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Speaker 1: Now we have the author of War Story, David Richardson
Speaker 1: coming in studio. Jack is here with me, I mean
Speaker 1: in scotto, of course, and uh we have Dennis here
Speaker 1: for the first time. Who's gonna be taken over for
Speaker 1: me on production duties. I mean, you technically were here
Speaker 1: last time, but I figured the audience get acclimated with
Speaker 1: you since you kind of shadowed everything and I was
Speaker 1: I figured I would sit back learn from the master
Speaker 1: now you did a phenomenal job. By the way, I
Speaker 1: want the audience to know that laid it out perfect.
Speaker 1: It really was. I mean, he he gave me the Bible, um,
Speaker 1: not literally the Bible Old Testament, New Testament, but the
Speaker 1: radio Bible. UM came in here, showed me exactly what
Speaker 1: to do, told me how the ropes are running. And
Speaker 1: hopefully it's a seamless transition from you to make Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it will be. I mean, if you, if
Speaker 1: you guys are hearing this show and it sounds good,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be the one who edits and produced the
Speaker 1: whole thing. So if it sounds correct, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of like the whole format, that is thanks to
Speaker 1: this guy. Um. With that, let's get into some different
Speaker 1: things going on. UM, I have some emails. I was
Speaker 1: going to mention that I listened to Tulci Gabard on
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan's podcast. She was on recently. Yes, she was
Speaker 1: on for I mean, it was like a big three
Speaker 1: hour interview. I've listened to probably two thirds of it
Speaker 1: so far. I wasn't as familiar with her as you
Speaker 1: and I have to say, I mean, I like a
Speaker 1: lot of the things she said on foreign policy, and
Speaker 1: it does seem like there's a lot of unfair criticism
Speaker 1: of her being a like supporter of Asade, which I
Speaker 1: think she will probably said the same about you, right,
Speaker 1: but that just because you met with him, they did. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just one of those questions that like
Speaker 1: every let's say, anti dictator, anti anti Saddam action, every
Speaker 1: anti Russian action is not necessarily by default in a
Speaker 1: pro American action. UM. Like, right now we're ramping up
Speaker 1: to go to war with Iran by all indicators, which
Speaker 1: we're gonna get in because we have an email, But
Speaker 1: every anti Iran action is not necessarily pro American. You
Speaker 1: have to keep that in mind. If we get bogged
Speaker 1: down in another fifteen year war over there, that's not
Speaker 1: a good thing for US. UM. And we're gonna get
Speaker 1: right into that in a little bit because we have
Speaker 1: an email about that, and I know you wrote an
Speaker 1: article about that. Um. The other thing I was going
Speaker 1: to mention real quick is speaking of people running for president,
Speaker 1: Mayor du Blasio today, we're recording this just through his
Speaker 1: hat in the race. Did you see the cover of
Speaker 1: the New York Post, Yeah, where it's just a bunch
Speaker 1: of faces laughing. Yeah, I don't. I mean I don't
Speaker 1: expect him to do very well. Yeah. No, and no,
Speaker 1: I mean he doesn't have he doesn't have any wosta
Speaker 1: on the national stage. You know, I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: really gives a ship. I'd say in New York State
Speaker 1: as a whole, he's not very well white. I mean,
Speaker 1: he did get elected in the city and re elected,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but I mean then again, we all, I mean,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is somebody who could who could never get
Speaker 1: elected mayor of New York because people knew people in
Speaker 1: New York knew him too. Well. Yeah, but he got
Speaker 1: himself elected as president. So the dynamics are weird, all right. Well,
Speaker 1: with that, we'll get into some emails here, and the
Speaker 1: first one I'll cover does have to do with Iran.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, because, as I said, you just wrote
Speaker 1: a piece for news Rep titled America's America's war drums
Speaker 1: beat for Iran, And that's exactly what this email is about.
Speaker 1: This one's from Thomas, of course, sent to soft Rep
Speaker 1: dot Radio at soft rep dot com. Jack. With the
Speaker 1: movement of the i r G to the States through
Speaker 1: terror list and the announcement of a carrier strike force
Speaker 1: and bombers headed over to the Middle East because of
Speaker 1: possible Iranian plots. Add the recent sabotage of Saudi oilers.
Speaker 1: Are the war drums beating louder here? And then he
Speaker 1: says Ian, sorry to see you go, good luck with
Speaker 1: future endeavors. Thank you so much, Thomas. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: as for that question, well, I mean I think Uh,
Speaker 1: I think Thomas put all the chess pieces together there
Speaker 1: and can see what's going on. Um, you have these
Speaker 1: things happening in rapid succession. Um. They pushed Maddis out,
Speaker 1: who was a big impotent to any kind of attack
Speaker 1: on Iran. He wasn't gonna he wasn't about expanding the wars. Right,
Speaker 1: we put the I r g C on the Foreign
Speaker 1: Terrorist Organization List the ft O, which makes it a
Speaker 1: lot easier to attack them. Right, they can be attacked
Speaker 1: under them, probably right under they'll they'll fold it right
Speaker 1: under the a U m F, the Authorization for the
Speaker 1: Use of Military Force that we passed after nine eleven,
Speaker 1: and it's been used to prosecute the entire war on
Speaker 1: terror Uh, from yem into Afghanistan, to Iraq to Syria.
Speaker 1: So then you have these other things happening. UM Israel
Speaker 1: telling the United States that we have intelligence dot Iran
Speaker 1: is potting an attack against you guys. There's no proof
Speaker 1: of that whatsoever. It's just like some innuendo. It's about
Speaker 1: as credible as the yellow Cake claims in Iraq. UM.
Speaker 1: In response, we send a carrier group into the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 1: Very very provocative action, UM, but not necessarily wrong in
Speaker 1: of itself. But you can see that we're trying to
Speaker 1: escalate tensions. We're trying to provoke things there. UH. Then
Speaker 1: you have the sabotage incidents of sabotage against oil tankers
Speaker 1: in the UAE, UM, against Saudi oil tankers off the
Speaker 1: coast of the uae and then actual oil tankers belonging
Speaker 1: to the u a e UM. Who's behind that sabotage
Speaker 1: we don't know, but publicly Iran is catching the blame
Speaker 1: for it. So we can see all of these things
Speaker 1: happening in fairly rapid succession of one one another. And
Speaker 1: I honestly think that UM John Bolton and his boys
Speaker 1: are trying to provoke a sort of Gulf of Tonking
Speaker 1: type UH situation, which was what led to the escalation
Speaker 1: of the Vietnam War under the Nixon administration. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, if you keep pushing and pushing
Speaker 1: the Iranian regime, you're basically just waiting for them to
Speaker 1: funk up, to make up a false start or a
Speaker 1: bad move, to screw something up, and then we find
Speaker 1: ourselves very quickly into some sort of a shooting war,
Speaker 1: which would probably start with it'll they'll sell it to
Speaker 1: the American public as limited strikes against I R g
Speaker 1: C targets in Iran. Where it goes from there, I mean,
Speaker 1: once we we initiate a war with Iran, it's going
Speaker 1: to plunge that entire region into chaos all over again.
Speaker 1: Um and where that war ends, we have no idea.
Speaker 1: The Iranians almost certainly have sleeper cells here in the
Speaker 1: United States, and I guarantee you if it becomes an
Speaker 1: existential crisis for the Iranian regime, they will launch attacks
Speaker 1: against soft targets in the West. Again, I cannot tell
Speaker 1: you or predict exactly how it's all gonna go down.
Speaker 1: No one can. And that's the scary thing about it,
Speaker 1: Like we don't know where the bottom is. And that's
Speaker 1: what I see happening right now. Yeah, scary things and
Speaker 1: read the piece as well on News Rep America's war
Speaker 1: drums beat for Iran. It's up right now. You just
Speaker 1: wrote that or it just went up yesterday. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that'll be up where it is up right now on
Speaker 1: the news rep dot com. Uh. Second email is from
Speaker 1: Matthew Ryan. First off, I would just like to say
Speaker 1: that I love the work that you guys do a
Speaker 1: news Rep. Keep up the good work. Second, I want
Speaker 1: to wish Ian well and his future endeavors away from
Speaker 1: News Rep, as well as tell Jack that I just
Speaker 1: finished Murphy's Law and I really enjoyed it. They we're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of that, thank you. Finally, I have
Speaker 1: a question that hopefully Jack can answer. You have referenced
Speaker 1: quote checkpoint pasta multiple times when talking about Somalia, but
Speaker 1: I can't find anything about it on the internet. It
Speaker 1: sounds like the Italians were doing some shady stuff in
Speaker 1: Somalia at the time. Can you please explain what checkpoint
Speaker 1: it Pasta was. This seems like something that would make
Speaker 1: a good article for Jack to write, given his history
Speaker 1: of writing stories about obscure military history that nobody knows about,
Speaker 1: like Debt k Debt, a Blue Light and the nine
Speaker 1: Panama Prison riot. Thanks Matt Ryan. Yeah, um, it could
Speaker 1: be a topic. Checkpoint Pasta was just a checkpoint that
Speaker 1: was manned by the Italian forces and Somalia back in
Speaker 1: back in like when all that stuff was going down,
Speaker 1: and um, there were Italian special Forces there and the
Speaker 1: checkpoint came under attack at one point there was some
Speaker 1: kind of firefight, and I would have to do a
Speaker 1: little bit more research, Like you should be able to
Speaker 1: find some information online if you look for it, um,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, so I'd have to research that. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of other smaller actions that would
Speaker 1: be interesting research, but yeah, that's one of them. Um.
Speaker 1: I know the people I could go and talk to
Speaker 1: about it, or I could even get um, what was
Speaker 1: his name, Polo Palumbo. He wrote an entire book about
Speaker 1: the Italian Special Forces unit like their equivalent of Delta Force,
Speaker 1: their counter terrorism unit. Um, but it's only available in Italian.
Speaker 1: I have a copy of it, but I can my
Speaker 1: Italian is not so good. I can't really read it.
Speaker 1: I could ask him. He's written articles for US. I
Speaker 1: have Benny translated. I could I could ask him to
Speaker 1: write an article for US about it. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not a bad suggestion. That would be cool, all right?
Speaker 1: And then one last one here from Onna, Hey guys,
Speaker 1: who writes to us all the time. Hey guys, I
Speaker 1: have two questions for Jack regarding Benghazi attack. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he cites this article from military dot Com reading it yesterday.
Speaker 1: So it's called untold heroism behind marine's secret Navy cross Benghazi.
Speaker 1: Is that the one you've seen? Okay? Uh? So two
Speaker 1: questions here. Question one, it tells us of an infantry
Speaker 1: assault marine assigned to a Delta attachment, asked out of ignorance,
Speaker 1: alone and no disrespect. What can a marine bring to
Speaker 1: a group of Delta guys? Question to the article says
Speaker 1: they carried the bodies of the dead down the ladder.
Speaker 1: In the book thirteen hours were told by one of
Speaker 1: the authors the bodies were thrown over the edge of
Speaker 1: the roof. What's your take on this discrepancy? Thanks Jack,
Speaker 1: And he says, I've listened to Murphy's Law twice. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a lot of listening to you to
Speaker 1: listen to the whole book twice. Uh. And everyone should
Speaker 1: get the book. All the best for the future to you, Ian,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And that's from Oah. Well, thanks
Speaker 1: for the kind words. UM, I've heard a couple of
Speaker 1: people who are like, I'm rereading your book. It's like
Speaker 1: very humbling and flattering to hear all of that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's very few books, to be honest, I've read twice.
Speaker 1: I ever listened to a book twice, and I've had
Speaker 1: a lot of people tell me like, this is unlike
Speaker 1: every other military memoir I've read, which I mean, it's
Speaker 1: touching for me. So thank you for that. UM. In
Speaker 1: regardless to this question, UM, what can a marine bring
Speaker 1: to a unit like Delta Force, Well, I would humbly
Speaker 1: go back and recommend to Soft Rep radio episodes done
Speaker 1: with Todd A Pulsky and you will find out Todd
Speaker 1: was a marine who went and served as a Delta rader.
Speaker 1: He was a troop commander and before um we ever
Speaker 1: had him on the show, I asked around like, Hey,
Speaker 1: is this guy legit? And you know, my contacts got
Speaker 1: back to me says yes, he was a jaysk operator
Speaker 1: and he was a good dude. We liked him. He's
Speaker 1: invited me over to coaster. UM, so I think that
Speaker 1: there there's that there are a lot of marines who
Speaker 1: you know, they bring a lot to the table. But
Speaker 1: also it's part of an exchange. It's an exchange of
Speaker 1: ideas as well. So you're bringing a marine in, you're
Speaker 1: letting him serve in the unit, and then you're sending
Speaker 1: him back, So there's, um, there can be some exchange
Speaker 1: of lessons learned as well. You know, I remember Todd said, um,
Speaker 1: you know, when he came back from his tour there,
Speaker 1: he said, the biggest lesson I learned was relationships. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't about like, you know, cool guy blowing down
Speaker 1: doors and shooting people in the face. He said, it
Speaker 1: was about the importance of maintaining and building relationships. So
Speaker 1: there's a there's a little takeaway from that. As far
Speaker 1: as what happened in Benghazi with a different this is
Speaker 1: a different marine UM named Jolly Tate, as was in
Speaker 1: the Military dot Com article names him who was awarded
Speaker 1: a Distinguished Service Cross for his actions at Benghazi. So
Speaker 1: another marine who was UM serving in the unit was
Speaker 1: one of two unit members who responded to what happened
Speaker 1: in Benghazi, and they got to the n X after
Speaker 1: the initial attack was over at the embassy, they got
Speaker 1: to the annex just around I think at the just
Speaker 1: as the mortars were falling on the on the compound.
Speaker 1: And I don't think there's a discrepancy. I think what
Speaker 1: happened was that there was an injured GRS UH service member.
Speaker 1: So GRS. What is the c I A protective staff
Speaker 1: guys that you can go back what two interviews back
Speaker 1: and listen to our podcast with UM Tom Pacora, who
Speaker 1: was one of those c I A protective guys and
Speaker 1: what you learn all about what they do. Um. One
Speaker 1: of them was injured up on the rooftop um from
Speaker 1: the mortar that fell and killed Glenn Doherty UH, another
Speaker 1: GRS guy, former Navy seal who we knew UM. I
Speaker 1: believe the marine, the marine who was serving as a
Speaker 1: Jaysak operator, tied that injured GRS dude to his back
Speaker 1: like with rope as I understand it, and climbed down
Speaker 1: the ladder carrying him down. I think the bodies of
Speaker 1: the dead were thrown off of the roof to get
Speaker 1: them down to the bottom. Now we we can ask
Speaker 1: UM Chris Paranto and get to the bottom of that one.
Speaker 1: But I believe that's where the screpancy is. I think
Speaker 1: the dead were dropped to the bottom to get them
Speaker 1: down off the roof, and I think the guy who
Speaker 1: was injured was carried down. Interesting, all right, so that
Speaker 1: someone answers it. Maybe Chris Berrono could give a full
Speaker 1: answer to that, since we talked to him regularly. And
Speaker 1: I guess that's it. The only other thing that I
Speaker 1: was wondering before we get over to David Richardson or
Speaker 1: not wondering. I think for the listeners, since you're gonna be,
Speaker 1: you know, an integral part of this podcast, people might
Speaker 1: be wondering your background, Dennis and what you've done. And
Speaker 1: uh so I went to college for production stuff like that,
Speaker 1: went to the Connecticut School of Broadcasting to further that along.
Speaker 1: I've been at Serious x M. I know you were
Speaker 1: there for quite a while. Um so we probably crossed
Speaker 1: paths years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you wouldn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like either of us stand out, but I
Speaker 1: mean I live but I also know uh Ron Bennington,
Speaker 1: which which I worked on The Bennington Show, which was
Speaker 1: a blast. So if Ron's listening, thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Um and then I was over at CBS Sports Radio
Speaker 1: for three and a half years. I want to say,
Speaker 1: and then really, um, live sports radio is a whole
Speaker 1: another animal, as we've talked off air, so getting used
Speaker 1: to that. And then I worked with Taz, the former
Speaker 1: professional wrestler. I did his live daily video and audio show,
Speaker 1: which we turned into he gets mad if you say
Speaker 1: podcast because it's not a podcast because it's live, but
Speaker 1: his live audio video. So I did the turnaround for that,
Speaker 1: and that was an opportunity that was otherworldly. So I
Speaker 1: was doing that and then so the ad for this applied,
Speaker 1: got the gig and here we are. So that's what
Speaker 1: got me to right here right now. Awesome, happy to
Speaker 1: be a board. By the way, I should I feel
Speaker 1: like I should mention that, oh yeah, man, now this
Speaker 1: is cool and and I'm glad they have someone of
Speaker 1: your experience, you know, taking over. I told Nick I
Speaker 1: wanted this transition to be as seamless as possible. So
Speaker 1: hopefully I can filly in shoes for the fans listening.
Speaker 1: If I can't, feel free to to let me know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they would. Can they Do you have Twitter?
Speaker 1: And I do have Twitter? I do it. I see,
Speaker 1: I'm not very active. I'll be active with the with
Speaker 1: the show's Twitter and um Instagram obviously, but my own
Speaker 1: personal Twitter is at Dennis Underscore Jones four four because
Speaker 1: there's forty three other Dennis Jones and the Instagram is
Speaker 1: the same. So Dennis Underscore Jones four four. Cool man. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, excited to have you on board. And right
Speaker 1: now we're going to get over to David Richardson his
Speaker 1: new book once again, his War Story. Uh so, let's
Speaker 1: get right into it with David joining us in studio.
Speaker 1: In studio with us for the first time. David Richardson,
Speaker 1: marine combat veteran painter and the author of his novel
Speaker 1: War Story, which is based around a marine and an
Speaker 1: Iraqi Defense Forces lieutenant colonel willing to put their lives
Speaker 1: on the line and come together in a pursuit for
Speaker 1: an ideal. And the interesting thing about this book is
Speaker 1: it's like two guys from completely separate cultures coming together
Speaker 1: through war. Indeed, and it seems like the American might
Speaker 1: loosely be based off you as a painter. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, full disclosure, most first novels you may
Speaker 1: be able to test this form autobio autobiographical. This one's
Speaker 1: probably And the reason is, you know, you start writing
Speaker 1: and you've got a bunch of stuff you want to dump, uh,
Speaker 1: and you kind of get it out in the first
Speaker 1: novel that way, your second, third, fourth, and fifth novels
Speaker 1: are actually fiction rather than so much heavy autobiography autobiography,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it is autobiographical, uh, and some of the
Speaker 1: most of the characters are based on real people. I
Speaker 1: think it's a good thing though, I mean writing fiction
Speaker 1: and when you write, when you write fiction, to draw
Speaker 1: on your own experiences rather than you know, and I've
Speaker 1: done both of course, but um as opposed to like
Speaker 1: doing research. A lot of novelists go out and do
Speaker 1: tons and tons of research and pour that into your book.
Speaker 1: But I mean, doesn't it bring something special to it
Speaker 1: when you're drawing in your own personal experiences and observations. Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: indeed it does. And I think there's because there's a
Speaker 1: tone that you can give it. Essentially, you can people
Speaker 1: can read between the lines when it's your own experience
Speaker 1: because you give it that tone. Um. And I was
Speaker 1: chating with somebody the other day and one of the
Speaker 1: biggest bestseller genres out there is, uh, like young adult fiction.
Speaker 1: And there's guys my age writing young adult fiction. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they pull that off so or how
Speaker 1: people read it at our age? Yeah, yeah, how people
Speaker 1: read it? So I don't know. But I could read
Speaker 1: my book I think, you know, and get something from
Speaker 1: it at the age I am. Um. So yeah. I
Speaker 1: think having lived it helped me lend a tone and
Speaker 1: allows people to kind of read between the lines and
Speaker 1: match things up. Some things I left a lot out,
Speaker 1: but I think that part that I left out gets
Speaker 1: in there by inference. Had I used a lot of
Speaker 1: adjectives verbs and been a little bit more wordy, probably
Speaker 1: would have been eight hundred pages and nobody would have
Speaker 1: read it. So I chopped it down to four hundred,
Speaker 1: got rid of the adjectives and adverbs, and that's what
Speaker 1: you got. And you were saying to me prior to
Speaker 1: us recording, there's a reason that you chose not to
Speaker 1: do a memo or not to do an autobiography. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the reason I didn't do an autobiography was because
Speaker 1: it was my first foray into writing, and I kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to show that I could. I could write
Speaker 1: a novel, which is uh a lot harder than writing
Speaker 1: an autobiography. And there's a this is a golden fleece novel,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially have hero that goes away, uh and
Speaker 1: he comes back with an answer to a question, or
Speaker 1: whether it's gold he comes back, whether whatever, he comes
Speaker 1: back with a question. It's hard to build uh that
Speaker 1: in a novel. It's much easier to write a linear memoir. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, having not written before, I was afraid
Speaker 1: if I wrote an autobiography, Uh, it would have been
Speaker 1: something like you know, the autobiography of Dave Richardson. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know subtitle who Gives a Damn? Uh. So I
Speaker 1: wanted people to actually read the thing and get through it.
Speaker 1: I tried to make it a page turner. And that's
Speaker 1: why I wrote a novel. Vice. A memoir was the
Speaker 1: cover drawn by you, because I know your background and
Speaker 1: art so so indeed it was the cover, the great cover.
Speaker 1: We thank you the cover. Um. I. When I was
Speaker 1: in Ramadi, the first time I went on patrol, I
Speaker 1: looked up to see a billboard painted on what looked
Speaker 1: to me like a piece of plywood of a man
Speaker 1: hoisting a barbell over his head. Uh. And over the
Speaker 1: months that billboard just disintegrated, essentially from random gunfire. So
Speaker 1: when I came back, I wrote the book. Somebody read
Speaker 1: the book and they said you should do paintings of
Speaker 1: muscle Man, and I kind of scratched my head. And
Speaker 1: the next day I called him back and I said,
Speaker 1: I got it. I'm gonna do muscle Man, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it in a series of three paintings. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have the one I saw in January of two
Speaker 1: thousand six that wasn't very shot up, the one from
Speaker 1: two thousand or March two thousand six, which is that
Speaker 1: one on the cover, which is kind of shot up,
Speaker 1: and then the one from May of two thousand six,
Speaker 1: which is essentially there wasn't much left of it. So
Speaker 1: I painted it and then eventually I put it on
Speaker 1: the cover of the novel. As a novelist, what was
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of clear on one sense, but
Speaker 1: there's clearly some sort of alliteration you were going towards with, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know that that it disintegrates over time? Oh indeed, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there's two there's two pieces of that, so uh,
Speaker 1: it disintegrated over time, which kind of showed what was
Speaker 1: happening in Iraq overall, but what what was happening specifically
Speaker 1: in Ramadi between probably the summer two thousand five or
Speaker 1: late two thousand four, right on through the Sunni awakening,
Speaker 1: uh soon after I left in late two thousand six.
Speaker 1: But there's also another piece of that. The Great Gatsby
Speaker 1: uh Dr Eckelberg sign got with the glasses. He's he's
Speaker 1: a he's a eye doctor. And as they're driving out
Speaker 1: to Long Island, I think it is, there's that sign
Speaker 1: staring at them, and it's mentioned a couple of times
Speaker 1: by f Scott Scott Fitzgerald. I didn't realize I had
Speaker 1: used that until later I realized, Oh, yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the parallel. So yeah, two different things, one Ramadi
Speaker 1: disintegrating any other the Great Gatsby. I had, you know,
Speaker 1: a similar experience with miss Wull and going there in
Speaker 1: two thousand five and it was pretty beat up, and
Speaker 1: then going back in two thousand nine and it was
Speaker 1: really beat up. And now I haven't been back there since.
Speaker 1: But I mean, we all know what happened in missoul
Speaker 1: I mean that the place is just leveled. Now. I
Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna have the Vietnam experience that John
Speaker 1: McCain had. We would go back to Hanoi and you know,
Speaker 1: it actually looks decent, and that's not gonna happen in
Speaker 1: the next thirty years. I think it's gonna be torn
Speaker 1: up for a while. I've often imagined, you know, if
Speaker 1: you know, you and I flew over there for a vacation,
Speaker 1: you know what it would look like. It's definitely not
Speaker 1: what our grandfathers or my father would have seen if
Speaker 1: he had gone back to say Berlin, Berlin in you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, where they had actually cleaned it up
Speaker 1: from what it was in nineteen or uh, Japan for
Speaker 1: that matter. But yeah, we're not gonna experience that. I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna stay like it is, which is kind
Speaker 1: of sad actually. To rewind a little bit, can you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about your own experience, how like,
Speaker 1: how did this journey begin that eventually led to the
Speaker 1: novel with you joining the Marine Corps and uh so,
Speaker 1: um I joined the Marine Corps in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: I was actually painting in Chicago. Um I went to
Speaker 1: the Army and uh they said, well, we can't guarantee
Speaker 1: that you know, we can you'll you'll be carrying a
Speaker 1: rifle in combat. I want the Navy. They kind of
Speaker 1: gave me a little bit of the run around, and
Speaker 1: I went to the Marine Corps and they said, we're
Speaker 1: the kind of guy we're looking for. So I joined
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps. I was still painting when when I
Speaker 1: was in the Marine Corps, which my peers found somewhat odd.
Speaker 1: But what's what's different about that is over time they
Speaker 1: all kind of accepted it. It was like Richards has
Speaker 1: been in an oddball. Uh, he's a pretty good marine
Speaker 1: paints like Private Joker, Yeah, a little bit like that.
Speaker 1: So and they kind of accepted that. Uh. And as
Speaker 1: time went on, you know, I've ended up. Uh. Just
Speaker 1: the book takes begins as I get to the jor
Speaker 1: or this character gets to the George Washington University where
Speaker 1: he is a professor of Naval science, which is a
Speaker 1: high fluting term because I don't have an advanced degree.
Speaker 1: And I was kind of chuckled when I looked at
Speaker 1: my card and it said I was a professor. I
Speaker 1: was just a guy who had read a lot of books. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I taught there. And that's right when the
Speaker 1: war was kicking off. And like most Marines, most rangers
Speaker 1: s guys in the second everyone when there's a war
Speaker 1: on they want to be there, so Uh. The autobiographical
Speaker 1: part of the novel is where I pick up and
Speaker 1: he's trying to get to war, and he's painting and
Speaker 1: showing his work in Washington, d C. And he runs
Speaker 1: a foul with uh some art galleries that owe him money.
Speaker 1: So he goes and gets a lawyer and he goes
Speaker 1: on and eventually he goes to Campbell June and then
Speaker 1: goes onto the war. Also in the first part of
Speaker 1: the novel, I introduced the character of Colonel Abdul Majid,
Speaker 1: who I knew Magid, and Mage told me what happened
Speaker 1: to him before we met, all the way back to
Speaker 1: the eighties when they were in the Iran I Rock War,
Speaker 1: then the first Gulf War, uh, and then what I call,
Speaker 1: you know, the Wars of nine eleven. So he kind
Speaker 1: of told me that and I kind of captured that
Speaker 1: in the first half of the book, and it goes
Speaker 1: on from there. We meet and it would kind of
Speaker 1: become fast friends and kind of get the mission done.
Speaker 1: So then what was your your experience again that bleeds
Speaker 1: into this novel um in Ramadhi working with mad so
Speaker 1: that that's my experience with them, and of course there's
Speaker 1: a big cultural divide, and my experience with them was
Speaker 1: they were undermanned, undertrained, and undersupported. And I'd be I
Speaker 1: mean by that that the war, as all wars since
Speaker 1: UH World War Two, in the Korean War, wars are
Speaker 1: always political, but I think after World War Two and
Speaker 1: I honestly believe the Korean War is the real first
Speaker 1: modern or postmodern war because it is so political. There's
Speaker 1: many political considerations we had to we had to look
Speaker 1: at in Korea that we didn't have to look at
Speaker 1: in World War Two. So there was a lot of
Speaker 1: political things going on in UH. The Iraqi army, the
Speaker 1: struggle between the Sunnes, the Koords, and the Shias. That
Speaker 1: was always a dynamic. Masi was a professional soldier UH,
Speaker 1: so I was able to relate to him on that level.
Speaker 1: And I was also able to relate to him because
Speaker 1: he was he was struggling so hard to keep his
Speaker 1: unit together. So that dynamic all kind of came together,
Speaker 1: and there was there was one odd thing I think
Speaker 1: about mag and I um ms was surprised that I
Speaker 1: could talk about the Old Testament and we don't realize
Speaker 1: how much the UH UH Muslim culture is actually steeped
Speaker 1: in the Old Testament. And we had a conversation one
Speaker 1: time that could would have may have gotten bad if
Speaker 1: I had been a religious fanatic, or wouldn't have gone
Speaker 1: anywhere had I not known anything about the Old Testament,
Speaker 1: And that focused on who was the sacrifice of Abraham?
Speaker 1: Was it Ishmael as he said, or was it Isaac
Speaker 1: as you know, essentially Christianity and Judaism believes. I didn't
Speaker 1: make it a big deal. He said it was Ishmael,
Speaker 1: and I left it at that, So you kind of
Speaker 1: get the dynamic. And we both liked to I smoked cigars,
Speaker 1: he smoked cigarettes, and we both rank tea. Uh So
Speaker 1: we kind of had a pretty good dynamic. And one
Speaker 1: thing I never did to him, uh I never demeaned
Speaker 1: him in any way because they weren't his unit wasn't
Speaker 1: that great. That's what we were there for. And I
Speaker 1: think he sensed that it was kind of like reading
Speaker 1: between the lines. I understood his plight. I don't know how.
Speaker 1: I think it was from reading so much about the
Speaker 1: Confederate Army, probably, but I understood his plight with an undermanned,
Speaker 1: under equipped army that had too big of a mission
Speaker 1: to complete. They had that incredible amount of responsibility to
Speaker 1: try to stop their country from coming apart of the seams.
Speaker 1: But as you said, like and I had, I was
Speaker 1: having this conversation with a friend yesterday. Their government was
Speaker 1: so corrupt. They were getting no bullets, they were getting
Speaker 1: no fuel, not even food and water. Like how I
Speaker 1: mean you're you were a marine, you know, you know
Speaker 1: without a logistics line, how long is the fight gonna last? Right?
Speaker 1: They didn't have any of that. And that really comes
Speaker 1: out in the book, by the way, And in fact,
Speaker 1: that's the mystery in the book. There's a thing about
Speaker 1: American dollar bills. And remember the palette of hundred dollar
Speaker 1: bills that got lost, the one that was drawn from
Speaker 1: the federal reserve. And I think I calculated the money
Speaker 1: it was like it was it was, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: It was trillions of dollars. They just got lost on
Speaker 1: a palette somewhere, got lost, right, and it floated into
Speaker 1: the rack. Kind know what happened to it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they had horrible problems. There were there there were warehouses
Speaker 1: full of gear that we had given them that they
Speaker 1: never saw. I don't know what happened to it. There
Speaker 1: were there were vehicles coming into the country that nobody
Speaker 1: accounted for. So uh, I don't know what the parallel is,
Speaker 1: but imagining it just can't imagine what it's just flooding
Speaker 1: someplace with a with a ton of cash and a
Speaker 1: ton of equipment. They had no way to absorb it,
Speaker 1: and it really didn't have the culture to absorb it. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they really struggled with that getting paid. There's a
Speaker 1: whole thing about ghost Jundy, which essentially means June do
Speaker 1: you have on the books? Uh, you still have on
Speaker 1: the books although they're dead or they deserted, and commanders
Speaker 1: twelve year old daughter is on the payroll right right,
Speaker 1: so you're collecting the money for him. And there was
Speaker 1: really no account ability. They didn't have uh you know,
Speaker 1: they couldn't go to the cash machine. They had to
Speaker 1: drive to Baghdad to sandbag full of money. You remember
Speaker 1: the bag full of money. So they would come back
Speaker 1: and they would have these bag full of moneys and
Speaker 1: other advisors. I wasn't really like this, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: would really dig into the ship about that. I never
Speaker 1: said a word, And it's not like I condoned all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Look, it was a different culture. They had
Speaker 1: their own way of doing business. We've got our own
Speaker 1: way of doing business that looks kind of funny to foreigners,
Speaker 1: and some of it can be viewed as corruption and
Speaker 1: nepotism and all that. They had their own version of it.
Speaker 1: I never dug into it. I just let it be.
Speaker 1: I tried to get him to reduce his ghost you
Speaker 1: any that has comes out in the book, But I
Speaker 1: didn't criticize for him for that, and I didn't demean
Speaker 1: him for that. Well, what was the mission you guys
Speaker 1: were trying to accomplish? Because this was early on the war,
Speaker 1: you said, right like two thousand four, it was two
Speaker 1: thousand six, So two six. We're just trying to get
Speaker 1: our head out of our asset. That's really what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do. There's this there's a great scene in
Speaker 1: Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen shows up and he's at
Speaker 1: this base in Vietnam and there's a broken down helicopter
Speaker 1: and there's some playboy bunnies in there, and they're they're
Speaker 1: kind of stranded, you know, so no telling what's going on,
Speaker 1: and and Martin Sheen's walking in the rain and he's
Speaker 1: smoking a cigarette or something and he says to some
Speaker 1: trooper He's like, hey, who's in charge here? And looks
Speaker 1: at he goes ship. Sir, I thought you were that.
Speaker 1: There was a little bit of that going on in
Speaker 1: Ramadi when we got there. So we we flew in
Speaker 1: and our mission was to team up with train and
Speaker 1: fight alongside the Iraqi soldiers and specifically Colonel Magid's battalion.
Speaker 1: So we went to uh Ramadi. We weren't in campermanty.
Speaker 1: We actually outside the fence and that's what we did
Speaker 1: in Ramadi, and then we moved to Fellusiam. And when
Speaker 1: I say that was our mission, uh, no one told
Speaker 1: us how to do that mission. And in our case,
Speaker 1: we found out we were going in October, we kept
Speaker 1: waiting for the team him to get together or the
Speaker 1: band to get back together. Uh. And we didn't get
Speaker 1: together till the first of December, and we left on
Speaker 1: twelve January. So there's only six weeks that my team
Speaker 1: got to know each other and we flew in and
Speaker 1: did this mission. Uh. And then the other thing is
Speaker 1: no one really told us what to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course I was a professional soldier, I was a major,
Speaker 1: but I remember my lieutenants looking at me and saying, sir,
Speaker 1: what the fuck you know, how are we gonna do this? Uh?
Speaker 1: And I said, look, man, you've been trained by the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. You've gone to the basic school. All of
Speaker 1: us know the basics of being a riflemen. We will
Speaker 1: get this done. You know the fundamentals of rifle markmanship,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're gonna use. And you know, and
Speaker 1: you know, instead of looking at me like I had
Speaker 1: a dick going on my forehead, they kind of gave
Speaker 1: me the thumbs up and said Roger, sir, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a reasonable plan. But that was our plan. That's it.
Speaker 1: That was gonna be my next question. Actually, and I
Speaker 1: don't mean this as a as a cheap shot at
Speaker 1: the Marines by any stretch of the imagination. But there
Speaker 1: were a lot of units, I mean, the bulk of
Speaker 1: our military. They went over there to train, equip, advise
Speaker 1: their around key counterparts. And this was traditionally a special
Speaker 1: Forces mission. You have highly trained special Forces team to
Speaker 1: go and do these missions. And because of the the
Speaker 1: numbers of Iraqis, we were working with the conventional forces,
Speaker 1: conventional American forces, UM subsumed the bulk of that mission,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to ask you what that was
Speaker 1: like to have marines doing this. I mean, was it
Speaker 1: something that they had a difficult time adapting to or
Speaker 1: did they I noticed that the younger conventional troops jumped
Speaker 1: into it really easily, and it was kind of the older,
Speaker 1: institutionalized ones that had problems with it. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: think you're getting the difference between a tight ass marine
Speaker 1: and I mean, you've known the type of your rangers,
Speaker 1: you know the types, and somebody that can swing a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, and you know, kind of make it
Speaker 1: happen in a fuzzy situation. And there were varying degrees
Speaker 1: of that in the Marine Corps. Some of us were
Speaker 1: kind of I mean I was a little bit of
Speaker 1: an oddball anywhere. Anyway. I was a painter, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I went I kind of did this mission, and
Speaker 1: you know, later on people told me like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: just heard about you know, what a good job he did.
Speaker 1: I kind of scratched my head. I thought, well, shot,
Speaker 1: I was just there doing my job. Some guys couldn't
Speaker 1: hack it. Some guys went over the top about trying
Speaker 1: to stop corruption, you know, or just training the Iraqis
Speaker 1: and letting them go out into combat by themselves. I
Speaker 1: saw that in both the Army and the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: So that was a lot personality driven, and there wasn't
Speaker 1: not There wasn't a whole lot of selection, like who's
Speaker 1: cookie enough to go get this done and make it
Speaker 1: happen right, Because if you're looking at a guy that's
Speaker 1: very concerned about his career getting the right slot, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it be a battalon XO or the operations officer, uh,
Speaker 1: overly concerned about those things, he's probably not gonna do
Speaker 1: real well. But if you take a guy who's maybe
Speaker 1: done a few shady things, whether it's inside the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps outside the Marine Corps, put him in that situation
Speaker 1: and he's and he's mature. Hell, I was fourty years old.
Speaker 1: We just got it done, and we kind of made
Speaker 1: it up as we went. Some of those guys us
Speaker 1: who are like all dress right, dress like they just
Speaker 1: can't handle the like, oh my god, these guys don't
Speaker 1: pull security. You know that, we can't. We haven't shoot
Speaker 1: their a ks. They're not on paper. These dudes don't
Speaker 1: even have compasses. What the fuck? Yeah, look there, they
Speaker 1: can load and shoot their rifle. As long as they're
Speaker 1: not shooting at each other, shooting all those civilians. We
Speaker 1: point them in the general direction and get them going. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, they wore six different types of uniforms. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know that freaks some people out. They didn't pt
Speaker 1: Did you ever see him doing jumping jack's. There's a
Speaker 1: video online that shows tenner rocket troops and bless their hearts, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all. I guarantee if I said right now, if
Speaker 1: I got us all in formation, we could all do
Speaker 1: pretty much the same type of jumping jack They ten
Speaker 1: different Iraqi soldiers did ten different types of jumping jumping jack's.
Speaker 1: They're just not part of their culture. But you know,
Speaker 1: kind of going on in patrol, picking yourself up a
Speaker 1: chicken and carrying it back and coming back with a
Speaker 1: watermelon and come back with the guy you were looking for.
Speaker 1: They could do that, And that's all I really wanted.
Speaker 1: I was not trying to make the Marines. I wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to make up army rangers uh or or Navy seals.
Speaker 1: I was there to train them to get these basic
Speaker 1: things done. Despite the fact that they lacked a lot
Speaker 1: of the gear. Uh. I mean, you know, they didn't
Speaker 1: have any rpts. All they had were pistols and a
Speaker 1: K forty. We didn't give them grenades. Uh so we
Speaker 1: didn't have any of that stuff. You know, we had
Speaker 1: plenty of that type of gear and they didn't. Most
Speaker 1: of them didn't have, uh, sappy plates. Eventually they got
Speaker 1: some type of savvy plates. Um some of the mostly officers,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say most, A lot of the officers took
Speaker 1: their sappy plates out and that's where they put the
Speaker 1: American money or the money they got extra from the
Speaker 1: mod by the way, which was definitely uh the problem
Speaker 1: if you got shot in the chess and you don't
Speaker 1: have your sappy plate and instead you had, you know,
Speaker 1: American money in there or Iraqi money whatever. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're real tight ass, it was not the job
Speaker 1: for you. I guess what I'm trying to say. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't a real tight ass, and I think most
Speaker 1: of my buddies could attest the originally wasn't too much
Speaker 1: of a tight ask. So then what was the genesis
Speaker 1: of the novel? I mean, this was an experience you
Speaker 1: had that obviously, you know, it meant a lot to you.
Speaker 1: It resonated with you, probably an important moment in your
Speaker 1: life that you wanted to capture in a book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: indeed it did. Uh. So I had had an art
Speaker 1: show here in New York City that didn't go how
Speaker 1: I wanted it to go. So I decided, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: promote my paintings. I'm gonna write a book about it.
Speaker 1: I got about a month into the book and I said,
Speaker 1: the book is not going to be about promoting your paintings.
Speaker 1: The book is going to be about something else. And
Speaker 1: I kind of went off on a stream of consciousness.
Speaker 1: Eventually I figured out I was trying to answer the
Speaker 1: question for myself, a question that probably drove me into
Speaker 1: the service and got me initially as a kid, got
Speaker 1: me interested in the military, and war drove me into
Speaker 1: the service. And I've been trying to answer, which is
Speaker 1: why is man fascinated by war? If you go to
Speaker 1: the toy store right now, about a quarter of the toys,
Speaker 1: whether it's camouflaged as Captain Captain America or it's an
Speaker 1: actual army, men are about some type of warfare. Same
Speaker 1: with games, same with films, same with literature. We are
Speaker 1: fascinated by war. I tried to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of that in my novel. I think I did. Actually
Speaker 1: it took a lot of thinking. I did not try
Speaker 1: to answer the question why is war so horrible? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, why does man kill man? Those are questions,
Speaker 1: you know, why do we go to war? Those are
Speaker 1: questions asked by somebody else, and I think, in many
Speaker 1: cases satisfactorily answered by somebody else. I picked that question
Speaker 1: because it's a question that I had asked myself kind
Speaker 1: of unconsciously over the years. Uh, And I'd never see asked.
Speaker 1: No one ever asked why are we fascinated by war?
Speaker 1: I think we're afraid to ask it because once you
Speaker 1: ask the question, first of all, you have to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that indeed we are, and it's hard to um deny that.
Speaker 1: And then answering the question, you start opening some union
Speaker 1: doors that uh, in some cases might be better off
Speaker 1: left shut. And as horrible as war is, and we
Speaker 1: all know it's horrible, you know, just stating the obvious,
Speaker 1: there's still this undeniable romanticism around it. Right, We're we're
Speaker 1: fascinated by it. And the reason is, and this is
Speaker 1: not a spoiler, I think is because just like the
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor winner I met the other day. I
Speaker 1: went back and I read about what he had done,
Speaker 1: and I thought to myself, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would have done that myself. But there are moments of
Speaker 1: UH courage demonstrated in war, and wars likely our most
Speaker 1: ferocious and greatest I don't want to call it game
Speaker 1: but but but endeavor, But there are unselfish acts of
Speaker 1: courage in war that lends dignity to the dung heap
Speaker 1: that is war. That is what we're fascinated with. We're
Speaker 1: fascinated with young guys that will get up, get off
Speaker 1: their ass being shot at, and go save their buddy. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's what this guy that I met the other
Speaker 1: day did. We're fascinated by men like Chestie Puller who
Speaker 1: repeatedly UH demonstrate leadership in combat, sustained leadership in combat.
Speaker 1: Both of those things are heroic deeds. And that's why
Speaker 1: we we We keep reading about war, and we keep
Speaker 1: looking at it on TV. We keep playing games of war,
Speaker 1: we keep reading about war, and we keep playing, we
Speaker 1: keep playing with toys about war. I think it's true now,
Speaker 1: maybe than ever before, there's this search in our society
Speaker 1: for authenticity, and in war there's this authentic experience that
Speaker 1: there's nowhere to hide. You have those do or die
Speaker 1: moments where you have to throw yourself in front of
Speaker 1: the bullets. You have to go and do these brave things.
Speaker 1: And it's not like there's a place you can retreat to.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's like you either get it done or
Speaker 1: you don't, and you and if you fuck it up
Speaker 1: or if something goes wrong, you die. There's a fun
Speaker 1: reality to it that doesn't exist elsewhere in society. Right
Speaker 1: in the boxing match, chances are you'll come out alive,
Speaker 1: and a football match, chances are you gonna come If
Speaker 1: you lose, you're still gonna come out ahead of the
Speaker 1: rest of society as far as payment goes. UM. In combat,
Speaker 1: when you suck it up, uh, you die or worse
Speaker 1: you enable or or you make a mistake where somebody
Speaker 1: else gets killed, and then probably worse than that is
Speaker 1: actually having to kill somebody else. Um. We don't realize
Speaker 1: that we actually have an aversion. There's probably two percent
Speaker 1: of people out there on either end. One's a psychopath
Speaker 1: and and and one's just a what we call a
Speaker 1: sheep dog that are willing that the killing other people
Speaker 1: doesn't bother them. One will do it for the good
Speaker 1: of society, the other one does it for the detriment society.
Speaker 1: Most of the rest of us to end up in
Speaker 1: the military, we're kind of somewhere in between there where
Speaker 1: killing people regardless of how well we're trained to do
Speaker 1: it still bothers us. I don't know how we got
Speaker 1: got into that, but it's interesting though, because I don't know.
Speaker 1: If I've had conversations with guys who have been on
Speaker 1: this podcast off air, and I don't know if you
Speaker 1: have Jack, you know, I'm obviously not gonna say who
Speaker 1: they are, but they were like very excited every time
Speaker 1: they killed someone. They've told me that they're like they
Speaker 1: loved it. I mean, I think a lot of them
Speaker 1: are full of ship, to tell you the truth, and
Speaker 1: this is in private conversation completely off air, I would
Speaker 1: say they are. And thus, for those two percent, if
Speaker 1: you're every David Grossman's book, he breaks it down into
Speaker 1: two percent on either end, the psychopaths and the guys
Speaker 1: that are actually trying to protect society. So maybe they
Speaker 1: were part of that two percent. Possibly. I know, for me,
Speaker 1: the first time we killed somebody the first time. The
Speaker 1: first time put it this away. The first time I
Speaker 1: fired my weapon, there was somebody dead on the other end. Uh,
Speaker 1: it bothered the ship out of me. I was trotting home.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, somebody is going home to know,
Speaker 1: or somebody's gonna come home to right, or Dad's not
Speaker 1: gonna come home tonight. That's a bottom line. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be somebody eating alone, grieving tonight. And it bothered the
Speaker 1: ship out of me. The times after that, it really
Speaker 1: didn't bother me so much. But the first time it
Speaker 1: did really bother me. And and that told me something
Speaker 1: about myself, that told me that I'm humane at least
Speaker 1: told me I'm not a psychopath, because it did bother
Speaker 1: me that bad. Yeah, the first time, or well, seeing
Speaker 1: terrorists killed never bothered me, to tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: but seeing the civilians caught in the crossfire is something
Speaker 1: that really haunted me and still does to this day. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean in terms of learning something about yourself,
Speaker 1: I mean that I was able to, like to stand
Speaker 1: over bodies of dead terrorists me like fuck them. You know. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it's like, is there something broken inside of me that uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, so The next day after we killed this guy,
Speaker 1: found out that he was covered with uh gunpower residue,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: clinics wood when he when in there, I lawed Josie
Speaker 1: Wales when he uh spits on the guy's forehead he's
Speaker 1: just killed, and he center says, I'll kim, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: we were both uniformed soldiers and we understood. We go
Speaker 1: go to a battlefield just like the bad guys. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows someone's going home in a body bagg like. There's
Speaker 1: no surprise there, you know, and it better be him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why we train like we train. Uh So when
Speaker 1: you watch somebody go from full brain matter to dead
Speaker 1: and a matter of seconds, it is you find out
Speaker 1: something about yourself. If you enjoy doing it, you're either
Speaker 1: one of those two, your psychopath, or you're one of
Speaker 1: the cheap wolves that naturally protects us on and doesn't
Speaker 1: most of us, I think fall and that other range somewhere.
Speaker 1: It didn't really bother me to see the guys killed
Speaker 1: that needed it. It did bother me to see the
Speaker 1: folks that it was questionable whether and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of those people who brag about killing people, or
Speaker 1: talk about how happy it made them to kill people,
Speaker 1: or in a lot of ways camouflaging what's going on
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. If you think they're full of ship
Speaker 1: and they never did it, or they are camouflage, they're
Speaker 1: cracking up with PTSD. They have a lot of residual problems,
Speaker 1: and this is a way to kind of keep people
Speaker 1: on the outside of that. I mean, as you know, though,
Speaker 1: there's there's guys, like I said, we've been on the
Speaker 1: show that you've personally interviewed that their book is I
Speaker 1: have this many confirmed kills of kidding and it's something
Speaker 1: that they are proud of. I think they're lying to themselves,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, to say that that they're
Speaker 1: proud of it. They're happy about it. And there's plenty
Speaker 1: of them, their seals, there's Army rangers who that's you know,
Speaker 1: a big part of their identity. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't read Chris Kyle's book. Um, I've
Speaker 1: read sections of it while standing in the p X.
Speaker 1: Uh I saw the movie. I think at some point
Speaker 1: you could be trained well enough where it might not bothery.
Speaker 1: But it goes back to my thing. The first time,
Speaker 1: it really bothered the ship out of me. Other times
Speaker 1: it didn't, you know, uh, to see the bodies that
Speaker 1: type of thing, but especially the very first time as
Speaker 1: a shock. Another thing about combat, the first combat, and
Speaker 1: you can attest to this is not that bad. It's
Speaker 1: when you have to go out on patrol the next day, uh,
Speaker 1: and the next day and the next day, because first
Speaker 1: of all, getting shot at is kind of exhilarating the
Speaker 1: first time, and then you either get used to it
Speaker 1: or it just bothers you every damn day. It bothered
Speaker 1: me every day was that ship. I gotta go and
Speaker 1: get shot at today and I had to get myself
Speaker 1: out of the rack, put on a happy face or
Speaker 1: some type of face, and go do it again. It's
Speaker 1: also the first time. It's kind of a surprise, you know. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I talked to uh, you know, we interviewed Dale Comstock,
Speaker 1: who's on the current MUSE rescue mission in Panama on
Speaker 1: eight nine, And there are other accounts out there. You
Speaker 1: can read about the guys in manga Dish and they
Speaker 1: talk about how like when they were in the heat
Speaker 1: of it, they were just doing what they were trained
Speaker 1: to do. But then they come back and like they
Speaker 1: get back to the safe area and they're told, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to go back out there, like we got
Speaker 1: guys missing, you know, we have a follow on mission.
Speaker 1: And then it's like, oh, ship, I gotta go back
Speaker 1: into that. And that's when you start getting like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard. I mean, you're you're scared and you
Speaker 1: got to go back. But that's where the training kicks in. Um,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're leading uh guys, you have to get
Speaker 1: you got people looking at you, got people looking at
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what the bravest I ever was in
Speaker 1: combat was when we took a lieutenant colonel on patrol
Speaker 1: with this one day. Suddenly he was responsible for everything
Speaker 1: and I didn't give a shit about anything. That day.
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, the burden of being the senior
Speaker 1: guy on the spot was suddenly lifted from my shoulder,
Speaker 1: and that day I was a brave son of a bit.
Speaker 1: So that's probably the one day, I mean, other than
Speaker 1: having to say damn, I gotta go do this again. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it makes you brave though, to have that
Speaker 1: burden on you because you're not thinking about yourself, You're
Speaker 1: thinking about the men that you're in charge of right,
Speaker 1: And I tried to weave that into the book. I
Speaker 1: tried to show kind of the burden of command. If
Speaker 1: I wasn't in command, I was, I was, I was
Speaker 1: an officer in charge of a mid team. I tried
Speaker 1: to show that in the book. Anybody who's done it before,
Speaker 1: we'll be able to to see that in the book.
Speaker 1: And I think, once again, since I wrote it from
Speaker 1: personal experience, those who haven't can kind of read between
Speaker 1: the lines and kind of sense it in the book.
Speaker 1: A buddy of mine read it and he told me
Speaker 1: it was entertaining, and he's been in command a couple
Speaker 1: of times, which was actually a pretty good compliment because
Speaker 1: I know my buddy, he would have tore my ask
Speaker 1: if there was a bunch of bullshit in there. So
Speaker 1: he said it was entertaining, which I was glad to
Speaker 1: hear that. Because I didn't write the book for uh
Speaker 1: military personnel. I wrote the book for the general population.
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons I kept the art piece
Speaker 1: in there. That's one of the reasons I tried to
Speaker 1: ask answer the or ask and then answer or allude
Speaker 1: to um why man is fascinated with war? I put
Speaker 1: some mystery in there. I told a lot about the Iraqis.
Speaker 1: I tried to put it all that into to make
Speaker 1: it palatable to civilians overall. So that's who I wrote
Speaker 1: the book for. And you wrote the book from the
Speaker 1: perspective of these two protagonists switching off indeed idea. So
Speaker 1: the first half of the book is Major Clay steer
Speaker 1: Fourth says marine Corps. Then next switches to kind of
Speaker 1: colonel I love doing maid Iraqi Army. And then halfway
Speaker 1: to through the book they meet, and then they go
Speaker 1: on from there and what's interesting about it? And and
Speaker 1: this is this some could some could say I was
Speaker 1: an innovative, others could say I was just not that
Speaker 1: smart of a guy. Uh. The magi part is written
Speaker 1: in the third person. The Major Clay Steerforth is written
Speaker 1: in the first person. So when they finally do meet,
Speaker 1: the reader kind of has a leg up on Steerforth.
Speaker 1: The reader knows who mag is and what he's about.
Speaker 1: Steerforth meets him for the first time and knows nothing
Speaker 1: about him, So in the back of the reader's mind
Speaker 1: he's like, I got something up on Steerforth because I
Speaker 1: know who is And when they kind of kind of
Speaker 1: unfolds from there. Uh, But that's kind of something unique
Speaker 1: about the book. And also something unique about the book
Speaker 1: is I don't think anybody's written anything from the Iraqi
Speaker 1: point of view. If if you wrote about the war,
Speaker 1: it was likely a memoir, and if it was a memoir,
Speaker 1: you told a about the Iraqis or the Afghansa or
Speaker 1: whoever it was. In this case, you actually hear the
Speaker 1: voice of an Iraqi officer as essentially Colonel Majie told me.
Speaker 1: I tried to recreate it as genuinely as I could.
Speaker 1: Uh made up a few things, but what you see
Speaker 1: in the character of the tenant Colonel Magite is from
Speaker 1: conversations between me and Machi in the beginning of the the
Speaker 1: book that says I changed all the names. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I think it's great that you took some time in
Speaker 1: this book to humanize the Iraqi side and in this
Speaker 1: officer you worked with, and to talk about your partnership,
Speaker 1: because that is absolutely something that gets glossed over and forgotten.
Speaker 1: That I mean, we typically, we being veterans, have a
Speaker 1: tendency to write this. You know, these books and these works,
Speaker 1: it's all about heroic American soldiers waving the flag. But
Speaker 1: there's another there's another side to that. And there were
Speaker 1: these people in Iraq who were, um, you know, they
Speaker 1: didn't get to go home, they didn't rotate home in
Speaker 1: six months. They lived there and they have to deal
Speaker 1: with that ship day in, day out. You know. We
Speaker 1: were of car and I said, we about the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: Some of the units were very critical when I would say, look,
Speaker 1: they went on leave for two weeks. How the fund
Speaker 1: did they go on leave for two weeks? I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: they've been doing this for two years and we're back home.
Speaker 1: We go on leave for two weeks. Uh, it's blocked
Speaker 1: leave for a bunch of them, a lot of the
Speaker 1: marine units, possible army. We weren't very sympathetic by that.
Speaker 1: About that, uh the And one of the things that
Speaker 1: gave me sympathy for them was it was a specific
Speaker 1: incident when somebody pointed at me one day and said
Speaker 1: you guys, and they were referring to me and the
Speaker 1: around another marine and I essentially said, hey, you see
Speaker 1: this ecolobe and lanker on anchor on my left breast pocket.
Speaker 1: I'm one of you. I'm doing what the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: told me to do no. No, that's the Lawrence of
Speaker 1: Arabia effect and everyone native. But you're You're exactly right.
Speaker 1: They thought I was Lawrence of Raby. I'm not on
Speaker 1: Dave Richardson. You know, I'm a major in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: I I'm not with them, but I'm with you. I'm
Speaker 1: having to over their training. So you're right, and and
Speaker 1: but that's what partially gave me sympathy for him. Once again,
Speaker 1: I never went native, but I knew that they had
Speaker 1: their side of the story. And when we were when
Speaker 1: all was said and downe and we were gone, they
Speaker 1: were going to tell the story, likely as if they
Speaker 1: won the victory themselves anyhow, So, um, you might as
Speaker 1: well acknowledge that we worked and fought alongside each other.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've done a whole lot of that
Speaker 1: back in the States. Where is your Iraqi counterpart today?
Speaker 1: Do you know somebody told me he died of throat
Speaker 1: cancer in missoul Yeah? Recently. The Chief one Officer, Anthony Worsbowski,
Speaker 1: who was on my team, went back a couple of
Speaker 1: times after that, and he told me that mas had died.
Speaker 1: Um was an interesting character for many reasons, but the
Speaker 1: Iraqi chain of command. Wasn't that crazy about Masi because
Speaker 1: MS essentially out showing them. I have a I have
Speaker 1: a theory which I put in the book of why
Speaker 1: his men were so loyal to them, and indeed had
Speaker 1: to do with money. Um, but he was kind of
Speaker 1: on the outs anyway. He left the army shortly after
Speaker 1: and then he went to Missoula, and that's the last
Speaker 1: I heard of him, which, you know, it's kind of disappointed.
Speaker 1: I spent essentially, uh, four years of my life right
Speaker 1: in a book about me and Colonel Machid As it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a novel, but it's essentially a biography, and
Speaker 1: to find out that he died and I would likely
Speaker 1: never see the guy again, it bothershed me. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's sad. He I mean, but he must have been
Speaker 1: a little bit older than me and you because he
Speaker 1: served in the Iran Iraq War at the time. He
Speaker 1: was about forty five forty six is when I met him,
Speaker 1: so I kind of put his timeline in the book.
Speaker 1: He would have been a lieutenant some somewhere nineteen eighty probably, uh,
Speaker 1: and he had been awarded for valor there. He told
Speaker 1: me that in the in the Iran Iraq War, his
Speaker 1: valet or his batman and what I have to call him,
Speaker 1: had been shot through the face actually, and in Iraq
Speaker 1: he was missing teeth from it. Hussaining well, who never
Speaker 1: I don't think he ever shaved, walked around a dirty
Speaker 1: T shirt, cooked me fish all the time, and had
Speaker 1: uh wearing flip flops and cammies. I mean, so if
Speaker 1: you were a tight ass marine and you saw you like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I shouldn't I gotta go home, you know,
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, man, this is it's Iraq. So
Speaker 1: I love those stories here and from from those guys.
Speaker 1: They would tell you, they'd sit down, they'd refer to
Speaker 1: it as when I served with the previous regime, all right, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just called it the old Iraqi army. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of them had a story about he was he
Speaker 1: was on a tank actually, like a T seventy two
Speaker 1: during the two thousand and three invasion, and they pulled
Speaker 1: their tank into a cave to hide because they're F
Speaker 1: six teams just swimming all over the head and he
Speaker 1: was like, that was the scariest night of my life
Speaker 1: because I thought, you know, missile was just gonna find
Speaker 1: its wave right into the cave and destroy us. Um
Speaker 1: the swat team commander I worked with also, he was
Speaker 1: in the Iran Iraq War, the Gulf War, the two
Speaker 1: thousand three war, and then with us. Well, what's interesting
Speaker 1: about that is so ten years, fifteen years earlier, we
Speaker 1: were fighting them and they were on the other side,
Speaker 1: and we would have killed them and they would have
Speaker 1: killed us. But there's something about two professional soldiers, media,
Speaker 1: no hard feelings, all that goes away. We were just
Speaker 1: trying to kill each other. Yeah, but now we're not
Speaker 1: trying to kill each other. We're working side by side.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the old John Wayne movie where
Speaker 1: he meets up he's a Union soldier that fought at
Speaker 1: Shiloh and he meets some Confederate guy and suddenly they're,
Speaker 1: you know, they're working side by side and miraculously they
Speaker 1: get along. Well, that's kind of how it is. Well
Speaker 1: like delving deeper, and I like the whole metaphysics. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you get into it in your book
Speaker 1: or not, but do you think it's there's something fucked
Speaker 1: up about how politicians, you know, they have this beef,
Speaker 1: so they send a bunch of like blue collar professional
Speaker 1: soldiers to go and kill each other. You know, like
Speaker 1: maybe these politicians should just like you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I throw physticuffs. Maybe they should go Uh yeah, that
Speaker 1: that would probably be a better solution. So speaking of politics,
Speaker 1: that that may be the reason that I did not
Speaker 1: bring that up in my book. If you read the
Speaker 1: prelude to the book, it talks about who goes to
Speaker 1: war in this country, um, and it's you know, they're there.
Speaker 1: They're a lot of different ethnic groups. The the major
Speaker 1: one has been the Scots Irish. Uh call um hillbilly
Speaker 1: is called him, rednecks, call him white trash, American Americans.
Speaker 1: We got of the white people killed in Vietnam were
Speaker 1: Scott's Irish. My point is I kept the novel at
Speaker 1: that level. Uh. And this sounds probably kind of bad,
Speaker 1: and it's probably only in retrospect. I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: give the politicians uh any recognition, whether it was grief
Speaker 1: or praise. I just took them out of the picture
Speaker 1: and wrote the novel from our point of view. And realistically,
Speaker 1: I mean, you didn't give a ship when you were
Speaker 1: on the ground in Romani, right, I didn't get I
Speaker 1: didn't care at all. I had a mission at hand.
Speaker 1: I knew we were underman, but I wasn't looking for
Speaker 1: the guy in bagdad of Washington d C. That was
Speaker 1: responsible for that I had. I had a mission to do,
Speaker 1: just like mag had a mission to do, and we
Speaker 1: were stuck with it whether we liked it or not,
Speaker 1: and we had to do it. So there was no
Speaker 1: use bitching about it or you know somehow, you know,
Speaker 1: writing home to you know, the Washington Post and tell
Speaker 1: them how, you know, funked up it is here. I
Speaker 1: never did any of that stuff. I just stuck with
Speaker 1: a mission as professional soldiers, and you know, guys that
Speaker 1: have been drafted and recruited or volunteered have been doing
Speaker 1: for millennia. All the political stuff is a discussion for
Speaker 1: another arena. And that goes back to why man's fascinated
Speaker 1: with war. Man's not fascinated by what by war with
Speaker 1: because of what poor or great decisions politicians made in war.
Speaker 1: Man is actually fascinated by war by what the trooper, yeah,
Speaker 1: the marine, the grunt, the guy from the eighty two,
Speaker 1: the ranger you know, has doing on the ground. That's
Speaker 1: why they're fascinated by war. Yeah, they're fascinated by what
Speaker 1: the sergeants are out there doing, and I like the
Speaker 1: general has almost become like a facsimile that, right. War
Speaker 1: is kind of written from the general's point of view,
Speaker 1: The history is kind of written from the general's point
Speaker 1: of view, but the fascination of war is not there.
Speaker 1: The fascinating awards actually with the foot soldier, uh, the artilleryman,
Speaker 1: the pilot. Those guys are actually throwing the lead titanium
Speaker 1: or whatever have you, mcgrenade downrange. That's who we make
Speaker 1: the movies about. Yeah. Yeah, you can get a movie.
Speaker 1: You can squeeze a movie out of MacArthur. You can't
Speaker 1: squeeze one out of Marshall. You can squeeze one out
Speaker 1: on Lee and Grant. It's hard to squeeze one out
Speaker 1: of schwartz Golf. Yeah, but you can squeeze a movie
Speaker 1: easy out of Grant. Hopefully some of you'll squeeze a
Speaker 1: movie out of your memoir and my novel. The kind
Speaker 1: of squeezed one out of My Crystal, But it wasn't Favoraball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't see it because I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how that. Yeah, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: by the I guess they did. It was a war machine?
Speaker 1: Was a Netflix film? Was it Brad Pitt? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I started to watch a couple of times. I like
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt. In fact, I watched money Ball the other day,
Speaker 1: which I like money Ball. Yeah. I'm not a sports fan,
Speaker 1: but I like Moneyball. Uh so. Yeah. And the warm
Speaker 1: movies that are worth watching by the general public are
Speaker 1: the ones that are about the dude on the deck,
Speaker 1: horse soldiers, John Wayne and the Green Berets. What are
Speaker 1: some of the ones that you like? So my favorite
Speaker 1: war movie is probably Doss Bolt because it shows the
Speaker 1: burden of command and it shows the commander making mistakes
Speaker 1: in command. Uh. Of course. Full Metal Jacket Classic UM
Speaker 1: Apocalypse Now, I can never watch it enough. I think
Speaker 1: I've been some of those places in various parts of
Speaker 1: the world. It's not strictly realistic, you know, in air quotes,
Speaker 1: but it's a great film. I like it because it's literary.
Speaker 1: It's based on Joseph Conrad's you know, the Heart of Heart. Uh.
Speaker 1: I would say probably the best war movie made in
Speaker 1: the last thirty years, though, is UM other than the
Speaker 1: series Band of Brothers and Pacific. I'm talking about just
Speaker 1: a warm movie. I got a hand to Oliver Stone.
Speaker 1: Oliver Stone fought in Vietnam War, and then when they
Speaker 1: I recently washed Platoon and I kind of had a
Speaker 1: hard time getting through it because it's so good. Platoon
Speaker 1: is a great movie. Uh. Part of the greatness of
Speaker 1: the movie is due by the way to Dale Die,
Speaker 1: who was Stone's advisor, and he didn't let Stone take
Speaker 1: it down the track of you know, we burned villages
Speaker 1: and killed people. He kind of kept it at a
Speaker 1: little higher level. But that movie, Platoon is a fantastic
Speaker 1: movie about war and the psychology of conflict within a unit.
Speaker 1: There's some of the inner inner inner fighting in my book,
Speaker 1: and I drew some of that Platoon from Platoon. I
Speaker 1: drew some of it from a movie called The Cross
Speaker 1: of Iron, and I read the book, which is directed
Speaker 1: by Sam Peck and Paw who was, by the way,
Speaker 1: a marine and based on a book by a German
Speaker 1: soldier from World War Two. I haven't seen it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: The Cross of Iron is outstanding movie. You should watch it.
Speaker 1: It was one of the first movies where they, you know,
Speaker 1: use slow motion when dudes were getting shot in that
Speaker 1: type of thing. It's a great movie. So I'd say
Speaker 1: Cross of Iron, Platoon Apocalypse, now, um, Paths of Glory
Speaker 1: is a good movie. That's Stanley Kubrick. I was just
Speaker 1: talking about that with a friend the other day and
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. I always wanted to. It's something
Speaker 1: I gotta track that one down. Yeah, if Stanley Kubrick
Speaker 1: probably the greatest filmmaker. It's a World War One film.
Speaker 1: It's World War One. If you ever get a chance
Speaker 1: to watch Barry Lindon, that's another fancase and the one
Speaker 1: that shows some eighteenth century warfare. So yeah, those are
Speaker 1: my those are my big ones. But Dost Boat is
Speaker 1: probably the best war movie I've ever seen. It's awesome.
Speaker 1: It's about sailors by the quids out there. You know
Speaker 1: what I wanted to ask you about as well is
Speaker 1: being a martial arts instructor in the Marines. That has
Speaker 1: to be its own story, so you know, I will
Speaker 1: tell you being a marshal arts instructor um. Other than
Speaker 1: running the novel was the hardest thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1: And I had a couple of buddies were like, Richardson,
Speaker 1: you're forty years old, what are you doing. I'm like
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to do this, you know, because so
Speaker 1: we get our we get our belts, you know. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to be an instructor. Uh So, at Campbell June,
Speaker 1: I volunteered for this course. I went to the course
Speaker 1: and the instructor was probably a twenty nine year old
Speaker 1: staff sergeant and I out up and he looked at
Speaker 1: me and he said, fox, sir, how old are you guys?
Speaker 1: And I'm forty, and he goes, just don't have a
Speaker 1: heart attack on me, because you've got some of these
Speaker 1: marines by twenty years. You've got all of us by
Speaker 1: at least ten. And this is not like, this is
Speaker 1: not gonna be easy. Was ninety degrees out. We didn't
Speaker 1: exercise one time, as I recount in the book, where
Speaker 1: I couldn't walk. I had to crawl out of the
Speaker 1: fighting pit. So it was tough. I'm glad I did it,
Speaker 1: and being a instructor I was did most of my
Speaker 1: instruction in Korea. Was very, very satisfied. I loved being
Speaker 1: a Marine Corps Martial Arts instructor. What's your background in
Speaker 1: martial arts? Marine Corps martial arts? But no specific, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's not a whole lot of finesse
Speaker 1: to Marine Corps Martial Arts, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: know any previous lines training. Back in the day, it
Speaker 1: used to be line training, but they advanced a lot.
Speaker 1: A guy named Lieutenant Colonel Shusko who's still teaching down
Speaker 1: a Quantico by the way, he's in charge of it.
Speaker 1: He was a I don't want to I don't want
Speaker 1: to misquote any of the things that he was. He
Speaker 1: was a hokkaido guy. He was a jiu jitsu guy,
Speaker 1: he was a karate guy. Them all together. Marine Corps
Speaker 1: Martial Arts is UM is ground fighting, uh, and then
Speaker 1: it's stand up fighting, and it's weapons manipulations, you know,
Speaker 1: like how to retain your weapon, how to take a
Speaker 1: weapon from somebody. It's knife fighting, and it's also some philosophy.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you it's violent and it's not um.
Speaker 1: It's it's it teaches you how to break bones and uh.
Speaker 1: It teaches some lethal maneuvers as well, and to put
Speaker 1: people down. It's there's not a whole lot of finesse
Speaker 1: to it. It's rough, it's very effective. I have no
Speaker 1: qualms about walking down the street somebody jumps on my
Speaker 1: back I'll take care of it. You two guys up
Speaker 1: to three, I think I can handle it as long
Speaker 1: as they're not martial arts guys themselves. When it gets
Speaker 1: beyond three, I'm probably gonna run as an instructor. I mean,
Speaker 1: did you have a lot of like twenty year old
Speaker 1: young marines wanting to challenge you, like I'm gonna uh no,
Speaker 1: because they were that's the old dog. Marines learned quick,
Speaker 1: like the old fucker's got some ship that you don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, and they didn't. Uh. I actually had some
Speaker 1: marines tell me something. Uh. They were in my class
Speaker 1: and we were in Korea, and they go, hey, so
Speaker 1: the ship works. I'm like, what are you talking about it? Well,
Speaker 1: this weekend we were out in town and this and
Speaker 1: this happened, and some soldiers jumped us and this happened.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, we're not gonna talk about that. It
Speaker 1: just stays here and then the ship works. So it
Speaker 1: does work. Um uh, and it's brutal, it's violent. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn how to be a Marine
Speaker 1: Corps martial artist, you can call me up or join
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps. They will teach you. It's it's it's A.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a good piece of gear to have
Speaker 1: with you when you're out and about, whether it's war
Speaker 1: or in the streets of Washington, see in New York,
Speaker 1: l A. Or anywhere else. The other thing I we
Speaker 1: would be remiss if we didn't ask, is can you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about your art and your
Speaker 1: background as a painter. So, my mother, uh was a painter,
Speaker 1: and she was a flower painter, and she painted, you know,
Speaker 1: she was she was a farm girl and she painted.
Speaker 1: I have a rooster that she painted in my my
Speaker 1: bedroom and it's always going to be there to the
Speaker 1: day I die. So she was a painter, and she
Speaker 1: taught me color. She taught me how to stretch color, uh,
Speaker 1: which from your own personal color. She taught me composition,
Speaker 1: and she taught me grit. My mom painted every day,
Speaker 1: even if it was just a half hour, she'd go
Speaker 1: in there and paint. My brother was a painter. So
Speaker 1: it's not something I came to uh in college or
Speaker 1: that I grew up around it. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: for like those folks who's parents golfed or went out
Speaker 1: a lot of vacations. It's something you end up doing.
Speaker 1: So I always kept it around I was doing what
Speaker 1: joined the Marine Corps. I tried to quit it a
Speaker 1: couple of times and I never could. But the main
Speaker 1: my painting really really kicked off when I was an
Speaker 1: instructor or, when I was teaching at Fort Sill, and
Speaker 1: then I went to Washington, d C. To be UH
Speaker 1: a structor at George Washington University, and I was accepted
Speaker 1: by a gallery there, and I was painting these paintings
Speaker 1: about their abstract paintings or near abstract, about their symbols, UH,
Speaker 1: their monuments of the characters in the Trojan War. So
Speaker 1: there's somewhat abstract, and he kind of got to feel
Speaker 1: it's kind of like reading between the lines of the paintings.
Speaker 1: My favorite paintings are the shotgun paintings U and I
Speaker 1: took that from the war, just like to cover of
Speaker 1: my book. I've taken a bunch of plane cards, painted
Speaker 1: it on UH corrugated tin and then shot it up
Speaker 1: with the shotgun. And my dad gave me when he died,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of cool because I've backed him in
Speaker 1: that type of thanks. And recently, oddly enough, I gave
Speaker 1: my girlfriend Stacy a bouquet of roses for Valentine's Day
Speaker 1: and I looked at those roses one day and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna paint the roses. So I've been painting large flower
Speaker 1: paintings recently, kind of after my mother, although it's something
Speaker 1: my mother's style, that's kind of what I'm doing. So
Speaker 1: that's that's something I've done all my life. I do
Speaker 1: show my work. I do have a dealer in that
Speaker 1: type of thing. These oil paintings, uh, primarily oil paintings.
Speaker 1: Of course, the ones I did in incorrugated tin, I
Speaker 1: did Alabanski with a spray can. Of course, Banski probably
Speaker 1: can't shoot a shotgun in London or he lives. He's
Speaker 1: a mysterious guy. But I used a shotgun on that one.
Speaker 1: And I also work in acrylic now and then that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I think it's bank Ski, not Bands. Yeah, banks Yeah, Bankski.
Speaker 1: But yeah, only if he had a shotgun he would
Speaker 1: he may be a greater artist. I actually think Bankski
Speaker 1: is a great artist. But yeah, now he's I mean
Speaker 1: what he does is so thought provoking. Banks He's interesting
Speaker 1: because I know for a while the high art world
Speaker 1: kind of ship on him. I think they've come around
Speaker 1: because he is a fantastic artist. There's other famous ones
Speaker 1: out there that I don't want to think much of.
Speaker 1: Bankski is great. Um, there's a handful like bank Ski
Speaker 1: who are popular with the public, and eventually the art
Speaker 1: world has to come around gritting their or gritting the
Speaker 1: nashal nashing their teeth and say, okay, we acquiesced he
Speaker 1: actually is worth the ship. And because he's one of them,
Speaker 1: because every collector wants their piece so right, so they're
Speaker 1: kind of they were beaten into submission by bank Ski.
Speaker 1: Only if I could, I could team up with bank
Speaker 1: Ski with my shotgun. I think that's kind of what
Speaker 1: I attempted to do. Should it just invent your own
Speaker 1: genre of shotgun art? I mean you're on your way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying, you know, I'm trying. I's got to get
Speaker 1: it in the right hands. Like I gotta know, I
Speaker 1: need somebody like you to kind of say, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is what it is. You know, I need somebody to
Speaker 1: tell the back story. So that's the most the thing
Speaker 1: with contemporary painting. You spend five minutes looking at the
Speaker 1: paint and then you know, two hours or somebody over
Speaker 1: dinner telling you about the back story. Uh, I want
Speaker 1: I want to split it kind of half and half.
Speaker 1: Actually people want to I want people to like want
Speaker 1: the painting hanging in their house, not even some installations somewhere. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I want it to be accessible to them, and
Speaker 1: then that they can tell the bank the back story.
Speaker 1: They don't need, you know, somebody in the inside world
Speaker 1: to tell them, inside our world to tell them the
Speaker 1: back story. So is there another novel in you? Uh? Yes,
Speaker 1: there is. So I've actually I lost my computer. So
Speaker 1: and when he finds my computer out there, it's got
Speaker 1: there's a draft on the there's a draft on it's
Speaker 1: a quarter of the novel with the outline that I
Speaker 1: lost it on backing up anywhere. I lost it somewhere
Speaker 1: between Los Angeles, California, and Dulls in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be heartbreak, man. Yeah. Well, so I restarted
Speaker 1: it about two weeks ago, and I've written the outline
Speaker 1: and I've got enough another novel in me and probably
Speaker 1: two more after that. I've kind of kind of planned
Speaker 1: out place. Tier fourth comes back to the war from
Speaker 1: the war, he gets out, uh, and then he starts
Speaker 1: working for DHS. That's the last place. It's autobiographical. And
Speaker 1: then it goes off to imagination. From there, there's a
Speaker 1: little conspiracy theory in there. There's a little bit of
Speaker 1: you know, dystopia, I love dystopia type of stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a apocalyptic type things in there.
Speaker 1: So it's gonna be an actual sequel to to this book.
Speaker 1: It will. I gotta keep the same I'm gonna keep
Speaker 1: the same guy, so so you know, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of how that's kind of how the dollars stack up.
Speaker 1: You know, you keep the same guy going and going
Speaker 1: and going. He probably gets shot at a few times.
Speaker 1: I bet he's gonna be the kind of guy that
Speaker 1: can kick your ass with martial arts, never has to
Speaker 1: use the gun until it comes right down to it,
Speaker 1: you know, unless you meet another martial arts guy. But
Speaker 1: I only use his revolvers because semi autos are prone
Speaker 1: to jams. Exactly. Yeah, that kind of stuff. I bet
Speaker 1: he's got chickens in his yard and Armington, Virginia, a
Speaker 1: couple of those types of things. Probably still smokes, probably drinking.
Speaker 1: He would probably the kind of guy that would show
Speaker 1: up for an interview and drink whiskey while he's He's
Speaker 1: that kind of guy that's probably got a hot girlfriend
Speaker 1: who trucks along with New York with him, so that's awesome.
Speaker 1: And a new painting as well for the sequel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll figure out whatever I'm working out at the time,
Speaker 1: and it probably won't be flowers, won't put flowers, but
Speaker 1: it will likely be something from the shotgun series, because
Speaker 1: I don't know if we have any gun enthusiasts there,
Speaker 1: but there's something that's definitely listeners. You are, okay, So
Speaker 1: never tell you something to create something, then go out
Speaker 1: and shoot it up with a shotgun. You'll like it
Speaker 1: even more, especially if it's not that good to start with.
Speaker 1: The shotgun adds this, you know, always talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: the randomness of a Jackson Pollock painting. Jackson Pollock didn't
Speaker 1: have ship on a twelve gate shotgun, well said, man.
Speaker 1: The last thing I have, unless jack is anything else,
Speaker 1: is you gotta shout out the guys who listened to
Speaker 1: the show, because you were telling me. The reason that
Speaker 1: you reached out your publishists publicist reached out is that
Speaker 1: a couple of guys that you know said you gotta
Speaker 1: go on software radio, right, Stephen Vanamarin, KB Henderson who
Speaker 1: I work with as soon as you know, I was
Speaker 1: talking to about getting the book published. Uh, They're like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you gotta go off the Software Radio. You know, they'll
Speaker 1: talk to you, you know, because you did some stuff
Speaker 1: in the military. We're not sure what, but but you
Speaker 1: do talk about a randomly sometime and we thought you
Speaker 1: had TRET syndrome, but it's actually just you shooting out
Speaker 1: random ship. So I need to go on Software Radio
Speaker 1: and talk to him about your book. And uh, and
Speaker 1: my publisher hooking me up John Bogdale before I had
Speaker 1: a chance to contact you all. So those are the
Speaker 1: dudes that initial initially introduced me to your program. That's awesome, man,
Speaker 1: Well really appreciate you coming on. This has been an
Speaker 1: awesome interview for the listeners. Your website is d E.
Speaker 1: Richardson dot com on Twitter at d rich war Story.
Speaker 1: Anything else that you want to get out there, maybe
Speaker 1: for your art. You can probably get the book on Amazon, Amazon, Google,
Speaker 1: um Books a million. Yeah, you can find just just
Speaker 1: google Dave richardson our Washing d C or Dave Richardson
Speaker 1: war Story and you can get the book, or you
Speaker 1: can see the paintings and you can also show my
Speaker 1: house with the shotgun and I'll take you along with
Speaker 1: me to make some art. Just don't point it at me. Excellent, man,
Speaker 1: this has been great, So pick up a war story.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate you having coming in with us. Okay, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. This has been fantastic. Yeah. Absolutely, we'll
Speaker 1: do it again when the next book comes out. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll try to make that within the next twelve months.
Speaker 1: Awesome having David in studio, and I mean beyond just
Speaker 1: his writing, really great artists. Just looking at his stuff,
Speaker 1: I mean, just the cover in general stands out. His
Speaker 1: girlfriend was showing me some pictures on on her cell
Speaker 1: phone of his art. It's it's really nice. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen much more. So it's cool that you got
Speaker 1: a chance to check that all out. That she came
Speaker 1: in studio. Um, yeah, just all around great dude and
Speaker 1: writing a book that's different than a lot of other books.
Speaker 1: And and it's great to see. I mean, sometimes you
Speaker 1: feel like this market gets saturated with all the veteran authors,
Speaker 1: but you realize a lot of them bring something totally
Speaker 1: new to the table. So absolutely, with that, be sure
Speaker 1: to check out Create Club. It's a club fore men
Speaker 1: by men of gear handpicked by Special Operations veterans. Now,
Speaker 1: I've been a little out of the loop of some
Speaker 1: of the changes over the site since I'll be leaving
Speaker 1: the podcast next week and they've been busy with that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you you're familiar with this, Jack,
Speaker 1: because I was just checking out the site to make
Speaker 1: sure I'm up on everything. But currently we're just doing
Speaker 1: the Dash one crate. Uh So, we have that DASH
Speaker 1: one crate available at a seasonal or annual rate. Both
Speaker 1: of those options are available at Create club dot us
Speaker 1: And right now we're running an extremely limited promotion of
Speaker 1: off for all software up radio listeners. That's the biggest
Speaker 1: discount we've ever made available, and we don't know how
Speaker 1: long we can keep this promotion live, So get on
Speaker 1: that right now. That's Create club dot Us coupon code
Speaker 1: soft rep for off our Dash one Create either seasonally
Speaker 1: or annually. Sign up today once again Great Club dot
Speaker 1: Us promo code softwarep Also as a reminder for those
Speaker 1: who are listening, now is the time to sign up
Speaker 1: for the Spec Ops channel. That's our channel that offers
Speaker 1: the most exclusive shows, documentaries, and interviews covering the most
Speaker 1: exciting military content today. The spec Ops Channel 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 schools, defensive driving, jungle and winter warfare, climbing, and
Speaker 1: much more. Again, you can watch this content by subscribing
Speaker 1: to the spec Ops channel at spec ops channel dot
Speaker 1: com and take advantage of a membership for only four
Speaker 1: ninety nine a month. That's spec ops channel dot com.
Speaker 1: Sign up today. Last, if you're not already signed up
Speaker 1: at the News Rep dot com, you've got to get
Speaker 1: on board expert reporting and actionable intelligence from your favorite
Speaker 1: writers you've heard on here and Jack, it seems like
Speaker 1: we have a few different guys writing right now, Like,
Speaker 1: isn't Stavros doing some stuff with us? What's the full
Speaker 1: current line up? You would say, staff Ros, Greg Walker
Speaker 1: is going to be writing for us regularly, UM and
Speaker 1: myself and uh Nick Kaufman perfect alright, So those are
Speaker 1: the guys that you're gonna be seeing, uh and also
Speaker 1: the guest writers who pop in. Unlimited access to News
Speaker 1: Rep on any device, unlimited access to the app, joined
Speaker 1: the war Room community, invitations to our exclusive events, and
Speaker 1: it's all add free from members. We have a trial
Speaker 1: offer up right now where you can get four weeks
Speaker 1: for only sign up now at the news rep dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the news rep dot com. By the way, for
Speaker 1: those not in the know, we have our own SOFTWAREP
Speaker 1: Radio app that you can download for free on iPhone
Speaker 1: or Android and our homepages SOFTWAREP radio dot com where
Speaker 1: you can see the full archive of shows. As I said,
Speaker 1: last show, since we had Vicky Behannah on something like
Speaker 1: that old episode from Michael Behannah that's up episode eighty
Speaker 1: eight was great talking to her, by the way, as always,
Speaker 1: keep up with us at SOFTWAUP Radio as well with
Speaker 1: that man. How is Europe? I I didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to ask you that it was good. I was
Speaker 1: in London for four days meeting with my wife, uh,
Speaker 1: and she was doing the UK premiere of her documentary,
Speaker 1: UM documentary I Have the Revolution. Yeah, and uh it
Speaker 1: went well. Is that the Italian Cultural Center which is
Speaker 1: in the London's version of Embassy Row. Actually I was
Speaker 1: able to get a picture where the s A S
Speaker 1: had hit the Iranian embassy back in nineteen what eight
Speaker 1: Operation Nimrod. Those like iconic photos you know of the
Speaker 1: s A S for pelling down and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we interviewed Rusty Ferman who was on that operation, and
Speaker 1: so I was able to get a picture of it.
Speaker 1: You know, just classic moments of counter terrorism history. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a military nerd, so I have to go in
Speaker 1: this ace pilgrimage. But um, anyway, there are two screenings
Speaker 1: of Benny's documentary. UM packed the place. Uh, probably two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty people together. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people. There's a lot of people showed up. When
Speaker 1: is this thing going to get a wide release? I mean,
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm was all there. The New York release was
Speaker 1: completely sold out. When somebody buys distribution rights. But it's
Speaker 1: just so funny, as we both said when the film
Speaker 1: had the New York premiere, It's like, there's this big
Speaker 1: outcry for more women in film, more women directors, women producers,
Speaker 1: and then you have a film that is a a
Speaker 1: film spotlighting women in combat, completely produced, directed, edited by women.
Speaker 1: Where is the financial backing for this? That's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think Benny is a little mystified by that. Also,
Speaker 1: She's like, I don't understand why, you know, this isn't
Speaker 1: how come it's not getting accepted into more film festivals,
Speaker 1: like is it a problem that technically the film isn't
Speaker 1: well made enough? Like, no, that's that's not it is.
Speaker 1: It's something to do with the content. And UM, I think,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, I think it's a couple of things.
Speaker 1: I think one, it's it's a cross cultural movie. UM,
Speaker 1: because it features Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a very
Speaker 1: hard sell to American audiences unless there's an American protagonist
Speaker 1: somewhere in there. Uh. And I think the other side
Speaker 1: of it is that um, American or Western sensibilities when
Speaker 1: it comes to feminism is very much UM. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't in my opinion, just being real bad. I
Speaker 1: think it's very superficial. I think American feminism is kind
Speaker 1: of weak. Uh. Feminism in the Middle East, these women
Speaker 1: you've seen the documentary is pretty strong all the way
Speaker 1: up to the point of women picking up collashon a
Speaker 1: Clauds and shooting motherfucker's you know, speaking about the the
Speaker 1: ypj UH Kurdish militia. Um, the female militia in UH
Speaker 1: in Syria that she spent time with. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a different These are women in camouflage. Um, they're
Speaker 1: women who are challenging UM orthodoxy and challenging UM their
Speaker 1: governments in these countries. Um. You can see Sally who
Speaker 1: is a secular politician in Afghanistan fighting for women's rights,
Speaker 1: and like, one of the scenes in the documentary is
Speaker 1: Sally on a news show with this like taliban dude,
Speaker 1: and she's like giving him knife hands, you know, like
Speaker 1: yelling adam. So I think, you know, like, and she
Speaker 1: receives like death threats all the time, all the time,
Speaker 1: she has to travel around with armed guards. So I
Speaker 1: mean American feminism in a lot of ways, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh look here, you know, we're chanting. It's about your
Speaker 1: individual identity, where as this film and the women in
Speaker 1: the film are like, no, we are challenging the entire
Speaker 1: paradigm of how how women are perceived UM in exist
Speaker 1: in these societies. Uh. And I think so, I think
Speaker 1: that in the West we have there's a certain way
Speaker 1: we're comfortable with you confront confronting authority, and this film
Speaker 1: is much more confrontational than what Western audiences are used to.
Speaker 1: So I think that may be part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I loved it. I thought it was great. I think
Speaker 1: it should have a wide release. I mean I would think,
Speaker 1: at the very least get this thing on Netflix or yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I that would be amazing. Um, at least
Speaker 1: get it up like Amazon. You know, we're so people
Speaker 1: can go and purchase it on there. But right now
Speaker 1: it's a question of securing distribution rights. Yeah. I got
Speaker 1: a lot of questions when I posted up the picture
Speaker 1: with Benny praising the film. A lot of our listeners
Speaker 1: how can we see it? See it? Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I hear all the time, and Ben Benny has to
Speaker 1: be like, you can't. Yeah, un like you could come
Speaker 1: to the Premier and you know, yeah England or you know.
Speaker 1: And you also got to meet uh Vassilish Bill. Yes,
Speaker 1: after years of working with Bill Um working remotely because
Speaker 1: he's Greek, Um he uh has immigrated to the UK
Speaker 1: and he has a decent government job there and so
Speaker 1: we both found ourselves in the UK at the same
Speaker 1: time and we were able to meet up. So he
Speaker 1: came came down to London from where he lives and Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we spent the day together. We went out,
Speaker 1: we had we had lunch, went out, had some beers
Speaker 1: and then uh went to Benny's mom's place and uh
Speaker 1: and had dinner. So it was great meeting him and
Speaker 1: his wife is amazing as cool of the guys you
Speaker 1: would have expected. Yeah, man, yeah, really very smart doc too.
Speaker 1: I'm really happy for him that he found uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a steady good job because you know, being Greek, I mean,
Speaker 1: they have a problem with employment there, and he's a
Speaker 1: great guy, but his like many many other Greeks, has
Speaker 1: struggled to find work over the years. Yeah, he's one
Speaker 1: of the few guys from the site I've never met, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, for obvious reasons. He don't have to meet
Speaker 1: George Hand I've never I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 1: met George. I've never met him in person. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: one of the only guys I've never met in person.
Speaker 1: And he's out in uh well, never mind, but he's out.
Speaker 1: He's out in the Midwest through you know, in the
Speaker 1: South somewhere. I feel like George is one of my
Speaker 1: biggest fans, Like he constantly talks about the work I'm
Speaker 1: doing it and it's crazy. The work he's doing is
Speaker 1: incredible with the you know, combating human trafficking. I'm just
Speaker 1: a guy who produces radio and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: he's done a lot of like really mind blowing stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, George has done some amazing stuff. Um
Speaker 1: and bill uh. I always joke that he looks like
Speaker 1: the Taliban because he has his big like black Beard.
Speaker 1: And when ever he post pictures of him and his
Speaker 1: wife as his poor girl has been kidnapped by the Taliban.
Speaker 1: The picture that he had up as a Facebook profile,
Speaker 1: it almost looked like I'm not gonna it looked like
Speaker 1: a special ops porno movie. As as the the picture
Speaker 1: of him with his gun, it's just very uh, it's
Speaker 1: very stereotypical of that. I posted a picture of it
Speaker 1: when he was talking about something. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: his current profile picture. It was for a while. I'd
Speaker 1: have to, you know, find your search through there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but look for it. Yeah. He I mean, from what
Speaker 1: I know and from his appearances on the podcast, he's
Speaker 1: just all around great dude. Yeah, I know he is.
Speaker 1: We will have to try to have him on again sometime, alright.
Speaker 1: With that, I mean, I guess all that we have
Speaker 1: to plug is for those who still haven't picked it up,
Speaker 1: the book is out. Murphy's Law if you have not
Speaker 1: bought Murphy's law. At this point, you're letting the communists
Speaker 1: and terrorists win. All right, it's as simple as that, folks.
Speaker 1: We are hanging by a thread right now. No, I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding, all right. This isn't uh, this isn't like
Speaker 1: Alex Jones or yeah, Alex Jones or even mainstream news.
Speaker 1: It's just trying to like terrify people all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: But the book is out. It's been out for about
Speaker 1: three weeks now, and UM, I've been super happy to
Speaker 1: hear about UM hear all the responses and the reviews,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's really connected with people. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, even people who have listened to this podcast
Speaker 1: for years or like, man, I never knew all these stories.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you were involved in all this crazy stuff. So, UM,
Speaker 1: it's out there. The audiobook is out there, which I narrate.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't picked it up, UM, I love it.
Speaker 1: If you grabbed a copy, and if you ever read it,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. If you can drop a review
Speaker 1: on Amazon, you know, good, bad and different. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not gonna tell anyone how to review
Speaker 1: the book, but UM, reviews help, you know, and everything.
Speaker 1: I've seen his five star Hey man, I mean, just
Speaker 1: just tell right it, tell it how it is, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh and and it only takes a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: You throw up a review on Amazon. Yeah, it helps
Speaker 1: get the visibility up and a lot of you will
Speaker 1: be excited to know. Next episode, we have a guy
Speaker 1: on who's been getting around in terms of podcasts and promotion.
Speaker 1: I've seen him everywhere. Uh and I'm probably gonna butcher
Speaker 1: his name because i haven't heard him saying but Remy
Speaker 1: at Aliki at a lackey. Uh, former navy seal from Nigeria,
Speaker 1: really interesting story, became an extra and Transformers movie. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk to him. I think he's gonna
Speaker 1: have a really unique story to tell. Yeah. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: even say extra. I think he had a small role
Speaker 1: in Transformers. Um cool role. But yeah, I've seen that
Speaker 1: he's doing a lot of podcasts and people speaking really
Speaker 1: highly of him, so much to uh talk to him,
Speaker 1: and that will be my last weeks shows. But for
Speaker 1: those wondering, I mean, I'm it's not out of the
Speaker 1: question that Jack and I will work on some outside
Speaker 1: stuff together or me do some podcast stuff again in
Speaker 1: the future. I'm just kind of walking away from this
Speaker 1: and uh focusing on me in our male prostitution ring
Speaker 1: that I'm not doing but as I've mentioned, focusing more
Speaker 1: on Voice so over and some other outside ventures. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that I'm you know, not gonna continue
Speaker 1: to do stuff in this field. If the opportunity comes up,
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely open to it. So uh, awesome man. Thanks
Speaker 1: again to David for coming in. Thanks Dennis who will
Speaker 1: be producing this whole show, and uh yeah, tune in
Speaker 1: next episode, which will be up on Wednesday. Awesome you've
Speaker 1: been listening to self red Radio. New episodes up every
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show on Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: at self red Radio.