So I came back and I set the whole fucking thing up and she goes, yeah,

I don't think I need to be in Iraq anymore. I'm going to go back to California. I'm like, ah, it sucks. And she's like, but you better take care of Gas Can Village and I'm like, yeah, 100% I'm going to go to that. and with the next day I'm like fuck you guys

and like so I'm sure there's a bunch of people in Iraq right now still living on gas cans with no running water all because you didn't get laid yeah I mean it would have been

the greatest thing for these people yeah if this chikang their lives would have yeah kids would have been you should have told her that before she went back to California

yeah the face of gas can village I mean I have a story similar to that doesn't involve me personally

a former colleague of mine and it involves like there's an affair there's Bo Birddall involved there is just like always strong there's like J-Soc D-I-R-L like it's all kinds of insane shit and like all this stuff came together just because they were sleeping together

yeah like I wait are you gonna are you just gonna tease us with this I'm just gonna tease you because I can't I can't go into the I can't get into carnal knowledge. I think I know exactly what you're talking about. Maybe I can get him on here one day, but hmm. It's a hell of the story.

Let's see here. State Department, it was I'll ask you because if you're so it could have been good working with the State Department but it didn't work out well. Guys again the PSA thanks for watching, thanks for sticking with us. There's like 40 people watching this thing live. You know if you like what we're doing you like the stream please click the link down the description and if you want to support us financially you know you can otherwise you know please remember to subscribe and hit that bell notification so that you get notified when we go live the next time so thanks for

sticking around we're we're up to just over half of our rent right now on patreon right yes yes we thank you thank you very much for everybody who is is currently donating uh look if you can afford two bucks a month, three bucks a month, whatever. Every little bit helps us. Every little bit helps us. And we're paying for all this out of our pockets. Yeah. No, I appreciate it.

So hook a brother up. Yeah. I mean, it's really exciting actually to see how this thing's starting to gain some steam. Yeah, yeah. So Andrew Dunbar, can I ask a pseudo-dum question? If opium... So is pseudo-dum, would that be fake dumb? Anyway, if opium is sourced by which...

the Taliban has been funding this insurgency, couldn't we just beat their price and buy directly from the farmers? Like, I just say legalize it in the States and you don't have to worry about any of that in you. In a sense, yeah. You know, like cartels, like opiate, like just legalize it,

regulate it, tax it, and all this crap goes away. Like we were talking about with the Mexican drug cartels. The insurgency goes away. I think what I've seen in Afghanistan is like we take away or we burn the opium fuels and we try to bring another crop, They're like well that doesn't make money. Yeah

Some far the thing is you're not your That's not physically possible so fuck you we're just gonna wait six months and plan it again. Yeah, you're you're burning down their fields and some carers like some farmers like how am I gonna feed my family now? That's my income is like we present with like a zero option. Yeah Here's this other crop and they're like that doesn't pay anything. Yeah, right So we're just gonna wait it out for a little bit right Yeah, it's like in Columbia. I mean we you know understood that the the plane is to bring in good governance It's not just the like burning fucking crops. Right.

Yeah. Because what are we doing some of that Agent Orange type type of shit as well? Yeah. Yeah. I have to, I don't know. Yeah. You've got to think about the second and third odor events. Right.

Yeah. Right. And the thing is, what are you going to do? You're going to post a fire guard on that field so he doesn't grow it again? Yeah. It's like, okay. Flamethrower brigades. Yeah.

Right. Right. I actually So real quick I just want to point out that We have a Legion in Hoboken American Legion and Hoboken And anybody from this area that's a veteran

That wants to join All I need is a copy of your DD214 And Jack can put it out there How to get it to me Yeah And it's 35 bucks And you can be a member And come to a really cool bar

You should uh Yeah they uh They rebuilt the American Legion After the Hurricane Sandy After Hurricane Sandy came through and blasted everything out. So, I mean, it's like, what, like four or five

story building now? Yeah. And they have a brand new bar, and then in the top fours, it's housing for homeless veterans. So that's amazing. Yeah, it's a pretty cool thing they got going there. Do you have a website, or do you have a... Yeah, it's Hoboken Legion Post-107. Hoboken Legion Post-107.

We'll put that down in the link also. Dot com. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Um, are you familiar with China Post 1? No. Is that the American Legion in the city? No, it's the American Legion that was in China. It was flying tigers.

It was associated with the old school. Oh, yeah. Yeah? And when the revolution, when the Cultural Revolution happened, they shut it down, they burn their books and kind of fled. But it's still... That's communism. It's still in...

Like, basically, it's the only American Legion that's posted, like sort of an absentee, I guess. So you can petition for a... charter. You can petition the American Legion for a charter. It's usually affiliate with like soft stuff. Yeah. So, yeah.

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So join kids. Yeah. Yeah. Sign up. It's a cool bar. He's a member. He's a member. He's going to be a member. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. What was the favorite thing you learned in training?

Hmm. I don't know. So, I don't know. So the SIEOP qualification course is, you know, like it mimics the SFQ course a little bit. But like, you have like tactical light and like, you're basically, yeah,

what I was talking about light. It's basically all our rocks are heavier, but we go much more there. You know, um, but like, so like, when you do like the,

like the tactical level like KLE party and the key leader engagement training, they actually bring in real actors that just shit on you. And just like rip your arguments apart. And then like you're sitting there and there's like a bunch of like instructors there with notepads grading you. And you're supposed to look like you know what you're doing. This guy is just ripping you apart.

That was solid. That was really solid training for me. Yeah. And they're just like you're an American imperialist. You're here to oppress my people. So like you get like you get your little like your little KLE like note card, which is what they made for the senator that fucked everything up. And, like, so you like, but you have to show, like, the cadre, like, what your arguments are first. And they clearly share it with this guy.

And then he just sits there and it's like, it's like a week of you just getting shit on it. It's really good. So you're trying to basically convince him or, or. Of fucking anything. Yeah. And he has all of the points against you. He knows what you're coming in with. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was good. And what, like, what did you get out of that? Or do you just enjoy being shit on?

I mean, I just, I'm not judging. That's a fetish. That's a fetish. No, like, you just have to, like, learn how to, like, persevere and be, like, okay with being wrong because you can set up a next meeting and come back. Right. And you just have to be like, all right, I fucked this up bad. Yeah.

Give me a minute. Well, let's reconvene in two days. Yeah. And, like, you just had to learn how to, like, deal with that. No matter what, they were going to give you shit, like, facts the first time around anyway. It's like, you're coming in wrong. Right. And then you got to come back the next time and, like, try to, like, fix it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like one of those, like, ego checks where you're just like, okay, I fucked this one up, but now I can plan for the next time. And I can convince you in the next conversation. Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah.

Yeah. Because, I mean, no matter what, you're coming in to lose. But, like, you didn't really, like, like, you didn't really, like, like, you didn't really. know that that well like you just came in like it's I don't know I haven't ever grading you there than like the guy's way more prepared than you are like you just like you suck and then you like you come back later and you get to like kind of like recover it's basically the uh why is it coming in on my mind right now this is gonna kill me the um the scenario on Star Trek the uh you can't win the uh oh

where Kirk was supposed to kill the guy and you know it's it's it's it's the it knows the ships it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's when they're in the training academy. Oh, the Kobayashi. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The exercise. Kobayashi Maru. And he hacks the, he hacks the system.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it'll a no-win situation. Anyway, nice. It is a Kobayashi Maru guy, right guys? Somebody out there is as nerdy as me. Someone out there knows it. I mean, there's always somebody watching that knows. And like Frank Bruno here, the thing we were talking about,

the human terrain teams. Oh, yeah, H-C-T. That's what it was. Yeah. Josh, what about you? What was your favorite part for you? What was the thing? You know what?

For me, it was a guy who was an old green beret that was an instructor there that kind of taught me that no matter where you are or who you sit down with, never refuse, like, food or drink or anything like that. Because it's like the best way to ingratiate yourself with the person that brings you into their house. And as disgusting as the food may be, you know, you can see a bunch of Iraqis putting their hands in the same pot or whatever. The fact that you'll put your hand in the same pot or whatever. pot and you'll eat that food with them, the amount of wasta, remember that word of the wasta you can get out of that is better than anything else. It's ingratiating and it puts you on the same level as that. It's a big deal.

It might not be a big deal here, but in a place like Iraq or even in Congo, it's a big fucking deal. And I ate some really nasty shit and I shit my brains out, but good things happen because of it. If you're like one of those people that's like a racist or a xenophobe or something like that, like you find another job or or we're a really picky eater on the same yeah you know what I mean we're a vegan yeah yeah I eat some fucking awesome food in Iraq yeah it was like it was all like organic it was all fresh it was all you know made by you know locals yeah there would be a few

times that I went into like villages and shit and I ate stuff where I knew I was going to get sick and I had Cipro and I could take that if I had to but the thing that was a real squeamish thing for me was watching like everybody put their hands in there before I get in right so you couldn't say no I eat some food in Africa like a plate that I think like you know exactly what you're talking about it's a big plate of food with the bread with the with the bread underneath like the Ethiopian type of and chicken yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it was left out for a day or two and uh yeah yeah yeah that put me in my ass yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but at the end of the day it works for you yeah yeah yeah it just it makes you stronger too like it builds that immune system yeah builds character I actually I

I love the food in Afghanistan. I like the food in Iraq too. Dude, the fucking chai. The chai is amazing. And you've got a question where that water comes from. But like sometimes you get a good cup of chai. Yeah. And you're tired.

I would tell you the story. We did a like five or six day recon patrol out in the deserts. It's like northwestern Iraq. It's an area called the Jazeera between Telephar and Syria. You know that area? And there's just an archipelago of little village. out there. And for,

it's, the Jazeera, the Jazeera is it, it means an island. So why is the desert called an island? I asked the people there, they have no fucking idea.

Yeah. Okay, we're moving on from that. But I went into one of these villages to meet with, it was, with a worst unit, and we met with a Mokhtar,

and we're sitting down and talking, and it's just hot as fuck out. You know how it is. It's Iraq. It's like 90, 100 degrees out in this desert. Even more. Even, even, This is like getting in the winter months.

It was cold at night. It was hot during the day. And a little kid comes around with a kettle of like ice cold water and like pours the water for all of us. And like without thinking about it for a second, it was like, ooh, cold water and drank it. And I think I drank two or three cups actually as the little kid came around. And yeah, that was not advisable. There's a thing like when the kid comes around with the water or it comes around with the chai, When you're done, you're supposed to shake the glass.

You're supposed to do like one of these numbers to let them know you're done. And if you don't, you just hold the cup like that. You just give it up to you. So, like, I've had like 10 cups of chai before, but before I picked up on what the hell is going on. Yeah. So we had a bunch of operations in like the Jazi area, or Jazeera. And I was working with this Korean guy. And I guess in Korean, Jazi is like slang for dick.

So all the operation names are like Jazi something. like so so he was always just giggling in meetings and we're like what's the fuck dude and he was like it's dick storm dick thunder

like oh man good times yeah long live the coalition yeah uh did any

anybody serve with uh jaco willink in Iraq no that's the uh seal right yeah yeah

yeah no No. He's got a big-time podcast, I think. Okay. Yeah. Do a show about the conflict in Ukraine? One day.

What if the Warwick Frost woman instead of wanting to... That question doesn't make sense, Andrew. I'll tell you about. She was hot. She was definitely hot. Yeah. She was America hot. She wasn't just Iraq hot.

Like wearing a plate carrier with, like, five, five, six days. She would wear like super tight 511 pants and, you know, like a crop top. Tell me more. Yeah. She just was like. Desired to no more intensified. And she really liked me. I was like,

maybe she didn't like me the way that I thought she liked me. You didn't get like the digits? I mean, like, no, I was sitting there trying to save the world. And like, I guess I didn't save it quick enough.

And she had to go back to America. And then those four bastards and fucking gas can village. Yeah. I'm probably sitting there right now waking up. Probably watching, probably watching our live stream and going, that motherfucker. We'll find that,

that's working in until one day. Where did he say that? Where did he say that post was? He promised to be generated. What are the number one most effective CA and sciops missions of the global war on terror? Honestly, you might not be able to,

you guys might, I don't know if they were classified or not, so. No, I don't know. It's kind of weird. Like, probably for CA,

something in Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah. It would be, Iraq wouldn't have anything good. For PSOP, like a lot of SOIP units work on, like,

pro-democracy stuff and get able to show up and vote. I mean, probably something. Yeah. Along those lines, but I don't, I don't really know.

It's a lame answer. So that's what you get, two lame answers. Yeah. Or a lame answer or nothing, so. I mean, that's about it, I think. Yeah, thanks, everybody.

We really appreciate it. Thanks to our guests. Josh is that for being here. We really appreciate you. I mean, I'll give you guys like one or two minutes if you have a final question to get in. But we've been fucking rolling for like two hours now. Definitely. That's a pretty good show.

And, you know, I'm really glad, you know, it's funny that for years, years at this point, I've had people asking me, like, can you interview CA and Psiops guys? and for some fucking reason it's like easier to interview a command sergeant major from Delta Force than it is to interview you guys and like I've had like crazy email chains with like all these people up and down

and SWIC and everything in CA and SIOPs and never managed to actually like get one of you guys on so to have the two of you on here at the same time. Yeah that's great yeah I'm really glad because I've like interviewed everyone else in special operations like from front to back

and then done it again and still have had C-A. Siamps guys on. Have you guys had like sore guys on or? Not, he may have on, yeah, on his previous. Yeah, but not on this particular live stream. But I mean, that's all in the works. Yeah. You know, Dave got everything working so that we can have people on Skype dial and.

Yeah, that's right. Our Skype seems to be up and running. We're going to do a couple of tests runs. It's coming. So it is on the way. So on that note, actually, next week we're going to have in studio guests again. And it's going to be the authors of these military fiction series, Andrews and Wilson from, I think this is the Tier 1 series. Both of these authors are going to be here in the studio next week when you hold it up so people can see.

So that's next week's show. And then the week after that, my friend Jason is going to be on. He was a former CIA operations officer in the CIA. So he's going to be in the week after that. So we have in-studio guests for the next two weeks. And then we'll take it from there and see what happens. Jason is the big guy from... You want to say the big black guy?

I know. I know. I know. I know. I said at my table at your wedding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice guy. Good guy.

Smart guy. Jason's a really good guy. I've known him for a while now since 2013, 2012, 2013. I've known him for a lot now. So yeah, he'll be here. We'll have him in studio. We'll have a good conversation. He's going to, he has some really funny stories to tell. He was a Marine, and then he went on to the agency, and he still works for our government. Yeah? Yeah. Andrew. Okay. Andrew, maybe getting. getting back to us with a more reasonable question. Would if the Laura Croft woman, instead of wanting to save the gas can people,

wanted this dude to just loot Iraqi antiquities smuggling out of the country? At the time, I would have done it for her. I would have done fucking anything. Jesus Christ. The difference being like jerking off in a fucking porta potty or fucking banging pretty decent looking chick. Yeah. So yes. Andrew, the answer is, I would have fucking done anything.

Except after she left, I would not help to Gascan Village. Yeah. Poor bastards. Here's to you, Gas Can Village. Yeah. Sorry, bro. Rest of peace, guys. Sorry, bro.

Nice people, though. The entire fucking Iraq war summed up. That's the story. All right. All right. guys that's our show so thank you very much once again for joining us thanks again to josh and Zach remember one more time with the Hoboken American Legion Post 107 and the website Hoboken American Legion post 107.com oh okay okay uh one or so and I'll remember

Josh is what's your official title over there facilities manager 4th in command okay yeah and then and Zach is a member also and next week key is. I'll be a member. Can I sign up online? Yeah, I'll sign up tonight. Just a copy of your DD214 and $35 check or money order or pay bail then. Awesome. Yeah. And it really is like because I've been there a couple of times now. I mean, it is like a super cool bar that you guys put together over there. Yeah. And I actually wrote a story about it. People want to go check that out. But also, I mean, it's like, it's interesting that there's, yeah, the social aspect of it of getting like veterans together, but also like you guys are trying to like do something for the

community and you're trying to like do something for homeless veterans. So it's like the two things combined and work. Is there is there, is that same site? If they wanted to donate to the shelter or something like that, is there a spot for that? So right now we have six units for homeless veterans. Okay. But next year we're going to have 15 more. Can I have one? Yeah. Wait you see these fucking units. Really? I'm in. These are like $3,400. I've seen them. They are very nice yeah yeah that's nice it's not like quote-unquote homeless shelter it's like an actual apartment it's like either a studio apartment or one-bedroom apartment yeah fully furnished that's fantastic in a brand new building yeah like controlled at the door like where you have to like

put a key fog to get in that's amazing it's really so is there a place where people can donate for that or yeah right on the website right on the website okay yeah so anyway thanks again guys we appreciate it um did it all for the nookie right Yeah, that's right. All right, until next time. Thank you, everyone.