Delta Force Legend Reveals What War Really Does to a Man | PBD Podcast #873

In beginning of war, I wanted to kill everybody. Let's just kill them. Did you have a reaction the first time? Fuckin' loved it. Are you kidding me? Loved it. So on any given day, what could be the highlight of the number? And keeping you guys to count? Oh god, time for all to count them. There's certain bad guys who are like, however the night pans out. Like, I could really care if this guy lived or died the night. I was good at it. I could save lives every day. When I would go out, I felt like Godless guys got hurt. Where else should I be? Who else needs me more? What's the closest call you around? I know what I can do. You guys didn't have a chance to begin that. We dealt with a lot of people, family, kids. Like, you come get a man of the house, he's got a family. You got to deal with them, too. We're there as bad as the stories we need about real. They need to die. I don't feel bad about them at all. I felt that he's like, I knew maybe this is what I was supposed to do. I don't know, but we were just amazing, those guys. So I stopped counting on my first day. This has never been talked about before. So I know a lot of people that follow your stories closely. And you may get upset at me for starting with this. But I think it's very important for you. I doubt it, I doubt it. I want you to get upset. I want you to get angry at me. So here's a guy that's Delta Force, Sergeant Major, fully decorated. I contacted my guy that was former Delta Force. I asked him about you. He says, this guy's a full on badass. All these things about you that scares the shit out of everybody, the enemy, right? And you come in today. Your only request from us is Pop Tarts. You ask for Pop Tarts? Not even Pop Tarts. We've never had a Pop Tart request. How long has that been? A thing with you. Man. Well, I love them brown sugar Pop Tarts. The brown sugar Pop Tarts. Yeah. Every time I talk about this, I'll get a, man, I got Pop Tart underwear, socks. Literally. Seriously, right? Pop Tart t-shirts, like people send me Pop Tart stuff. But the Pop Tarts comes from, when I went out alone, I flew my pick. It started out in a sod a bad, and I told my boss, I was like, hey, we don't got no beef jerky. No, no. Well, you know, we're who we are. You know what I mean? I know wherever the main hub is, right? Bogrum. I know they got this stuff. And the other guys are just eating it up while we're out here kind of like eating vegetables. I don't even know what they are in some goat. Like with some dude cooking it, who's sketchy also. So I was like, he's like, if you want, you want Pogi. You've got to get it yourself. Schedule everything yourself. I'm not lifting a finger kind of deal. I'm like, I'll do that. I mean, what a good experience for me. So I scheduled the Chinook to come in, pick me in my pickup truck up. We fly us at night to Bogrum, park at the Chow Hall, see my man that I squadron cook, like yo, fill up the truck for the boys, you know what I mean? And then, so that's when they asked me to go on a solo mission. I was actually kind of lute and pop tarts at the time, you know what I mean? Do you miss it? Like do you tell, when I, when I watch you here, the telling these stories, do you ever like, have you fully disconnected or do you still miss it and you're here? I don't know. I think I moved on on a lot of stuff. I mean, when I retired, I was talking to a friend and I, like, you know, you know, he was in Ranger battalion with me and we were kind of like, kind of like talking my highlight real because I hadn't talked to him in a long time. What he'd been up to, kind of deal, right? And I was just thinking like, man, what am I going to do now? Excuse me. How am I going to be happy now? Would you resist? It's like 11 when I retired, like, right when I retired, excuse me. So right when I retired, right? And I was just thinking, what do I do now? Like, you know, chasing after you, chasing, or done some of these things, like, what do you do for happiness now? Like so, and he was like, wow, I feel sad for you and like, we started laughing, right? And then I started thinking about it and I was like, he's right, like, what am I going to do now? Was he a former guy with you? Well, he was in Ranger battalion with me. He was a Ranger. And what helped you just from that life to civilian? Because my buddy, when I talked to him, I had to go visit him in Madrid. He's like, you know, we call each other B. He says, you know, B, I can't handle this. So I go to Madrid. He's a ETS thing after being 20. He was also Delta. I showed you his-- Yeah. So he was a B squadron guy. And he says, I don't know how to adjust. Yeah. I don't even know how to. So what was your mechanism of adjusting from that fast life? Well, I think the big thing for me was I was working on the staff as an E9. I just came from Baghdad and I got to work on the staff like, what a smack in the face, you know what I mean? So in general, culture shock, you know what I'm saying? I go from doing whatever I want, you know what I mean? Whatever I wanted to do, you know, '06, '07, then I was on the staff and I'm-- And then like, I never had an army computer. I think I had a blackberry, you know what I mean? Like, I don't even have a cell phone myself yet. I never even had email yet, you know? So yeah, so I'm on the staff and I'm just overwhelmed every day. This is incredible. Like, I go from a life of being alone, going out, you know, being a leader, bringing out my guys, you know, to like desk. And like, I just hated my life every day, I was miserable. Guys would come in my office, I'd be like, "State your business, too slow, get the fuck out," you know what I mean? I'd be like, "Oh, when you can spit it out, I ain't got fucking time," you know what I mean? And then like, I just always mean. I thumb down, like, we'd have new hires and like, you'd have to thumb up or thumb down. I don't thumb down everybody that I've faced, you know what I mean? This is post. This is, this is post you no longer being. This is I still in the army. Yeah, but you're now working, you're now working on the staff. And how long did they put you on the staff when you. I worked there for like my last, like four years. Holy shit. So for you, it was harder transitioning within from being deployed to working on the staff. Yeah. Okay, so then that means the transition for you when you got out, you were, did that kind of help? You get ready to leave or not really? Well, so, okay. This is what leaves me. One day I kind of had fun at work. And I was like, "Huh, I had fun today. I get home, you know what I mean?" "Huh, I have fun today," right? And then, you know, I was like, "Well, I wonder if I could have fun tomorrow," right? Because all my other days fucking suck, you know what I mean? Like, it's army strong, not army smart. Let's just be real clear here, you know what I mean? But so, I was like, "Huh, I wonder if I could have fun." So I woke up the next morning and I told myself I was going to smile and have fun no matter what. And I remembered I used to be fun, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like, "I'm a little brother. I talk smack." You know what I mean? Like, I was a ranger. They talk smack, right? Like, we have fun. We joke with each other, right? You know how guys are. Of course. Uh, I realized I used to do this. But I hadn't been that person in a long time. So I told myself I was going to smile and enjoy my day and be positive and try to be positive, you know what I mean? And that was it? That was it. And so from there, you know, by the time we came out for you to get out, did you try to go back and say, "Let me go on one more tour. Let me get one more thing," or, "No, you already knew that they were kind of pushing you out." You know them? The biggest thing you could know about the army is that no one to say when. No one to say when. For yourself. And you knew it? It's time for me. I was burned out. You know, they burned me out. They burned everybody out. And that's why your body has a hard time right now. He was burned out. He was burned out. You got to recover from it. Risky behavior. It's from burnout. You know, concussions causes risky behavior. So like, guys get out of control. It's like, well, the guy's fucking mentally suffering, but we can't talk about that, right? We can only talk about this guy's out of control. So I knew it was time. Did they knock on the door? Or did you? Did they come to you and say, "Hey, no, I was at 20. I was at 20." So really the way it went down is like, I had one of those days where I was over it. But I went to the retirement guy and I was like, "Yo, if I retire right now, right? How much money do I get at retirement?" And then I think they wanted me to like stay in and pull another job, another star major gig somewhere else, you know, dangling the carrot over my head with other fancy jobs. You'll never get. And then I was like, but you know, they wanted me to stay in another, you know, I don't know. Well, you did the star major academy. So you owe us time and you did. So there were days. I don't think you're that guy though. I'm not that guy. All operations. And then so I went to the retirement branch and I was like, you know, and the guy's like, I was like, tell me if I get out, like, you know, I don't know, whatever they wanted. I was like, I don't know. I was like, what's that? I don't know. I was like, you know, I was like, what's that? What's that? I was like, tell me if I get out, like, you know, I don't know, whatever they wanted, a year or two right or if I get out now and the guy was like, come back after lunch, Sergeant Major, like, I'm like, huh, and the retirement guys are dick. I didn't know that, you know what I mean? But I guess it's, you know, the army doesn't want you to retire anyway, right? So that's what I'm thinking. So I go back after lunch and the guy like prints me two pieces of paper and he like slides him across the desk. I'm like, okay, where is this going? So I look at Wad. I set it down, I look at the other one, I look at him together. We're exactly the same. He's like, there's no difference in the money. Staying or leaving. And that's when I was like, I'm out. Did you ever in your career get demoted or no? No. What is it with some of the best soldiers that are fighters tend to have a moment of the career where they get demoted? You five to E four, E six, D five, look, look, I would say this is everyone, okay. Let's just say, you know, million people join the army, right? Okay. How many people separate from the army under bad terms? Five percent. You think five percent? I don't know. I'm guessing. What is it? I would say everyone who leaves the army before 20 years is disillusioned about the army in some way. So everybody leaves the army with a shitty story. You were burned out. It's the most common story there is. And it is what it is. And guys always like, it's like they were being bad or something, but everybody has a limit. Most guys get in trouble for saying what's right. That's not in trouble in my book. And then so I would say this for like, there's more, I, you know, look, especially in the E9 ranks. There's more fucking wrangling to put someone down so you get the next job. Like so it's the age old thing. I'd say 90% of the people should. I'd say 90% of the people get out of the army have an iffy story at best. It's only the commanders that leave, they get to write their books. I mean, think about, okay, let me ask you the question another way. How many people leave with the, you know, the high school quarterback, you know, prom queen fucking story that are great. How many people leave like that? What would you say? How many after that? Like you're talking about the album. Out of the mill stories. You said five, five percent have a bad story. What do you think have a good story when they leave? Oh, no, that would be different for me. I think those guys a very high chance have a bad story. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like when you look at it, good or bad stories, you'll see the most people have. Who's the most successful guy? Like, do you went with that after the life? And I'm talking like tier one, like you. He whimer. It's our major of the army. And he was Delta as well. Yeah. Wow. So what was different about Mikey? What is Mikey? Was he as crazy as you? Like was he as he was? Yeah. Mikey's one of the guys. He's done it all. So how did Mikey transition from that fast pace to be able to handle the office situation to hire him? Probably to get there. But I mean, and you got to want it. I mean, think about this. If you really-- The Michael Weimer. Yeah, Mikey. You guys are the same age, yeah. Yeah. Is my next star neighbor? Interesting. So if you were to say, OK, this was different about Mikey than me. What would be different about his personality? He wanted that. He wanted that. Got it. Think about this. Do he want it that early on? No. He probably didn't even know he wanted it. I mean, I don't know. Maybe he knew-- maybe he knew he was born to be the star-- I don't know. I don't know. Mikey could tell you that. I can't answer for him. What I could say is, like, it's easier to adjust if it's something you want, ain't it? It's not so easy to adjust when people are forcing orders, stuff down your throat. That applies in every aspect of life. One million percent. Whatever. So I remember when I was sharing this story off camera with you is when my kernel came up to me and this e6, when it got the orders I wanted from Virginia comes back, I wanted to go Vichensatorally, DLI, Airborne, Special Forces, 18 Delta V group. I wanted to do all that stuff. And then, you know, last minute I'm like, I'm getting out and I told my kernel peacocks I'm going to get out. My orders went to my body. He took the orders. He wanted to eventually be Delta six, seven, eight years later. I can't find him. I don't know where he's at. I was telling the story earlier to you. And he goes in. And for about five, six, seven, eight years, we were not in touch with each other. All the information I had never heard back from him. How intentional can somebody be to be selected versus because sometimes people are like, well, there's guys that are in Delta and they don't even know what the selection process is. What is your impression of what the selection process is to get into Delta? It's hard. It's hard. Would you look for it? What did they look for? I had to explain to me like this once from one of the shrinks. If every human being is on a scale from like one to a hundred, right? Like they're looking for guys at like 89.7 to 89.9. And you got you got fit in that psychological number and or you're out like it's that simple. You know what I mean, you have the mental, whatever that is. I'm not a shrinker, a doctor, but whatever that is, you got to fit first. So like guys that don't make it, I don't think it's no harm, no foul. You didn't fit the, maybe you were 89.91. Did you see a pattern amongst all the guys that were being selected and were you ever in the process of selection or that you were not in that, I never, I never did selection or anything. So who does selection? All ex-delta guys that do selection or current, they run their own selection. I mean, it's a task, you'll do it. So let's just say if I do delta and they may come to me and say, Hey Pat, we like the way you think we want to bring you to be part of the selection process. Who gets that job? To select? Yeah, that's like the crown jewels, you know what I mean? Really? Oh yeah. So was Mike party? The only secret in the army. Are you being serious right now? Yeah, I'm being serious. The only secret in the army is the selection process. Why is it such a big secret? I don't know because, you know, it's, you're dealing with human beings at the highest level. I'd keep it secret so the Chinese couldn't steal it from us. Super soldier shit. Who the fuck knows? When you went through the selection process, who interviewed you? Well, the unit runs all their own stuff. So the army, you know, they have shrinks, they have, it's all internal army. But is it a recommendation? Is it kind of like, we got this guy here, John McAfee, I think you guys going to like him. You guys got to talk to this guy. Does a, does your E9 or your first time to make that recommendation? There's no one talking about it. First off, they screen your packet and that allows you to go to selection and then you got to walk, you got to do, you got to do the whole selection. So you got to walk the walk first. How long is the selection process? It's like a month. Something like that. So you went to Ranger School. You also went to Special Forces School and it's like a school you go through or at that point, they already know. It's a selection. It's a selection just like, you know, when you go through Rangers, I went through RIP. Now they call it RASP. When I went through Special Forces, they call it the QCourse, you know what I mean, like our SF, was a SFAS back then, I don't know what it's called now, right? So it's its own selection course. Would you be able to speculate what they look for, like if you were to say, I'm speculating that they will look for this, this, this and that? Yeah, I'm not a shrink, but I would tell you this is what they're looking for. A man who won't drive himself is not worth driving. They don't want that guy. A man that will drive himself into the ground, they want that guy. Tell me more. Well, that's like one of the things they always say, you know, if a guy is not worth driving, I'm not driving him, but if a guy is worth driving himself, and he's a true professional and he'll work hard and he'll do stuff, that's the guy we want. So it's not really, I don't, you know, the world these days like, I get all these questions these days. What were you thinking? Let's think and fucking survive, you know what I mean? So I don't think there was, I don't think there's like a, maybe from a psychologist, there's some like a psychologist could tell you a deep level stuff, but I think it's simple as like they're looking for guys who want to be there, want to do, you know what I mean? Like doers, that's what they're looking for. I always say this is like every team I've ever been on, I'll take all, you take kids out of school, I'll take all the board under achievers out of school that are problem kids. I'll take every one of them. Why is that? Because we're making army out of them. Because they're bored, because they're not engaged. Okay, so that's one board. Board under achievers. There's tons of them. There's me in school. You know, I got like seas. I didn't want to be in school. It's stupid. Yeah, so the reason why this is so interesting to me because I have a lot of guys John that their dream was To be Delta and they did they were gone co-soldiers ran 12 mile two mile 12 minute two miles They did the 82 points guy to sit ups and they did the correspondence class They did everything you asked them and they were early late You know they did everything you wanted them to go they had no problem going to the back 40 regularly They would do all that stuff and it was their gym now. You want me to get deployed to Cam Casey? I'll you want me to go over here anything you said they would do it, but they never got selected So it's not like they were not doers. Yeah, so you know, is there a due date? They didn't fit between eighty seven point seven and eighty nine point one You know what I mean? I could have been one point off and they don't get the The nod I guess I don't know what the army does so when you went in was it like a dream? It was like all right. It's a job. All right. This is I had no idea there was no internet like I didn't know what I was You literally had no idea what they mean like you hear rumors, but like no one knew back then You didn't know back then at all like no one knew like the internet has changed the game dramatically, you know But I didn't know shit about shit. I just figured as in seventh group and like I don't know these guys But it wasn't the first guys that came and talked to me about selections You know, there's other selections in the army and the guys that I try to recruit me for not not for Delta for other things Yes What what would be other things would it well? What would they be? I don't know I didn't go, but that guy's kind of recruiting pitch sucked What was the second guy's recruiting pitch? It was like it was like I was like so what would I do and he was like You would have great job satisfaction. I was like I mean, I could make break parts in a break factory and like that too, but it doesn't mean I want to do it You know what I mean? He was like you would have that's what he kept saying. I mean great job. He had no answers Like he couldn't even tell me so what sold a guy like you with the second time when man These guys like said they kicked doors, you know what I mean like at least they gave me an answer You know, I felt like the other guy just talked in a big circle who wants to work for people like that? John when that process happens when you're being selected the second time What does the units say today just say oh John got you know, you know, he went to a different unit What's the language they speak at the unit and do they tell you like I got a call yesterday a pretty big business He went just taking place and this lady tells me hey, you're gonna be a part of this if you accept it I'm on a contract with them, so but if you do this you can't talk about this this this this this and that and She ran through the entire thing with me. I said okay great It's like a secret high-level secret clearance for business, okay? So do they tell you if we go through this process you can talk to your wife you can't talk to your friends You can't tell them this you can't tell them that you're gonna go and you're gonna disappear What what happens next once you're selected all that? Yeah, you disappear. You already nailed it Wife I mean, yeah, your wife knows I never really told my mom because my mom would have told everybody You know what I mean? So I never really told my mom But she would come to my house and be like you had a beard, you know I'm just trimming my beard at my nipples with scissors, you know I mean in a field and like I come home and she's to be like You're in the army. I mean I'm in the army like here's my decard, you know what I mean like So you're in the army your grandfather was in the army and he was clean shaven you're in the army I'm like I am in the army mom, but that's really all I told her So you don't want to tell mom wife knew how did how do they know that wife's not gonna say anything do they tell you you can tell your wife There's briefings. It's very do they have a briefing with her or oh, of course. Oh seriously, of course So first processes conversation with you second meeting is with you on your wife. Oh, no There were as you are kind of like getting ingrained. There's like meetings and stuff, you know like You know, and then I'm sure it's look. I was pre-social meeting You know, I mean pre-cell phones paper army. It was different back then. God only knows what they got to tell people today Shit, you know, I mean like God only knows like so so much simpler back in my day But what what what how do they know that a wife of a soldier that's about to go Delta is Loyal to the secrets that you're committing to so let you say the marriage doesn't work out She's gonna go out my job. I don't know and whoever's dealing with them wives good luck I just want to go on the range and blow shit up. I could care less. That's kind of how you looked at it Oh, good care. I got it. I was skydiving. I love that. I was shooting every day You know what I mean? Yeah, and then like after we get on shoot and it's like hey Pat. You want to go? Do you just who let's go? Was there was there a personality pattern with guys that were in Delta like were they Were they all fairly charismatic charming and retaining because even when I talked to my body He says you can tell stories better than anybody else. He's met in his life was it kind of like Because when I sat down with mobsters and I sat down with guys that became underboss like Italian mafia when you talk one of the things all of them Have in common. They're all great storytellers. Yeah, they all know how to tell a story They all know how to kind of walk you through what happened why they did it Was there a pattern with all of them having charisma and charm and personality? Yeah, you know Look it's 88.7 88.9 like it says that These guys are so similar like but I will tell you this is like I always felt like for me I always felt like I had to work hard every day to be where I was and but I did feel like those guys you talk about They're got their Boston marathon t-shirts. They got they do all the push-ups. They do all the sit-ups They're faster than any human being I've ever seen and like you see them and you see these guys at selection It's like super intimidating because like Well, I'm just working hard to be here, you know what I mean? And like these guys are doing all this shit and then When you pass selection, I don't know where they go, but a lot of those guys go away, but there is I'm telling you Genetic specimens there these guys are just in I can't say enough good about the guys They select and the guys that are in the squadrons. They're so fucking good so talented and I always felt like There was stuff I was good at and when I was not good at I worked on every day So I didn't have any weak points, you know And I mean I did the stuff that I sucked at absolutely such as oh man now, okay the obstacle course like I never run an obstacle course in my life You know what I mean and the army has some but it's more of a joke than like this run the other course Ah, you know what I mean? It's more of a joke than anything I got legit ones with high ropes and like I didn't know how to do this So I came in like last and they are my counselor had to tell me like we've never let anyone go for the o-course before You could you could be the first then like I'm like now this ain't happening, right? So Every weekend Saturday I'd come in and run it and then I saw it out guys that were like way better at it to me like Best guys in the building and I would just approach him in the hallway. Hey could you show me this and then like I go run it And I get like and then when I realize is my technique was bullshit It it's not that I lack the strength or the cardio You know what I mean? This is like I didn't know where to put my hand and how to swing from here to here like simple stuff You know and then by the end of it, I think it was raining and like you know like The end of training like it's competitors like Jedi shit, you know what I mean? It's a tight window like you know guys are mad you you lose a point you're in third You know what I'm saying and like I think I finished like third it was raining guys It like spun off the track you know what I mean because it's wet, but I had done it so many times I just kind of breeze through right so I tried to always work on what I was weak at Here's one of the when we did the aerosol the last thing I had to do was the the 50 mile rock march that they do Kentucky, you know Ford Campbell hardest 10 days in the army. You're so funny. You're so funny Yeah, and they said hey, let's go a big guy. Let's give you the saw and I'm like all right I'll come away. I'm I'm I lift weights. I can bench three plates. Give me the saw I got it not a problem and I go through this and at the end of the guys is like whatever you guys do don't lay down Just don't lay down don't lay down and go to your barracks. I'm like my body can handle it I go lay down my body is literally frozen like this They had to come and put me in warm water to kind of loosen up it took about 30 minutes, right? But I heard one of the things they did is you know Maybe this is even special force and maybe this is not even selection for Delta the 40-mileer where they give you You know 13 maps or 12 maps or whatever it is a what is that all about? Yeah, that's what that's about like you got like 13 maps. I don't know. I don't remember but Yeah, it's something you got to do and it's a lot of maps You know what I mean? And like they'll give you a point and you're like And you know how big the map sheets are. I'm not joking and you're like Oh crap. I gotta go to map sheets over to this point, you know what I mean? And I get to walk the states Yeah, it's in the states, okay, so then listen, you're not a dummy. I know sometimes guys are like, well, I'm just a regular guy and those are some of the most brilliant guys in the world. The guys that try to tell you how dumb they are, they're some of the most brilliant guys that are high EQ, you know, you're not gonna choose Delta guys who are, oh, just go kill people and that's all we're looking for. There's no way in the world they're selecting people like that. I'm assuming you guys are some of the most brilliant guys out there that have a balance of EQ, any balance of IQ, would you agree with a little bit of that? Yeah, I think you're right on that. It's hard to find people like that. Yeah, yeah, that's what they're looking for. That's that window, you know what I mean? 88.7 to 88.8. Whatever it is, you know what I mean? And I could have got the numbers wrong. He could have said different numbers too. So prior to being selected, did you already have a highly decorated career? No, it's just a new guy, regular guy. You know, look, I've been through Ranger Battalion, I did, I did my five years, I did, well, four and then like four and a half, like the Sarm Major was like, you got to go work in the Army somewhere. I was like, I didn't want to leave being a Ranger. And I didn't want to end up in Korea, nothing against Korea, but like, I had no want to go there, you know what I mean? And that's what it seems like. They were sending people because that's where they send people, right? So I had no desire. So I was like, I'll try this special forces thing. And then I've been on a team, but I went through the Q course, I was on a special forces team, like not even a year. And then I was like, this looks cool. And I went they told me about I was like a new guy, you know what I mean? So nothing like there was nothing in the past. I had no, no, no, no, nothing. I mean, no, I had nothing. I remember they would say guys would come back from Camp Casey. They would say there's rumors in Camp Casey. If you get a certain STD, they keep you there for a year or two years until you get cleaned up. I don't know if you've ever heard the story or no, but they would say some stuff that would scare the shit out of you. They're like, do you do not want to go to Korea? You know, and if you go there, don't do anything because some of the STDs, they don't have anywhere in the world. It's like an epidemic. They don't want to release it to the world. I'm like, oh my god, you know, they would scare the crap out of it. I never heard any of that. I heard it was cold. And I'm like, I don't want to go somewhere. Imagine being an outside where it's cold all the time. Like, we did that one some while in Ranger Battalion. It sucked. You know what I mean, I didn't want to go nowhere cold. So what was the first mission you went on? Well, you're like, I can actually do this. I'm capable. And people saw that, you know, John Shrek McAfee is special when it comes out to the moments like that. What was the first moment for you? The first one you got deployed on? Man, I don't know. You get on a lot of interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I would say this is like when you get out of training and you get to your team, like, I felt like I was personally capable. I could, you know, I could handle firearms. I could skydive. I could handle myself, right? But I didn't know how all of it worked yet. Does that make sense? So I felt like I came really well prepared from training, but I really didn't know how to apply to to a real life situation. Yeah, to like any situation because speed accelerates or because it's like, no, because like, you know, it's like, look, I bet for you, it's like college, right? You go to marketing school, but when you get your first marketing job, this is where rubber hits the road, right? And like, you might have to do stuff that works that no one ever told you about. You might, you know, the stuff they told you about may or may not work, right? So it's it's kind of like an experience thing. But I did feel like I came well prepared from training. Got it. So training gets and you're selected, you're in. What happens next? Do they tell you, John, you're going to XYZ? Well, you go to a team and then you got to make your own way. Yeah. It's one thing you got in this world and that's your name and trying not to fuck it up. And is it like, here's where you're going? Are you waiting? Are you waiting on a call? Is a team? No, no, no, you're just, no, you're on a team. It's yeah. Do you work with these five guys, four guys, three, whatever, all the time? Are you here? Are you in the States? Are you out somewhere, you know, on a mission all the time? Well, you're based out of the States here. You know, what percentage of time are you spending here? What percentage of it? It's all cycles. The army does cycles, you know, like, and you know this, it's quarterly or the government cycle, you know, I mean, so it's all cyclical, just like the army does. Is it a regular schedule? Are you at a regular unit, like going to PT with everybody else? Are you? Yeah. So it's a regular job. There's a place you go to work every day, you know what I mean? And then kind of my day to day was I would come in around six. I would do cardio till about seven thirty. I'd walk to the chow hall. I'd eat breakfast and then at eight o'clock we'd shoot till about 10 thirty, right? We'd be on the range whether it's shooting, blowing stuff up, just some type of training, mostly shooting. And then 10 thirty to one, I would do jujitsu. I would sometimes work out and then I go to lunch and at one o'clock we shoot till like three or four and then you could go back to the gym, you could go for whatever. And then I did the o-course once or a week. Generally I got in the pool a couple times a week. Man, you know what I mean? So my day-to-day schedule was cardio in the morning, shooting, then jujitsu and weights, lunch and then shooting and then I'd go home or do something else. Is that all of you or that was your schedule? Well, that's pretty much the schedule. I mean you could do whatever you want. You could just show up at eight, right? But that's kind of my personal. Okay. God, so it's not like it's a, is it fairly an independent, decentralized without somebody holding you accountable? Hey John, get off you. Where were you at? You are accountable at all times. There is no not accountable in a job like that. And is it a well-known military base you're at or are you on a. I live in North Carolina. Fort Bragg. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And are you going and eating with other guys from different units and just regular, like you go into regular childhood? Man. Oh, I breakfast and lunch in the childhood generally because you're right there. Dinner usually gets somewhere else. And when other people ask you, so what do you do for a living? What's your emoist? What do you say? Dirt farmer. Dirt farmer. Yeah, I use that for a long time. But then if you're talking to a couple of the guys, do they know or nobody knows? I mean, you know, pre-beards day, you know, like no before guys started having beards when I had a beard, like nobody knew, like even my mom didn't believe us in the army. You know, after Afghanistan, when everyone has a beard, like you could pick these guys out amongst paratroopers for sure, you know. Got it. So now, so then, so then it's not like the army is trying to hide it as much as they claim. It's like this elite organization that nobody knows about. Like it's not like the fight club, wink, wink. If you're in it, don't tell anybody, you know, it's just between us boys. The internet ruined it. I think so. The internet ruined everything. You can't keep a secret. Seriously, you think there's real secrets with the internet and shit? Was it the internet or was it that one Delta guy that wrote a book about it, like what it is to be, uh, I don't know what the name of the book was. You know what I'm talking about that? No, I don't read them type of books. And then guys were upset. They're like, why would he write this book? Why would he tell our story? There was some controversy behind it. I look at it this way. My brother, my own family, like once they found out what I did, they have a million questions for me, right? There's nothing I would say to them that I wouldn't say to you. You know, there's nothing. I'm not divulging secrets. I'm just telling you about my life. And, you know, the officers can write their books, but yet the guys can't talk about it. That seems ridiculous, too, doesn't it? So, um, I just look at it this way, man. I just try to tell my stories. I would want my kids to hear this, you know, I would, I would hope that like, um, my stories and loving the army. I hope I'm spawning a whole generation to join, matter of fact, the army should be paying me for recruiting. Where's this, where's these army dollars at? Like, that's how much I love the army. So like, why shouldn't I talk about it? And then look, you know, I was, I would thank everybody I ever served with. I'm so grateful in so many ways. But, you know, like, look, if I can't talk about it, who should? Because there's so many guys like your buddy who, while they're not well adjusted yet, you know, like, you know, there's, I hear there's, I don't know where this is, but I hear there's veterans that don't like fireworks. I used to get mortared and rocketed. Boy, I will buy a thousand dollars with a fireworks from South Carolina where the good fireworks are and we're going to have a good time, you know, like, uh, but like, look, I hear there's guys that, that, you know, that have those things. And it's like, it's not all bad. So if, if I can't tell my stories, well, who should? Yeah. Who you want talking? Do they tell you don't talk or no? Do you get calls and say, hey, stop talking? You're talking to my, no, no, I've never, they've never mess with me at all. I think it was this book inside the Delta Force by a guy named Eric Cainey, uh, O2. So I don't know when Facebook and YouTube came out, but some of the guys you talk to, they'll say, hey, you should never talk about what's going on. And, you know, there was some criticism behind the unit schedule. I'm trying to see it. Was this guy? Can you go up a little bit? Go up the other way? Yeah, if you can. Key operations, Haiti shares, a first-hand book, a grueling, highly selective training versus uncessional. He recounts several major deployments, I'm just, yeah. So, when I talk, like at least at that time, it was like, why would this guy talk about it? So, okay, so you're at a regular unit. But the commanders in generals can write about it, and that's okay. It seems like a double standard, which the army says it doesn't do. Was he a commander-or-general or. No, he was an enlisted guy, wasn't he? What's his thing say? Like, I don't even. For a special first-off range, I'm a little more commonly known as Zeltors. In recent years, he has been writing on terrorism. Go a little bit lower to see his military career. Haiti joined the army in 1970. Be Squadron. Be Squadron. We found the problem. Look, no further, friend. Be Squadron. So, what's the difference? Tell me about, is there anything to it or no? Like, what is be Squadron to be a part of? Oh, A Squadron. A Squadron. Got it. I mean, it's the first letter of the alphabet. A number one. I mean, come on, you know what I mean? Did you want to get bees in school? Or would you rather had an A, you know what I get it? But, is it like joining the Navy SEAL versus being SEAL Team 6? Oh, is that kind of looking. Take those words out of your mouth. I'm not even going there. There's no compares. Between Delta and Navy SEAL. No compares. Tell me why. Well, any day of the week, I say this all the time. Any day of the week, a Navy SEAL could go to a unit selection and become a unit guy. And if you've crossed over, talk to them. They'll tell you. And plus I'm an Army guy. I should be given the Navy SEAL shit. It's my job as an Army guy. And it's their job as Navy guys to give it back to me. That's the way I see it. So, yeah, it's not a comparison. Come on. In what way though? In what ways is not a comparison? It's not a comparison. And they'll even tell you, like read their books. They'll even tell you. Be specific though. Tell me, tell me, because you guys are more capable in, you guys show up better in. The unit was made to be self-sustaining. They need nothing. The SEALs were not. And this kind of weakets them because they need augmentees to do our jobs where we have all, or we talked about this, the engineers, the prime power, we have all these people. It's the way the Army's made it. It's the way it was designed. It's the charter. There's a charter. It's all written down. If someone cared to read it, which I had, too, as a sorry major, they would have figured all this out, but hate to burst anyone's bubble here. Like, were there any Navy SEAL guys that came through to Delta? And you were like, "All right, good, respect." All of them. All of them respect. Yeah, all of them that's crossed over. Look, you make it to the unit. You get my respect right now, man. I love them fucking guys, you know what I mean? Did anybody do the opposite? Did anybody go from Delta to Navy SEAL? You can't do that. Why can't you? You tell me. This is what I've been talking about. The charter? The charter? Yeah, so it's just the way it is. It's the way it was built. It's not my fault. I'm just telling you how it was written. What is the history of like Delta? When did it happen and how did it happen? Was it something that- I'm not gonna probably read it in that book. You can't tell me you don't know how it happened. Like, did it happen? Come on. Come on, John. I wasn't around then. Would they tell you the history like this? Yeah, it started because of the desert eagle. Desert. Basically, when they went to go save the hostages and I ran during Reagan, right, the aviation helicopter hit an airplane and like burned to the ground or something. And this is what spawned. We need a more professional force. And the unit had been training for that. But that's where it all starts to come together. Now, the unit had been created for counter-terror stuff. SF teams were doing it. The unit was doing it. I don't know. I don't know how it even got there to be honest. This way before my time, I probably was told to read about this and forgot. Say, you're probably putting me on the spot, you know what I mean? But I probably should know, but it was made somewhere in the 70s or something. I mean, I used to look at all the old pictures of the guys who made it. A lot of bad hair and mustaches through the 70s. I had a mullet in the 80s, so I had bad hair too. But a lot of cool pictures, a lot of cool. Can you spot a delta fork? Can you spot a delta guy? No. So it's like if you buy a back at spot every Navy SEALs, you know what I mean? Navy SEALs, Crossfitters and vegans, you know what I mean? They'll tell you, come on. Vegan's Navy SEALs, vegans and Crossfitters. Yeah, that's right. Crossfitters. Okay. So walk me through, maybe share with the audience the story of what happened with Saddam Hussein. We were out there looking for him. And you got a bunch of things. You even have, I think, one of the hats that yet. Yeah. So there's a picture where he's like shooting a mauser in the, I had that hat. I gave it to Zach Bagans at the haunted museum. Yeah, that's the, yeah, where he's holding the thing up. Yeah. Saddam, you know, one of my day jobs was to coordinate intelligence between the government and us because we just, the war requires bodies, you know what I mean? This is something no one really understands is the war requires a lot of bodies. I mean, look, I know I talk about my stuff and what I did. But for me to even roll out the door, you know, how many people it takes. I mean, you know the army, right? There's intelligence. The engineers had to build the place for me to stay. The intelligence needs to lead me to a target, right? So so many people, but I had to read all these reports and kind of figure out, you know, who's what? We ended up getting like his tailor, his butlers, his bodyguards, the deck of cards. We got a ton of them, the other squadrons got a ton of them, unit kind of clean the deck, I think. And then, you know, I always thought the Saddam capture was really on a timeline. And the timeline was for junior, I think, more than anything. No, no, junior, Bush junior. Oh, Bush junior, right? Because if you start a war, but you don't get the guy you're after in your term, that don't look good. So I always figured like, we had to finish this for him. Now I had done anything for the guy, but I always felt like that was kind of like the deal. You know, there's a timeline on this. You know what I'm saying? And timeline, meaning like, if the next administration comes, it may have shut down and the mission wouldn't have been accomplished. Shut it all. All the stuff. Yeah, we're almost there and they shut it all down like they do so many times. How do you see the court comparison with, you know, Saddam and maybe what's going on right now with Iran and how they took out, you know, the supreme leader and they took out all the leaders, the mom, the dad of, you know, everybody. Do you see a correlation? Come on. I don't believe taking out Saddam who's saying, made this world a better place. I loved being in Iraq. I had the time of my life. I say it's all the time. However, I don't believe strategically the test of time. It wasn't a great idea. So the test of time will show how we, but I don't always believe we make great decisions. We do our best is no one's got bad intent. But at the same time, shit still gets fucked up. So I don't know. You know, I don't know how Iran's going to pan out. I don't think anyone does. But I will say this is the capture of Saddam I do believe was always a timeline, some type of timeline. And then at the same time, you had emerging threats, you had Zarqawi growing and in the background and, you know, other stuff going on, the insurgency in Iraq. So there was other stuff bubbling in the background at the same time, you know, we had a focus and capture Saddam. And would you guys get briefings and say, here's what you need to know about this? Here's what we need to know about this. So was it called, hey, this is what we need you to do. Was there a briefing on explaining who the enemy was? No, look, there was no intelligence. There was no human intelligence. No intelligence agency had intelligence agents in Iraq. There was no intel at all. Seriously? Seriously. We did operations to gain intel, which is backwards in special operations. And we used to have, I used to think about this. We used to talk about this like, so you want us to go out there and get this guy so we can find something out. And then that's just how it works. And then we look, man hunting is like a sweater. You're wearing a sweater. If I was to pull the right thread or the perfect thread off your sweater, the arm might fall off. I'm looking for that one thread. But how many threads are in this sweater? Thousands. And then, you know, so the intelligence agencies might say sources are worthless. And we're not doing it. We're in the army. We're running every thread to ground. Period. the form of Delta is also playing Intel? Are you also playing the role? - I've always got to have your own Intel. I mean, how are you reporting it up? - Always. There's no, this is all 1,000% oversight at the highest levels. No one wants the, no one wants unit guys running around not being checked. - How did you guys view the CIA? Who was the CIA to you? I mean, you all obviously have strong opinions about the Navy SEAL. What did you guys think about the CIA? - I don't work there. That should tell you something. I thought I wanted to work there at one time and I thought that would be my futures. I just work for them the rest of my life and that and then I won't work for the government again. - For the government or specifically CIA? - Any part of the government. - Why is that? - 'Cause I've seen them in action and war. I just know too much about how this works. So I wasn't impressed, obviously. And I felt like all forms of government. I also feel like, not just the intel piece, but the nation building piece, I feel like the State Department failed, I rack also. It's not the Army's job to reorganize everything. So I feel like there's a lot of failures. - Okay, so let's go there because what happens? We have the greatest military in the world. - Yeah. - What do we do if guys like you don't want to serve? Because a guy may listen to this and be discouraged to want to serve. 'Cause like I don't ever want to work for the government. If John Shrek McAfee is doing what's saying this, McAfee is saying this, what am I gonna be doing, right? - I know, everybody's got dreams. Maybe someone was born to wanna join the FBI. I would tell you, get in there right now. Go be the best. Whatever you could, I would never discourage anybody. But at the same time, I don't wanna do it. Just like, I don't watch TV. I don't watch the news. It's just what I do. - Even till today, you don't watch TV or do no. - I stopped watching the news in the war years. I were wrong so much. I just turned it off and never looked back. - It's funny, my friend said the same thing. The guy I'm talking to, he says. He says, we would watch the news and we're like, no, they're lying, that's not happening. We're here right now, that's not taking place. - I just woke up and this is what your baby milk factory, I wouldn't call that green sludge baby milk. Like, and our chemical guy couldn't even figure out what the fuck it was. So it definitely wasn't baby milk. And I'm like, that's it, man, you guys are wrong. It's fear-based bullshit. I turned it off. - When's the first moment you had where you're like, these guys are full of shit? Who was it? Do you remember it? - Man, there was, we raided this place. It had this green sludge. We left, gave it to the army. I was, we've been out all night, it's morning time. And then my boss says, hey, we gotta turn around and go back. And I'm like, we're going to bed. And he just starts laughing, he's like, turn around. So I turn the vehicle around and there's a mushroom cloud in Baghdad. Place blew up somehow. I don't think baby milk is volatile at all. Do you have you ever seen baby milk blow up? In a microwave maybe, I don't know. - Who reported that? Who reported that it was baby milk blowing up? - The news, like, oh, it had to be CNN 'cause there's the only real news back then. - So they're reporting this. You guys are, no, at that time, are you guys coming home and watching and who knows to see what's going on? To see what's being reported or not, you are. - Yeah. - 'Cause you're doing, so like, they play it, you know, in the operation center. They're playing the news at all times, you know what I mean? - At the operation center. So people are, and why are they doing that? Are they just trying to-- - Everybody, look, CNN was on all the time back then. You know that everyone just watched CNN. - Right. - Especially in the Army. (laughs) You think the Army's gonna tell you what's going on? We're watching CNN. - No shit. - But I realized they were just lies. - Did you ever have an experience with the CIA? We are like, I can't trust these guys. - Yes. - What happened? - Stuff. So much stuff. I don't even remember, but yes. And that's what led you to not trust in those guys. The energy I'm getting from you is, there is a level of frustration or not even frustration. Like a trust for them that's slightly above everybody else. Would you agree with that or not? - I don't trust them. Why? - You know what I mean? Well, first off, like a lot of them are, through the war years, they're just college kids. They were recruiting kids right out of college, you know, to be-- - Got it. - And you know, the next thing is I thought, beginning Afghanistan, I think these like, mid-level guys are station chiefs or, you know, whatever, right? Just a little above case officers. I think they thought Afghanistan and Iraq was gonna be like France after World War II. They were gonna be in Chateau's and their best clothes and they're gonna be cheers in and, you know, down with whatever they, I don't know what the fuck people would even say at a party like that. You wouldn't get me in those clothes, but that's what they thought. And then here we are, you know, rocketed every night, you know what I mean? Like mortared rocket, especially in the beginning of Afghanistan, like they're rocking in you every night, mortared in you ever. So they didn't get what they bargained for and a lot of them were just kids. Like, I mean, how do you blame, I don't blame anybody, you know, everyone had good intent, but like, you know, some 23 year old girl, they recruit out of college. Now she's in Baghdad trying to run sources, counter to Zarkawi, who's just gonna kill you if they even get whiff, they you talk to somebody. Yeah, come on, it's ridiculous, right? So it's, I don't think there's anyone has bad intent, but it's several layers of kind of, I don't think they really had a good plan and you'd think like, well, who would have the good plan? Well, they don't got a good plan, who's got a good plan? And then you realize like, well, we're the only ones like kind of doing what we say. Well, we're some of the unconventional ways you got intel. I don't even know what that means. Meaning, like, if I go in, find somebody that is, like I remember you told a story about Saddam had this one girl that he liked a lot and she wasn't that pretty. So he went to the husband and, you know, you got, so what was unconventional ways you got intel? Yeah, wives, the tailor, his butlers, like, I don't know if there is an unconventional way. I mean, I don't even know what that means, you know. Just any way to get it. Any way to get it. And then look, and if they got beef, if someone's husband wants to sleep with someone's wife and you're gonna tell on these guys, like, okay, where they, I don't care how we get these guys, they're on our list. We need to go get them. That makes sense. So it's always a never ending. We're getting these guys to answer these questions. It's a puzzle piece, you know what I mean? And we're just filling in these puzzle pieces one guy at a time. And then I would say this is like, everyone thinks like, you need these guys got these massive secrets. No, I just need to know who on the truck you were in 'cause we already know most of the story. Who on the truck? All these questions, what we're looking for is like, they're just silly benign questions. You're not gonna die for that. I'll come at on the truck, like, I don't know, you know what I mean? So, you know, these people think there's this like, you've really got to get answers out of these people. Most of them just tell you if you're right to answer the right questions because, you know, they think you're gonna, a lot of times, people think like, you're gonna kill 'em or they're being robbed. Like, you know, how many, I can't tell you how many nights we raided houses in Baghdad and the family was relieved. We weren't Iraqis because Iraqis will also rob you. So, they're just relieved to deal with Americans, you know, and the questions we ask, you know, who on the truck? Who did you meet with yesterday? Right, like, these are nothing questions. So, when framed correctly, the guy will just tell you, I'll tell you, I used to do this all the time. You know how to get a guy to tell you who he is? I'd walk up to the guy and I'd hold my little pictures up to him and give him a really stern look and I'd be like, fucking Saddam. And you know what the guy's gonna say? No Saddam, no Saddam. Muhammad, I mean, like, he's on the list, get him outta here. Next guy, Saddam, no Saddam, right? Like, the best way to do it is accuse him of being someone, you know they're gonna put the death. They'll tell you who they are. But if you ask him their name, they're gonna lie to you. I used to do that all the time. So, the reason why I asked this question is about the unconventional way of getting intel, is because CIA is not capable of doing what you guys are capable of doing. To get the intel, one must fear for their lives to eventually give the information. Would you agree, like, some of the higher level intel? And made in Portugal. Their craftsmanship is a way of life. For those who move through life differently. From some, it decks to nights that never need an occasion. Every detail is considered. Every step, effortless. Crafted from fine swayed and built with builder technology designed to move with you. Because true luxury isn't about being noticed, It's about how you feel. feel when you arrive. The FLB icon Lova made for the life you've earned. I mean, you know, if you're going to play that game, you know, I mean, you better play it to the end as a terrorist, you know what I'm saying? If you're going to play it, if they have to play that game, they're playing the terror game, they know we're coming after them, better play your part to the end, you know what I mean? John, what's a one-on-one face-off you had with a guy an enemy that he was sizing you up that you're like, I don't think this guy's scared and I've got to make a statement. Did you have a lot of those moments? Never once. Never once. You're ain't sizing me up. I already put you down. What are you talking about? Why would I let it get this far? Really? It's how you survive. Why would you let anyone square up on you? It's such a bad idea. I already stopped this. At what point? But if you're trying to get information at him, you kill me. You didn't get anything out of me. The guy squares up on me. I'm going to put them down. I could care less what he knows right now. Guy squares up. You're putting them down. Yeah. Let people threaten you during war. It's a risk you and your guys can't take, especially in small teams. I wouldn't even let that happen. Or if a guy wanted to square up on me, I'd already be gone. If I was alone, I wouldn't even allow it to happen. So why even get there? What's the closest call you're ahead? I know you're probably ahead. I'll tell you the worst thing is the mortars because as you could hear, I'm coming in and they're coming and crump and they get louder. Crump. Crump. And then they'll land them in the camp sometimes. One night, I think a reindeer was injured trying to pee and mortar around came in and shrapneled his man part. Stop. I'm saying that's rough. But look, I think that's the worst stuff as you're just, you know, and I got to the point where like, guys will be like, what are we going to do? I'm be like, I'm staying in my bunk. If it hits me and disintegrates me, I'll never know anyway. I'm going to sleep. That's all you can do. So I would say the mortars and rockets are like the worst. The mortars and rockets. Yeah. And when you say small team, how big would the teams? Three, four, five? Yeah. I mean, it depends. We're requires bodies. We could be down to two waiting for people like we could have however many. So always small teams. I went out alone a lot. I worked with, I would go out with other guys, but generally speaking, it's very small teams, couple guys here there. You prefer going alone or would it? Yeah. I'd rather go. Why? Why is that? Because this is going to go my way. When you're with a group, I think you end up having a group dynamic. And I think you overlook a lot of things that you would look, well, you would look at very critically when you were alone. Like when I was alone, I learned a hundred to one over when I would go out with like a dozen guys and we're going to raid houses like who wants to oppose us? You'd be stupid, right? But you know, when you're alone, you can't be taking those risks. So it's always is always different switching a gears for me. Anyway, you know, and when I was with a group of guys, like there's two of us. You guys didn't have a chance to begin with. Yeah. Do you remember the first time you took somebody out to one of the enemies out? Man, the battle at Torah Borough. Like I don't know how many people, I mean, you can probably Google how many people we killed the first day, but it was like too many to count for sure. Is that is that your first ever? Yeah. Yeah, my first time in battle was the battle at Torah Borough. Fucking loved it. Are you kidding me? You loved it. It was great. I mean, I didn't know. Honestly, I didn't know if it was incoming or outgoing. I was getting mortared. I didn't know. I mean, another guy, but I thought it was great, man. I kind of like, I don't know. I don't know, but yeah. And then like, yeah, we were just amazing. Those guys. And this is still with a small team that you're taking a bunch of people on. Yeah. It's not like you're dealing with a big team. Yeah. So on any given day, what could be the high low number on people you guys took out? There was hundreds. There's hundreds. On any given. What does it say on this thing? Hundreds. Like, I don't even know. I didn't count. Like, I'm going to tell you, all these guys count and I don't even know where the fuck this comes from because like, oh, God, time for all to count. Like, I don't think guys that count have seen it like, much bigger, many more bodies, mass casualties. I don't think they've seen those things. But like so many, it's not even funny. Did you see like, are there different ways people react to it? Or is it pretty much all the same? Um, okay. I think if this goes right for you, I think you'll never have a problem with it. And I try to do this when a guy, when one of my guys shot somebody in the moment, I tell him this is exactly what I expect of you. This is good work, right? You need to hear that on the spot. Okay. Next, I would try to, if I had time, cut off the shirt and look at the shot placement because as the as the ball, yeah, I'm in charge of the marksmanship. We need to see if these rounds are where they should have been. You know, so I would check the marksmanship on guys and I would show him these shots are perfect. Keep doing what you're doing. Couldn't have done better. And then when we get back, I'd make everybody drink even the guy that don't drink, grab a cup, I give a little, a little drink to everybody. And we toast. I gotta never have a problem after that. You know, but look, I'm telling you, and it works. You don't, anyone that's worked for me, you don't see them complaining about PTSD, you don't see me screaming about it. Now, I've had every symptom, and one, and like, here I am. I live on bonus points, you know what I mean? So, but, you know, I don't think it's a huge deal. I think it's a human condition. And then there's a way to deal with it and deal with it correctly so we can all move on. Is there a, is there a positive natural high where you want more of it or no? And I tell people this all the time, you might have to do stuff sometimes you don't like. And then other times, that same stuff, you might like it, right? It's the times you like it that you should be concerned with. It's the times you would like it. Yeah, there's certain guys I could have really cared less what happened to this guy on certain nights, you know what I mean? One of your guys, mostly bad guys. Okay. Like, there's certain bad guys where like, however the night pans out, like I could really care if this guy lived or died the night, you know what I mean? And there's other times where like, man, you feel for people and, you know, you got to think like it was we dealt with a lot of people, family kids, like, you come get a man of the house, he's got a family. He got to deal with them too, you know what I mean? What was that like? If you just took somebody out, the wife is sitting there sitting there, how do you handle that? Well, it depends on how it's going down. Some of them wives go nuts, like they know without this man in the house, their life is over, you know what I mean? Just culturally. So like, that didn't always go great. What could that look like when you said some of them went away? A ton of screaming, trying to scratch up your face, like, I mean, you don't understand what they're saying, but you kind of know what they're going through. Did they ever take out guns themselves and come after you? Yeah, I seen a lady whip out an AK once, it didn't go well for, you know what I mean? I'm assuming she's no longer with us. No, no, we didn't. We just lumped her up a little bit, you know what I mean? I have to shoot her. So most of the time you guys didn't take out the wives? No, no, we're not messing with them at all, you know what I mean? Or the kids, you know, but you got to come get this dude out of this house. We got questions for this dude, you know, and a lot of times these these guys would bring their families to gun fights, bring them out on the streets and like, you know what I mean? Like what for? Coward shield. Yeah, shields and coward. I don't know. Crazy, but you'd see it all the time. So when you hear stories about them using their own family as shield, there's credibility behind that. Yeah. Yeah. Kids, including kids. Yeah. How did you guys handle that? Oh yeah, you work around it. I mean, do they grab rifles? Are they combatants or not? Say the kids grab rifles. No, that's their choice. You voted, you've chose poorly. Got it. So if a nine-year-old kid picks up a rifle, and he wants to shoot you, you're not going to shoot him back. What movie was it? There was in one of the scenes Americans. I don't know which American sniper was where there's a scene where that happens with the kid and. Okay. First off, if a kid had an AK and I was 300 yards away on a roof, like, I wouldn't shoot him. It's only a plus. He's not a threat. It's only if you're a threat. Because everyone carries an AK and every adult male should have an AK and Afghanistan and Iraq. They're not really civilized places, you know what I mean? Then the policy was even these generals who now say America shouldn't have guns. Even those guys's policy was you had to leave one AK per house, per male. They got to defend themselves. Pff. Did moments where you had a young kid that have a, you know, a K with them that tried to defend the family, like, listen, if you're going to take me out, I'm going to take you out. Did those land with soldiers in a different way or the same, no, you're trying to kill me, I'm going to kill you. I mean, everyone takes it differently. You pick up a gun and you point at me and you're about to shoot, you already voted against me. I'm going to vote against you. Got it. It's that simple. I mean, what, what else do you do? You want to just stand there and die? Watch it happen. You want to just watch all the way till the bullet hits you, it, you know, I don't. Would guys ask you this question? What to do in those moments or it's instinct? Um, a little of both. It depends. You're just sitting here waiting for this to happen or did this just happen in front of us, you know? So, so there's this side of you on the podcast side, right? Where people watch you and you're extremely entertaining, right? Yeah. But the guys that you talked to who were with you, when you were in the game, demanding, pushing, challenging, high expectations, how different is the John today from the John at 30 years old, and if I'm in your unit, uh, man, uh, I was just peachy. Are you kidding me? Right. You know? I can't believe it. Yeah. I, I was the best ever. My mind just asked me. I don't know. Um, yeah, I was wherever I lost my smile is when I became an asshole and I was an asshole for years. I tell people all the time, I lived at rock bottom for years. My normal, uh, and so, uh, I would say like, uh, I was an asshole for years. I was. And but, you know, I mean, think of this, you know, I, I think what happens is, you always want to do right. And then shit happens, maybe right, maybe wrong. I don't know. No one's got bad intent. Shit gets fucked up, right? But the army will convince you that you were the bad guy here. And, you know what? Sometimes that's not true, right? And sometimes like, sometimes you are the bad guy. So I was an asshole for years. Um, you know, I drank, I hated my life, loved war, hated coming home. Pretty simple. If they would have just left me and bagged out, I'd have been fine the whole day. No shit. So I didn't want to come home. Like, at that time, were you married with kids or? Yeah. Yeah. I had little kids. I was married. My personal life was a shit show, so I just engulfed myself and work. How do you manage that? Like, how do you manage the scene, forget about the wife, the kids. How do you manage the relationship with the kids? What do you mean, war? No, no. Like, while you're. You mean war? Yeah. How did I manage my relationship with war? I just stayed there. Missing the kids. Was there any, like, did you, in your mind, like, was there thoughts of your. In my mind, if I don't go to war today, we're not going to win this war. What else matters to me right now? Anyone else going to do this? Anyone else raising their hand to do this? So the guys that raised their hands are very few. We're busy. You ever seen a movie, a few good men? Is that that lawyer movie you ordered to code red? Have you seen it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Long time ago. Do you remember, like, he's saying you don't know what this life is like? You go around to an office and all this other stuff. You don't know what men like me do and that out of the speech. I'm not going to get into the speech. Do you agree with him? Like, there are certain things at the average. I mean, at times, I mean, you know. I'm not talking about the code red part. I'm talking about, like. Yeah. For sure. Look, I look at everything as right and wrong. There's always a right thing to do. Try to do that. You know. And then I would also say this is, in beginning of war, I wanted to kill everybody. Get it over with. How old are you at that time? That you want to kill everybody? 26, 27? Yeah. You know. Let's see. 2001, I had been 31. 31. 30, 31. And you just want to kill everybody. Everybody. So you're. It's not even play games. Your eyes go to different places. Yeah. One eye you have is just a fun guy, chill. One eye you go to, like you're locked in, right? The level of intensity I can see it's in in front of you. Was it the level of intensity 24/7 with you when you were at 31? At that phase, the first time? Yeah. For sure. Always. Level 10. How much were you drinking at that time? Oh. A man. Yeah. I drank about two bottles of crown a night and then. A night? Yeah. And then I go hit the strip clubs. Every night. Yeah. Most nights. In. In. No. In Baghdad. Oh, no, when I was home. Oh, when you were home. Yeah. And this is your living with your wife, but you're going and hitting. Oh, yeah. It's kind of divorced and single, then. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. So two bottles of crown a night and you hit in the strip club. Yeah. And then you're at the. And you're at the. And you're a few ambient, too. Yeah. And then you're coming to the cardio at 6 a.m.? Uh, generally. I'd like. Sometimes I'd drink a bottle, take my ambient and then I'd just wake up at the strip club. And it'd be time for me to go in and do cardio. I quit drinking for a little bit. My God. The guys that work for me were like, we need you going back to drinking because morning fitness is worse when you're sober. Huh. I was like, yeah. Pub shit. Uh, you know what I mean? But, uh, yeah. I used to drink a lot. When I was deployed, you know, I didn't drink as much. I'd probably only drink like, I don't know. Maybe a half a bottle a night, maybe not every night. Because like, I was the guy to go out alone. So I'd go get all the booze for everybody. I'd just go down to the Christian district, buy cases of booze, bring it back to the house. Right. Rule number one, not supposed to drink, dumbest rule ever. Someone's got a blow off steam and here, otherwise you end up having trouble down the line. Oh yeah. Tell me more. Well, I mean, if you got. I mean, think about it. You just. If there's a major battle, the army had a major battle, I think about this like a hundred years ago. They'd have a major battle, right? After the battle, they're all going to get hammered high five, talk about their stories with each other. This is called therapy in my book. And then, and then the next day, they move on. Like the army allows for no venting. You can't tell someone you're burned out. You can't tell someone. The army accounts for none of that. They don't care about you. Keep your mouth shut. Do your job. Okay. So, while you're out there, what are you doing with girls? I mean, if you're. Were there. Were there any girls? Are you funny? Nothing, right? So. Who cares? No. No girls. Who needs girls? That's ridiculous. There's a war going on. You could kill people today. You're worried about girls? Maybe you're drinking. If you're drinking, like guys. Thank you. You're trying to find a girl. Where guys trying to go find girls or no? Overseas? Yeah. Well, why would you want one of those girls? That doesn't even make sense to me. To tell me why. I mean, guys who go to any wedding, they would want to get a girl. Dirty? Besides, they need shoes. Like. I mean, that's just a couple factors off the top. Not that I'm a germaphobe, but like, you know, that's the first thing, you know what I mean? And then, look, I always felt like it was surreal. Like, we'd go with these towns, like Afghanistan or Iraq. It was surreal. We don't live like this. We don't live nothing like this. So it was always so surreal. I kind of almost. I don't know. It's like. Almost was like, it's some type of narrative play, you know what I mean? Like. It was surreal. Like, whatever happens to these people has nothing to do with my life, who I am. You know, my family, my, you know what I mean? So it was like surreal to me. A lot of times, like, I was just indifferent, maybe. Yeah, to stay in that, say, you know, 31 years old, specifically that John, where you're like, you were an asshole and all this stuff, what was it working with you? Like, are you hard-charging throughout the day and then chill at night? Is it like two personalities? Is it three personalities? Who am I dealing with? I don't think there's any chill, you know what I mean? 24/7. Yeah, I don't think I could chill at all. In fact, I didn't sleep either. I'd probably sleep like four hours, three hours a day. Why sleep more time for drinking, you know what I mean? You're not joking. You're actually being desperate. Yeah. It needs to do this all the time. All the time. I tell people this all the time. I mean, I should get that crown of oil. Where is that? Yeah, you know. The day sponsored, brought you by me. Hey. And if they sponsored me, I'll be it. I probably need like a 10-year contract to get my money back out of them, you know what I mean? Do you still drink today or no? I do drink, man. Oh, I stopped drinking for a while. Years I stopped drinking and I didn't do no alcohol and then like, here's why I see a booze wasn't my problem. So like, I like socially to have a drink, you know what I mean? But like, when I'm at home or anything, I don't really drink that much. But if I go out, we're socially, we go get lunch. I'd love to, like, get done with Jiu-Jitsu, I call it stinkin' drink. and go get some lunch and have a cocktail right after you get to with nothing in my stomach. So I love this. Right and afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. Stinking drink. I love it. Stinking drinking. So go back to, if I came to your unit and I'm working with you, your unit, you're my guy. What's your expectation from me every day? How are you treating me? Oh man. I want you guys. Yeah. First off, you're going to get treated the best. You've been treated. I don't believe in stupidity and leadership. I don't believe in bad timing. I don't believe in emergencies like, let's just kind of smooth out the playing field and we got to do it. We got to do it when we got to do it. That's simple. I don't fuck with nobody. I ain't micromanaging you. Now, if you're a performer, the more you perform for me, the more slack I'll give you. And what does performance mean? Performance kind of works this way. Credibility equals freedom to maneuver. That's what guys use to say. Got it. So if I'm doing a good job for you, I have a little bit more flexibility. Yeah. Yeah. You could be late. You could miss a day of work. I'd have to do it. Tell me. Yeah. Go do your shit. Get out of here. However, you're bitchly fucking shun up. Like I will have some solutions for you that are going to be cruel and unusual to you. Just. The army says if it looks stupid and it works, it's not stupid, you know what I mean? But like, yeah, a guy couldn't pull a pin on a fast rope and he blamed it on the glove. His gloves. I made him wear his gloves, like nine to five for a week. I don't care if you have pick your nose, wipe your butt. These gloves will never be a problem for you again. And they weren't. I read a story about Tim Kennedy, if you want to play this clip here, Tim is telling a story about who you were. I don't know if you've seen this or not. Go for it. John McFee, former Delta Force operator, amazing war fighter, a storied career at the unit. He was my boss. John was a force. He's one of those guys in Garrison. He is not a fun human to work for. He's definitely not one that you want as your personal mentor about how to be a good human. You put John McFee in a case in glass that says, "Break the case of war violence." And you break that. He is one of the greatest war fighters to, like, walked her and she bought it. We were a hammer in that first deployment. John, you've never seen that? I think I've seen some of it, but I've never seen this clip before. I told you I was an asshole, you know what I mean? And then, yeah, and I was good at my job, I, you know, like, look, I came from, like, kind of fucked up childhood, you know what I mean? So like, no one ever showed me how to have good relationships, right? So as soon as war started and my, I would say this, if you had a good marriage, you're lucky. Your marriage survives the war. I mean, because think about it, it's like going to prison. You can call home, but you ain't going any time soon, you know what I mean? And then think about what you're doing on the other end, right? And guys say this all the time, right? Like, then they come home, they got to sit at soccer games and it's like, why didn't I want to do any of that? I just wanted to go back to war. I'm not going to sit here and lie and say like, oh, I'm a great, I was a great father. I went to those soccer games bullshit. There's no dude wants to sit at those soccer games. Let's be honest. Hey. And then B, I just wanted war. I was good at it. Who else needs me more, you know what I mean? And I think people don't realize the focus that it takes, you know, but I'm not the only one to have that kind of focus. Look at these CEOs of these big companies. Some of these, you know, I don't know, like, that's all they do. You know, and their kids will say they weren't a great father. I'm not going to sit here and, you know, say I was a great father and, you know, lack the responsibility of my focus, my thoughts, my everything was about war. And if I wasn't there, who was? And if I'm not there helping people, who's going to help people, right? And that's where my thoughts were. Did everybody need to know how to fight? Was everybody fairly a fighter? No. War requires bodies. I mean, we only need a couple fighters, you know what I mean? We need a couple of smart guys and we need a couple of mechanically inclined guys and we need a couple. I mean, this is a team sport. It truly is. Got it. So it's not like, like, Tim Kennedy wasn't a UFC at one point, you know, he was fighting. There's stories about he was going around telling everybody I can beat you up. I can beat you up. Is that a true story? Yeah. Yeah. It didn't go well. What happened? Yeah, he's like, I don't know, one night, like one of the helicopters got bombed, right? And like, you know, we have packages, you know, certain teams always ride on the same helicopters. You build these habitular relationships so the helicopter pilot feels like he cares about you enough to come get you in bad situations. So like, we build these kind of packages and like, have these habitual kind of, you ride on this helicopter, helicopter goes down for the night. I tell him to stay back, right? And I was like, hey, get the gun trucks ready. Just kind of case we need you, you're going to have to roll in trucks and come save us, right? But he wasn't the only one. There's a bunch of like his whole helicopter, you know what I mean? So we lost like, however many guys ride in the helicopter for the night, right? So we had to do more with less on an evening, right? So he had to stay back. And then when I get back, you know, he's kind of like kicking rocks and he's just a young kid, you know? I would say this, at that point in my career, I hadn't dealt with any like younger kids in the army. To this point, I'd been surrounded by what we called lifers. The guys are just, this is my life. This is what I do. I'm good at it, you know what I mean? And the lifers aren't really hip to new guys, especially younger new guys when you're more senior force. So, you know, I mean, I don't mind these guys. He's a young kid, right? And like he's really mad about it. And I was like, man, you want to kick my butt? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, well, you meet me in the dojo tonight at like whatever whenever we get done. And he's like, okay. And then, you know, so he comes in the dojo. And then what I did is like, I knew he would do this and I knew he would accept the challenge. So before I even asked him, I was like, hey, who wants to kick his ass? And everyone raised their hand. And I said, be in the dojo at this time. Everyone literally wants to kick his ass. Yeah. Because why he was being obnoxious. Yeah. Just kind of like kind of, I don't know, just a little mature then, you know what I mean? I kick your ass. I'm tougher than all of you guys. Like that kind of a mechanism. Well, no, just kind of like complaining about having to stay back, like, you know, in maturity is really what we're talking about. So he comes in the dojo and like 15 people are standing in there. And I said, we're going to fight in order of rank. And like, he handled a few guys like the first few guys handled him successfully, you know what I mean? But the lesson was, you can't beat us all. And this is a team sport and by the and then by the time it got to me, I put him in the sand and he's bleeding. And I just whispered in his ear, I hope we don't got to have this talk again. And then me and the guys walked out and left them in there, you know what I mean? Was he the best fighter out of everybody? Because I mean, for sure. So you guys, yeah, so he is better fighter than all the guys in the room. Everybody, but he's not better than 15 guys at once. What a great lesson. Yeah. What a great lesson. Yeah. It takes him to do something big in your life. For real? Can't do it alone. And then what happened? What was his attitude afterwards? What everybody? Did he also earn his respect from others? Or you're like, uh, yeah, yeah, he, he, he earned respect and got better after that. And he's grown and like, I talked to him now. And he's, he's great. But yeah, back then it was like, my thing was, this is a team sport. Not one of us can do this alone. Not one of us. Yeah, he's, he's also, was he also Delta? No, he was just, I was, it's when I was in seven special forces. Oh, okay. So he was special forces. He was in Delta. Yeah, we were in seventh grade. Would a personality like him ever been selected into Delta? And maybe if he would have tried out, he could have been there, but he didn't. So we'll never know. And maybe he's not at 87.7, you know, I don't know. We don't know. I'm not a shrink. Not a doctor. But by the way, you know when, when we all woke up one day, this was, I don't sometimes last year. We, we officially have Maduro, and he's going to New York, and ta-da-da-da-da-dan, well, you, US did this operation and they went in, and we heard about all these different things on how they did it. Right? Yeah. Oh, first off, way to go, boys, you know what I mean? I couldn't be prouder. Literally. Oh, hell yeah. And was it your guy? Was it, was it Delta? Well, I don't know who it was, but whoever it was, you know what I mean? Way to go, boys. This is the Super Bowl, you know what I mean? Yeah, because when I, when I read this stuff, it says Delta was involved. Two Delta IV squadrons had been moved into the region ahead of a raid, one of them in Middle East, not America, and they were flown in by the 160 Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stockers, and of course, we, we hear the stories, but, but a project like this that is that successful. And in all of a sudden, he's getting all this oil and the deals and stuff that he's doing. I'm talking about Trump. Then you have Iran, the right that you do. How different are those two missions? For somebody that's spent a lot of time in the Middle East. Oh. Well, I would say this, one is in our hemisphere and one is not. That's the way I look at it, right? Like, look, we should be working this hemisphere, we should be better friends with every one in South America. We should be better friends with Canada. We all live on this side of the world. We should all pull the rope together more so than sending a shit halfway around the world, right? And then geographically, they got their own issues. So I see it as a geographical issue and maybe a where to stand in the world of helping your neighbors more so than helping people that don't live in your neighborhood. That's kind of the way I see it. Okay. So, you know, let's just say somebody comes in, a president comes in and saying, we're shutting down all our military bases outside of the western hemisphere. Is that a good move? No. Why? Yeah, I don't know. I would say this. We should have never gave up balad and Iraq. We should have never gave up Bogram and Afghanistan because think about this. We would have a major army base on both sides of Iran right now, but that's the mindset of it. And I had to throw mines around it and told the locals, mess with us, and we will just, you'll just get blown up walking through the minefield. We won't even have to shoot you, save bullets, you know. And then just have these bases full at all times. Why are we giving this property back? We took it. Why are we giving it back? And think about this. If we would have kept the base in Iraq, you think ISIS would have took it. Think ISIS would have took Iraq if we had a base there. You think the Taliban would be as adverse friends to us, because I know we're friends now, air quotes, but you know, why couldn't we keep a base in both one of these countries? We took that ground and think about strategically where we'd be now. I think we make a ton of mistakes. And I think our political cycle is way too short for most of these guys to make good decisions, which goes back to the Saddam conversation of there was a timeline on it, because of politics. And we should be playing a much longer game. It's not possible, because presidents change, you've got eight years max, and typically we go like this. And the next guy that comes in is like a complete, a lot of love. Yes. You go back and forth. Correct. Unfortunately, that's how the Constitution's been created. Correct. We change that as a lot of amendments that you need, I don't know if it's two-thirds or not, but. Well, I don't think that needs to be changed. I just think someone should have a long-term strategy, and we should be following that somehow. We got all these smart people in government, yet we ain't making greater decisions. You know? So are you in the mindset, because you're saying let's just focus on Western hemisphere, that was part of your first. Yeah. But then you're like, hey, we should have had one on each side of Iran, put minds and come mess with us. You're going to blow up. We're going to kill you. It's done. So go ahead. If you want to do anything, right? We should have never given up the basis. Okay. Would you consider yourself a non-interventionist, or a person that protects the country, and we need to intervene at times? I'm a realist. And the truth is, if the fight's going to come to you, you want to fight it in your yard or someone else's yard. That's simple. But the way they fight is different than the way we fight. They'll come in, you know, like the way China fights is they'll send spies to work in companies to get intel from us. And, you know. Well, that's a different type of war. Now, you're. But this is another long-term plan. I don't feel we have a good strategy on it. You know, China is a separate issue from Iran, but I would tell you this. Stay on Iran. Let's stay on Iran. I would tell you, I personally think, and like, I'm not a, I'm not a anybody. This is just. No, I'm not a doctor. This is just my opinion. Iran's in the perfect place to get a never-ending supply of guns and money from Russia and China. They got Saudi boxed-in, right? Always have, which means the Israelis are boxed-in. When we took out Saddam, we took out the only opposition to Iran. So having said that, right, it's a, it's a, it's a shit show. And until something changes, it'll continue to be a shit show. And then the culture, you know, and I mean, come on, they've been charting, you know, saying that to America for years. That's generations of hate. You know, and I hope these kids today, with the internet, start to see that this is all bullshit. This is. People play in you for power. It's not about religion. It's about money and power. Don't, don't ever forget that, you know. It's about power. You know that's not going to change, that depth, hatred, animosity. You killed my dad. I'm going to seek vengeance when you're not paying attention. I'm going to send my kids to your country, dear true believers, when you're not looking, I'm going to blow your shit up and kill everybody in your family and I'm going to go to heaven and meet my 72 virgins and meet my. that's the mindset. You're going against that kind of an ideology. So are you in the school of thought, Woody Ron, where if we don't do something to them now, long term, we're going to face of your consequences, well, they'll do something to us, or you're like, no, leave them alone. Let them do their thing. I argue, see, whatever they got going on. Obviously, you can't leave them alone because they got their fingers in a lot of stuff. And that's the game they play. And if that's the game they're playing, well, they want to play Wacomold, you might get hit on the head with the hammer. Look, I don't know what the right answer is. I'm not a scholar, not an expert, but I would say this is it's not going to end until you can somehow cut off all the guns and money that come to Iran, the support they get from these other countries. Until then, it's on, you know what I mean? And they know it, right? Because it's, and then, you know, the next thing is, is like the religious part of the world. You got the Sunnis versus the Shia, you know? So I don't know how to win Iran. I don't know what the best answer is. I would tell you, I think one of the things we should have done already is look two Russian guys in the detest track shoots and a Range Rover, I'm going to drive it in Iran with a bucket loader and try to dig up that nuclear material. Why aren't we seized that shit? Let's get that off the playing field. So it ain't, you know, 20 years from now, someone dug it up and they now have the fuel. Now they just need rockets or something. I would have secured any nuclear material as soon as possible. It doesn't sound like we succeeded the last time when they said we shot all the things down and you know, be, you know, all the stories of, you know, they're never going to have nuclear weapons again, but we're back at it again. So probably that mission wasn't a successful mission. I don't know. As long as that material is out there, it's, it's for grabs, isn't it? I think. So are you? They could hate us all they want, you know, fly your drones, shoot it up, Navy ships, like it's all news and stuff. That nuclear material shit, that's going to be a problem if it don't get fixed now. At your peak, at your peak, like I'm talking about 31, 32, 33 years old, that the John McFee. If you had a team to go in there, what, what do you think you guys could accomplish? We go get that nuclear material. You would get the nuclear material? I look, I, I think the whole reason they hate us is because we've been fucking around there for years, right? Like, you know, if you read some older books, gaming nations, stuff like that, like we were messing around with Syria, all of them, post World War II, and I think we've kind of done it to ourselves. And that's why I'm a big fan of leaving alone. If it's not a problem. Even now. Yeah, leave them alone. Leave, leave ours. You see alone. Well, okay, you mess with our ships, shoot their ship down. Your plane flies near our plane, shoot that plane down. Mess with it at all. It's going to cost you. However, let them go. Seize the nuclear material and let them go back to doing whatever they're doing. I mean, what, what, what material is a big mission? Okay. How many people are in the army right now and nothing to do? We're paying them right now, aren't we? You're saying put ground troops on the ground. You're for that. And for getting that nuclear material, that means putting troops on the ground to dig it up to seize the material. I say yes. Do you think the president is afraid of doing that because he promised no troops on the ground? I don't know what that guy does. I don't even watch the news. I don't do politics. I could care less. But it's military, though. This is, this is, yeah, but this is decisions he has to make, and that's political. Got it. So it's, but if you, but if you were there, you would say, let's get that nuclear out of the world. and then leave them alone. If they had no fuel for this nuclear rocket and we described their whole program, what's our beef now? If you're claiming that Russia would provide it to them, wouldn't Russia be able to provide them whatever they want? I don't even if you got them. It's like if you if Russia wants Iran to be stronger because they're good ally and they sell them the Chevy drones and all that. Well, if they were going to sell them shit, they'd have done it before now. I'm thinking and that hasn't happened so whatever stopped them before stopping them now. Here's the deal that the materials, the problem, right? Because you could build a rocket knowing I don't think anyone in the world cares. You know, most governments have rockets, right? I mean, I don't own any, you own any rockets, but most governments have rockets, right? So that's not a big deal. The problem was the nuclear thing. Okay. Let's take that off the table. Now what's our beef? The reality is what we're just going to fight indefinitely. I mean, come on, man, since I was a kid, we argue about the same shit I ran, the border, fucking healthcare, the VA sucks, all these things have never changed in our lifetime. We've never fixed anything like, shouldn't we start to like maybe look at these things and go, how do we fix them? How do we fix this shit? If the beef was the nuclear material, well, then let's get that shit. If the beef something else, well, then what is the beef? What are we going after? What's the goal here? If Saddam would have stayed, you think they would have neutralized the the RGC? What do you think would have happened to Saddam would have stayed? I mean, I would have empowered Saddam to do whatever he wanted to do. Why is that? Because he kept them in check as long as they were fighting Saddam. They didn't have the bodies, the manpower, the money to bring the fight around the world like they have. They're now they're unchecked. They can just do whatever, right? I lived in Iran when he was attacking and everybody in Iran was worried about Saddam. So she after the Shah was gone, he's like saw a massive opportunity. Khomeini does not rule a nation led around his military. He's not a military leader. Let's go. And he was on offense mode for I don't know how many years like back to back to back. This isn't a middle of 80s when this was taking place. And you said that Saddam had a lot of Christians around. And why why is that? What was the story about him? Martyr. Martyr stuff. What do you mean? Well, as a Muslim, if I martyred myself and you, I go to heaven. Christian kills himself and you. Christian goes to hell. Who's less likely to kill you? Christian. So he was like his butler, his tailor, his if you touched him in any way, clothe him, fed him. Those are all Christians. Because he trusted Christians. Yeah. And you know, during his time, there was a massive Christian district downtown Baghdad. They've always been there. I mean, a serious or old country. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Now, I doubt how many are left after ISIS. But they probably didn't do well then. Did you, because you said what they, you guys captured him nine days after you left the Iraq or some like. Yeah. Nine days after I went home for Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. They're squandering on it. Did you ever deal with you day, his son or no? I only seen his body dead. You only saw his body dead. The guys that killed him, brought, I had to watch his bodies in the hangar him and, uh, Kusay, were they as bad as the stories we need? For real, they needed to die. I heard a story. Matter of fact, the planet is way better without these two. So they were more brutal than their father. For sure. How did that happen? So it's their psychopaths. They just, you know, uh, man, they would just snatch girls off the street and like have them in the perfume palace. Like I talked to a girl that when the Americans, like, came in Iraq, they freed her and she was like 18. She had been there since she was like 12. Wow. Uh, so they would just rape and murder and whatever the fuck they wanted. And is that because they felt empowered by the dad that they can get away? I don't know. I don't know what these psychos are thinking. Don't be, don't be getting me inside their head. These guys are sickos. I don't know what they think. I heard about a story about and the Syrian wedding in Iraq and the wife, the bride was the hottest girl in town. And so who they shows up with is true to the wedding shows us guns. He says, I need to take the bride for one night and you guys will get her tomorrow. The groom, the husband jumps in, phone, kills them right there at the wedding, takes the girl, makes they brought the girl back. These are types of stories you hear about this guy. That's what they did, man. Like I don't know what those guys thought, but they were bad news. They're bad news. No one needs to be treating people like that. And Saddam wasn't like that. Um, I don't know. I don't think Saddam was like, I would consider them like psychopaths where I would consider Saddam a dictator. You know, like he killed for control. I think these guys sport and pleasure. And I believe they were drug addicts also these guys. Yeah. Like white powder, whether it's mouth or cocaine or whatever. It was a movie they made about it. I don't know if you've seen the watch movie about today. Can you type in Oude who's saying movie and it's actually by pretty legit act. It's a phenomenal movie. I watched. I don't know how many years ago. Um, go a little bit lower to see. Yeah. That's that one right there. The devil's double. But a good name. Yeah. The devil's double. Turned out to be by the opposite. Yeah. The military commander, Oude who's saying in his body double, I interviewed the double by the way. Like eight years ago, seven years ago, very interesting. He talked to his body. Yeah. The devil. I have to say it was, it was some like, um, I mean, I was sure that guy was scared of them also, you know what I mean? Scared shit. Everybody scared of this man. It was a, um, yeah, it was a very, uh, uh, interesting conversation. What year is this? How long was this? Five years ago, okay, five years ago, talking to him and what role he had to play and how it would use him versus the other one. But, um, yeah. I mean, Oude, those guys, so you saw them by the time you saw their body, they were dead. They were already killed. And your guys killed them. You're a or b, a, okay. So warfare, how much of warfare changing do you sit there and like the strategies for you guys would change everything right now. You hear is drone drone. Yeah. Ukraine is supposed to be destroyed by Russia. And I know, shit, they got the best drones in over for a couple thousand dollars. Iran, they got these drones for a couple thousand dollars. Yeah. Is it changing like dramatically? Yeah. I think warfare, like I experienced is going to be different in the future, for sure. You think Delta force will still be needed with the way they're doing it? One million percent. Yeah. Tell me why. Um, man, I mean, until you can do get robots that can, I mean, I think the goal with warfare is robots, right? Like why lose people? We could, we could then war indefinitely. No one gets hurt and we could all make money on war, right? Cause war is a money making business. I'm not dumb. Um, so I think it's the way of the future. But I always think there's going to be, you know, the need for a unit to be able to pull stuff off that no one thinks is possible. And so you guys would just simply adjust with the weapons to use and, and whatever they have, have you heard about these new dragon drones? No. Is this it about dragon drones? Watch this. I love the sparks. So it just comes in. Yeah. This is genius. Maybe play the one I sent you because the other one gives a, uh, explains what it's capable of doing. And how different it is. The ones Russians make versus I just texted it to you. You should have it somewhere there. So dangerous, right? Did you guys have to deal with this back in the days or not really? Yeah. Man, we had them airplanes crash, no one could fly I'm right. We crashed them all the time. Like, uh, we had kind of similar small stuff, but nothing like as effective as they are today. Like nothing like this. This came after my time at the audio dragon drones to ignite Russian positions. Thermite burns at up to 4,000 degrees, causing severe burns and spreading fear among enemy troops. It can penetrate four millimeters of armor in seconds with each unit costing only $10. Nighttime footage shows these drones setting tree lines ablaze, a tactic used in regions like Zaparizgia, Donets and Kursk. Russia has also developed similar drones, but initial footage suggests theirs are less effective. Ukrainian forces are deploying thermite equipped dragon drones. I mean, this is something cool. It's worth it, right? I'm telling you. Do you look at this and say this is cool shit. Oh, yeah, that's cool. Really? Oh, yeah. The average person may look at this and say, dude, warfare is changing. Well, okay. I think the Russians are still fighting at World War II style war in the sense that they don't give a shit if they lose 20 million people. And I think that's how they think. So I think their warfare is different than the way we see warfare. You know, we're very objective focused where we take this, we take that. We're moving. We're on the move. I think the Russians are Stalin grad. If you take call the world. where we're two examples, they're kind of military doctrines throw bodies at the problem, lots of bodies. - Yeah, it's like he doesn't care right now. He even said all the rules are, I think Zelensky said yesterday or two days ago that the way Putin's leading all the rules in war are off the books now. Do whatever you want to do. They just surrender, 250 Russian soldiers just surrendered and set a bunch of things and how do you think this one's gonna end? - Obviously this is very different than Iran. How do you think this is gonna end? - Well, Putin's probably, honestly, like look, ever since they found what is it? 15 trillion dollars of oil, a gas under Ukraine. They went from zero on the oil charged to fourth in the world in potential. I think he wants to carve off a slice of that for Russia. And he needs like warm water ports and he needs pipelines and shit. And if he had the Don Bass, he would have some of that, right? So I think he's looking for a negotiation, a carve out, you know, a couple trillion dollars off the top for himself. - For himself? - Well, for Russia, whatever. You know, it all goes to his pocket. I mean, that's why he's the richest man in Europe now. Emmons Lindsky, right? Two richest guys in Europe. - You hear people saying that, but who knows if it's true or not? Who do you trust more? Who do you trust him where he stresses Lindsky more? - I mean, I don't trust either one of them. That's a fool's game. Trust in these dudes. Are you kidding me? I mean, I'm not saying we shouldn't have allies and be good to people, but like, you know, I'm saying trust, but verify always. Period and a discussion. - Yeah, it'll be interesting on what happens, you know, with these guys and how it ends up ending between the two because the days of, do you think like in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years, possibility of maybe even a next six to 12 months, any possibilities of somebody using a nuclear warhead? - I think that's always a possibility. - But I'm talking about like the way that it happened, like, you know, Truman eventually called the shots and we did what we did. Do you think the tensions are at a level right now where Putin may sit there and say, "You guys wanna play this?" No problem. NATO wants to expand to the east. You guys didn't keep your promises. I'm gonna show you what I got. You think it'll get to that point in our lifetime? - Not with Putin, Putin's smarter than that. That's a no-win, that's a no-sum game. That's not how to get, that's not how to get, you know, half a 15 trillion dollars. That's how you get zero of that money, right? So I don't think Putin would do that, but I do believe any one of these rogue states warring anywhere in the Middle East would love to detonate a nuke anywhere they could. So I think it's a very, look, I think the world, I think the world now is crazier than the world in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s. Like, there's so much going on these days and it's going so fast because of the internet truth, you know, all of it, so I think the next five years are going to look very different, you know. I would say this is like, look, I also think we need to have good friends in this world, you know what I mean, like good friends. And we have the biggest economy in the world. It's the biggest weapon this world's ever seen. Let's pay the people that like us to do nice shit for us and let's have friends and the people that don't like us don't give them no fucking money and ignore them. End of discussion, right? But we keep giving everybody money and we know, you give I ran money, where's that money going? It's not going to the people. They're not buying, you know, blankets for babies. They're gonna buy fucking weapons and they're gonna go to China and get more AKs so they can get them the Yemen because they're trying to box the Saudiians from every angle, right? So it's a never ending and it's a geography problem, I think. Second amendment is coming up lately where guys are saying, you know, originally when the founding fathers came up with the second amendment was for you to be able to defend yourself against a tyrannical government, right? Yeah. You're not gonna do shit today with M16, you know, against the government that if they become tyrannical, right? Do you agree that maybe we need to extend this second amendment? Some people want to take away your guns, some people want to take away anything you got. Some are saying maybe civilians need to be able to have a little bit more than just M16s and, you know, good ones. What do you stand with that? Some America freedom of choice, it should all be legal. Even if I want to have bombs and nuclear on any of that. Well, maybe not nukes, you know what I mean? Or maybe-- Maybe you need to give like fingerprints and like a background check for the nukes. I don't know, but I think, look, this is America, everything should be legal. I don't think anything should be illegal. We're going into the future, this is freedom of choice. And I think the government should be traditionally in the business of like doing stuff like this to make money more so than whatever the tax is, you know what I mean? Have you seen what this guy Palmer Lucky is doing with drones? Never heard. Have you followed it or no? No. Palmer Lucky is a billionaire who all of a sudden got into it. And rule, you know, $2.9 billion Navy submarine shipyard contract days after Lucky, Paul and Lucky joins Pentagon weapon group. So he's creating a company that's building weapons now. Oh, is this the guy that's got like this helmet that can see dudes in the next room? Yes. You know, I want that. I think this is the guy. Hey, Palmer Lucky sent me one of these. Yo, I need this. I've heard of this thing, but I didn't know who he was. Yeah, so some of the stuff that he's doing, if you, the one Andrew specifically put the go up a little bit, go up a little bit and see if it's that one. Go up one more. Is this the one we're talking about design? It's a, no, no, that was not it. But he, yeah, it's like ego vision or something, right? I forget what it was called. Yeah, this ego, uh, ego, I helmet, eagle, I helmet. I need to see you go, I helmet. We're going to notice a drone picks up a guy behind that container over there. And what's going to happen is when he walks behind that container, I'm able to continue to see where he is and what he's doing. So here's ghost X is the drone that's watching just watch for a moment. So the blue force is my friendlies. So see that little right hand corner where it sees behind the containers? They're tracking where the bad guy is. They're tracking where my guys are and then watch when they go behind the container. So I can actually see through it and watch now they're engaging the guy over there. And he's down. So, um, this is a system that allows everybody to basically be operating is one. You know this guy, can you help me? You really, you really want to? Oh, yeah, of course. I'd be wearing this around the neighborhood, walking my dog, you know what I mean? Like come and get me if you had this and while you were out there, how different would have been for you guys? Oh, you know, great. It would be if like you put on like your night vision for lack of a better term or whatever it is. And like you see like bodies where people are even through buildings or behind dumpsters or whatever. Right. Like this, what if all 10 guys have the same view like this is incredible. This is like Star Wars shit in my book. And it's just like this is a competitive advantage at the highest level against your enemy. Well, you know, okay, you're in the army, right? You know what an op order is? No. Organized cheating. Right. So when guys used to say you game the shit out of this, you know guys will be like you game did that. So while you did this, you game it like an op orders organized cheating, are you gaming? Like it's the way the army does best. Get used to it. You know, it's the way of the world. Yeah. I mean, this guy, this 34 year old entrepreneur billionaire who came up with the product Oculus is now using the Oculus VR is now using this to create military weapons for the US government. Love it. This is going to be one of the biggest players. So if you see him right, that's a bad picture, Wikipedia could have chosen a better picture from the now one. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Can somebody update that picture? Yeah. But yeah, if he's watching, you know, let's get one of those, one of those goggles for you. Last but not least, today with you, you know, you have kids, you have family. Yeah. You in touch. Do you have relationships? Yeah. How did that happen? How did that happen? What dad was doing that? Now it's good. How did you do that? I mean, it's not as great as I'd like it to be, but maybe one day, you know, we'll be good, you know. It is what it is. I'm always positive. I always try to be positive if I, if you call me, I'm going to be positive. So it's like, either way I see my children as lead by example, you know what I mean? But this is where the sea life in general is, like, you know, the kind of, you know, Living a better life is the best thing you can do, right? 'Cause people all the time, like, your enemies, right? They really want revenge, we want this. Cool, I'm living a better life, you know what I mean? I just flew here from Tuscany, you know what I mean? I have the best time of my life. So it's like, I'm living a better life. You can be mad at me for it. And then since I've been living a better life and people see that, you know, a lot of people, you know, I'm positive, they want to talk to me, you know what I mean? We'll have fun, you know? So when it comes to my kids, like, they know I'm here for 'em, they call me, you know, I get them cute pics from 'em, you know what I mean, I'm happy. But they're also of the age where they're adults and like, they're in the middle of their lives, you know what I'm saying? Are you grandpa yet or not yet? Yeah, I'm a grandpa, yeah, I got two grandkids, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, that's why I say I get those cute pics, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's cool. That's a, it's interesting going through the process. You know, we have one of the guys out there, you met him, you spoke to him, he had a guy on a neck, he, one town, one of his daughters, she was 16 or 17, he's like, look, don't call me again if you're gonna get deployed again. And he was like, shit, you know, he's always out there, right? Don't call me again, 'cause if we have to go through again, you know, as a kid, worried about what to do and all this stuff, if somebody, when somebody would get into Delta and let you say the guy wasn't married, would you encourage marriage or would you tell him to put it off until he's done with Delta? What was your position then? It really doesn't matter, that's what they'll tell you. Most guys are married, right? You go through a divorce, they do not like that, 'cause that could get messy and that's a reflection on them, right? But I would tell a guy, don't get married. I would tell most kids these days, don't get married. In the military. Any kid. Any kid. Any kid. Seriously, yeah, tell me why. Yeah, for a man, what are the benefits? You know, someone's gonna take half a nothing or whatever you got later, like, it's ridiculous. Have a solid prenup in place. Oh, there you go. So would a prenup you would do it? No, you still wouldn't do it. It's a waste of time. There's no reason today in my book to get married for anyone. It's just where the world is. 'Cause you live together, they're still gonna take half your shit. And the way I see anything in life is, I choose to be here, I choose to stand next to the people, I wanna stand next to, right? And I'm right or die, like I will stand next to you. You know, I think, you know what? People say they're right or die. Like, I've had people tell it to me and I was like, not happy to hear it from people because on the right or die spectrum, I've chose death a couple times. So I know what right or die means and I know people say it and don't mean it, right? So I would tell people marriage, what for, what for. Or wait till you're older, wait till you're, you know, like no one really understands the level of focus. Like, and I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one. But guys like me, the level of focus. I mean, imagine you find that one thing you're good at and you think lives are based off of you being at work or not. We're playing a game of life or death here. This ain't like I have to pay the IRS more money or any whatever, right? This is life or death. And when it comes to that game, like, you know, I would say once you've played that game, everything else is kind of bullshit. We don't have to take it so seriously, right? And having said that, there's, there's no advantage in these situations to being married for a younger guy who's so focused and so ingrained and believes so much in what he does. Go do that, don't distract yourself with something else. Stay focused, do your shit. - You're 54 years old right now. - 56. - 56, I'm sorry, 56 years old right now. What's your greatest accomplishment? - Me? - Yeah, what do you think? I just came from Tuscany, I keep saying this. It was bucket list, man. I had the real time, yeah. - That's cool. - I stayed at this villa, it was the papal hunting grounds for hundreds of years. Napoleon wrote his horse from one end of the property to the other is just absolutely incredible. So, man, I've been just trying to check off this bucket list little by little every day, you know, like, don't wait 'til the end of your life. Pro tip, don't wait 'til the end of the life for the bucket list, do it now while you got a chance, you know. So, I'm bucket list and shit yearly, man. I tell you, I tell people, I live on bonus points, you know, but it's a choice I made years ago to either smile and have a good day, or I can frown and be an asshole. - You're so young, you know, 56 is young. - I know, man, I can't wait. - There's a lot of living, there's a lot of living too. - You know, I got become a world champion in this jujitsu. - Is that really a goal? - Yeah, yeah, I've been trying for years, you know what I mean? I ain't got there yet. Well, last year, I got disqualified 'cause I'm too bad for jujitsu, but this year, maybe I win, maybe I won't, you know what I mean? - You got disqualified last? - Yeah. - What'd you do? - Pretty much nothing, but like, the guy rolled over. He sock her fake, then he was like, oh my back. And then like, well, this guy's injured, I'm moving on. I'm healthy, and like, I got disqualified. But this year, maybe I get it, you know, but it's the journey for me, you know, the, I love jujitsu, I love, I say this all the time. I think guys forget about things they love, and they focus on reliving their pain, right? Like, there's a time in your life where you were at a low point, and this song meant something to you, right? Don't listen to that fucking song anymore and remind yourself of the low point. Find new songs, find a new high point. Don't relive your pain, and I'm not reliving my pain, guy. I'm moving on, right? So, kids, you know, you could play peekaboo with a kid 200 times, and they think it's funny every time, right? Are we so different than kids that there's stuff that'll make us laugh over and over? 'Cause whatever that is, find it and go do it. Jujitsu makes me happy. I do it all the time. I hunt, I do jujitsu, I do bucket list stuff. I was just at this villa, you know what I mean? So there's so much good, you know what I mean? That, like, I'm just, I tell people, I'm so much good. I'm living on bonus point. Are you, how do you make money right now? It's just a retirement, the pension that come in. I get army retirement, and I teach people to shoot. Oh, that's right, that was in that documentary where you were listening to the heavy metal song in the car, I made that heavy metal song on an app. I made a whole workout with a death and destruction, and I listened to it when I worked out. Seriously? Yeah, I made my, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not. Yeah, yeah. It's called Green Eyed Devils, just a killer. (laughing) Yeah, you were singing along, you know the lyrics, all of it. I had AI make it for me. That makes sense, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so I made a, okay, I made a ton of songs. I think this is pretty cool. 'Cause like, okay, all things being equal, these songs are almost as good as anything I grew up on the radio with, but it's the words I like, you know, like, you know, like helicopters coming in, snipers, night vision, guns. Is that, like, you're literally making your own playlist. Yeah. Like, it's not like, hey, this is my playlist. No, this is your playlist. Yeah, I think there's like 17 metal songs. It's an app called Sooner, like. No, no, I know, trust me, like, we're one time in a car, and my dad was freaking out Vinnie, makes a song, and my five-year-old, he writes the songs. It's a Brooklyn, it's like, oh my God. It's my name. Green eye devils, maybe a little pop up. 'Cause it on YouTube or no? No, I don't think, it's just on this app. I just kind of, I tell people to go to my thing on the app and listen to it if they want, but. Did you upload it on YouTube or no? Maybe you need to do that. I don't know, maybe. But, yeah, I made all my own songs, right? Let me see if I can find it. I'm like John Schreck, McFee on "Suno." Oh, that's it, wait. That's it. I found it, so let me send it to you. That's sick. If you go on YouTube and you tap in Green Eye Devil, you'll find it. Yeah, but yeah, and there's a whole playlist of like, I call it death and destruction, but it's like workout music, like, you know, like, kind of like 90s metalish, you know, 2,000 metal. Play the Furtino, no, top left, it's a short. Yeah, there you go. That's the best part. Green. Yeah, it's my jam. Devils out for the night. Oh, shit, I love these songs. The enemy called you guys to Green Eye Devil. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's the best part of it. The enemy called you Green Eye Devil. Yeah, the bad guys call it Green Eye Devil. Well, it's because like when you got your night vision on, you see the green. glow in the face. So the song is called Green Eye Devil. Yeah, Green Eye Devil is so cool. That is so cool. And so do you do anything? Do you write? Do people follow your sub-stack? Is there a podcast? Are you doing anything or nothing? Man, I mean not doing nothing right now. Any plans? I wrote a book a while ago. It's at a finishing editor right now. But I wrote a book. It's a fiction book. It's about my first deployment of how I went out alone and stuff like that. I made it a fiction book and it's kind of got like a subplot. But I wanted to write a fiction book about every deployment with like a bigger so-what to it, you know what I mean. But I would like to write some books maybe, but to the amount of stories that you have where you put into all the stories. Well, I've had book meetings with a lot of these book guys. I had I think 37 total and like I didn't find anybody I wanted to talk to. You know, not me. I'll introduce you to somebody. Okay. I'll introduce you to a guy. Talk to him. He's a business guy. Very successful. Probably worth 50 million and he knows everybody in Hollywood, agency and I think he's unlike the guy. And, you know, he knows all the agents and all that stuff, all the managers, all the publishers and see where it takes you. And he's a kind of guy you would like to talk into. Yeah, listen to. Brother, this was amazing. Really enjoyed it. Yeah. And for the audience watching this, stay tuned because I think there's going to be more stuff coming out with John here. Well, your story's fascinating. This was amazing. Thank you. Yes. Thank you everybody. Bye, bye, bye, bye. And crafted across five Italian factories with builder technology and her foot. It may be the most comfortable shoe you will ever own. Introducing the all-new FLB shoe finished a new chocolate curates a leather made to move built to endure designed to impress. [BLANK_AUDIO]