INSIDE THE IRAQ WAR | Frank Sobchak | Ep. 341

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Special Operations, Cobert SPI and.

The Team House with your host Jack Murphy and David bark.

Hey.

Welcome to episode three hundred and forty one of the Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and our guest on today's show. We're very happy to have in studio Frank Sobchak. He is a career Special Forces officer now retired, and he's the author of Training for Victory. This was a really great book. It has five case studies on El Salvador, the Philippines, Columbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, examining our partner force relationships and where do they go well, where do

So let's start off a little bit talking about you.

Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, sort of how you grew up and how that took you towards military service.

Yeah, so I did not come from a military family. When actually I went to West Point, or I got accepted west Point, my dad literally told me, why are you going into the army? The armies for stupid people? And schmucks and he.

Was not entirely wrong.

So so my dad the recent kind of I was attracted in a military service, and my dad was drafted for World War Two, but he served in.

The Panama Canal.

Both my dad and his brother were enlisted men. His brother was in seven nine Infantry Division, kind of fought his way across Europe Purple Heart CIB. Years later used his CIB when I earned this. So it's very cool.

We have here.

And that's that's what drew me to military service. It was it was definitely the black sheep for sure of the family.

But you got accepted to West Point, So that's a what year is this?

So it was I started in eighty eight, graduated.

In ninety two. Gotcha.

I actually went to enlisted as a reservist as a combat engineer before because you know, we had no military experience in our family. It's like no one to be like, hey, what's it like other than my dad who's drafted and is like.

It's horrible. I want to do it, you know.

So I did that kind of his little experiment to kind of test the waters.

So how is West Point in the late nineteen eighties, I mean, you.

Know, West Point sucks. It's you know, it's it's organized torture.

But it gives you, i mean great opportunities that you know, you have experiences that I mean, you're so fortunate. I did in exchange with the British Army, went to Sandhurst, who went.

To the field.

You know, my second year spent two weeks of the Britton Field. Things that you know, a lot of times you might spend a career in the army, like or a tour in the Army and just never have the chance to do.

I mean, you know, the other thing is is the.

It and it's hard, but it really builds your the camaraderie and the closeness of your classmates and your friends, and you know, it's just lifelong friends that you know, you know, you can always count on.

The last episode that we filmed earlier today. Actually, Lindsay was the.

First captain I think is the very cool.

Yeah, like the fourth woman to ever have that position at West Point.

Yeah, very cool. So she did pretty well for herself over there.

Yeah.

I didn't do that well.

You were the guy that had to what it's the when you get the merits, you have to like walk around.

The walk the area.

You walk the area when you get demerits or punishment.

I was not bad.

I mean I only had eight hours, so I kind of kept my nose mostly clean, you know, matter truth be told, I just didn't get caught most of the time.

But you know, it is so when you went to West Point.

Before you went, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do in the army and did.

That change or form while you were at West Point? Yeah?

This is uh, that's this is part of the unfortunate thing, I think, coming from a non military family, not knowing anything about really service other than what my dad and my uncle had talked to me about, and you know, shocker, the West Point experience is not like the experience in the real army like nothing like it.

Yeah, and your your dad and was your uncle.

I mean, they experience the massive global war drafted probably for like a year's period of time, a little bit different than what you were experienced completely do from.

The you know, volunteer army.

So I went to West Point, wasn't really sure what I, you know, was going to do. After graduating, I actually went in military intelligence for the first four years and found it was not a good fit for me.

And I was really kind of fortunate though.

One of my bosses, my company commander, it's one hundred first infature guy. You know, this is back in the day. There's a pre email, right, but they're sending notices through you through division mail.

Like photocopies. And I had a photo.

Copy that I was looking at my desk and it was, you know, try out for SF. And he looked at me and he's like, I know you, Frank. He's like, you're a good fit for it. And he's like, if you don't do it, he'll regret it the rest of your life.

And that's one of the best piece of advice I've ever.

Been given, and you know, went through made it.

You know, so you get to group then what is it ninety.

Six or so?

No, I get to group ninety eight.

Okay, so you know stopovers, Ranger School, Q course, you know Armor Advance Course, you know, kind of like the pathway.

The Armor Advanced Course, So you have to go through that as like Captain's Career course.

Scre course gotrip.

Yeah, And at that point SF for officers was singing the decent amount of guys there because of like the FID mission, you know, Middle East, a lot of tanks, a lot of mechnized warfare, So there was kind of an emphasis on sending at least a good slew of the guys who would go to fifth group to THEOS.

Yeah, very interesting. Cool, So you get to fifth group, tell.

Us about landing on a team now mid to late nineteen nineties, what you guys were up to?

You know, there's no better job in the Army than being anf team leader. Like, it's just not it's just a at least I was very fortunate. I had a good team. It was young, but still a couple enough experienced guys to you know, have strength there and.

They're hungry.

They wanted to deploy, they wanted to you know, go out and do things. So I got a you know, trip to Kosovo. During that time period, we did three JTF six missions.

And then this is a lot on the border.

Yeah, this is all after the period where the Marine shot the Mexican kid on the Mexican side of the border and then they shot shut down the hide site operations and effectively we're doing FID with.

Law enforcement agencies.

Okay, but it was also kind of a cost effective because they would pay for our travel out there.

We would pay for our trucks to get out there, and you're doing desert training basically.

Exactly right, piggyback, like two three weeks of desert training out there, do just cool stuff, go out the Imperial Sand Dunes, you know, National Park in California and driving over three hundred foot dunes at night with nods.

I mean, it's just it's awesome.

You had the whole like ansabrego out there and yeah, yeah, yeah.

So and then Kosovo is interesting that you got that trip because that was mostly like tenth group guys, right, yep.

They had a small contingent called the U A l CE again a fid SFA mission where there's a combined Amoradi and Jordanian soft presence, and so we were there to be their advisors, to connect with the you know, the AOB that was there as well as you know, there was some early kind of rumblings of you know, Islamic extremism was starting to pop up even then in Kosovo that we were some of our guys were plugged into.

Yeah, the Iranian influence too Iranian.

There was more Cindy threat at least when I was there. I mean I could have changed afterwards, but the threat was more a Q or you know pre AQ or you know, just Sydney extremists.

And so then where were you guys at when nine to eleven happened?

Yeah, I was at Georgetown studying actually Arab studies.

I was doing like five and a half.

Hours Arabic a day as well as regular master's load.

I was going to go teach at West Point.

And yeah, I mean, you know, saw the Pentagon burning from the hill at Georgetown and here a bass mover, you know, sixteen flying over you know, US City, which is you know, at that point, it was just unimaginable.

This is something that you.

Know, you knew the world had kind of forever changed at that point.

And yeah, and what was the next stop for you after Georgetown?

Yeah, I went to teach at West Point for two years, and I went went to branch asked that.

I was like, hey, Bosky, get me in the fight. You no like speak Arabic. I'm a you know two plus two plus three at that point. Yeah, so really like very.

Functional, and you know it's like, look, you know, maybe.

It's tragical reserve to have your chance. And I did have my chance. So yeah, I taught at West Point for two years teaching history. I got to do Best Ranger during that time period too, and eleven Worth two I say, did.

It twice and then back to fifth group. After that, back to fifth group.

Yeah, yeah, I had a brava company. Five twenty I took to Iraq just south of Moosol and Ninola Province, so Hantra to Mahmour to Hamama Alil and then uh Kayada also of a you know area that really went from bizarre because it included past the green line into you know, Kirstan all the way to the border up to the southern elements of the Soul.

And so you're a company commander of this commander and what was So you have six teams over there, I have four teams, you fourteen. Yeah, this is what were your company's partner forces at the time.

So the partner forces.

The at Aki military had basically collapsed in November of I think it was November four and they hadn't really been fully reconstituted. So we deployed, if I remember correctly, in May, and it was like an off cycle where they deployed a conglomerate of like third Group, nineteenth Group, fifth Group under a fifth group battalion headquarters to like try to get the at Aki army in Ninia kind of back up the par and that was the core

Into their area guys, Yeah, you know, I.

Think they were KDP actually on on the ones that we were with with you know, the the Kurdish flag as most the Iraqi flag, and you know they're well organized arms rooms as most of the general chaos two on the border a sunny former chick who everyone just referred.

To as you know, uh tony soprano sacks of money down in the basement of the mosque.

Would not surprise me. They were quite crazy stories that we'd hear. But and also he's kind of pretty thuggish.

So so how did how.

Did that deployment play out for you guys?

You know, it was you know, it's not a high adventure. It's not like you know, Flujah Ramadi, you know, get shot out occasionally, but nothing like, you know, not high drama, so not in the thick of anything. Some of the teams, you know, other companies kind of had more you know, they're out at telef So it was kind of there's operation that ran.

There was nuts back then.

Yeah, but you know, it was a it was a mix because even by that point it was very clear that the Iraqis were really liminating what we were, at least with the regular army, what we could kind of do and reach into their units and kind of control, and you know, it'd be like, okay, you know, why are we having the same platoon you know, rotate through from different battalions. I thought we're supposed to partner with

Right.

But regardless of the complaining up the chain, you know, nothing ever happened.

What was your you know, your you're fairly senior at this point in time, and you know you have more of a direct line to you know, command decisions and things like that, yeah, than you know then a guy on an eighteen for instance, what was your impression of the US management of the war.

So that's a great question.

I distinctly remember when General Casey, who is the MNFI commander, he flew up. We all went up, the most sold the whole battalion, uh, you know, team sergeants, team leaders, and team warrants and met with him as he briefed on the campaign plan and kind of how we fit

Where you know, there were more.

We were creating more insurgents than we killed, just because we were the Americans being there, right, And you know, we sat through that brief. I remember another major and I and afterwards we looked at each other and I can't remember who it was. One of us said, we're really going to lose this thing, aren't we.

And the other one of us said, yeah, we.

Are, because I mean, if you know, the just basic precepts of counterinsurgency theory, like transition is particularly when the Arakis aren't nowhere near ready and you know, this is like a month or two into it, or we're like, holy smokes, we got like ten years of work with these guys to like get them to like where they need to be, right, and they're telling us we're gonna be transitioning in at four bases in like eighteen months, and we're backing up and leaving, like that's not gonna.

Work, right?

Did you think that's because they were just like on our side, just unseerious about the war or were they really so deluded that they believed that this was a possibility.

So I think there's two factors going on.

Is I do think Casey and General Avizade, who was the same comm commander at that point, I think they actually both believed in kind of the antibody theory and that we were creating more insurgents.

By just being there.

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And there, you know, the prescription for that was like, Okay, minimize presence, go to minimal footprint. And you know that works if a you know you're now having you don't have.

A civil war to contend.

With, be the political and military side of the Iraqis are capable of being transitioned to and see that if you really have beaten back the insurgency to the point where you don't have that kind of threat also, and none of those were viable at that point. So it's to me, it's it was madness. And I'll tell you so.

It, right, Like, and I sat.

Down and I think I had twenty seven hours with General Casey of like person in person interviews, eighteen hours with General Sanchez who's the you know CJTF seven commander from like four to six, and General Abizaide interview Jenn Abozide also all sorts of others.

And they actually really believed it.

Wow, like I you know, it wasn't you know, and going through the documents, they really believed it. And in some ways, you know, afterwards they argue that how things turned out proved them right in effact that they wanted to transition because theoretically they didn't think it was ever possible in it ack. But yeah, I it's weird, I

Way over committed here.

We're going to lose transformation, We're going to lose all these weapons systems that we want to use to focus on the next you know, pure near peer competitor and we want to get out of I Rock. I thought that there was so much pressure on them from all these sources that they just decided, okay, yeah, we gave my best military advice and I moved on. But their best military advice was that transition.

I'm curious because you know, I spent like three years in and out of there a lot, and I used to think about, like, what's going on because we see, you know, when you do sixty day trips at a time, but.

You do three trips a year over you know, three years.

And you see you see the same thing over and over again. I felt as though our government was too hung up on the the concept of liberation, right, we liberate these people from Saddam, and then it's done. Where when you see past World War two, for instance, you break it, you buy it. So we stayed in Germany, we stayed in Japan until those countries were rebuilt, and we didn't shy away from the word occupation where this is like it was such a.

Nation building it's the other that we shot.

Yeah, it is such a like it was such a politically sense. At no point in time did anybody ever want to say we are we are occupying Iraq, and so we basically, like I said, we went in there and we kicked it over and then we went okay, you know, well we're here to facilitate, but we're not doing it for you.

Yeah.

I mean there's there's a lot to unpacked there, and I agree with you completely.

So like there was.

It was crazy because like the Joint staffs, there are these interviews like beforehand that they are like unquoted members of the geos who wouldn't give their names, would say, hey, I want to pike a post a big sign on the pentagon that says we don't.

Do nation building.

And and it was a combination of the uniform services but also the civilian defense leaders, you know, whether it be Rumsfeld or others within the administration at that point who who were allergic.

To it, like Somalia and things like that they'd seen in.

The past, completely Somalia, Kosovo, you know, the Yugoslavia, all those they fought were a waste of resources. And I mean, I think you can make a viable strategic argument on the value or lack thereof of Kosovo or Balkans or Somalia. And I think there are arguments that can be made either way, but to then drag that into Okay, we're gonna you know, topple Iraq, which is the traditional counterbalance to Iran, which is our greatest threat in the region, and then just leave.

Like seems sure there's a strategic.

Lack of foresight there. That is, that's you know, where it's on criminal negligence. And and so there really was. I mean, the they the many of the civilian leaders. One of the civilian leaders actually had proposed that there was one brigade, right, I need to remember the there's intrinsic action or whatever they called it, the one brigade on the collect you know, doing not peacekeeping but deterrence in Kuwait. And the civilian leadership is like, we have

Didn't go to his retirement.

So clearly, you know, lost off the Christmas or holiday cards. And you know, they they thought that a single brigade kind of like on the Afghan model with soft terminal guidance jay tax et cetera, precision guide munitions would be able to topple Sadam. And there's also this bizarre notion like he said that you know, like almost like the liberation at Paris in World Ward two, that rather than you know, flowers are going to throw flaffels at us, right,

It was insane.

But those are the notions that we kind of went into it with, and it in some ways, I mean, there are many. It was interesting because we also had access to all of the detaining interviews with all these insurgent leaders.

And there was also another I don't know if you ever heard of Bill Naherr. He think he was a SF guy.

He ended up going to j Sound, but one of the projects he did was he went into Jordan in the eleven to like thirteen time period and interviewed all these former Sunni insurgeon leaders.

And so many of them, like it was like almost the same comments.

They're like, yeah, you know, when you guys toppled Saddam, you know, we we had hope, Like we were thinking, like this is America. This is you know, the country that you know put a man on the moon that you know, blotted out the skies, or a Nazi Germany with you know, bombers to like blotted out the sun.

There were so many but.

You guys couldn't even get gas to the gas stations right in the third country with the most oil in the world, right, like they just it just they're like, you know, so we and I mean, you know, the conspiracy theorist are so much throughout the Middle.

East, so they're like, well they think it's intentional, like oh, this is part of your plant, that's exactly right.

They're like, well, what is this is it intentional? Are they trying to bring you know, the Persia over, you know, which is.

The level of paranoid reaches the point to sometimes like not even exaggerating, more like it'll rain outside and be like see I ended that. And I think a lot of it does come from like American movies, like our culture, the way it projects into the.

Like because I remember talking to people.

And they'd be like, if you guys really wanted Asama bin Laden dead, you just sent Bruce Willison kill.

Them and to be over.

Yeah, they there's death. They do believe the movies. They believe that America has this omnipodence.

And we backflip over triple strand concertina wire and all that good stuff, and you know.

Just just the war plans in general, Like when when we went in, I remember going through these bases, these empty Iraqi bases that had been stripped of, you know, all the copper and and everything, and I was like, where are the Iraqi forces? If we weren't fighting Iraq? Right, if we were, if we were, if we were getting rid of Saddam, why was there not a psyops company? Why were they not dropping flyers over these bases telling the Rocky Army, hey, put your weapons down, state, remain

Yeah, And I mean there's so many just just crazy like when you you know, historically reviewed it, it's like madness because there's no logic to it.

Yeah, and the.

You know, we're fortunate we actually got four hours to interview President Bush kind of talk to him. There are three people who refused us to be interviewed Robby. One of them was Rumsfeld, and so unfortunately we didn't get his perspective. We got Bremer's perspective, we got Secretary Condo Liza Rice, this perspective. So many different people, and the core question of CPA Orders number one and two, which disbanded the Unarchy Army and then.

Outlawed the Bath Party.

It's gonna be one of the historical questions that I think it's gonna probably take.

So I'll figure out the mild spoiler alert. And I can't tell this story because it's not really my story to tell. But Tim Winer knows a lot about how that unfolded with Ian Bremer and the Debathification, and I believe it's gonna be in his new book that's coming out cool. And he told it to me, But it was like over a drink in a bar. I don't want to get ahead of his work that hasn't been published yet, but so stay tuned for that.

But it is an interesting subject. I would be curious.

I've thrown a lot of shade Bremer's way since, you know, since that time, and I would be very curious, And maybe I'm completely wrong, but I would be curious how your interview with him went.

Yeah, so I was not in that interview with Bramerus okayself, I did Bush a bunch of others.

Tell us about w I mean, I would be fascinating here his perspectives.

So one of the things we did ask him about that question, and you know, he said, look, I'm hands off manager. I trust the people who are on the ground more than the people in Washington, and I'm going to let you know the people there call audibles and when if they want to make a decision based on what they're seeing, I'm going to let them make the decision based on what they're seeing.

So his core premise was that, Okay, it happened in at Ock.

We it was kind of conflicting guidance and it wasn't clear to us even from what we could because we didn't have access to the National Security Council, the White House all those kind of records, or we didn't you know, we've had sentcom, we had you know, MNFI C, JTF seven and all those, but not any you know, not

Like the CCP in a way or whatever. Right, it's more a.

Yeah, and I mean we we employed Nazis, you know, after the Nazi Party members in Germany and in our space program after the war. Part of it is because we wanted the trains to run time. And there's you know, there's there's a degree of there's you know, you know, perfectness to it, but there's also a practicality to it, like that there's you know, when they run.

Your public works, when they run everything.

Everything right, you know, to be about you know, if you're not about party member, you're going to be a janitor, right, It's it's just like you said, it's the CCP, you know, the Communist Party. You know, like if you're not a member, good luck.

So where do you think the disconnect came about? Because what President Bush was describing there is, on its face of it, not really a bad thing. He's delegating decisions down to guys who are on the ground and saying, you have to address the terrain as you see it. But nonetheless, you know, all these other problems we've been mentioning. I mean, where did the thing did it start to come a part at the geo level? That's the popular answer perhaps, but maybe it's too obvious.

So the Bush interview is very interesting because you know, in some ways, you know, politicians tell very little.

You get very little out.

Of the interviews because you're just not gonna they're not gonna bear their soul, particularly someone that they've never met before, who isn't from the same culture they are, you know, and not you know, some geos.

Gave useless interviews.

Others I had three geos breakdown like sobbing, like during the interviews, like I had to stop the recording and.

Could Yeah, I mean and so there's it's a mix, you know. Bush. It was one of the most interesting things was you could almost.

Tell by like his his body posture and how when we started talking about Rumsfeld it changed a little bit kind of from that jovial I mean, you know, I'm just gonna say, kind of goofballish almost like you know, he's a fun guy, right, he's you know two, I almost detected a little bit of anger, you know, and just that reading the.

Reading him.

So I think that particularly early on, there were a lot of mistakes made because of.

Rumsfeld.

But I think in parallel.

At least my premise is that the uniformed services, the generals, the strategy of the transition strategy was completely wrong for the time period.

And you know, if we'd done.

The surge three years earlier, the whole thing might have turned out okay.

But instead we.

You know, try the transition strategy while a civil war basically a slow burns of wars.

Was the surgeon seven surges and seven, yeah, because there was.

A mini surgeon of four, right, I'm trying to remember, but I know there was a major surgeon of the big surgeons sevenct.

Yeah.

So I want to come back to the Iraq War study.

I mean there's a lot to talk about there, but also I want to talk about the controversy. But uh, continuing along your career, you spent some time as three operations, Yeah, as.

The S three for first Battalion and fifth Group.

And then legal at Tasha No.

So I went to a Legislative AFFAIRRIS for SOCOM, and so.

I actually like that job. That's up on the hill right it's the Congress.

So yeah, you are the liaison between SOCOM and Congress and you're doing everything from budgets to authorizations to your like the travel guide for congressional members and staff when they're doing visits to the base codels and codels and staff dells. And I ended up mostly on the Senate side, mostly in the Arm Service Committee working with them, but a little bit on appropriators too, And I mean I

There were there's a member PETA.

There was a movement to shut that down.

There was a movement to shut it down in.

It's either ten or eleven where Pete had gotten something like forty seven members of Congress to sign onto a bill to terminate live tissue training.

They did end up they contracted out. Now it's like kind of the workaround.

Yeah yeah.

So so then it was serious, and so we came up with a strategy and you know, like I'm like, look, let's bring wounded guys and like literally go into these guys who are We're gonna play hardball and going to the guys who signed onto this bill particularly find a constituent, one of their constituents from their district who's wounded, who can say, look, I'm alive because of live tissue training, right, And we literally had fifteen people on that bill take their name off the bill.

It's amazing so for people.

And so it collapsed and I was like, Okay, you guys can come back in five years and try it again, but we killed it.

For people who are watching who might not know what we're talking about. Live tipshoe training is generally taking a goat or you know, some other farm animal, but and pumping them full of ketamine so they don't feel anything, and then inflicting gunshot wounds or some sort of wound on them so that the medics and other people, like anybody really on a team can do actual live tissue training, stabilizing life saving procedures, things like that, things that really

You guys managed to circumvent that.

We killed the bill.

Yeah, and another occasion, there were two years when the army and is bizarre like totally not understanding like how the system works. They came up they thought they had this principal approach that, Okay, we're not going to try for any ear marks or ads. We'm not gonna try for any correstional ads.

No pork barrel politics. We're not gonna do any park barrel politics.

We're not going to submit a up list and unfinancid requirements list. Man, I made like two hundred and fifty million dollars a year for so Com. I got additional helicopters, I got frees drive plasma, I got all sorts of I got you know, dog handling teams and uh, you know.

All sorts of like the seal got boats.

I mean we this cleared house those years because the way the game is played on the hill is that money's there, right, and it's gonna go to someone.

Yeah, you have to fight for it, and you have.

To fight for it. The army takes themselves out of the competition. That money is still there for the taking, right, and you have to make a good argument for it.

And that's why so calm has you up there, that's right, did you?

I imagine you learned quite a bit about that side and how it interacts with the military, I mean, how it works in general, but particularly how it works with the military.

Yeah, you see how poor you know, you see how sausage is made, and I mean there's good and bad, and you know, it's like anything, and many of the members have no clue. Yeah, the members meaning like senators or members of the House representative. But there's staffs that sometimes are like the you know, really good and decent and smart and hard working people that really care, particularly on the Armed services committees. And there's a lot of veterans on them too, and people who just really and

You know, they were trying.

To do what's right for us, for those in the fight. And I mean, you know, one of the funny, well ironic things is, you know where drones came from, the Predator and the Reaper was a Congressional ad.

The Air Force did not want to buy.

Them because you know, it's not a pointy O's fighter pilot or a bomber pop right, So they totally opposed it. It was a forced ad where a California house member I believe, forced them to you know, support and buy the original Predators from General Atomics. And the Air Force fought it every step of the way.

And they they're like, no, this is the way of the future.

You're you, and you need an aircraft that can loiter over your ground.

Guys for like hours. Right, Like I was in a.

Sorry, I was in a one meeting where I went out to Vegas and was a.

Creach and.

It was a joint Air Force and SOCOM one and so they're seeing our stuff and the Air Force's stuff. And I literally had an Air Force two star where it's an appropriator and appropriators are like the gods of Congress. A real appropriator, a member and this air Force general says, the F twenty two is a coin aircraft, right, Like, I mean, it's got like fifteen minutes of playtime probably or twenty minutes, and it's not like what two three four bombs maybe max, no gun, nothing.

And I literally laughed in front.

Of him, like I laughed in front of him, which is you know, I I.

Was not invited to a future Air Force tripts.

I ended up mostly going with I found a guy on the army side that would take me on your rips, and you know then we had this discussion with him on you know how little value in F twenty two is to guys in the fight, right, It's no value whatsoever.

Because obviously the person who pushed for the drones and said this is the future warfare, I mean it. You know, it's very possible that it was General Dynamics who like pitched it.

And you could say that you know, you could say.

That you know that they were working commercial interests, but in that case they were one hundred correct. But then you have somebody who says that this is a coin aircraft. Meanwhile, we see that since Vietnam they've tried to get rid of the AC one thirty, which is a coin aircraft.

Or do we want to go on a big rant about the coin aircraft that we finally got the air tractor after all the gnashing of teeth about that.

All the willing and gnashing of teeth.

Yeah, I you know, I mean it's funny. I even harkened back to a time period when we were there where I mean, Congress is like anything else, it's been of human beings, sure, and there's the good, the bad, and the ugly right right then. And there are good people. And what I try to do is I try to find and work with the good people. There are other people who even in our office.

Who would work with Frank Underwood would.

Work with people who were a little you know, not exactly where I would like to work with, but you know they would.

They would still get things.

Done, you know.

But so we had a occasion where the Silicon Commander wanted to buy a whole bunch of Uh. I think they're super Tocano aircraft made by Embryer, which is a Brazilian company and not a US company.

And that's what SOCOM wanted to be.

The coin aircraft, great loiter prop, you know, a prop, extended range, ship ton of stuff you can hang on it. And uh, you know, it came down and if I recall correctly, whether it was Beach or Cessna or both were up in arms and literally, you know, we had to bring I don't remember whether it's the deputy or the Vice down to like defend our position. And they're like, you know, and and they're working through the members from wherever you know, Beach and.

Cesena are to which don and Seattle probably I think so.

Yeah, I think one is in Kansas and the other.

Yeah, anyway, and uh, you know they're like a bio caracraft and so it comes like, no, it's got you know, half the later time, half the you know payload. You know, we don't want it. And and I don't know if we won that one. I think it ended up getting fought out and extended out, and it just that's one of those where Congress ends up posing it, you know, I mean.

And you know, and yeah, it's tough because from a military perspective, you're like, well that you know, congress person is is fucked up.

But sorry for the language.

But from a constituent perspective, that's right. They are right. They're doing what they were elected to do.

That's absolutely right. And so you know, I mean, it's it's to me. One of the things that I tried to advise was, you know, it's like this first soft imperative, understand your operational environment, figure out how the game is played, and then play the game to win. And so what I would always try to do is I would try to triangulate a visit or a u fur an unfinancial requirement, like something that we genuinely needed.

And sometimes, I mean I would go to the you know, the.

Guys I think he was an easy seven down at you know, Delta, who was working stuff like freeze drive plasma, and you know, like, hey, what do you guys need and it was approved to the chain of command, and we would align that need with a visit to the district where it was made or where it would benefit. And that's what you kind of had to triangulate. You know to like to try to get the treaties.

That was a big break through too, to get that into the field. I and afterwards you had a garrison deployment.

There were garrison deployment command. Yeah. Far from a deployment. Yeah.

I you know, I competed for a tactical command. I did not get a tactical command. And this is back in the day where you like, the first time I actually only put tactical. I was like, no, I just want a tactical command. And then I didn't get a command. The second year, They're like, look, if you only put tactical again, you are.

Not going to get a battalion command. Like just read the tea Lelyes buddy.

So okay, put in a garrison and then got the Natick Garrison in Massachusetts, which is the Soldier System Center testing.

Yep.

They do you know, uniform testing, they do fire retardant clothing, they do mrs.

All sorts of kind of cool.

Okay.

That kind of dovetailed with your time at Congress a little bit.

There was there was a small also so CAM detachment there.

Interesting.

Yeah, Now are they working I mean so yes, I think are they working with DARPA much and things like that, or.

Is it it's all integrated.

Yeah, you know, DARPA is is even more cutting edge.

NATICK is more boots and uniforms.

Yeah, boot boots, uniforms, MRIs. There's actually a parachute detachment there. There's civilians who jump.

There, who the.

Steerable parachutes, you know, the ones with like the GPS hanger on it. They would fly the in Afghanistan that came out and ate it too. So interesting are these small detaishments of you know, like thirty pound brain dudes and dude ads.

Yeah, yeah, just thinking about that the other day for some reason. I don't know why I popped in there that I heard about how like we actually have classified parachute projects.

It's like it's kind of cool.

Yeah, not if you were the test jumper, of course, but otherwise it's pretty cool.

Yeah, uh okay.

And then how did you end up getting selected for the Iraq War study?

How did that come about? Yeah?

So I was most likely thinking, hey, I'm going to get out of the army. I didn't want to go to USA, soak or it's even worse to Installation Management Command, you know, like changing colors on slides and happy to glad.

We're not telling the story of the Iraq War.

And so they wanted an eighteen series of must fill eighteen series Alpha, eighteen Alpha plus.

They needed somebody who spoke real right Arabic.

And you know, my friend knew me and he's like, hey, you want to do it, And I'm like sure, so.

Tell us about it.

Kind of like you mentioned a little bit before we started recording, like the research process and how it was all digitized, but it was completely unorganized.

Yeah, So I mean that was wow.

You know, we had such a great opportunity because we did both oral history interviews but also archival research and our team did you know, thousands of hours of interviews with everyone from President Bush down to you know, E seven's in key positions. On the archival side, almost everything's digitized. And so we were fortunate in the General Odierno, who's the chief staff of the time.

Had worked with.

Scottie miller No, the sent Comm commander at the time. I'm drawing a buying for some reason Austin and they were tight, and so he called him and it was like, look, can I'm putting it the other team to write the first kind of draft of history for this? Can I send a team down? Will you give them access to all the Sentcom archives? And Austin is like, sure, whatever

You know.

Some of them like literally are the hard drives of the multi National Force of Rock headquarters and we would have to plug into it and you know there's like we're terrible data on that one drive, not organized at all, and there's everything on there from like porn to like dudes, you know.

iTunes, music to movies, to.

Photos of an accident and accidental discharge with a gate guard.

You know, whatever, fob It.

Just madness, just like how much data is out there, and so it's just like sifting through all that trying to find the needle in the haystack.

That was. It was a process.

How many years did it take to complete the study?

So I was on the study from twenty thirteen to twenty eighteen.

And we were and I'm being a.

Little evasive here because it depends how you ask, it's five years till it actually got published. We were forced to change our publisher from the Center Military History, which does the official history, to the Tregetic Studies Institute at the War College to Carlisle because that was an academic institution and we could be more controversial there. Interesting what had happened was Gen Odierno had retired and his guidance was like, look, if you have to kill sacred cows, kill sacred cows.

I don't care whose feelings get hurt.

We lost people. We made the same mistakes of the Vietnam War. And you know, part of the reason we made those same mistakes is we never really tried to learn from it. You know, we never really wrote or never finished writing the history of the Vietnam War with the Army, and so we didn't have any institutional learning on it.

And so he's like, I want.

You to do it, and you hurt people's feelings, that's totally okay.

And so.

One of the reasons why I was shifted was that commander's guidance, and you know, just delayed on forever because Channel Milly was appointed the Chief staff of the Army. He the chief of public Affairs for the Army, and then Secretary to Esper, who's the Secretary of the Army, all opposed publication because through three grounds one controversial, which.

You know, a lot of.

Army publications are as boring as a refrigerator repair manual.

You know, they're just like, there's no controversy because they don't want to hurt anyone's feeling.

It's like the same argument that was made against publishing the Pentagon papers.

That's exactly right. And so we we tried to do our best to explain why we thought things went wrong, who made decisions, what their logic was behind those decisions, and then you know, kind of let the cars fall where they may. And so it was controversial, there's no question, and you know, like a couple examples.

I'm just gonna be a blunt here.

One of the things that General Odierno told us was he's like, look, we need to have a honest conversation about what the Garden reserves brings to the fight. And I mean, you know, the Army, there's this big talk of the total force and everyone being equal.

And it's bullshit, right.

I mean, someone who trains forty or fifty days a year just is not going to be the same as someone who does it year round.

With the budgets that the active force.

Has granted, the reserving guard are going to bring other skill sets to the fight that are good and valuable, but in terms of fighting, they're not equal.

And you know, so.

The Guard went crazy, like and there were people who literally tried to One individual wrote to the Vice Chief of Staff of the arm me making accusations about that we used too much oral history interviews rather than archival, which is not accurate, and you know, other accusations about how controversial it was to try to get them to kill the project.

And so you know that was like the controversial is who's one of it?

A second component of it was this weird notion where you know, in the army, at the general officer level, there's this sense that we're supposed to be a pul right, and that you know, you're not supposed to I'll take a little yeah, I'll have a nice please, yeah, thank you. And you know, there was this sense, that weird sense where that we in the military were not theoretically supposed to add any sort of political advice for political guidance, right to to stay out.

Of it, Demitri, you just want to grab the check trey out of the.

Sorry, go ahead, It's all good.

But so there was this sense where they believe that we should that the senior general shouldn't have been like having a back and forth with the president or the secular defense on how the war should be conducted. Like they thought that it was like, okay, they give us guidance and then we translate that guidance and make it happen. And these are generals who are like giving us this like premise and it's like, no, that's not how it happened.

I think maybe we should try this.

Instead, or you know, And so there was this weird just a pushback that that came from like senior officers giving their best military advice was they were allergic to it.

They were like, oh, like, we don't want to talk.

To you, do you. I'm out of curiosity.

To me, I would take that as that as that they want the failure of Iraq and Afghanistan, but they want the failure of those wars to rest solely on the president, like, hey, we were just following orders. They want to pretend that they had no say in how things went.

So you know, to me as a historian, it's it's harder for me to speculate.

Sure, I'll speculate all day. Yeah, yeah, totally fair.

And it's totally fair to do that.

And there's a there's a public notion.

I think all we've all espoused this at some point, like you know, it's not the military's fault, it's the politicians. But it's like, well, the military lost the war. We have some responsibility.

We absolutely share in the responsibility, and I think really in and Afghanistan, in many ways, we set the conditions for losing it, particularly early on when Bush was so hands off. I mean Bush doesn't really grab the throttle again until six o seven. Yeah, when he's like, holy smokes, this is a dumpster fire.

Like you military people, get out of the way.

Like I'm going to tell you, you're gonna search, You're gonna send more people because and that came out about as academics and other strategists for coming and seeing him and providing other options, you know, and he's like, these military people are given me totally opposite, like they still want to transition and leave.

I I honestly though, whether it was Bush or Obama or even Trump in the latter part, I think that I believe they were all light too. I believe that none of them ever had a true situational awareness that they were always they were always given like the good news. You know, it's you know, it's like a twenty year war, one year at a time, that next year will.

Be the year we'll turn in a corner. Yeah that yeah story, Yeah, that's the turning in a corner.

There certainly was a lot of that of a very bad assessments of kind of where the enemy situation was, and in particular where the host nation forces were, where their capabilities were, and a lot of that, frankly, was from the military side, and that it was self induced because all the metrics we tried to pick that we thought were effective were useless. Right, you know, we're trying to say, oh, well, you know, are these infangy battalions fully manned?

Do they have all their equipment?

That means nothing, right, we were drinking the stats too, though, Yeah, yes, absolutely, And the whole notion of you know, they weren't putting the premise.

Of ghost soldiers or of you know, people not showing up for duty, or the corruption that's going on right there.

None of that I don't think was.

At least we did not find any record of that really making its way back on the Uttox side, I will say. At the very end, though, there was a friction in the Obama presidency where the military leaders were actually saying like, wait a minute, the Iraqi army is not ready really yes, positivity at the very end, and we need not X number of soldiers to stay in Iraq,

Now, would you say at the very.

End, like twenty ten, like before the som.

Are right before we withdrew.

Yeah, so we went to twenty fourteen, but the twenty eleven to twenty fourteen period was like a chapter out of like you know, like thirty or something. The end, our primary end is twenty eleven of it, because we've o three to eleven was are that's where a heavy lifting on.

So I guess what I'm curious about, and I don't want you to speculate if you don't know. Do you think do you feel as though the reporting got honest because they knew it was the end and they wanted to say this shouldn't be the end? I like, I don't want this on my record as whatever, or or were they reporting in good faith regardless of whether it was the end?

Yeah, I think I know what you're saying.

I think some of it is the individuals involved, right, There are different individuals just a higher.

Level of like integrity or whatever whatever. I think part of that is the case.

Yeah, I think part of it is what you say. I mean to me, I'm always multi causality. Sure, none of us function by a single like right determinant.

Right. There's a sort of things.

Right, and there's all sorts of calculus going on in our brains that they're driving us to make a decision one way or the other, right, And so I think kind of both of those factors are really playing playing out.

Is is you have.

Individuals with more integrity at that they're involved in the process. You have a sense of perhaps you know, like, hey, I don't want to be left with the the albatross. Well, I was gonna say burning bag of ship. Yeah, can I say that you can't? Okay, you know, don't want

And then tell us about the drama around the publication of this.

There was a third one, right, because yah.

So the third the third element of why it was blocked from from publishing was the And it was interesting. I mean, you know, being you know, once you get to a certain point in the army, you spent enough time around people, you have friends everywhere, right, And so I had friends in the Vice chief's office, in the chief's office who had filter me back.

You know, it's like run of my own network, right, and so like I think, you know, on a burner phone like.

That is when it went down in the meeting, like you won't believe this. And so one of it was that they basically were like, Okay, we want to forget about coin and insurgency. We are pivoting to at that point, I think it was called decisive Action, but basically large scale combat operation.

Let's go. Let's go.

We're pivoting to exactly what Vietnam, exactly what happened.

I don't want to hear about that coin shit no more.

Exactly and literally that you know, they're like I was getting reacs for they like.

They said, this is what they said.

They said that this doesn't match with our public affairs messaging, our messaging on the hill, and.

Our budget priorities.

So we don't want it's distracting, we don't want it to be published.

Wow. Yeah, And so how did it finally come out?

So it finally came out in that we were we were fortunate you know, usually your GS civilian GS employees or.

Not well respected.

Right, Yeah, there's this is you know, uh stereotype right of your GS employee that never does anything. Well, there was a just fifteen who after we had been shifted from the Center Military History to the Strating Studies Institute at Carlisle, who he made a decision, you know, effectively, you know, laterally to provide a draft copy to Michael Gordon, who is the senior defense correspondent for the Wall Street Drip.

And he did it on the premise that and.

I mean this is just like this is the Army in a nutshell, right, because it's like just public.

Affairs, just like negligence. Right.

He gives it to him on the premise that the Army is going to get a good news story out of it. Because the Army is a learning institution, We're willing to be self critical, We're willing to like name names and have controversial stuff published about us. We're willing to, like, you know, semi crucify ourselves over the mistakes we've made. Right,

A bargain, right, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Is kind of the way the world works.

Well, because the Army isn't willing to publish it. You know, Gordon's starting to get pissed. He's got it, and he's being forced to sit on it. And it's not like you know, the Leaf Chronicle outside Fort Campbell.

It's like the Wall Street Journal. And so finally he gets so.

Frustrated that and this is what I was told, and I believe this is accurate, that he sits down with General Milly, who then is the chief staff of the Army, and starts a recording and basically says, General Milly, why are you blocking the publication of your own Iraq?

Wards ambushed him after, I mean, and.

In his defense, he did it only after the Army basically drug him for the.

Fuck off every which way, ye for like a year, year and a half. I don't think he needs any difference. I mean, he totally did.

I mean, and you know, he'd expended time and effort to write these stories ready to drop and and you know, so the Army had opted in bad faith, and he called them on it, and immediately, of course, uh, you know, he generally goes, oh, you know.

Sure, I'm publishing it. I'm gonna publish.

I'm going to write a forward to it, which I'd had like emails from other people who had written like General only will never write a ford to this. You know, they were considering it actually at one point that several the options were to put it on Sipper, which is one of the things that Odierno has said, we will never put this on Sipper because of it goes there, it'll be like the Lost Arc of the Covenant at the end of Indiana Jones will be hidden this month, whereas where nobody'll.

Ever learn from it show real quick.

YAP is like the secret Internet of the classified classified side of like government or at least the military Internet. So basically, once you put it there, it's immediately classified information.

Then in order to.

Affoid it, you have to know it exists in order to affoid it, so.

It basically goes to die disappears.

Yeah.

Yeah, and this is after we had already gone through an office that you know, I didn't even know existed. It was called the Defense Officer Publication Security Review. Yes, so it had passed the Dopster review, and I mean, man, they were so detailed that they actually one of the photos that was like on the Centcom website had detainees in it, and they actually caught They're like, oh, you

Like I guess newsletter or something like a high school newsletter.

Like we published it like you know above our mom's garage on weekends right right, like doing it in her part time, ither than being commissioned by the Amazon creates completely.

That was their other option.

Yeah, and so you know it was only because of you know, Michael Gordon basically throwing down the gauntlet.

And so general Millie of course writes the forward and gets up published.

What my phone blows up that day.

There's like it's like ten I'm the meeting I think with my kids teacher or something. I come out of it and there's like ten voicemails, like fifty emails like I see.

When can you publish this? You know?

Well, yeah, I'm curious. What was the response when it was published? I mean, not to use a term that is loaded for a round, but was a mission accomplished? I mean, I mean, but seriously, I mean, did you feel like, you know, you guys.

Did what you set out to do and that I had an impact? So, I mean, I don't know, it's who knows if it had an impact.

I mean, I think one of the challenges that I think, other than for a lot of the g Y veterans. I think the army has like turned the corner, and I think they want to forget coin. And I think a lot of counterinsurgency or insurgency, and I think a

Of the Iraq War. Yeah, for sure, that was the bumper sticker that came out of it.

And that that was for I mean, you know, as long as the new cycle alouts fifteen seconds of fame or whatever, that that that that was the bumper sticker that a lot of.

People both when you know, you go on and you do these interviews like even here we do art of viewers are two to three hours their long form, and people get an opportunity to talk about things that normally when they go on these other shows, it's like five minutes sound and how do you condense a fifteen page report? Like what do what do they? What were their burning questions?

That became a lot of like, you know, almost the self licking ice cream pone where different outlets would anchor onto a certain premise or area or you know where we lied to about wmd uh, you know, like you know what was the you know, like, okay, we're we looked at an operational level history, so we were not looking at the causes of the reasons for the war. We in the military don't really get to make those policies.

And so it was it was.

Hard, and to be honest, I mean, I'm very thankful that we're doing such a like long form because you can really do deep dive into stuff, and it was.

It was hard to be able to.

You know, distill all that into such a short interview. I was fortunate in that some people did center on that bumper sticker and I.

Could talk about that.

Others would talk about the withdrawal, you know, like more oriented against politically Obama and they had a you know, extra grind. Others would focus on the decision to go to war, the lack of preparation, the you know, the plant, the invasion without a plan or a you know phase four post conflict plan quote unquote, which you know there's lots of asterisks there, you know, again focused on kind of astra grind against Bush.

So you know you.

Have have you ever read Leonard Wong's paper Lying to Ourselves?

I think I have, but I I I don't. You know, recall.

If I were to have a hot take about all this, like that would kind of be mine about Iraq that we g lied to ourselves and we institutionalized the line, right, it became institutionalized that and accepted that you can send false reports up to hire about the readiness of these units and so on.

Well, and I mean not just rough, but Afghanistan too, And so you know, I'm curious because when did the report finally get published and when did you start doing the interviews? Twenty eighteen, so we were still in Afghanistan and were people asking you based on what you learned from Iraq.

Like applied to Afghanistan?

Yeah? How is it applied to Afghanistan?

Very few would even take that.

I mean I recall a couple questions along that line, but most, you know, just exclusively focused on on.

And did anybody ever ask you how smart.

It was to attempt to overthrow Assad after what we learned about Saddam?

I don't think. I don't think Asad came up.

I don't remember the time frame, but you know, I mean this is I mean, you know how things go in our I mean it's like, yeah, the weeks and then it's gone.

I mean like this is just nothing. It like falls off the cliff.

All of this leads us into your book, Training for Victory that I want to make sure we have plenty of time to talk about here. Tell us first, to kick it off, I mean, how did this book come about?

Was this your dissertation or yeah, yeah, so is my dissertation and then to me, you know, it was kind of came ou about because of the mystery and in at all.

The whole the general effort.

To build the Iraqi Army is a train wreck. It's a dumpster fire, it's you know, Churchillian, it's an epic military disaster, except for the ice Off, the ICTF and the commandos, and some describe the ice off is the best thing we built in a rock.

And in fact, in twenty fourteen we kind of see it play out.

We see the ice off fighting against that is isis kind of every step of the way. Right they're at the critical oil refinery at Beiji. They actually get surrounded and they fight for a week, which.

You know, I mean, yeah, there's an epic battle over there.

Yeah, it's an epic battle, and it's it's a you know, the the conventional wisdom, the conventional narrative, and much of this story, which is true, is that the Iraqi Army dissolves large almost. I mean, they're they're pockets, but the ice off they're fighting and like fighting hard at you know, Beiji. They get an opportunity to surrender. The ISIS says, hey, look we'll let you you know, you can even keep your weapons.

We'll let you go.

You know, you won't get slaughtered. You can fight another day. We just want the crossroads to be able to move on and what you live. And they all to pound sand and kept fighting. And then on the way back, you know, on the once things shifted and the counter offensive. They're the head of almost every battle. Mostly they take

And I wanted to.

Look at, you know, what, what was it what made those units successful while the rest of the efforts really were not.

So let's start with your first case study.

Then El Salvador nineteen eighty one and nineteen ninety one.

This was really interesting. I mean there's a few things.

Obviously you'll key on them much better than I will.

But there are some unique aspects of it.

Communist insurgency in the context of the Cold War in Central America, and Congress had a cap on how many advisors were even allowed in country. It was like fifty five fifty five, So a very light footprint, to say the least. Not nothing comparable to Iraq or Afghanistan at all.

Yeah, what went right in El Salvador? What went right? What went wrong? What were kind of your observations from that?

Yeah, So I think one of the big things that went right in Al Salvador, that that is a theme kind of across all five of the case studies, is that in many cases you have the same advisors returning rotation after rotation after rotation.

And it happened for a couple reasons.

And I mean, I was so fortunate to have like just a bunch of s f legends from that time period like talk to me like time and time again, like tell me their stories and then give me documents sometimes or give me, you know, diaries.

And stuff that I could still go through.

And you know, it happened because one, as one said, it was the only war they had, you know, the Cold War, you know, Vietnam had ended.

Those three seven three seven guys.

That's that was another component.

So the I mean, they're crazy stories of individuals who literally because then Spanish was a hard requirement for NCOs you had to be a two to two on the language proficiency test, and for officers you had to be a one to one. And if you didn't have that, like you didn't pass go, like you didn't get on the bus, they didn't.

Bring it down.

And so there are people wanted to go to this mission so badly that they're literally in their spare time teaching themselves Spanish, yeah, like and studying Spanish because they know that that the Vietnam War you know ended you know, like almost a decade before, and this is their chance and their chance to lead indigenous forces in some ways in combat because there are multiple occasions of units getting overrun of you know, battles occurring, or helicopters, advisors getting

But I mean, you know, it's it's insurgency. There's no front line.

It's funny when you think about you know, prior to the GAT, you know, after Vietnam when any combat action was you know, you have Somalia, like Panama, like you have these very short So the idea that guys go through these hard ass selections and training processes and then the chance to get in war in war, it's like learning All I have to do is learn Spanish to go to war.

That's I'm down for it. I'm down, I'm down.

I thought one of the interesting observations you had in the book was about the difference between some of our Latino American Special Forces members as opposed to some of these like redneck dudes from Alabama, and that there were actually some circumstances where the El Salvadorans, one of the rednecks who speak with a redneck accent in Spanish because they don't have like cultural assumptions about them.

Yeah, and you know, in some ways, one of the things that surprised me was I kind assumed that language was going to be a really important factor across all the case studies, and granted, for Al Salvador and Colombia, speaking Spanish was kind of a prerequisite and it was important.

Some people just can't teach right, they're just not cut out to be an advisor.

And and these individuals they could build and maintain rapport. And it was like those you know that West Virginia. That guy was speaking you know, Spanish with the best West Virginia, the southern accent.

You know that just is talks and can make friends with anyone.

That some of the Al Salvador and officers just you know stock too, like glue, because he built and maintained rapport consistently, and in some cases that way what was more important even in the language.

Another thing I've found is that like courage, like just straight up courage that if they see you throwing yourself out there for them, even though whether a person is doing it for them or just because they just are in the in the heat, you know, in the throat of the fight, that that means everything to them.

Yeah, that's another huge component. And in all Salva or other proved particularly valuable because you know, there are occasions in cases where multiple times where an Al salvad On officer either crumbled or collapsed and couldn't like, you know,

Yeah, and leading from the front becomes it's a whole new world in another culture when they see in America a you know, somebody who could sit back and tell people what to do or advise the way they're told to. But when they lead from the front, like those indigenous indigenous forces glom onto that.

So when you looked at it, El Salvador, do you give our partner force relationships over there a passing grade? I mean, how do you think that turned out?

So I think what's important El Salvador to kind of look at is that is the US strategically at the beginning of the war there they studied like, okay, what's the situation? And the situation was really bad. It was a ship show and it looked like the government was going to fold. So US military comes up with three options, like a win option, an offensive option, and then like the lowest cost scenario of like hold the line, but

Three, the least cost, you know.

And so the force we built, we built a force to that specification. The the berries the battalions battalionis infantiria. The reaction in media demente where there like immediate reaction infantry battalions were they were okay.

And I think one of the best ways to describe it.

Is is there was like a discussion between two two American advisors, one who'd been a Vietnam veteran and one who wasn't, and the Vietnam veteran basically said.

Man, these L. Salvadoran guys, like if they had to fight the viet Cong, they would be massacred. We lose in a day.

But then the other guy, I looked at him and goes, look, they don't have to fight the viet Cong.

They're not fighting the viet Cong. They're fighting other L. Salad Orans.

And that's that's the only level that we have to get them right.

Train them to do that one thing you want them to train them do to that level.

And they successfully got them to that level, and they survived. And at the end of the conflict, the one of the fml EN leaders during the peace Box the Chibultepec Accords, he walked over to the head of the US mill group, the advisor group, kind of poked him in the chest and said, you know what, if not for your advisors, we would have won this war.

The second case study in your book, the Light Reaction Regiment in the Philippines, the LRR.

So now totally different context, just after nine to eleven.

We obviously have a long relationship with the Philippines. The complicated, too complicated, a little colonial a little bit. You go to their museums, they have like paintings of them shooting cannons at us and stuff. It's okay, we get it.

The motto for the Light Reaction Regiment, the Shooters of Death, actually came from the unit that killed the senior American during the American War.

Yes, there's a little weird, like you said, exactly.

I mean, some people don't realize we developed the forty five caliber round for the Filipinos because they were so crazy and combat So post nine to eleven, right after nine to eleven, we have this relationship with the Philippines. There's an Islamic insurgency in the south, there is a communist insurgency in the north, and then we have missionaries being held hostis that feels like it was the bigger it is bybe.

That was, So it actually starts before Sevenmber eleventh a little bit in that the you know, the US, there have been this period where we drifted apart, right, and so military leaders on both sides we're kind of looking for a way to get us back together because they, you know, the divorce was we never met anyone else, right, we want to We're like that, we'll give it another shot.

So both military leaders on.

Both sides want to try to get the situation to to to start again, to like reignite things, and particularly after the I don't know if you remember the I think I'm pronouncing this correctly, the Boyghinka plot where they were going to bomb.

Something like twelve or a dozen.

Or somewhere in that range airc airliners, civilian airliners at the same time period, including possibly I think they're going to try to target the Pope also at the same time period, and this is pre September eleventh, that originated in the Philippines, that plot, and so the Philippines comes to us in there as a former First Group officer who is now as part of the Defense attache there in the Mill Group, Joe Felter, Yes, yep, who were like, hey,

Being like an idea to do it, and.

Not only I think the idea is that it started even a little bit before. But what happens is all the guat funds and firts and troops, i mean money comes start flying out of that.

You know it was terrorism.

So there you go, it's a combination not only terrorism, but you know, as Americans, we have this thing after the running a hostage crisis of if you an Americans sell the hostages. It's like Rome, We're coming for you. Right, So money starts, you know, falling out of the sky for it, as well as additional forces being deployed for it, and it goes actually from being a single company. The original plan was to create a company that over time but becomes a regiment.

Yeah. It went from an l r C to l r B to l r R.

Yeah.

So it's it's it's a long term effort and it is is the Burnhams, it is the ties to September eleventh. It's the terrorism, the uh you know, and associated groups that results in you know, hey, this that spark becomes a fire.

So talk to us about the partner relationship.

There first Special Forces group in the lead, I think the guys from Okinawa, right, Yeah.

I was similar to three seven, yeah right, because it's the Ford deployed battalion and during the Cold War three seven was in Panama.

So it made it a lot easier for them.

To deploy that and consistently deploy it because that's the theater commander's force, right, and the theater commander he doesn't have to go to the Joint staff to get that force deployed.

It's just you make them go.

And so there were some parallels actually to Al Saladar where and they were also fortunate because the First Group leadership, for its part, saw consistency is important in returning the same advisors to work with the l r R or l RC or whatever it was.

At that point.

They saw it as important. They saw it as you know, they tried to. They actually had names for them, and they called it u Sorry I'm drawing a blank here for a second. They called them as individuals that basically would return. They made a strong effort to try to redeploy the same individuals to the mission. And you saw parallels with Al Salvador where individuals would go five six, seven rotations working with the l r R, l r C.

And that's easy to do in countries where people can have second families.

I'm a Fifth Group guy, so that's not a Western Union checks the First Group going back and forth, Seventh.

Empire, the parallels, but that yeah, yeah, but that, but that is I think vitally important that.

One, you know, you build that rapport because you're there.

It's not just a rotation of you know, Americans coming through. Everybody trying to imprint their idea of how things should be done right.

It's the same people.

There's that trust that's built, it's the consistency that's built.

You know.

Yeah, it was in that I finally remembered the word that I was looking for is they called them repeat offenders or OAFP alumni. And so there was a command effort also to like return the same people.

They recognized its values, that.

Individuals they would build rapport with leaders and that that it made a difference in the quality of the unit. There's this one great story of an E seven who are actually I think he was an E eight at that point, but at the very initial stand up of the Light Reaction Company, at this very inception, you know, Paycom you have specific command wants to like put together a big dog and pony show with all the senior

And they like tried to kill.

Him from going on to this, you know, this planning session to create the Light Reaction Company. UH sock Pack held its ground, and you know, the master sergeant arrives and when the senior Philippine military officers arrived there, you know, their chief of staff at their army equivalent, walks in. He sees this master sergeant and literally bypasses everyone else in the receiving line, gives him a giant bar a hug,

One more reason why SF doesn't always go so well. It doesn't always land well with.

The conventional army.

Yeah.

Yeah, I had a great occasion. Can I give you one of my stories from a trip out weft y. So we were training at Naval Station El Centro, which is a Navy base, and you know, the Navy is really big on their ranks, and so you know, I'm we're taking a day off for eating a third you know, dying hall, and I'm eating in I guess whatever.

It's the Chiefs section, the chiefs.

Yeah, so the Navy.

Has the enlisted mess, the chief's mess, and the officers mess, like they have three different Yes you do.

And I'm there, you know, with my guys, right and so uh and so one of the chiefs notices me and comes over. He's like, heyce Or, I think you're in the wrong area. And I'm like, hey man, I'm with my guys. Like I'm gonna be with my guys. I'm not going to go eat somewhere else period, Like that's not happening.

This is with your team. Yeah, this is my team. Yeah. And of course one of my guys. One of east up is like, hey, Frank, we have passed the assault. Watching his head kind of explode that.

You know, my guys called me by my first name, is like, anyways, the Navy is the.

Closest thing to a few system I think we have in America in the sense of because on a ship it is very segregated in terms of rank.

So yeah, yeah, anyway, so yeah, you hit that.

I apologize for that little story there, but it's I think it's reflective of how sometimes soft we can rub people.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

So that l r R as it gets stand up in its evolution versus what it was maybe initially designed to.

Do, versus what it became and what it began to do. How did you kind of chart that out?

Yeah, so, you know, and again all these cases, I was so fortunate to have so many SF guys, you know, and then also host nation individuals talk to me and tell me their stories, and you.

Know, it was one of the challenge.

There were challenges in particular in the Philippines because the Light Reaction Regiment. Soon after it was formed, while it was still a company, there.

Was a.

Coup plot the oak Wood The oak Wood plot against the president. The President Arroyo and some of the leadership of the Light Reaction Company were involved in the plot.

They always get a little kooi over there. Yeah, it happens all the time where it gets very interesting. There's a lot of ins and outs.

Like I was at Fort Meg Say say once, and I was having just hanging out with a major their version of SOCOM and we're just sitting there bullshit and I think, like drinking a coke or something like that, and he just like kind of as a blue tells me like, yeah, I got some trouble because I was involved in a coup plot.

You know, my unit never.

Moved because of some miscommunications, so I didn't get in as much trouble as the other guys did. Uh, So you know, they just kind of hid me out over here. And now it's kind of okay, and I'm just like, wow, Okay, this is a different kind of military here.

Yeah, I feel like Thomas Jefferson would approve a little rebellion.

Sometimes those those coups happened for or attempts happened for different reasons.

But sometimes there's a lot of.

You have to understand, Like amongst the soldiers like if their officers are like stealing their food for example. Oh yeah, that lends units towards these sorts of attempts.

Yeah oh yeah.

Yeah, so that that created some real initial frictions that hurt the unit's progress initially. And this is before you know, the make say say it became become of the headquarters of the Philippine equivalent of SoCon. They didn't have a soft headquarters and so when the unit is first stood up, arguably.

They didn't until a few years ago. Right, yeah, that's right.

So it took years before they really had a soft headquarters. So they experienced kind of some of the same challenges that we experienced in the US when soft didn't have apparent headquarters looking have for us, they're used improperly, they're used for you know, uh, you know, personal protection detail.

They still were they they brought in a whole l r C just to protect them.

Wow.

Yeah. But but you know, and the thing is is like what President and if even if it was just a couple of people, like that's what you can prove, right, and what president wants their Tier one unit right there there crack guys to be like.

Are they against me? Yeah?

And that's that's really what caused a lot of the problems is that accommodation there. They the conventional forces used them like like an hammer anvil approach, just not like infantry operations, like an infantry like you know anyway you know, a movement to contact basically like battle jill too, right, and like there's to use a small.

Elite soft force like that is just madness.

Yeah, So there's a lot of challenge early on, and it wasn't until battles later on where you know, in Samboanga and where they were kind of thrown into the situation because the situation was so dire and there were hostages that were taken. So they needed you know that kind of national counter terrorism capability due to hostage rescue missions.

And they get thrown into the.

Fight and they are it's a mixed you know kind of.

Results between you know, two critical battles that they have, but they after some initial kind of missteps, they you know, generally are.

Successful and they are able to.

Rescue you know, dozens of hostages successfully, which is I mean you know that was Ted Yamas.

Yeah right, yes, man, that is the coolest dude ever. Please, yes, you get to have a mirror with that guy. He's such a cool guy and he's very low key, very humble, and you wouldn't know it from talking to him. But like later on I met some of the guys who were like his lieutenants at the time for the Zambo siege and they're like, yeah, that dude was like went right into the battle.

Was like, we're taking our o arp by force.

We're putting our ops in right there in that abandoned school in the middle of the city. Let's go take it and just start like running ops out of it. He was like that was nuts, and like I had to like fight this battle, but at the same time, like try to stop my colonel from getting shot in the because he was leading that from out front.

He was he was out there getting it done. Nice. Yeah, ted Yamas is a really cool guy.

Yeah.

They are really fortunate that they have a bunch of really good leaders, particularly during the battle Zamblanga and other conflicts in that that time period that there's there's success some of their sniper shots there.

Yeah yeah, yeah, uh.

And I think it's Zambo and also Morrow week Yeah uh, the l r R snipers like did God's work.

They did. Yeah, they you know, they if.

I recall correctly, like one day they wiped out like half of the senior leadership of the Papsilon's organization.

I think they smoked HVT number one.

They did, they got number one also, and you know, it just it created a situation where it enabled the rest of the conventionals to do the job, to be able to really do the job.

Which is I mean, that's what's soft.

We're an enabler for the conventional forces in some in most missions, and the conventional type.

Yeah.

Sorry, so so yeah, you know, they're they're pretty successful in the Philippines despite the early challenges from the oak Wood.

Plot and uh, lessons learn from our partnership with the l r R. What are the big takeaways? Yeah, you know, in some ways they're parallel with some of them from El Salvare. That consistency is absolutely critical, and that those interpersonal relationships, you know, I mean in America, sometimes we're so fixated on just the job at hand that we forget how important interpersonal relationships are and the rest of

Back to that.

Yeah, so that has a huge impact. The Philippines also is another case where language was interesting in that you know, again were we spend SF spends about fifty million dollars a year on language training. There's this whole premise that you know, you can't be effective if you don't speak the most nation language. And at least in the case of building you know, a battalion size unit like the light Reaction regiment or regimental size that it.

Didn't matter as much.

And there are multiple occasions where individuals would start speaking in Filipino or Tagalog or whatever of the hundreds of local dialects there are, and they either had situations where half the individuals were like, I don't speak that dialect, I have no idea what you're saying, or they're like, you know, like almost like the scene from Inglorious Bastards where it's like, do you Americans speak any language other than English, you know, where it's like my English is

We'll understand you better.

One thing that I mean is not in your book, I don't think. But I've been told that the main partner force for the LRR in recent years has transitioned from American Special Forces to Australian sas interesting and I don't know if you have any thoughts about you know, the partner force is actually kind of changing hands from one Western soft unit to another.

And what that means if anything.

Yeah, I mean, so relationships do matter, and in some cases it is you know, if their relationship is deep enough, you can go a couple of years and.

Pick it back up.

But if that relationship is allowed to kind of like evolve to the point where no one knows anyone in the.

Leadership, again, it's starting over again. You're starting over.

You know, I did not work with the Australian sas, so I you know, it's difficult for me to know how good they're fit.

You know, advisory skills are.

So.

I mean, you know it's interesting.

We you know, as a nation, we keep talking about wanting to shift our focus to the Pacific, but we keep getting drugged back into sentcom time after time. I would kind of premise that, you know, particularly given the Philippines position, you know, with regards to China and the conflicts and frictions that already exist between them, we would be well served to maintain a strong relationships with them.

Yeah, let's jump into Colombia. Columbia twenty two to twenty sixteen. So again, now we're in South coom totally different fight, totally different terrain.

Jungle Mountainous are still.

Down there with their second families there, so there's there's some similarity.

And fighting narco terrorism at this time with FARC. You know.

I recall when we had Frankie on the show asking him about about this. This subject came up, like why did Colombia work when so many of our other partnerships didn't, And the Colombian officer told them something like, well, we're closer to you, and we're much closer, have much more in common culturally, and that was that's it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's there's I think there's a component of that, but I think there are other factors and I think the So the Colombians.

Went through a period where.

You know, President and Simpler his his presidency was racked with corruption to the point where the US and I believe this is under Clinton, literally shuts off AID and there is so much corruption that we can't and I mean, you know, we're in the drug war, right, and this is like the greatest place where the drug war is coming from. And yet we actually went hardcore and said, hey, yeah, no more candy from you, because you guys are so corrupt.

Ob Yeah, and I believe it was Adibam.

I apologize, my little deaf dump details right now. I apologize. He basically cleans house, takes off almost all the three and four stards in the army, reappoints individuals who are you know, upstanding, not corrupt, who want to win, who are capable, and then they in turn appoint a whole

That has a huge impact because all those.

New Colombian officers who come in.

A lot of them have trained in US programs and they are really capable, and so they come in with a totally different perspective and they want to win. And so when you know, we start working to partner with them, there are some of the old hands.

I mean, it's we should point out too in that regard that our relationship with Columbia also goes back to like what the Korean War I think is.

Yeah, and the one of the units, the Alan a group of ascilland Lencero Lancero group is formed after the the Lancero's. The Lancero's is kind of a Colombian version of Ranger School, but you know, without the safety restrictions, without any safety restrictions.

And I think, I mean, I, you know, been in the Ranger School.

But didn't go to Lancero, but my friends who have been, is like, it's harder the Ranger school.

Yeah, Like and you do combat patrols, like real combat patrol. Yeah, your graduation as a Colombian. Nothing else but the Colombians.

Yes, I know a seventh Group guy that went to Lanceero and like his ranger buddy.

Got smoked on patrol. Wow. Wow, it was a Colombian officer.

Yeah.

And so you know, Lancero School was something that the US actually started in the fifties. They came to from like, hey, we'd like a ranger school type course.

And so.

I think the second advisor who is standing a the Lancero program actually ended up being the southcom commander in the eighties in El Salvador.

And there's these all weird.

Connections where like a bunch of the individuals who are really junior advisors in El Salvador are now like group sergeant majors or like group commanders or you know, SoC South commanders. They're all senior leaders and this they have this experience from Al Salvador, and they're kind of trying to compare the you know, the different situations. But you know, the relationship is strong. The Colombians really want to they want to succeed, and they kind of want to please the Americans.

So there is this.

Really good relationship where they when we ask them to do something unless it's like really stupid.

You know.

It's not like in Afghanistan or Iraq where there's a lot of foot dragging. Like the Colombians were like, okay.

The Colombian people, I sense, are also like kind of sick of FARC at this point.

They're sick of the FARC.

Yeah, and it's been you know, they've been at war for decades, yes, like fifty years, and so it's it's not just you know that there's pressure from the US that convinces you know, that go when it goes from Saint Pler to Oriba. But there's also the Columbian electorate is like, look, we've had it, you know, and they I believe they doubled like the percentage GP going to

So from the Colombian soft perspective and the US Special Forces partnership, same question, I mean, what went right?

What went wrong there? Yeah? I mean the Colombian soft.

Is literally the.

The poster child of like the best example of a soft result. I think we could hope for they they you know, Columbia goes from exporting coca to a country that's exporting security forces assistance where they're literally doing FID missions throughout southcom and like they're working so closely they're with us, Like they're like, Hey, we're going to go to I don't know, I don't know that, I can't remember the nation, but Trinidad or two Barbados, and we're going to do a FID mission there.

What would you like us to train them on?

And that's literally working yourself out of a job, literally working yourself out of a job, not only in the country but across the theater.

Yeah, right, which which is you know, which is a testament to what you accomplished there?

I think.

Yeah.

And the long term, you know, playing Columbia and all that, I mean, there's some long term you know thinking that went into that for.

Sure, and the you know, a lot of the successes there is that there is consistency and that there's actually more consistency on the Colombian side than there is on the American side.

Right the.

In the mission in Columbia, they're their challenges because you know, I mean, it's in the middle of the Gyt and and there are these demands in Afghanistan, their demands in at Ac. There's you know, everyone's getting pulled every which way.

That was a big thing in Colombia at that time, with like all the like willing spirit and everything like that.

They're kind of having to compete for resources.

Yeah, and you know it's one of the individuals said, you know, we're we're supporting theater, and so you know, we would get what we got and we just had to live with it, and that they were just fortunate that the Colombian partners were so dedicated and that in particular those soft units, unlike most of the other soft units, you know, it became like ours.

They created a.

So calm, a use of sock, a national you know force, and individuals would spend twenty year careers in that. Yeah, and so those relationships would just help tremendously as well as the Colombians, you know, not resisting reform.

Right.

You know, when we would.

Suggest something, the colombiansoud be like okay, sure, like unless it was stupid, and even if it was stupid, sometimes they would do it to like placate us, right, but then not like follow.

Through the whole way.

We were really blessed to have great partners in Colombia and.

So fark collapsed, that conflict is over. But I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. My impression of it is that a lot of the drug violence got pushed into Ecuador, and we have a lot of Ecuadorian mostly illegal immigrants here in the city. I understand, like they're here because of the violence and the poverty.

In their country. I mean, what do you think about that?

About that that like there's always these insurgent elements in South America, and like, are we ever going to be able to really as long as there's an American demand for drugs, are we really going to be able to end that?

Yeah?

I mean, you know, it goes back to the movie Traffic, and then you know the movie Traffic, one of the guys who's turned against the narco traffickers, you know, is talking with one of the individuals that's guarding him and says, look, you guys are never going to win this because you're

Fight the war on drugs and drugs won. Yeah, that's a man especially, you know. I mean, you know, it's it's just a huge it's it's the Gordian not right, No, I mean it's I mean, but you deal with it.

I mean, I think you deal with the way you deal with prohibition or anything else. You legalize it and tax the hell out of it. You know, Once you do that and give it legitimacy.

It kills It kills the black market, It.

Kills one course of action. I mean, I I don't know. I you know, drugs is unfortunately not my uh you know that the drug war is not my kind of specialty.

Yeah, so I don't well, I don't advocate.

I think I think drugs are horrible, you know, like most drugs or a lot of drugs are horrible and destroy people in families and communities.

However, he's always going to be demand if there's.

The demand, like you know, war on drugs, like before the gy, like the war on drugs was where all the money went to, right, It's just it's everybody wanted to be part of that.

That's why I did JTS six mission, Yeah, because there was tons of money there and then get our vehicles out to the West train for Yeah.

Everybody makes fun of the Coast Guard, but the Coast Guard was stacking bodies because they wore on drugs time.

You know.

So it's one of those things of you know, do you keep sort of with the self flagellation saying this is the moral course or deal with the practicality of it.

I don't know what the right answer is.

But yeah, so as we come to a RAQ, I'm not going to harp on it too much. We talked a lot about Iraq, but just through the soft perspective and the partnerships with the i CTF.

And the commando. Yeah, just talk to us about how that partnership played out.

Yeah, And it was similar to the others in that everyone recognized that relationships matter, and the same individuals kept coming back time after time after time to the point where, particularly with the ice off, they got to a point where one unit would deploy, the next unit would be in garrison and then they would flip lump and it would be just you know, one punch after another for

So there's huge just consistency.

Where even while they're in garrison they're using WhatsApp or whatever to communicate you know, too forward and find where what the unit is doing, where it's at, what its skill levels at, and so that they're in touch with that they can return and pick right back up where they were last time.

There's I mean, there's there's ownership of the unit. Yeah, they acted as the paymasters for the unit. They came up with the to and the like.

The Americans really were running those units at that time.

One of the themes really kind of across many of the case studies was that in some cases the US has a reluctance to in almost are you know, our like liberalism from like a Jeffersonian like liberalism right ideal that like we we don't want to be a colonialist and like run things.

But a theme kind of became was that there's sometimes that you have to step back.

It's the responsible thing to do, the responsible thing to do, and not from a colonial perspective, but just to prevent corruption, to enforce standards.

To take care of the soldiers, to take care of.

The soldiers, and and if you do that at the beginning and then you trans position, they can be more successful than if you didn't do it at all. And for example, in the ice off, you know, the US held a selection and if the guy didn't pass selection, they didn't go to the ice off. And it was a real selection. It wasn't like everyone passes. You know, they're taking off half to a third of the individuals. They selected the leadership also, which is really the most important.

He led from the front.

He's a Kurdish dude.

He was a Kurdish dude, and he you know, in Iraq.

He was a little corrupt, but he wasn't really badly right, right, And so it was enough where because we had picked these people who we knew were going to be decent leaders, the unit was successful.

It was also interesting how you point out how it was like mandated that the demographics of the unit represent the ethnicity you know, percentages you know, across Iraq.

So there's like what six different.

Groups of Yeah, that was another thing that they really mandated again and it wasn't the iraqis that, you know, it was like, okay, from squad level to battalion level, you know, everything is going to represent Rock's demo demographics. They're going to be roughly twenty percent Kords, roughly you know, twenty percent Sydney, and then roughly sixty percent you know, Shia and then handful of other minorities to comment and it like.

Gave them the reputation over time, right that they're not like a partisan force of like Sun He's going after Shias or vice versa.

That they are a national force.

It became a national force, and individuals within the unit, you know, interviewing them, they'd be like, yeah, you know, at first, it was really hard for me to like trust like the dude, the sun dude that I thought was like you know, and we thought they were like al kaeda. You know, I've been raised to think Sunnis were gonna murder us, and the Suniors.

Are like, I've been raised, you know that you know all a Shio were.

Apostates and that they were devil worshipers, you know, and but you know, you fight alongside of them for months at a time and you kind of realize, like, this guy saved my life more than once, and like it builds these bonds or the unit become the national unit.

Was that that quote in your book where they did some op that had all this political fallout and the Iraqi was like, yeah, we don't care about that.

We worked for President Bush. Yeah, there was, I think it was I can't remember.

There was six or seven is the tenth reup rotation and it was a hit on a mosque where in one of these typical cases the insurgents, I think it was a sodrest as a Shia mosque, I believe where afterwards, you know, they re arranged in the bodies, they take all the weapons away, they shoot a couple of civilians and women and children in the streets, drag their bodies in, and all the Americans have mastered all these people at prayer, you know, they put out prayer rugs and everything, so

It helped us for a little bit.

But on the Iraqi side, the Iraqis were like, and this is one of those examples of where at some point, you know, you can't play nice when the host nation is being corrupt and incompetent, you have to step in.

And they're like, man, like I'm getting paid.

My chow is good because nobody's skimming money off the chow fund. Like I'm getting fed you know, my family's here on base too, because they are worried that, you know that if my family was off base, they'd get killed.

So I'm willing to.

Fight because we've arranged all these things to be successful. And then over time you slowly start stepping back and then you get to a point where they're actually standing.

On their own.

But in this case, it turned out Malachi ended up using them for his own political purposes and that really ruined the unit's reputation.

It did for a while for you know, a couple of years.

Melachi, who really helped, in my opinion, is one of these central causes of the second what I would call the second Idaki Civil War. This is the civil war that not from like six to nine. It's really from about you know, twelve to you know, ISIS is really part of it because everyone buys into ISIS because they're like, you know, yeah, fuck this guy, fuck this guy.

And you know, the Shia.

Malichi was literally going down the list of the sons of Iraq of you know, the Sahua individuals and arresting them off their list because you know, he's like, oh, well, you know they're al Kada, and because you know, when Malachi came in, he he flooded the ice off with more Shia candidates and it was it's this weird dynamic where the unit would push back a little bit, but they couldn't push back completely because if they did, then they'd get fired, right, So it's this weird dynamic where

You being you know, the PM anymore. When as soon as he's gone. The I saw many of those.

Cultural habits that they had been trained with, they defaulted back to them. They expunged a bunch of the incompetency officers, they brought back in a more balance, and so like by like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, when they're starting to do assessments again of like, okay, well what is the breakdown now, it's almost back to like, you know, the two thousand. What's no, that's awesome, it's almost back to the same democratic I.

Want to ask you because so I wrote in this book the whole chapter about the SIF, and we haven't really mentioned them in this discussion thus far. But you mentioned, for instance that IOF continued to fight while the rest of the Iraqi Army basically dissolved.

The SIF was involved in training the LRR.

Yeah, they were down in Columbia training their hostage rescue you know, national asset down there. What do you think about the SIF being kind of disbanded and turned into a different sort of capability, Like, I mean, I'm just curious, you know, based on your research and your experience as an s F officer, like, was.

That the right decision was that a bad decision. Did the SIF have a lot of value added that we've lost? I mean, what do you think about that? So?

You know, so I had a lot of friends in A one to five because obviously you know I was right downstairs, and even when I was a team leader, there are two stairs downstairs, right so Joe Canella, Rick Frazier and all these you know, great dudes, Dean Franks who who ran A one five and.

Ran a great organization.

I think disbanding the SITH you you lose a really good capability. But the challenge, I think is that and this may be controversial, and it may piss off some of the old A one to five or other stiff guys. The the SIFT probably was never going to be used for traditional for its intended function right right, to be a backup to the US National Mission Force to do hostage rescue when they weren't available. The chances of them

Does on occasion.

You know, these the skills that they had, they rarely actually use them other than transferring them to host nation forces.

Right, and that's what they're really good at.

Out of curiosity, you know, you mentioned like ICEOFT and this massive battle with Daisha isis you know, we talk about Alsavador and Colombia and these units.

What is it about?

Because it's one thing for them to behave and perform in a certain way when American advisors are.

Attached, right, very true, but you're talking about the advisors have left YEA, and these units sometimes not necessarily with like Columbia, but maybe with you know, the ice offt In.

Spite of cultural norms, in spite of what happens with the rest of the military, in spite of they still maintain I want to say sort of that American is spree accor right, They still culture. They still like have that that culture that that binds them together and and gives them a sense of right and wrong and and.

Sense of mission. Right, what what is it? How is that passed on. How is that germinated and and fostered, and then.

Even when Americans leave, these units are still an echo of those American ideals.

I think it's in some ways it's a transference of culture. And how it happens. I think there's there's a couple factors. One is that there's a long term partnership. And it's not like particularly what we did with a lot of Iraqi, Africa African units, where we would show up, we work with them for six months and then they'd be trained right and they wouldn't need advisors. Again, you don't pass culture on in six months like you know, that's that's a decade or more.

Project.

So that's one component of it is it's a long term, consistent, you know connections.

Second is leadership matters most.

And helping pick the right host nation leadership, either directly as we did in the ICEOFT or indirectly as we maybe help nudge things along or helped individual's.

Careers or whatever.

That makes a huge impact because you know, those individuals then pass on that culture to the units, and rather than a corrupt culture, they're passing on a culture that we have selected that we think is closer to ours, I think, and not culture meaning like American culture, but just like viable military cultural norms of the warrior ethos.

From the front, all that stuff.

You kind of have leadership.

You've got to kick the right leaders.

So outside of you know, special forces and you know anybody else who's doing you know, FID seals when they you know, when the money is, you know, when they want the money or whatever.

But don't get me started.

But outside of you know, special forces going in and teaching these commando skills, has the army overlooked the idea of senior leaders, whether senior enlisted or senior or not senior officers, but senior enlisted and officers creating that sort of FID capability from a leadership point of view, with with like the Iraqi Army or with armies with trying to teach that culture at the top so that it filters down.

Yeah.

So there is one quote from the Iraq War study that really stood out to me, and it went something along the lines of in Iraq.

You know, we had all of the.

Guns and money to influence the Iraqi military, its creation, it's leadership, it's ethos, and we used neither. And for some weird reason, you know, like the money troth kept going mostly right, and the weapons troth kept going in that we very rarely really threw down and said no, like, this guy is a sectarian thug and he's not going to be He should not be leading any units whatsoever.

Right.

I mean, I could even give you a personal account of my time there.

Where the one.

Uh Tony Soprano, the Sikh.

At Mamour, the shake of Shakespeare. Yeah, who, I don't.

Know what happened to him. Actually he posts you know twenty fourteen the previous unit that had worked with him. I mean, in a on a positive note, you know, he is Tony Soprano. He's a thug, so he fights. But he was horribly corrupt, right, and skimmed huge amounts from his soldiers.

He was and he was a thug to the point of.

Dangerous to the civilian population, and to the point where.

You know, he had hooked ratchet straps up to.

A Iraqi insurgent that they had captured, who was still alive and then drug him behind. This is rotation before us drug him behind till he died. You know, I tried to get him replaced because I was like, this guy is we do not want to work with this guy. And are the team leader, the team sergeant, the whole team is like, this dude is bad.

We do not want to work with this guy. We need to find someone else.

And so we'd even worked through and all this so much had happened before, in like that November four period, or he had fought, he'd been one of the few that fought that they'd kind of gotten Stockholm syndrome. With me and so my team I representing them, I put together the packet to try to get rid of this guy. We even had the point where we had talked to this guy buttering him up, you know, like a man.

You know, do you have photos? Oh? Yes, I have photos.

Here, let me show you.

You know, I mean there's photos, like have copies of those. Whould love to show them to our friends, you know, And so we literally had photos of him doing this.

So did you try to do this through the laky bedding?

No, I just tried to do it through the regular chain of command. So like company command, our team leader to company commander, tiling commander goes up somewhere to the ethos. Conventional guys get very angry at the soft guy goes up to the death star, goes up to the death.

Star somewhere, and then it comes pouring back down of Hey, Frank, what are you doing there pissing off the conventional guys.

You're working with the artillery guys.

And I mean it was even to the point where when with the photo that we had gotten from the team guys from the rotation before us, I actually posted that next to you know, the infamous photo of the and there is definitely a backstory to the Vietnam you know where he's executing the prisoner.

Oh yeah.

But my point was the political impact of that right on the war. I was like, what happens when this comes out?

Right?

Totally fair port And and my battalion commander, totally, to his great credit, he absolutely supported me. He's like, Frank, you're totally right. I am going to support you. I'm

Like the word the word that always gets used to avoid or excuse why you.

Can't do the right thing is equities have equities, which is so weird.

Which is so weird because in other countries, when it's a soft, pure mission, they'll be like, like they'll come down on you guys for the smallest human rights human rights violation that the guys that you didn't even go out with commit.

Oh yeah, it's crazy, absolutely absolutely, And you know, so it was just like, well, let's uh, you know, I don't want to keep all night.

No, it's okay, this is a great conversation.

Thank you for so deep into it.

I'm just trying to, you know, make sure that we we cover it all.

So the last case study in your book, Afghanistan, again widely different culture terrain, the auspices under which were there very different. And also the auspices under which we stood up the Afghan Special Operations capability was quite different than Iraq, very different. Start talking to us about the KANDACT commandos, how that comes about and how that partner relationship develops.

Yeah, so it.

Comes about unlike at Ack where the ICEOFT with the commandos and the ICTF, you know, the invasion, it's.

Seven eight months after the invasion.

That the the the initial seeds of the ICEOFT are

Passes you know, their.

Little ability to select leaders for it. They don't have the ability to kind of command it. And battle pay is different. Their pay is more than the rest of the army, but they're not generally like doing it out like the situation in Iraq where you literally the paymaster is an American at the beginning to kind of like treat teach them almost the right way to do it, and then transition.

By the time you know it starts.

Well, you know, quarter of the war is over almost already, or you know, twenty percent of the war is over already, and so it really limits our ability to make changes within the unit to kind of like a lot, you know,

When you look at the like Afghanistan, just look at like the Afghanistan Special and Paramilitary and on all these like weird SAPs and stuff. My impression of it is that it's about ten times more confusing than.

What we did in South Vietnam. Yes, which is a little confusing, Yes, which is very confusing in itself, But.

The stuff in Afghanistan is like, it's mind boggling.

It's crazy.

Yeah, Like there's no unity of effort because we keep changing things. It's like it's like someone with ADHD is like in charge.

Like, no, that's that's a good point. That's why I think about like that. It's nuts.

But where where was that coming from? Was that coming from theater the like the theater commander. Was that coming from the theater soft commanders? Because obviously No. E seven is making that decision?

No way, right, these sevens are picking pulling their hair out right, They can't believe how stupid the decisions are. The the general sense was that in many cases it came from either the group that was rotating as the jujitsta had or as the theater soft headquarters as you know, as the point when a theater soft headquarters was stood up over the group headquarters that those because it was

Wonder what the.

Correlation is there, you know, meaning basically that somebody's command tenure, they've now rotated out, somebody else rotates.

In, and they got to leave their mark on it.

They want to leave their mark. They've got a new pet.

Rock, do you you know?

We talked a little bit about GAT veterans contempt for general officers and why that is. Do you feel as though there's an argument it's kind of impractical because of how you know that they gain rankers eff, but do you feel there is an argument for when you start a war, it's your war until it's over.

That was actually one of our challenging conclusions in the Iraq War study in that you know, there war two veterans, that it was the war from the beginning to end. The challenge with that is the all volunteer force, right and I mean there are ways that you can kind of perhaps get away or get around it where if you actually return the same units to the same theater.

Because this is totally different environment.

What about on a geo level to say, hey, if you want ownership of this war, you have ownership of this war and it's all on you. Yeah, like you don't get out, you don't get out after two years and say, well they just failed to carry on my vision.

Yeah.

General Casey actually commanded from June oh four until I think it was like February of seven. And you know, it's a pretty long tenure. It's not a year tenure, it's I think it's three hund years.

Yeah, yeah, and The challenge was is he was one of the ones who was pushing the transition strategy, and I think he.

Really was a true believer. But I mean I went in like thinking like.

Oh this, When I interview these guys, they're going to be like, yeah, uh, you know. I gave my best military advice and then the politicians told me to do it and I saluted and drove on.

No.

They were like, this is.

The right idea.

We should have done this all along, We should have just totally left. And it proved me right, you know that the wrecking army collapsed and I was like, wow, oh so much.

Yeah. So the flip side of that, the challenge is if you get the right geo right, great.

If you don't get the right geo, you are totally screwed. And one of the challenges, to be very honest, I think in civil military relations and post volunteer army is we don't fire a lot.

Of generals, right, we don't fire enough generals. We don't fire we almost fire no jump right right.

We have this sort of like cultural inclination towards like worship of this like unique singular individual who's going to save us with his brilliance.

That's not really how.

It we're Yeah, I think in some ways it's also worse when your senior civilian leaders believe it, believe it, but also have little or no military experience, like when they've never served, or if they've been you know, their National Guard for what six months or whatever or zero like zero. It takes a really strong person like an FDR or a Lincoln to be like, hey, McClellan, guess

Until we found a good one.

So that's the model.

Sorry, the Kandak commandos, I mean, despite our very many failings in Afghanistan, it's interesting again that it seems that SF essentially accomplished their job, and even as Afghanistan was collapsing, the commandos fought until their logistics lines.

Just crapped out out on them completely. And that's a.

Military failure, you know, to be clear, the military logistics failed to get them the fuel, the ammunition, water, whatever they needed.

But they did fight. Yeah, they did fight.

In many cases, they're what's happening or sending notes to their posting on Facebook I need AMMO. I need fuel. I'm willing to fight. Somebody get me ammo. Like this crazy stuff like social media, right, like Twitter, Like I'm at this location, send me AMMO.

I'll fight. We'll fight for AMO, right.

You know, uh where they did fight, and you know, in many cases some of them were executed.

You know, they they.

Fought till they ran an ammunition and then the Taliban.

Executed every single one of them to like prove a point.

And I mean, despite our frictions and our challenges and our mistakes, you know, we still ended up with a partner for us.

That performed far better than the rest of the after military.

And the irony is that this is not a small force, right, It's a division sized force.

There's like sixteen.

Thousand people in the Commandos by the time it's done, so it's huge.

It's not this small force.

It's said it's like a fifth of the overall ANA.

Yeah, it's like a fifty overall ANA. But they're doing like seventy percent of the fighting. They're larger than like six NATO countries militaries like the commandos. So it's a big force, but rit large. There was enough time and impact even though it was with different individuals to create enough of a culture that they fought.

So any final thoughts about the book before we move on.

I mean, I know there's a lot in here, you know.

I guess the biggest thing I would just say is, you know, thanks to all of like the SSEF guys and host nation forces and everyone, they just like poured out their you know, life stories and sometimes there are worse days that they of their life.

Yeah, you know that spent time with me.

I mean, time is our most precious resource, and they spent a lot of time with me. And so I'm just super thankful that so many people gave me so much time and to let me and let me tell their stories. Because there is some fucking amazing stories out there.

So Training for Victory it's available now. You guys can go out and find it on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Tell us about life after the book. What are you up to nowadays?

Yeah?

So, so I am kind of a gig.

Economy for education.

So I do in the chair of a regular Warfare studies at the Modern War Institute West Point, which means I research and write. I'm fortunate I do everything from insurgency to uh, you know, security, force assistance kind of everything in between.

So it's fun.

To be very honest, I would far prefer to teach, and this is gonna sound maybe a little weird, but I would almost rather teach like civilians, like undergrads, like particularly RTC kids, than military because man, they are so so like I teach as an adjunct at Tufts University. I teach a class called War Film and Politics, which uses war films to kind of help understand the military ethos and to understand how politics is inserted into films

They are in the fall, and.

I taught other classes like the class and Intelligence and Technology.

Taught that at JASOW. I thought it right in university.

It Urtzelia in Israel, so you know, I get around kind of whatever is available to me. I much prefer kind of a more stable kind of like particularly civilian. It would be my dream opportunity, but it's it's challenging.

It's challenging being.

Fifty five because people look at you differently, particularly in the academic world.

In the academic world.

Aren't you supposed to be like a seventy year old professor that you just stay there forever and collect the collect the paycheck.

Until they kick you out.

Yeah, is the most accurate thing about the latest Indiana Jones movie with the Harrison Ford playing that still the professor is still teaching, putting the transparencies up on the projector.

Like yeah, yeah.

So you know, getting into it late is hard because in many cases they see it as publisher paris, you know, as we were talking about before, and they want you to publish a lot, in research a lot, and it's.

Almost like a timeline.

They're like, oh, well, you got twenty years left maybe if that fifteen, whereas if we hire somebody who's thirty, we can kind.

Of mold them in our image or are in our image.

And we have a lot.

More years of research and et cetera.

Yeah, what the crap? I wrote this fifteen hundred page I RACK report.

What do you want?

Yeah?

There is also.

I think there is in some cases, some universities are very most very friendly. You know, when I got my PhD at Fletcher's School, Long Diplomacey at Tufts University, Medford Massachusetts. When I was going there to like try to decide where I was going to pick for my program, got any elevator to go up to do an interview, and there's like a flyer like.

Kind of celebrate the Marine Corps birthday. And I was like, Wow, this place is like.

Pretty military friendly that they're like, you know, come out cake for the Marine Corps birthday and they're celebrating it, right, And so it was a really good fit for me because they're like pretty military friendly. But there are other institutions out there that are not very multi friendly that you know, look at you like, you know, you're some sort of barbarian, right chromagnon.

Yeah, you were over there killing brown people from Uncle Sam. Yeah, and which is.

Who misunderstanding of what we were doing? Yeah, total misunderstanding of what our ethos is. Yeah, total misunderstanding is like why many of us joined the military.

It's I think, I mean, if you're twenty two in saying that, okay, if you're like forty in saying that, it's an intentional misunderstanding, Like.

It's you, right, you haven't interacted with many military.

Intentionally, like you have no intellectual curiosity whatsoever.

Yes, Yeah, and and there there are some schools.

That have that problem. Yeah, I'm this is yeah, so I uh, I'm on a kind of a hiring freeze at another position, so really excited about it. I'm really looking forward to potentially start there. It looks like it will happen, but hard to tell, so, you know, but you know, anything could happen. I mean, it's it's a very dynamic environment these days.

Is you know, uh putting the screws to the college.

Yeah, I mean, you know, uh, within government and outside government, it's a very dynamic environment. And you know, the entire eCos some education ecosystem, whether it's within the military system, teaching a military schools, or whether it's at a civilian school, there's government dollars.

You're going to have a party member in your office pretty soon supervising making sure you're doing the right thing.

So there's there's so much government dollars involved that.

We're in a very dynamic.

And I'm kind of waiting on, you know, something, to see how it turns out.

Outside of academy. I mean, you are.

Arguably one of the leading experts on like what happened, what went wrong in Iraq. You know, your book shows that, you know, I mean, before before a book like this, I mean, what did we have, we had learning to eat soup with a knife, like we there were very few resources on conventional warfare. Yeah, but now we we have. You know, you're like, you're generating new documents, historical documents.

On that.

Outside of academia, are there places in the government, in the military where anybody's saying, look, we need to retake Not only do we need to retain the knowledge, but we need somebody with the ability to look back and when we're making these military decisions, give us a historical perspective as to how.

This might go. Because if they had had.

Anybody from Vietnam, from Vietnam, they or look at Yugoslavia. Obviously that wasn't a military dissolution. Tito just decided to die. But we saw what happened, and they would have gone, well, you know, this happened in Yugoslavia.

Maybe take maybe taking Saddam Ow isn't the best idea. He'sphically he's a shithead.

But he's a stable shit It's there's this interesting thing where the politics are happening right in the moment. My sense is that like they don't want to know what the history is, like, that's not something they're even interested in because they've made a decision, right, and so now well.

It's it's like there's there's some information coming out of Syria right now, but not a lot about you know, sort of the ethnic cleansing of Christians and alay.

You know, it's like.

Nobody nobody saw, nobody thought that if we get rid of a sad that things might go sideways and they'll be taken over by a extremist regime.

Nobody nobody thought that.

Yeah, so I think there are two To me, there are two factors at play.

One is, you know, the.

Old adage that success has a thousand fathers and you know, defeat has none, right, and taking that a step further is, you know, when you lose or you don't do well, you try to want to forget about it, right, And and I think that's played out and it's playing out kind of in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably even dark experienced.

At Syria, et cetera. Where we I mean.

You look at on the army is you know where we gravitate, you know, you look at the last two uniforms that we've had.

We wear it's the World War Two and the Civil War uniform.

Both wars that were clear cut like good guys, bad guys, you know, both wars that were massive, you know, moving not divisions but cors and armies, right, and you know, conflicts that were very kind of straightforward, and we, frankly, we won pretty much. The second dynamic. I think that's kind of going on a little bit is.

Being an American.

And one of the most beautiful things about an American that I think is good that we are very different than so many other countries of the world, is we are always forward looking. We are always looking for the future. What is next, what is the next big thing? Howming

But on the flip side of that, we don't know.

History, like we're really bad at history.

And you know, teaching history at West Point for two years, there is among thingers where we would you know, keep records of essay responses of you know, the most shocking responses that future second lieutenants that have two historical questions of you.

Know, our high school education system is following a.

Bit short, yes, of the the lack of success of our high school education system.

And again at a top university.

Right right, these are Ivy League kids basically equivalent.

Yeah, okay, So Frank, tell us where people can go to find you on the interwebs.

What's the poise to go?

Yeah, you know, I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, interwebs. I mean, and you know, I I publish Small Wars Journal. I publish. I mean, if you if you go to my LinkedIn, you'll see all my publications. That's probably the best place because that's this where I kind of that's the.

And I write a lot. I write a lot.

I write for the Miriam Institute, which is a Israeli American kind of thing tank. And so I've written a lot about the you know, Palestinian Israeli Iranian conflict, multidirectional both October seventh, pre October seventh and post October seventh. You know, I've written for One on the Rocks, written for Jerusalem's Tribute Tribune. I'm pretty good amount of shorter pieces. If you're interested and you know something you can finish in five ten minutes.

And we will have a link to that in the description for this podcast for folks that'll want to go check it out. Frank, we covered a huge array of topics in this interview, and I'm sorry if I kept you a.

Little late, but I mean it was for taking so much time.

Yeah, it was very good, and I mean this is very important information that I hope people will take some time to reflect on before we get going tonight. I mean, is there anything else that you want to talk about that I didn't ask that you'd really like to shine a light on.

No, I mean, thank you so much for being so patient taking time.

We appreciate it. Talk too much. No, not at all.

Nobody, no guest ever has to come on the show and apologize to us because I and and like Jack's being very like Magnanums by saying I'm sorry I kept you so.

Long when we all know, we all know why you're here so long. Thank you.

Yeah, well, no, really, they're Legit was a lot of content to cover in the book, and I'm glad that we were able to get to it.

So thanks for joining us. Thanks coming out.

I really appreciate you hosting me, and especially with such an awesome you know, channel and podcast.

And check it out. Training for Victory is the book. I actually finished reading it this morning. I read the first three chapters when it first came out, and then when you were coming on the show, I was like, oh, I got to really finish it now.

I really enjoyed it. I hope you guys will go and check it out.

It's out now, find it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever.

Oh d do we have any questions? Good point, I almost forgot about that.

Yeah.

From m corbin, uh, coin from my city dumbass point of view seems to work best when done with a long term, more multi generational goal in mind. How important are women in achieving coin goals in that respect?

So multi generational I think is critical.

That is really the outlook that you have to take from it and one of the biggest challenges.

I think we talked.

I don't remember it was before the interview or after, but you know there's this premise that like it was just over the horizon, the next year was.

All going to be over right.

I think the second part of the question was women how important are women in it?

So, I think women are a really important factor.

In it, if you and so there's a challenge, there's there's there's a balance, right, certain cultures do not appreciate women and do not value them like we do in the United States. Well, okay, maybe I'm that's maybe.

A little harsh, but I think I'm just gonna say it.

Yeah.

I the challenges is pushing.

You don't want to push too hard, too fast, but you also don't want to push too slow because there's a tremendous value there in you know, of the population that could be producing economically, they could be producing new ideas. It is out of the workforce, you're automatically stemy.

The Afghans had like the was female tactical unit.

And the cstet for the Yeah.

And you point out in the book the ICTF used women for reki.

Yeah, you know, for just say for because I'm trying to forget the best way to say this. For you know, human intelligence, oftentimes women make superb sources sources. Yeah, and you know, and and there is tremendous value there. And I think particularly on the human intelligence side, if that has overlooked it it's you know, a huge resource that is being not tapped.

Well in a lot of times, you know, and whether it's in a Latin American country where you know, the women are free to speak, but you know, are tired of losing their sons or tired of the bullshit, or you know, you go to Afghanistan where you know, the FAT and CST teams or even a medcap or a PRT or whatever, where all them guys are like, I'm not saying ship and the women are like, yeah, they built a well and then these motherfuckers came in and blew up the well. And now I have to walk,

Yeah, it's like it's a massive advantage. Yeah, advantage. Yeah.

There's one last thing I wanted to throw is that is oftentimes when women are more included in the defense forces, there's a statistical correlation with less corruption. And you know, whether it's that, you know, they're the outsiders, and so by being outsiders they're more willing to kind of call out stuff and willing to be both whistleblowers or whatever. But there is a correlation there in that in organizations and armies that have women in the services, the corruption often is less.

I wonder if that is.

I wonder if the corruption is less because there are women who will call it out, or if a culture that is progressive enough to have women is just a less corrupt culture by nature, don't I don't know'd be curious.

That's a valid point. Yeah, that's a valid point. It's the causation versus correlation.

Yeah, you know the questions.

From what Ryan p Training for Victor was a pretty informative read. I learned a lot, particularly about about the Afghans and Iraqis and their advisors. However, I kind of wondered why an uncritical take was given to the Colombians.

Can we get an explanation?

So, I don't know, uh, uncritical, uncritical? Yeah, I think, I mean my perception of the Colombians and I okay, so I'm gonna back up when I went into this.

If I was gonna rank.

Order the most successful units. Before I started my research, I thought it was going to be I saw off Afghan commandos, LRR, Colombians Alsalvadar.

Like my perception, not having worked.

In Latin America and perhaps you know, just the stereotype, you know, I thought, oh, there's gonna be a mass corruption, et cetera. Man Like everyone I talked to like everyone, and I talked to civilians. I talked to people in the intelligence community. I talked to a journalist. I talked to host Nation. I talked to everyone from you know, East seven to lieutenant general and every rank in between.

Like Colombia in.

The nineties is a mess, it's a disaster. Everyone is predicting it's going to be a failed state, or that large tracts of the country are going to be overrun by the farc. The fark is going to run parts of the country. They've become their own already did. Like Theomous stated in Atomis though Farklandia completely that there were there.

Were more.

Kidnappings and murders in Colombia than in Afghanistan in the late nineties. It was like the number one per capita in the world. It was a disaster. Yeah, the training for Victory comes.

After that period.

Partially, I start after the Sampler has ended, because the Bokoa and Aglan don't start getting really stood up until post September eleventh.

Do you who made that content, Brian p So if Ryan Ryan, if you're still watching right now, just throw up in the chatter and the thing like if you had criticisms of it, I'd be curious.

Obviously you saw it as as uncritical.

I'd be curious what criticisms you may have expected that didn't didn't land.

All right, we got one more from Matt.

Gu what's the best advice you've received?

And thank you for your time?

Best advice I ever received? Yep, great question.

I mean the best advice I ever received was from Captain Cunliffe, who is my company commander and who told me to try out for us out.

I mean that was the best advice.

I ever received because and he you know, he said, look, if you know you, if you don't do it, you'll regret at the rest of life.

And there are certain things that kind of turning.

Points in your life where you know, I didn't come from a military family. I certainly didn't come from a you know, a software elite family. You know, my dad was an orphan. You got to jump into deep end, and you know, having the right mentor or right person at the right time in your life to help push you a little bit off or to tell you, like, hey, jump, it's gonna be okay, that taking that jump is okay.

Do you had were you aware of a SF prior to him? Saying that.

I mean, I was aware of it, but I you know, I was not one of these guys that was like at west Point like I'm going SF you know, like I was in the Infangy Tactics Club and so like I spent my spring breaks like overseas training with form military like the Brits. Mostly I spent my weekends in the field doing cool you know patrols basically pre ranger almost like patrols, but without getting hazed.

It was like it was fun.

It's just like you know, doing training all the time with Amlo and anyway.

But yeah, so it's you think, I'm sure.

I was just gonna say it wasn't like something that I knew that I was going think that you.

Ever would have it had he not said do it. I gotta tell you, I don't know's I mean, like the fate, it's it's on my mind. But if we just did it.

But when we interviewed Lindsay earlier today and she went and assessed for one hundred and sixtieth because her commander told her you'll never be a little Bird pilot, there's no way you'll ever get selected, and she was like, I'll fucking show you. And it's just it's interesting how like different people need to hear different things at different periods of their life.

Right, So I will add one of the other company commanders. I overheard him talking to another commander saying, a sub check is never going to.

Make it, like you so so yeah, so I had that.

I had actually on both kind of both poles, right, going around ye, but pushing me kind of like magnetically

Yeah, fascinating. Yeah did Ryan Pire respond?

Okay, So I think that's about a wrap for tonight, Frank, at least until you write your next book publisher perish.

Yeah.

You know, we'll see you here again sometime, I hope. Yeah.

So then, thank you for joining us. Thanks for Yeah, we really appreciate it.

I really appreciate you having me.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, you're welcome anytime, man, and we'll see all of you guys out there next time.

Thanks for joining us. Hey, guys, it's Jack.

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