Speaker 1: Ah beaut force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to software radio, special operations, military
Speaker 1: news and straight talk with the guys and the community
Speaker 1: socrep dot Com on time on target, I mean in Scotto,
Speaker 1: Jack Murphy is here, I'm late and off target to that.
Speaker 1: Barrie Ranger, Green Beret, editor in chief the soccrep dot Com,
Speaker 1: which I you know, I tried to throw out there
Speaker 1: every now and again because there's always new listings every episode. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I guess for the people of Philadelphia, congratulations on
Speaker 1: your victory and burning her. Yeah, it's gonna say, being
Speaker 1: very classy about celebrating. I'm not surprised. I lived in
Speaker 1: Philly for a year in like oh four to oh five,
Speaker 1: and their fans are fucking crazy. Yeah, I haven't spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in Philadelphia. One of our staff
Speaker 1: rights are. One of our writers lives out that way. Well,
Speaker 1: James Powell lives in like the New Jersey Philly area.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you mean him, Yes, I guess
Speaker 1: if if you're an Eagles fan, congratulations. Another story I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention though, was this tsunami thing. So today
Speaker 1: as a recording this people got this AccuWeather alert that
Speaker 1: said tsunami warning and effect for West Palm Beach, Florida
Speaker 1: until am East source US National Weather Service. And the
Speaker 1: crazy thing was it even went to parts of New York.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so like this woman tweeting in Manhattan wrote
Speaker 1: that she got this on her phone, which is the
Speaker 1: same things maybe she had as impossible she had like
Speaker 1: a Florida area code. Well no, this says this actually
Speaker 1: says tsunami warning and effect for Greenwitch Village, New York. Yeah,
Speaker 1: until a M East source National Weather Service. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a woman on here saying she got one in Bushwick.
Speaker 1: So that's weird. My question is this is the third
Speaker 1: time this has happened. It was Hawaii, Japan, and now
Speaker 1: West Palm Beach and other parts of you know what,
Speaker 1: five weeks of each other. Yes, So I was talking
Speaker 1: to the Odissean about this, and my feeling is like,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be Alex Jones to think something
Speaker 1: is weird here. Well that's what me and Danielle were
Speaker 1: talking about when we had her on and that you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just a mistake, maybe it's just an error,
Speaker 1: but it could be if these systems were hacked, that
Speaker 1: somebody has probe or probe and the wire so to speak,
Speaker 1: that they're testing to see what our responses will be.
Speaker 1: And then you're also conditioning the population so that when
Speaker 1: a real emergency text comes through like that, like hey,
Speaker 1: the I, C B M s are in the air,
Speaker 1: you just ignore it because you've been desensitized to it,
Speaker 1: which according to the odisse And I didn't have time
Speaker 1: to look up exactly, so I could be wrong in this,
Speaker 1: but I think the response for that first one in
Speaker 1: Hawaii it was something like forty something minutes, and according
Speaker 1: to the Odissey and the response time in Japan was
Speaker 1: probably under three minutes. So that's pretty yeah, that much
Speaker 1: more prepared. The Japanese drill for They do like earthquake
Speaker 1: drills and natural disaster drills all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: and go and see videos like they have the school
Speaker 1: kids running through it, and I mean the Japanese are
Speaker 1: pretty tight, like they have that they have their act together,
Speaker 1: you know. I also would think after Fukushima, they don't
Speaker 1: they don't sunk around. I mean, because that was before Fukushima.
Speaker 1: They didn't wuk around because they had earthquakes, they had
Speaker 1: tsunamis they had fucking nuclear bombs dropped on them, which
Speaker 1: leaves a bit of a memory, right, So they always
Speaker 1: took that stuff very seriously. Yeah, that's understandable. Um, that's
Speaker 1: even you know, the only other comparison I could think of.
Speaker 1: I know in Israel they have that like text or
Speaker 1: if something is about to hit. Yeah, and then I
Speaker 1: mean they drilled his rarely uh, school children and Israeli
Speaker 1: citizens pretty well too, don't they as far as like
Speaker 1: bomb show looking at me like you're Jewish? You know
Speaker 1: you've been you've been to Israel? Or yeah, I was
Speaker 1: in Israel over twenty eight days. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: it was like fifteen. I don't even remember exactly. Don't
Speaker 1: your brothers and sisters tell you about this stuff? And no,
Speaker 1: I'm not part of any secret society. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a great trip. I I enjoyed it, but I'm not
Speaker 1: in the know of any more than you guys of
Speaker 1: what goes on there. Um. Then the other story to
Speaker 1: get to is this Russian pilot story from the BBC. Here.
Speaker 1: Russian media have lauded a pilot killed in Syria as
Speaker 1: a hero, saying he detonated his grenade to avoid being
Speaker 1: captured by Jihadis who had shot his plane out of
Speaker 1: the sky. Um Roman Philippov's reported last words were, here's
Speaker 1: for the guys. His Sukhoi twenty five ground attack aircraft
Speaker 1: was shot down over rebel Rebel held it wid Province Uh.
Speaker 1: He survived the attack and ejected, but died in the
Speaker 1: ground fight. Former al Qaeda affiliate Hyatt to hear al
Speaker 1: Sham said it attacked the plane um and then it
Speaker 1: says TV ved ved Zeita, probably pronouncing that way Off,
Speaker 1: which is controlled by Russia's Defense Ministry, said the pilot
Speaker 1: was posthumously presented with the Hero of Russia metal, also
Speaker 1: known as the Gold Star. Yeah, it's a it's an
Speaker 1: interesting story in a couple of regards. I mean, I uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I respect the Russian soldiers who are doing
Speaker 1: their job honorably. I mean, even though I'm probably opposed
Speaker 1: to most of the things Russia does foreign policy wise,
Speaker 1: I understand their you know, military professionals doing their job,
Speaker 1: and if they're doing that, you know correctly, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, I respect that. But what strikes
Speaker 1: me about this story that the Russian Ministry of Defense
Speaker 1: is putting out. Is how similar it is to another
Speaker 1: fake story about a Russian soldier that died in Syria,
Speaker 1: which happened over a year ago. Now was the Russian Rambo.
Speaker 1: You recall the story about the Russian g Ru military
Speaker 1: special forces dude um, who supposedly got isolated trapped behind
Speaker 1: enemy lines. Um. And he called it an according to
Speaker 1: the story, called it an air strike on his own position, Um,
Speaker 1: in order to like sacrifice himself and kill all these
Speaker 1: gi hotis. At the same time, the whole story was
Speaker 1: total nonsense. Um. You know, I'm sure the guy fought
Speaker 1: and died honorably, but I mean then they make up
Speaker 1: these like propaganda stories. It's like it's so like the heroic,
Speaker 1: dramatic but fatalistic Russian narrative. I mean it's quintessential almost.
Speaker 1: And uh. And this repeats almost the exact same story
Speaker 1: that the guy kills himself in a heroic sacrifice fighting
Speaker 1: gee hotti ists. Um. And I've seen the picture of
Speaker 1: the pilot's body, and I mean he his hands have
Speaker 1: black suit on them. It looks like maybe he's been shot. Um.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened, he did not hug a frag grenade and
Speaker 1: blew himself up. He wouldn't have hands, he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a face if not ahead. I mean, I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: be so descriptive about this guy, but um, I don't
Speaker 1: buy the story that the Ministry of Defense is putting
Speaker 1: out for a second. I also would want to know
Speaker 1: the source of who did he say here's for the
Speaker 1: guys too. Yeah, I mean it's it's so cliche. It's
Speaker 1: almost like he might as well have said like this
Speaker 1: is your fault, America and then like pull the pin
Speaker 1: on the grenade and brew himself up. You know, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you Kremlin, appreciate that. Yeah, I would just want
Speaker 1: to you know, there's no source that says he said
Speaker 1: that to him, you know, of who he said that too,
Speaker 1: of who corroborates that. So and the story is probably
Speaker 1: gonna get even more outrageous over the next couple of days,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna see like RT Russia today, they're gonna
Speaker 1: blow all that up. Yeah. And then I also want
Speaker 1: to mention Luke Ryan did a story about this they
Speaker 1: could check out on SOFTWAREPP. Really unfortunate to seven five
Speaker 1: ranger killed in training in Oregon. Uh Devin James Coon
Speaker 1: who was twenty four. Uh, yeah, really unfortunate. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know, they still don't totally know what happened or well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened there, but I mean it's
Speaker 1: under investigation. It sounds like they're doing some kind of
Speaker 1: dry fire drills and someone had a round in the chamber.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, unfortunately. You know, stuff like
Speaker 1: this has happened before. When um, when I was, I
Speaker 1: was in Ranger School. I was actually in Ranger Battalion,
Speaker 1: but I was in Ranger School at the time of
Speaker 1: this incident. They're doing. My unit was doing a training exercise.
Speaker 1: They had some kids who were in the Ranger and
Speaker 1: Doctrination program in the selection program. They brought them out
Speaker 1: to play the Op four And what had happened was,
Speaker 1: you know, rangers, at least when I was back in
Speaker 1: the day, we typically would do a blank fire drill
Speaker 1: when we hit like a training objective during the day,
Speaker 1: and then you would transition to live ammunition and hit
Speaker 1: it in the day, and then you'd wait for nightfall,
Speaker 1: and then you do it with blanks at night and
Speaker 1: then blank and then live the ammunition at night. So
Speaker 1: you're kind of it's like the concept of taking baby steps.
Speaker 1: You know, you're like getting walking into it um or
Speaker 1: like they call they would call it the crawl walk
Speaker 1: run method. Right, we kind of ease your way into
Speaker 1: the training up until like night live fire drills, so
Speaker 1: they're transitioning between blank and live the ammunition. When they
Speaker 1: went from day live fire to night blank fire, something
Speaker 1: got screwed up. Somebody didn't take all the live rounds
Speaker 1: out of their magazine and when they went in when
Speaker 1: they're when they're doing the objective with UM blanks and
Speaker 1: there's no you know, some was really no chance of
Speaker 1: anyone being hurt. You would bring an up four role
Speaker 1: players to play the bad guys so you can see
Speaker 1: how where this is going. Um, somebody left live rounds
Speaker 1: on their weapon actually shot one of the role players
Speaker 1: and uh and fuck this kid up pretty good. But no,
Speaker 1: this person didn't die, he survived. I mean, my this
Speaker 1: is what I was told by a medic when I
Speaker 1: got back from Rangers school, was that the UM the
Speaker 1: bullet actually hit the blank firing adapter that's on the
Speaker 1: barrel of the gun. The metal rod that's in the
Speaker 1: in the barrel for the blank fire went and hit
Speaker 1: this kid. Uh went into somewhere like his pelvis or
Speaker 1: his thigh, hit the famoral artery, took off one of
Speaker 1: the kid's balls. Um, he was bleeding out. The medic
Speaker 1: came in put to turner kits on him to stop
Speaker 1: the bleeding um. And then when they got to the
Speaker 1: hospital they met evact this guy to the hospital and
Speaker 1: the doctor told the medic and this medic who did
Speaker 1: this told me. The story is that the medic said
Speaker 1: or that I'm sorry the doctor the e er said,
Speaker 1: cut the what the funk is this? Because they don't
Speaker 1: use tourniquets and normal medicine. They're like, what the fund
Speaker 1: is that? Cut that off right now? And our medic refused, like, fuck, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that. The doctor got his people in
Speaker 1: their cut the tourniquets off, and he said the kid
Speaker 1: flatlined immediately. Yeah, so medic must have been you know,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be really strange because you're talking to a
Speaker 1: medical professional and but you're doing the more practical ar
Speaker 1: medic had just come back from you know, the invasion
Speaker 1: of Iraq in two thousand three. Is our medic had
Speaker 1: a lot more experience with a certain type of trauma
Speaker 1: medicine he probably wanted to kill these docs. Then the
Speaker 1: doctor he was not happy, he was not pleased with it. Uh.
Speaker 1: The kid he did survive, thankfully he did. He didn't
Speaker 1: make it through that. But um, you know, obviously a
Speaker 1: horrific ordeal for everyone concerned. And um you know that.
Speaker 1: That's why I don't know what happened with um with
Speaker 1: Devon kuhn Um you know the two seven five rangers
Speaker 1: who died. But the story reminds me of you know
Speaker 1: that past experience. Yeah, do you think this happen is
Speaker 1: more often in sere school because at least in my time,
Speaker 1: your work, why, I feel like just in seal training, Oh,
Speaker 1: seal training, I thought you said seer, Well, it'sn't. It isn't.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Am I getting my acronyms? Here is the survival, escape,
Speaker 1: resistance and evasion school where there's no live ammunition in
Speaker 1: that course. No, but I mean I've heard of the
Speaker 1: drowning stuff that's happened. I just I've heard more about
Speaker 1: seals dying. Yeah, buds and yeah, but um, I man,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'd have to compare what the numbers
Speaker 1: look like. And you know, I'm sure it's also dependent
Speaker 1: on relative numbers, Like say the Special Forces Qualification course.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot well there's I know there's
Speaker 1: a lot more people going through that than going through
Speaker 1: say range or indoctrination because I went through both courses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: SF has way more people. Um, it's also probably way
Speaker 1: more easy to just drown on accident, and there's not
Speaker 1: as much I think of that. Do you do any swimming?
Speaker 1: I don't even know a little bit. I mean we
Speaker 1: did like a basic um uh, like they called a
Speaker 1: combat water survival test, you know, but you're not being
Speaker 1: held like to the bottom of the pools. It's nothing
Speaker 1: like what the what the seal candidates go through, not
Speaker 1: as far as like water is concerned about nothing even
Speaker 1: approaching that. Yeah, I would think that that's just I
Speaker 1: mean that's part accidents happened. Yeah, and um, you know
Speaker 1: Bud's had had some people drowned over the last year.
Speaker 1: Didn't that there's a over the last year. But I know,
Speaker 1: like in my time here, I've heard of a few
Speaker 1: of these things. Had also quite a few parachute accidents.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a dangerous job, even in peace time
Speaker 1: when you're just training. I mean there's an inherent danger
Speaker 1: to what these guys do. Yeah. Absolutely. Um. So before
Speaker 1: we get to Kurt, which I'm really excited for. He
Speaker 1: hasn't been on in a while other than you know,
Speaker 1: the shot show update which was pretty short. Um. Checking
Speaker 1: our emails sent to soft Rep dot Radio at soft
Speaker 1: rep dot com. Uh, this is a good one from
Speaker 1: k Ebert. Um and it's a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 1: So all se you have an answer fir him. Good morning.
Speaker 1: I am currently a student pursuing a masters in criminology
Speaker 1: and have been used to writing reviews of journal articles
Speaker 1: articles for my classes. I'm also in the process of
Speaker 1: being selected for the Marine Corps o c C class
Speaker 1: this June. I'm interested in research articles conducted in the
Speaker 1: military setting. For instance, Criminal Justice Quarterly has many articles
Speaker 1: on the militarization of police and policization of the military.
Speaker 1: I don't know if policization is a word, but maybe. Um.
Speaker 1: These are often written by civilian academics that do not
Speaker 1: have prior service. I was wondering if your team knew
Speaker 1: of any military journals that were research oriented rather than
Speaker 1: history oriented. I would like to address issues such as terrorism, militarism,
Speaker 1: and international crime using the expertise of peer reviewed military
Speaker 1: author data in my studies. Additionally, is there an outlet
Speaker 1: in hurricane group that focuses on military theory and research?
Speaker 1: Thank you for your time and consideration and answering respectfully,
Speaker 1: Kay Ebert. Um. Well, I mean there's tons of militar
Speaker 1: terry journals out there if you go looking for them. Um,
Speaker 1: is there one specifically focused on the stuff he's interested in?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Also, the War College puts out a
Speaker 1: ton of white papers every year, um, and you go
Speaker 1: take a look at that kind of stuff, search through there.
Speaker 1: As far as US, I mean, we don't have a
Speaker 1: wing or research wing. You know, we're not as well
Speaker 1: financed as like the CIA, even though Special Operations dot
Speaker 1: Com is like the history but yeah, yeah, we have
Speaker 1: a we have a lot of there's tons of history
Speaker 1: on on Software band, on Special Operations dot Com. There's
Speaker 1: a ton of Special Operations history stuff. But we don't
Speaker 1: have like people who are just shifting, you know, in
Speaker 1: the National Archives going through paperwork all day. I mean
Speaker 1: we can't. We can't afford that. It'd be cool. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: interesting question. I figured you'd be the person to ask,
Speaker 1: because not only are your former special operations. You also
Speaker 1: have a degree in journalism, So no, I don't. I
Speaker 1: have a degree in political political science. I'm fucking everything up.
Speaker 1: We are a journalist with a degree in politically I
Speaker 1: was a minor in political science, but I was. My
Speaker 1: wife has a master's and journalists. That's right. But you
Speaker 1: met in a journalism course, correct. Uh, No, we met
Speaker 1: in that in a Middle Eastern security strategies course. You
Speaker 1: did tell me that we're talking about that off air once.
Speaker 1: Who will hopefully have on soon? Is the documentary coming
Speaker 1: out of the was it the Old Women's Trip to
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's an the editing process, it's cool, yeah,
Speaker 1: Syria or it's filmed in three places. It's filmed in Iraq, Syria,
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan. Nice. Yeah, So she's got a while too.
Speaker 1: There's still quite a bit of work to do on
Speaker 1: that documentary, but they're gonna get there. So hopefully, I
Speaker 1: know we have a slot open at the end of
Speaker 1: the month, maybe can fit her in there. Absolutely, that'd
Speaker 1: be cool. All right. Well, with that, back on the
Speaker 1: podcast for the first time in a very long time,
Speaker 1: is Kurt Schroeder. I mean, I shouldn't say a very
Speaker 1: long time because you were on the shot show episode,
Speaker 1: but the last time you were on a full episode, UM,
Speaker 1: it was actually to fourteen UM. To give you some
Speaker 1: back round on those who don't know, Kurt Kirk recently
Speaker 1: became full time at the site as a writer former
Speaker 1: marine volunteer fighter with the Pech Murga, and I was
Speaker 1: also going to break your balls because you need to
Speaker 1: update a you need to put a bio on your name,
Speaker 1: like all of us have a bio on soft Reap
Speaker 1: and don't. Yeah, I was. I brought that up to
Speaker 1: the other day. So he just needs to come out
Speaker 1: of the fucking closet because I'm tired of this charade.
Speaker 1: We keep screwing it up. Man. It is funny though,
Speaker 1: you see. That's and that's why we can't do a
Speaker 1: live feed. You were like, do a live feed with this? Uh?
Speaker 1: You actually mentioned James Powell as Jason and I won't
Speaker 1: say his last name, so I this is confusing you.
Speaker 1: I texted James Powe and I was like, are you
Speaker 1: cool with Jack saying your name? Just bore I put
Speaker 1: this off. He was like, yeah, I can say Jason,
Speaker 1: just not my last name. So I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll add that we used this last name in the past.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I guess maybe from now and
Speaker 1: he wants to be like secretive, none of none of them. Well,
Speaker 1: actually you do right under a code name Kurt, which
Speaker 1: I didn't realize. Yeah. Yeah, and I won't reveal your
Speaker 1: real name, which is that of a famous actor if
Speaker 1: you're already given clues work famous black actor? Is it
Speaker 1: Tom that black? Um? Anyway, man, I guess the first
Speaker 1: thing to get into was you wrote this article about
Speaker 1: Turkey attacking the Kurds. You wrote the article Kurdish fighters
Speaker 1: killed two Turkish soldiers over the weekend, um, which people
Speaker 1: can check out. Yeah, well, I guess the Well I'll
Speaker 1: start with the other one because it's kind of a
Speaker 1: go over. But uh so, yeah, to two more fighters
Speaker 1: were killed. I believe it's they're up to sixteen total
Speaker 1: Turkish fighters, uh like eighty six Free Syrian Army fighters
Speaker 1: and a hundred seven or something YPG fighters have been
Speaker 1: killed at this point in the the new renewed conflict
Speaker 1: between Turkey and the Free Kurdish Region or what they
Speaker 1: would call Rojava Syrian Kurdistan. Do you want to explain
Speaker 1: a little bit um about Afrin because there's three cantons
Speaker 1: and Java, and I know we've talked about them on
Speaker 1: the podcast before, but just to kind of like jump
Speaker 1: people's memory a little bit, Um, you know where Afrin is,
Speaker 1: it's you know, geographical location why it's important. Sure, okay,
Speaker 1: So the three main cantons are Effrin, all right, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think and then I'm not actually I'm not as
Speaker 1: not as familiar as probably you are. But Efri in
Speaker 1: itself is pretty important because it's right along the Euphrates
Speaker 1: um as I understand it there? Am I wrong there? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: the Euphrates cuts between Kobani and Afron cantons, right and
Speaker 1: uh Effort itself is right up against the Turkish border,
Speaker 1: um so uh. And there's there's a bit of some
Speaker 1: cultural relevance there of just general hatred between the Turks
Speaker 1: and the Kurds and as well as UH land land,
Speaker 1: the views of land ownership, UM resources as. I understand
Speaker 1: that afron Is has some the biggest oil deposits there
Speaker 1: exies me the largest oil deposits in um in UH
Speaker 1: northern Syria and what is still considered the Curtistan. So
Speaker 1: I don't think they want to give that up for
Speaker 1: resource reasons. And why do you think the Turks are
Speaker 1: impressed in this issue now? I mean it's not the
Speaker 1: first time that they've gone into northern Syria, but now
Speaker 1: this is a renewed defensive sure. Um, I think the
Speaker 1: renewal is really just it's it's all timing because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to have to deal with so many things
Speaker 1: like one. Now they're able to task the Free Syrian
Speaker 1: Army as uh merks for them, so to speak, when
Speaker 1: before they would have been tied up fighting the Islamic State.
Speaker 1: Turkey was tied up fighting the Islamics states. There's a
Speaker 1: lot more coalition involvement in the region, and I think
Speaker 1: they just waited for it all to die down after
Speaker 1: the ISIS conflict before making their move. I mean, some
Speaker 1: of the f s A guys were always um, you
Speaker 1: know Turkish patsy's, weren't they? Yes? Uh And and it's
Speaker 1: that's a weird one. You probably know a bit more
Speaker 1: about them than I do, but uh, because they were
Speaker 1: the New Free Syrian Army was the one you wrote about,
Speaker 1: and that was the one that was a CIA funded program,
Speaker 1: you know, the New Syrian Army was that was a
Speaker 1: d D program. Okay, so this is and this is
Speaker 1: where it gets complicated, because you had groups like that, um,
Speaker 1: and also the YPG and the y p J D
Speaker 1: o D worked with them as well. We had special
Speaker 1: forces and Delta Force operators over there. Um. But then
Speaker 1: you had Free Syrian Army quote unquote different f s
Speaker 1: A elements that were part of CIA programs. So now
Speaker 1: with isis out of the way, what we're seeing is
Speaker 1: proxy forces trained by the CIA and the Pentagon fight
Speaker 1: each other. Right. And that's another article I did where well,
Speaker 1: it was it was more of an observation, uh kind
Speaker 1: of rather than a really in depth look at it.
Speaker 1: But because it's a very as you just said, it
Speaker 1: is recomplicated. Um. But yeah, it's kind of ironic that
Speaker 1: we have, uh, two of the groups we trained in
Speaker 1: the region that now that they don't have a common enemy,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, I guess we'll fight each other. I
Speaker 1: guess we all saw that coming as well. Isis was
Speaker 1: like the unifying force that well, I shouldn't even say that,
Speaker 1: there's never any unity in Syria. That's the last word
Speaker 1: you want to use, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Um So where do you see things panning out in Afrian?
Speaker 1: I mean, what what's gonna where's this gonna go next? Well,
Speaker 1: the Curds aren't going to give up a footholds and
Speaker 1: Turkey is not gonna let up either. Um. I also
Speaker 1: don't see a whole lot of investment by the coalition
Speaker 1: until it really starts to affect them. I mean because
Speaker 1: if if you think of it in resources, like there's
Speaker 1: a little oil up north, if Turkey gets it, well
Speaker 1: there in NATO ally so we still have access. And
Speaker 1: if the Kurds keep it, then we still have access
Speaker 1: to that. And and just in terms of resources, it's
Speaker 1: also worth noting here too that Afron was so we
Speaker 1: only supported the Kurdish offensive um on the east side
Speaker 1: of the Euphrates. Um. We went and did the man
Speaker 1: Beese offensive, but there was we were never going to
Speaker 1: keep our forces on the other side of the Euphrates.
Speaker 1: So we never really supported Afron um in any real
Speaker 1: like material way. UM. And that kind of has left
Speaker 1: the door open. Um. You know, at one point the
Speaker 1: Russians were providing air strikes for the Kurds and Afron
Speaker 1: because at that point they were fighting ISIS and other
Speaker 1: bad guys. Um, but this is because we never went
Speaker 1: into Afrina and we as Americans, that kind of has
Speaker 1: left the door open for Turkey to attack, Like the
Speaker 1: Turks can't go and attack the other cantons because there's
Speaker 1: American troops there, right and uh, and the you know,
Speaker 1: Department of Defense and Rex Tillerson at the Department of State,
Speaker 1: they've all said, like, we might actually make permanent bases here. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it would make sense too, because I mean
Speaker 1: you can kind of see that playing out because they
Speaker 1: are as of right now, our only real staging point
Speaker 1: in the Middle East is Turkey. And and I feel
Speaker 1: like our long term goal was kind of in backing
Speaker 1: the Serian courage is like, hey, yeah, we're gonna we
Speaker 1: want a presence here because Seri is like that's perfect,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that puts some range of a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well Turkey would be important. And you have to remember
Speaker 1: that this is on the minds in the back of
Speaker 1: the minds of people in the Pentagon, is that in
Speaker 1: Sirlick is where we allegedly have nuclear weapons stored in case,
Speaker 1: you know, something popped off. And also that Turkey would
Speaker 1: be a pretty big staging ground if we ever did
Speaker 1: go and to go to war with Iran or who
Speaker 1: knows what other bad actor in the Middle East. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if Yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: wonder what the strategic thinking is, UM. Are they really
Speaker 1: thinking like, oh, we're going to move our logistical hub
Speaker 1: from Turkey to northern Syria? Like I don't think that.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're that far along with anything. But
Speaker 1: what what I in my opinion anyway, is I think
Speaker 1: it's an attempt at strategic ambiguity that we're going to
Speaker 1: keep troops there and it keeps every all the players
Speaker 1: in the region off base, like they don't really know
Speaker 1: what to think. They don't really know what our next
Speaker 1: move is going to be, and that's kind of the intention.
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's I think that's actually a
Speaker 1: very smart way of looking at my my two cents anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm sure other people have differing opinions. Time will definitely tell. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then another thing I wanted to get into with you,
Speaker 1: UM that I thought was interesting, and you wrote an
Speaker 1: article about Peshmerga has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 1: You wrote an article about this UM where it talks
Speaker 1: about him Monshoe Gulatia, lawmaker for Norway's Progressive Party, making
Speaker 1: the nominations pesch Murga have been crucial to the fact
Speaker 1: that we have been able to fight Isis, which I
Speaker 1: believe is the greatest enemy of humanity. Without the sacrifices
Speaker 1: of the pesch Murga victims of the front line of
Speaker 1: the on the battle against Isis, Isis probably would be
Speaker 1: bigger and more powerful than they are today. Um. And
Speaker 1: then you're kind of joking about this with me yesterday
Speaker 1: and the phone were like, if they get a Nobel
Speaker 1: Peace Prize, do I get a Nobel Peace Prize because
Speaker 1: that'd be pretty cool. Uh No, it was funny because uh, well,
Speaker 1: I mean one, it's it's Um. I think it's excellent
Speaker 1: for the Uh. Uh they should be nominated because the Peschmurga,
Speaker 1: you know, fought and blended, did a lot of good
Speaker 1: things and a lot of putting a lot of manpower
Speaker 1: and time into fighting Isis in their their region. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it is interesting that they haven't. He didn't
Speaker 1: mentioned the Syrian Curds because I feel like they have
Speaker 1: done as much apart as the Peshmerga have, and they
Speaker 1: were Almos they were also a unified front from all
Speaker 1: the way down and kirk Cook all the way up
Speaker 1: north through the KRG and then across the border into
Speaker 1: Syria Um and that that front ended, you know, over
Speaker 1: where Kobani is because Afrin and Kobani were geographically separated.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of bad guys in between them,
Speaker 1: but they're the Syrian Curds and the Iraqi Curds had
Speaker 1: a unified front. I just want to point that out right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they they held their own I mean, they took
Speaker 1: some fallbacks initially with what was it sin Jar when
Speaker 1: they lost the hilltop, but then they went back and
Speaker 1: took it, retook it um and they got pushed back
Speaker 1: a little bit of in kirk Cook in Uh at
Speaker 1: the end of two thousand and fourteen during the initial attacks,
Speaker 1: and then went back and re pushed them back again.
Speaker 1: And they it's important to remember because you know, quite
Speaker 1: some time amount of time its passed, but they were
Speaker 1: the only ones who were like kicking ass while the
Speaker 1: Iraqi army was getting pushed back city by city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like not even not even just like battle, but like
Speaker 1: city by city made in the Ambar province. So I
Speaker 1: mean the Curds really did hold their own considering they
Speaker 1: we they had almost no coalition support or very little,
Speaker 1: um and we're just it was just them and like
Speaker 1: they're they're bands of politically affiliated grunts so to speak,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah they I think they did well anyway.
Speaker 1: But I do think yeah, it's ah, I will it'll be.
Speaker 1: It remains to be seen if the nomination goes anywhere,
Speaker 1: but um, it is an interesting development. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: joking though. It was like, so if all the past
Speaker 1: Murga get uh get a Nobel Peace Prize, does that
Speaker 1: mean all the volunteers do to or But uh, not likely.
Speaker 1: I would just say for those who you know, haven't
Speaker 1: caught up with, like the earlier podcasts, you want to,
Speaker 1: you know, just briefly give a background of going from
Speaker 1: being a US marineto volunteering with the paste Murga, because
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty interesting in itself. You you always
Speaker 1: see these like keyboard commando type I'll go over there
Speaker 1: and fight, and you actually did it. I got my
Speaker 1: ices hunting permit. Oh man, the isis hunting permit? Yeah no,
Speaker 1: actually there's quite a few of them around up where
Speaker 1: I live. So zink he actually gave them out when
Speaker 1: he was running for Congress. I know he gave one
Speaker 1: to Welco. So yeah. I got out of the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps in two thousand and twelve. Um Um a four
Speaker 1: year marine, have a background on logistics. UM. I went
Speaker 1: to college for a little while and while I was
Speaker 1: in school, UM, the Islamic State start. You know, they
Speaker 1: took Fallujah and that was the big one because it
Speaker 1: was all over the news. UM. And this was you know,
Speaker 1: post Libyan revolution and the war in Syria could already
Speaker 1: kind of started to go UM, and they just started
Speaker 1: getting traction UM. And at one point, so I knew
Speaker 1: I wanted to fight UM. And I guess the first
Speaker 1: thing I saw was footage of the French Foreign Legion
Speaker 1: fighting in Africa or in Mali against Islamic terrorists, and
Speaker 1: so I decided that's what I was gonna do. I
Speaker 1: bought a plane ticket and went off to France. UM
Speaker 1: and got there and did not make it, which was
Speaker 1: kind of a pain in the ass because I mean
Speaker 1: I flew all the way. It went all the way
Speaker 1: to France like all my own went down to Oban
Speaker 1: like she handed a passport and uh, I got turned away.
Speaker 1: Later um and went back home kind of defeated. And
Speaker 1: then it was weird because I didn't really have any
Speaker 1: direction and out of nowhere I had already hit them,
Speaker 1: messaged them. The Lions of Java got back to me
Speaker 1: and said, hey, brother, here's what you need to do, this,
Speaker 1: that and this. So I uh, yeah, I did what
Speaker 1: they told me to do, got my plane ticket. Um
Speaker 1: was about a week from going out, like flying to Suli,
Speaker 1: and a Pesh Murder group of foreign volunteers messaged me
Speaker 1: back five and said, hey, what are you going to
Speaker 1: get here? And I'm like, oh, on a week I
Speaker 1: already got like plan to the whitepgs like no, come
Speaker 1: to us and yeah. And then next thing you know,
Speaker 1: I was with the Pesh Murga Uh. Totally different course. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: showed up in Kurdistan, stayed for two years, hopped around
Speaker 1: to a couple different units. Um. Uh, did some private
Speaker 1: security stuff in Iraq, uh here and there. Um and
Speaker 1: uh did a little bit of time in Ukraine. And
Speaker 1: now I'm a journalist. Yeah, now Kurt's working for us
Speaker 1: right in full time. Yeah. And you've said it before
Speaker 1: on and I know Benny has like YPG and pect
Speaker 1: Murga very different politics Um, depends. Well, Kurt, why don't
Speaker 1: you before we even get to that. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: But before we even get there, Kurt, why don't you
Speaker 1: break down the difference between because there's basically two Pesh
Speaker 1: Murga's and people don't realize that at all. When you
Speaker 1: say the Kurds, people are just like, okay, the Kurds,
Speaker 1: as if they're one single entity. I know. That's the
Speaker 1: hard part. Like it's hard to like get into this
Speaker 1: stuff and tell people I was with the Kurds and
Speaker 1: like not be like, well, let me break it down
Speaker 1: for you real quick. There's two to nationality or two nationalities,
Speaker 1: one ethnicity, five or five different political parties. Yeah. Um
Speaker 1: so with the Pesh Murder. And this is where I'm
Speaker 1: glad you're getting into this because Syria I'm pretty good.
Speaker 1: I'm okay with Syria. But this is where I specialized,
Speaker 1: obviously because I spent a lot of time there. Um
Speaker 1: So with the Pesh Murger there are two major political parties,
Speaker 1: the PUK which is the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and
Speaker 1: they have traditionally seen more Iranian support. I would say, Um,
Speaker 1: it's hard, you know, it's it's it's loose, but it's there. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you have the KDP, which is the Kurdish
Speaker 1: Diplomatic Party, and they are a bit more rightist, would
Speaker 1: you say, Jack, They're more capitalist leaning for sure, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And they have they have a decent, decent ties with
Speaker 1: Turkey and they're the ones who are really i would say,
Speaker 1: doing the leg work and as far as communicating with
Speaker 1: the Iraqi government within the Kurdish Regional government, which both
Speaker 1: these parties belong to. Um. And then they are actually
Speaker 1: Pesh murder units. They are strictly affiliated to these and
Speaker 1: actually that's a very interesting thing where what's going on
Speaker 1: right now is that the KRG is trying to nationalize
Speaker 1: the Pesh murder turned into Yes, they're trying to turn
Speaker 1: into federal force and unite all these different sub political
Speaker 1: brigades and unify them under one banner. And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: second brigade they want to include like the Tsaravani and
Speaker 1: all of them in it. I think they're at the
Speaker 1: end goal. Um. The also the Gorn Party while I
Speaker 1: was there, Um, they they joined up with the PUK
Speaker 1: like officially I didn't. Actually Goran was the like the
Speaker 1: Pesh Murga political party wasn't it. Yes, man, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not as good with the subparties because they're kind
Speaker 1: of like they really don't matter. It's say, but they
Speaker 1: literally have no say. They're just kind of like the
Speaker 1: annoying kid in the room that sometimes sides with the
Speaker 1: two big big ones. Um. But they did. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. They joined up at the UK while I
Speaker 1: was there. Actually the ceremony of the grown political leader
Speaker 1: and uh, them joining up happened at my brigades chow Hall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I walked by. I was walking by, like on my
Speaker 1: way to the Kurdish p X, the pm p X,
Speaker 1: and I was like what I saw the Sergeant Major
Speaker 1: of the Brigades Stales side, like what's going on in there?
Speaker 1: And he did like the pantomiming of his hands of
Speaker 1: goron Puk and did like the hand together thing. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: do you think will that be a good thing if
Speaker 1: they federalized the Peshmerga, because I mean, the way it
Speaker 1: is now, it's almost as if, like imagine if in
Speaker 1: America there were two armies, the Republicans had one army
Speaker 1: and the Democrats had one arm me. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: I used to compare to I was like, how bizarre
Speaker 1: would that be? Um? So yes, I do, because people
Speaker 1: forget before isis uh and before the Iraq War, they
Speaker 1: had a civil war where they legit puk and KTP
Speaker 1: were killing each other in the streets. Yeah in the nineties,
Speaker 1: right the yeah, the actually the brigade brigade, the brigade
Speaker 1: general of the last unit I was with, under orders
Speaker 1: from Talibani, went down to U Sulemannia and slit the
Speaker 1: governor's throat, like and his wife like murdered his the
Speaker 1: governor's wife and like yeah, straight up like during the
Speaker 1: civil war. And that's why he's uh like right hand
Speaker 1: general to Costa Russa Ali, who is essentially the vice
Speaker 1: president of the puk Um wild stuff. So yes, I
Speaker 1: do believe that unification is something they need to do
Speaker 1: if they want to progress as a nation and really
Speaker 1: climb that ladder, because right now, you know, the more
Speaker 1: unified they uh they are as the Kurdish Autanas region
Speaker 1: of Iraq, the more uh pole they're going to have
Speaker 1: with the international community, Iraqi government, you know, they become reputable.
Speaker 1: I think it seems like it's going to be pretty
Speaker 1: difficult to do. I mean, Barzani doesn't seem like he's
Speaker 1: really reached across party lines. Sure, no, and he's not
Speaker 1: favored by anyone UM near chervan Is, which is his
Speaker 1: son is now the current UM I want to say,
Speaker 1: the current acting president of Kurdistan within the carriage, or
Speaker 1: at least he's the prime uh, one of the one
Speaker 1: of the major prime ministers. Their governmental system is a
Speaker 1: little uh, a little hard to wrap my head around
Speaker 1: at times, but it's still very similar to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the structure of ours, with these family dynasties. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: we used to say they're like it's like the mafia,
Speaker 1: like you you literally have associates and right hand men,
Speaker 1: loyal people like you know, made men who were like
Speaker 1: guys like that general I just spoke of who went
Speaker 1: down and like killed the governor on orders like those
Speaker 1: are like you know, and it's like this hierarchy and
Speaker 1: then you know it's weird. It's weird. You definitely see
Speaker 1: it within the ranks, like down to the lower ranks,
Speaker 1: like if somebody if one of the Peshmerga, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if his squad leader or his n c O is. However,
Speaker 1: many years in the Peesh Murger has ranked. If that
Speaker 1: kid under him, if his uncle is somebody important within
Speaker 1: the party, it doesn't matter. He'll be like yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: half right face bits, you know, like he won't care. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember a friend of mine telling me he was
Speaker 1: gonna go and set up He had linked up with
Speaker 1: a with a local with a Curd and they were
Speaker 1: pitching a business deal. They were trying to do some
Speaker 1: business with like the Kurdish Ministry of Defense or something
Speaker 1: like that, and the deal didn't go through, even though
Speaker 1: it would have been great for really all parties concerned,
Speaker 1: except for one thing. The concern from these higher ups
Speaker 1: in their defense establishment was that if they agreed to
Speaker 1: this deal, the Curd this American was working with his
Speaker 1: family would come to have more power. And now you
Speaker 1: don't want that, because now you're upsetting the hierarchy, right. Uh. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a totally different way of doing things than
Speaker 1: here in the US of A. Yeah, yeah, well, and
Speaker 1: it's funny because like that, on our level that would
Speaker 1: be viewed as insane amounts of corruption. But but there,
Speaker 1: that's just how they do business. There's nothing they don't
Speaker 1: There is no like you know, it's funny. That's one
Speaker 1: of those things like being like a foreign volunteer, you've
Speaker 1: got to go over and catered at their cultural relevance,
Speaker 1: just like in anthropology or something. Um. You know, you
Speaker 1: have to take away your your system and kind of
Speaker 1: look at it from there's and it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I could be like wow, that's really screwed up, or
Speaker 1: it could be like, well, you know what, that's how
Speaker 1: their culture has been doing it for generations. It's not
Speaker 1: weird to them. That's just the way it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not going to change it anytime soon, right right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's interesting as Americans we often we don't see those
Speaker 1: like relationships and foreign cultures. The relationships between people seem
Speaker 1: to mean a lot more abroad, and then like in America,
Speaker 1: it seems like the business relationship is more important, but
Speaker 1: in foreign countries oftentimes the familial relationships are even more important. Oh,
Speaker 1: I would say exponentially more so. Ye. That which is
Speaker 1: why you know another thing as a foreign volunteer, you
Speaker 1: literally like the majority of your time is spent building
Speaker 1: report relationships with people, um, because it's going to get
Speaker 1: you further, It doesn't. They don't they care about who
Speaker 1: you are and what your capabilities are, but more so
Speaker 1: about who you are as an individual and how you
Speaker 1: treat them and you know, what you can do even
Speaker 1: in uh in Europe, I mean like you're doing business
Speaker 1: in Europe. I mean, I think we've talked about this
Speaker 1: in the past. I mean, it's just so different than
Speaker 1: the United States. Personal relationships means so much more than
Speaker 1: they do here. Yeah, I I could see that as well.
Speaker 1: Definitely in America, we we do things like kind of
Speaker 1: by the seat of our pants, and you know, huge
Speaker 1: amounts of money change hands on a handshake. Yeah, happen
Speaker 1: time capitalism. Chalk up another win for capitalism, baby, I
Speaker 1: love it. Why change it if it works? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always say that, you know, for people who do
Speaker 1: bash capitalism, I feel like it's just a natural order
Speaker 1: of things of just you know, I'll trade you this
Speaker 1: for this amount of money, and to not have some
Speaker 1: bureaucrat in charge of it all, well, yeah, to me,
Speaker 1: it's better than having like royal families and ship like that.
Speaker 1: Like you know, you're like living in the times of
Speaker 1: like the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to deal with all that, which, you know,
Speaker 1: to get to the political side of things that probably
Speaker 1: conflicts with the whole patch Murga thing. You know, their
Speaker 1: their views on capitalism. Well it's look, even even the
Speaker 1: communist Chinese embraced capitalism to an extent right when it
Speaker 1: works for their advantage. So there's a whole fields called
Speaker 1: political economy, which it says that economics isn't just about
Speaker 1: tick marks on a ledger, that it's also about the
Speaker 1: social aspect. It's about the bureaucrats, the families, whoever has
Speaker 1: access to these pools of resources and if you want
Speaker 1: to access those resources. Is not just about the numbers.
Speaker 1: It's not just about the currency. It's also about the
Speaker 1: personalities who control those resources. So to get to those resources,
Speaker 1: you have to go through the person, and the person
Speaker 1: isn't going to help you unless there's something in it
Speaker 1: for them. So it's just one way to study economics.
Speaker 1: I mean, if that makes sense. Yeah, I've just seen
Speaker 1: a credit anything. Oh no, I yeah, definitely, that's a
Speaker 1: little out of my specialization, but definitely, yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 1: And uh, the last thing that gets you is that
Speaker 1: I hear you're working on a memoir, which should be
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. Yeah, I was kind of volunte old but no, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm getting ready to write a book. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's nothing official yet. I'm still waiting on the contract,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I'm gonna do a pretty much a memoir
Speaker 1: of the start of how I began, the journey to
Speaker 1: Kurtistan and everything that happened from there or up until
Speaker 1: the the departure. I think that would be a pretty
Speaker 1: good read. Um, I'm right now, I'm leaning towards more
Speaker 1: of a first person perspective, with a little bit of
Speaker 1: reminiscent reminiscing from that perspective as well. Um, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm I'm pretty excited. I've been taking notes, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's weird because initially I had
Speaker 1: always said I was never going to write a book,
Speaker 1: and then it just kind of, I don't know, now,
Speaker 1: it just kind of happened. So yeah, I felt the same.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I know someone in a similar
Speaker 1: predicament in front of me. I uh, yeah, you'll see,
Speaker 1: to Kurt, once you sit down and start writing this thing,
Speaker 1: it'll just kind of flow off the page, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I've been writing about recently about this deployment I
Speaker 1: was on with fifth Group in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: and even the other two deployments I wrote about in
Speaker 1: this in this book, Like I thought like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have that much to say about any of that,
Speaker 1: And then like the second I sit down and I
Speaker 1: start writing, it's like page after page after page, like I,
Speaker 1: actually I do have a lot to say about that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. I'm uh, well, I've we we've gotten a
Speaker 1: bit of a sneak preview of some of your your
Speaker 1: work on the book and uh read it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: shot some of it over to you guys. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm still working on it. And and as I write,
Speaker 1: like the more stuff I remember, Like actually, on the
Speaker 1: subway on the way here today, I remembered this whole
Speaker 1: story about some of our interpreters, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: tell their story a little bit of it. And we
Speaker 1: were teaching English to this one of our terms. See,
Speaker 1: so we hired him as an interpreter, but really he
Speaker 1: just cleaned up our mess on the base after us.
Speaker 1: Um we called him Mickelvin, that was his nickname, and
Speaker 1: I he actually hit me up in the comments mclovin did, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, I oh no, it was in
Speaker 1: the Life beat with Irwin. I was like, mclovin, where
Speaker 1: do I arrow whatever? Where do I know? It was
Speaker 1: his real name, Like, dude, where do I know you from?
Speaker 1: And he's like, you call me mcgloven like Jack talked about,
Speaker 1: mclovin is the man, and uh so we were teaching
Speaker 1: him like these he learned English are very very quickly,
Speaker 1: very intelligent person because he was picking it up just
Speaker 1: from listening to us. Um. But then we taught him
Speaker 1: all kinds of ship that probably we shouldn't have um.
Speaker 1: And so like one day, uh you know, he was
Speaker 1: thrown out trash and the dumpster outside our compound and
Speaker 1: some of like first sergeant from the military police units.
Speaker 1: So this like Iraqi unescorted walking around by himself, was
Speaker 1: like who the fund is this guy? And he goes
Speaker 1: up to him. He's like, hey, hey, who are you?
Speaker 1: And mcgloffin looks at him, he's like, who am I?
Speaker 1: You want to know who I am? I am the
Speaker 1: grand shake of pounding badge. Holy fucking dude. Wow, yeah
Speaker 1: that's a grand shake of pounding badge. UM. But anyway, him,
Speaker 1: he was y z D um so is his brother
Speaker 1: who is a legit interpreter for us, you know, actually
Speaker 1: doing the job. And they came to America. Then their wives,
Speaker 1: their kids, they all came to America before Isis went down.
Speaker 1: And it's like thank God because their their extended family
Speaker 1: got wiped out, like they like cousins, aunts, uncles, father's
Speaker 1: grandfather that they don't know what the funk happened to
Speaker 1: those people. They're they're they're probably I mean sadly, they're
Speaker 1: probably in a mass grave somewhere. It's fucking terrible. It's
Speaker 1: it's fucking horrible, you know. And that comes back to that,
Speaker 1: you know, why they're trying to give a group of
Speaker 1: Kurdish fighters the petch Marks, specifically the Noble Peace Prize.
Speaker 1: Is it when they when he spoke about Isis being
Speaker 1: that evil against like anti humanity, like the anti Christ,
Speaker 1: like the fact that they were in this day and age,
Speaker 1: you know, rounding up entire groups of people, village whole
Speaker 1: villages and just putting them ask graves. You know. It's
Speaker 1: just yeah, and it's uh, the way the press refers
Speaker 1: to Isis too. They would call them, they're like barbaric,
Speaker 1: they're out of the Middle Ages, you know, all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff like it, there's this temporal displacement. But really,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it's not out of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. This ship happened just now. So what does
Speaker 1: that really tell us about the world that it's not
Speaker 1: out of the Middle Ages. It's not some you know,
Speaker 1: these ancient barbarians. This is happening now. And maybe these attitudes,
Speaker 1: these approaches, these ideas are not as far and away
Speaker 1: as we think. Do you think it's just that someone
Speaker 1: to argue that, you know, the the initial values of
Speaker 1: Islam are they're using something from a time period ages
Speaker 1: ago even then. I mean it's kind of debatable, I
Speaker 1: mean at different points, and and uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: constantly try to use the Koran and Shariah as like
Speaker 1: the guideline, like we are you know, we are enforcing
Speaker 1: Sharia law, and we are you know, everything we do
Speaker 1: is in the Koran. Every you know, like the Kurdish
Speaker 1: people are Muslim, uh, And literally they would sit there
Speaker 1: like ah Mr Mr Kurt is like dash and no Muslim,
Speaker 1: and you know, basically they always say something to that effect,
Speaker 1: and even they know they're just they're just using it
Speaker 1: as a scapegoat to be a group of psychopaths. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a vehicle. Yeah, but it's weird. Like then
Speaker 1: you got to start asking, So if there isn't it,
Speaker 1: that really isn't the great unifier? What what is drawn
Speaker 1: this collective of mass murder? Like that's it's insane, especially
Speaker 1: in the age of like you said, it's not on
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. Everybody in Iraq has a cellphone. Not
Speaker 1: just a cell phone, but a fucking smartphone and iPhone
Speaker 1: six h or whatever. They could be living in a
Speaker 1: mudhead and they have one. It's it's common now. Like
Speaker 1: so in an age of information and you know, technology,
Speaker 1: this is still happening. What attracts all these young people
Speaker 1: to go and join ice this and do all this
Speaker 1: crazy ship beheadings and raping women and filling up mass graves.
Speaker 1: I mean, what the fuck? Like there were people who
Speaker 1: traveled from all over the Middle East to participate in
Speaker 1: this kind of ship. There were more foreign fighters going
Speaker 1: to Isis than the word of the Kurds. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: we were outnumbered. We we were estimated as far as
Speaker 1: foreign fighters go. I think to be like a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred and Isis was had, Like what was it
Speaker 1: like ten thousand foreign fighters at one point it was estimated.
Speaker 1: It seems like, I mean, there's like more than the
Speaker 1: West World, but you know, still international community. You know,
Speaker 1: for sure, there's a perversion of religion that carries the
Speaker 1: water for these idiots and makes them and they try
Speaker 1: to make themselves sound virtuous and you know, God is
Speaker 1: on my side. I'm sure poverty plays some role in
Speaker 1: that there aren't other opportunities for these guys. Blah blah blah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got that, But there's also like this this element
Speaker 1: of just like it seems like they're like angry children,
Speaker 1: you know, and they don't have anywhere else to express it.
Speaker 1: And uh and and someone made a comment to me
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, it's really weird to think
Speaker 1: about the concept of going war to have sex, but
Speaker 1: that's actually what it was about. For a good at
Speaker 1: least that's partially what it was about. Because this was
Speaker 1: like the way these guys could access women. You know,
Speaker 1: you can you get yourself an Isis bride, you get
Speaker 1: the rape girls, and probably back in their slum in Egypt,
Speaker 1: no one was ever going to marry them. No one
Speaker 1: would ever give a funk about them. So this was
Speaker 1: like their way to actually have sex with women. That's
Speaker 1: a really weird thing to think about. And I don't
Speaker 1: think I could. I don't know how to quantify that,
Speaker 1: Like how big a role did that play in the conflict.
Speaker 1: I think it's in there for sure. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like you said, I don't know how we could quantify
Speaker 1: as far as the percentages go, but I definitely think
Speaker 1: things like that, and I'm sure there it was a
Speaker 1: multi I mean, what about all the uh you know,
Speaker 1: the Eastern European or not excuse me, Western European kids,
Speaker 1: uh girls going over to the Isis brides. Yeah, Australian
Speaker 1: kid who went over at like what was the sixteen.
Speaker 1: Of course, they stuck him right in a V bed
Speaker 1: because like literally he had been there a week and
Speaker 1: they said, yeah, go blow yourself up. I mean what
Speaker 1: I mean that that's what they did with most of
Speaker 1: the foreigners. They used them as suicide bombers. Well that's
Speaker 1: because they were all stupid civilians. Like, what are they
Speaker 1: gonna do with that as a military power? What would
Speaker 1: you do with some piste off teenager who has no
Speaker 1: military training, never even shout a rifle before he's not
Speaker 1: a fighter, he's not one of your top commandos. Going
Speaker 1: to send him as a you know, he'll do more
Speaker 1: damage in a v bed than he would on the
Speaker 1: front lawn. Yeah, Yeah, you find some way to get
Speaker 1: rid of him, which is uh propaganda, propaganda, you know,
Speaker 1: And that reminds me of, Yeah, the whole propaganda thing
Speaker 1: reminds me of We've talked about this on the podcast before,
Speaker 1: how there's always this big cry to end Guantanamo, to
Speaker 1: let these guys, you know, not be a part of
Speaker 1: this person that we have in Cuba. But it's never
Speaker 1: gonna happen because every single congressman is like, you're not
Speaker 1: going to release these guys into my district, because these
Speaker 1: guys are gonna radical wise just regular prisoners who were
Speaker 1: in there. It's gonna continue spreading this message to people
Speaker 1: who are hopeless, people have no purpose in living. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the people who are I don't
Speaker 1: know a lot. I mean we can actually find out
Speaker 1: what number, but there's uh, there is a not insignificant
Speaker 1: number of get MO inmates who have been released and
Speaker 1: went on to become suicide bombers. Yeah, it's kind of surprising. Well,
Speaker 1: what was it when we did when we traded bird
Speaker 1: Doll for those five guys, like three of them, like
Speaker 1: within a couple of months, were top ices commanders. There
Speaker 1: is a huge backstory to that, um that I found out,
Speaker 1: and I would love to write this story someday and
Speaker 1: maybe I'll just go ahead and blast it out there. Um.
Speaker 1: The gist of it, those guys we released for bird Doll,
Speaker 1: we did not release them for bird Doll. It was
Speaker 1: not a trade. That was a huge disinformation campaign that
Speaker 1: the State Department and others ran to fool the Taliban
Speaker 1: or I'm sorry, to fool the Hakani network into giving
Speaker 1: up bird Doll. Those guys were they were scheduled for
Speaker 1: release anyway, and they would have been released regardless of
Speaker 1: what happened. It was basically, Yeah, it was a trick
Speaker 1: to make the Hakani network feel that they weren't going
Speaker 1: to get these dudes back unless they released bird Doll.
Speaker 1: You gotta get that out there, because I have I've
Speaker 1: never read about this, maybe you never will, so write it.
Speaker 1: It's well to get the people to you know, get
Speaker 1: all the right sources and to get the people to
Speaker 1: uh to go on the record. It's difficult to do. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: and it's one that that would be one of many
Speaker 1: stories that um, I'm already working on a on a
Speaker 1: big story right now. You know. It's funny. I know
Speaker 1: so many people listening to this podcast, where like the
Speaker 1: New York Times and different you know, because they follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter, just different other journalists. Yeah, they're listening.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I'm thinking that they're gonna get on this.
Speaker 1: So if you don't write it, someone's gonna write it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're gonna take an excerpt from this show
Speaker 1: and put it on. Sometimes it's like you lead a
Speaker 1: horse the water and they still don't know what the
Speaker 1: fucking do with it, you know. And uh, I mean
Speaker 1: The New York Times does some good work sometimes, but like,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to their writing about the intelligence community,
Speaker 1: when I read their stuff, their articles, it's and I
Speaker 1: look at it and it actually hurts my head because
Speaker 1: it's not like they have it's not biased in the
Speaker 1: sense that I think they're like left wing or right wing,
Speaker 1: or that I think they're like pro CIA or anti CIA.
Speaker 1: It's like I read their articles about the intelligence world
Speaker 1: and it's like they're not even on planet Earth. It's like,
Speaker 1: what the funk are you writing like this doesn't make sense?
Speaker 1: And it's almost as if The New York Times has
Speaker 1: a willing intent to not be able to connect the dots.
Speaker 1: It's almost intentional, and I think I think part of
Speaker 1: it is because so much of the stuff they publish
Speaker 1: is stuff the CIA wants out there, and they wanted
Speaker 1: out there on their terms. And they have journalists at
Speaker 1: the New York Times who don't want to burn access,
Speaker 1: so they just there's no critical thinking involved. They just
Speaker 1: kind of like put the it's it's basically a c
Speaker 1: I a press release, but it looks as if it's
Speaker 1: some sort of New York Times investigative journalism or something
Speaker 1: like that. But anyway, that's my rant about the New
Speaker 1: York Times. You know, good luck with you guys writing about,
Speaker 1: you know, the bird doll disinformation campaign. If you yeah,
Speaker 1: if you need any help, you give me a call,
Speaker 1: you know, hit me, hit me up on Twitter. We'll
Speaker 1: call at jack or if you are g R. By
Speaker 1: the way, wait, since yeah, did either of you see
Speaker 1: called fucking maddest uh Secretary of State? Who did you?
Speaker 1: I did? Yeah? I got the internet roasted me alive. Dude,
Speaker 1: there's your Freudian slit. Yeah, well I was. It was
Speaker 1: the headliner. I just I don't know why. I just
Speaker 1: had a brain part and was like secretary State madness,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah headline and god damnit Kurt Dude. Yeah
Speaker 1: I know. But there's a thing. No one caught it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: we we we make mistakes to um yeah no, no
Speaker 1: question about it. But anyway, Yeah, that was my mess
Speaker 1: up for the month. So the last thing I was
Speaker 1: going to mention is that you could see hurt On
Speaker 1: inside the team room, the pech Murga one that's on
Speaker 1: soccerp TV. I also have the audio op if you
Speaker 1: look up inside the team room in your podcast app
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcast, it's there. So check that out. You
Speaker 1: look very confused. Yeah, I'm trying. We did a Peesh
Speaker 1: Murga inside the team room. You did it inside the
Speaker 1: team room with him and Joey Joey Yeah, oh the
Speaker 1: one we did in Kirk Cook. Yeah yeah, it's in
Speaker 1: Solomon Ea. Sorry, yeah, I I just blank that out
Speaker 1: because I did it abroad. It wasn't like in a
Speaker 1: bar here, and no it was also you could even
Speaker 1: tell from the audio. It's not the quality of like
Speaker 1: the full photo shoots. That was Yeah, that was kind
Speaker 1: of like a realist style in the field. By the way,
Speaker 1: uh mentioning Joey, it was funny. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: because your your interpreter story and teaching people bad English.
Speaker 1: So Joey and his crew when they went over to
Speaker 1: rujava Um to join the YPG, they were there for
Speaker 1: a few months anyway, they taught all the Curds because
Speaker 1: there were some of the first volunteers there. They taught
Speaker 1: all the Curds and their two boor that uh, taco
Speaker 1: bello meant good night. So they all slept in like
Speaker 1: a big room with blankets and stuff, you know, and
Speaker 1: like as a group, and like they'd be like everybody.
Speaker 1: They'd be like Taco bello and all the Kurds are
Speaker 1: on the room. We go Taco bello, Taco bello. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the culture clashes hilarious. Man. I remember watching, Um, what
Speaker 1: movie was I watching with the iraqis one time in
Speaker 1: uh uh to offer actually on fop psychs. It might
Speaker 1: have been like that last Rambo movie where he's a brama.
Speaker 1: It was some movie like that, or no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was um, oh shit, it was something like die
Speaker 1: Hard where they're in America and uh, one of the
Speaker 1: one of the Iraqi dudes turns to me, he's like, wow,
Speaker 1: America is really violent. The stuff like this happened off
Speaker 1: and over there, and you know, you look at him
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, not every day, you know, like
Speaker 1: maybe once a week something like that happens to me.
Speaker 1: You know. I got that. We had a PlayStation for
Speaker 1: a while and we gave it to some of our
Speaker 1: Kurdish instructors, and I forgot there's some zombie video game
Speaker 1: on there. But he's like playing it and dowto. I
Speaker 1: remember that. He looks over me goes He's like, in
Speaker 1: America many zombies. So I trained and I was like, yeah, bro,
Speaker 1: when you get off that plane, you better be running
Speaker 1: all right, VSA passport whatever. There was um oh man
Speaker 1: what and now see you got me thinking, now I
Speaker 1: need to put this in the book. Now. There was
Speaker 1: I walked in on the on the Iraqi swat team
Speaker 1: one day that I was training and they were staying
Speaker 1: in these choose there like what cargo containers walk in there?
Speaker 1: And these dudes have pirated satellite TV, Like they figured
Speaker 1: out how to do it. They pirated satellite TV and
Speaker 1: they're watching the Penthouse Channel. And so the Swat team
Speaker 1: commander and a couple of the other like n c
Speaker 1: O s are sitting in this their hot box in it.
Speaker 1: They don't smoke marijuana, but they're smoking cigarettes like hot
Speaker 1: box and the ship out of this container, there's a
Speaker 1: cigarettes smoke everywhere. And they're just sitting there staring at
Speaker 1: the Penthouse Channel and like no, in their heads, yeah,
Speaker 1: this girl is just like getting filled in by like
Speaker 1: a twelve inch dong. You know. It's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can imagine what's going on in the
Speaker 1: Penthouse Channel. And uh, and theyre, oh, Mr Jack, Captain Jack,
Speaker 1: come in, come in. So I come in, I sit down.
Speaker 1: I'm watching the Penthouse Channel with these dudes. And uh,
Speaker 1: They're like, I don't understand how Americans can fuck this long,
Speaker 1: Like we can't funk anywhere near this long. And you know,
Speaker 1: I play it off like, oh, well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an acquired skill, right, we practice of practice.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's funny. Actually, the funny and almost forgotten
Speaker 1: and the other things. A Swat team command of looks
Speaker 1: over at me and just totally nonchalantly is like you
Speaker 1: know these girls they're just in it for the money.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, damn, bro, how do you know so
Speaker 1: much about porn? Yeah? Yeah, that was a very astute comment.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, like like he understood like the l a
Speaker 1: porn scene, like knew how it worked immediately, Like wow,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, I don't think most most American teenagers
Speaker 1: have figured that out for a couple of years, you know,
Speaker 1: like hreck Ranky figured it out a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: Um no, when So Justin, which I interviewed him in
Speaker 1: an article, was Joey's buddy, and they went over to
Speaker 1: sere together. So they were sitting around eating. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: one of those disconnects. And uh, the they were given peaches,
Speaker 1: like canned peaches. So Justin looks at it, looks at
Speaker 1: the can. He goes, oh, peaches, and like smiles, and
Speaker 1: but all the currents are like the men look kind
Speaker 1: of terrified, the women all look piste and he's like,
Speaker 1: what it's peaches, And they look at they look like
Speaker 1: they're getting madder. And finally the guy he speaks a
Speaker 1: little bit like no, no, no, no, there's no peaches.
Speaker 1: Pet He says this peaches and he's like peaches means
Speaker 1: and he basically told it means horror, like like like
Speaker 1: prostitute or whatever. So he's standing there, sitting there for
Speaker 1: a bunch of white PJ and he's like, oh prostitutes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so sear muta? Uh that's uh yeah what No, it's
Speaker 1: uh is muta? Ice cream? Which one is? Which one is?
Speaker 1: Ice cream? Around around me? They would always say scream
Speaker 1: and I get, I get. I'd start getting irritated with
Speaker 1: him because I'm like, what are you trying? I know
Speaker 1: my Arabic is bad, but I'm like, what are you
Speaker 1: trying to ask me? That kept your jack scream? Scream?
Speaker 1: And I realized ice cream Yeah yeah, yeah, No, multi
Speaker 1: means ice cream, but if you use it in the
Speaker 1: correct context, it also means like you're telling the dude
Speaker 1: he likes the cream. So it could be insulting or
Speaker 1: actual just description. Um. Yeah, especially the guys who went
Speaker 1: over there and they were hanging out around the you know,
Speaker 1: the y p j uh female Kurdish soldiers like got
Speaker 1: into some dicey situations, but purely because of like translation issues,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, the well in Arabic, dude means gay.
Speaker 1: So I was walking around in Iraq, I was like,
Speaker 1: what's up, dude, And then if people are looking at
Speaker 1: me like what the hell you just called me? The
Speaker 1: other culturally significant things probabe, no, is that they told
Speaker 1: me that, um, giving someone the thumbs up over there,
Speaker 1: it's like the middle finger. Uh yeah, I know, No,
Speaker 1: I know that was an Afghanistan for sure. They warned
Speaker 1: us of that when we went over to Helmond. They
Speaker 1: were like straight up like, don't thumb up. Give people
Speaker 1: the thumbs up. It does not mean what you think
Speaker 1: it means. Yeah. I think now they they've like everybody's
Speaker 1: got it, like they up symbols enough. Yeah, they know
Speaker 1: we don't insult them, like, you know, absolutely, like the
Speaker 1: Iraqis that have been working with Americans, even like the
Speaker 1: guys I worked with, if I gave him the thumbs up,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't get offended by it. They understood. They had
Speaker 1: been working around us long enough that you know they understand. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. It's really funny when you talk to like
Speaker 1: our interpreters, Like I meet people over in Iraq who
Speaker 1: worked as interpreters for the Americans for a long time,
Speaker 1: and they're like so Americanized. They'll come up to you
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, dude, remember rippets And it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what if we created Yeah yeah the monsters.
Speaker 1: They're literally deployment babies, like yeah yeah, and they're they're
Speaker 1: all nostalgic for the past, you know, they're like like
Speaker 1: we are. They're a bro remember the rippits. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll fit in with the VET community perfect, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, we had this one terping and Curtis Stam
Speaker 1: working for one of the companies um back and he's
Speaker 1: probably not listening about wish he was. He's a cool guy.
Speaker 1: He's still trying to get over here, but yeah, he's
Speaker 1: like he was an interpreter with you guys the SF
Speaker 1: and I was like, I was like, hey, dude, so
Speaker 1: like what you do as a terp with the with
Speaker 1: the special boxes? And he goes, we killed motherfucker's I
Speaker 1: was like, oh ship, yeah, man. I mean some of
Speaker 1: our interpreters like some I mean it depends like team
Speaker 1: the team, but like some O d as are pretty
Speaker 1: rough to work with, you know, and like these terps,
Speaker 1: a lot of them developed like seriously thick skin man.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, well um yeah, the uh man I
Speaker 1: forgot I was going with that, but uh yeah, funny stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh the captain thing because he's and Captain Jack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody everybody calls you captain. Now show up an advisor role.
Speaker 1: Like even the Kurds they just and I think it's
Speaker 1: a soccer or a football thing for in our case. Um,
Speaker 1: it's because in the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi culture,
Speaker 1: like you're either an officer or you're nothing. So like
Speaker 1: if you're if you're not an officer, you're just some
Speaker 1: dude with a shovel that digs for four years of
Speaker 1: his time in the military like a Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if they I mean I guess they did have
Speaker 1: n c o s, but they're like nothing like sergeants
Speaker 1: are in the U. S Military. Yeah, I think you
Speaker 1: actually might. You know, if you were an officer in
Speaker 1: the Peshburga you were like yeah, yeah yeah. So I
Speaker 1: mean when we went over there, we all had to
Speaker 1: assume the fictional rank of captain just out of necessity.
Speaker 1: And again, these the swap guys had worked with us
Speaker 1: so long they knew they knew that we weren't captains,
Speaker 1: like at least like their commanders and stuff. They knew
Speaker 1: that I was an n c O. You know, it
Speaker 1: didn't bother them. They understood as long as they could
Speaker 1: stand like at their level that you knew more and
Speaker 1: knew enough to Yeah, no, they did. And they told
Speaker 1: me that too. They're like, you know, a sergeant and
Speaker 1: you know US Special Forces knows like ten times more
Speaker 1: than an Iraqi officer. I was like, well, yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: I think we might have talked about this the last
Speaker 1: full episode you were on. But the story of you
Speaker 1: guys meeting is is pretty cool. You were telling me
Speaker 1: about while we were over at shot show. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: I uh. I was at one of my local gun
Speaker 1: stores the other day and uh, the guy was like,
Speaker 1: uh he saw my T shirt and he's like, do
Speaker 1: you read soft Roup? Like no, I write for them man,
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh sweet, I read you guys every morning.
Speaker 1: And he's he's like, well were they like? And I
Speaker 1: was he was like, how did you get that job?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, so, uh I was. Remember we
Speaker 1: joked that when we were at a shot show. I
Speaker 1: was like everybody's like everybody I was like, everybody else
Speaker 1: has like a master's degree in journalism. Jack pretty much
Speaker 1: just found me when I was homeless and wanted hey
Speaker 1: man on a job. Um was running around in the
Speaker 1: Peshburga and we were in kirk Cook or actually doc Cook,
Speaker 1: which is just south of it Um, and we were
Speaker 1: taking two villages, which I believe the first one was
Speaker 1: zaga Um and Uh it was. It was a very
Speaker 1: really successful day for us because all we had to
Speaker 1: do was deal with I D S. Which that was
Speaker 1: Jack brought up the point what was it, uh in
Speaker 1: depth defense and thank you depth defense and depth They
Speaker 1: were practicing that pretty much. They You know, there was
Speaker 1: some brief fighting at the beginning of the day, but
Speaker 1: then everybody sucked off as far as ices goes, and
Speaker 1: we just kept pushing. So anyway, were sitting on the
Speaker 1: side of the road watching our fifty five blow by
Speaker 1: and blasting us with exhaust Um and down down comes
Speaker 1: into the street. I see uh, Jack and Benny and
Speaker 1: some other guy walking up. I'm like I was sitting
Speaker 1: there with Joe and I'm like, hey, I know this guy.
Speaker 1: What's hot man? And walked over and yeah. We hung
Speaker 1: out for a good part of the day. Then we
Speaker 1: shot off to go take the last village real quick,
Speaker 1: Um and then we met up later at the our
Speaker 1: Basis Training Center. Kurt and I had talked a little
Speaker 1: bit over Facebook, I think, and we were trying to
Speaker 1: like arrange to meet each other because I was I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, Kurt, I'm inter Rack and we meet
Speaker 1: like face to face and oh yeah cool. So like
Speaker 1: we were trying to facilitate that, figure out how that
Speaker 1: was gonna work out. And the meanwhile, we've Benny and
Speaker 1: I find out there's this big battle going down and
Speaker 1: kirk Cook. We're like, we need to go there. So
Speaker 1: we rushed down there. We take We're driving it like
Speaker 1: three in the morning from her Bill down to kirk Cook.
Speaker 1: We get there, Um the battle started. That was. That
Speaker 1: was when we were driving and sorry, our driver asks
Speaker 1: um at a checkpoint which way to the battle and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, just drive that way until you get
Speaker 1: to the dash and you'll know you're there. Like holy fuck. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we get there and um, it's really foggy that morning
Speaker 1: as we got there and I e d went off
Speaker 1: like maybe a hundred meters in front of us and
Speaker 1: killed the Peshmerga guy. Remember, and yeah, curtis down there.
Speaker 1: So anyway, me and Benny were walking all through the
Speaker 1: morning right behind the front lines of the pesh And
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, you said you're completely unarmed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was completely unarmed, and um, yeah I had a
Speaker 1: caram bit. I guess that would help. Um. And as
Speaker 1: we're walking, yeah, I come up and oh no, I
Speaker 1: ran into a Curd who had been working with some
Speaker 1: American volunteers and I got to talking about that and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh yeah American volunteer. Yeah, I have something here.
Speaker 1: You want to meet them? I'm like yeah, sure. So
Speaker 1: he starts walking us further down the road a little
Speaker 1: bit and there's Curt and Joey's sitting on the side
Speaker 1: of the road and Kurt's like, hey, I know you.
Speaker 1: So that's how we ended up meeting face to face.
Speaker 1: I didn't expect for it to be. There's cool. Yeah
Speaker 1: they're small, small, Curtis doan. Yeah, well that'll that will
Speaker 1: definitely be in the book obviously. But when I get
Speaker 1: right in it. Um, but yeah, that I e d
Speaker 1: that went off. So we were it was Joey and
Speaker 1: I were down there and like right in the blast
Speaker 1: and for some reason, we're lucky as ship we never
Speaker 1: got hit, but like guys around us got hit, and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it was funny. We were actually standing on
Speaker 1: the berm that blew up, and then we we pulled
Speaker 1: back in the one of the bulldozers they used to
Speaker 1: do route clearance. It hit it. Oh yeah, I got
Speaker 1: there like a couple of minutes after that. I think
Speaker 1: I believe that when I walked down there, the Peshmerga,
Speaker 1: we're actually moving in and starting to clear the houses
Speaker 1: in that little village right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was they well. Uh and then I know there
Speaker 1: was that one kid who was wearing all Curtish guard
Speaker 1: and show wall and stuff. Uh, he hit a G
Speaker 1: three and he was some other random volunteer. We didn't know.
Speaker 1: He just kind of showed up with another curd and
Speaker 1: he ran out in the field by himself and started
Speaker 1: shooting up our Peshmerga as they came into that village.
Speaker 1: She's yeah. And then of course the commander ran over
Speaker 1: and like screamed at him. They took his rifle and
Speaker 1: threw him out of the you know, running back to
Speaker 1: the staging area and kicked him out. You know. I
Speaker 1: also saw as I came up there, there's like a
Speaker 1: humpy full of and I could see them right away.
Speaker 1: They were they were foreigners. There were Americans and they
Speaker 1: were all dressed up like Robin stage role players, and
Speaker 1: they were wearing balaclavas and all that kind of ship.
Speaker 1: They were wearing the staf masks that would have been
Speaker 1: Shake Joffers. Guys. There is a team of Mircondo's um.
Speaker 1: They seemed like a bunch of googers and they were
Speaker 1: like making cat calls at Benny and stuff like this.
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, this is fucking amateur hour out here. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's why they they were been the back in
Speaker 1: the in the rear with the trucks. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got that impression. Yeah, that's the that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Like the guy that ran out there and shot up
Speaker 1: a peshimerga, like or those dudes who were sitting around
Speaker 1: cat calling and stuff. I mean, it just makes it
Speaker 1: it's so much harder to be a volunteer, especially when
Speaker 1: you're trying to do it, do it the right way
Speaker 1: and be serious about it and like because you gotta remember,
Speaker 1: like it's just like, you know what we got. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they told us in the Army, but
Speaker 1: in the Marines, they're like, you don't represent you anymore.
Speaker 1: You represent the whole marine coup. And it's the same
Speaker 1: thing with a volunteer, like you represent every American ever
Speaker 1: to these guys or every foreign volunteer that comes over
Speaker 1: and tries to do this. So like when one person
Speaker 1: bucks up or you get the fraught artists like that
Speaker 1: Alan Duncan cat or whoever. Yeah, that's what they think
Speaker 1: of you, and you have to work past that. It
Speaker 1: makes just more barriers. It's terrible. That's oh man, I
Speaker 1: mean you could I know you and I know Irwin
Speaker 1: could tell stories all day about all the strange cats
Speaker 1: that showed up, weirdos out the yin Yang. I never
Speaker 1: realized like how many weirdos showed up to this kind
Speaker 1: of party. Yeah, I guess us included. But still like
Speaker 1: and I mean, you know, I've an article, like one
Speaker 1: of my first articles was like bitching about like stop
Speaker 1: coming over here, Like if you're here for Instagram, you're wrong.
Speaker 1: Remember remember that chick what was her name, like cat
Speaker 1: Argo or something like that man cat Argo and the
Speaker 1: qui Quackum Bosham whatever. Yeah, the French guy. He was
Speaker 1: like some crazy like French right winger who was in
Speaker 1: Ukraine with the separatists. Yes, that's what's weird the separatists,
Speaker 1: the Russian separatists, an ultra nationalist, Well it makes sense,
Speaker 1: and a certain well there's a certain breed of these people,
Speaker 1: and they see Russia as being confronting the um you know,
Speaker 1: like the New World Order. So these like people. There
Speaker 1: are people on the far right who are aligned with Russia,
Speaker 1: and that's the only way I can imagine that shook out.
Speaker 1: But I also heard from some people who are in
Speaker 1: the military in the U. S Military with cat Argo,
Speaker 1: and they were like, that woman is a nut, Like
Speaker 1: just stay away from her. Yeah, well, I mean they
Speaker 1: what caught me onto it was the stuff they were
Speaker 1: claiming they were doing one and then the stuff they
Speaker 1: had on their like go bund means and things like that.
Speaker 1: We're talking about doing deep behind in me lines, extracting
Speaker 1: when injured Peshmerga. They talked about weird techniques employed and
Speaker 1: Kirk Cook of like daily catapults of propane tanks like
Speaker 1: the The Havoc Journal wrote this like a glowing article
Speaker 1: about about so did the Army Times, So do the
Speaker 1: Arty Times, And then there's there. I was just like,
Speaker 1: idiot's never gone on the ground of these people. I
Speaker 1: will tell you. Everybody that's with them right now that
Speaker 1: isn't part of their group knows their fun wads. And
Speaker 1: there's my French. And then there was there's that other
Speaker 1: woman that showed up and she hooked up with the
Speaker 1: Italian dude and she was over there for a while.
Speaker 1: Samantha J. Yeah. I don't think she was nearly as
Speaker 1: malicious as those other guys she was, but she was definitely, uh,
Speaker 1: definitely there for the fame, I think, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: and like there were other outlets that I mean, if
Speaker 1: you were like a girl, especially if you're a pretty girl,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the Daily Mail and all of them,
Speaker 1: they're like all over that kind of stuff. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean she was posting like picture or swimsuit and stuff,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, she had this big following. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe she had other reasons. We're going, but I don't,
Speaker 1: you know, I think she's just one of the fame
Speaker 1: the glory ones, like look at me, I'm doing something.
Speaker 1: She was one of the she was one of the army, uh,
Speaker 1: the people coming out of the army who didn't do
Speaker 1: the whole war bit and felt they needed to maybe
Speaker 1: And then when there were some interesting women who showed
Speaker 1: up foreigners who showed up. Jill Rosenberg was the other
Speaker 1: one who was a big scam artist and got a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble. Yeah, I remember hearing about that. I
Speaker 1: mean I heard rumors some about some really bad stuff,
Speaker 1: but nothing that I know for a fact. She showed
Speaker 1: up to a we knew a contractor friend in her
Speaker 1: bill and we went down there for some R and R.
Speaker 1: So we were partying and we had a pool there,
Speaker 1: like a bunch of beer and it sounds like an
Speaker 1: s F party, how Jack, I deny everything. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. No. So anyways, she shows up with
Speaker 1: a fucking gun in her waistband and like in city's
Speaker 1: like and we're like, what the funk? And I like
Speaker 1: a guy who ran the own the compound. He like
Speaker 1: wouldn't leave his m for all night. He's like, dude,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, And it was just it was weird.
Speaker 1: It was weird. There was also that Danish woman who
Speaker 1: showed up with the y p J and then she
Speaker 1: was like making claims that she had slain like a
Speaker 1: hundred of ices people when she was a sniper over there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a liar man, because I wrote an article tell him
Speaker 1: saying that was bullshit. Yeah. Man, every time I read
Speaker 1: this person was a sniper, I start to a zone out,
Speaker 1: like because literally we we had this joke in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: like we were trying to decide who was gonna do
Speaker 1: like the little sniper course Joey and I were gonna
Speaker 1: go to and uh this guy, uh, one of the
Speaker 1: one of the other Forders. He's like, well, ay, I'll
Speaker 1: do best accident I can. And he's Greek, but he's like, well, coach,
Speaker 1: here was a sniper with the best murga. So but
Speaker 1: it's it's funny because like everybody was a sniper with
Speaker 1: a beshmurger, you know what I mean. Everybody's a sniper.
Speaker 1: Everybody's an operator, you know, it's yeah, everyone's my My
Speaker 1: My running joke is it's the it's the Russian way
Speaker 1: of determining your sniper, Like, oh, come, you have scoop
Speaker 1: on the rifle, now you're a sniper. Well it's an
Speaker 1: Iraq too. I mean everyone's wearing the Special Force. It's patch.
Speaker 1: Yeah everywhere. Well the Pasha Murga there they and I
Speaker 1: mean they do have commando brigades, but everybody's wearing the
Speaker 1: red Commando brig Yeah, the Cobra is there. Cobras are
Speaker 1: pretty good. They're like, well, here's the thing. So like
Speaker 1: basically it's just structured just like ours you really look
Speaker 1: at it. They have their uh, the ctgs and the
Speaker 1: counter terror groups and things like that of either party,
Speaker 1: and they're like our you know, SF Delta high speed dudes.
Speaker 1: And then these Cobras and Third Special Brigades and things
Speaker 1: like that are like the rangers to those units. They'll
Speaker 1: go in and do the big smash and direct action
Speaker 1: and take over villages while these guys go hit the
Speaker 1: specifics um because they usually do go in together. When
Speaker 1: they every time Third Brigade went in to do a
Speaker 1: village or when we took a sheer, CTG was off
Speaker 1: on the left side doing their thing. Yes. CTG complained
Speaker 1: about that. When I was there. They were like, we
Speaker 1: want to do counter terrorism, not the conventional fighting. But
Speaker 1: they you know, felt obligated to play their part too
Speaker 1: and you know, help out. Sure. Sure, well, I mean
Speaker 1: you read that article I wrote about how they were
Speaker 1: doing the prison transports closing down the old castle. That
Speaker 1: was interesting. Yeah, dude, they smoked a whole group of
Speaker 1: them apparently, like and this is kind of hearsay, but
Speaker 1: apparently they were like kitchen workers who were disgruntled about
Speaker 1: not getting paid. Yeah, Like it wasn't even ices trying
Speaker 1: to snatch up their own prisoners. It was like some
Speaker 1: angry kitchen workers who staged an elaborate ambush. That's not
Speaker 1: such an Iraq story, you know, yeah, yeah, very very
Speaker 1: people People are always like that could be that doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. I'm like, well, if you've been to Iraq,
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense. Like that's the thing about you know,
Speaker 1: war as uh you know, and I know I've said
Speaker 1: this before on the podcast, is that, you know, people
Speaker 1: ask what the differences between fact and fiction or we
Speaker 1: are writing fiction and writing nonfiction. I tell them, you know,
Speaker 1: fiction has to make sense. Yeah yeah, those ships. No, seriously,
Speaker 1: war stranger than fiction every every time, Like, yeah, people
Speaker 1: do ship that doesn't make any sense at all. It's
Speaker 1: irrational and things happen that are random and weird. That's
Speaker 1: why I said if I always said like I'm never
Speaker 1: writing a book. If I write a book, no one's
Speaker 1: gonna fucking believe me, like it's gonna be there's just
Speaker 1: it's just wild. Like all when I really look at
Speaker 1: all the weird things that have gone on in the
Speaker 1: strange stories and things I could go on about, like
Speaker 1: it's just it's bizarre. It's just bizarre. It's because like
Speaker 1: movies and television and all that has created like an
Speaker 1: expectation in the minds of civilians of like what war
Speaker 1: is supposed to be like. And then and then if
Speaker 1: reality doesn't deliver that expectation, they're like, oh, this must
Speaker 1: be fake. Can't be like Battlefield and Call of Duty
Speaker 1: and video games. Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean because
Speaker 1: I mean if you really look at like the you know,
Speaker 1: it's like they you know, even on like the they say,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty big into the tacticle shooting community. You see
Speaker 1: like the promo videos for companies and they look cool
Speaker 1: and they got their sweet plate carries and their ops
Speaker 1: scores and they're sweeping corners and kicking doors and it
Speaker 1: all looks fluid and smooth. And then you look at
Speaker 1: a guy's go pro footage or like even some of
Speaker 1: my mind, and it just looks like a like a
Speaker 1: ship show. But I mean it's works and it's getting
Speaker 1: the job done and dudes are doing their ship, but
Speaker 1: it just does not look as clean. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, nowhere nearest clean is the you know, the
Speaker 1: media will make it out to be. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the guy who has the most kills is probably some
Speaker 1: specialist in the army that fucking has like an antiquated
Speaker 1: M six two out of the arms room. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you're not gonna hear that. No, no, definitely not.
Speaker 1: So I think people are gonna really look forward to
Speaker 1: this book. I have to say I had a great
Speaker 1: time hanging with Kurt at shot show. He was the
Speaker 1: first person I saw getting off the plane and first
Speaker 1: time hanging with you, and we shared some awesome stories,
Speaker 1: both both of us apparently diagnosed with a d D
Speaker 1: as kids. Maybe not surprising like hardcore. Yeah, well you were,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, you were a d h D.
Speaker 1: I was a d D. So I was just like
Speaker 1: staring at the window. I was not like the hyperactive part.
Speaker 1: Oh me, you know, I I have a d D
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit a d h D. When you
Speaker 1: were in the same yeah, you were in the same
Speaker 1: category as me. No, I couldn't pay attention at school.
Speaker 1: I was a terrible student. College was hard as well,
Speaker 1: even though it was a little more disciplined. But like
Speaker 1: but yeah, you stick me in front of something like
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about whether it be you know what done
Speaker 1: recently or um, we're ready for software. I'm getting to
Speaker 1: write about things that I love talking about. It's you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in the exact same vote as you,
Speaker 1: which is what we're talking about. Before you even got there,
Speaker 1: Jack was like the first night we got in a
Speaker 1: whole discussion about this and uh the Odyssey and was
Speaker 1: talking about his son having those same issues. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: great happening on. We got to do this more often
Speaker 1: if you're ever in New York, will do it in
Speaker 1: studio any You don't have any social media, do you,
Speaker 1: other than your own like private Facebook page? Well, um,
Speaker 1: I am gonna probably go on right now and finally
Speaker 1: get off my ass about this. I need to get
Speaker 1: you get off your ass to make a social media
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, well you know, but I need Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do need to do a writer's Facebook page where
Speaker 1: you can just follow me or something. Yeah, you should
Speaker 1: do it. Get a Twitter account so you can tweet
Speaker 1: about fucking memos and collusion all day like everybody else
Speaker 1: on there. I don't know, maybe I'll get an Instagram.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll be honest, I haven't followed the
Speaker 1: memos stuff at all. People come over and they're like,
Speaker 1: what do you think about the memo, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm completely in the dark about it. It's a memo
Speaker 1: about a dossier that we all knew was fake the
Speaker 1: second we saw it. Like Jesus, Yeah, I I have
Speaker 1: not been following. But it's because I don't watch the
Speaker 1: mainstream media. I mean when I see what I see
Speaker 1: on Twitter, but I kind of avoid. Twitter is just
Speaker 1: such a cess pool. Yeah, it's like something I don't
Speaker 1: want to jump into. But I will say, scrolling through
Speaker 1: Twitter for like fifteen minutes, you're gonna get what's covered
Speaker 1: on Fox for several hours or any network. I'm not
Speaker 1: targeting Fox, Yeah, you know, because all you're gonna get
Speaker 1: is people debating the issue before you even know what
Speaker 1: the issue is, talked about it before. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I use Twitter to get a lot of my news.
Speaker 1: Not gonna lie, really, Yeah, I I just I see
Speaker 1: what people are talking about. I mean, I don't take
Speaker 1: it if it's from the Daily Mail, I don't take
Speaker 1: it as fact, but I at least like to get
Speaker 1: a I don't know, get an overview of what people
Speaker 1: are talking about. Twitter just seems to me like it's
Speaker 1: a lot of people trying really hard to convince everybody
Speaker 1: that they're an expert on something subject. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: the subject matter expert, and it just comes across as
Speaker 1: kind of like desperate and sad. It's like, why, what's
Speaker 1: what's the point of this? What's the point of this
Speaker 1: communications medium? But also created so much phony outrage. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the whole me too movement is probably more
Speaker 1: Twitter than anything else, and it's gotten to the point where,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw like Ben Shapiro debating this Sun
Speaker 1: Fox Um, I was watching a clip of that, but
Speaker 1: how it went from a guy like Harvey Weinstein, who
Speaker 1: obviously is out of control and should be in prison,
Speaker 1: to a guy like as he's I'm sorry where it's
Speaker 1: just like, was this date I had a bad date?
Speaker 1: Part of the thing the woman wrote was that that
Speaker 1: she didn't like the disease I'm sorry picked red wine
Speaker 1: over white wine, And I was just like, is this
Speaker 1: really could you really put this in the same categories? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you just regretted sleeping with this guy.
Speaker 1: That's what it felt like to me too, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that whole thing. When that article was published, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like reading this like I felt uncomfortable, but
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything. What Yeah, it really doesn't disserve.
Speaker 1: It's it's weird that Twitter, like tweets alone are being
Speaker 1: like one of the source of like all these articles
Speaker 1: that are flooding us now. Like literally someone tweets something,
Speaker 1: it's like, we could write a whole article about this,
Speaker 1: Like it's how about the night of the super Bowl.
Speaker 1: The number one thing trending part of that night was
Speaker 1: that Kylie Jenner had a baby over the super Bowl. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: more Americans care about that. I wonder what was what
Speaker 1: were the ratings for the Super Bowl? Like because I
Speaker 1: don't care anyway, but where people? Is it true that
Speaker 1: like people are kind of tuning out of the NFL
Speaker 1: now because of their whole issues with patriotic you know,
Speaker 1: I think things. I think a lot of those people
Speaker 1: tuned out for the season, but then they'll still if
Speaker 1: they're a football fan, they're probably still going to watch
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl. I would think. I do know the
Speaker 1: NFL didn't allow and add like a veteran and run
Speaker 1: group ad that said you know, police stand and they
Speaker 1: said it was too political, they wouldn't run it, huh,
Speaker 1: which I I do think it is bullshit, regardless of
Speaker 1: like you're feeling on the issue itself. But because you
Speaker 1: and I we've talked about this, it's definitely not a
Speaker 1: priority in my mind. But the fact that like they're
Speaker 1: allowed to kneel for the national anthem, but they weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to put on a patch for like a police
Speaker 1: officer who died, Like you're either going to politicize it
Speaker 1: or not politicize at all, you know. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't fucking care myself, but whatever, I think Vince McMahon
Speaker 1: is probably doing a smart thing by saying he's coming
Speaker 1: out with the XFL. Didn't he already tried that once? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's doing it again. Yeah, because this is perfect timing
Speaker 1: with all the politicization and all the people saying like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna watch I bet you, Vince McMahon is
Speaker 1: gonna be like, we're gonna have hot, skippy cheerleaders. You're
Speaker 1: probably gonna need to stand for the national anthem. He'll
Speaker 1: probably have Donald Trump be involved somehow. I'd rather that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: why not? But you know, he did do it one
Speaker 1: season and failed. There was a great thirty for thirty
Speaker 1: on it. But I bet you he sees it. I
Speaker 1: talked about it on the episode with Stobolos Jerry. I'm
Speaker 1: not like a football fan, but he probably sees a
Speaker 1: big opening in the marketplace with all this protesting, all
Speaker 1: this politicization, and he'll probably just be like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do what men want to see, not politicize shit. Between
Speaker 1: that and t b I, it seems like the NFL
Speaker 1: they're heading in a bad direction, Like like I would
Speaker 1: not buy stock in the NFL, I'll put it that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think also a lot of it is the media
Speaker 1: when they say that, um you know, NFL ratings are
Speaker 1: growing down. I think it's it's sports in general. I
Speaker 1: think people are even watching watch TV in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the internet is taking over because who wants to sit
Speaker 1: and watch all his ads and all this bullshit on there? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I also, um you know, there's a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I feel like my dad's age who will watch every
Speaker 1: single met game, every single Knick Nick game, even sports
Speaker 1: fanatics age like I don't think I would rather just
Speaker 1: like spending night watching YouTube videos than watching television like
Speaker 1: cable TV, Like, who watches that? Yeah, yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 1: much what I do anyway. Actually, especially the show on Tesla.
Speaker 1: Who watches that? Terrible? Apparently nobody because they moved it
Speaker 1: to the Science Channel. I didn't. I didn't even be
Speaker 1: not gonna lie, I didn't even know there was a
Speaker 1: Science channel. Yeah, nobody does they dude, they like sabotage
Speaker 1: that show because they and for those who don't pick
Speaker 1: up on the sarcasm, I'm obviously joking that. You know
Speaker 1: about five episodes they played the first three, episode four,
Speaker 1: they changed the time slot. Episode five, they changed the
Speaker 1: time slot and the network. That's not a good sign. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and well they told me the first episode did great.
Speaker 1: They were like, we did. We beat everything in ratings
Speaker 1: except for except for professional sports, which is like we're
Speaker 1: never going to beat that. Yeah, but then something up
Speaker 1: in between then and now and and I feel like
Speaker 1: they never even gave the show a chance. They also,
Speaker 1: like I've said in the past, like they're advertising. Um
Speaker 1: approach is like in the Stone Age, and they're acting
Speaker 1: like it's still seven. I mean, I'm shocked by how
Speaker 1: bad they are when it comes to advertising. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: whatever they need to get the advertisement that Kurt and
Speaker 1: I were talking about with Tonto and the sunglasses. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see that ad I saw that add on on
Speaker 1: the TV when I had lunch with Jim. I see
Speaker 1: it all the time. I was at the gym suite
Speaker 1: as far as the marketing department, but I almost man.
Speaker 1: I saw him at range day at shot and I
Speaker 1: was just like, I was gonna be like, Hey, Tontos,
Speaker 1: you're wearing them HD sunglasses. You know, you know, you
Speaker 1: should you should go, you should go say hi to him.
Speaker 1: Though Chris is a he's a really nice guy. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I did say hi to him. He is a phenomenally nice,
Speaker 1: down to her earth guy. Like like every I met
Speaker 1: a few, well I rate and didn't see him met,
Speaker 1: but I noticed quite a few. Uh So, we say
Speaker 1: tactical celebrities that shot show, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: have big egos and just um yeah. But Chris was
Speaker 1: just man. He was awesome, really nice guy. He took
Speaker 1: the time to bullshit with two of our load at
Speaker 1: room writers who were in Second Bad as well with
Speaker 1: the Rangers. So um, I love really nice guy. I'd
Speaker 1: love to have him back on the show when he
Speaker 1: comes through town again. Sometime. Yeah, really cool guy. I'm
Speaker 1: very well he does and he does so many of
Speaker 1: these speaking engagements and all. But yeah, that that that
Speaker 1: sunglasses commercial is pretty funny. But hey, he's can't you know,
Speaker 1: I can't knock it. He's making money, so hey, dude
Speaker 1: pays the bill, so be it. You know. Yeah, I'm right,
Speaker 1: damn Ryan, And I mean I haven't I haven't seen
Speaker 1: the sunglasses themselves, so I don't know how they are
Speaker 1: and I will not can't say anything negative. Get me,
Speaker 1: get me a commercial. Sign me up, baby, I'll do
Speaker 1: that commercial to that. Yea, the rapper barred sunglass like
Speaker 1: the Kanye West sung glasses if you pay me, don't
Speaker 1: even have lenses like and in the commercial you'll say like,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what I wear when fighting isis like
Speaker 1: if you want you got to block out those negatory
Speaker 1: peripheral zones with these bars. They're tactical, like yeah, just
Speaker 1: make up some trigger words and helps you shoot one
Speaker 1: thousand percent better. What was it? Time? It works every time?
Speaker 1: Order now and it comes with a free iis hunting permit.
Speaker 1: People do dig the ice a sonic permit. I see
Speaker 1: it all the time, see on cars all the time
Speaker 1: and usually it will be like a trump sticker n
Speaker 1: R A stickers hot dogs. Get your hot dogs. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks as always Kurt, and we'll definitely have you back soon.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you guys for good talking with you.
Speaker 1: Thanks man. So as a reminder for all of those
Speaker 1: who are listening, for a limited time you can receive
Speaker 1: a fifty percent scounted membership to softwarep TV, our channel
Speaker 1: that offers the most exclusive shows, documentaries and interviews covering
Speaker 1: the most exciting military content today. Software TV is premier show.
Speaker 1: Training Cell follows former special operations forces as they participate
Speaker 1: in the most advanced training in the country, everything from
Speaker 1: shooting school's, defensive driving, jungle and winter warfare, climbing and
Speaker 1: much more. Again, you can watch this content by subscribing
Speaker 1: to soft rep TV. It's softwarep TV dot us and
Speaker 1: take advantage of a limited time offer a fifty percent
Speaker 1: off your membership. That's only four ninety nine a month.
Speaker 1: And on there. Although you forgot about it is the
Speaker 1: Peshmerga inside the team room which curtis on So yes,
Speaker 1: you can check that out on softwarep TV. And like
Speaker 1: I said, if you want to just hear the audio
Speaker 1: that's actually up on our inside the team room UM channel.
Speaker 1: I have all the audio strip and people will actually
Speaker 1: have commented before they're like, why does the audio suck
Speaker 1: on this one? Well, we didn't like a full camera staff.
Speaker 1: There wasn't Nick kill and Drew Wallace. It was me
Speaker 1: and a camera and a and like one external mike,
Speaker 1: and it was yeah, you made it work though it
Speaker 1: was it was in the field improvised. But I mean
Speaker 1: there's some really cool stuff in there. It's you know,
Speaker 1: me and Kurt and Joey talking about being a foreign
Speaker 1: volunteer in this war overseas. You know, it's like modern
Speaker 1: day you know, you know the Americans who went and
Speaker 1: volunteered in the Spanish Civil War or something like that,
Speaker 1: or you know you think about like congo mercenaries or something.
Speaker 1: You know. So, I mean, I think it's interesting and
Speaker 1: I should through out there. Joey not to be confused
Speaker 1: by Joey L who's been on the podcast. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: Joey L is a photographer. We're talking about a different
Speaker 1: Joey who was Kurt's friend that was over there and
Speaker 1: kurtis stand with him. And if you watch it, if
Speaker 1: you if you watch it, on Software TV. Kurt is
Speaker 1: the guy with the gun tattoo on his arm? Do
Speaker 1: you know what does it funk around? It's true, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta be a badass to do that. Um so.
Speaker 1: And also, if you haven't gotten a chance to check
Speaker 1: out the softwarep Crate Club, you're definitely gonna want to
Speaker 1: do that asap. It's a subscription get a box of badass,
Speaker 1: tactical and survival gear delivered to your door every month.
Speaker 1: Here's the kicker. All of the gears handpicked and tested
Speaker 1: by former special ops guys, so you know you're gonna
Speaker 1: get quality gear that's gonna work when you need it to.
Speaker 1: Creates we've sent in the past have included gear like
Speaker 1: custom knives, multi tools, fire starters, a d C med kits,
Speaker 1: and other kick ass stuff. You don't just get great
Speaker 1: gear with your subscription, you're also supporting a veteran owned
Speaker 1: and run company. To subscribe and start getting your gear,
Speaker 1: visit Create Club dot us. We also have gift options available.
Speaker 1: That's Create Club dot Us. A lot of great stuff
Speaker 1: coming for the Create Club. I know Scott Whittner has
Speaker 1: been hard at work, and next episode we have Shannon
Speaker 1: Miller coming on who's I'm apparently not supposed to say
Speaker 1: exactly wherever. It has worked at several alphabet agencies and
Speaker 1: uh is in the intelligence field. We'll be able to
Speaker 1: talk about Korea, right, Yeah, I definitely will talk about
Speaker 1: North Korea. UM and a colleague of James Powell. So
Speaker 1: we're excited for that. That's the next episode, and a
Speaker 1: lot of other great stuff coming up, including Jack Divine
Speaker 1: in studio this time. Yeah. I honestly think between UM,
Speaker 1: Mike Vining and Jack Divine, those were two of the
Speaker 1: best episodes that we've done recently. So I'm just excited
Speaker 1: to have Jack Divine back in studio, well in studio
Speaker 1: this time for the first time. UM. And then you
Speaker 1: also Fox Strotten Candahar on the desk in front of
Speaker 1: us because Dwayne Evans will be on soon. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be a great interview, I think. Yeah. And as I
Speaker 1: mentioned in a previous episode, I gotta get Pat McNamara
Speaker 1: on here. I've gotten so many people say get pack
Speaker 1: mcnavera on Jason Everman. You said we'll be able to
Speaker 1: have on at some point hopefully, Yeah, I think so. Um,
Speaker 1: that's been a big request. Yeah, in the future, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to line that up, and um, I can't
Speaker 1: promise Pat McNamara, Sorry, he's a great dude. Um, but
Speaker 1: I'll ask the question. We'll see if he's interested. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Odissean is a very good impression of him. Namara. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was doing it in the car with us. I
Speaker 1: would not do a Pat McNamara impression. I met Pat
Speaker 1: in a bar once in North Carolina. Uh, super nice guy,
Speaker 1: but that guy could pick me up and my body
Speaker 1: slamming into the ceiling. Yeah he looks huge. Yeah he's
Speaker 1: he's not that tall, but yeah he's like Jack. Yeah
Speaker 1: he's he's a big guy. I would not want to
Speaker 1: be in a dark alley. I would put him into
Speaker 1: the same category is like Jim West, like do I
Speaker 1: just don't do it? Just don't suck it, don't do it.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to self Rep Radio. New episodes up
Speaker 1: every Wednesday and Friday. For all of the great content
Speaker 1: from our veterman journalists. Join us and become a team
Speaker 1: move member today at soft rep dot com. Follow the
Speaker 1: show on Instagram and Twitter at soft rep Radio, and
Speaker 1: be sure to also check out the Power of False
Speaker 1: podcast hosted by Hurricane Group CEO and Navy Seal Sniper
Speaker 1: instructor Brandon Webb, M