SEASON 2! Mark Grdovic (Retired Green Beret) Psyops & turning Iraq against Saddam!

Spring 2003. While the world watched tanks roll toward Baghdad, about forty Americans were already inside northern Iraq — dressed like Kurds, sitting on promises of money, weapons, and air support that never arrived, and expected to open a second front alongside Peshmerga fighters the United States had already abandoned three times in twenty years.

LTC (Ret.) Mark Grdovic was the battalion operations officer who planned that campaign and lived it. Twenty-three years in the Army, nineteen as a Special Forces officer with 10th Group, twice an instructor in the Special Forces Qualification Course. His book, THOSE WHO FACE DEATH: The Untold Story of Special Forces and the Iraqi Kurdish Resistance, isn't a memoir. It's the full account of a campaign almost nobody has heard of, from one of the only two men who saw the whole thing from planning through execution.

This one runs long because it earns it:

• Why our surrender leaflets failed — "polite" Arabic that read as an insult, and the one wrong word that made Iraqi units bury their jets
• Loudspeakers playing tank noises on a hilltop, and the fill-in-the-blank "telemarketer letter" sent to Iraqi generals
• The single order that turned thousands of professional Iraqi officers into the insurgency we spent the next eight years fighting
• A Green Beret captain who stopped a Peshmerga commander from shooting prisoners — without threatening him once
• Three SF weapons sergeants in a straight-up duel with an Iraqi mortar crew, and what winning it bought them
• Why a twelve-man team can live inside a hostile city and survive, and it has nothing to do with walls or drones
• Taking Kirkuk with almost nobody, then using the press to convince a city of 600,000 that five thousand paratroopers had shown up

Two very different careers in the same war. Mark is a Green Beret officer. Ryno was a Ranger forward observer with 1st Batt. They don't always land in the same place, and the conversation is better for it.

If you're a young man looking for direction and you're not sure the military is it — this one is for you. That's why we're both here.

GET THE BOOK: Those Who Face Death — hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook narrated by Mark. More at markgrdovic.com

CHAPTERS 

00:00 Cold open 

01:30 Meet LTC (Ret.) Mark Grdovic 

05:00 Ryno's road: Marines, 9/11, and a contract he didn't understand 

07:51 A book at fifteen that pointed Mark toward Special Forces 

14:18 The Kurdish word that turned Green Berets into eighth graders 

17:35 Rangers, SEALs, Special Forces: what each is actually for 

24:55 Discipline when nobody is standing on your left or right 

26:54 Robin Sage for real: prisoners shot at the front line 

34:47 El Salvador and the case for staying engaged 

38:26 An American flag pressed against a car window 

45:29 Kirkuk: liberation, parade flags, and lying to the press 

51:56 PSYOP done badly — the surrender message nobody accepted 

57:46 Tank noises, telemarketer letters, "your officers have left" 

1:04:30 Broken-down tanks and the general's missing helmet 

1:13:03 Building the ICTF and the Iraqi commandos from scratch 

1:16:55 The Baghdad church hostage rescue they ran without us 

1:26:26 AKs, negligent discharges, and a body rolled in a rug 

1:33:25 The loaded Saddam pistol pointed at everyone in the room 

1:44:57 Katyusha rockets and the skill nobody should have to learn 

1:51:33 Three NCOs versus an enemy mortar crew 

1:58:52 "The next time we meet, it will not be as friends" 

2:03:14 How we built the insurgency that fought us 

2:10:03 The secret sauce: why the neighborhood decides if you live 

2:14:33 Con men in brand-new BDUs and the "Free Iraqi Forces" 

2:29:40 Walking off the field in the fourth quarter 

2:35:40 Turning the power back on

Old Ranger, New Dad — hosted by Ryno. Former Marine infantry, then 75th Ranger Regiment, 1st Ranger Battalion, 4 combat tours. 

Now a dad trying to hand the next generation the map nobody gave me.

New episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Transcript

speaker-0 (00:00)
Suicide bombers in the church waiting to detonate themselves, and they successfully assaulted, killed all of the suicide bombers before they were able to actually detonate. We bombarded the Iraqi army through the underground and these cell phone messages, you know, if you will. Do not conduct, do not follow you know those kinds of orders because we know who you are. So, like if you think you're gonna follow Saddam's orders to blow up the oil well or launch chemical weapons.

We would his time is done. You have to know that. In Iraq, I'd get rocketed and artillery so many times by the insurgent forces, I unfortunately developed that same skill. And for listeners that may not understand, so like in the movies, older movies, when you hear the the whistle, what that is, is that's the round breaking the sound barrier. How could you possibly, as a special forces team, how could you possibly survive living in a house in a city? To me that seems like there's no way you would survive. That's a true statement. You would.

My name Mark Grdovic. I'm a retired Army Special Forces officer, retired from active duty in 2012. Since then, I've worked in some capacity as a contractor or consultant supporting the special operations community. And I wrote Those Who Face Death, The Untold Story of Special Forces in the Iraqi Kurdish Resistance. I started writing it about three years ago, and I completed it about six months ago and finally published it three months ago.

speaker-1 (01:30)
Awesome. Okay. Okay. Well, Mark, it is it's obviously awesome for me to have you on this podcast specifically. having just recently listened through your podcast or your audio book, which for everybody out there and the thing that I've I've been being stressed by other veterans who have done the same, they've all told me the very f first thing you've got to focus on once you've completed your book and done the editing and you want to never touch that book again.

for some time is go ahead and do the audio you have to build that in as part of the book. The book is not done until you do the audio book. And what was your experience with that real quick? How how how much more painful or how easy was that for you personally? Easier than I thought. Okay.

speaker-0 (02:17)
'Cause I had some pretty good professional advice. and I had to struggle with decisions like do I narrate it, do I pay someone else to narrate it? Everybody told me no, you have to narrate it. and I'm a hundred percent glad that I did that. I think that was the right thing to do.

a little bit nerve nervous ahead of time, like, hey, am I gonna sound okay? You know, how am I gonna is it gonna is it gonna be too mechanical sounding for trying to read my own stuff? and I I developed a very regimented, okay, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do two chapters, you know, a week, gonna had a whole calendar planned out. And

It was easier than I thought. I will say I probably ended up reading each chapter like I would read a chapter but I didn't like that. And I you and I'd do it again. Right. and it is hard. It is hard to listen to yourself in an audio. Yeah. But I got better as I went along. It became easier. I I learned little tricks the way I would go into the script, and either phonetically write out certain words like particularly like Arab names or something like that.

I put extra spaces in where I knew I needed to cue myself to slow it down, New Yorker.

speaker-1 (03:22)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (03:22)
And then when I finished it, you know, I had a guy editing it. I was I was and I'm looking back at it now, I'm so happy because I've had a lot of friends, my wife included, who said, Hey, I love listening to it because it's exactly like you're telling me the story. and I think it does provide a slightly more personal you're hearing me read it. So I'm actually really proud of the audiobook.

speaker-1 (03:40)
That's awesome and

I hundred percent agree with you and I will tell you I didn't know for sure and I I probably just missed that part of the very beginning that you were gonna be the one reading it. And so I feel bad admitting this, but yours your book is the first book that I've ever had to slow down to listen to it. right. I always do audio books where I bump it up to about one point one, one point one five. Yours I literally had to take it down to point eight five.

speaker-0 (04:09)
Same

thing. She's I always listen to audiobooks at one point two. And she's I tried that on yours and I was like, Holy smokes. Yeah, I apologize to everybody. It's the New Yorker in me. Yeah. I'm reading I thought I was reading slowly and I'm still reading a little fast, but at least it gives you an authentic feel.

speaker-1 (04:23)
Absolutely.

speaker-0 (04:25)
And I will also tell you, I've I've since connected with several other author friends that are either in the process of writing books, and I've I've given them the advice of, hey, you gotta do this, you gotta do it this way, don't be intimidated by it. it's it's not as hard as you probably think it is before you do it.

speaker-1 (04:38)
Yeah. Again, that's that was that was a great experience. And la last night I was re-listening and I once again had to bump it back down. Was like, yeah. I'm gonna take notes on this, but I have to go back and re-listen to it multiple times to get that done. Yeah. Yeah. So sp let's start out with as I mentioned on this podcast, the reason for this podcast is as a new father and a former ranger and you know, combat veteran and

former Marine Corps, then the Rangers and private contractor, all those things. What I looked at my life and thought is how can I contribute the most? And I thought back, there was no podcast, there was no Google, there was no way to look up information to find out what a Ranger was. And me being a weirdo, I, like you had mentioned previously in our conversations that we'll bring up, that camaraderie that you sought

was the same thing that I saw. Now I didn't know it was that word and I didn't know what it was that I needed, but I knew that I needed a challenge to push myself. And I took the leap and I went after the hardest thing that I could possibly do and still be in the reserves because in 1999 there was never gonna be a war. We had taken out Saddam in 72 hours, I remember as a kid, on watching TV. So I just thought, what is the hardest thing I could possibly find?

Marine infantry heavy weapons specialist in the Marine Corps and a reserve station in Oklahoma where I lived. So that's what I jumped on. Nine eleven happened. I re-enlisted because my unit wasn't going to deploy and I didn't want the war to be over by the time I got there. So I re enlisted for the Ranger Regiment. And I I've already told this, but I I will have to tell this a million times. I did not know what a Ranger was and I had no idea what I was going to be doing as a Ranger Ford observer.

Until I was wearing a tan-beret. And even then we got one, we got the end of the night, right before graduation, they they let you ask them about your job. And I asked, I raised my hand and I asked him, there was only two of us in the class. I said, What does a Ford Observer do in the Ranger Regiment? Everything I learned was artillery. We're not using artillery. What do we do? He's like, you're gonna love it, man. You're gonna be calling in airstrikes from Spectre gunships, from AC one thirty, gunships from Little Birds.

Jets, you're gonna be doing cool stuff. Don't worry about it. Sit down. Shut up. And so that was it. That's all I know. And when I got there, it was a it was a rude awakening because I hadn't been through the hazing and the difficulties that I but having overcome that, if I got to live my life over again, I would still do the same thing. I would still wear that tambourine. I would go through the adversity because the brotherhood, and that's where I want to get it back to. The future.

in in our nation of special forces, the future Rangers, the future Marines, the future you name it, they're gonna have access to these types of podcasts. There's gonna be a S F future S F soldier out there who has heard this podcast and this inspired them. Did you have any experience like that growing up or what made you want to be special force

speaker-0 (07:51)
some of the story before but I was saying my first exposure to special forces, which I knew nothing about. I I was I was somewhat interested in the army. My grandfather was an old Navy veteran from World War One and World War Two. so I had a I had a real affinity for the military.

But at 15 years old, I like all fifteen years old, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. I was, you know, somewhat confused. And I ended reading a book by a guy named J. C. Pollock called Mission MIA. It was about guys who go back to Vietnam to rescue you know, POW friends of theirs. It's a great book. But that book just really spoke to me and moved me because it described this relationship, this tight brotherhood between these six individuals and that their characters and they were they were they were all based on REL SF guys. JC Pollock did a lot of research for the book.

It resonated with me the way he described them, the way they interacted, the the way they were proactive. They they were not bystanders in their life. They were, you know, action guys, if you will. So at fifteen or sixteen years old, I was like, this is what I want to do. Now, also, you know, like most six years, like, I don't know if I'm good enough, I don't know if I could do this. But I but I was attracted to it. And then as I said, when I was eighteen, nineteen, twenty, somewhere in there it triggered me to be like, Okay, I'm gonna give it a try.

Yeah, made that scary decision and going back to, you know, yeah, I I certainly do hope there's somebody listening right now, guy or gal, that is intrigued by maybe something we say, some story that resonates with them, and maybe they think, I don't know, I could do that. Okay. All right, that's fine. Hang on to that, you know, maybe you're d maybe you'll after thinking about it for a year or two, you'll you'll change. And then maybe in ten or twenty years you're gonna look back and go,

Yeah, I was listening to this podcast with these two old guys and they were telling stories, and that's what first made me think. Maybe that's something I could do. I certainly hope it inspires somebody like that.

speaker-1 (09:36)
Awesome. And yeah, that's that's the mission with this podcast. And there's so many young men right now that are struggling in our nation. And so many of them need a place, a direction to go, and a purpose. And that's the one thing that I will say. If you if you're struggling with that as I was at that age, I knew that if I raised my hand and I went into the military, if I just gave it everything I had, and this is from the books that I'd read, which were old

Navy SEAL books and some LERPS books and those types of things from Vietnam. I just knew that, and it and it proved true. In my experience, if you are the type that's just going to kill yourself on PT and get better at it every day, and you're just out there running the obstacle course in the rain by yourself, if you're allowed to, which we were, that will be seen, that will be picked up, and those types of people will be

nudged in the right direction. You don't have to have a special forces contract, a ranger contract. Funny story, I actually, when I was re-enlisting, I tried to do the 18 X-ray program. I was the first person to sign the 18 X-ray out of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma MEPs, because at the beginning, 9-11, I went in to try and re-enlist, or I tried to go active duty. The Marines were like, shut up, sit down, you'll deploy in a couple of years. And I was like, yeah, that's not going to work for me.

So I started looking into all of the programs and I thought I suck at swimming. So I'm SEALs out. I had never heard of a PJ, still hadn't, even when I was in the Rangers for a little while. And I I I knew special forces, I knew a Green Beret was this tough, right? Rambo, what I grew up with. I went ahead and signed the contract and then they're like, everything's great. We need prior service guys. You're a reservist. We can flip you over to active duty army. No problem. You have to take the D Lab.

I'm like, what's that? I'm like defensive language aptitude battery. You have to go in and listen to a fake language that doesn't exist on a recording tape from the nineteen fifties and trail.

speaker-0 (11:33)
Allegedly determines your ability to use

speaker-1 (11:35)
Pick up a foreign language. The the

girl that went in before me to take it to become a linguist, and she has two other fluent languages she spoke. She just graduated her bachelor's degree in foreign language. She failed the D Lab right in front of me. That's what I say allegedly. Yeah. And so I was like, if you failed, I have no shot at it. So I did the A, B, C, C, B, A, C. And I I failed, obviously, miserably. Yeah. And so they were like, Hey, you have to sign a contract. I was like,

I I know my rights. I'm not signing anything until you give me something that's harder than a Marine. You give me something that is equal to or more difficult than what I am right now, then I'm gonna sign it. And that's where he's like, Hey, I got a Ford Observer contract. You're probably not interested. I was like, I didn't even know there were Ford Observers in the Ranger Regiment. That's how I ended up becoming what I am, and the reason why I bring all that up on a podcast with you, where I want to hear your story, is I had no idea what I was gonna do, and I just knew.

that if I tried really hard and I took that leap, that I would be the only one that would decide whether or not I succeeded or failed. Because I will keep trying until I die or until I'm forced out. And that was my experience and that's what I always recommend to young men struggling for direction. And I

speaker-0 (12:50)
think you know like your situ your experience is very different than mine but it's actually very similar. You know, the military is largely a relatively screwed up organization. And I say that as that's just a reality. It is and

speaker-1 (13:01)
Right. It's made up of people. Yeah.

speaker-0 (13:02)
every other organization is screwed up too. All organizations ha you know are messed up in some ways. but I have no regrets. I love my military experience. It's an adventure

that you are navigating and you have to make decisions like, you know, do you want to accept forward observer? Do you want to try to 18X or do you want to volunteer for this? And it's hard because some of the stuff doesn't work out. I mean I think the path most veterans would look back on their career is not what you expected on the front end of it. you know, because also you don't know anything when you're volunteering or signing up. You're assuming, hoping. and you know, some of it's gonna go right and some of it's gonna go wrong. But but

I'm fortunate to say in my twenty-three plus year career, I just like you said, I would not really change anything. I'm very happy with the experiences and memories I have. Very fortunate the way it played out. but it's a great experience and I again I hope that inspires somebody to maybe consider maybe that's a path for them in the future.

speaker-1 (13:56)
Awesome.

So let's jump right in. very first I have to greet you as Cockmark. yeah.

If you if you don't mind share with us your experience with the cock mark.

speaker-0 (14:18)
So in in the context of this story that's about a specific special operation, it's about a whole mission, we found out we were gonna work with the Kurdish forces that are referred to as Peshmagas. that's the term for their guerrillas. And we I the organization had a little bit of experience with them, but it wasn't our habitual area. Like we were really supposed to be focused on Europe, but because of the war and people were shifting around, suddenly we're told the Middle East is now our area, Iraq is our area. So we're preparing

speaker-1 (14:45)
Give us give us a date. What what time frame? Okay.

speaker-0 (14:48)
So nine eleven two thousand one is pretty close still in the rearview mirror. Like it's it's still emotionally right there. Afghanistan has not been going on very long. The the fighting, the new fighting in Afghanistan is going on maybe about eleven, twelve months. And now we're starting to talk about, hey, it looks like we might be conducting an invasion of Iraq.

So in in the quick research of okay, so what are we looking at doing or what what's what's our mission or what's our scenario, we're finally gonna work with the Kurds. And we also found out in Kurdish the term of endearment, like you would say sir, like or in Arabic it's Sadi. in Kurdish it's cuck. And yeah, see, just like that, we all like we're like little high school kids when we first heard that we're like, Are they messing with it? Right.

speaker-1 (15:29)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (15:30)
but once we got on the ground and like literally after twenty four hours and got past that, it became

you routine, like I was Cock Mark, the battalion commander was Cock Ken. And you actually did hear it as a term of endearment, and not, you know, like high school kid laughing like he should he just said funny words.

speaker-1 (15:46)
And that's spelled K O K just for everybody.

speaker-0 (15:51)
K-O-H-K.

speaker-1 (15:53)
Touch ya,

okay. With your right hand over your heart was the greeting customer. Similar to the salute.

speaker-0 (15:56)
that's well the the hand thing is another

it's based on a salute. it's ba also based on the way like adult males in this country might shake hands if you meet someone. There, when males cross paths with each other, the the part of that gesture of hello, greeting or respect is you know, is to go like this. And it's kind of funny because we all got indoctrinated to that so qu 'cause you can you can feel the real emotion when you see a guy doing that to you. They're glad the Americans are here. You know, like, you it's absurd.

And we all started doing it just instinctively. And it really resonated with us, like, hey, this is we're actually starting to really adopt these these practices.

speaker-1 (16:35)
Awesome.

So that that took a little bit of getting used to, but I also bring that out because, right, the understand the the miscommunication is something that is a common thread throughout your book. There there's right, there's times in which, and we'll get into that where, you know, information through PsyOps is putting out information and it ended up twisting it and it comes out backwards. And so one of the things that everybody has to be prepared for and something that you

mention is the strength of the special forces Green Beret specifically is the ability to think, the ability to overcome, to think on your feet, so to speak, and to just overcome whatever that is. And whether it's now or cock in front of everybody's neck, okay, we're gonna roll with it. And you couldn't do that in the range regiment. There would be so much laughter and it would never end. And it's it it's just the that professionalism has to be there though and you've got to roll with it.

speaker-0 (17:30)
Yeah, I pardon me, sarcastic we're just so much.

speaker-1 (17:33)
Naturally. Right, naturally.

speaker-0 (17:35)
You know, w you'd asked me a question previously, it was in in some of your notes, like, hey, just for the the the listeners to describe a little bit of the unique distinction between some of the soft components. you know, we're all part of the same family loosely, but we're all slightly different. You know, we all have our own unique

organizational cultures and strengths, not not really weaknesses, but different strengths that we can play to. The Rangers, I have a lot of love for the Ranger Regiment. I think they're an incredible organization. I I mean I can actually go on and be like, hey, the Ranger Regiment has been the insurance policies of the United States military for the last fifty, sixty, seventy years. They they've come through for us. You know, if there are Rangers in the mix, you know you know you know this it whatever they're doing is going to be done correctly.

speaker-1 (18:16)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (18:18)
and I I will describe it as hey, the Rangers are the greatest

infantry in the world, if you need something broken, destroyed, or captured, they're your force. Far none. Doesn't matter how hard it is, they they can they will give it the best possible try if it can be done. and that's amazing. They're they're incredible in that regard. Navy SEALs are are you know maritime aquatic brothers, definitely a unique culture, slightly different. Great guys. I have tons of friends who are SEALs now. And if there's something to do with the water, they're your guys. You know, they are your guys. And

Most of the world is accessible by water, so that's actually a good thing and that makes lot of sense. So what where does special forces come into that? Special forces they are trained and well selected and trained and educated on a slightly different type of career track where they're selected for guys who are more comfortable operating in small elements, more comfortable operating without massive resources and support, which sounds weird to say, but like they're kind of trained to get used to you're sort of on your own. Because

Theoretically, going back to World War II, they're supposed to be able to operate in, if not enemy lines, very remote locations where there is not lines of communication, supplies, and logistics. And that's mentally hard. That will freak some people out if they're not accustomed to it. So again, you know, the Rangers wouldn't operate that way, but that's just the way they're designed. Where a special forces team might be by themselves, you know, alone and unafraid, as we like to say, in the mountains. But they also have unique skills like we have our own kind of medics that are super medics.

We have our own weapons guys, our own engineers who can build pretty much anything, our own combo guys. So we're designed to be semi self sufficient. And if somebody were to glance at that, it's it's a bit weird. but so subsequently the guys end up getting raised being comfortable, one, not having all the most beautiful support in the world. They'll figure it out. You know, they're comfortable like, just go figure it out. Yeah. they're also thinkers. By default, they are constantly analyzing and thinking. So

You know, where I might say the Rainers, they they can stake themselves on, hey, lethality, they are the most lethal force in the world. Not to say special forces isn't lethal, but that's not something that we're gonna try to like where it's lethal or more lethal than. We are the you know, if I always like the phrase, you know, man is a reed, but he's a thinking reed. We are the thinking force that can figure out how to solve problems that seemingly seem unsolvable. You know, and I know you you liked I said something once about having been a former instructor twice in the special forces course.

We put guys through lot of really weird dilemmas. And we know they're weird and we know they're hard and it seems like there's no solution. And one of the things I used to try to explain to people is you know, don't modulate your effort based on your estimation of how successful this is gonna be. Because just like things tend to turn bad quickly, they turn to tend good quickly too, without without a long ramp that you're seeing it. It's getting better ten percent every day. So if it looks like it's going bad or badly

Give it a hundred percent. And then suddenly when it's you know, when you've turned that corner and success is right there, you won't know it until it's right there. So we trained that to keep your mind thinking that way. Don't gauge your effort on I don't think this is gonna work, I'm not gonna really try, or I think it is gonna work, so I'm taking it seriously. Take it always take it seriously, do the best you can, and subsequently, and you see it in this story, there's plenty of crazy obstacles we face. that looking back on it now, be there's no way this is gonna work. But we were able to work through

you know, those those obstacles and get to a successful outcome.

speaker-1 (21:47)
Awesome. Yeah, and that's something that as you bring that up, my thought was make it happen. You guys are the make it happen guys. The MacGyver moment is every moment of every day for you guys. That is one of the things that I again kind of reading LERPs and reading about what Special Forces is doing, and this is where the force multiplier. That's what I heard most of the time while I was in. And a lot of our guys ended up going to Special Forces. whenever you're getting

to the end of your enlistment as a ranger. You're either going to stay in the ra range regiment, you're going to go to special forces, you're going to go to tryout for Delta, you're going to go tryout for other units that recruit from Delta, or you're going to go at that moment where Blackwater and Triple Canopy were first formed in around, you know, everybody was going to Triple Canopy. Like we lost our command sergeant major to Triple Canopy. Like a a lot of dudes were going that way.

speaker-0 (22:42)
'Cause but life as a ranger and life as a Green Beret are so different, and a lot of guys are attracted to I want to try something different. I want to go experience something as professional but completely different. And like in the special forces community, I don't know what it is, you know, how many of our guys are former Ranger Regiment guys, I'll say somewhere between ten and twenty percent. Those guys are critical to us. Those guys bring critical personality and skill sets because they're such great soldiers. Now they're gonna operate, they're they're gonna demonstrate their mental flexibility and I

operate different than when they were in the Rangers, but having a mix of Rangers sprinkled in goes back to my comment about the insurance policy. Like if I've got Rangers in the mix, I know that I know that the standards will still be maintained. I know they'll do things right. Like if you just count on a Ranger when I'm not watching, he will still do it the right way.

speaker-1 (23:27)
Yeah. It's and it's funny you say that because what I my one of the things I've never brought up on a podcast, so as a Marine I became so discipline focused, I was like a robot. And so at in the Ranger Regiment when I first got in, my one of my sergeants ended up like labeling me the robot because I would just sit there at like just sit there with my hands my my you know, just like in the Marine Corps boot camp or

Your ankles near you, your hands on your and I would just be sitting there waiting for whatever it is that's next while everybody else is you know chilling and and just kinda hanging out and then I'm just doing push-ups or I'm I'm doing something to make myself better and occupy my time. And whereas once I left the Marine Corps, I stayed that way. My brain set was focused, ultra disciplined, and then when I got into the Rangers, I was still had to be disciplined, but it was a disciplined

But we break the rules when we need to and we have to make things happen as quickly you have to make a decision and go with it as as quickly and and violently as you need to to get it done. And so that was my experience. I I lost some of the discipline and really it transitioned over to I don't care about the rules as much as I want to get this done and that's where my wife and I now butt heads because she was a Marine. So

speaker-0 (24:55)
You actually an interesting point about discipline, 'cause I I think this is a an interesting example. 'cause I've had people, you know, do the debate of hey, who's better? Who's

speaker-1 (25:04)
Right.

speaker-0 (25:05)
better? Rangers are special forces, and like what a great question. What's better? Apples or hammers? It's two things that i w what do you mean what's better and what? And the the discipline requirement is there for both of them, but it's different. So like a young ranger

you know, is in a ranger unit and he has to do hard stuff. He's gonna be asked to do ridiculous feats. Go climb that cliff, you know, things like that. But he also has a guy in his left, right, front and rear. You know, sort of keeping that discipline in check. In special forces now, you're gonna get a different scenario where let's take that guy in the left, right, and front and rear out of there and it's just you. Are you still gonna perform the same task to the same degree of discipline? you need to. Mm-hmm. And and and I said it, you know, for for individuals that have never had the

luxury of, my gosh, it's just me. You know, 'cause like as a young infantryman, if you do it wrong, the discipline guys on your left and right will fix you.

speaker-1 (25:59)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (26:02)
You learn not

to do it wrong. But what if there was no check there? Would you still do it right? Or would you s I sometimes refer to as taking the sides up a swimming pool and hoping the water stays there? You know, would you fall apart? And I have seen examples, you know, in for in but both forces actually were it didn't work. That individual failed us and fell apart. But but that's actually almost the requirement that's unique in special forces, hey look, you're gonna go operate someplace where there is no there's no other left and right checks on you. It's a hundred percent on you to still do it.

the right way when no one's looking. And for the most part guys do that. That's truly the challenge. You know, because if if there's some little thing in your mind that's like, well, now that now that it's war, now that I'm going to the you know the real world operations, I can suddenly throw all the things out the window. we we try to discourage guys from thinking that way, like, hey, we do these things not because we're being washed, but because we're professionals. Right.

speaker-1 (26:54)
Now, I wanna I wanna get to I'm j I'm gonna jump into one question real quick and this one's gonna be hard for me to to really get it out as precisely as I want to. In Robin Sage, you guys have to in Special Forces. you have to it at some point from my experience of reading books about it and hearing people's stories, there's a point to where you're going to have to negotiate with a, you know, resistance, guerrilla, terrorist, whoever it is,

Who is causing harm or doing violence or even killing members of essentially doing a an atrocity. And you now have to interact with this person and convince them that you're not going to help them. Now, in your book, one of the one of the stories, you're in a in that position in real life to where you're dealing with this, and I and I wanna know.

Did that fla did Robin Sage flash back in your brain at all? What's going through your brain in that moment where you're standing in front of this guy talking to him?

speaker-0 (28:01)
about Captain Pat Bagger's OD and

speaker-1 (28:03)
Yes.

speaker-0 (28:03)
his counterpart. all of us, I think all of us were stunned at how you know, we all we all have a great memory and affection for that thing called Robin Sage, which it's a culmination exercise in the special forces course. and we're like, yeah, it was really good exercise. I learned a lot, but we don't expect it's going to be exactly like that. This was exactly like that. I mean it was ridiculous how exact it was. and in in Robin Sage though

Truth be told, in some ways it's it's actually it was harder because the Kurds for the most part were great partners. They're good fighters. They they're just good people. They're fun to work with. In Robin State, you don't get that. You get problem children. You get a counterpart we need to work with. Who's inclined to, you know, g there's ten thousand scenarios you could put on the guy. He's working with the black market, he's doing some illicit drug trade, he's committing some degree of human rights violations, or not, you know.

And then you have as the American, you have to deal with this to try to get you a good outcome. And like again, as the American, it's not a black and white, you know, completely right or completely wrong answer. There's a spectrum of are you gonna cower to this guy because you want it to succeed so bad, you're gonna like be conflict avoidant and not tell him what he's doing is one, you know, maybe it's morally and ethically wrong or illegal, but it's also not operationally good.

Are you gonna just look that way 'cause I just want to keep rapport with this guy, or are you going to challenge him? Are you going to challenge him in a way that destroys the relationship? Are you going to challenge him in a way that finds some negotiated, I need you to stop doing that with your guys, because it's not to our benefit. And he's going to say, No, you're wrong. You don't know what you're talking So like in in the the individual I'm talking about, Captain Pat Beckers, he handled it beautifully. And there were other team leaders who had similar challenges like that. I think all of us look back to, man, I can't believe how much this is like.

five years ago, ten years ago for me in the special forces course when I don't even think I as a student, I don't think I appreciated as much how valuable some of these weird scenarios that are putting me, you know, I like I think I wanted to do more shooting. Like I wish we shot more. but we did more human role playing interaction that that in hindsight looking back, you know, ten, twenty years was way more valuable than just shooting.

speaker-1 (30:20)
Absolutely. And so in that what was the outcome? So they or kind of walk through that scenario because they don't necessarily haven't read the book yet. So

speaker-0 (30:32)
First before I explain this scenario, one thing that's also very important to point out. Because a lot of people with military experience now will say, I've worked with foreign counterparts, or I've worked with you know, I'm gonna use the term like sort of unusual partners, like maybe for example, Iraqi military forces or Afghanistan Afghan military forces. Guerrillas is a different category, you know, of irregular forces. They don't have the benefit of a regular military structure, the of what you know, what we would call UCMJ. so the

They have to live a different lifestyle that's a little bit more challenging. So in this particular case, they had captured some Iraqi prisoners. The Iraqi prisoners, Iraqi soldiers prisoners were over there. Kev Beckers was over here with his team and he had I think he had just talked to his Kurdish commander counterpart and then he heard shots ring out. And he ran back over there to find out they had just shot all the prisoners. You know, and I don't I don't remember how many was, but say it was like five or ten prisoners. And he immediately expressed you know, somewhat

probably toned down outrage, like this is unacceptable. And the the Kurdish guy quickly explained to him, You don't understand how it is here. This is how it is. And that this is it. This is, you know, action. Go. You know, special forces captain, you're on. And he has a decision to make. How do I handle this? I can say, hey, we're this is unacceptable, we're pulling out, we're we're ending our mission. And a lot of people would look at that and go, That was a good decision. That wasn't an inappropriate choice. It's a choice. It doesn't really benefit us, but it's a legitimate choice. The the

other end of that spectrum be okay he's right I gotta keep this together I'm not gonna say anything. Also a choice, not a not a good choice, because they're gonna kill more prisoners tomorrow or the next day or something like that. So he made a decision to show the operational futility of what the guy was doing. And he said, you know, you're so worried about keep keeping American support because they were also like trying to prevent the Americans from getting too close to enemy fire. Like they actually kept holding them back.

Because they had instructions, if an American gets killed, we can't trust the Americans, maybe they'll all pull out. And in his case, all the team leaders were doing the same thing, kept stressing, You've got to let me go with you all the way to the front lines. You've got to let me stay with you in the firefight or whatever we're doing. So he said to him, You're so concerned about losing American support. I have to be honest with you. If anyone finds out that you're killing prisoners, that will end American support faster than any of us getting killed. And that resonated with the guy. So he was able to like

take corrective action, if you will, to get this guy on a more moral and legal footing, which is important to us, to t to sustain our our support, but also it is operationally more beneficial. You know, and I think he might also said something like, Hey, and we're here now so like we can talk to these prisoners, interrogate them, get information, more intelligence. You you can't do this. And I think at the time, I kinda remember which commander it was, I think the commander was skeptical, but reluctantly I'm gonna agree with what you said because

You know, I to meet you halfway. And he was able to get them to stop that unacceptable behavior w you know, for the rest of the campaign as far as we know at least. so that's that's an example of it's not as simple as black and white. You have to ha really apply some saviness here and some smarts and and continue to navigate the situation. And he did a fantastic job.

speaker-1 (33:47)
Absolutely. And that made me think, especially as we had just previously talked about the difference between how the special forces soldier would do that versus the ranger and the hammer, right? So in my mind, when I read that, I thought, if I were in that position in the Ranger Regiment, what would I have done? You know, especially once I moved up corporal, I'm into team leader role. I'm not telling you this as a way to like say that this is how all rangers are. However, my initial thought is

I've got to physically stop him from doing that. So probably I would grab him by the throat, put my gun in his face, and throw him on the ground and let him know that he can't do that anymore or he's dead. And and that's where, like you just said, you have to not tell him no and you don't threaten him. Instead you teach him why this is beneficial for him and to get him to buy in.

speaker-0 (34:41)
I do I do you know acknowledge and respect that particular choice of response. he's got like five hundred

speaker-1 (34:47)
Right, absolutely. And still that's exactly what my outcome would still be.

speaker-0 (34:54)
Point to this, it's actually really valuable. And I'm going back to my time as an instructor and knowing history, knowing other campaign experiences. And I knew this as an instructor. So the United States Special Forces, when we were operating in El Salvador in the early 1990s or late 1980s, early 1990s, you know, supporting the El Salvadorian military in their counter-insurgency efforts. Kind of an interesting, not particularly well-known period.

And if somebody were to glance at that effort, they would not be wrong to say, hey, the El Salvadorian military at that time had a lot of human rights violations. Totally true statement. And somebody also could criticize that. So are our advisors still working with guys that are having that are committing human rights violations? And the answer to that question is absolutely. And and it's totally logical that someone would say, that's unacceptable, we shouldn't be working with that. And I'm not trying to make light of it like, well, that's what we gotta do.

We are continuing to engage to change their behavior. And the coolest thing about the El Salvadorian example is when the conflict ended in nineteen eighty two, and it sort of ended like let's say with a sort of a ceasefire, the insurgents or guerrillas came out of the mountains and arguably gave up. You know, they've been fighting for like ten years and they just gave up. Also because the military had been getting more proficient over the years. When they interviewed the the guerrillas and said, Why did you guys choose to give up? The singular thing that made them choose to give up is they said

Because the government stopped committing human rights violations. So now let that sink in for a second. Arguably the government of El Salvador won that conflict. The fighting insurgents gave up. But who actually changed who actually won? Because arguably the insurgents did eventually do something that forced the government to reinvent themselves and change their behavior. And we had a hand in that over a ten year period. So if you only look at things in a snapshot of one day, you can make short term decisions.

But hopefully, you know, you're looking more long term and you're seeing the benefit of it might seem like what I'm doing today is something we shouldn't be doing. If we disengage, we'll never get the long-term benefit of it. And in that case, you know, El Salvador today is still a pretty good, a pretty very good South American partner. and we were able to get to a a good, a favorable outcome, if you will.

speaker-1 (36:59)
And I notice in your language there, and this is constant throughout your book, a favorable outcome is is kind of a common theme and like you talk about, it's the st it's the strategy that's at the forefront of your brain as you're making decisions and as you're deciding how to react to crazy situations that you're in.

speaker-0 (37:23)
Yeah, mean and the larger context of this story, and to to your question too, is always keeping in mind, at least my job is I was the operations officer for the battalion. so I'm largely responsible for the the plan, if you will, and and also the execution of the plan. You know, what are we doing this for? Like what's our what's our intended outcome? What's our objective? And keeping that in mind so that when weird things happen and things fall apart or things change, I can continue to make additional adjustments that still lead us to that objective. And that's

That's that's at the heart of all military planning is to be able to adjust because you have a clear picture of you haven't memorized the plan and you're originally doing it, you have a clear picture of what we're trying get to, you know, and I'll t I'll speak Ranger for a second. You got lost, you were off asthma, and now you can correct because you know where you're supposed to go.

speaker-1 (38:09)
Exactly, exactly. That's exactly what I was just thinking. triangulate your position and and re reshoot your azimuth. so one thing that I wanted to definitely bring up, and this one I would say you tell a lot of crazy stories, and there's several I say crazy stories, that you tell a lot of very intriguing stories that are right, keep you on the edge of your seat. The one story though that immediately gave me goosebumps and brought a feeling to me that

really brought me back to that moment was one section that you say that kind of galvanizes or that galvanizes your entire story is you're seeing a Kurdish man holding a child with tears in his eyes and you guys are driving through but you're in you're in Peshmerga outfits, but you pull a Velcro flag, American flag off, and you hold it to the windshield in solidarity, and all these people erupt in cheering and

celebration. And this is the one thing that I have to drive home to people that watch the news and watch CNN and MSNBC lie. Not they didn't do anything else. It's an absolute lie that they faked that we were these invaders that everybody there hated. The closest I've ever felt to a rock star was the day I drove into Baghdad the first time di after the invasion, because as we drove across the desert in our doom buggy vehicles and I'm on the 50 cal on top.

And we have no armor whatsoever, and we never had armor on any of our vehicles. we were literally driving by crowds of people standing in lines for, you know, not like in one line for a mile, but over the miles as we got closer. You see the oil rigs on fire, the oil shooting up and it's all in flames, and I'm like, Okay, here we go. We're about to go into it. And instead we're met with people's little American flags, which you guys helped with and and

And they're celebrating us as not as these conquerors, which is another huge mistake that was made, which was we don't want to be seen as the invaders and the conquerors. And so we're not gonna say that we're in charge. We're wanting to make sure that we don't put ourselves in that position. And that caused chaos and essentially like a twenty-four hour period of purge that and we'll get into that as well. But tell me what that was like

In in that moment of you seeing this man

speaker-0 (40:33)
The story you're describing is actually one of favorite events. So to to put in context, so our mission was to create a second front in support of the invasion. you know, for whatever reasons it's an interesting question or story, the United States chose to invade with a smaller invasion force than I think we've ever done in any conflict ever. Like even we went in with seven divisions, which is you know, for for military people that's uncanny how ridiculously small that is.

So the notion of a second front to draw away as many of the Iraqi forces from where the invasion is going to take place is super critical. there's a lot to it. Like we don't know when the invasion is, so we don't know how much time we have to accomplish this. And there's there's other complications that make this more challenging. But so when we finally get when I finally get into country several weeks before the invasion starts, you know, it's a secret mission,

speaker-1 (41:24)
So what time frame is this? What month?

speaker-0 (41:27)
early March of two thousand three. Yeah. Invasion starts, I want to say on the twenty first of March. So we're driving around, I'm dressed like a Kurd, trying to keep our profile very, very low key. many of the things we have promised have fallen through. you know, it is I'm sure you recall Turkey changed their position. So our main force can no longer infiltrate into Iraq from Turkey. This is a problem. All of our equipment is in Turkey. So even if we could figure out how to infiltrate

We don't have any of our equipment. this also means that close air support will not be available from Turkey. That's problematic. we promised the Kurdish fighters we would bring in money for them to pay their fighters and lethal aid equipment. Didn't materialize. So here I am on the ground. All of our promises have fallen through. And you know, at that time, rightly so, the US had somewhat of a reputation of you can't really rely on the United States. we had

historically betrayed the Kurds three times in the previous twenty years, once in I want to say seventy three, then in ninety one and then in ninety six. So they were familiar with our promises and then how suddenly the promises fell apart. So here I am on the ground, you know, the representative now with a handful of other Americans, about there's about probably about forty of us total in country. And we just feel terrible because these this particular Kurdish faction has committed to this. There's kinda no going back.

And if in fact and we and honestly, we as the United States, we don't know if i you know, General Colin Powell was on TV talking to the UN, he made some comment to the effect of Saddam has one more chance. And that's a funny comment because literally I I jokingly refer to like all the resistance members throughout the country that had like weapons hidden under the floorboards of their house, were taking them out, and then suddenly he says, Saddam has one more chance, and they go right back under the floorboards, people like we've been here before. We all rise up, we all get slaughtered.

I'm not rising. So like the the will to resist started to to wane. People were getting really nervous that my god the US is going to leave us again. so I felt really, really bad. We were driving around and we were in a small Kurdish town, I was in intersection, I was in a Kurdish car, and the locals could tell those are not normal cars. They weren't like our cars, but they knew like those are Kurdish VIPs. And there was a guy with his daughter, and he's he's it's supposed to you like he's where you are and there's a car window between us and he's looking right at me.

And I just made a decision that I was so disgusted. I was really viscerally angry that we are failing these people. Because my entire desire was to correct the mistakes we made in ninety-six. Like I th I felt like this is a second chance. So I reached into my vest, I pulled out a Velcro American flag. I used to wear I used to have a larger size American flag, like it was the sort of a reminiscent of World War Two flag. Not the not the small ones that they could wear. And I pressed it up against the window. And as soon as I did that, he started he put his hand over his mouth, started crying.

They started to clap and cheer, you know, and they were like, There are really Americans here. I've not seen an American flag. It's for real. And we drove off. You know, and I was like, Okay, I know I just assumed a little bit of risk exposing ourselves, but that's an it to me was an acceptable risk to demonstrate there's something to this. It's for real. You know, and yeah, that was a big moment for me. I will say, I'm gonna push back a little bit 'cause, you know, my friends from CNN, we actually had a CNN journalist embedded with us, Jim Skeudo, who's great, you know, fantastic.

And I've got a couple other good journalist friends that were on the ground with us. you know, people will get upset about the media one way or the other, but like I I have a tremendous amount respect for the war correspondent journalists that put themselves in tremendous danger to report, good and or bad. and I'm very grateful for the ones that I saw on the ground, you know, some from the New York Times, some from the Washington Post. I'm thinking of actual individuals, good folks. and I really respect them trying to get the story, even if

Even if there's a little part at times maybe we disagreed about that, you know, still have a lot of professional respect for them, for what they do.

speaker-1 (45:29)
I I I understand what you're saying and I can respect that. I didn't I didn't know any of those people. All I all I got was the the blowback from the spin that they would put on things and I'm not talking about like right, 'cause all the missions we were going on, either the credit goes to regular army unit somewhere or the Navy SEALs when that started. Like I remember when

Okay, now our missions successful are being mentioned as a Navy SEAL successful mission. And I was just I thought that was strange. And then we fast forward to Osama bin Laden being taken out, and now we're literally saying SEAL Team Six exists. They're called DevGrew. Here's here's the guys. This is and all of that kind of blew me away. But in my experience, just it from two to five when I was in and during those crazy times.

kind of the wild, wild west of the of the initial war, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was it was so frustrating for us to go out and experience something and then get to base and see that they're literally have a little tiny group of people behind them and they're pretending like there's this huge riot of people and that's that's the specific instance I mentioned.

speaker-0 (46:47)
and one of the the jump jumping a little bit out of war, but it's not for the stories. So when we we captured the city of Kirkkuk, which is a major city, six hundred thousand people, a major hub of the oil infrastructure in the north, which makes it very important to Saddam. it's the first city in the north captured. It's the only city captured one hundred percent by indigenous, you know, guerrilla forces or resistance forces. When we took the city and we rolled in, and there's you know, the book I think captures it's a great story 'cause we really it's

Pretty crazy how we pulled that off. we pulled it off with very few people. Once we rolled in, we realized, hey, there's not enough of us here. Like, if the Iraqis ever figure this out, they might change their mind and come back into the city. So, if you recall in the book, there's a story where we're all dressed like Kurds and like we all agreed, like, hey, today's the day we need to shave off our mustaches and put on our traditional American desert uniforms. So we did that.

And the day we did it, you know, my Kurdish counter-friends have never seen me without a mustache, which would be the equivalent of if you went to high school and shaved your head, all you know, all your high school friends would laugh at your shaved head. They thought it was hilarious that I had no mustache. Like they were literally making fun of me. It was it was very, very grade school bullying like.

speaker-1 (48:00)
That's awesome.

speaker-0 (48:01)
But so here I am, I'm dressed like an American soldier, I've got an American flag on my sleeve, you know, desert uniforms. And we had a whole thing where me and a couple of the NCOs would drive around the city now.

And we'd go to intersections and we'd see media. We'd see news. And we'd be like, Okay, let's okay, let's do the thing. And they would shout to me like, Hey, put this stuff in the truck. And the new the news people would hear Americans talking and they'd come running over like they got us and we would act like, crap, you got us. And they would start interrogating us and we would give them everything they wanted to hear. Like, who are you guys? We're like, we're the paratrooper brigade. Where where are you? But we're like, There's three thousand of us. Total, none of this is true. Right.

And they're like and they would say, Where are you? And we're like, Where'd you just come from? Like, we were at the governor's palace. We're like, we're at the airfield. If they came from the airfield, we're like, We're all at the governor's palace. So we created this, I'm gonna say lie, that we sustained for about seventy-two hours, that everyone in the city knew there were five thousand American paratroopers in the city. No one had actually seen them in mass, but everybody had secondhand knowledge of this. And we yeah, we did leverage the media to help us with that story.

we drove I told my guys, we literally drove around the city. we sectored the city up like so every team had a s a neighborhood, if you will. And I said, Hey, your mission today is to make sure every local in the city sees an American in uniform. They need to all know we are for real here. and as we were doing that, you know, we were also speaking to the coalition forces saying, You gotta get more we gotta get more forces up here 'cause at some point someone's going to figure out they've never seen more than thirty Americans in one place.

speaker-1 (49:36)
Right.

speaker-0 (49:37)
That was pretty successful, but the media helped us a lot.

speaker-1 (49:39)
Mu much like the SEAL team six, even though there's not six teams. Well and yet Yes.

speaker-0 (49:43)
Well and you also mentioned the American flags.

as we were driving into the city and and it it is a it is a useful point of history because we were welcomed in Kirk Cook as liberators. From my historic knowledge, it looked exactly like everything I've ever seen of rolling into Paris or rolling into Antwerp, like the streets were packed with people that I'm shouting, get out of my way. We're driving at three miles an hour and the car is literally pushing them and they're all just cheering, they're having a great time.

So as we're doing this, we're trying to make our way, we're all saying we're gonna rally up at the governor's palace. Because the forces that our forces that attacked the city attacked it from like four different sides. And, you know, so we haven't seen each other. Like the guys who attacked in the north are now driving south, and I'm coming from the east, and there's somebody coming from the south, and we're all gonna meet in the center of the city. And as we're in this jammed up intersection with, you know, I'm gonna say ten thousand civilians, one of my CIA counterparts jumps out of his vehicle and he's got a box with him. And he says, Hey, come on, and he grabs me and he

Reaches in his box and pulls out handful of small US parade type flags. And he we just start passing them out to every intersection and or everybody at the intersection. And we do that, we jump back in the vehicle, go to the next intersection, do it again. And it creates this optic where every place you drive, you see literally thousands of people waving US flags. And it really did create this like this is liberation. and it also didn't support them there must be tons of Americans here because I'm seeing thousands of American flags that I don't know where they came from.

speaker-1 (51:10)
Right. Right. And that's that's something that I that I was really you guys working with PsyOps, I think I think that's one of the s the stories of the Iraq invasion that really to me just I always want to know what were these little things that were put into place that really helped drive that narrative that America can accomplish this. We can liberate you. It's not just

about killing Saddam and Uday and Kusay. It really is about turning this over to you, you guys being able to vote for your own leaders. Like I think that's one of the stories that that needs to be told. And I I'm really fascinated with what was your experience working specifically with PsyOps during this time.

speaker-0 (51:56)
Yeah, it's a great it's a great topic.

When I was a younger special forces officer, I had a lot of materials that I had read, mostly from like World War II veterans, that talk about how important PsyOps was. And I almost felt like like typical young SF guy. I almost felt like, yeah, you gotta say that. They're they're great guys. But I didn't I I believe like, yeah, they're supporting folks, you know. And looking back at it now, I'm like, okay, now I actually get it. The combat veterans before me saw this, meaning i if my goal is to physically kill someone with weapons, artillery, I have to physically kill them. It's black and white.

white. if my job is to convince them that their situation is hopeless, you know, I don't know how much that's gonna spread. And if I do it well, the potential range of that weapon system is massively more effective than my killing systems. and and I saw that firsthand. You know, now yeah as y as you kinda hinted at, you know, there are some bad examples of PsyOps gone wrong and some good examples. And and the US military we struggle with this because we still s we're struggling the last

twenty years. It's been on and off again with what we think of our Sab's forces. We're gonna rename them or call them something else, we're you know. But they're very powerful it's a powerful tool. so in the context of this story, this I'll say the bad stuff first. We were trying to tell the Iraqis to surrender.

based on our experience in the Gulf War ten years previously, where where literally tens of thousands of guys surrendered. So we just assumed they're all going to surrender again. We did not take into account Saddam had done some brilliant, although brutal, things to you know, he applied his AR lessons of, yeah, I'm not gonna let that happen again. So he he did some really innovative, weird stuff, like, well, one, I think he told everybody, hey if anybody surrenders, I just want to sure you know I'm killing your entire extended family back here. You know, so there's that.

Then if anybody's got a little plan, like you all think you're gonna surrender at the last minute and you've all conspired, he actually from at least what we our information was, at one of his division commander staff meetings, he told all the division commanders to change seats. I mean, like from an American perspective, like that's complete madness. you know, it's like, hey, Khalid, you are now the third division commander. Aziz, you now have the fourth division. But it did break any schemes his officers may have been plotting.

I mean tr try to picture that for a second. You know, General Khalim left at nine o'clock to go to the meeting and General Aziz is the guy that came back and you're like, What the hell? But so he did a bunch of this kind of stuff and it was actually very, very effective. And we also we the United States did not consider we thought people will surrender or they won't. We actually hadn't considered the third course of action where what if they just desert? What if they all just take off the uniforms and run away? And that's actually predominantly what happened.

But so in our message to tell them to surrender, this is actually one of my favorite weirdo stories, you know, the United States is doing its thing. We're we're sending radio broadcasts, we're probably dropping leaflets, whatever. And the the Kurds, as we're getting to know our Kurdish counterparts, and this is actually the Kurdish underground telling me this, they're like, Hey, why did you guys do it that way? And we're like, What do you mean? And this is a l it's an interesting cultural dynamic, the language barrier thing.

because Arabs are like this, Kurds are like this. They're not gonna insult you and say what you're doing is wrong. They're gonna hint two or three times, you know. I don't know if that was the best way to do it. I don't even think they would say it that harshly. a good friend of mine who's an Arab explained this to me years later. He's like, I come to your house and I and you ask me if I want to coke, and I say no. Of course I want to coke, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna take it on the first offer. That's rude.

And then you Americans don't come back and ask me if I want to coke again and I never get a drink. And like that's one of my favorite lessons from an Arab friend of mine. He goes, Of course I want to coke, but I'm not going to say yes. It's they don't want to offend you. So it's the same thing here. So one of the Kurdish guys goes, I don't understand why you're doing it that way. And we said, What do you mean? He goes, It's not don't it's not important. Don't worry about it. And that was a cue for us, but there's obviously something concerning. It took us three times to come back and go, What is the issue? And finally he goes, We look.

We know you hate the Iraqis. We just wouldn't do it that way. And we're like, honestly, we don't know what you're talking about. And he goes, Why are you making fun of them? Why are you taunting them? And we're like, You mean the the the surrender message? He goes, Yeah. He goes, We assumed your goal was to not get any of them to surrender. And what he tells us is the way you're saying it, from our perspective, we thought we were saying it professionally and polite. The way they're interpreting it as it's effeminate.

You know, like we're saying, hey, I would like you to consider surrendering. That's horrifyingly offensive to them. 'Cause like consider surrendering. What kind of man do you think I am? I c I should I should decide to surrender? That's you think I'm a coward? That's the way they took it. Where they're saying, No, no, you should tell them you have no choice, you must surrender. They're like a man can accept that like, this is actually really and they also said something to the effect of the grammar you're using is is also somewhat

Again, while we think it's formal and polite, it's coming across as effeminate. So it's like we're making fun of they said, No man, if he wanted to could accept this surrender. So like that's useful feedback. they they also told us and Iraqi vets from the day may remember this. There was a lot of weird accounts after the invasion where we found jet fighters buried. Do you remember that? Like

speaker-1 (57:23)
I I remember hearing something about that but I never got any more details. Yeah.

speaker-0 (57:27)
Of it. And we and when it all when we found this stuff, we're like, so weird. They're burying their equipment. And they told us afterwards, they're like, you you told us to bury it. Like, what are you talking about? Like the message is said buried. We're like, no, it says abandoned. Like, no, that word is is buried. And we're like, man, Arabic is apparently really tricky. Yeah,

speaker-1 (57:44)
Wow.

speaker-0 (57:46)
so like that's you know, okay, so we got a word wrong in the message. And then when I say us, this is this is

the US military. This isn't the special forces. This isn't us. We're just the we're just on the f receiving end of it. We're getting some feedback. So that's that part of it. The the good stuff that you're hinting at we did when everything was falling apart and you know we don't get the assets we need

one of my young PsyOps soldiers one day just goes, Hey, I've got a loudspeaker and a and I'll say a cassette, I don't know if it was a cassette or a C D or whatever it was, but he goes, I got a cassette with tank noises on it And we're like, okay, this is like the stupidest idea I've ever heard but we're like, so let's do it. He sets up his loud speaker on a hilltop about a kilometer from the Iraqi forces and we just played tank noises all night. I have no idea, you know, did that actually contribute to breaking them around 'cause they did collapse the next day. Like they freaked out and it became a route where they're all like retreating.

But but it cost me nothing, you know, to just broadcast tank noises and just mess with them all night. and that's because the actual American tanks had broken down like forty kilometers from where we were and couldn't get to us, so it was very frustrating. and there's other things. there's one particular strike we did, we did a an air strike that was very, very successful because it was raining and the bulk of the Iraqis were sitting in their bunkers.

So it was it was a much more lethal strike than under normal conditions it would have been. but we we ca so that was great, but we took the opportunity to capitalize that because then we know that an airstrike took place. They know there are Americans here. so instead of now hiding, we're gonna communicate with them. And communicating with them is very easy because every single Kurd has an Iraqi person in his cell phone.

So if I tell the Kurds, hey, can you get this message to that Iraqi unit ten kilometers away? They're Yeah, absolutely. And like they're literally dialing a guy they know.

speaker-1 (59:37)
Wow.

speaker-0 (59:37)
But the message we conveyed was, hey, let them and then remember now I said the surrender message is happening, but it's not no one's taking it and we don't know why. So we're like, Okay, tell that unit that we don't want to kill them all, but we can kill them all at any time. Not a true statement.

But based on the strike last night, you might think that. We're like, we want them to surrender but if they don't, we will kill them all. And we also said the reason we killed that unit last night, a and this is tr somewhat true, but what I'm about to say is true, it's not why we did it. The day before that unit had killed a Kurdish woman at a checkpoint, 'cause pe Kurdish people go back and forth across the lines, like, you know, delivering food and stuff like that, she got caught smuggling a jar of gasoline.

'cause I guess gasoline was contraband or something to that effect. So they they took the jar, poured it on her, lit on fire, and she died. that's you know typical for those days on fire. Yeah. But the Kurds told us this and we're like, hey, let's tell that unit that atrocities like that against the population are not acceptable and we killed that unit in response to them killing that woman. Don't do that. Not acceptable anymore. We want you to surrender

So there's you there's a couple of and it's like what we're doing is we're amplifying the true lethality of what we can really do with we're now and this this is the true power of PSYOPS. As I said before, killing someone is very quantifiable black and white. You know, I don't want to make it sound like it's easy, it's not, but convincing someone their situation is hopeless, that's actually way more powerful. And this is that's the game we are now going to play. I'm going to do some lethal things, but I'm also arguably going to convince you

Your situation is completely when we weren't getting the surrender message, we started to convey to the units, Have you seen your officers recently? You know, and the I actually I know the answer is you haven't. I'm like, and we're telling them, they have abandoned you. Why are you going to die for them? If if you think I'm not telling you the truth, go find your officer. You know, and now we're telling them you should abandon your position. You should run for it.

We you know, we would say things like Saddam is finished, Saddam's time is done. One of my favorite things we did, if folks don't remember from the original Gulf War, we were very worried about environmental disasters. Like Saddam told them in the south during the Gulf War to set the oil walls on fire, which caused tremendous, tremendous problems. We bombarded the Iraqi army through the underground

any cell phone messages if you will, do not conduct, do not follow, you know, those kinds of orders. Because we know who you are. So like if you think you're gonna follow Saddam's orders to blow up the oil well or launch chemical weapons, we would his time is done. You have to know that. And you will be held to account afterwards, general so and so. Like we'd say guys names, you know, to make a point, we are watching you and we know who you are. Do not do it. And then we actually said, take matters into your own hands.

Do the right thing for the Iraqi people, protect the infrastructure for the future of Iraq. And actually this is one of something I think I I I enjoyed quite lot. We sent, we crafted a letter written in English on one side, Arabic on the other. And and this goes back to they know we're here, the jigism, so to speak. So let's take advantage of it. And we now told them this is what I refer to as the telemarketer letter.

Where we literally wrote it with a fill in a blank and said, You know, dear general, fill your name in here. You are a highly respected leader within the Iraqi army. We have deliberately chosen you. But this offer is limited. You must act soon. We want you to join our side and saying we want you to be a part of Iraq's future. Please do the right thing for you and your pe your or your men, your forces, contact us. And we have like six ways to contact us.

we got very little feedback from that. Like it we because Saddam was doing his thing. But that was actually we we sent those letters through the underground to just drop them all over, you know, Iraqi units. And when we weren't getting the feedback, that's when we changed it to okay, your officers have abandoned you. Have you seen them? They and we were telling them and I this turned out to be very true, we're like they all have plans to flee to Syria, which is largely true.

And when we did, as I said, take Kirk Cook, we captured hundreds of guys. Every guy we captured was someone who had no place to run to. We largely got no officers, we got lower enlisted, and many of them were not from Iraq. I don't want to use the term foreign fighters because that that conjures up like you know terrorists, but we got like knuckleheads that came to help fight with the Iraqi army from Lebanon, Syria, you know, nearby Arabic countries.

And they didn't have relatives to take their uniform on and flee to the next town over. Any Iraqi who did, that's what they did.

speaker-1 (1:04:18)
Yeah. And I remember that scene specifically and that's s something I put in my notes. telling the Peshmergas not to take their tanks. You mentioned that already with them getting stuck.

speaker-0 (1:04:30)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (1:04:31)
those were American tanks. Right, right. Okay. And and they but they kept getting stuck and then you'd have to leave people to guard those and each time you you essentially end up being you know, like a babysitter and you're

You're constantly having to tell them and educate them and then they do it anyways and you're like, this is the fourth time that you've seen you or your buddies put their hand on the stove and everybody gets burned and here we are.

speaker-0 (1:05:00)
Topic. So the 173rd Airborne Brigade from Vicenza Italy, great, great organization, great unit. We didn't have a great relationship with them. You know, that's just the way it is. We went to Italy before the invasion to to meet with them and get to and it went terribly. Like that was the first sense that they're like, they don't want to hear anything we've got to say, they just want to argue with us. they wanted to argue that they wanted to be in charge. It was really, really weird. So now we're on the ground, we've been on the ground for months.

and they parachuted into Bashur Airfield, which is where they parachute into. And that's fine, you know. The entire purpose of them parachuting in was to then airland C seventeens that you know the next day and bring in four M1 tanks and I think th eleven one one three armored vehicles.

which was called the Merck, the Medium Response Company from probably Savannah. From the eighteenth Airborne Corps. so theoretically that little bit of combat power was like the whole purpose of the jump and now we had this conventional armor company. So we're like, Okay, whatever, that's been weird how we got here, but you know, you're here now, let's go do some good stuff. They refused to leave the airfield because they for whatever reason, they were convinced their mission was to hold the airfield at all costs. You know. and I'm like, Well the airfield's in our hands, like it's been in our hands for

ever. it's not in danger. It's forty kilometers from the front line that we're fighting on. But they so there was a real reluctance or lack of understanding of the situation, what they needed to do. When we finally compelled them to please join us, you know, going west, they didn't take the roads we recommended. And to the point where when they showed us on the map where they were like we wanted them to drive right down the main highway. It was like an eight lane highway.

When they showed us the routes they took, it was literally dotted lines that that that switched back on maps and we were like, What are you thinking? And like, what do you mean? We're What do What do I mean? It's a switchback mountain road, and sure enough, that tank broke down on that one. And I like every ten kilometers, a tank would break down or get stuck, and they have to leave two one one threes to guard the tank. And I you know, no offense to my conventional brothers, God bless I love But that's kinda why

No mechanized or tank forces, armored forces got into the fight. And and that's that's actually the event that leads to the guy playing the

speaker-1 (1:07:12)
Exactly. Yeah. And that's what made me think of that because I wanted to mention that how frustrating that was for you where you're sitting here telling these guys, no, you just need to get on the road, you just need to do it this way, and they're not listening to you. Yeah, that that had to be super frustrating. And and this I think is another thing where it kind of hops back and forth in your in the full story where you're dealing with regular conventional

soldiers and and or a general and he can't find his helmet and you're and you're share right and it's sergeant majors and colonels and they're keep asking hey where's the general's helmet? Where's the general's helmet? And it's this like goofy thing where home alone where they keep where's Kevin? Where's Kevin? Where's Kevin? He's not here. He's not here and it goes back and you're just like w why is it me why would I know where the general's helmet is and then these guys come back, watch your tone. Yeah that's one of the

speaker-0 (1:08:07)
snarkiest

stories I have in the book that's a hundred percent accurate. Like that's you know, I laugh every time I read it. I almost don't

speaker-1 (1:08:16)
Absolutely, absolutely. I w I don't wanna spoil it for you, but my point is with that story specifically is right, the the sentiment is effing special forces. Like they have this in that moment, these people have this like disdain for I can't just like you're not my my little aunt that is supposed to be doing what I you should be watching my helmet.

speaker-0 (1:08:40)
And I get that. I will always point out at my core

I'm an infantry guy. Like meaning, hey, I used to be an infantry guy. And that that's actually like the identity that I still hold at my core because I love being an infantry guy. I love for Benning. You know, like that's that's where I came from. and as a result, I'm a conve you know, there's a conventional guy in here too. So I'm not like some from some other team. and I do I don't like it. I regret it when I see conventional forces like demonstrate this lack of willingness to work with special forces. But I also know in the back of my mind, you've had a bad experience.

With one of my peers who probably you're probably accurate that he did something stupid, you know, like there's plenty of dumb things, you know, special forces guys can do. Like meaning, okay, the the reason if I'm working with Kurds, the reason I'm gonna put on their uniform and grow a mustache and maybe wear a Kurdish neck scarf is because that's the way they're dressed. And it does have a ability to build mental rapport that I look like you, we look the same. And also there's an obsec value to it that it's keeping me safe because you can't identify me from a hundred meters out.

That operational logic should also extend to, we gotta go talk to the guys from the 82nd Airborne, the 173rd. They want to tone some of that stuff down. And I said it this is a real thing. guys, younger guys without good mentorship and experience will roll into the conventional headquarters with all of their weirdo accoutrements because it feels kind of cool. Like everybody knows I'm special and that's you know, it's a d it's a real mental dynamic that needs to be trained out of them of hey.

For the same reason we put the scarf on when I'm working with them, take it off and we go in there. You don't need to wear the scarf in their cock. I know you want to, because you want them all to look at you and go, look at those special forces guys. But the worst thing you can do, it's what I call the hybrid operator, where you have things on you that look indigenous, like your beard, like your scarf, but you're wearing a baseball hat and you got the coolest looking weapon I've ever seen, and you also have like a you know, some weird patch. Yeah,

speaker-1 (1:10:36)
Reflective Oakley's

speaker-0 (1:10:38)
right. It's like you're mixing and matching two worlds.

and it's not having utility for either one. It it's really it's an education one. Be the professional special operator where you can turn it on and off based on your you know your audience. That's that's when you've arrived. That's when you're actually a real operator.

speaker-1 (1:10:55)
Will say this from being in the special operations compound, and I was on the task force the entire time I was in. So it was strange to me because you see those guys that are coming in, and of course, I know who's the CAG guys, I know who's who's them, DevGru, and those those were the only SEALs I worked with was Dev. we didn't work with them much because it's primarily CAG. The SF guys. Now that's the one thing that I never worked with special forces, other than, right.

Cag. So you would see a cag guy and the guys that that we would see, it's it's it's almost more eerie when they're in a complete uniform, looks completely clean, but they have this lumberjack beard and they're just like you can see that they're so suntanned from having spent so much time in the sun and they're out there wearing, you know, their little reflect the reflective okie's are the one thing you have to do. That is more eerie to me than

The guy who walks up and he's in total peshmirga. And and I had a special forces guy come up to the compound because they weren't allowed into our so-com compound. They just didn't have the authority to go through. And so this E7 is asking me if I know a guy, and I'm a PFC, right, in Ranger Regiment in Afghanistan. And he's standing outside the gate, like, hey, is you know, the Delta guy, so and so that I went through training with, and he had moved moved on to Delta.

And it was such a weird feeling for me to be like, I'm a PFC, you're a seven, you got a lumberjack beard, but you're not allowed to come in here. And it for me it was frustrating because I thought that for sure those were gonna be guys I would get to work with, the A teams, right? Not exactly I didn't think Mr. T would be there, but I thought the same thing. I'm gonna see f I'm gonna see face. I'm gonna see all these other characters that I grew up with and loved about special forces, but I never got to work with those guys. It was only ever

The CAG, the those guys that that were a part of the task force. Was that ever something did you guys ever do anything with task force yourself or anything like that?

speaker-0 (1:13:03)
Not too much. as Iraq more so Iraq my experience is more in Iraq I served I did a tour in Afghanistan, but I did multiple in Iraq and longer tours in Iraq. As Iraq started to develop around two thousand four, the the coin the counterinsurgency part of it started develop.

Task Force had a strike force, seven one four that used to go out and just, you know, do great strikes. And they were doing th I won't say they were doing so well, but there was so much work, they did turn to the special forces community and said, Hey, do you a force that you can chop over to me? Which we did. We used to have the companies we used to have specialized companies called the CIFs and CRIFS. and that company chopped in half and half of it was literally chopped to the task force to do unilateral strikes, and the other half

became the advisory c component that worked that created and advised the thing called Iraqi ICTF and Iraqi commandos, which was a phenomenal Iraqi unit that like it's it's as good as they ever got like the I mean incredible how good they were. But we that's the only time we were really doing the same stuff as the CAD guys. Like we were 100% integrated with them. we were actually those guys were actually chopped them under their control.

speaker-1 (1:14:17)
Wow, that's fascinating. So that was something else that I that I thought of too as you guys were training these indigenous forces and I was gonna ask you at what not obviously to say they were like at the level of being infantrymen or what level would you say was the best that we were able to train up the Iraq Iraqi special forces during your time?

speaker-0 (1:14:40)
Look here's deal. Their forces were good. You know, and that's that's actually a really interesting question because like if anybody's got when you fight a war, we we've done this in every war. We we create derogatory terms for the enemy because it's gonna be easier for us to mentally

speaker-1 (1:14:55)
The others

speaker-0 (1:14:56)
in some, you know, derogatory term. and we tend to think they're not good fighters. And then as we get to know them we're like, they're exactly like us. Like they're if they have good training and good discipline and good leadership, son of a gun, they're good units. And like the the top one we ever built was called the Iraqi Counterterrorist Force, the ICTF. I mean

Now, it's funny because we often criticize ourselves that like we can't make them in our image. we cloned ourselves. Like they dressed like us, they acted like us, they joked around like us, they they looked a hundred percent like us. They were outfitted with all of the exact same equipment as us and and I would tell you, I mean, the ICTF was as proficient as our SIFs were. a lot of people don't know this, but so the CIF the Special Forces SIFs used to have a

speaker-1 (1:15:43)
What does that stand for?

speaker-0 (1:15:44)
Commanders in extremist force. they were disbanded a few years ago, unfortunately. they kind of brought them back recently, but it's not exactly the same thing. But they were a specialized company that had higher higher level direct action skills and a hostage rescue requirement. And you know, it it started from being from having forward station forces in Stuttgart and Okinawa and once upon a time in Panama. Like they were already forward, so it made sense for them to have a hostage rescue requirement or capability. They were really, really proficient.

the it I that's what I did as a team leader in Stukar. The degree of extra training you got was massive compared to the rest of the special forces committee. So it it did make you better. with so people don't know th it's not well known, but in the latter years of Iraq, I wanna say like two thousand ten, maybe eleven, there was a hostage a terrorist hostage event in Baghdad where I can't remember who they were, it doesn't matter if they were

Al Qaeda or or Jam. But they took over a Christian church in Baghdad. Had like a hundred hostages, you know, tied up in this church. The ICTF responded without our like they did everything, they didn't wait for us. The the friend of mine was the company commander that was advising them, and he was at dinner with the counterpart company commander, and they got word their beavers went off and they responded and they did a a as complex of a hostage rescue scenario as you could possibly imagine. They executed it.

Lawlessly. You

speaker-1 (1:17:13)
Why?

speaker-0 (1:17:14)
know, to the point where there were suicide bombers in the church waiting to detonate themselves and they successfully assaulted, killed all of the suicide bombers before they were able to actually detonate. You know, and they did all of this without our assistance. So when I say they were well trained, yeah, they're

speaker-1 (1:17:29)
Wow.

speaker-0 (1:17:30)
so that was the ICTF. The commandos were a notch below them, but also super proficient. And like in Iraqi lingo, the commandos are their rangers. Like

They're just they are good. They they they can crush the enemy. And we built so there was one ICTF battalion in Baghdad. We had a commando battalion in Baghdad, a couple of other supporting like Reqi, there was a Reiki company that was really sophisticated. and then we have because it was such a successful model, we built a commando battalion in Mosul, we built a commando battalion in Basra, we built a commando battalion out west somewhere, I can't remember where. So they became like regional and they were just wreaking havoc on the enemy.

speaker-1 (1:18:10)
Wow. And I and this was gonna be my my question because of your experience in the Q course, right? You were a s you were a selection instructor with SF. The officer phase. Okay. So you were you were doing only the officers. so with having gone through that experience and then working with the Iraqis at their highest level of guys, what parallel what what commonalities did you see between the soldiers that would succeed

going through your course and the Iraqis that were going through their commando course and those things.

speaker-0 (1:18:44)
guys who spend a lot of their time working hand to hand with guys. You know, if you have any cultural misperceptions, like, well, they're not as good as they're exactly as good as us. They they have guys that suck and they have guys that are just pure fierce warriors that are disciplined and smart and good leaders. And like same thing. It's weird because this let's say the counter I'm talking the counterinsurgency years. This war's been going on for five years. Yeah. And it's been, you know, bumpy to say the least. If there's an Iraqi commander

He's there 'cause he's good. You know what I mean? Like like who do you think is a Raqki commander five years into this war? Nobody is calling their cousin in the government to be like, Can I get a command? Like nobody wants that. And there's one guy I'm thinking of, his name was General Boss. He was the commander of the Hill of SWAT. So in addition to the thing called the ICTF, which is a battalion, and the five or six commando battalions we built, we also built about thirty to thirty five what we call the Raqqi SWAT units.

And they range from maybe company battalion size and they're in every single

speaker-1 (1:19:46)
And company just for people that aren't familiar with how large is a company, how large is a battalion. Okay.

speaker-0 (1:19:51)
Sixty sixty members. Yeah, it's

probably anywhere from like sixty to a hundred fifty Iraqi soldiers. And they're we call them I SWATs, Iraqi SWAT. They're just like police SWAT units. Not quite trained as high as the commandos, but nevertheless still pretty proficient. And they know the territory. This is their town. You know, so that's that's a huge thing. So they all have special forces ODAs or in some cases SEAL platoons attached them as their trainers and advisors.

And just doing great stuff. So this is lost in a lot of the conventionals. And I do talk about it a little bit in the book, because it's not really well documented anywhere. we, special forces, and I when I say special forces in this context, we had SEALs attached to us. They're in there in this batch too. We're providing easily a division worth, you know, of combat power to the the coalition's efforts with indigenous SWAT commando and Iraqi counterterrorist force. So it's massive this

this this force multiplier if you will. and like I said, th there w you find guys that have just either risen through the ranks, probably even more so than the American military, because again, we're in combat. Like it's pure combat for them. If you are if you became the commander of the so-and-so unit, it's because you're dedicated, you're patriotic in your own right. I can't tell you every veteran has these stories. The guy that you like that you worked with, you found that they were doing it and you're like, why are you doing this?

You know, and he he says things that are like more patriotic than anything you've ever heard. He's like, I'm doing it for my family. I'm doing it so my son has a future. And that like you when you experience that, it does change you a little bit to realize, you know, hey, these are these are good people. They they have the same values we do for the most part. They want something better for their family. If it seems like they didn't act like that one or two years ago, it's probably because they felt like they had no hope. There was no option, there was no route.

For a better life. Once they saw a round for a better life, a swath of the population has now decided this is what I want. And they're willing to risk their lives to fight for it. It's really it's powerful when you when you're there. Like this this guy's not getting a medal. He's probably not getting retirement. His his only path to success is crafting a better government. You know, so it's it's it's really impressive.

speaker-1 (1:22:03)
And

like I and going back to that question as far as commonalities between the the ones that were successful, again for you know, young men that are that are watching this right now, what would you say are some common traits that you've seen between the Iraqis that are right, because their situation is very dire. An American has many, many options. Yeah.

speaker-0 (1:22:23)
well y the a simple answer is some of it is a little bit of luck at the draw, like did they have just like when you join the military, did you get into a I don't want to say a system, but like were there people who are good trainers, good good mentors, good examples? If they have those things, it it will trickle down. And hopefully at least the special forces guys like we were providing that, hopefully in most cases, if not all cases. and that resonates throughout the force. Now I will say

In two thousand and twelve, right after we sort of met you know, our main withdrawal from Iraq, we did start to see more of the he's putting his cousin in charge of the battalion. And we we did the best we could to stop that kind of stuff and stop and we stopped a lot of it, some of it we didn't stop unfortunately. So that's that's bad. But pr the the training that makes an American soldier good is exactly the same. Like

Imagine if you were an Iraqi, right? You've never even imagined having the kind of training and equipment that we have. But now I give it to you. And and you you're also like a little bit touched that you you know, they they thought we would never we would never give them the good equipment, that kind of thing. But we do.

And then also like, and by the way, when we do something, I'm gonna be right next to you. You know, and when we gave our guys permission to accompany forces, the ICTF as an example, the Iraqi counter-terrorist force, if we knew they had a particularly complex mission and we were concerned, for the most part, our concerns were, you know, like a nervous parent. Like they've got it, but we would make a decision, and when I say we, I wasn't, I was doing something else. I wasn't one of the guys running with the ICTF, but I had a lot of friends that did.

They would put on Iraqi uniforms and mix into the stack with them. Now, don't ask me why. The uniform that the Iraqi counter-terrorists for was laffian camouflage. I can't explain why. It's really cool, actually. But like it was different than the regular Iraqi military, which which did kind of s distinguish them as elite forces. But, you know, again, if it was a really bad target, like in the case of some of the targets they did in Sadr City or Karbala or Najab, we would have our guys dressed like them and every fourth guy would be an American.

And we would just mix in with them. That kind of confidence and trust is is immeasurable. And

speaker-1 (1:24:34)
Absolutely.

speaker-0 (1:24:34)
so so I say four years later, when they did that mission a hundred percent of their own. And by the way, you know, the latter years too in Iraq, like they were the thing that they were the glue. The the all of these forces were called ISOF later, in the ISOF Brigade. ISOF Brigade is the thing that held Iraq together in the latter years against ISIS. They took massive casualties, but I mean they truly

really held the country together. I i all the stories you've heard about about the Iraqi military falling apart on ISIS, the ISOP did. The ISOP stood their ground and took massive casualties. I mean they really are heroes to the Iraqi nation. and and we have our fingerprints on that.

speaker-1 (1:25:12)
That's awesome. And and that's one of the things I think as I'm reading through your book is it gives you that it gives you that feeling like like you just said, you guys were really giving it your all and these the ones that you're working with are receptive to that and they're really putting forth that effort. Obviously I think there's a lot of YouTube videos that have gone around with many, many millions of views where you see the contractor trainers trying to train them to do jumping jacks.

And there's fifty of them and not a not a single one of them can can coordinate their body enough to do a single jumping jack on time. but then I and there I want to bring this up because you also see the the time where the Iraqi is trying to hand his Kurdish guy's trying to hand his rifle off to the guy accidentally shoots him. Right, ADs. That literally happened in Afghanistan and Bagram where I was at, and it was a Marine doing, you know, hands his rifle off to another Marine and ends up

shooting him in the face and killing him right there. I didn't witness this. They just told us like, hey, if you're going to chow, it's all blocked off right now. This is what just happened. And then the and I want to bring this up with it, the three third special forces guys that AD the automatic automatic grenade launcher Mark nineteen twice near the the aid station. And just the the reality is that those types of things do happen. Now

As we all know, the standard is the standard. If you're in the Rangers, you do it one time, you're gone. You guys are also dealing having to deal with that with these Kurds and with people that haven't that didn't sign up to be special ops, that didn't sign up for all these things, and you're trying to make sure they don't accidentally shoot themselves or somebody else, but that's something that tends to come another A D, another A D, this guy accidentally shoots himself in the thigh. That type of thing was something you guys always had to work with and overcome.

speaker-0 (1:27:08)
Parts of I'm to talk about the Americans first. So there's obviously stu at least one story, if not maybe a couple stories in book, where one of my sister's special forces units, you know, has some bad events. Okay, let me clarify this for folks. That you know, because I d I do have some friends, for the most part we've joked about this. that's a period in time. So, like, okay, if that guy did something bad, it does not mean in perpetuity.

speaker-1 (1:27:32)
Exactly.

speaker-0 (1:27:33)
Forces

Group is terrible. Ten special forces group is great. It means that that individual in time, coincidentally who assigned to that unit, didn't do a good job. You know, these are all great units, you know, people who do bad things it's just the way it is. Or, you know, who to do something regrettable.

So there's a there's a story in the in the book where a team has a couple of accidental discharges with the Marcantino my compound. You know, not super happy about that. And then later they act same team accidentally fires a star cluster into one of their guys' faces. if anybody's wondering what that if I have to explain that. So absolutely for my friend

speaker-1 (1:28:08)
Please do.

speaker-0 (1:28:09)
So a star cluster is like a metal tube about the size of the cardboard inside a paper towel, roll of paper towels, and it's a handheld flare.

And it's designed that when you open it up, you take the cap off, the cap has a firing pin on it, you put it on the backside, and you hit it, it fires the flare. This individual at the time was employing and it's also worth noting, in 2003, war is still a novelty. Like meaning we're all learning things, but but we don't have twenty years of combat experience. So like we're so subsequently, sometimes some of the things that we think are good ideas turn out to be stupid ideas. In this case, the individual thought that pre-priming a star cluster was a good combat technique because it would be ready.

And th there was a popular backpack at that time that had a specific tube for a star cluster, which by the way is a really stupid idea. 'cause if a star s if a star cluster gets hit with a round, you're not going to appreciate what it looks like, you know, burning on your back. But so he loaded it into that side pocket and then when they were loading their RuxX into the vehicles, he hit it and it fired and hit him right in the face. Fortunately he had a pair of oakies on and that actually diverted a tremendous amount of it.

and then there was also an incident, same team, where they tried to call close air support on one of my teams and we got into a massive argument over that. and I subsequently ended up throwing them out my sector. and I make that point again that hey, nobody who's from one unit or the other should take offense to that. It's you should take offense to those guys. they could have been from my unit, they could have been from somewhere else. You know, that's just the way it worked out. with regard to the indigenous forces and accidental discharges, this is a really interesting point.

'Cause I've worked with a lot of foreign militaries and I don't think we as Americans we take for granted even even the most conventional part of the military. Well actually that may be a bad example where we've we've taught young soldiers to be terrified of their weapons. Right. but we do a good job of hey, the front of the weapon where the bullet comes out, don't ever casually point at anybody. You know, we do pretty good at that in the American military. And I didn't realize how how much of that until I started working with other militaries, regular militaries, like massively

Waving their weapons in front of me, you know, really, really weird stuff. Then you get irregular forces like this or Iraqi forces during the counterinsurgence years, and it's rampant. Rampant. And if for anybody who doesn't know, an AK forty seven, I would go so far as to say it doesn't have a safety. It kinda does, but it kinda doesn't. So it's very common that your AK forty seven, you know, is for lack of a term, hot at all times.

And you're wearing it on your side and you know, it's it's really not unusual for the trigger to get tapped on something and it fires. And ninety percent of accidental discharges go into your thigh. Just the way it is. there's a a different event in the book I talk about where literally the police, the Iraqi police were sent to go do combat stuff. And they were probably all issued AK forty sevens and they're not familiar with AK forty sevens, and they were literally having accidental discharges every hour. And I was one of the guys having to deal with

literally for the first day you'd hear a shot and you'd respond like it was a sniper. After the tenth time you'd hear a shot and be Okay, let's go see who shot themselves and and we'd have to go patch their leg up and you we'd deal with it. But there is one there was one regrettable story where the the team leader, Captain Joe Locke, they just briefed a nighttime attack plan and it was a it's a great story, it was a good plan. They were just getting ready to move out to to you know, this is Ranger School. We're you know, they're about to kick off and

move through the lines, go into a single file and move to the attack position. And he says to the Kurdish commander, Hey, could you just do me a favor and like stress to your guys to just be careful with muzzle awareness? I we're just we're a little uncomfortable. The guys are being a little a little careless. And the Kurdish commander says, no, absolutely, absolutely. And as he says that, literally a shot rings out from twenty feet away from them and one young Kurdish, you know, I'm gonna say private accidentally shot his best friend and killed him. And like you you want to talk about

morale just being sucked out of everyone before a very important combat nighttime operation. and the Kurds you know, the Kurds almost kicked it off like an SOP where I don't I don't know if I explained this in the book. They the punishment for the guy who accidentally shot

speaker-1 (1:32:23)
You did.

speaker-0 (1:32:24)
was to it sounds very I don't mean it to sound as brutal as this, but they they you know, like we would put a body in a body back.

They don't have body bags. So they rolled him up in a rug. Rugs are something they have an abundance of. So they rolled him up in a rug, put him put the rug in the back of the car, and he had to transport his body back to his friend's home and explain what happened. That was his punishment. it was really interesting to watch. It was I mean a horrible event. but it makes that point again of like accidental discharges with foreign soldiers and AK forty sevens is so rampant, it's actually pretty crazy.

speaker-1 (1:32:57)
That's wild. And and that's what I thought of while I was listening to that is I put myself in that position because as a police officer years later, I was having to do death notifications. And so I thought, Man, if I was the cause of this death and now I have to go knock on this guy's door at two A. let him know that his nineteen year old son just died and it's my fault and I have to tell him why I accidentally how I accidentally killed the this person who's my friend.

speaker-0 (1:33:25)
Lack of training. So like when someone's being careless, they don't know they're being careless. It's just that's the way they're raised. And this isn't in the book. This is one of the weird stories I actually remembered that I I it didn't make it into the book for whatever reason. The the battalion commander I was working with, Lieutenant Colonel Kentovo, we both come in a few weeks before the invasion. And we're we've been we've infiltrated to assure them that the American effort's not falling apart. Like we have to show them some confidence. Like, look, they sent two officers in.

And we have a good meeting with them. It's great. You know, our first we would call the first meeting with the guerrilla chief. We're meeting with the top Kurdish guy. And to solidify this relationship, they want to present Colonel Tobo with a special Saddam pistol. So they they break out this pistol and they make a point that it's got Saddam's special crest on the thing. And and and he and I still actually laugh about this. When they're like, they're explaining this pistol. This is all this pistol is

is only carried by his elite forces. It's all this pistol is very, very special. And like we are very comfortably like we're like, that's that's really and we we look we probably look ridiculous like that we're squirming. And it's almost like and they're not doing it deliberately. But it seems like, my God, they cannot help but point it at us like as if it's somehow you really need to see what it looks like from the front. And if this goes on for like at least a minute of them just saying this pistol, this pistol is only carried by so finally

They hand him the pistol, he hands it to me, they step away, he and I, you know, he and I just kind of look each other. I slide it back, yeah, it's loaded. and we both joke that we're like, yeah, not only is it loaded, I'm sure the guy who loaded it thought his day was gonna go a lot differently that day. Meaning like it was loaded by an Iraqi commander, someone they killed on the battlefield, God knows when, they've never thought to unload it or clear it.

They just took his pistol as a war trophy and now they're giving it to And like I'm like, Yeah, the guy who loaded that pistol, his day went very differently than me.

speaker-1 (1:35:20)
Yeah. Wow. That is a awesome story. And and it just reminds me of that actually happened. I was trying to train my wife right before she leaves for Marine Corps boot camp. And we just go to the gun range and she's right in front of me. I'm standing right behind I'm hugging her back and somebody drops a broom and it slams and inside there it echoes so loud. I thought somebody AD'd behind me. I do this and I see what it is. Okay, cool. I turn around, she has the gun in my chest, touching almost touching my chest, not touching it.

with her finger on the trigger and said, I don't want to shoot this anymore. Glad to hear that. And I I I instantly thought I should I should move and grab it and then take the ranger reflex. It's the ranger reflex. But then you will but then I s I was just like, if I do that, she's gonna accidentally shoot me. So I slowly grabbed it and just held death gripped the barrel and the slide and took her hand off. I said, go sit down. And that's when she realized what she had just done. That that I can't even imagine sitting there

Doing this while it's a loaded forty five. I had the same thing years ago. Heart racing

speaker-0 (1:36:24)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (1:36:25)
just hearing that story.

speaker-0 (1:36:26)
I d it was it was a I'm not gonna say what country, but it was a s a a an international special forces guy and he was showing off the pistol that his family gave him for graduation and he took it out and same thing. Like it seems like he cannot stop pointing at us to the point where when he was saying what a great pistol, I love this pistol. This pistol's great he even like checked yeah, no, yeah, it is loaded. I just want to make sure it's loaded. And, you know, we both were like, We're we're trying to keep cool. Like, yeah, I love those. That that's a great pistol.

speaker-1 (1:36:55)
Yeah. Yeah. But I and I wanted to bring that story up specifically because that was something that stuck in my brain rent-free was this that that special forces guys had AD'd these Mark Nineteen. I don't want anybody to come away from reading your book and think that exactly what you just said, and that's why I wanted you to say it again here, plainly is, you know, you're you're obviously not putting down the third special forces group or any soldier. It's the reality of what happens in a combat scenario.

We're good, highly trained people. And that was my point. The same as my wife. My wife goes on to shoot the same qualification almost perfect from the 500-yard line without with iron sights in the Marine Corps boot camp. She knows how to do that now. It's just that's reality. That's that's something you have to deal with, though you constantly are dealing with that. in addition to it just seemed like blue on or green on green and coordinating to make sure that there are no friendly fires.

both between the Americans that are coming into the area and your right, the Kurds and these it seems like there's a section in the middle of the book where it's almost like that's what all you're doing. And you're just thinking, I feel like you're exhausted as I'm reading your words, where it's just one after another of, you know, we got to move these people because I know they're gonna accidentally fire on them and they think they're enemy and they keep trying to call in fire and you keep telling 'those are our people, quit trying to call in and they're calling on a back channel and you're like, hey

Quit trying to c kill my people.

speaker-0 (1:38:26)
Yeah, I think I'm still a little bit tired from that endeavor a couple years ago. there's a lot of examples in the in the in the story about close calls with friendly fire. And I I hope that resonates with readers how important how important it is to pay attention to that aspect. because going into it as an officer, one of my biggest concerns and I want to make I this and I don't want to sound cavalier or overly dramatic, but like for anybody so many people are combat veterans now.

But I go back back in the day when combat was a novelty. our f at least for me, my first response was you know, you when you know you're going to to this to this combat, I was not so much afraid of dying. And I don't I don't mean to make that sound cavalier. I was afraid of performing badly. Like that was truly and when I say performing badly, I mean

you know, I'm not gonna be able to deal with this if I do something that results in one of my guys' deaths. Like so so I mean that's the thing that kept me up at night. Not my God I might get killed. 'Cause not to sound cavalier again, but like if you get killed, do you get killed. I I'd love to pretend as we all have been through, like, if you're squared away, you won't get killed. It doesn't work that way. I I wish it did, but it doesn't. So you kinda tend to you're pretty good at putting that out of your mind. Like if it happens, it happens, you know, and I'm gonna do the best I can to avoid that. But the thing that I can hopefully control is

I need to be able to do my job proficiently. And as an officer, my job, you know, is not just I'm not going to say to keep the guys alive, but to execute the plan and not allow guys to accidentally shoot friendlies or something like that. so that was paramount on my mind going in. And there's probably the at least five instances where it you know was this close to it could have gone very differently. And I'm super grateful that it didn't, like that we

We pulled off all of those events by the skin of our teeth where someone was this close to sh accidentally shooting someone that they shouldn't have shot and we were able to intervene, whether it was me do stopping it or someone else. case in point. One of the one of the you know, TTPs outlined in the book, again it's actually Zero A three, Captain Joe Locke's team. on the front lines of the Green Line, he talked about how they were so physically exhausted, you know, and here's the reality. If you go to war,

Yeah, you're gonna be exhausted, like to a to a degree that is hard to fathom, you know. And they his point was we have been awake for forty eight hours, everyone is punchy. If we're gonna call a grid coordinate to an air strike, three people are gonna check the numbers. And I thought that was brilliant. And as a young captain, that he comes up with this thing like I say it, you read the numbers back, and a third guy is then recording it and repeats it. And they they instituted that by themselves and he admits we found at least twice where we were gonna we we

We in superimposed grid coordinates. And like, that's a fantastic lesson for someone to take away. How you you can't you can't try to move too quickly, you've got to be methodical and and also recognizing you're operating in a degraded status. You know, you're nervous, you're hyped up, you're exhausted, and mistakes will happen. You know, so training does help a lot of that, training and experience.

speaker-1 (1:41:28)
And and that's something this secular there there was a study done that I just recently heard of where they they did sleep deprivation training, I think it was like Sean Ryan show, and what they found was they would keep giving these guys math tests, very simple math tests and and just rudimentary things that they it lulled them with their confidence into still believing that they were getting the right answers each time and s and

Not just that they thought they were getting the right answers, they knew these were the right answers. And each time they were just getting worse and worse and worse at very simple addition, subtraction, you know, nothing crazy. And and that's what I found going to ranger school back when it was still hard, where because they had lowered my understanding is now they allow them more sleep than no sleep, because that's what I got for five days. And if you get recycled, you get to do that again and you get three

more phases of that. So I did four phases of no sleep for a week straight, five days for patrols. And yeah, exactly what you're talking about. And I remember as we're calling in things and as we're trying to do that, we would have to do the same thing where we as students are like, hey, you police me when I'm trying to make this math call here, because if we screw this up, then we all fail this patrol and we ended up calling in an airstrike on ourselves.

And I remember a real true life when I was in the Ranger Regiment, as a Ford observer, they said there were some special forces guys that in Afghanistan, and I don't know, and that's why I'm just bringing it up though because it was widely known, that they had re had to replace the batteries. But

speaker-0 (1:43:11)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-1 (1:43:12)
that was fascinating.

speaker-0 (1:43:17)
great example. So like look here's the deal. If we go to big war, like let's say we're in a state of peace and tomorrow we decide we're going to war, what happens is all of a sudden all this technology that we've been hanging on to, we dump it onto the units. Like we race to get them all this technology. And it's overwhelming because like I get it you think you're helping me but you're crushing me with all of this stuff. So when I when in 2001 when we started deploying forces to Afghanistan we're suddenly getting all of these like new GPS

The garments but we have the plungers we had had which w was the military version of a GPS was like this big. And it of course it took some odd shaped battery that fits nothing else. But

speaker-1 (1:43:56)
L shaped battery.

speaker-0 (1:43:57)
we're getting all this different equipment.

And in that case, like we were learning the hard way, things we didn't know about the equipment. What you're talking about is when the batteries ran out and you or you take the batteries out, the the display defaults back to like the last grid coordinate. So the guy was thinking he was putting in the grid there, it reset it to the grid you're at, he called the grid, and that turned out they ended up calling fire on themselves. And like that's a that's a

a good example of things you don't know if you haven't worked with equipment for a long time. So like when you're dumping all of the newest cutting edge equipment on me, it sounds great. You're you're kind of setting me up for failure because I don't know that case in point, like the guy that had the accidental discharge with the Mark nineteen. I can't say this for sure, but I have a hunch he wasn't that familiar with the Mark nineteen. Right. And I used to be a Mark nineteen veteran in the infantry. so I knew when they were like, it just had an ADM like no it didn't. It doesn't work like that. Like I know how Mark 19 works.

That kind of stuff happens when you just overload them with stuff they're not familiar with. So it's it's a really tricky balance.

speaker-1 (1:44:57)
That's awesome. And and one of the things that I wanted to bring up too was kind of going off of what we were just talking about, near misses. So you mentioned an instance in your book where a rocket hit the transformer and a few seconds later another rocket hits the side of the building where you guys were standing, looking at a map five minutes prior, and then you jumped in your vehicles and sped away. And these are the types of things that I've lived through multiple times.

And this is the part where civilians tend to check out of stories and be like, Okay, he made that up. How this near miss right.

speaker-0 (1:45:33)
This a great story of my combat prowess. So again, I'm talking about a period where look, I have some experience I had some operational experience, but not like you know, overwhelming combat. So this is a relatively new experience. So we I'm I've now infiltrated into northern Iraq. I'm dressed like a Kurd. I'm they're torn they're taking me around, showing me different parts of the battlefield, you know, there's the enemy there, there's the enemy there. So we go to this one meeting and we're in a room

We have a meeting, we talk about what we think we're gonna do next week. we walk out of the building, there's probably four hundred Kurds milling about in the street, and there's probably, you know, twenty vehicles, because the theory is after this meeting they're gonna put us in these trucks and we're gonna go drive to the front line and see the enemy positions we just talked about. In this particular case, it's mountains that are right there, high ground, that's where the enemy is. Well as it turns out, they can see us and they can see an unusual amount of traffic in vehicles.

So when we come out into the street, I didn't hear it necessarily, but a Katusha rocket was fired and I don't know if this is gonna make sense because this is an older person that but the terrible movie long time ago with Steve Martin the jerk. Mm-hmm. There's a scene where a sniper is shooting at him and the bullets keep hitting the vending machine and Steve Martin's character keeps yelling, These sodas are defective. I felt very similar to that. I th that that will resonate with a smaller audience.

But the first Katusha rocket came screaming through the air and it slammed into a transformer on a telephone pole. And it made as if you've ever heard a transformer explode, it made a particularly twangy you know, big explosion. And like we didn't jump to the ground. We all like turned and I was like, that's weird. 'cause my first thought was the transformer just exploded. What I'm talking about is probably in the difference of one second. Then the second rocket came in and I heard the swoosh on this one and it slammed

it went it was actually between the transformer that exploded and where I'm standing. It went between us and it hit the wall of the building we just walked out of and blew a hole right through the wall that shredded the desk that we just had a map on that we were all talking over. Now, this is how we've snapped out of it. Like we every every person here realizes what just happened and we're all running seemingly in opposing directions to get to you know the vehicles we want to get to.

We jump in the vehicles and I do find this kind of amusing, 'cause more rounds are coming and it's very, very chaotic now. And the youngest, you know, Kurdish Peshmerga privates that are the drivers of these vehicles, these very decrepit old pickup trucks, they had very explicit instructions, just like a ranger private that, you know, j drive to the front lines. That's what they were told before the shooting started. So now we jump in the vehicles

you know, jump in the back, jump in the front, and we scream, Go! So they follow instructions. They make the vehicle go as fast as the vehicle goes, but we are racing toward the enemy. And it's a bit surreal because I am actually literally in the back tailgate of this truck. and it's you know the unsafest driving I have ever done by far. And I'm rolling around with the other three guys in the back of the truck, and sure enough, one of the guys in the back of the truck

He intra I don't he's American, but I don't know him. He's a CIA guy and he introduces himself. He's like, Hey, I'm so and so. I'm I am I'm so and so too. Good to meet you. And like literally, as I'm peeking over the the sides of this pickup truck, I'm seeing mortar rounds hit left and right on the road, and the kid is actually doing a pretty good job of like serpentine this vehicle. But the the crazy thing is we are still driving toward the end of the game. So we get to our final destination, which is l the equivalent of like

a hilltop, they can oversee the hilltop that's shooting at us. And the shooting has somewhat stopped. We get out of the vehicles, the Kurdish guys are like, that's the enemy, to which I'm like, Nah, I think I got it. I I think I figured it out on the drive up here. And and this is actually a cool part of this too. They start to shoot at us again. And the Kurdish commander that was with us gave us a look like, it's o no, no, those aren't close. And what what he is demonstrating is an ability to hear

the whistle of the round and determine that's actually not going to be close. And then there's another one where it's going to be close and he goes, get down. Now, in my younger days, I'm like, my God, how much combat experience do you have to have to be able to do that? Well, I learned that. You know, fast forward five years later in in Iraq, I'd get rocketed and artillery so many times by the insurgent forces, I unfortunately developed that same skill.

And for listeners that may not understand, so like in the movies, older movies, when you hear the the whistle, what that is is that's the round breaking the sound barrier. It's it's literally ripping the air. Because the way it's ripping the air, much like the way bullets look in the matrix, right? You can only hear it if you are on line with the gun tube. So if you're off to the sides and you, you know, don't really hear the whistling, it's not close. If you hear the whistling and the whistling, the sound is moving, it's also called the Doppler effect.

The sound is moving faster than the round, the sound will precede the round on at least on the axis that the round is firing. That's how you know, get down, it's close. And unfortunately, in two thousand seven, I developed that same proficiency of I could tell by the sound in the air. I also was able and I'm saying this because I remember thinking about that guy. I could distinguish the sound of a mortar tube firing from three or four kilometers away. And like you said,

How do you know it wasn't someone dropping a broom or a barrel? I don't know, but I could tell the distinct because it's not loud what I'm talking about. It's like that sounds like a round. And then you'd hear the whistling, like, get down. I'm like, no one should ever have no one should ever develop that skill. But I saw that with the Kurds and then unfortunately like I said I developed it you know several years later.

speaker-1 (1:51:33)
That's awesome. So obviously that really resonates with me. as I will mention in another story. So you bring up the and it's right here. So you had three SF weapon sergeants, eighteen bravos, and one was a eleven Charlie infantry mortarman previously, one was a Ford Observer previously, and the other was a mortar instructor. And essentially it kind of warms my heart because it's like the

the roughest game of chicken ever. And the the winner gets to mention he's in Mark's book. The loser dies. Yeah. And they they take on this enemy mortar.

speaker-0 (1:52:16)
I'm now thinking of the three NCOs and very, very proud of these guys. I'm still in touch with two of them right now. so as I said before, a lot of our promises have fallen through. We feel bad about this. We hate this. And three of my NCOs, very, very good NCOs, they come to me and they said, Hey, can we go to we call it the front line. It's actually in there's two front lines, they're in both directions. This is the one that's sorted to our rear.

But they're in like the same place where that rocket attack happened I just talked about. But like, can we go out to the front line and just hang out with the Peshmerga? We want them to physically see us. And I I a hundred percent got that. Like we feel like we're letting them down. Can we at least be with them? And they they they sold it to me as we want to just go kind of see their gear, get a sense of their capabilities. I'm like a hundred percent legitimate. So they're dressed like Kurds, they go out to the front line and they go out there. They come back.

that evening and they got that look on their face that I am familiar with where they're like, Okay, let it let us explain what happened. And I'm like, what happened? And they start with, everybody's okay. I'm like, okay. and it's funny

speaker-1 (1:53:20)
Best starting ever.

speaker-0 (1:53:22)
because what they're describing to me is like, okay, don't get upset. We killed some people today. Because the war hasn't started yet. Like for us officially the war hasn't started. They went out to this Kurdish position and I'm trying to think, this is probably

a day or two after that shooting that that rocket attack at the map area that I was talking about, same place. But they went out there, they hung out with the Kurdish folks, and the Kurds showed them their equipment, and it's very what you'd expect with gorillas. It's very ad hoc. it's like a Russian mortar tube. It's got like a Chinese sight hose clamped onto it, like jerry rigged onto it, and it's Iranian mortar rounds.

You know, and you can appreciate it's like yes, technically they all sort of are the same caliber and fit together, but no one in their right mind would intentionally mix Iranian, Chinese, and Russian equipment in this in this way. And the Iranian rounds, if you understand how motor rounds work, there's a th the charge on the end is called a cheese charge. You put a certain number of them on, and that's how you know how far the round's gonna go. The charges are all rotten and old, so they just sort of jam extra ones on there. It's really, really goofy. So the guys are looking at the stuff.

And they point out the opposing enemy gun that probably the same gun that shot at us the day before. And the NCOs just said, Hey, would you guys be okay if we shoot at that gun? And again, guerrillas, you know, with that don't have a lot of training, they probably more tend to use this gun like sort of like a cannon. Like they sort of eyeball where it will land. These guys are professional trained, you know, gunners, if you will. They know how to actually adjust and and call for fire.

So I think the Kurds must have like, check this out. The stupid Americans are gonna shoot at that guy that shoots at us all the time. And they were like, sure, we're all gonna be in the bunkers. You guys have fun. So, you know, they make their adjustments, and I think everybody must have been watching. It's like it's the greatest TV show they've ever seen. And they fire around, and the round, let's say, lands 75 meters off the enemy target. Wham. Second later, the enemy fires around back. That round lands off.

But now instead of like running, the three NCOs, you know, snap into mortar crew mode and are shouting commands. One guy's doing adjustments, one guy's adjusting the gun, one guy's prepping the round, he's calling, hang it, they drop it. Second round goes out. And they do it pretty quickly. Second round goes out. And now it's you know, thirty meters off the enemy target. Now the enemy fires one back. Their round is.

thirty to forty meters off. And so like we are truly in a race, a gun battle with an opposing gun. And the third round finds its target, as we say, and they destroy the enemy crew. You know, and I'm sure as they destroyed that enemy crew, they were scrambling to get their final round out. But and in that engagement we won. And the Kurds explode cheering because you gotta put this in context. That gun has been harassing these guys for a year.

And these crazy Americans that I didn't know anything about that I was questioning their value

I think about it, they demonstrated a degree of technical proficiency that gave us instant credibility in reporting. By the way, also the way the guys handled themselves under fire, which actually is pretty cool for us because like again, we're not we're not nearly as combat experienced as all of you guys are. So we have to like make up for it by doing the best we can. And they did demonstrate proficiency under fire. So now, word goes through the entire Kurdish force like wildfire.

that these Americans have skills. These Americans have something to offer. These Americans are warriors. And like that that that made that paid giant dividends for us.

speaker-1 (1:57:00)
And I think of that because of right, we talk about the airstrikes and our lethality and our reliance on technology. This really showed a a we're gonna take it down to we're both loading, you know, handheld pistols at each other and

speaker-0 (1:57:15)
Said that because it's a human component. Like we're not only valuable to you because we have stuff, right? Like a bag of money or air power. Those are those are great things. And you'll if I bring them, you'll appreciate them. But now they're connecting with us on a human level. You're a fighter. You're a fighter, you know, that that would that can help me with the things you know, how to use my equipment. And that's super important because truly, if you aspire

to advise and train and advise a force. That's what you want. You know, you're not

You're not just blindly throwing equipment at them and hoping that they all fall in line and do whatever we say. Like you want to develop a true relationship where, you know, I respect them. I treat them like like people I respect. And they respect me as, you know, a partner in their endeavor. It's not like it's not an employee boss relationship where I you know, I make them do whatever I want. It's we are it's sure it's a partnership. And that's that's a super important dynamic for anybody listening to special forces or not to understand that when we do good things with

indigenous forces. If we did well, it's because we treated them truly like a partner, not somebody I was able to manipulate and make them do whatever I want. Like we don't we don't treat that way. And and special forces, that's a huge thing that

I would almost put it like we put a guarantee on our advising, like what I teach you is legitimate, what I advise you is legitimate, and I will make good on that by being there with you and staying committed. Sometimes we haven't been able to make good on that, you know, because we've been told we're we're ending this endeavor, but when we can, that's the value special forces NCOs really bring. Get because of their training, the kind of guys they are. that's a super important point.

speaker-1 (1:58:52)
So as you're as you're saying that, even though it's it's a little bit later on in in your book, but I want to jump forward to there was the the part where you're standing there talking with a guy and he is a commander and both of you need to come back to that one. hang on one second. I'm trying to think. This wasn't the Sons of Iraq, which the Sons of Iraq I'd never heard of, so I want to ask you about that, but

There's a point where you're talking with this guy and previous to this moment, you were able to work out with them a deal. But now the rule is surrender or die. And at that moment, like this is a heartbreaking moment like in this story where you're sitting there face to face with this or you know, you're sitting there on the telephone with a guy, not face to face, and it just sinks into you. And the way that you detail that though is masterful because it really

I I resonated with both of you on both sides of that phone understanding how other people, right, we always talk about generals in Washington are making calls that cause young soldiers to die on the battlefield and bleed.

speaker-0 (2:00:05)
story and the story that that sticks with me the most is the the thing I regret. So as I said we've been working for a long time trying to broker this deal. Now the United States has been pushing a surrender message.

We've been pushing a slightly different message of capitulation, meaning come to our side. And it's di it's legally different. If you surrender, you're out of the military, I have to demobilize you, you can't go back into Tibet. If you capitulate legally, I can actually turn you in around, you can join my side. And this was the offer we had now been making to them of hey, if you're an Iraqi general, Iraqi colonel, and you have three thousand soldiers.

I want you to still be an Iraqi colonel tomorrow in the new Iraqi army. This is an appealing offer. Like in these you know, a lot of these military professionals, I would assume, are starting to buy into this as, hey, there is a future for me. The US military had overcompensated to some degree from my previous message that said, Hey, the way you said surrender surrender was goofy. So now they've kind of come over the top that it's surrender or die. And you know, somebody can blame us like, well you told us to say it that way. I'm like, yeah, but not like not right now.

Because I've been working on I want you to come to my side. And and we've been doing this through a lot of phone calls, you know, and and that sort of thing. And now this message comes down that no, all those officers are off the table, it's surrender or die. And that was really frustrating for me because I did convey through my channels that I'm like, hey, the guys I'm talking to, it's long distance. Like I don't have them at gunpoint. So surrender or die is a really weird, hollow threat. And

I was talking to one particular guy, I was doing it through my my I don't like calling to my interpreter because he's almost more like my not he's not a bodyguard either. He like

speaker-1 (2:01:42)
Lia's on.

speaker-0 (2:01:43)
he's like my guy to sit here to help me out all the time, you know. And we're on the phone and we're talking and the the guy said something like, you know, how can we make this go through? And I just found out it's off the table. We can't do this. And I said to him, I'm I'm terribly sorry, but this offer

And I I I think it was it was hard for me to even explain it. I'm like, I know I just called you an hour ago and said, I want you to do this. Now you're like, We're ready and I have to tell you it's too late. I can't and I and he said to me, Do you understand what this means? And I said, I think I do. and I s and I, you know, said something to the effect of, and I am sorry about that. And it was in what you're alluding to, even now it still gets to me. It was a very legitimate personal moment between two professionals.

That he I said, you know, I understand what this means. And then he said, The next time we meet, it will not be as friends. And and that wasn't a he didn't say in a threatening way, and I said, I understand and I don't know if he said it or I said it, but one of us said, and I regret that. And then, you know, as I say in the book, he said, Salaam alaykum and I Alaykum Al Asam. And and our phone call ended. And I mean I was devastated. I was like, What did we just do?

speaker-1 (2:02:57)
And that has to be heartbreaking for many reasons. And this this is where I I just wanna kinda think outside the box here. I know you don't have the numbers, but how many Iraqis do you think we turned into insurgents that day? 'Cause that's

speaker-0 (2:03:14)
Thousands.

speaker-1 (2:03:16)
that's a sense I left. When I read that section I I immediately thought these are the guys we had to kill afterwards.

speaker-0 (2:03:23)
Most effective insurgency we've ever created is that one against us. because it goes back to what I said, our mindset was binary. They will surrender, they will not. We didn't think of what if they just run? What if they just disappear? And they all and you know, we we also didn't have the we were too naive to realize like they all have family. They all have ties, they have ties into Syria. So they all took their uniforms off and just disappeared until a new opportunity arose. and I would argue

I'm speculating. The bulk of the professional military and going back to the guy I was talking to, the original plan would be you come to our side and you will then help me find the ten percent that doesn't want to come over. And and for the most part, they were all like, understand, those guys are crazy. You know, I mean like and they're speaking of like the like the elites, like, that's the Fed, that's the Republican Guard. These are like regular professional officers, like those guys are nuts. I will help you find them. And I go back.

If we had enlisted these guys to our side, you you can't understand the value of I can have a hundred ISR birds overhead. It makes no difference. If I got an Iraqi here, you know, and I've I've got ten thousand stupid stories. He'll be like, That guy's accent's not from here. You know? and be like, What do you mean? And well, like, his beard, nobody wears a beard like that here. And like, there's I could never develop that.

speaker-1 (2:04:46)
Well, like you guys were in cars and they could tell that you guys weren't just regular people.

speaker-0 (2:04:52)
There's a there's a I can't remember the name of it, but the Russell Crowe movie about spies in in Baghdad with Leonardo DiCaprio.

speaker-1 (2:05:01)
Yes, I know what you're talking about.

speaker-0 (2:05:03)
Baron

Caprio is supposed to a CIA officer and he's running around dressed in indigenous clothes and he walks up to these terrorists and he's and he speaks fluent Arabic and it's it's it's lost on a lot of people. The guys they were burning CDs and the guys look at him and they say, Where are you from, my brother? And he Rusafah. Rusafah is a neighborhood in Baghdad. And it's it's such a great scene because he goes, Rusafa, which is the right answer, and they're like and they take off Ronin because they're like, You're not from Russafa, because your accent's wrong. That's what indigenous forces can do.

can do that we will never be able to do. And that's the greatest flaw of our counterinsurgency efforts that we didn't figure out how to bring true regional expertise from our indigenous partners and we try to do it alone for the first, you know, year or two. those guys went, you know, we said went to ground. Like whether they went to Anbar province and hid or they went to Syria and hid, I'm gonna speculate and say this, I don't think their intention was to come back and fight. I think then the environment, much like

a medical scenario of like if I opened up your chest like you're prone to infection. Now all these crazy foreign fighters are flowing into the country for jihad. And they're the ones who really changed the nature of the fight into something totally different. Like whether it was Al Qaeda in Iraq, mostly Al-Qaeda in Iraq were the with a problem in our areas, Jay Shah Mahdi was the s the Shia variant in the South. But we allowed those radical

entities to come at. It wasn't the professional military that went away. So I think then they developed an alliance of convenience where you had like, okay, let's go get our country back from the the the occupiers. but eventually the fanatical elements overtook the resistance movements and pushed any of the like you know regular exiled military out and it became very radical insurgencies that we were dealing with by two thousand five, two thousand seven.

speaker-1 (2:06:56)
And with those groups, it was this is the other thing. Like you said, they weren't necessarily like hardened fighters that just wanted to kill Americans. They were in this terrible position where they used to be Iraqi military, but now they're in this radical group. And the part of that that most people don't understand is it's like you're either with us or you're going to die now. And and this is the part that most people don't understand that weren't in the war to the Iraqis, to any of these insurgents, to the terrorists.

Killing their own that are unloyal or disloyal or in any way going to be that infection that could ruin their organization is more of a threat to them than we are. So they will deal with them way like way more harshly. Th those are the ones that are getting set on fire with tires around them.

speaker-0 (2:07:40)
Iraqis, you know, this is the Special Forces Academy. Like I I find cultures interesting. I'm I'm in intellectually curious about this kind of stuff. Iraqis are really I think they're great people. I think it's a really interesting culture. And by comparison, they the same way I would say it like with West Virginia, they're a little bit reluctant about outsiders, more so than some of their neighbor countries are. And so when these foreign fighters come in and it's freaking us out.

much of the population does not care for these foreign fighters either. They have a disdain for them as you're not Iraqis either, you know. And as a an example that is really, really cool. So like I mentioned the ICTF and the commanders and all that kind of stuff. The way those things happened, it's it's a question not sometimes guess who made the decision to make them? Nobody. Like literally it's a handful of SF guys were hanging around

in this weird period, like the invasion has stopped, but it's not quite counterinsurgency yet. So like we're not really sure we're done. And truly I some of these guys are friends of mine. They're like hanging around and they do what SF guys do and they're like, hey you guys want to shoot? And they they start no serious and they start to like make friends with the local males. And maybe we made friends because you bring me eggs and milk and stuff and I pay you. And you know, maybe you were reluctant because I'm an American, but when I started paying you for milk and eggs, you're like, they're not that bad of guys. So we've been doing this for like a month.

You you're making decent money. so now you're like, hey, you you guys are actually a lot like us. And it sounds crazy to say it that way, but like over time now it's like, hey, would you guys like to learn how to shoot? And we start shooting, and suddenly there's this rapport building, and suddenly guys says, Well, I used to be in the Iraqi army, and you know, fast forward six months later, much of these special forces units that are still in country all have like fifty Iraqis they've befriended. You know, and these are the guys who migrated to us because they want a new future for Iraq, whatever. And you were starting to realize

Everybody in Iraq is not crazy. They're just there there are people just like us. And then we start to formally train those guys. Fast forward a year, like when General Petres came into the country and the training efforts were not going well. Like, you know, the the videos we talked about, like we see guys who can't do jump ejects, whatever, he sort of sees our counterparts and is like, Who are those guys? Like, that's the that's the ICTF that we made and and suddenly the coalition efforts embrace that as as that's the that's the model what

speaker-1 (2:10:03)
Winning hearts

and minds.

speaker-0 (2:10:05)
But so making a point, we started to integrate partners almost from the get-go. And that makes a huge difference for us because again, and this is like so here's the secret sauce how this works. How could you possibly, as a special forces team, how could you possibly survive living in a house in a city? To me, that seems like there's no way you would survive. That's a true statement. You would. Unless the local community wanted you to survive. Now, like let this sink in for a second, because this is the secret sauce.

No one is doing anything in this neighborhood without the neighborhood knowing it. So if they don't like you, they're gonna get killed. If they like you, they're gonna warn you that people are coming to kill you tomorrow. And I mean it's as simple as, why would they warn you? Well, maybe the guy likes getting paid for eggs and milk. Like he gets five dollars a week from me and that's more than he was getting before we were here. And they will hint to me like, You should be careful tomorrow at around noon. Like that there's a hundred examples, there's thousands of examples like that where

We've we've fostered relationships with twenty five people in a neighborhood like that. And we get warnings all the time that tonight's gonna be a bad night for you guys. I'm like, okay. That's how a special forces team survives. Like 'cause we know it's not about more fencing and security and all this ISR. It's it's up to the locals. They will decide if we're gonna die or not. So it's up to us to build some what we would consider what we call our outer security ring of no one's getting past those folks. They gotta go through those folks to get to us and they're gonna warn us.

And there's all sorts of really cool stories how I've heard examples of locals warning us like that. there was an example where so then I go back to the commandos, ICTF, I SWATs. We are legitimate with these guys. We don't treat them like, you know, replacements for American shoe, like we don't care. We legitimately care about them. We have a real bomb with them. an Iraqi soldier was killed. So as was the practice, we're now going to take his body home to his family. They get just

'Cause they're they get a salary like everybody else and they do get death benefits. it's it's not much, but it's something. Like that's that's the contract his their son signed. This guy's house, the family's distraught as you would expect. The guys are distraught too. You know, some of the guys like it it for listeners that might be surprised to hear this, like it's one of the most emotional events I've ever experienced to see a handful of Green Boys crying. You know, but it happens. so we're at this person's house, or they're at this person's house, they're describing

how the son died. The father asks, you know, did my son die bravely? Which he did. Actually he was saving he was actually saving some of the Iraqis and the Americans. So they explain that your son was really a hero. He was a very brave fighter. And like the guy is saying this to the the the father, they're crying. Like you can see they're broken up. So the father excuses himself for a second, goes in the back room, comes back a minute later, he's carrying an Iraqi uniform. He's an Iraqi former general. And he says

I want to turn myself in. I'm surrendering. To which we're like, what do you mean? And he's like, I am General, and I'm making up the name. I am General Khalid of the Third Division. We're like, Okay, we don't we don't have a warrant for your arrest or anything. But he was of the impression like anybody in the Iraqi military would be thrown in jail. And and but this guy is surrendering to us because he thinks these are honorable men that worked with his son. So now they tell him

Sir, there is no issue between us. You are not someone we're looking for. We were only looking for Saddam's layer, the the what we call the baseball cards of that type. So now that this guy is like, how can I help you? No, it's serious. And now think about this.

speaker-1 (2:13:49)
Yeah, yeah.

speaker-0 (2:13:50)
He's like, My son trusted you. You trusted my son. I am with you. And so we're like, okay, yes. What can you tell us? And then it's like literally, okay, do you have a map?

Like, yeah, the men in this house they're bad. I know them. You're like, how do you know them? Because they're my former men. You know, like and you're like, Okay, I think this is credible. And you know, now imagine forty teams like this spread around the country. That's where our success comes from. And I mean that story always stuck with me because that demonstrates the leg the the true nature of our personal relationships. Again, these are not transactional where we're ha ha, we get the locals to do things that are to our benefit. Like we're right there with them, we're doing this because we believe in it. We have common objectives.

speaker-1 (2:14:33)
And this is the I think that point specifically where that outer ring of security is so important because most people think you said ISR. Some people might not know. So the drones right that are flying overhead, the MQ9 Reaper, which was my last podcast I put out, was with a Reaper pilot. like that didn't exist back then. You guys didn't have Reapers flying overhead. Back then you guys had predators just giving you feed, I know, because I only saw the

speaker-0 (2:15:00)
Snarky

very deliberately. No, no, we didn't have ISR because if we had an ISR bird, then task force would only have ten.

speaker-1 (2:15:10)
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah,

exactly. But it's so important that that the intelligence, and this was the point that I think has been has been made, but I want to drive home is instead of needing to kill 10,000 Iraqi soldiers, if you can convince them to give up, and instead of saying you seem like the kind of guys that would give up, and then that hardens them, and then you make this and then America makes this call.

You know, what we're gonna do is it's either give up or die. And it's there's these hard lines that they're that are drawn, and you guys have worked for so long, so hard, to build this relationship to get them to come over to you. And as you just described, these soldiers, I think of it for people that maybe watch Game of Thrones, then then the zombie king is coming and they're fighting. And there's so many live people that are coming up. You're like, this battle's gonna be over in a second. As they kill them, then they wake up and now they're

fighting their own men on this side. And that's what you guys are trying to do. You're trying to flip them instead of needing to attack them and kill them. And that in an insurgency specifically is so crucial.

speaker-0 (2:16:24)
things about that that are useful lessons if you will for any war. If the United States endeavors to go to war like this wherever, we should really ask ourselves, is there anyone in the room who sees this plan that's from this country? Because we are prone to mistakes. Like I've looked at the map, I think I understand this country. And you know, I mean imagine like when you first time you ever went to Afghanistan or Iraq, like how different it is on the ground from, gosh, I've stared at a map for a month or six months.

You know, there's so many examples where if you had brought someone in who is truly indigenous, if not just an expert, and be like, is this gonna sound the right way to them? And they'd be like, nah, that's not gonna work with them. That's not that culture that doesn't work. Like I've and I've been i involved in many of plans where yeah, there's nobody who's not a pure American in this room and that's that's just not a good it's not a good idea. the second thing is going back to the the the psychological operations stuff again.

again stressing how powerful of a tool this is for both sides. There's examples in the latter part of the book where I

It was called Operation Yarborough, where I talked about now, okay, now I'm gonna show you like I told you examples earlier of how we're convincing the Iraqi army your situation is hopeless. And it's not great. It's actually not hopeless, but it's not great. But I'm gonna make you I'm gonna push it a little farther. Now as a counterinsurgent, four or five years later, I'm gonna play the same game. I'm gonna convince the insurgents your situation's hopeless. You guys should just give up. And we were very effective doing that.

against J. Shal Mahdi in the South. Like I would argue, and I I I know I talk about it in detail in the book, we literally broke them by lying to them. Like we orchestrated a series of there's no other way to say it, lies that looked really credible and we caused panic. And panic is contagious. And like again, we can try to kill all of them. It's gonna take a really long time. Or we can we can inject them with panic and hopelessness

And just let it take off like a virus. And that's literally like the simplest synopsis of how we broke jam, the Jay Shalmadi, the Shia insurgents. and I love that 'cause and I did get to participate in a lot of that one personally. Like, we did little stuff, you know, and then we amplified it with a lying campaign that just confused the living hell out of them. You really should check this out 'cause it's it demonstrates, you know

Both sides it's a game of who's gonna whose lies are gonna convince the other one that you're you're beaten, you're hopeless.

speaker-1 (2:18:47)
And the the YouTube videos that are going kind of going a little viral now, Ghost in the Machine. Yeah, those are phenomenal marketing ploy or you know videos for PsyOps. And for those people that are unfamiliar, how powerful it is, I think your book, again, everybody should definitely get a copy of this because you're gonna learn so many lessons as these ones that you've detailed. It's not just a

running and shoot up. Like a lot of the stories, the a lot of you know, the memoirs, people are just talking about and I got in this gun battle, and I shoot these three guys and I run over here and I get you know, I blow up these guys and it's like this is really looking at the whole picture and you get to describe all these different moving parts that you don't you just don't see in a normal memoir.

speaker-0 (2:19:31)
Sort of describing it that way 'cause th that's the the pitch that I'll make is d why I wrote this. This is not the story of me. This is not my memoir where, you know, I'm gonna tell you all about me. Like you you get introduced to me in the book, but you know nothing more about me when I get introduced. Like I tell you, my name is Major Gurdish and I'm you know

I'm the guy who saw the whole story. You know, yeah, and I'm a key I'm a key participant, but I was there from the inception to the planning, the preparation, and the execution. So I can tell the complete story, not just my thread through it that has cool firefights. and subsequently I've been able to weave in lessons, I'll almost say, you know, not in a way that feels like it's an academic lesson. It's in the form of a story. that you now get the you, the reader, get to share in just like as if this was your experience and you took away. That was a bad idea, we shouldn't do

that look. Like instead of me just saying, here's the list of ten things you shouldn't do or should do. and I also predominantly wrote it or wrote it for really two three reasons. One, as the guy who knew the totality of the story, there's only a couple of us that know the whole story. Like literally me and and now Lieutenant General retired Tobo are probably the only two guys that knew the whole story. And I felt a responsibility to share it for the military, for the sake of those guys. That then it's not about like they didn't get credit, but

the military doesn't really know what they did. so that was I felt a personal responsibility to share that. The second part was to get the benefit to the military or academic audience of, hey, this is a missing piece that it if you know, it's been twenty years, we're j in my opinion, we're just at a point, the military, where we can have unemotional conversations about what went well and what didn't go well.

we're we're just there where we can start to academically talk about this. And this is a missing piece of that story. So I felt like that was really, really important. And it is a positive story overall. Like it's a great story of success for special forces in support of the regular military. And then lastly, you know, I think it's a very entertaining action packed story. I hope I captured it that way. I think I did. and I think the population is good is glad to learn this this

'Cause there's plenty of bad stories out there about this went bad, this you know, everybody died. this is a pretty powerful, exciting story, but it's also pretty, you know, it's a it's a positive story in the animal.

speaker-1 (2:21:51)
It's it's a snapshot of history and lessons learned from a firsthand perspective. And I think that's the part that right to your point, multiple people are gonna write different books about their experiences, but you were there for each phase. And that's the part that really sets your book apart and makes it more of a a h again, a lessons learned, first person narrative, history of what happened. These are the things we didn't hear about.

from our perspective. You right, I was in the range regiment on the task force and I didn't know about all the all these other moving parts. I just know about we're going after one through ten and we've got birds up and we've got this or we don't have this. one of the things that I definitely want to to make sure and mention which going with that full picture, you guys have you said surrender or die. Okay, what happens after that is you get some car sell use car salesman crackheads

Who show up in brand new fatigue uniforms straight from the PX wearing FIF on their shoulder. And this is a part where we, I think as Americans, have gotten disgusted with how much how much the American government can't be, in our eyes, trusted to make these things work, where we've now created a vacuum and in its place we've been talked and and swindled by these

you know, con artists into being putting themselves in power. And as you mentioned, people putting their cousins in and all that's what I experienced a lot of. Every time I saw some type of corruption, it was nepotism because these guys that we're putting into power are just taking all the money and then they're just distributing it to themselves. Even in Iraq in 2020 when I was there, we were doing the exact same thing. I'm I'm literally on the ambassador's personal detail.

So I'm literally watching as and bringing it driving in these escorting in these Iraqi generals and the president of Iraq or the, you know, Prime Minister, whatever, I forget his title. And they're we're literally handing him, you know, these pallets and suitcases full of cash. And we know from talking with all these guys that are guards at his at his facilities, like none of that move money moves anywhere except for to his cronies.

speaker-0 (2:24:14)
Yeah, another aspect I think is useful for the book for readers, particularly anybody who might be getting into like military or national security type endeavors, it's a snapshot of a complex case. You know, it's not just us and the enemy. There's tons of different players and it's very, very complicated.

as the world always is. And what you alluded to during that time period where the United States is trying to figure out, you know, what Saddam is doing. Like the and it's it's easy to look back now and be like, it was wrong in the intel. But like it was very hard at the time, you know, to tell is our intelligence correct? Is Saddam defying us? Is he not? Because he was a a pretty evil dictator, if you will, but pretty strategically savvy. There's no shortage of con men along the edges looking for opportunities to take advantage. And if the US government

is gonna be naive is a fair word, but like if we're not gonna have if we're gonna be susceptible to bad advice. And the individual one of the individuals you're talking about, Ahmed Shalabi, he had been a source of information for the CIA for you know the better part of a decade, and the CIA learned the hard way. That guy's a liar. He's a con man. and unfortunately at this time period, Department of Defense and CIA are a little bit butting heads

And the Department of Defense finds this guy called Ahmed Shalabi and they think he is fantastic because he says he knows where all the secrets in Iraq are. The CIA literally is telling Department of Defense that guy's a liar and the Department of Defense doesn't want to hear it. They're like our guys our guy's great. And he was literally posturing himself, which he's not Iraqi by the way he's Lebanese. But he

speaker-1 (2:25:49)
Even better.

speaker-0 (2:25:50)
He's

posturing himself for the US to hand him to be the leader of the country. It was crazy. But we had just kind of done it with Karzai in Afghanistan. So this guy's a hundred percent con man. And the Kurds all knew that they hated him. and I think the Iraqis, the regular Iraqis probably did too. So that's the time you're talking about of suddenly the Pentagon the Pentagon, which is super weird because the Pentagon's not a unit. So why is this guy from the Pentagon in my battle space with

You know, Ahmed Shalabi and some other former State Department guy now turned you know, literally turned mercenary. And what I gotta say this because this this'll resonate with older military folks. He's wearing BDUs, the old camouflage pattern, and some kit. And if anybody's ever worn that stuff,

You can tell what it looks like when it's still got the folds in the pockets from where it was on the shelf in the TX and the pouches have never had magazines in the money. It's very you you're smile because you know what I'm talking about. And this guy's dressed in his camouflage fighting outfit, but it's just not right.

speaker-1 (2:26:52)
Yeah.

So the thing

speaker-0 (2:27:06)
Guys

were the entity that was now telling the Pentagon and or leading the Pentagon's efforts to put an Iraqi face on this conflict, which is super weird because I I kinda have an Iraqi face with the sixty thousand fresh murder fighters that I've been working with, and they are literally paying

Ahmed Shalabi to find volunteers to join their fake manufactured Iraqi force that they call the Free Iraqi forces, FIF. And it's really weird because everything that I've tried to coordinate and was turned down by the military, these guys got it all. They have ID cards from the US military, they have patches that say FIF, which is super weird. And now the conventional military is being told these guys are the true resistance heroes of Iraq.

Don't trust the Kurds. So I mean, unfortunately, bad information, inaccurate, bad start to the next phase of the conflict. But the thing I would offer up any listeners, military folks the future is, you know, don't take bad performance as a measure of these endeavors are bad. They shouldn't be because I know everybody like right now the current UN militaries, you know, nation building is a bad thing and it was wrong. I'm not gonna say that's necessarily not accurate, but don't judge the potential of a concept

By bad performance. And what I mean by that is, as you've hinted, what if we did turn massive elements of the Iraqi military to work for us immediately? How would it have done differently? So like our endeavor was somewhat noble. You know, maybe naive, but it was still noble. Because like Saddam was a horrifying dictator that committed genocide. There's no two ways about it. And we don't talk

speaker-1 (2:28:39)
I know.

speaker-0 (2:28:40)
about that very much. We talk about the weapons of mass destruction. He did or didn't have God. But he committed massive genocide against his population.

so he was an evil evil person. The world is a better place without him. the way we went about it though was really weird. Like we threw our own plan out the window. We had a reconstruction plan that was proposed by the State Department under General Colin Powell that I think made a lot of sense. Because of conflict between Department of State and Department of Defense, we threw that plan out the window at the last minute and instituted an ad hoc plan that was terrible. So again, you know, do we go, hey, these these endeavors are wrong or

it's really wrong the way you did it, it didn't make sense. So like if anybody wants to go forward in complex things like this again in the future, my only advice would be is, you know, make sure you have the intellectual depth and acumen to understand what you're really doing and have a plan that when you look at it, it makes sense. And not it doesn't make sense, but we'll work our way through it. You know, midway we'll we'll see what opportunities arise.

speaker-1 (2:29:40)
Yeah. We're gonna jump out of the plane and sell our pairing chute. Sell our pairing chute on the way down.

speaker-0 (2:29:44)
kind of personally hurt me as a veteran of that time period. we were on a very good trajectory right up till the you know the middle of 2003 and like we're like I

I yeah, I've said it you may have said it's like we kind of walked off the field in a in the fourth quarter of a game that we were winning, and then we're surprised later on how how could we be losing? You know, and and we're not acknowledging because you walked off the field. Right. You chose to not finish out your own plan. And I think there would have been a potential to have executed this in a more structured fashion if a couple of events had changed, you know, and we could have solidified the success with the Iraqi population. Because like you and I said, it it is a popular myth that the Iraqis

Hate us. They did not hate us. They they they're like normal humans. They welcomed us, but it wasn't free. They welcomed us to see what are you gonna do? Right. And suddenly we're like, Well, we're not here for governance. We're not here to provide you like, Well, you just destroyed the guy who I didn't like, but he is the guy that kept the lights running, kept the buses running. Are you gonna do the same? And we almost said this that's not my problem. Like

Well then I like you either. Like I and I'm and saying that I'm ready to like the next entity that just provides me the basic services that governance is supposed to provide me.

speaker-1 (2:30:59)
It almost feels like when you just said that, it almost feels like that's how we felt as Americans with the last few elections, where it was like when I hear just regular people, they're like, Just leave me alone and let me live my life. Don't don't crash our government, don't crash our economy, just let me live in peace.

speaker-0 (2:31:17)
In the South that I I find sort of twistedly amusing, the Iranians have been supporting the insurgency in the South against us for years, very effectively, very, very effectively against us, causing us a tremendous amount of problems. They were so effective in their efforts that they were able to then start to transition almost away from fighting to governance, meaning they were investing in like they were building roads, they were building power plants, and like in some places.

you know, the roads and the power plants and stuff were actually pretty good. And like we we as the Americans, reporting on things, noted like all of the roads going east into Iran are brand new. And there's power lines going all the way into Iran and like I can remember hearing Americans going, and we will not accept that. And I'm like, why? Like that's the contest. Like are we are we offended by their quality of governance? Like I get it. I don't like how we got here and I don't like the way, you know, they sort of

attacked us to get here. But like but now the things they're doing are not necessarily nefarious because they've already won over the population. And if you want to do better, then offer a better legitimate, you know, we're not going to win this by the gun. It's going to be we offer you something better. and I always that I I remember watching the American officers get offended by the good roads and the power the the legitimate power lines. I'm like, I don't know if I feel like we might be off on this one.

speaker-1 (2:32:33)
I think that that drives to a to a question that I have thought of since I was a kid, watching us take right Baghdad in seventy two hours, and I thought, Okay, well that's it, right? In all of human history, you conquer the land, you go plant your flag, you win. Get the t time of the game is over, fourth quarter, the game ends, the buzzer okay, now we won. And then we can leave and we can all just be happy that I won.

speaker-0 (2:32:59)
It's in the top one of my chapters, a quote from Genghis Khan. It says something like conquering the world on horseback is easy, governing it off horseback is the hard part.

speaker-1 (2:33:06)
Yes.

speaker-0 (2:33:06)
That's again, if somebody wants to take a lesson from that, like yeah, take it seriously. it's it's as challenging as the conquering part.

speaker-1 (2:33:15)
And that's the hardest part for us, I think, to rationalize why we see that we pulled out of Afghanistan and we a lot of people just go, okay, well, we lost that war, right? And people are right now like trying to figure out wait, did we win in Afghanistan or did we lose in Afghanistan? D I understand the way we pulled out was an absolute debacle and horrible and horrific things happened to the people that stayed. And some of those channel there's people that have started channels since that are all talking about

Afghanistan, the people we left behind and all of that. And I think that we're all just kind of stuck in this like, I don't know. Is this the same as what happened at Vietnam? 'Cause I wasn't alive back then. We didn't technically lose Vietnam. We won every battle, but technically we lost the war 'cause we left. Well, we just left Afghanistan. Does that mean we lost?

Exactly. Very different vehicles. No, but I

speaker-0 (2:34:11)
The but the lessons, the academic lessons, and that's where I go back to like if we can get past the emotion of it, like I was a better, I was there. If we can get past the emotion and like, okay, it's time to start academically analyzing what we did and peeling it apart and be like, that was actually pretty good. That could have been better, that was bad. Let's capture that and not do it again. Or you know, or do it don't don't repeat the same mistakes. Because I I personally do feel, you know, if we had as a force really understood some of the lessons of Vietnam.

we probably would have avoided some of the missteps that we had to learn the hard way again in Iraq and Afghanistan.

speaker-1 (2:34:43)
And and I think I we see these things being played out in more than just the military role. Like we see defund the police and then we see everything falling into chaos. And you're just like, No, you need more funding, you need more you need more support, you need multiple different things. But we see this we see this not only in overseas wars, we see it at home, and it's like w I think there's so many people out there that have the common sense that are watching

This these large debacles and these things that are just rolling downhill and you're like, you know this is gonna crash on all of our heads and you're just not stopping it. And I think this part of this book and where you're sitting there just going we are putting the FIF in charge. We know that he's a con man, and you're just sitting there reading the book going, Please, there's somebody at the end that goes, Stop that, let's not do that and and you want a happy ending.

speaker-0 (2:35:40)
Readers that do if someone does actually get like I do offer some good lessons of we were very successful in the city of Kirk Cook. You know, and I'm not gonna make it sound like we're so smart, it was almost coincidental, but because I have I have advice of locals who can tell me things, we almost accidentally found people who knew how to do things. I mean, like I found we f and I think I two times my book, we found a guy who knows how to turn the power plant on. Yes. We found a guy who knows how to run the water facility to pump water. And like the

There was a story myself and Pat Roberson who's a character in the book were talking about this when we were both majors driving around the city, when we got the power turned on, which was a coincidence that we found the guy that knew how to turn the power on. We turned the power on and I joked that it was like a gigantic cartoony electrical switch. And when we did it, power came on to seventy five percent of the city. And it sounds weird to explain it this way, but when power came back, w he and I both said this you could almost feel like the

the anxiety in the city like just dissipated. Like it was almost we must rise up. It is time to the soccer game is on. Yeah. And

speaker-1 (2:36:47)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (2:36:48)
and it makes this point, like, again, are those people different than us or worse than us? You know, well, those people are crazy. Like we say things like that. I'm like, no, they have nothing. So the distance from them from where they are to let's pick up guns and fight is a lot shorter than it is for me because I got a really nice house and I get a really good job. And I got lots of stuff.

You know, if I had none of that stuff and subsequently there were piles of rifles laying in the street, I might be like, I hate my neighbor. and and if you can provide, you know, some stuff, your electricity still works, water still runs, the buses are running, you still have a job, money still works here. There's basic security. Suddenly people are like, I hate my neighbors. Let's go watch the game. But you know, there's not this drive for let's fight, let's attack.

I I make it sound kinda, you know, childlike the way I'm explaining it, but I'm actually really serious. Like basic governance is seventy five percent of it. If you if you fill that gap, it inoculates the population to all the crazy propaganda. We must rise up, we must fight, you should hate your neighbors, let's kill the government. They ha if you have something to lose, you don't want to lose it. If you have nothing to lose, you're like, Yeah, let's let's listen to the crazy guy from outside this country who wants us to rise up.