434: War Crimes, Murder, and Leadership.

How Coalition Forces and Task Unit Bruiser fought for and maintained the moral high ground in The Battle of Ramadi. With Dave Berke, USMC. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 434 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. Also joining us tonight is Dave Berke. Good evening Dave. Good evening. So there are two brutal conflicts going on in the world right now. Well, there's more than that, but there's two that are very prominent. One in Ukraine, between Ukraine and Russia, and then obviously in Gaza and in, in and around Israel as well. And the term war crimes comes up quite a bit. And we all now look at social media and the news and there's a lot of speculation about war crimes that are going on or allegedly going on or possibly

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  going on, or they could be occurring on the ground in both these wars.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not on the ground in either of those wars, obviously, right now. I haven't been on the ground in either of those places, but I have been on the ground in another war.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  And I heard speculations about war crimes in that war. And this is in Iraq. Dave, obviously, that's one of the reasons I wanted to bring you in today because you are also on the ground in Iraq. And so looking at it now, when I hear all these, when I hear the term war crime get thrown around and used, it seems like a good thing to try and understand what that looks like on the ground. And I can understand, you know, where some of these,

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  some of these speculations come about, some of these rumors come about. And it's really clear when you look at social media and there's, there's pictures, images that get put up that are 22 years old, or 14 years old, or seven years old from different locations. These things are happening, but they're really not happening at all. And then in other cases, there's clear, there's clear that horrible things are happening.

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  So again, I don't want to speculate about what's happening on the ground right now in either one of these wars. If I was going to come on here and talk about them, you know what I'd do is actually I would go there. I would go there. But I haven't done that. But like I said, and Dave, same boat, is we've been on the ground in war and wanted to talk through some of those, some of those things. One thing that happens in, you know, on me, so if you as a leader fail to do a good job of communicating what the situation is on the ground, you leave a vacuum.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  You leave a vacuum of people that don't understand what's going on in the ground. And when people don't understand what's happening, because I as a leader do a bad job of explaining to them and painting a clear picture, just like any other situation, rumors will start to fill the blanks in their own heads with ideas and with assumptions. Now, fortunately, what actually happened in the Battle of Ramadi is very well documented. It is extremely well documented and it was documented in real time and it's been documented since then. There's situation reports, there are

• 3:27Jocko Willink?

  operations summaries, there's commanders' briefs, there's investigations. So that on the inside the military, you got all those things. I mean, how many sit reps did you write while you were over there, Dave?

• 3:39Dave Berke?

  Literally one every day.

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:41Dave Berke?

  And that's just the daily sit rep, not including all the sit reps for all the actions.

• 3:46Jocko Willink?

  So for an individual action, you're writing a sit rep?

• 3:49Dave Berke?

  Everyone.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  The op sums? Same thing.

• 3:53Dave Berke?

  Every day.

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  So we had to write every time we did an operation, we do an operational summary. Yes, the sit reps, the commander's briefs, all these things are saved. You know, they're all, they're all, they all still exist. Um, the commander's briefs, investigations that happened, they all get saved. But then it's not just the military that's doing this because guess what else is going on? You've got news reports, you've got journalists, you've got embedded journalists, you've got articles. Then you've got also what's interesting and I kind of mentioned this, you've got academic journals now that have gone back and interviewed people and written books about exactly what happened. So there's all luckily, there's all kinds of documentation about

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  what it was actually like on the ground there. Now, of course, Dave, you have all this information in your head, you know what it's like. I have all this information, I know what it's like. I, I made the mistake of thinking it was obvious what was going on on the ground in Ramadi. I, I made the mistake sometimes of assuming that other people understood the situation. And look, you, did you do one deployment on the ground in Iraq?

• 5:01Dave Berke?

  One.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  And it was just to Ramadi?

• 5:03Dave Berke?

  Just Ramadi.

• 5:03Jocko Willink?

  When you were in Ramadi, did you ever go to anywhere else? Did you go to Balad? Did you go to Baghdad? Did you go to any other cities, any other towns?

• 5:11Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I did Baghdad once or twice, went to Al Assad, uh, and that's about it.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so.

• 5:16Dave Berke?

  Rest of the time was.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  So Alice, how much time did you spend in Al Assad?

• 5:20Dave Berke?

  I took probably three or four trips out there.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 5:22Dave Berke?

  Not, not a ton of time, but I went out there a handful of times.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  Spend the night there?

• 5:25Dave Berke?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 5:26Jocko Willink?

  Um, so you were in Iraq, you were in Al Assad, you were in Iraq, you were in Ramadi. What was the difference between Al Assad and Ramadi?

• 5:34Dave Berke?

  Dude, night and day.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  It's.

• 5:37Dave Berke?

  Night and day. It's hard to describe how different it was. It might've been like two, two different planets. They're very different.

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  Totally incomparable.

• 5:43Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  Totally incomparable. So, and that was the way a lot of Iraq was. So much of Iraq, now look, you could go to Sadr City, terrible. There was certain little neighborhoods in certain cities that could be bad. But even, you know, for my first deployment, 2003, 2004, we, it was very interesting because we went all over the place. Man, I'd roll up on some fob somewhere in the middle of nowhere and you could tell they were taking it and it was pretty hot and then you'd go to another fob two days later and just like the guys, there's nothing going on.

• 6:18Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Jocko Willink?

  So what happens is people take their experience of Iraq. So even someone that was in Iraq and they go, oh, I know what Iraq was like because they were in wherever. But everyone's experience is very different. And depending on where you are, things are a lot different on the ground. So I never really thought through that as clearly as I should have so that people would understand what the actual situation was on the ground. It was not the same as everywhere else. News article, May 22nd.

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  NBC News, 2006. One recent coalition tally of significant acts, that's roadside bombs, attacks, exchanges of fire, indicated that out of 43 reported in Iraq on a single day, 27 occurred in Ramadi. According to a marine officer who declined to be named because he's not authorized to speak to the media. And that, he said, was a quiet day. So you have all of Iraq. There's 43 reported incidents and in that particular day, 27 of those incidents were in this tiny city of Ramadi, which is four miles across. In one, continuing on here. In one neighborhood, Master Sergeant Tom Coffey, 38, of Underhill, Vermont, gestured to a paved road his forces would not drive on.

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  "They hit us so many times with IEDs, roadside bombs, we ceded it to them," he said. So think about that. There's a road, the enemy has hit us with so many bombs on it, we're not driving down it anymore.

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  Look, I was in Baghdad for six months. We drove down Route Irish, did you ever drive down Route Irish? Route Irish in Baghdad. It got hit. There was never a chance that coalition forces were gonna say, yeah, we're not gonna drive down it anymore.

• 8:13Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on same article, after one neighborhood sweep developed into an hour-long gun battle, Iraqi Major Jabbar Marouf Al Tamini returned to base and drew his finger across a satellite of the, a satellite map of the area he just fled under fire. "It's fallen under the command of insurgents," he said, shaking his head. "They control it now." Again, there was no other part of Iraq that I'm aware of where Iraqi forces said, "Yeah, that's under the control of the insurgents." There's no other area that I can think of, that I've heard of, where US forces said,

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  "Yeah, we're not gonna go there anymore." Because the enemy controls it. Summer of 2006, in Ramadi, there was 30 to 50 enemy attacks a day. And by the way, what counts as an attack? Because is someone shooting a rifle? Someone shooting a machine gun at a Humvee hitting the window? That's an attack. Guess what else is an attack? A complex or coordinated attack where there's multiple elements maneuvering. It is, the enemy was good. In, like I said, in 2006, this was very different from other places in Iraq. I'd been to a bunch of other places in Iraq in my first deployment.

• 9:39Jocko Willink?

  I've been to Baghdad, been to Fallujah, been to Ajaf, been all over. Enemy contact in those other places. Now, look, I'm not talking about the assault on Fallujah. I'm not talking about Sadr City at certain times. I'm not talking about Tamim when they, or Al-Kaid, or, what was it? Al-Kaid? Al-Kaid? Al-Kaim? I'm not talking about Al-Kaim when the Marine, I'm not talking about those moments. But on a general, normal day, there's no, there's, in those other places, enemy contact, you kind of had an anticipation that it could happen, but it was unlikely. It was unlikely.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  And in Ramadi, it was imminent.

• 10:27Jocko Willink?

  It was actually imminent.

• 10:30Jocko Willink?

  I would have bet every time we left the wire, every time coalition forces left the wire, the odds were they were getting enemy contact, period and a story. And it's hard to understand that. Like I said, especially if you've deployed to Iraq in a different time. Leif deployed back to Ramadi in 2000, I think it was 2009.

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  Not a shot fired during his six month deployment.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  So the reason I'm bringing this up is because

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  if someone had been to Iraq and they went to a different place at a different time, or even went to Ramadi at the same time, it's, it's not going to be the same thing. And again, this is something that I failed to recognize.

• 11:21Jocko Willink?

  How different it was, you know, even going back to Vietnam. You know, when we came back from that deployment, I talked to Vietnam guys and it was the same thing. There were some, some guys went to Vietnam, some SEALs went to Vietnam. And they were in significant contact regularly. That was a smaller number of SEALs. Most of the SEALs that went to Vietnam, they did operations. They got three, four gunfights. I mean, I talked to one of my friends who was a machine gunner in Vietnam, SEAL machine gunner in Vietnam, and he's like, yeah, we got in four firefights. I fired like 50 to 100 rounds in each firefight and then we were out.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  Good, like awesome.

• 12:07Jocko Willink?

  It's, it was very different. It was, it was a very different situation. When you were rolling in, as going into Ramadi, like where were other FACS going to?

• 12:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah. So for Anglico, remember I was an Anglico FACS. So we had, I'm pretty close, I think either 23 or 26 teams all over Iraq and all the cities you just mentioned. And we would roll up a summary every day of what everybody was doing everywhere. And the way you described it is exactly what I experienced, which was. And I'm generalizing a little bit because there's always an oper- there's always risk everywhere you went. There wasn't like, oh, there's nothing going on ever, but there was always risk everywhere. Just about everything that was happening was in Ramadi. And it was an interesting thing for me because you talked about some of the, almost like a leadership failure of what that perspective was in my mind. I failed to grasp that too, because not only was Ramadi my first,

• 13:01Dave Berke?

  it was my first deployment on the ground and I'd never been to any of those other places in, in like, non-combat scenarios at all. So I didn't have any other perspective. So I'm in Ramadi for however long I'm there. This is just how it is. And I had this first trip, we called it buy up. We go to Baghdad International Airport, which we would do like a log run of supplies or something. And what I ca- what I realized very early on was-

• 13:23Jocko Willink?

  Would you guys do that on helos or were you guys driving out there?

• 13:24Dave Berke?

  Driving.

• 13:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, check.

• 13:25Dave Berke?

  And what that was, was I figured out very early, I'm like, oh, this is a break. And again, this is not like judgment of, oh, if you're in Baghdad, there's nothing going on.

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  Guys in Baghdad were getting after it.

• 13:35Dave Berke?

  They were getting after it. But the environment was such, there was much more control, the coalition forces controlled much more and the environment was just very different. So if we had guys that needed a break, I could put them on a log run to buy up, which meant like, you're gonna go out there for, spend the night, you're gonna get two days, and I say off in quotes, but it's a little bit of a break from the imminence of that. And I came to discover very early on, my experience in Ramadi wasn't normal. It was Ramadi in 2006 is where I ended up and it wasn't like that everywhere else. And so the calculation I had to make of, oh, I need, I need to pay attention to how my guys are going to do throughout this deployment, because this isn't normal.

• 14:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, again,

• 14:17Jocko Willink?

  anywhere you were in Iraq at that time, look, is there a possibility of insurgents? Absolutely. Guys did incredible things. Guys were taking risks all the time.

• 14:25Jocko Willink?

  Ramadi, that was, that was intensified and amplified. There were insurgents everywhere. That, and they were interwoven into the population.

• 14:33Jocko Willink?

  And they used all kinds of weapons to attack and kill American and Iraqi soldiers. And they used the most sadistic methods of rape, torture, murder to control the population. So there was a situation where a local was skinned alive by the insurgents. There was a situation where heads, the heads were cut off and left in the yard of people in the local population. The insurgents were-

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  They were sadistic and evil and they were there and there were targets everywhere. And

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  we really hadn't been in an environment like this before. The so the previous so when we got there, the previous task unit, great dudes, and they had been busting their ass, working hard, getting things set up. They were setting conditions. They were building relationships with the conventional forces. They had some Iraqi forces that they were partnered with. They made all the introductions for us. They started training them. They were a little bit limited by what their Iraqi forces were capable of, which, you know, it's just the it's just the reality of the situation on the ground. But they gave their Iraqis, their Jundis, I might use the term Jundie.

• 15:57Jocko Willink?

  Jundie is just a term for Iraqi soldier, but we kind of used it as a catch all for Iraqi military person, Jundie, soldier. So they had done that and they conducted some good operations, but they were also controlled by the amount of the areas that they could get into. So as you heard in one of those quotes I read earlier, there's roads that were just, no one's going down those roads. And to say, oh, we'll just jump in our Humvees and drive down there and do a direct action mission was stupid. It's just dumb. And so they weren't going to do that. We weren't going to do that. There's massive IDs, there's ambushes, but we show up there

• 16:37Jocko Willink?

  and we start doing a turnover with the guys we're taking over for, great dudes, gave us great turnover.

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  And that was the environment that we stepped into because there's all these, usually the estimates are like four to 5,000 enemy fighters there. That's usually the estimate. Now the population's 400,000, but standing against these insurgents are these soldiers and Marines that are putting their life on the line on a daily basis to protect the local populace while trying to hunt and kill the enemy. And just look, the 228, which was the group that was on the ground when we got there, the Iron Soldiers, outstanding. And then the 11 AD came in and took over. They were outstanding and

• 17:29Jocko Willink?

  The, the, the daily life of those guys was heroic. You know, I just, I just asked you if you took helicopters to Baghdad, you're like, no, we drove. That first seven minutes driving out of Ramadi sucked.

• 17:45Dave Berke?

  Totally, man.

• 17:46Jocko Willink?

  Sucked.

• 17:46Dave Berke?

  Michigan, yep.

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're going down, down route Michigan to get out of there. Now, look, you could have snuck up, what's the road to the North African?

• 17:53Dave Berke?

  Mobile.

• 17:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you could have gone to Route Mobile and, and pushed out. And that's, I hope you did that. You're looking at me like, maybe you did sometimes.

• 18:01Dave Berke?

  I have done, I had done one of each at least. When you just, I know, I'm cutting you off. The Michigan out of Ramadi to, to buy up. That was, if you got through to the street sign that said like, next exit, you know, you're leaving the town, you're heading towards Fallujah, you were good to go.

• 18:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're good to go. But the guys from the 228, the guys from the 118D, these are soldiers and Marines that are there. Everything, single thing that they did, every single time they rolled out, it was them standing in the face of death.

• 18:31Jocko Willink?

  And this is something that impacted us. So as soon as we get, as soon as Task Unit Bruiser shows up there, immediately we're going to memorial services for soldiers and Marines. And standing there in the, it wasn't the chow hall, it was next, it was a chapel. So it was a tent, it was a big tent, it was a big general purpose tent next to the chow hall. And we show up and, you know, I hear that they lost a soldier, lost a marine. And so I'm like, hey, we'll go, you know, this is, these are our guys. So we show up and immediately know the seriousness. Now, I will tell you, I knew there was casualties happening. I did not know that the casualties were happening as often as they were. I did not.

• 19:15Jocko Willink?

  I thought to myself, hey, if a soldier or marine gets killed, we will 100% go to the memorial service. That was not true. We went to them when we could.

• 19:28Jocko Willink?

  But almost every day, someone got wounded and people were getting killed a couple of times a week.

• 19:36Jocko Willink?

  And it was an honor for us to be able to support them. Now, there's this little technical aspect when I use the word support.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  So in the military, there's two different, you can either be the supporting unit or the supported unit.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  And what supported means is everyone is support, supporting what I'm doing. I'm the supported unit. So I'm the one that's the main effort. And if you're a supporting unit, then you're the one that's helping the main effort. You're sort of like, oh, I know what it's the co-star. So there's the star and the co-star. The star is the supported unit. And everyone else is the supporting actors. Right? Well, quite frankly, oftentimes, special operations is the star of the movie. Like, hey, we're, we're going to be the ones that actually hit the target. So these other conventional forces are going to support what we're doing. Where the you're going to be supporting role, we're going to be the main role.

• 20:42Jocko Willink?

  That makes sense in oftentimes, what we had here was different. We were the supporting force oftentimes, meaning that the conventional army or the conventional Marine Corps was the main effort. They were the star of the show. And we were the supporting actors. The reason that's important to bring this up is some people didn't like that. Some people in the special operations and community in, in the special operations community did not like that. And there's a good reason why they didn't like that. There's actually a good reason why they didn't like that. There's a good reason why I was

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  cautious. And if you read the book by Ben Milligan called By Water Beneath the Walls, you'll understand why, because sometimes special operations, when they're the co-star, when they're the supporting actor, they can get abused.

• 21:34Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't know what I'm talking about, read the book by Water Beneath the Walls. There was times where the Rangers, for instance, would get used to assault targets that they shouldn't be assaulting. Didn't have the strength, didn't have the numbers. They were so highly trained. So there were times like that in the history of special operations where.

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  Falling into that supporting role has caused problems. Now, I would, like I said, I was cautious, but it was not like that. We, we may have been on paper, the supporting unit, just like you were, you were the supporting unit on paper, Dave.

• 22:11Dave Berke?

  So many, so many similarities.

• 22:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. We were the supporting unit, but I can promise you that we got as much support as we gave.

• 22:22Jocko Willink?

  And that was required. That, that was really necessary. Now, listen, if we wouldn't have done that,

• 22:28Jocko Willink?

  we just wouldn't have. I mean, same thing with you. If you would have said, listen, I'm only going to go out if I'm the, the, the star of this movie, you wouldn't have gone out, really. I know we wouldn't have. If the only way to go out, well, we could have done an alternate set of missions. This is true. Uh, but we wouldn't have been as involved as we were.

• 22:50Dave Berke?

  And you would not have contributed the way you, the impact you would have made would have been significantly less. I was forced with, faced with the exact same, when I got there, maybe a little different because I had an image in my mind, which really wasn't based on anything because I had no previous ground combat experience. So I had a sense of what Anglico does. So I showed up there thinking how it's going to be. As soon as I get there, I realize if we're going to contribute, we are going to have to find a way to support the army and we are on the army side of things. So you're talking about the Marines army. There's, we were covering both, but we were primarily in the South with the army units. I was going to have to.

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  Did you have another Anglico team that was up with three eight?

• 23:27Dave Berke?

  No, because three, it's a marine battalion. They have their own organic fact, which I know those guys, three, seven and three, I know those guys extremely well. We had another Anglico team out of Craig River with you guys, which you know, another Anglico team. But because the Marines up on the north side of the city had their own organic fact and air shop, they didn't need me. I worked with them a little bit. I actually did some missions with them, but mostly didn't have to. The army didn't have any, so I worked with them. To your point though, as soon as I got there, I realized, well, first of all, there weren't enough of me to go around. They needed way more support than, than I could provide them. But the only way for me to really contribute is I, it was exactly what I just said. I had to support them. Not do what I thought I wanted to do for me. It's what I needed to do for them.

• 24:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. I got asked by one of my senior officers that actually came to Ramadi. They're like, do you need anything? I was like, three more task units or two more task units or something like that. Cause there was so much work to be done. And one of the reasons there was a lot of work to be done was this was going to be a very tough fight. And one of the reasons it was going to be not, not just a tough fight, but it was a different fight than what had happened in Fallujah in 2004. So in Fallujah, it was a massive kinetic operation where coalition forces pushed through. They gave warning to the civilians to leave like it was a siege and assault of Fallujah.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  Just, that's what it was. And outstanding job by the soldiers and Marines that executed that. But it was very kinetic. Like I said, there was warnings. The infrastructure was devastated inside of Fallujah when that happened. And so when Maliki gets elected, he wants peace. And he knew that a Shia-led invasion, let's call it, because that's what it's so, most of the army, so Iraq is made up primarily of Shias. And the ruling class had been Sunnis. That's Saddam was a Sunni. So the army, once

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  the army was formed up now in 2006, the army consisted of a lot of Shia. There were some Sunni battines, but it was a majority was Shia. So what Maliki knew is if he took his Shia army, for the most part, and did a massive kinetic operation through Ramadi, that would look like Shia versus Sunni. And that would, you know, could obviously splinter into a massive civil war. So what he wanted to do was a less kinetic op option. He also wanted to preserve the infrastructure. Yeah.

• 26:02Jocko Willink?

  So that's what was going on. This, this, that's what was going on. And so a few weeks into our deployment, it was time for the 228 Iron Soldiers out of Pennsylvania. And they're actually out of all over the country because they were National Guard here. They got guys from Utah, guys from Vermont, guys from all over the place. Pennsylvania, yes. And there was also active duty, the 38 Marines was working for them at the time too. But it was time for them to go home, most of them to go home. And General Gronski's been on this podcast, talked through what that looked like, talked through what his deployment was like.

• 26:36Jocko Willink?

  The now the group that came in to take their place is 11 AD. They're led by Colonel, now General Sean McFarlane. He comes in to replace them. He brought more combat power too. So he has tanks. He has Bradleys. He has more people like it's a significant upgrade in combat power. And that gives him the capability of going into these enemy controlled territories and setting up combat outposts. So when you got there about a month ahead of me.

• 27:09Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  So what did that transition look strategically from what the 228 was doing? To now you get 11 AD rolls in. What did you say?

• 27:21Dave Berke?

  Yeah, a lot of how you describe it. So I get there. I have, I think a month ahead of you is about what it ended up being. I'm there a month ahead of you. I think I leave a month before you give or take a couple of days. A lot of work when we first got in with the 228. A lot of that for me was figuring out what was going on and I'm not a strategist, but really what we were, there was a lot of, maybe the best word I could think of is like a containment. Like we knew where we could go and where we couldn't go. We, and of course we are there as a supporting unit. I am there to bring capability that they don't have. They didn't have helicopters. They didn't have jets. They didn't have ISR. They didn't have a bunch of things that I had. We also, quite frankly, like had an extra Chuck and extra rifles and an extra turret gunner. We brought things that just helped, that did nothing but help them.

• 28:05Dave Berke?

  But in the end, the operations were somewhat limited to making sure that the enemy didn't expand their reach and didn't go beyond what we knew they currently had. We had crystal clear maps of what we owned and what they owned. And a lot of it was operating inside those confines and knowing what that was. Clearly the contrast when we swap out, we watched the swap out from 228 to 11. That operation, that the entire strategic mindset changed. And that month, maybe a little bit of, I may have saw some things from an experience wise. But you and I saw the transition very similarly from what was going on from a very similar perspective, despite I had a little extra time on the ground.

• 28:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I do remember when I got there.

• 28:46Jocko Willink?

  Cause I got there, maybe like, I don't know, a week or something before like tasking at Bruiser, like all the boys showed up.

• 28:52Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Jocko Willink?

  And the rumor was, we're doing Fallujah.

• 28:56Dave Berke?

  We're gonna Fallujah the place.

• 28:57Jocko Willink?

  Did you get that?

• 28:58Dave Berke?

  Exact same thing.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  So, so I was, when, when my guys were coming, I was thinking to myself, oh, it's on. Like this is gonna be, we're gonna do another Fallujah. And SEALs operated in Fallujah and uh, that was a good situation for them, you know, to get in there.

• 29:15Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and obviously it had worked because you looked at Fallujah and Fallujah was pretty pacified. I mean, at least from that perspective.

• 29:23Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 29:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, well, there's some negatives, of course, you know, you've got displaced citizens. That's a huge thing. You take 400,000 people and think about that. You're in Iraq, the infrastructure is already not great. Now you're gonna send 400,000 civilians out into the hinterland to try and figure things out. That doesn't work. But that's what I was hearing. When I showed up there, oh, we're gonna do another Fallujah. That's what we're gonna do. And it didn't take maybe a couple of weeks before, oh, we're not doing a Fallujah. And part of that was the 118 coming in. Oh, maybe you remember this, I just remembered it. There was a moment where what we're gonna do is when the 228 and the 118 are on the ground together, we'll have twice the combat power. That's when we're gonna do the Fallujah thing. Did you hear that rumor?

• 30:06Dave Berke?

  We've talked about this, we've never proved it, but you and I were in the same meetings. Partially because of our role in our organizations. We had similar roles in terms of our responsibility downstream and roles to the brigade. And so all these, you're repeating all the exact same conversations, I observed to include, well, if we do this, what's the risk? What's the drawback? The infrastructure piece was always the largest one. It was like, rubble in the city might have long-term impacts that we don't want. So all these conversations, but we have this window where uh, we had all these, yeah, all this firepower available. So I, I think we were literally sitting in the same rooms, having the same conversations as they're talking through these things.

• 30:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep. The clincher was though, Maliki, smart, right? Um, Maliki had been elected and he was smart enough to know, dude, I don't want a civil war in this country. And if I invade Ramadi with a bunch of Shia army people and they go into a Sunni city, we could have a, we could have a freaking civil war on our hands. And he didn't want that. So the new strategy was to go into these enemy-controlled territories, enemy-controlled neighborhoods and set up combat outposts.

• 31:14Jocko Willink?

  All of this was to be done by, with and through Iraqi forces. Meaning, everything needed to be led by Iraqis. They wanted everything to have, and this is the term that was used, an Iraqi face. Here's the problem with the term Iraqi face. The Iraqi face is just the face, right? And ultimately, you needed to have more than just the face. You needed to actually have some capability. And I wrote about this in the dichotomy of leadership. We were told, when we got there, and the guys that turned over with us, like, hey, they're gonna try and make you use Iraqi soldiers to do all your missions. You're gonna have to take them with you. And we were kind of like, and they were doing some of it. It was definitely challenging for them. It was challenging for us.

• 31:56Jocko Willink?

  But, and again, wrote about this in dichotomy. They were telling us, we needed to have, I forget what the exact ratio was. It might have been six to one, it might have been seven to one, but for every one American, you had to have six Iraqis soldiers with you. This was problematic. I pushed back against it. Even though I pushed back against it, I didn't push back and say, no, we don't want to take any Iraqi soldiers. All I said was, hey, look, the minimum number of SEALs I want to have is like, four, five, six, something like that, depending on where they're going. But, we still, 99% of the operations that we did were side by side with Iraqi soldiers. We didn't have to take them on reconnaissance missions.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  That's one that we were allowed to do unilaterally. And so, we did a couple of those. We did one, we did one that was waterborne, and we were really nervous about taking the Iraqi soldiers with us in the boats, because they didn't know how to swim. And so, we went, took the time to get them. We had to order life jackets, we got them life jackets, eventually. And I remember, I sent that one up the chain of command, saying, hey, listen. We want to do this, we want to do these operations from the boats. I don't feel comfortable with the Iraqis going with us. Can we do it unilaterally? And the word came back down, nope, take Iraqis. And so, what we did was, we gave them like swim training. And it was more like float testing than it was swim training, training.

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  But what we did is we got them to make sure that they would float if they fell in the water. And then we went and brought them with as a partner force and they like did basically security from the boats as we did the go in a shore part. But tha- that's the type of scrutiny, you know, that was happening with trying to get these missions done. And, and that's the way it works. And the reason it was, was because

• 33:50Jocko Willink?

  i- if no one is telling you, you have to take Iraqi soldiers with you, you're going to say, yeah, okay, then we, then we won't. It's, it's just additional risk that you don't want to have to take.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  And here's another important piece to understand. That again, through, through my fault, not everyone understood this. Our mission from the Siege of Sotif, which is the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, so this is all special operations in the country, both Iraqi and American and whoever else. Our mission from them was to train and fight company and platoon sized elements of Iraqi soldiers. So why is that important? Well, we weren't being told to train and fight special operations units of Iraqi soldiers. We were being told to train and fight, and by fight, I don't know if you know this echo or I just want to make this clear.

• 34:52Jocko Willink?

  Train and fight means we're going to train them and we're going to fight with them. Like we're going to, we're going to take them out and fight them. Like sail a boat, like we're going to sail the boat. That's what you're going to do, you're going to fight the platoon. You're going to take them out so they can fight. The people that we were training were, that we were directed to train were regular conventional Iraqi soldiers, the Jundis. We ended up scraping together and actually the guys that predated us, they scraped together and put together a, a unit, a special, they call it a special mission unit. That was pretty close to like, okay, this is more of a special operations type, direct action. And again, the guys that preceded us there from the SEAL teams, they built that unit and did a good job. And so we took them over, but we also took over a bunch of working side by side with regular.

• 35:38Jocko Willink?

  Iraqi Jundis and out of each time we try and carve out like a scout element. We called them scouts. They had their own little scout element. We'd kind of work with them. But they were mostly just general purpose Iraqi soldiers, which meant they were conscripts, which meant they were untrained. They were uneducated. They were unmotivated. Sometimes they were unloyal and we didn't have any blue on green. We didn't have any of those types of attacks while we were there, but we were definitely suspect. They had a they the they had a poster of Muktada al-Sadr in their barracks. You know, like the crazy Muktada al-Sadr looking poster and he has got lightning all around him. Like the Jundis had that. That guy was a that guy was a bad guy.

• 36:20Jocko Willink?

  I had targeted him my previous deployment and here he was a poster of him hanging in the barracks. So there was it was tough. But that's that's what we were dealing with. It also mean that they were poorly equipped. They didn't have night vision for sure. They certainly didn't have night vision. They didn't have they didn't actually have flashlights. So they might have like a flashlight for every three or four guys. But they certainly didn't have weapons mounted lights. They didn't have any helmet mounted lights. They just have would have like a flashlight. And you know, we did we you know, everyone, every SEAL probably has three or four flashlights. And so guys were giving them flashlights so that they could see. But this is the this is one of the reasons

• 37:03Jocko Willink?

  why we conducted a lot of operations in the daytime. Because when the mission of the partner force that you've been tasked to train and fight doesn't have night vision and operates in the day, what are you going to do? Are you going to say, hey, we trained you, but now you go out by yourselves? You can do that. What kind of bond do you form with the forces that you're working with? Not a very good one. Does it give the enemy a tactical advantage?

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, here's the thing. The enemy did not really go out at night. In Ramadi very much. I'd say we probably killed less than 1% of the enemy that we killed were at night. They came out in the daytime. That's when they came out. That's their best form of camouflage. Their best form of camouflage was wasn't the darkness. It was the civilian populace.

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, the idea that we own the night, which we certainly do, but the enemy knew that we own the night. And that's why they were very inactive at night. They wouldn't do anything at night.

• 38:09Dave Berke?

  Yeah, very similar things. And obviously, coming from aviation, you know, the massive advantage we typically had back then was we had the capability of conducting daytime tactics at night because of our night capability, night vision goggles, all the systems that we had. We loved operating at night because it gives us huge advantage. One of the other things that was a huge priority for us as we focused almost exclusively. We did a lot of stuff at night. I shouldn't say we did plenty of things at night, but typically the night missions that we did were all intelligence-driven raids where we knew where we were going and why, and we wanted to catch them by surprise because we expected them to be doing nothing, which is what they were typically doing. So I don't mean to say we didn't operate at night, but the night missions had a different focus behind them. Our daytime missions, one of the things we also got some strategic insight. You've talked about this a lot,

• 38:54Dave Berke?

  and it's just something that I had to reflect back on because I didn't quite keep up as much until after I was gone thinking about it was our presence there, our existence there was really designed to help the local populace that we decided not to fallujah. We were not going to try to level their city. Is we wanted them to see us as a better alternative than the insurgents who were really bad, evil people. And one of the ways we had to do that is we had to be present. We literally called them presence patrols. They were there to show them, hey, we are going to stay here and we're going to align with you and I want you to see us doing that, which meant we were going to operate during the day. Would I rather operate at night for a metallurgical advantage? Yes. Have all this great gear and all this great training and a lifetime of experience doing that, knowing the enemy couldn't.

• 39:37Dave Berke?

  That did not help us with one of the main strategic objectives we had, which was you are going to see me there, which means we had to operate during the day and we had to make a big adjustment to do that. Because just at face value, we were at a bigger advantage at night, but that wasn't going to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish.

• 39:53Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, that's exactly with, for instance, with that special mission unit, like we're doing direct action raids, which we did. I don't know how many direct, we did a lot of direct action raids. Of course, we did those at night. Because we had that small group of Iraqi soldiers that we gave them all flashlights. So we could help get to the target, you know, we'd have our guys on night vision, we could kind of protect the patrol going on there. Once we hit the target, well, now they're inside, we can turn on lights, they can use their flashlights, everything's cool. Yeah, we absolutely did that. We did a lot of that. But when you've got a conventional Iraqi force that needs to do a patrol or a clearance inside the city, they are absolutely going to do that during the day.

• 40:35Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 40:35Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it would be mayhem if they did that at night. You couldn't. Yeah, you couldn't do it. So that's what we started doing.

• 40:41Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 40:41Jocko Willink?

  With these Iraqi forces in the lead, again, as much as we could get them to take the lead, we started to clear the city. Now, the other thing is, am I going to have to like push the guys like, hey, you guys gotta go out? Dude, I have to push, I have to push Leif, Leif Babin, or Seth Stone, or BTF Tony. Like, hey, you better go out there and do this, or JP, or Mikey Mansour, like, no, these guys are people, I mean, yeah, Mikey Mansour is the guy that had got Casavac because he had a freaking ear infection, comes back and is like, can you get me back to my guys? I want, there's not, I want to go, I want to go. Like, that's just,

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  that's just not happening. We had 30 plus freaking badass frogmen that want to go out. Hey, so do I have to push them? No, actually, what I have to do is hold them back. Actually, we'd have to say like, hey, BTF Tony, I know that you want to go and do this, that, the other thing in broad daylight? You're not doing that, bro. It's not happening. He wanted to get, he had all kinds of ideas of things that BTF Tony wanted to do.

• 41:48Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we did. And like I said, do we do direct action raids? Of course. Do we do those at night? Yes, of course. Do we do recons at night? Yes, of course we did. Did we oftentimes for our Overwatch positions insert at night? Yes, we did. So we did those kinds of things, but this is, what was, what was different was we, we had to go into a coin, a counter insurgency mode. We had to change the mode from just doing direct action to doing these counter insurgency type operations, which is a whole spectrum of operations. Why are we doing that? Because we were freaking losing at the time. We were losing, not just Ramadi, the whole country. We were losing. Enemy attacks were up 300%. It was going in the wrong direction. I know that while my first deployment to Iraq, we were targeting

• 42:33Jocko Willink?

  insurgents, we were targeting really like cell leaders. We weren't calling them insurgents yet. That's what they became. Once they got organized, once they got led, but we were playing whack a mole. Go grab a bad guy. Go, someone will replace him. Go grab a different bad guy, someone will replace him.

• 42:48Jocko Willink?

  Here's a declassified study about the war that was released in 2007 about the insurgency in 2006. It says, uh, this is from the Gamma Corporation. Ramadi, the capital of Al-Lanbar, was the only city in Iraq where gunfights were still routine in 2006. In late 2004, AQI leaders fleeing the assault from Fallujah had poured into Ramadi, eventually laying siege to the government center in the heart of the city. A woefully undersized force of two American battalions undertook a house by house operation to hold a city of 400,000. In five visits to, since 2004, I had watched the American casualties climb beyond those suffered in the Fallujah battle.

• 43:32Jocko Willink?

  140,000 troops in country and they produced 3,000 patrols a day, including close in security. That's not a sufficient number. Force protection had become its own mission. Even our advisors have to take four Humvees to make one patrol. The senior levels insist on it. We're too risk averse. We're not taking back the streets. The commanders understand the principles of counter insurgency. The first is to make contact with the people. And you don't establish that by staying inside the wire or driving in convoys. The first technique we'd push as instructors, if given more freedom to suggest improvements, that's simple.

• 44:14Jocko Willink?

  We'd argue for more foot patrols with the Jundis. But this school is not the business of operations. We're here to change attitudes. So this was the whole.

• 44:27Jocko Willink?

  That's one of the strategic changes that we saw is we got to get outside the wire. We coalition forces got to get outside the wire, got to start doing like you said, presence patrols, but it's not just presence patrols. It goes beyond that because what we're going to do is we're going to set up combat operations inside your city. So yes, we're going to do presence patrol. And what are we doing on those presence patrols? By the way, we're going into meeting with the families. We're saying, oh, your kid's sick. Let what's oh, we got a cormin here. Let's give them some medicine. That's what we're doing. Oh, you got a problem with your generator. Oh, guess what? We got a CB that we can bring out here and help work on your generator for you. You're doing, you're figuring out what this, you're doing census as well. Who's out there? What's that human terrain look

• 45:04Jocko Willink?

  like? Yes, I'm doing big clearance operations where you're literally going, again, we being Iraqi soldiers in the lead, you know, on one of these clearance operations, we probably have 150 Iraqi soldiers, seven seals, 100 army guys, the army guys are setting up cordons, the seals are setting up overwatch positions and the Iraqis are moving building to building.

• 45:33Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Jocko Willink?

  But just to, just like as a broad kind of overview of what those clearance operations look like.

• 45:38Dave Berke?

  There was nothing like, like, there's no comparison to this. You couldn't look at Fallujah from the year prior where, where that, I know it worked for a particular outcome, but it would not, it was not a frame, a, a, not a model, model to use. In fact, they looked at the Fallujah model and said, we can't do that for that exact reason. It was nothing like oh, three, the march up. It was nothing like Desert Storm. Like there was, what we were doing in that time, there was no other, oh, just, we're just going to do that. Everything was different. Everything was new for everybody. It was, it was completely complex and it was unlike certainly historically, but also unlike what I was thinking and what people were thinking, because the frame of reference that you have is whatever your previous frame of reference is, is if you're on the march up in oh, three, that's what

• 46:21Dave Berke?

  you remember. And then you get there like, oh God, this is totally different. If you're in Fallujah and guys that came from Fallujah or had been in Fallujah, this, this is totally different. There was no comparison to the complexity and the range of things we were doing and the type of missions we were doing. To anything that anybody had done, and I mean anybody, even the most experienced people that have been around for 15 years, there was no frame of reference that, oh, we did this, you know, back in Desert Storm, or we did this back in OIF. We were doing things that nobody had had done in a generation.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  And again, when you say we, you're talking about this broad coalition of US Army soldiers and Marines, special operations, that would be us, the SEALs that were there. It was, it was all new. And again, this is all historically documented. This isn't like Dave sitting here saying, oh, he's saying what they did, we did something. No, it's like, it's, it's documented.

• 47:10Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 47:11Jocko Willink?

  Hey, did it happen in Tal Afar? Yes, it did. So, had it dimmed and dimmed? Yes. Actually, let me throw a correction at you. Up in Tal Afar, which H R McMaster went up and did seize clear hold and build up in Tal Afar. The Marines in Al Qa'im, which I mentioned briefly, they did, what they did that was outstanding was they made friends with the vocal populace who were pointing out where the bad guys were. So actually, now that I think about it, people had done this before. We were, we were capturing those lessons. We heard about the guy, the Marines in Al Qa'im going door to door. It was a great story. It's like Marines are in Al Qa'im going door to door, trying to clear the city, and someone would be like, hey, why are you coming to my house? The bad guys are four buildings down. Oh,

• 47:53Jocko Willink?

  okay. Well, do you want to help us? And they would want to help. And then McMaster did this up in Tal Afar, and guess who took McMaster's place? McFarland. So, General McFarland, Colonel McFarland at the time, rolls it in and said, oh, what'd you do here? Oh, I see what you did. Okay, it worked? Oh, yes, it worked. Okay, let's go, let's go do it in Ramadi. Colonel Gronski didn't have the combat power to get it done. He needed more people. Well, McFarland shows up and he's got tanks, which is going to be a huge asset, and he's got more combat power. So that's why this idea of going in and building these combat outposts, so it wouldn't just be a presence patrol, it would be a permanent presence. That was another word that got thrown around a lot in those brigade meetings. Permanent, establish

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  permanent presence.

• 48:39Dave Berke?

  Yeah, the cops.

• 48:40Jocko Willink?

  That's what the combat outposts were. And as we started to

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  Come up with a plan, the actual like mission planning for building the combat outposts. I realized one of the best things that we could do in tasking a bruiser was support these operations. Be the, be the supporting actor. Provide overwatch. And look, we did some overwatches out of the gate, out of the gate, tasking a bruiser and, and hey, I'm going to correct you again, Dave. You said no one's ever done anything like this before. My first deployment, there was a unit that was getting hammered with mortars on the fringes of Baghdad, real hostile area at the time. And we went out there and set up sniper positions. We went out there and set up these sniper positions. We did it one time. We were ineffective. We were ineffective. We got

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  mortared, you know, we, we took some really close mortars, but we didn't do anything. We didn't, we didn't engage anybody. But it gave me a little glimpse of, oh, wait a second, what if we would have been out there for a few days? What if we would have put a couple other overwatch positions in other spots? You know, there's, there's other things I figured out that we could do. And as I saw this unfold, as soon as we got there, it's like, oh, we could put snipers out. Yeah. And that's what we started doing immediately. And luckily, tasking a bruiser had 13 snipers in it.

• 50:03Jocko Willink?

  Which is a lot. It's a lot. Four to four snipers in a, in a task unit would be, would be sort of probably what the requirement is. Six is probably normal. Like, oh, we got six or seven snipers. We had 13 snipers. It's just luck, luck of the draw. Look, oh, you have a chief, you know, BTF Tony, guess what? He'd been to sniper school. Not, not every chief goes to sniper, but he, so that's, there's an additional one. Uh, we had guys that were new guys that had snuck in and gone to sniper school. And so we just ended up in a platoon with a lot of snipers in it. And so we had a huge tactical advantage. And so very quickly, like I said, I got, I got our snipers into the field. And, and guess what? When our snipers are going in the field, they're not going into the field solo.

• 50:45Jocko Willink?

  They're going in with Iraqi soldiers. They're going in with our interpreters on every sniper overwatch. So the Iraqi soldiers are with us. They're helping maintain security. They're up on the rooftops. They're, they have machine guns in case we get attacked. They're helping us deal or manage the, deal with or manage the families that are in these buildings.

• 51:11Jocko Willink?

  And so we put these sniper teams out there and like I said, very quickly, these snipers, our snipers, these SEAL snipers started killing bad guys.

• 51:20Jocko Willink?

  Within days, we had these combined Iraqi SEAL sniper elements that are out there killing, we probably killed, I don't know, six, seven, eight bad guys within days.

• 51:32Jocko Willink?

  And this was very shocking. This is very shocking to the rest of the SEAL community, really, and special operations community at large. It was shocking to me as well. It was shocking to the guys. Well, look, we all knew Ramadi was bad, but we didn't understand how effective we could be. You know what else was surprised? The enemy. The enemy was shocked.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  Because they hadn't had someone sneak into their backyard and kill them when they didn't expect it. In these areas where people couldn't drive, well, guess what we could do? We could walk. We could sneak in there. We could sneak in there at night. We could set up a position. When they start, in the daytime, start doing what they normally do, we could take them out. When they start digging holes in the road to put IEDs in, guess who's gonna kill them? We are. But there was a lot of them and it surprised, like I said, it surprised the enemy, it surprised me, it surprised everybody. My boss was surprised. I was surprised. My boss's boss was surprised. No one was used to this level of enemy engagement. That's why I said

• 52:38Jocko Willink?

  Ramadi was different. Here's a, here's a quote, another one. "After the Fallujah offensive, the Americans tried to quell the insurgency in Ramadi with a combination of political maneuvers and cooperation of tribal leaders to root out foreign Islamist fighters. But that plan has spectacularly fallen apart. The men who dared to ally themselves with the Americans quickly learned that the US military couldn't protect them. Insurgents killed 70 of Ramadi's police recruits in January." Yeah, that's Glass Factory.

• 53:13Jocko Willink?

  And at least a half a dozen high-profile tribal leaders have been assassinated since then. This was a freaking terror campaign. Quote, this whole thing's a quote, I'm injecting some little quotes like this thing is a freaking terror campaign. That was my interjection. Back to the book. Ramadi has become a town where anti-American guerrillas operate openly and city bureaucrats are afraid to acknowledge their job titles for fear of being killed. The government center in downtown Ramadi comes under gunfire or mortar attacks daily. That's from Megan K. Stack and Louis Ruge from an article called Fear of Big Battle Panics Iraqi City, 11 June 2006.

• 53:58Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, go listen to the podcast about the glass factory.

• 54:04Jocko Willink?

  If you want to know what happened there. And this is all fresh when we showed up. That happened in January.

• 54:13Jocko Willink?

  Those tribal leaders, the sheiks got assassinated.

• 54:20Jocko Willink?

  So the idea that Ramadi was somehow in good condition when Task Unit Bruiser arrives. And let me give you another quote here.

• 54:30Jocko Willink?

  In late 2005, the Sunni tribes around Ramadi attempted to expel Al Qaeda in Iraq. After growing weary of the terrorist group's heavy-handed indiscriminate murder and intimidation campaign, a group calling itself the Anbar's People's Council formed a, from a, formed from a coalition of local Sunni sheiks and Sunni nationalist groups. The council intended to conduct organized resistance against both coalition forces and Al Qaeda elements. But undermanned and hand-strung by tribal vendettas, it lacked strength and cohesion. A series of tribal leader assassinations ultimately brought down the group, which ceased to exist by February of 2006. This collapse set the conditions that the brigade found when it arrived in late May.

• 55:14Jocko Willink?

  The assassinations created a vacuum, a leadership vacuum in Ramadi and by cutting tribal ties to outside tribal centers, isolated the city. For their part, the tribes had adopted a passive posture, not wishing to antagonize the powerful Al Qaeda presence in and around Ramadi. In short, as the ready first, prepared to move from Tal Afar, their new AO was essentially in enemy hands.

• 55:41Jocko Willink?

  So that that's what was going on. The idea that Ramadi had been pacified was not true. Ramadi was a complete war zone when we showed up. Uh, here's from the same article in the summer of 2006, Ramadi by any measure was among the most dangerous cities in Iraq. The area of operations averaged over three times more attacks per capita than any other area in the country. With the exception of the embattled government center and nearby buildings held by a couple, a company of Marines, Al Qaeda related insurgents had almost complete freedom of movement throughout the city. They dominated nearly all of the city's key structures, including the city hospital, the largest in Anbar province.

• 56:26Jocko Willink?

  Their freedom of movement allowed them to place complex subsurface IED belts, which rendered much of the city a no-go terrain for US and Iraqi army forces. That's the summer of 2006. I'm just gonna use that as a better way to explain what I was saying. All corrections aside, my whole point was like, this was different than anything. When I say we, that was my team and the teams we're supporting, this was a, there was nothing like this. This was just different. Yep. This environment was different. And listen, if you were in Habenia, or you were in Baghdad, or you were in Yusefia, and someone was shooting at you, we get it, man. Of course, of course.

• 57:09Jocko Willink?

  The chances of them shooting you were three times greater if you were in Ramadi. So that, that, that's just the way it was. And that's why it was different. And that's why I didn't do a good job of making sure people understood what we were getting into. Because it was so different. Now, as we got there, and like I said, we started killing bad guys almost immediately. We immediately became the most scrutinized unit in the country. And I don't mean that in a bad way, actually. I actually mean it in a positive way. My chain of command wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing and make sure that we had the support that we needed.

• 57:47Jocko Willink?

  So they increased their micromanagement and I was fine with it. How did they do that? Well, here's a couple of examples. Number one, they changed the level of authority required for operations to be conducted. So let me give you an example. There was some basic operations that I was able to approve myself.

• 58:11Jocko Willink?

  If we were going to do a presence patrol. When I got there, I could say, yep, Leif, you want to take your guys out and do a presence patrol? Go ahead, I approve it. Within a week, they said, hey, Jaco, we want, we have approval for that now. I said, okay, cool, fine. I wasn't upset by this at all. I had a great relationship with my commanding officer.

• 58:32Jocko Willink?

  We could, I think the only, the only thing that I was actually allowed to conduct by the end of the deployment. But no, not by the end, but just within a couple of weeks was like, hey, if you need to do a logistics convoy, you can approve it, Jaco. Everything else was overseen by my chain of command, which I was perfectly fine with. Why did he do that? It's because the operations were very risky and he knew it. My boss knew it. My commanding officer knew that.

• 59:02Jocko Willink?

  He's the overall responsible.

• 59:05Jocko Willink?

  If I'm going out there and killing a bunch of people and he wants to know what's going on, of course, he's the one that's going to have to answer for it. Yeah, hey, Jaco, I'm gonna put more control on you. Great, thank you, no problem. And that's exactly what happened.

• 59:19Jocko Willink?

  And listen, he knew the operations were risky, like I said. And, and, and I can tell you right now, this might seem strange. And I don't know what it's like for you in the pilot world.

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  If you want to promote and you want to make rank,

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  the surest way to do that is to avoid

• 59:40Jocko Willink?

  risk. Just don't take risk. Just don't take it.

• 59:46Jocko Willink?

  Even for me, like I had a, at up to this point in my career, it had been an awesome career. I mean, I had had an incredibly blessed career in the SEAL teams.

• 59:59Jocko Willink?

  And if I wanted to continue on my trajectory, the easiest thing to do is not do anything. The easiest thing to do is, yep, we're going to train some Iraqi soldiers. That's, that's our mission. We'll train our Iraqi soldiers. We'll stay, that, that is tempting. I'm sure it was tempting for my boss too.

• 1:00:14Jocko Willink?

  But here's the thing.

• 1:00:17Jocko Willink?

  Our fellow Americans were in a fight and needed our support. The US Army soldiers, the US Marines were in an incredibly tough fight. And we had some capabilities that we could bring to the table to help them. And I knew it. And there's not one part of me that looks at a situation where there's Americans that are fighting. And I say, oh yeah, that's not me. I'm not doing that. These guys are getting wounded and killed on a daily basis, and we've got an opportunity to help protect them. That's what we're doing.

• 1:00:56Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? My boss agreed. And guess what? His boss agreed.

• 1:01:04Jocko Willink?

  These were risky operations. I had a conversation with my boss, my commanding officer. He, he, he comes out, we'd already done some operation. We already killed some bad guys. We'd already gotten some firefights and he's like, isn't this risky? And I was like, sir, yes, it is.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it risky, risky to be out there with these Iraqi soldiers in the daytime clear, doing clearances? Yes, it is, sir. It's very risky. There's enemy all over.

• 1:01:31Jocko Willink?

  He says, what are you going to do to mitigate the risk? I, I told him, we are going to kill the enemy before they kill us. That's what we're going to do for mitigation. That's where, that's one of the primary drivers of setting up these overwatch positions. Because I had an element on the ground with 40 Iraqi soldiers. And I had six or seven SEALs with that element, helping them do the clearance. How can I protect them? Oh, I can tell you, I can protect them. I can put my snipers in overwatch positions where they can protect them and see the enemy maneuvering on them. And that's exactly what we did.

• 1:02:04Jocko Willink?

  And, and again, my commanding officer was, I had a great relationship with him. And he, it's his job to make sure we're doing the right thing.

• 1:02:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, before we even left on deployment, I was in his office. We had changed. We were supposed to go to Baghdad. We had changed. Now we know we're going to Ramadi.

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  And he, I was in his office and he asked me something along the lines of, or he told me something along the lines of, hey, before every mission, you need to ask yourself, is this mission worth the lives of one of your guys? And I actually looked at him and I said, hey, sir, I can ask, I can answer you that question right now. There's no mission that, that there could be that's worth the life of one of my guys. There's no mission. I don't care if it's Osama bin Laden. I don't care. That might be an extreme statement. But there's no mission that's worth the life of one of my guys. These are my bros. Were you kidding me?

• 1:03:11Jocko Willink?

  And I said, sir, that being said, there will be risk on every mission that we do and we're going to mitigate it as much as we can. But it is not possible to mitigate all risk. It's not possible.

• 1:03:25Jocko Willink?

  Or unless we just stay home.

• 1:03:29Jocko Willink?

  So we will mitigate risk to the utmost, to the utmost.

• 1:03:35Jocko Willink?

  And that, and that's what we did. And

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  then, again, great relationship with my commanding officer. He approved all the missions. He had to approve all the missions that we did, except for maybe, like I said, logistics convoys. If we were running a logistics convoy to bring Seth Stone and the guys out at Craig door, some equipment or gear that they needed, we could do that. I could approve it. Everything else that we did had to be approved up the chain of command. And by the way, there was also a level of operations that had to get approved by his chain of command.

• 1:04:10Jocko Willink?

  And they were all being very micro managing of us, which was fine. Which was fine. So the idea that I was out there just running unchecked is like completely insane. It's completely, I had, first of all, I had my chain, my chain of command. So my SEAL team commander, and then the CGSOTF commander above him, they're reading all these ops ones. They know exactly what's going on. On top of that, we have the conventional army chain of command. And the Marine Corps chain of command, which by the way, the army reported into the Marine Corps at that time. On top of that, we had to get approval from the battlespace owner.

• 1:04:51Jocko Willink?

  So if you're gonna go work in Tamim, which is a one section of Ramadi, if you're gonna go work in there, you need to get approved by the battlespace owner. You've got to present that mission to them. You've got to coordinate with them. Then you gotta go talk to the company commander and say, hey, captain, here's what I'm looking at doing. Then you gotta talk to the platoon commander, who's actually gonna be running the QRF for you or whatever. Oh, and by the way, on top of all that approval, you gotta get approval from the Iraqi chain of command. So every move that we made, every operation that we conducted, every time we left the wire, it had to be approved and coordinated through all these different elements.

• 1:05:30Jocko Willink?

  And then of course, on the ground, like I said, you gotta coordinate with every, everyone on the ground for sure. You gotta talk to the battalion, company, platoon, squad. If you fail to coordinate with the battlespace owners, it's freaking suicide. It's suicide. They owned the ground. And by they, I mean like a company commander owns a chunk of real estate out there. You gotta go talk to them. They have the intel, by the way, too. Like they're the ones that know, hey, there was an ID in that street three days in a row. Don't go down it. Thank you. They told us the safest route. Leif wrote about this. Leif wrote about asking a conventional battlespace owner, hey, Spec Ops wants to do an operation down here.

• 1:06:14Jocko Willink?

  What do you think? And he's like, do not drive down that road. You'll lose a vehicle. Okay, cool. We didn't go.

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  By the way, the conventional battle space owners, they're the ones that conducted our QRF. They're the ones that conducted our fire support. They're the ones that we relied upon to conduct our casualty evacuation. So if we got a guy wounded, it was the Army or the Marine Corps that was going to come and rescue us. If we needed fire support, it was the Army or the Marine Corps that was going to come and rescue us. That's what was happening. They're the ones that were going to send troops. They're the ones that were going to send armor. They're the ones that were going to send CASVAC vehicles to us. We didn't have the assets to do that. We didn't, we did zero times. Zero times, well, I guess, let me not say zero times. Anytime we did it at an operation in

• 1:07:05Jocko Willink?

  the urban area of Ramadi, zero times was task unit bruiser assets, the QRF or the CASVAC, zero times. If we did, if we did a, an operation in the hinterland, in a rural area, like up at MC1 or 1MC, um, what is it, MC1, MC1?

• 1:07:23Dave Berke?

  MC1.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If we did an operation up there, it's a rural area. We might stage our vehicles and leave an element with vehicles that could actually do the CASVAC. But even there, most of the time, I don't want to say zero, because I think a couple of times we did act as our own potential QRF or act as our own CASVAC. But 99% of the time, it was the conventionals that were doing that for us. And so they had to approve what the hell we were going to do. They had to agree to support it. I had to put in my concept of operations, what my CASVAC platform was, who it was, what frequencies we were going to be on. And if we couldn't get the approval and support from the conventional forces, we could not conduct the mission, period, end of story.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  We, we couldn't conduct operations without them. That's why this was such a team effort. And we called in these assets, QRF, fire support, and CASVAC. You combine all those three together, we called those in, I can't count how many times. And God bless the US Army and God bless the US Marine Corps for coming to help us and coming to save us and coming to evacuate our wounded guys.

• 1:08:42Jocko Willink?

  And you might think to yourself, why did they agree to do that? I can tell you why they agreed to do it. Because they knew that we took significant risk to go into their areas, go into their battle spaces and kill the insurgents that were trying to kill them.

• 1:08:58Jocko Willink?

  And they were thankful and grateful. Just like we were thankful and grateful for them. When they came and pulled our ass out of terrible situations.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  This was a team effort.

• 1:09:16Jocko Willink?

  The Army called us Army SEALs.

• 1:09:20Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps gave us Marines. I had Marines that worked in my Tactical Operations Center for the entire deployment to coordinate communication.

• 1:09:30Jocko Willink?

  There's two outstanding Marines that were there 24 hours a day.

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  We used Marine Corps circ boats on many occasions at great risk to those Marines and their boats. Cause we had a great relationship. Marines didn't have to do that. They did it because we were all part of the same team. That's what's going on.

• 1:09:54Jocko Willink?

  Here's an overview of how things unfolded. This is once again from Colonel Sean McFarland. The Brigade Commander. He says, "It was clear that to win over the sheiks and their people, our BCT, that's Brigade Combat Team, would have to move into the city and its contested areas. Thus, we decided to employ a tactic we had borrowed from 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and use successfully in Tal Afar, the Combat Outpost or COP. This is what I was just talking about. That's what McMaster did. General McMaster. No disrespect, sir. General McMaster, Colonel McMaster at the time. That's what he did up at Tal Afar with the proud soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cav.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  Legendary guys, legendary deployment, did an outstanding job. Continuing on back to the book, our cops normally consisted of a tank or infantry company team based in a defensible local structure in a disputed area. Eventually, the cops included an Iraqi army company wherever possible as they became emboldened by our presence. Later, we began to establish Iraqi police substations at or near the cops as well. At this early, at this early stage, the outpost provided lily pads for mechanized quick reaction forces, safe houses for special operations units, that's us, and security for civil military operations centers. In rural centers, the cops sometimes doubled as firebases with mortars and counterfire radars.

• 1:11:22Jocko Willink?

  That's out like at MC1. Because we now maintained a constant presence in disputed neighborhoods, the insurgents could no longer accurately trace and predict our actions. Frequently and random patrols out of combat outposts presented, prevented al Qaeda from effectively moving and operating within the local populace. At the same time, the cops enhanced our ability to conduct civil military operations, CMO, intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, and information operations. Now I'm going to continue on, here's something that no one wants to hear.

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  These outposts also acted as fly bait, especially in the period immediately after a new cop was established. Experience in Tal Afar taught us that insurgents would attack a newly established outpost using all systems at their disposal, including suicide car bombs. These attacks usually did not end well for the insurgents, who often suffered heavy casualties. During the establishment of the first outpost in July 2006, the enemy mounted multiple platoon assaults. The frenzy of attacks on the new outpost culminated in a citywide battle on July 24, 2006, in which al Qaeda in Iraq forces were severely beaten and sustained heavy casualties.

• 1:12:44Jocko Willink?

  By October, the attacks were far less, with elements consisting of a handful of men conducting hit-and-run type operations. These noticeable decreases in their strength indicated our plan to decimate their ranks was clearly working. Constant coalition presence, insurgent attrition and loss of insurgent mobility freed the people from constant intimidation and sapped any support for al Qaeda in Iraq. So.

• 1:13:08Jocko Willink?

  What that meant was, what I just read, the fly bait, this is what people don't want to hear. You, when the conventional forces were building this massive construction project to establish a combat outpost, we knew that the enemy was going to attack. That's what we knew was going to happen. And so, what we did in Task Unit Bruiser is we pushed out from those combat outposts as they were being built and set up sniper overwatch positions with Iraqi soldiers along with us, with interpreters along with us, with SEAL elements,

• 1:13:49Jocko Willink?

  and would set up these sniper overwatch positions. And when the enemy maneuvered into attack, we would interdict and kill them. And they did it, often.

• 1:14:01Jocko Willink?

  That's what was happening.

• 1:14:07Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, "The Cops also allowed us to control the infrastructure in Ramadi and use it to support the populace again. During a heavily publicized operation in July 2006, we established a combat outpost manned with newly recruited Iraqi Army troops and US forces. We set it up just outside the Ramadi General Hospital walls while the Iraqi Army secured the hospital. Within days, the hospital providing medical care for, was providing medical care for the city. The effect devastated and embarrassed Al Qaeda and Iraq insurgents. Wounded fighters brought to the hospital were detained while the general populace received quality medical attention for the first time in a year."

• 1:14:50Jocko Willink?

  And yes, SEALs supported that operation. As a matter of fact, SEALs went in first to that operation. SEALs went into first, SEALs were the first people on the ground in almost all of these combat outposts. Why is that? Because the Army wanted us there, because the Marine Corps wanted us there. Because they knew and we knew they were going to get attacked. They knew and we knew that as soon as we cleared these roads, as soon as

• 1:15:19Jocko Willink?

  EOD and the engineers cleared these roads from roadside bombs, insurgents would come out and put, they have a name for it. It's called reseeding IEDs. So, an insurgent would go and put a hole in the ground and put a bomb in there.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  The engineers would clear that bomb. It would leave a hole. The insurgents would come back out and reseed, meaning put a new bomb inside the hole.

• 1:15:48Jocko Willink?

  That's one of their tactics, techniques and procedures. So that was very easy for my snipers to get up on a long access road where a mine clearance vehicle goes by, digs out a mine, disposes of it. There's a hole there. The vehicle drives away. Two hours later insurgent comes out to reseed.

• 1:16:11Jocko Willink?

  This is one of their tactics.

• 1:16:17Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on from the same article, "The brigade staff believed that by offering convincing incentives, we could create a tribal alliance that could produce lasting security in Ramadi. To persuade the tribes to cooperate, we first needed to understand the human terrain in RAL. And that task fell to an outstanding and talented junior officer."

• 1:16:44Jocko Willink?

  Captain Travis Patrick Quinn. An Arabic-speaking former special forces soldier

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  and an infantry officer assigned as the Ready Brigade's S9 engagements officer, Patrick Quinn coordinated brigade-level, local meetings and discussions. He quickly gained the sheik's confidence through his language and interpersonal skills and developed strong personal bonds with their families. He strengthened these bonds during meetings between the brigade commander or deputy commanding officer and the sheikhs. Battalion and company commanders also worked on improving relations with the townspeople on a daily basis. Thus, the sheik's growing trust of the brigade officers led them to support our efforts to reinvigorate police recruiting.

• 1:17:40Jocko Willink?

  So there was interaction on a daily basis almost with the tribal leaders there. And much of that was because of a heroic human being named Captain Travis Patrickrin, who is at all the meetings Dave was just talking about, who is an Arabic speaker.

• 1:18:05Jocko Willink?

  Who was, he was a special forces guy, freaking just an outstanding human. Big ass smile on his face, by the way.

• 1:18:14Jocko Willink?

  Nice, super nice guy, understood the culture.

• 1:18:20Jocko Willink?

  Now, does this mean that every single Marine and every single soldier saw this incredible level of coordination and cooperation? Of course not. Can there be someone that might have a different perspective or harbored some kind of animosity? Or didn't understand how the team worked together? Of course. Look, there's 5,600 people there. There's people in silos. There's people that see one event and judge it. You know, what if some Marine didn't get word on SEALs using their OP? Or getting fuel from their fuel farm? What if an Army officer didn't know we had coordinated with headquarters on a resupply of some ammo? What might, what might one of those individuals get angry and hold a grudge? Sure.

• 1:19:04Jocko Willink?

  That's possible. Could there be someone that didn't get the coordination that was, missed the meeting? And SEALs roll in there and they didn't know about it? Could that? Yes, absolutely. Is that possible? In fact, it's not just possible, it's guaranteed. You've got such a complex environment. Not everyone's going to see it the same way. But the, those people are in a small, very extremely small minority. The vast majority of people on the ground understood with great pride the communication, the coordination, the camaraderie.

• 1:19:36Jocko Willink?

  That was everywhere on the battlefield, everywhere.

• 1:19:49Jocko Willink?

  Now, again, if you're on the outside and you don't know this, I can see how you, you know, someone could get the impression that Jocko's just out there just doing everything on his own. That you could, you could end up with that. It's just so clearly ludicrous to think that. Everything was checked. Everything was scrutinized. Everything was approved through multiple lines of chains of command. And that's the way it was. And so I got into this whole diatribe because I was talking about the scrutiny that we fell under. Here's another scrutiny that we fell under. So yeah, we had scrutiny from getting our missions approved. Another piece of scrutiny that we fell under almost immediately was we had

• 1:20:32Jocko Willink?

  to begin filling out two sworn shooter statements for every person that we killed. This was not a normal procedure. And, and as you know, within a, within probably a week, this, hey, from now on, we want two sworn shooter statements for everyone that you killed. I was like, okay, Roger that. What was, what did Leif and Seth and the boys say? What are you kidding me? We gotta fill out more paperwork? Of course, they're mad. But I knew and I understood why. I had a conversation with my JAG officer about it. He's like, listen, these multiple forms of document, documentation of what happens, this is gonna, means when people make claims in the future, if they do, we will be able to explain exactly what was going on. And that made sense to me. War is complex. And people remember things differently. And

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  it's best to document what happens. And that's exactly what we did. That's exactly what we did for every single enemy fighter that we killed. We have an explanation of what happened, why they were engaged, any pertinent information around the incident, and how the rules of engagement were implied. And those documents were then reviewed, and they were corroborated with other reports.

• 1:21:45Jocko Willink?

  And what do I, so what do I mean by corroborated with other, what other reports? In order to do that, I have to explain the, the human terrain. And you heard Colonel McFarlane mention the word human, human terrain, human terrain in Ramadi. First of all, the enemy, the insurgents, there's really three components of, of insurgents there. You had Al Qaeda, straight up Al Qaeda in Iraq, AQIZ is what we called it. Al Qaeda in Iraq, you had Sunni extremists. These Sunni extremists were not Al Qaeda.

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  They were fighting for themselves, for their own control. And then you had criminal elements and there's crossover in all three of these because sometimes they all had a common enemy. Sometimes they didn't, sometimes their enemy was each other. In fact, often it was.

• 1:22:32Jocko Willink?

  So, but, but you had this, this element of enemy, these insurgents. Okay. So then you, so you have that, then you have American forces. Well, anything, what did I miss on, on, uh? We could talk the whole day, I guess, about Al Qaeda, Sunni extremists and criminal elements. They're, and these are the three main, there's little fractions within those. Cause, cause the Sunni extremists, sometimes different tribes had different elements of extremism in their own tribe.

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  So they would sometimes fight each other?

• 1:23:09Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  So it wasn't just a war, it was like a three, four way war kind of going on?

• 1:23:14Jocko Willink?

  So check this out. The Sunni extremists, the Sunni sheiks at one point fought Al Qaeda.

• 1:23:23Jocko Willink?

  Al Qaeda assassinated the sheiks. This, I think it was six or eight, I think I just read it was six, six Sunni sheiks got murdered by Al Qaeda. That actually put the, the Sunnis in check. They were like, all right, dude, this is, we're not, we're just gonna have to go along with them. That's freaking terror. Terror is supposed to have a purpose in a situation like this where we're trying to control the populace. The, the Al Qaeda was trying to control the populace. What they did was torture, rape, murder. One of the key people or one of the key murders that they can do is murder the leaders of the tribes. And that's exactly what they did. They did that bomb at the, at the glass factory. Who was at the glass factory? Police recruits, who were the police recruits?

• 1:24:08Jocko Willink?

  They were local Sunnis.

• 1:24:12Jocko Willink?

  And then you just had straight criminal elements. And there's a lot of talk about a guy named Sheikh Satar, who we formed a relationship with. It was actually, the conventional forces, we included, formed a relationship with this guy named Sheikh Satar.

• 1:24:29Jocko Willink?

  And Sheikh Satar had been targeted

• 1:24:34Jocko Willink?

  in the previous six months as a bad guy.

• 1:24:38Jocko Willink?

  And as a matter of fact, the brigade commander, Colonel McFarland, went to the Marine Corps and said, hey, we're going to form a relationship with this guy. And they're like, no, that guy's a target. And he's like, he was a target six months ago. Now he was on our side.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  So, so that's what was going on. So that's what you had from the, from the enemy. But on the friendly side, so we had American forces, obviously there. We have almost 6,000 soldiers and Marines. By the way, not all these soldiers and Marines are in combat roles.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Look, you got logistics and support, but you also have military transition teams. What are those military transition teams doing? They're embedded with the Iraqi military. They're friends with the Iraqi military. They're working with Iraqi military. They live with the Iraqi military. We have police transition teams. What are they doing? Oh, they live with the Iraqi police. They work with the Iraqi police. They have a relationship with the Iraqi police. You also have civil affairs groups that are going out there and, and building infrastructure, working with the sheiks, trying to get projects done for them, paving roads, digging wells, all those things. Medcap, doing medical civil affairs. So, oh, there's a breakout of some kind of disease or there's a situation going on where kids need better water.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, let's get that medical of civil affairs element going. So, so, so you have the US military, but the US military isn't all people with rifles. There's people that are there specifically. Their job is to rebuild the infrastructure from day one.

• 1:26:04Jocko Willink?

  Then you have the Iraqi army. I don't know the exact number, number, maybe 3,000 Iraqi soldiers out there. Uh, they were out on operations with American forces with all of us.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Like I said, 99% of the operations that we did, other than recons and logistics runs. There were Iraqi soldiers with tasking a bruiser.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  I don't want to deviate too much from the, the timeline here and all that, um, but like when you say criminal elements. Generally speaking, do you know what their goal is?

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Make money.

• 1:26:36Speaker 02

  Oh, that's it straight up. So they're, they're essentially fighting a different war than it. I mean, everyone's kind of fighting their own different.

• 1:26:42Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if the, if the opportunity comes to make money by putting a road in the bomb, I mean, putting a bomb in the road. For Al Qaeda, they'll make money that way. If money comes from helping, uh, an American. Find out where a bad guy is, they'll, they'll make money that way. They're just criminal elements. So you have like. Human intel sources. Do you know what that is?

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's basically like someone that's going to tell you what's going on. Some of those people like. Six months ago, they were planting bombs in the roads.

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Jocko Willink?

  Now Al Qaeda is running out of money to pay me. Oh, but you'll pay me to work, tell where Al Qaeda is? I'm in, let's go.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  Crazy man. Makes sense.

• 1:27:20Jocko Willink?

  The Iraqi army is there with us. They're out on all these operations and they're obviously. Gonna bond and they're gonna take care and protect the friendly Iraqi civilians. Also, we have interpreters. The interpreters are come from a bunch of different backgrounds to speak Arabic, but they're. Gonna look out and see what's happening. Then on top of all this, you actually have the interim government of Ramadi. There's a government in this city. They have a mayor, they have staff. They're trying to run, run a city. They're trying to build infrastructure. They're trying to provide services. They're trying to build up their political capital. Right? And how do you build up political capital? By protecting and supporting the civilian populace.

• 1:28:01Jocko Willink?

  So when someone runs a tank through a freaking wall, what happens? They go to the government officials and say, hey, the freaking Americans drove a tank through my wall. Uh, what does the, what does the mayor say? Oh. Let me get the Americans out here to give you some money or let me get their engineers out here to rebuild your wall.

• 1:28:19Jocko Willink?

  There's a direct conduit for. These civilians. To run their grievances and complaints up the chain of command is going to go right to the coalition forces.

• 1:28:34Jocko Willink?

  And, and so you have that official government of Ramadi, then you also have this entire sheik, all, all the tribal sheikhs. And they've got all their elements and they're trying to keep their political power.

• 1:28:46Jocko Willink?

  And that means the, the coalition forces are conducting what we call tribal engagement, TE, engaging with the local tribes. These are the people of the power. It's, it's tribal culture. These are the people of the power. And there's multiple tribes, powerful tribes in the region. And the tribal leaders, they're gonna have power. And the Americans, what we had to do, the Marines, the Army, the SEALs, we had to build relationships with those tribal leaders. And we had to help the tribal leaders protect their neighborhoods.

• 1:29:19Jocko Willink?

  We had to help them fix damaged buildings, help them with their power issues. Like, that's what's happening. And guess what else? Civilian casualties. If there is a civilian casualty in Ramadi, it's immediately known to everyone in Ramadi, up, down and across the chain of command.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  That's what's happening.

• 1:29:44Jocko Willink?

  That's what's happening. That's why it's so important to mitigate collateral damage.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  That's why it's so important to protect the civilians. But when I say collateral damage just now, I just meant like the walls, the buildings, the infrastructure, but you've got to protect obviously the people, the human beings.

• 1:30:06Jocko Willink?

  I think Leif's platoon like cut down date palms

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  because they wanted to improve their field of vision. Like, we had to go pay for these freaking date palms. That's the level of like grievances that would get filed. So the idea that SEALs or any American or any Iraqi force was out there indiscriminately killing civilians is, it's like implausible. It could not happen. It could not happen. Every single civilian death, which did occur, by the way, were there civilians' deaths? Yes, there were. And every one of them was reported, was investigated, and it was resolved with the local populace. It had to be. You could not just go out and think that you could go and kill civilians. Let me give you an example.

• 1:30:58Jocko Willink?

  This, this, let me give you an example of what happens. This is from Al Jazeera. 25 June 2006. Specialist Nathan Lynn was charged with voluntary manslaughter for allegedly shooting an unarmed man on February 15th. Lynn and a second soldier, Sergeant Milton Ortiz Jr., were charged with obstructing justice for allegedly conspiring with another soldier who reportedly put an AK-47 near the body in an attempt to make it look as though the dead man was a fighter. Ortiz was also charged with assault and communicating a threat in a separate incident on March 8th. He allegedly put an unloaded weapon to the head of an Iraqi man and threatened to send him to prison. The soldier who allegedly placed the weapon near the body was redeployed and left the army before criminal proceedings began.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Both soldiers from the 1st Battalion 109th Infantry of the Pennsylvania National Guard are being held in Baghdad while awaiting hearings.

• 1:31:51Jocko Willink?

  So you want to know what happens when you kill a civilian? Everybody knows about it. And again, who reported these things? The locals report them, the Iraqi soldiers report them, the Americans report them, the sheikhs report them, the TERFs report them. Everyone is watching. You can't get away with things.

• 1:32:10Jocko Willink?

  And if you try and get away with things, you're going to hurt the freaking war effort. This is how, through all these different sources, this is how they found out and investigated and followed up on every engagement in Ramadi. It was reported through a citizen network to the government officials and back to the military.

• 1:32:27Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, I don't care if it was a broken door, a smashed window, a breached wall, we're going to hear about it.

• 1:32:35Jocko Willink?

  And any careless or overly aggressive unit that behaved in this manner would have been shut down immediately. Would have been shut down immediately.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  Any unit that didn't coordinate with battlespace owners, well, they would have been there for one day. One day.

• 1:32:55Jocko Willink?

  We wrote about one of those elements in the book Extreme Ownership. A special operations element came in. They thought they were going to do their own thing. They were gone in two weeks. I think they did two or three missions. They were gone. They weren't coordinating.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  And certainly any individual who's intentionally or repeatedly behaving in a way

• 1:33:17Jocko Willink?

  that's against the rules of engagement or against the law or against the strategy that we were conducting. They would have been

• 1:33:26Jocko Willink?

  arrested, imprisoned, court martialed, sent to jail. Period. End of story.

• 1:33:30Jocko Willink?

  So, so if you hear, when you hear about war crimes, if you hear about someone wantonly killing civilians, it's just a lie from someone that has no idea of what it was like on the ground. It was not possible.

• 1:33:46Jocko Willink?

  So despite the level of violence in Ramadi, engagements were highly visible, highly tracked. And in Task Unit Bruiser, we did get investigated. And when we did, I was thankful. I, this is actually a great lesson I learned very early, which was from the army. If something questionable happens, immediately get investigation. You should invite investigation. Did you, did you have this attitude?

• 1:34:15Dave Berke?

  Dude, I am literally sitting here and you, it's like you're describing my experience there. All these things you're saying are the same exact things. I have so many stories in my head. I was thinking of a story. 10 minutes ago, you're walking through this. I was on a patrol and listen, we worked together a bunch. Most of my operations were not with you because we were doing so many operations with so many other units. I was on a patrol where, and I was supporting an army squad or platoon or something. We shot a cow. We shot a cow. A local civilian cow got shot twice. And they did an investigation. I was interviewed because I observed it. And in the end, like we, we conducted an investigation and then went back to that family.

• 1:34:55Dave Berke?

  I could, I could show it on a map and paid them, bought the cow, apologized and fixed that problem. Over a cow. The, the level of scrutiny was so insanely high and I don't want to make it sound like it was debilitating. Where you were fearful of doing something wrong. You just understood that every single thing you did. Was being watched and observed, scrutinized and assessed and reported. From all sorts of people. So even if I was like, hey, don't tell anybody we shot the cow, which is ridiculous anyway. 20 other people who I'm not coordinating on that are going to report it to include the owner of the cow.

• 1:35:34Jocko Willink?

  The owner of the cow who's, who's, who's going to go meet with his shake on Thursday night? And he's going to be like, hey, your freaking Americans shot my cow.

• 1:35:41Dave Berke?

  That's right. And so the best thing we learned we could do is if anything went wrong and things went wrong. We made mistakes. We, cows got shot. Is we didn't wait for someone to tell up the chain across. We came home and immediately reported those things. And if it wasn't you, somebody else is going to do it. It was just the life that we were living there. So as I'm listening here quietly, I am living in my head. What went on? It's exactly the same thing across all places that we operated there with every single unit. You couldn't, you just, you simply could not do anything out of the, of, of what was appropriate. And by the way, if you did, you're actually putting your own life at risk too. It would have been dumb, even if you could, but you couldn't. That's just how it was.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  And that's what the thing about investigating, that's what I learned, you know, investigate, the word investigation has a negative connotation, right? Like, oh, you're getting investigated. And so what happened was I was working with an army unit. I was probably two weeks there and he, we were planning or something. He's like, oh, I gotta go talk to whatever legals here to the jet or the. And CID, CID is here from Baghdad. I'm like, oh, what for? He's like, oh, we're getting investigated. And I was like, oh, he goes, oh no, it's good. He goes, that's my attitude. Come investigate us. You want to know what we're doing here? Come investigate. And I was like, that is beautiful. And that's the attitude I had. So. You should want to get investigated. You should want to have everyone interviewed. You should want to have the truth be there.

• 1:37:09Jocko Willink?

  The, the classic example that looked like, uh, the blue on blue. We had a blue on blue. Obviously, what about extreme ownership? I came back. I was like, hey, we just had a blue on blue. Let's investigate and find out what the hell went wrong. Every KIA gets investigated. If you enter a mosque, they're going to investigate that. If an unarmed personnel, unarmed person gets engaged or gets killed, that it's going to be investigated. And here's the good thing. Once everyone on the team knows that, like, everyone knows. Everyone knows, oh, any action that you take is going to be investigated. So that's what we did. And, and listen, we're there for six months.

• 1:37:54Jocko Willink?

  We engaged hundreds of enemy. Did we have a small number of engagements where military aged males were maneuvering or behaving in a manner that was congruent with enemy tactics? And they got shot? Yes. That absolutely happened. Guys digging holes. Guys maneuvering in a tactical manner toward friendly forces. Guys driving past clearly marked checkpoints. Like, there was a, there were some cases where this type of behavior was identified by snipers and the snipers deemed that military aged males were displaying hostile intent.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  Meaning this sniper is looking at someone maneuvering, running, digging a hole, driving, and decided, hey, this person needs to be killed. They're a threat. They're, they have hostile intent. Sometimes there's a warning shot, if possible. Sometimes there wasn't. And then, once neutralized, those individuals that were shot were inspected. And if it became clear, once the target was neutralized, that they ultimately were not a threat, then we initiated the investigation. Yep, here's what happened. Bring someone in from the outside to investigate. Whether it's the army, whether it's the Navy, whether it's the Marine Corps. Bring their legal teams in

• 1:39:20Jocko Willink?

  to interview everybody and to review the pertinent information and debrief with the, all the different elements that are out there and then make some kind of a legal recommendation.

• 1:39:32Jocko Willink?

  That happened and in each of these small number of individual cases, the shots that our snipers took were ruled clearly within the rules of engagement.

• 1:39:45Jocko Willink?

  And look, does that help the conscience of a freaking sniper?

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  Maybe a little, but not really.

• 1:39:58Jocko Willink?

  We still gotta go out, find the family, pay the family.

• 1:40:03Jocko Willink?

  But this is a tiny number of situations where this took place. And like I said, all investigated

• 1:40:11Jocko Willink?

  and reviewed and cleared.

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  What you have to do is you have to investigate. You have to get the truth out there. There's a another term that I learned from the army, which is good shot, bad result. And it's a it's a terrible thing. Means a sniper or a rifleman saw something, they identified

• 1:40:34Jocko Willink?

  what they thought was hostile intent. They took a shot and it ends up having a bad result.

• 1:40:42Jocko Willink?

  And that did happen. And it did happen with my guys on a on a couple of occasions. Now, look, I can tell you, no women or children were ever engaged by anyone in Tasking the Bruiser ever. And the reason is because they weren't a threat.

• 1:41:01Jocko Willink?

  They seldom would even come out. If there was shooting going on, they wouldn't come out.

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  When they did come out, it's like they were doing things that were not even remotely hostile. There were times that the enemy used women and children as human shields. But even in those circumstances, no one ever shot a woman or a kid. There's one instance where

• 1:41:22Jocko Willink?

  enemy fighter was transporting weapons and ammo and was hiding behind a child.

• 1:41:28Jocko Willink?

  And that military age male was shot and killed by a sniper from Tasking the Bruiser.

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Documented.

• 1:41:39Jocko Willink?

  Now, you might think, well, how is this happening? Were there, were, were Task Unit Bruiser the only snipers in Ramadi? That were having success? Absolutely not. There were many successful snipers and sharpshooters in the Battle of Ramadi. Here's, here's a, an example. You've probably never heard of this. Uh, this is from an article called Marine Sniper Makes His Mark With Swift Death. This is from AP Press writer Antonio Casta, Castaneda.

• 1:42:11Jocko Willink?

  Battle of Ramadi, July 30th, 2006.

• 1:42:15Jocko Willink?

  When he was, when he, he was five, when he first fired an M16, his father holding him to brace against the recoil. At 17, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, spurred by the memory of September 11th. Now, 21-year-old Galen Wilson

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  has 20 confirmed kills in four months in Iraq and another 40 shots that probably killed insurgents. One afternoon, the Lance Corporal downed a man hauling a grenade launcher five and a half football fields away. Wilson is the designated marksman in a company of Marines based in downtown Ramadi, watching over what Marines call the worst, what Marines call the most dangerous neighborhood in the most dangerous city in the world. Here, Sunni Arab insurgents are intent on toppling the local government protected by the Marines. Wilson, five foot six, with a soft face, is married and has two children and speaks in a deep, steady monotone. After two tours in Iraq, his commanders in the 3rd Battalion, 8th Regiment,

• 1:43:12Jocko Willink?

  called him a particularly mature Marine, always collected and given to an occasional wry grin. His composure is regularly tested. Swaths of central and southern Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, are dominated by insurgents who regularly attack the provincial government headquarters that Marines protect. During a large-scale attack on Easter Sunday, Wilson says he spotted six gunmen on a rooftop about 400 yards away. In about eight seconds, he squeezed off five rounds, hitting five gunmen in the head. The sixth man dived off a three-story building. Just as Wilson got him in his sights and counts as a probable death. Wilson says, "His skill helps save American troops and Iraqi civilians." "It doesn't bother me."

• 1:43:56Jocko Willink?

  "Obviously, me being a devout Catholic, it's a conflict of interest." "Then again, God supported David when he killed Goliath," Wilson said. "I believe God supports what we do, and I've never killed anyone who wasn't carrying a weapon."

• 1:44:09Jocko Willink?

  "He was raised in a desolate part of the Rocky Mountains outside Colorado Springs, surrounded by national parks on three sides," he says. "He regularly hunted before moving to Fort Lauderdale, Florida as a teenager." "His brother also serves in the military." Technically, Wilson is not a sniper. He's an infantryman who also patrols through the span of destroyed buildings that make up downtown Ramadi. But as his unit's designated marksman, he has a sniper rifle. "In the heat of the day or after midnight, he spends hours on rooftop posts, peering out onto rows of abandoned houses from behind piles of sandbags and bulletproof glass cracked by gunfire." "Insurgents have killed good Marines I've served with. That's how I sleep at night."

• 1:44:50Jocko Willink?

  Though I've killed over 20 people, how many lives would those 20 people have taken?

• 1:44:59Jocko Willink?

  So...

• 1:45:02Jocko Willink?

  That's an example of one Marine. Outstanding Marine, by the way.

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  In an infantry, supporting his infantry unit. And, and look at what he's doing.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  So, by the way, the 38 Marines and the snipers from 38 Marines gave us so much information. We, we modeled their operations in many ways, the way they were doing things. Tony, BTF Tony, Chris, went and talked to them

• 1:45:33Jocko Willink?

  to figure out, hey, what's the best way to get this done?

• 1:45:38Jocko Willink?

  But, so there you have a Marine, sharpshooter. Imagine what happens to the number of enemy killed when Tasking Bruiser goes into areas. It goes into areas that have bait out, which is a combat outpost that's being built, and sets up between one and 13 snipers in mutually supporting Overwatch positions with interlocking fields of fire.

• 1:46:06Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna kill a lot of bad guys and we did kill a lot of bad guys. We killed hundreds of enemy fighters. So did the army, so did the Marine Corps.

• 1:46:20Jocko Willink?

  But we clearly had to stick to the rules of engagement.

• 1:46:28Jocko Willink?

  The rules of engagement were so perfectly clear.

• 1:46:34Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna read them to you. Here's the rules of engagement. This is what Dave, your SEALs, your Marines had to follow. The soldiers had to follow, the Marines, everyone there.

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  Rules of engagement. Nothing on this card prevents you from using necessary and proportional force to defend yourself. One, you may engage the following individuals based on their conduct. Persons who are committing hostile acts against coalition forces. Persons who are exhibiting hostile intent towards coalition forces. So if someone looks like their intent, that's a target. These persons may be engaged subject to the following instructions. Positive identification is required prior to engagement. PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target. If no PID, contact your next higher commander for decision. B, use graduated force.

• 1:47:26Jocko Willink?

  When time and circumstance permit, use the following degrees of graduated force from responding to a hostile act or intent. One, shout verbal warnings to halt. Two, show your weapon and demonstrate intent to use it. Three, block access or detain. Four, fire a warning shot. Five, shoot to eliminate threat.

• 1:47:43Jocko Willink?

  C, do not target or strike anyone who has surrendered or who is out of combat due to sickness or wounds. D, do not target or strike hospitals, mosques, churches, shrines, schools, museums, national monuments, and other, any other historical and cultural sites, civilian populated areas, or buildings unless the enemy is using them for military purposes or if it is necessary for your self-defense. E, do not target or strike Iraqi infrastructure, lines of communication, or economic objects unless necessary for self-defense or if ordered by your commander. If you must fire on these objects, fire to disable and disrupt rather than destroy. F, always minimize incidental injury, loss of life, and collateral damage.

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  Three, the use of force, including deadly forces authorized to protect the following: yourself, your unit, and other friendly forces, detainees, civilians from crimes that are likely to cause death or serious bodily harm, such as murder or rape, personnel or property designated by the on-scene commander when such actions are necessary to restore order and security. Four, in general, warning shots are authorized only when the use of deadly force would be authorized in that particular situation. Five, treat all civilians and their property with respect and dignity. Do not seize civilian property, including vehicles, unless the property presents a security threat. When possible, give a receipt to the property's owner. You may detain civilians based upon reasonable belief that the person: One, must be detained for purposes of self-defense.

• 1:49:12Jocko Willink?

  Two, is interfering with coalition forces' mission and accomplishment. Three, is on-listed persons wanted for questioning, arrest, or detention. Four, is or was engaged in criminal activity. Or, five, must be detained for imperative reasons of security. Anyone you detain must be protected. Force up to, including deadly forces, authorized to protect detainees in your custody. You must fill out a detainee apprehension card for every person you detain.

• 1:49:36Jocko Willink?

  MNC, Tac 1, General Order Number 1 is in effect. Looting and the taking of war trophies are prohibited. All personnel must report any suspected violations of the law of war committed by any US friendly or enemy force. Notify your chain of command, judge adequate, CID, IG, or chaplain.

• 1:49:55Jocko Willink?

  So, those are the rules of engagement. They didn't change. We didn't have, Dave didn't have one set of rules, and I'd had another set of rules. It didn't happen. All the rules of engagement are the same.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  And they were followed. And here's another thing that was an undercurrent at the time. The Hiditha Dam investigation had started. So, there was a bunch of civilians killed at the Hiditha Dam.

• 1:50:24Jocko Willink?

  The story had not broken yet, but the Marine investigation started February 14th, 2006. So, right before we arrived in Ramadi, the Marines knew that there was an investigation taking place, charging Marines with killing Iraqi civilians. And it definitely sent a shockwave through the Marine Corps and that shockwave leaked over to, you know, everybody else, myself included. So, the 38 Marines were highly focused, very professional with this atmosphere, but so was everybody else. It was like the first time everyone's thinking themselves, "Oh, wait a second. Oh, this, this, we gotta make sure that these things are done correctly." And by the way, just FYI, these, these charges were dropped eventually

• 1:51:07Jocko Willink?

  in the Haditha Dam. The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse thing, freaking terrible, terrible strategic impact on, on the war. Nobody benefited more than Al Qaeda from what happened at Abu Ghraib with the prisoner abuse. And look, I had just come from being the Admiral's aide. And so, I got to see all the, I got to see the way this stuff hit SEAL Team Five. On their deployment, they had some drama with photos. They had taken photos of prisoners and whatnot, and these got posted in a public forum. It was a disaster. That's why I was like, "No more photos. You're not allowed to have photos anymore."

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  When I got home, SEAL Team Seven, 2004, I get home from deployment, and you know, we put our gear away, and then they're like, "Okay, go spend the weekend or whatever. Go spend two days with your family." I come back, every single one of our computers, and we have a lot of computers, because our whole system is running off computers, all of our computers, both classified and unclassified computers, were all confiscated by NCIS. All of them. Every email, every image that was on there, every briefing that was on there, it was all on there.

• 1:52:23Jocko Willink?

  So even though I had had a great deployment and led scores of operations and got, you know, great marks on my evaluation, my foot wrap, received combat awards for that deployment, it didn't matter. Even though I was selected to go serve for the admiral, it didn't matter. Guess what?

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  Despite an eminently successful career in deployment, it didn't matter. It's like you're getting investigated. And this was stemmed from at SEAL Team 7, in my sister platoon, there was a report of prisoner abuse from someone that had been fired in the platoon. Someone stole something, they got fired, they got sent home. And then they reacted to that and made a bunch of claims. And this, these types of things happen where someone gets disgruntled. They get, yeah, they're mad about something that happened and then they go out and make some wild claims. And that's triggered an investigation here.

• 1:53:20Jocko Willink?

  And this is the thing that I learned, you gotta be ready for that. You gotta be ready. Who knows what might motivate someone to fabricate claims against you or your troops. You gotta be ready for that.

• 1:53:34Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be ready for that. You gotta even be ready for your own freaking guys telling stupid stories, right? This happens too. Guys exaggerate, guys are emotional, guys let their ego get out of control.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  I always like to talk about getting mortared. Cause if I'm sitting here and I'm telling you guys a story and I'm like, okay, let's say I got, I'd say the closest mortar ever hit to me,

• 1:54:02Jocko Willink?

  one really close in Ramadi, but I was on the other side of a wall. So it wasn't that bad. I got, there was, we were in Baghdad, in the outskirts of Baghdad, and we were set up and I, a mortar probably hit.

• 1:54:18Jocko Willink?

  Probably hit 50 feet away from me, right?

• 1:54:22Jocko Willink?

  And it was a little mortar too, a little 60 millimeter mortar. I guess 62 or whatever it is the Russians use.

• 1:54:29Jocko Willink?

  If I'm telling you guys that story, what am I gonna say? You know, I'm probably not gonna say a number, but I'm like, this thing hit right next to me. What? Echo, if I say something's right next to me, how far away is that? Right next to you. It's three feet, one foot. Two feet, yeah. So that's what happens. Guys, tell, so Echo, have you ever gone home to your wife and be like, you know, come, we, we trained jiu-jitsu? You ever get home and tell your wife like, Jaco beat the shit out of me? Yes, sir. Now, your wife understands jiu-jitsu. She knows what that means. She's not picturing me pummeling your head in, right? She knows what that means.

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  They caught Leif on a video, I saw it the other day. Leif saying, Jaco choked us all the time. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? What's he talking about?

• 1:55:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's like Jaco's a bully. No, Jaco trains jiu-jitsu. Leif's laughing as he says it, but if you hear that second hand, Jaco choked us all the time, what do you got? Uh, here's one. Dude, I was surfing, I caught every wave. Dude, I caught every wave. Yeah. What does that mean? Dude, I want you to know that I caught a lot of wave, but what if you're not a surfer? What does that mean? If you're not a surfer, that means, oh, Jaco said, claimed he caught every wave. Now you meet someone else that's, that's, is a surfer and you say, well, Jaco's out there. He says he catches every wave. And the surfer's like, dude, that doesn't sound, that's not, that's impossible. No, he said it, he said he caught every wave.

• 1:55:50Jocko Willink?

  So can you get someone from tasking a bruiser that's like, dude, we killed everybody? Yeah, 100%. 100%.

• 1:56:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, we shot this dude. Yeah, you're gonna get people that do that. You gotta protect yourself from that. You gotta, you're, you're gonna develop that stuff.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I hear stories about me, like my friends would tell stories about me that are totally exaggerated. I'm like, dude, come on, man. Like, really? Chalk would do whatever he wanted. It's like, bro, there's an entire, I know it might have seemed that way. And you probably felt like that, but um, do you want to review all the free concept of operations that got set up? The chainic man. So you gotta be prepared for that. You gotta, you gotta be prepared for other people to come at you. You gotta be prepared for your own people to tell stories that aren't true, that get caught by someone that us doesn't understand. And next thing you know, you've got

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  stories that are out of control. And what, and what that means is you gotta take the high road. You've got to, you've got to take the high ground. You gotta take the high road at all times. You know, it goes back to that story of Delta Charlie, one of my platoon commanders. When we were doing a hydrographic reconnaissance and had that opportunity to not do it. And him looking at me and looking at the platoon and saying, we, we don't have to do this, but would that be the right thing to do? And it's like, yep, that's not the right thing to do.

• 1:57:26Jocko Willink?

  And I learned from that. That was when I was 22 years old. It's like, yeah, you better do the right thing. And so, yeah, good. Oh, came home from SEAL Team 7 deployment. They take every computer that we have. They scrub it all. And guess what? We're cleared. Cleared from any wrongdoing. Had another investigation after that, multiple interviews. And again, it's just people are talking, they're hearing things. Once you sit down and do the investigation, thankfully, it's like, oh, good, got it. You're clear. So investigations should be conducted and they are conducted. And, and, but I saw what this negative behavior could do to the community.

• 1:58:09Jocko Willink?

  And do strategically in the war effort. So you gotta do the right things for the right reasons. And if you don't follow the rules, you're going to be held accountable. And, and you know, Leif and I did a whole podcast on rules of engagements, podcast 385. Go listen to it.

• 1:58:27Jocko Willink?

  If you want more detail. But, but going back to what we were talking about earlier, Dave.

• 1:58:33Jocko Willink?

  Did the violence escalate? When we were there?

• 1:58:39Jocko Willink?

  Did the violence escalate? Oh, it absolutely escalated. And I, I mean, I kind of covered that from these other sources. It's like the 228 iron soldiers from Pennsylvania had to rotate back to America. 11 AD came, took over. They brought in a new strategy. New strategy was seize, clear, hold and build. Go into these enemy controlled neighborhoods. Very aggressive strategy.

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  Building these combat outposts. It was taking the fight to the enemy. That's what it was doing. And, and we did it in the entire city. An intensive and aggressive strategy. And you know what? Did it increase the casualties? Yes, it did.

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  And the brigade commander, sitting in those meetings that you and I were at, Dave, he would tell us, yeah, I had to explain this up the chain of command. Cause the chain of command's going, oh my gosh, you're taking more casualties down there. He's like, yes, sir. This is what we're doing. This is why. Here's the efforts that we're making. This is why the casualties are happening. This is why casualties are increasing.

• 1:59:32Jocko Willink?

  When you, when you take the fight to the enemy, there's going to be more casualties. The, when you go into the lion's den, you're gonna find lions in there.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  And there's gonna be casualties and it was. It was heartbreaking. It's horrible.

• 1:59:51Jocko Willink?

  But the American Marines and soldiers did their duty day in, day out, and got the job done.

• 1:59:59Jocko Willink?

  And it was an honor to fight alongside them. And it was, it was also incredible to see the progress. It was incredible to see the progress. And that's one thing that I'll, I'll always remember that. I'll always remember seeing the progress. And look, obviously, I didn't go out in the field on every operation, you know, because I'm the overall commander of the SEALs in Ramadi. And we had, we divided up into five different, how many elements did you have?

• 2:00:27Dave Berke?

  We created three elements out of my single element.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we created five, from Task Unit Bruiser, we created five elements. And

• 2:00:36Jocko Willink?

  they were partnered with, we did it originally to partner with the five different Iraqi conventional forces and the one special mission unit. We did it to partner with them and built those elements. You know, so everyone, every one of those elements had an officer in it and had an NCO. And of course, I trusted them and trained them and knew they understood the mission and the commander's intent, the end state, and the rules of engagement, all that stuff. And so sometimes there'd be two, three, four of these elements at the same time going out on operations. And usually those were, usually those were smaller operations. And most of the time, if I'm sending a platoon chief, a chief and a lieutenant junior grade out in the field to

• 2:01:21Jocko Willink?

  conduct an operation with seventeen Iraqis, I'm not going on that operation. You know, like, plus there's three of them going on at the same time. So there's a lot of work that the guys did on their own, obviously. But there's also plenty of situations that I had to go in the field. And usually, like if we're conducting a larger operation, like a big corps in search in the city, I'm going. We're doing a direct action, I mean, I don't know how many days, times you and I, Dave, were sitting in the field together, but like doing that, that big area south of, you know, I'm going on that. We're going into build a cop. Oh, I'm definitely going on that. We got all these different, we're going on a complex direct action mission, multiple, yeah, I'm going on that. We're supporting construction. Yeah, I'm doing that.

• 2:02:06Jocko Willink?

  But in those situations, it's, if you can provide better command and control from the field, you have to see what's going on.

• 2:02:13Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes, of course, I just go.

• 2:02:16Jocko Willink?

  Cause you have to understand what the guys are doing. You have to go out and see what's happening with your own eyes. And also the guys have to know that that I'm not asking them to do anything that I wouldn't do myself, of course. So you gotta roll out. But going out over and over and over again on that deployment. I got to see, I might've gotten to see, you know, when someone's losing weight, Echo Charles?

• 2:02:39Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:02:40Jocko Willink?

  If you see him every day, you don't notice as much.

• 2:02:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:42Jocko Willink?

  So like Leif or Tony or Seth or JP who's going out on every op. They look, they don't see that drastic difference, but if I'm going out once a week, it's like, oh, it's a little bit. Oh, so one of the first missions I went on, we were in enemy contact, took 32 minutes. I was like, damn, okay.

• 2:03:03Speaker 02

  Wait, it took 32 minutes to get contacted?

• 2:03:06Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. It's like, and the reason I know this is because the company commander was like, start your stopwatch. He's like, we got a half an hour. And I was like, okay, 32 minutes, it's go time. That was in the beginning of deployment. In the middle of deployment, there was another operation. And again, these stand out to me because of this time thing. One of the, one of Leif's assistant platoon commanders going out and I was like, you're going to get contacted. And this is leaving from Cop Falcon. I'm like, you're going to get contacted. And he's like, you think? I was like, you're gonna get contacted. And he walked out the wire. I set my stopwatch, 12 minutes later, he's in a gunfight. So enemy contact coming even faster, but then I compare that from a progression

• 2:03:48Jocko Willink?

  to one of the last combat outpost that we put in. And I actually did like the clearance, I was the guy that seized with a few army guys seized this thing in central Ramadi. The platoon pushed right past it to set up an overwatch position and we didn't get, SEALs didn't engage anybody. So it went from this immediate contact thing, or within half an hour, 15 minutes, you're going to get contacted to this last combat outpost that we put in, no contact.

• 2:04:17Jocko Willink?

  And that's when I knew that a change was taking place. That's when I knew that we were winning. Did you notice that kind of reduction? You also, you left a month earlier than me, right?

• 2:04:29Dave Berke?

  I did. The timing of my departure was pretty interesting. I mean, pick, go back, I left in mid to late September. Think about what was going on with you guys in mid to late September. I mean, it was still just, it was right at that apex. And I left and, and even like the basic sit reps for the next month were already different. And that, that last cop, I think went in like right, I mean, like right after I left. I completely noticed it too, when I got, I mean, it was busy when I got there. Things were going on with the 228. And oftentimes like early, I would judge how busy it was based on what my teams were doing. I had two, became three teams. There was a lot of times where something would happen and it would frustrate me because I wasn't at where the, the engagement was.

• 2:05:14Dave Berke?

  Because what frustrated me about it wasn't that I wasn't part of the engagement, it's that I couldn't help. It got to a point that by the middle of the summer, and it's, it's, that's a comparison of the 35 and the 12 minutes was my teams were engaged all the time. And it was, it, it wasn't that we were just in the right place at the right time. It's just that, that, that the engagements, it got so much more, just like that. So again, all the things you're talking about, I'm listening in parallel to my experiences, exactly the same.

• 2:05:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Putting in that last combat outpost, I was really surprised because we had the enemy surrounded. I thought to myself, the enemy's gonna fight hard.

• 2:05:51Dave Berke?

  Caged and we're a cornered animal.

• 2:05:53Jocko Willink?

  And it was really surprising.

• 2:05:57Jocko Willink?

  I have a picture of myself and, and Colonel McFarland. It's one of the, I think it might be, actually it's the only picture I have, uh, but, and I forget who took it. But we were in that combat outpost, like me and him. And there's no security set yet, like just this, just the actual security of the element that took it. Right? So it's probably like 20 guys there or something. And we're standing up there, but it was weird to be, I look at that picture, I was like, oh, I know why we took a picture. Cause there was like no shooting going on, you know, cause he'd come to cop, he'd come to all these different where I was out there. And it's like, oh, why do we, oh, okay. That's right. Cause nothing was happening. And Again, that's when I kind of recognized that a change was taking place. And again, this

• 2:06:42Jocko Willink?

  change wasn't because the, the positive change was not just because of Task and Bruiser, obviously, was we had a tiny role. The negative change of what, you know, the escalating violence, that was the strategy.

• 2:07:00Jocko Willink?

  And that's what was planned. We knew that that was going to happen. But the change wasn't from us. It was from, it was from the entire team. And it was a bond, a bond that we had with that entire team. And we still have it. We still have it. I mean, I've, I've gone and talked to,

• 2:07:23Jocko Willink?

  I've gone to talk to units that were commanded by guys that we were on the ground with, you know, I've talked to the Air Force Academy, talked to West Point Naval Academy. That's, to me, when these guys invite me to talk, it's like, yeah, what do you need?

• 2:07:42Jocko Willink?

  The, they gave, they gave, some of the guys in Task and Bruiser got

• 2:07:47Jocko Willink?

  valorous awards from the Army.

• 2:07:51Jocko Willink?

  That's not normal. Look, has it happened? Of course it happens. Joint awards is, is a little different. Like you get joint awards, good, it's a joint group, but to, the amount of administration, administrative effort you've got to take to get a, a Navy guy, an, an award of, a valorous award? That's, that, that show, that to me was such a huge gesture

• 2:08:19Jocko Willink?

  of the bond that we had, that these guys were actually taking their time to put in, and I'll tell you, like Stoner, dude, he had an ARCOM with a V, Army Commendation Medal with a V for valor. That was his, you know, he also had two Silver Stars, by the way. He didn't care about those. He liked that ARCOM with a V.

• 2:08:44Jocko Willink?

  That was the bond.

• 2:08:55Jocko Willink?

  And the Brigade Commander, Colonel Sean McFarland, now General Sean McFarland. But when we were leaving, because when we left, they still had a lot of fighting to go. And when we left, you know, shook my hand, he said, "You and your guys kept hundreds of my men alive, hundreds of them." And that always stuck with me. Because, look, we look back at the war now, what, you know, was it right or wrong? What was our reasons? WMD, all these things. We could tear ourselves up thinking about that. But what I know, that we did,

• 2:09:39Jocko Willink?

  was we helped keep hundreds of American and Iraqi soldiers alive. And on top of that, we liberated that city from those suffering civilians that are living in Ramadi in a torturous environment, under the reign of brutal extremist insurgents. And we were able to liberate them and protect our fellow servicemen and women. And, and it's not just my opinion that like, things got a lot better. Again, this is so well documented. Here's a, here's an example of that.

• 2:10:25Jocko Willink?

  Here's an article on point by Andrew Lubin, October 2007. Quote, "While Al Qaeda has been driven from the city, it has not been driven from Anbar Province nor from Iraq. But Ramadi, which the Marines thought in August 2006 was fully under control of the insurgents, is the example of Iraqi-American cooperation. There is an economic boom taking place. There are rebuilding projects. The porcelain factory is reopening next month. Shops are reopening and better quality food and goods are for sale in the markets and salaries have risen 20% in the last six months." "For, as Mayor Latif Obad said to me in April, when I attended his third economic development

• 2:11:09Jocko Willink?

  conference, Ramadi is open for business. Come visit us."

• 2:11:17Jocko Willink?

  So when I hear people talk about, oh, we made it worse. No. Ramadi was open for business. It was awesome. We, there was a Green Beret in charge of teaching counter insurgency to junior SEALs. And the example that he used was the Battle of Ramadi. That's the model for that type of warfare. That was a very meaningful, right? You got a Green Beret that's teaching SEALs and he's teaching not about what Green Berets did, but he's teaching about what SEALs did. Cause it's an outstanding example. Here's another article explaining the success.

• 2:11:58Jocko Willink?

  By Ulrich Thichner. The article's called "Hope and Despair in Divided Iraq" from August 2007. "This is news the world doesn't hear. Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious Sunni triangle, is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers, and are now the protectors of the Iraqi reconstruction."

• 2:12:28Jocko Willink?

  Again, just an incredible victory, incredible victory for coalition forces.

• 2:12:36Jocko Willink?

  And Colonel Sean McFarland and his Major Neil Smith said this about the reason for success. Here's why the success happened.

• 2:12:46Jocko Willink?

  "Clearly a combination of factors, some of which we may not fully yet understand, contributed to this pivotal success. As mentioned before, the enemy overplayed its hand and the people were tired of Al Qaeda. A series of assassinations had elevated younger, more aggressive tribal leaders to positions of influence. A growing concern that the US would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias made these younger leaders open to our overtures." Our willingness to adapt our plans based on the advice of the sheiks. Our staunch and timely support for them in times of danger and need.

• 2:13:29Jocko Willink?

  And our ability to deliver on our promises convinced them that they could do business with us. Our forward presence kept them reassured. We operated aggressively across all lines of operation, kinetic and non-kinetic, to bring every weapon and asset at our disposal to bear against the enemy. We conducted detailed intelligence fusion and targeting meetings and operated seamlessly with special operations forces, aviation, close air support, and riverine units. We have now seen this model followed by other brigade combat teams in other parts of Iraq, and it has proved effective. Indeed, the level of sophistication has only improved since the Ready First departed

• 2:14:13Jocko Willink?

  in February 2007. Although perhaps groundbreaking at the time, most of our tactics, techniques, and procedures are now familiar to any unit operating in Iraq today.

• 2:14:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. This was...

• 2:14:34Jocko Willink?

  It was a pivotal, pivotal moment. I remember if I had another article, I was going to quote, I didn't bring it. But there was another article that called Ramadi the Gettysburg of the war. The turning point. This was the turning point.

• 2:14:48Jocko Willink?

  In that same article by Colonel McFarlane, they share some of the important lessons from the battlefield.

• 2:14:57Jocko Willink?

  And they say this, "The most enduring lessons of Ramadi are ones that are most easily lost in technical and tactical discussions, the least tangible ones. The most important lessons we learned war/were. Accept risk in order to achieve results. Once you gain the initiative, never give the enemy respite or refuge. Never stop looking for another way to attack the enemy."

• 2:15:29Jocko Willink?

  And finally, the tribes represent the people of Iraq and the populace represents the key terrain of the conflict. The force that supports the population by taking the moral high ground has as sure of an advantage in counter insurgency as a maneuver commander who occupies dominant terrain in a conventional battlefield.

• 2:15:54Jocko Willink?

  So, and I think it's important to mention, never stop looking for another way to attack the enemy. He's not just talking about combat. He's talking about attacking, in air quotes, attacking the sheiks by building relationships with them. Attacking the economic situation by putting money into the economy. Like, it's attacking on all fronts, on all lines of operations, and finding another way. I guarantee, some of those projects that cost $230,000 that propped up a sheik had much more negative impact on al-Qaeda than some of the operations where we're doing clearances. But both of those weren't important. But

• 2:16:38Jocko Willink?

  the most important thing that he talks about is the moral high ground. Having the moral high ground was critical. And we knew that, we all knew that, and we kept it. And anyone that was on the ground there knows this. For people that weren't there, they might not understand it. And that's my fault. It's my fault. I obviously have done a bad job of explaining all this. Obviously, if, when I, when I hear things, I think it's crazy talk. But it's my fault.

• 2:17:19Jocko Willink?

  People that were on the ground understood what was happening. And that's my job. And, and I can say thankfully, I did have the opportunity to explain the Battle of Ramadi to the families of the fallen.

• 2:17:41Jocko Willink?

  And they, they know, they know and understand the efforts and the risks that their sons and we as SEALs and all coalition forces in the Battle of Ramadi took in order to protect the local populace.

• 2:17:59Jocko Willink?

  And I hope that the families of the fallen Marines and soldiers know the same thing that

• 2:18:04Jocko Willink?

  these brave warriors were part of an incredible band of brothers who fought and sacrificed valiantly to do their duty.

• 2:18:17Jocko Willink?

  Who took massive risk and sacrificed immensely to accomplish the mission.

• 2:18:25Jocko Willink?

  And ultimately liberate the city of Ramadi.

• 2:18:36Jocko Willink?

  And you know, we probably, I was getting a little choked up, choked up earlier talking about Travis Patrick Quinn. He ended up being killed.

• 2:18:48Jocko Willink?

  By an IED after we left in December.

• 2:18:54Jocko Willink?

  Traveling with Megan McClung, Marine, another, just an outstanding woman, just outstanding, squared away. Again, Dave, you and I sat in all those meetings with those, those individuals. They're just outstanding.

• 2:19:10Jocko Willink?

  And there was such a huge price paid and and listen, a lot of that price was

• 2:19:18Jocko Willink?

  making adjustments to make sure we could take care of the civilian populace. Doing a massive kinetic, how many bombs did you guys drop?

• 2:19:27Dave Berke?

  I I mean, between me and the other Ramadi Anglico team, the two in Anglico in Ramadi of the 24 units out there, dozens.

• 2:19:35Jocko Willink?

  Like 23?

• 2:19:37Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:38Jocko Willink?

  Like 42?

• 2:19:39Dave Berke?

  Probably between bombs, uh, hellfires, guns, the all, all the different quote drops, probably 25? That's just amongst the two Ramadi Anglicos.

• 2:19:54Jocko Willink?

  That's six months of heavy fighting. And you guys only did 25 drops. Uh, did you drop any 2000 pounders?

• 2:20:08Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I think I have, I think I've got one GBU, you know, heavy JDAM. And I don't, I can wait if you want to complete your thought, but there's some context here that I, I can't help but, but mention because it's not just your failure. Because

• 2:20:27Dave Berke?

  when you hear about an accusation or a story or a perspective that's so outlandish, not just because it didn't happen, but because it couldn't happen, it's not just levied against you.

• 2:20:41Dave Berke?

  It's anybody that got there and my team had the same exact experience as we got there with a certain set of expectations of how things were going to be. And very quickly they changed out of necessity. And what my team ended up doing is even that, that number seems like a small number. That is a huge number of drops, more than anybody had done before we got there. Way more, there are teams before us that never dropped a bomb, partially because, and this leads into the, what I've been feeling, listening to you during this podcast is, do you know how much attention it draws? When you drop a bomb from a plane, from a $45 million fighter overhead a city? And you drop a bomb, you want to talk about the scrutiny that you get when you decide,

• 2:21:26Dave Berke?

  I need to employ this piece of ordinance off this aircraft, whether it's a hellfire missile into the building adjacent to Mark Lee or a gun in a type one cast scenario that hasn't been conducted in years.

• 2:21:40Dave Berke?

  And we were scrutinized every one of those drops between the two Angloco teams in a level that had never been, it never happened that much scrutiny because we didn't, nobody done that much. And the firefights, when a forward air controller is shooting his personal rifle, you're going to get scrutiny. And of course, obviously, the most scrutiny comes is, I lost the first Angloco Marine in Iraq. My radio operator, I lost that first Marine. Nobody else, me. And you were talking about investigation and the connotation that most people have is this negative connotation, when actually what it is, is when done correctly, which it almost always is, is they're there to help. It's not that much different from like an inspection.

• 2:22:24Dave Berke?

  They're making sure that you're smart and safe and protected, so your Marines are. And so, all that scrutiny was welcomed, and I think reflecting on this, the biggest mistake that I made, and I can feel this now, looking back, because, and I don't want to put myself on the same scale of what you did, I worked with you guys a lot. I did a lot of my own, without you, with other teams, so not just with Task Unit Bruiser, but I feel all those same things that you're talking about, all those same experiences I had, is I took for granted the understanding that everybody would have about what we were doing, because I spent all my time with people doing it. Meaning, I didn't think about what people on the outside were thinking about what we were doing, I just didn't spend any time, and I needed to.

• 2:23:08Dave Berke?

  I needed to think about their perspective, their misunderstanding, their ego, their point of view, their experience, which is totally incongruent from my experience, because if you did anything like we did, it is nothing like anybody else had done. It was different. And if you don't understand that context, you could very easily draw conclusions and make accusations and say things that aren't true, and that's because I never explained it. It's because I took that for granted. When I arrived there and we started doing what we're doing, up to the point that Chris was killed and beyond, what I took for granted was people understanding what we were doing, how we were doing it, and probably most importantly, why.

• 2:23:48Dave Berke?

  And so, the idea that this is just a perspective levied on your unit or a particular unit, it's all of us that were there that had the obligation to make it understood what we were doing.

• 2:24:01Dave Berke?

  The idea that you could do something misaligned with the rules of engagement and get away with it, the only thing more outlandish than that accusation or that thought is is the realizing you would never do that anyway because it would undermine what you were trying to get accomplished, the belief in what we're doing. And it's hard right now, a little bit of a hard pill for me to swallow was the failure for me to not take into account everybody else on the outside of that world and the assumptions they are making. That was my job. It wasn't just to call in airstrikes or train my guys or shoot. That was my job.

• 2:24:39Dave Berke?

  And no Anglico unit had endured the ups and downs that my salt did because we had a ton of jobs, a ton of engagements, and I lost a Marine. So whose other job should it have been to explain what was going on and why? Did I talk to Kathy Leon? Yes, all the time. She knows everything, everything. But I didn't share or explain or even consider how important it would be to have people outside of that understand in the community and beyond. And so the failure you're talking about or the fault that you have, it's really hard for me to listen to you and agree with that without at least making it clear that I was in a

• 2:25:23Dave Berke?

  very, very similar position, very parallel, very adjacent and doing the exact same things, recognizing the same obligation that I had in my same mistake.

• 2:25:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, you know, you, you, you lost Chris. And so Mark was the first SEAL killed in Iraq. You know, what, what, what happens to the community when you lose a SEAL, the first SEAL in Iraq? I mean, it's, yeah, everyone mourns, but there's, there's guys, wait, what are you doing? Wait, why are you doing that? And I, I heard a little bit of that. But I also heard a lot of support. Like massive support. What do you need? How can we help? You're doing great.

• 2:26:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you know, again, my chain of command, which is the army chain of command, the special operations. That's what what I'm getting is, you know, hey, good job. So I, I again failed to see, oh, and you know, I'd hear, I'd hear someone say, well, what are you guys even doing? I'd be like, hey, man. You know, like I lit, I got an email from one of my buddies was like, dude, what are you guys doing going out in the day?

• 2:26:38Jocko Willink?

  And it's one of my friends, you know, it was a little bit longer than that was ba- basically was, hey, what are you guys doing going out in the day? You know, and I wrote back like, hey, man, this fight is taking place during the day. We're working with the Iraqi units. They don't have night vision. They don't have a, he's kind of like, okay. He's like, got it.

• 2:26:53Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:54Jocko Willink?

  What I didn't think was, what about the person that doesn't know me? What about the person that can't ask that question?

• 2:27:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:01Jocko Willink?

  What about the person that

• 2:27:04Jocko Willink?

  has, you know, has a negative attitude?

• 2:27:08Jocko Willink?

  And then sits in the platoon space saying, I can't believe these guys are going out during the day. These guys are taking too many risks. That's not a special operation. I should have done a better job of explaining the situation on the ground.

• 2:27:25Jocko Willink?

  Cause you, you know, and we took a lot of casualties as well, wounded guys. So we have wounded guys. We have the first seal killed in Iraq.

• 2:27:34Jocko Willink?

  Mark Lee, we have the second seal killed in Iraq, Mikey Monsour, Ryan Jobe severely wounded. Ends up dying from those wounds.

• 2:27:46Jocko Willink?

  And unfortunately, I should have noticed, oh, when someone has a que- if one of my friends is asking this question, that means people that aren't my friend

• 2:27:58Jocko Willink?

  are thinking this. And I should have done a better job of explaining what was happening. And it goes beyond the opsums. Because my friends, when I got back, I didn't really think about this when I was overseas. When I got back, my friends said they would read the opsums aloud in qu- in quarters in the morning. So like at trade at.

• 2:28:24Jocko Willink?

  At the team areas, they would stand up and say, you know, last night Task Unit Bruiser conducted an Overwatch and killed 14 enemy fighters. And guess what my friends were? They were pumped and they were stoked. And when we had guys get wounded, when we had guys get killed, they were heartbroken. But my friends who know me

• 2:28:51Jocko Willink?

  knew that I was doing the right things for the right reasons.

• 2:28:56Jocko Willink?

  But what I miscalculated was there's going to be people that don't like you. There's going to be people that hold a grudge. There's going to be people that look at your success and basically accuse you of cheating, or whatever the case may be. And that's what I failed to realize. And it's a blind spot. So hopefully

• 2:29:22Jocko Willink?

  this type and I'll, you know, we can bring on, I can bring on Leif JP, everyone's got their perspective. But hopefully this paints a clearer picture

• 2:29:32Jocko Willink?

  of what we did and how we did it. And how we were able to maintain the moral high ground in Ramadi. And like I said, the risks that were taken and the sacrifices that were made to maintain that high ground. That's originally why I asked you, how many bombs did we drop? Because you know how many bombs you could have dropped on Ramadi? All of them. Yeah. All of them. Yep.

• 2:29:56Jocko Willink?

  You dropped 30, maybe 40, whatever the number is. Every, every one of those buildings at one point or another could have had a bomb dropped on it because it was housing insurgents. But we didn't do that.

• 2:30:13Jocko Willink?

  Men and women, by the way.

• 2:30:18Jocko Willink?

  And I call that out specifically because I'll never forget a seeing a casualty evacuation rolling out to go support Iraqi soldiers that were wounded. And there's a girl up, a woman in the turret. So men and women took incredible risk. Instead of dropping a bomb on that building to go out and, and clear that building and keep the local populace safe.

• 2:30:45Jocko Willink?

  And there's a huge amount of risk to do that.

• 2:30:50Jocko Willink?

  But that's what you have to do.

• 2:30:54Jocko Willink?

  And I hope that in these ongoing wars, the same approach is taken. And that is what we have to do in every aspect of life. You really have to do this in every aspect of your life. You've got to do the right thing. You've got to take the moral high ground. You can't surrender it. You've got to do the right things for the right reasons. If you make a mistake, you own it.

• 2:31:17Jocko Willink?

  If people try and tear you down,

• 2:31:21Jocko Willink?

  try and understand what their perspective is.

• 2:31:24Jocko Willink?

  And try and lift them up by showing them yours.

• 2:31:29Jocko Willink?

  And for business, for life, for combat, in tactics and in morals.

• 2:31:40Jocko Willink?

  Take the high ground, or the high ground will take you.

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  And that's what I got.

• 2:31:51Jocko Willink?

  So,

• 2:31:55Jocko Willink?

  like I said, I think we'll probably get questions about this. We, we got Leif, we got JP.

• 2:32:04Jocko Willink?

  People, you know, people that were there with us in other units. So many awesome people.

• 2:32:15Jocko Willink?

  So we can continue to get this, the real picture of what was going on. So that these people are remembered in the right way.

• 2:32:29Jocko Willink?

  Herrick Charles?

• 2:32:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of doing the right thing.

• 2:32:35Speaker 02

  I have a question.

• 2:32:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, let's go. What you got?

• 2:32:38Speaker 02

  How do you dispose of a mine?

• 2:32:40Jocko Willink?

  Bunch of different ways.

• 2:32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. That's what I thought. What are the ways?

• 2:32:44Jocko Willink?

  You can, you can blow it in place. So you can put another bomb on top of it. That's, actually, that's what you're probably gonna do.

• 2:32:52Speaker 02

  That's the main one?

• 2:32:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Getting in there with like a pair of pliers and clipping the detonator, it can be done. And guys do it. But the preferred method is just to blow that thing in place.

• 2:33:04Speaker 02

  Is there like a, any scenario where you'd somehow transport it somewhere else and blow it or?

• 2:33:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, you could. Uh, funny story, we, we, we put in Cop Falcon. And the Minesweeper was coming down the road and it was like digging. And Leif and someone else was like looking over the side of the building, watching this thing dig up a freaking bomb.

• 2:33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Jocko Willink?

  And at some point, he's like, dude, this might not be a good idea. And the same thing happened to me on my first deployment.

• 2:33:34Speaker 02

  Oh, to look over the building at it?

• 2:33:35Jocko Willink?

  Looking over the building and I think it's about to blow up.

• 2:33:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's gonna blow up.

• 2:33:38Jocko Willink?

  It's not a good move.

• 2:33:38Speaker 02

  In your face.

• 2:33:39Jocko Willink?

  I had that. I had the same thing happening on my first deployment. I'm like, my EOD, we, we were hitting a target. We found a, an IED. And in this particular case, my, I, just to case in point. My EOD guy, like, disarmed the bomb. Yeah, so, but I was standing there as he's manipulating it.

• 2:34:01Speaker 02

  Like, come by him?

• 2:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Like, right by him, like, watching him. And he looks over his shoulder and he goes, you don't have to stand here.

• 2:34:08Speaker 02

  That's what I was thinking.

• 2:34:09Jocko Willink?

  And, and there's two things going on. Number one, he was looking out for my safety, but number two, like, that's probably not the most comforting feeling, having someone standing looking over your shoulder. And you're gonna get him and you killed if you screw this up. So there, those are the, yeah, you're either gonna disarm that thing, or you're gonna blow it in place. And the guys will do both depending on what it calls for.

• 2:34:28Speaker 02

  Damn, that's crazy. And they're pretty like common ways of making a mine, or I mean, cause you said, sometimes you say IDs, sometimes you say mines, and obviously there are two different things, cause IDs improvised or whatever.

• 2:34:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a key component is improvised, but you can take a, an artillery shell. Do you know what that is? It looks like a big giant bullet.

• 2:34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:34:49Jocko Willink?

  And it's filled with explosives.

• 2:34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:51Jocko Willink?

  So sometimes they just take old artillery shells and they bury, they, they turn those into the bomb.

• 2:34:57Speaker 02

  Oh, they like rig the, what do you call it? The trigger?

• 2:34:59Jocko Willink?

  They, they make a trigger, generally speaking, cause the trigger that it comes with is not gonna work for what they need it for.

• 2:35:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:35:05Jocko Willink?

  So they'll, they'll. Basically, the way explosives work, there's the explosive itself, the thing that's gonna make the explosion and cause the problem is generally pretty stable.

• 2:35:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:20Jocko Willink?

  But then you have to have something that's not stable, that's less stable. That's generally speaking, a blasting cap. This is something that is gonna explode very violently, very quickly.

• 2:35:29Speaker 02

  So blasting cap and detonator or what?

• 2:35:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the same thing.

• 2:35:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:35:32Jocko Willink?

  And there's different types of detonators, there's different kinds, types of blasting caps, but

• 2:35:39Jocko Willink?

  but generally like the, the material like in a, in a claymore landmine, have you ever heard of a claymore?

• 2:35:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, front toward enemy.

• 2:35:47Jocko Willink?

  The stuff inside of that, like, you can play with it like Play-Doh.

• 2:35:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, was that C4?

• 2:35:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can set it on fire and it'll burn, like, there's, there's, that's what you can do.

• 2:35:56Speaker 02

  Oh damn.

• 2:35:56Jocko Willink?

  But if you set it on fire and hit it with a hammer, like, you have a problem. But

• 2:36:00Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  But there, the blasting cap that you put in there?

• 2:36:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:03Jocko Willink?

  It explodes very fast, very violent, it's a lot, a lot more volatile. So when our breachers are carrying their breach, they don't have the blasting cap in the explosive charge itself.

• 2:36:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so it's C4.

• 2:36:16Jocko Willink?

  So if it blows up, it'll hurt, it might even take a couple fingers off, or like, you know, but if you have the, it connected, now you're gonna like lose an arm and possibly your life.

• 2:36:27Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:36:27Jocko Willink?

  So that's kind of the deal.

• 2:36:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hmm, crazy.

• 2:36:32Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Any other questions?

• 2:36:33Speaker 02

  That's an example of me, bro, I don't know how this kind of stuff works all the time, you know? I mean, all I see is what's on like MacGyver or whatever, you know, when you re, undoes the bomb or whatever, that's all I know, that's my education, so thank you for that.

• 2:36:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, you can, you can kind of tell, you know, you'll see, but what you gotta watch out for is there might be wires going into the bomb, and then you clip the wires, and then you lift up the bomb, but there was a pressure plate, so now it still blows up.

• 2:36:57Speaker 02

  Oh, like what?

• 2:36:58Jocko Willink?

  They can have multiple different ways of the charge blowing up.

• 2:37:01Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, huh, I was gonna say maybe like a distraction, you know, like, you know, they'll be like, hey, it's this, but it's really this.

• 2:37:06Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm, totally.

• 2:37:07Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 2:37:07Jocko Willink?

  Just like MacGyver, bro.

• 2:37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's all.

• 2:37:11Speaker 02

  I'd go into that part, but I know, I know we're off that. Cool, right on. Thank you. Yes, we're doing the right thing. We need fuel, by the way. I don't know if you knew that or not. Just coming off the UFC fights, by the way. Did you have a good time? Good fights, good card. We're not mad at that. Some good people hanging around, which was cool. It was kinda epic, honestly. Yeah, I would say that, say that as well. I didn't, I didn't talk to Tim Kennedy about how he feels about being at the UFC. You know, like. I actually did. What'd he say? Basically, in a nutshell, I said, do you miss fighting? And he, and he said, no. And I was like, oh, interesting. Like, what, like, what do you mean, whatever? He was like, he's like, hey, let me explain this to you. He's like, I like violence. But, like, and we're, we're eating dinner, whatever.

• 2:37:56Speaker 02

  And he was like, see, if a fight broke out over there and they needed me, I would love nothing more than to jump in that fight. But if you said, hey, go fight that guy over there, I'd be like, no. He said, go F yourself. So, he doesn't like, like, hey, you fight for this, or you fight for that, you know, kinda thing. But if the fight is going down, he's down, kind of a thing. So that's why he, so he didn't really, you know, he said that he wasn't that much into it, being there. But he was very much into hanging out with everybody. That's what he said, straight up. What, what about Andy? Andy Stone? Yeah. I didn't talk to him about that specifically, but, you know, we caught up, which was very cool.

• 2:38:38Speaker 02

  You know, he had the, the operation for a scenario. He went through that. That was kinda, kinda scary. Cause he said it was random. It wasn't like something, you know, he ate the wrong thing, or freaking ran into this. He said, hey, it was just sort of bad luck kind of scenario. But he's back in the game for sure. Him and, and Leo was there as well. I felt bad because, um, yeah, I saw, you know, I did text Andy. I was like, I didn't even say hi to Leah, just like.

• 2:39:01Jocko Willink?

  Mayhem going on. It was mayhem going on. Uh, another thing I felt bad about. So we had a contest at Jaco Fuel.

• 2:39:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:39:10Jocko Willink?

  And I barely, like, I didn't get the word out good enough. And the contest was sick.

• 2:39:15Speaker 02

  Fuck, yeah.

• 2:39:16Jocko Willink?

  It was sick. Like, it was the best contest ever. And what you won was, and this dude Corey freaking great, he, so the, the contest was if you, if you won the contest, it was a, is it called a sweepstakes?

• 2:39:27Speaker 02

  It was technically not a sweepstakes. That's different. That's technically different.

• 2:39:31Jocko Willink?

  What was it called?

• 2:39:32Speaker 02

  Uh, just a freaking, I don't know, contest.

• 2:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Well, you got like a vote for every time you bought something from Jaco Fuel. And then there was like a drawing. And you could also, there was another way to enter because you have to give another way to enter because there's all these legal rules and whatnot. You gotta follow the rules. So we did it. Anyways, the winner was this dude, uh, Corey. And what he won was, and he got to bring his buddy out.

• 2:39:58Speaker 02

  Fabry.

• 2:39:58Jocko Willink?

  Fabry. Uh, they came out from North Carolina. And so what they did was they got there. They showed up. They got there Friday.

• 2:40:08Speaker 02

  They arrived, happenstance, by the way, the same, like maybe five minutes after I arrived.

• 2:40:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, check.

• 2:40:13Speaker 02

  Like, I was gonna leave and there were, or, or the Jaco Fuel guys, you know, Liam and them. They're already there with the sign. And I was like, oh, they got the sign for me. And they're like, no, man, not for you. It's for the winners. I was like, all right, well, I'll hang around and see what up.

• 2:40:26Jocko Willink?

  Dude, epic. So those guys got that dinner that night. We had dinner the next night. Uh, we all hung out for good food at the steak restaurant in, uh, Vegas. Then we went to the fights. Had like the UFC suite hanging out. Andy Stumpf, Tim Kennedy, like

• 2:40:45Speaker 02

  Chris Pratt.

• 2:40:45Jocko Willink?

  Chris Pratt. Like, it was really awesome.

• 2:40:48Speaker 02

  It's legitimate.

• 2:40:48Jocko Willink?

  And then watched Bo Nickle fight and then went to Bo Nickle's after party, which you didn't go to, by the way.

• 2:40:53Speaker 02

  I, yeah.

• 2:40:54Jocko Willink?

  Will we give you the low down on Bo Nickle's after party?

• 2:40:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, please.

• 2:40:57Jocko Willink?

  They had like 10 bags of In-N-Out burger. And a bunch of Jaco Go.

• 2:41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Solid.

• 2:41:05Jocko Willink?

  And some Hulk. And so we went there and those guys came. Um, yeah, just really cool. But here's the thing that I felt bad about was I didn't really like, we didn't promote it enough.

• 2:41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:18Jocko Willink?

  To like, as how cool it was.

• 2:41:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:21Jocko Willink?

  And it was UFC 300.

• 2:41:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:23Jocko Willink?

  And that's a big deal, bro.

• 2:41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:24Jocko Willink?

  UFC 300, UFC 200, UFC 100, those are big. It's a big deal.

• 2:41:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:29Jocko Willink?

  Monumental moment in time.

• 2:41:31Speaker 02

  Even the way I felt about it, when you're like, oh yeah, we got this contest or whatever. And I'm like, all right, cool. Like, yeah, I guess you get tickets and UFC and it sounds fun or whatever, but I never, didn't really think about it. But when it went down, I, I hung out with them like kind of a lot. Like I've been, you know, sometimes we'd be apart or whatever, but you know, just some of it kind of by happenstance as well. And when I looked around and I was like, bro, this is kind of, for me, this is fun. And I'm just me. You know, I didn't win nothing. I was, I was just there. Bro, for me, this is like a kick ass time. I was like, if I won this and got a, bro, this would be a really good fun, good fun time. Um, but then I compare that being actually in the experience, like the freaking like level 10 fun going on. Versus what I thought it was when, you know, before everything happened. I was like, yeah, there, there's a total mismatch with like how

• 2:42:15Speaker 02

  kind of we promoted it, if you will, versus how it really went down.

• 2:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Cause it was freaking, it was epic. I was so, I was, I had like really good seats.

• 2:42:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw that. I saw that.

• 2:42:27Jocko Willink?

  I may or may not have had the second best seats in the entire arena. So I'm literally sitting three feet behind Dana White.

• 2:42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:34Jocko Willink?

  And here's what's awesome. Dana White is so fired up that like when something would happen, he would turn around and, and like give commentary, just to like me and the two guys, three guys I'm sitting with.

• 2:42:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:49Jocko Willink?

  I'm just, he, he was so amped. I'll give you an example. So Gagey broke his nose with like a second left.

• 2:42:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:57Jocko Willink?

  And like as

• 2:42:58Speaker 02

  Like in the first round.

• 2:42:58Jocko Willink?

  In the first round. And as that like happens, like for example, Dana turns around, he's like, he's like, I just heard Gagey, he said they broke my nose. He broke his nose right there. He just had surgery on that thing. Dude, this is crazy. And then like turns back around.

• 2:43:10Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:43:11Jocko Willink?

  When you wonder about the success of the UFC. Man, you gotta have someone that is that passionate and into it that he sits there and is totally engaged in every fight and turn around and saying that that kick was ridic like, did you see how hard they were so like? That's what he's saying. And again, it's just, I mean, I'm sitting there like, you know, just in it and he's that freaking pumped.

• 2:43:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:37Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, it's pretty cool to see.

• 2:43:39Speaker 02

  Even the way, you didn't make the weigh-ins though, right? Cause you had a thing.

• 2:43:42Jocko Willink?

  I did not.

• 2:43:44Speaker 02

  Even the weigh-ins were freaking legit. Like in that, like, you know how, okay, and so last UFC I went was Dominic Cruz, Uriah Faber back in the day for the championship. Yeah, so you barely even remember. Yeah. And I remember thinking, oh, like they were really, when I was at the event, they do a really good job on the hype during the event on TV. Cause when you're at the event, you know, it's kind of like, oh, wait, there's no music. I mean, there's music, but it's different. It's like, okay, cool. It's way better live because you're seeing the actual fight, but the hype, all the hype.

• 2:44:13Jocko Willink?

  The hype can't be contested.

• 2:44:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's different. On TV, it's way more, um, as far as like the, the production hype is what I'm saying, not the fight hype, production hype. So I'm thinking, oh yeah, that's cool. That's interesting, you know, from a production standpoint, but bro, now, now, bruh, every little moment is like you're just on this roller coaster of freaking UFC weigh-ins, free limbs, freaking main card, the whole deal. The whole deal was really good. Yeah. And those weigh-ins were legit too, just to experience the whole deal.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I'm fortunately, I've been to a lot of them. I've been to a lot of UFC's, but most of the time I was, quite frankly, I was working.

• 2:44:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it's different.

• 2:44:52Jocko Willink?

  I was working at 95% of the UFC. I've probably been to 40 some, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe not 40, but I've been to a lot of UFC's. I was working at most of them, meaning I had a fighter on the card. I'm warming up. I'm getting punched backstage. Um, you know, like I'm sweating. It's not, it's a different kind of fun.

• 2:45:11Speaker 02

  The attention is like not even on the show.

• 2:45:14Dave Berke?

  Really?

• 2:45:15Jocko Willink?

  Your attention is on your gig, your job.

• 2:45:17Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:45:17Jocko Willink?

  It's actually wasn't fun. By the way, also, this is back in the day, like, we're all like the fighter. You get two rooms. The fighters in one room, the other nine of us are in the other room piled up on the floor, sleeping on towels, you know, he's cutting weight, so we're cutting weight.

• 2:45:32Dave Berke?

  Right, right.

• 2:45:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, you can't eat in front of them or whatever.

• 2:45:35Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:45:35Jocko Willink?

  And then on top of that, then we're all poor, you know? So it's not like, oh, let's go to the steakhouse. No, it's hey, let's go to the buffet and sit here for two hours and just fill up so we don't have to eat again.

• 2:45:45Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:46Jocko Willink?

  Dave, Super Bowl. You went to the Super Bowl this year.

• 2:45:50Dave Berke?

  I did.

• 2:45:50Jocko Willink?

  How was the hype?

• 2:45:52Dave Berke?

  It was hype.

• 2:45:52Jocko Willink?

  In that scenario?

• 2:45:53Dave Berke?

  It was pretty crazy.

• 2:45:54Jocko Willink?

  That must have been crazy.

• 2:45:55Dave Berke?

  It was also in Vegas, so.

• 2:45:57Jocko Willink?

  This insane.

• 2:45:58Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it was insanity. My son was overwhelmed.

• 2:46:02Jocko Willink?

  Did you have good seats?

• 2:46:03Dave Berke?

  We had good seats.

• 2:46:04Jocko Willink?

  Where were your seats?

• 2:46:08Dave Berke?

  Forty-five yard line. Perfect seat.

• 2:46:11Jocko Willink?

  Perfect seats.

• 2:46:11Dave Berke?

  They're up, yeah, they're in the upper level, but like first row. So like for him to be able to see everything, you know, with nobody blocking his, he's, you know, he's young, a little kid, like it was pretty.

• 2:46:21Jocko Willink?

  And isn't he a fan?

• 2:46:23Dave Berke?

  He is all, he's like all in on the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes. So it was like, all right, this, I'm going to take him. This may never happen again. He's going to go, he's at a good age where it's going to be like a life memory locked in forever.

• 2:46:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:34Dave Berke?

  Ten years old, Patrick Mahomes, and then of course they like win in overtime. It was, it was insane. It's Vegas. It was crazy.

• 2:46:40Jocko Willink?

  Dude, he's never gonna.

• 2:46:41Dave Berke?

  He's never gonna forget that.

• 2:46:43Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking epic.

• 2:46:44Dave Berke?

  It was awesome.

• 2:46:44Jocko Willink?

  Do you watch football on TV with him?

• 2:46:46Dave Berke?

  When he wants to.

• 2:46:47Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. How does the hype transfer?

• 2:46:49Dave Berke?

  Dude.

• 2:46:50Jocko Willink?

  It's not even close.

• 2:46:51Dave Berke?

  It's not, I can't even, yeah, there's no, it's not worth explaining. And in fact, like, he, he's like, likes watching football, kind of. But, you know, take it or leave it. He likes to play, but to see it live is, is. So different. He was pumped. It was a, it was a life event, man, for sure, without a doubt.

• 2:47:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Super Bowl two.

• 2:47:12Dave Berke?

  Super Bowl Vegas.

• 2:47:13Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of a UFC 300 in Vegas.

• 2:47:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:16Jocko Willink?

  This is freaking hype.

• 2:47:17Dave Berke?

  Out of control, yeah.

• 2:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Hype city.

• 2:47:18Speaker 02

  Big 10. Jaco Fuel, good presence.

• 2:47:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:22Speaker 02

  I've seen some Jaco Fuel scenarios crack.

• 2:47:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:25Speaker 02

  And Oregon.

• 2:47:25Jocko Willink?

  You know else was fired? Zuckerberg sitting next to Dana the whole time. And like, they're, they're talking shop the whole time too. And Zuckerberg's talking shop. You know, he's turning around like, ah, you know?

• 2:47:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you know, he's in the game.

• 2:47:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's in the game. He's training as jiu jitsu.

• 2:47:41Speaker 02

  It's true. Yeah, it was good.

• 2:47:42Jocko Willink?

  The jiu jitsu can bring everybody together. The fighting.

• 2:47:45Speaker 02

  It can.

• 2:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Can bring people together. So, yes, and obviously Chris Pratt was there. He was getting after it.

• 2:47:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:47:51Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Fuel.

• 2:47:54Speaker 02

  Yep, we bonded over his Hawaii story.

• 2:47:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right, that's right.

• 2:47:58Speaker 02

  At Baba Gump Shrimp, by the way, which I'm very, very familiar. He was in Maui though.

• 2:48:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:48:02Speaker 02

  Which, you know, we love Maui.

• 2:48:03Jocko Willink?

  Hey, man.

• 2:48:04Speaker 02

  Maui, all day.

• 2:48:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. Hundred percent Maui.

• 2:48:07Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. But yeah, all good. Yeah, it was good to see him.

• 2:48:11Jocko Willink?

  All right. Jaco Fuel.

• 2:48:13Speaker 02

  Jaco Fuel.

• 2:48:14Jocko Willink?

  If you want some Jaco Fuel.

• 2:48:15Speaker 02

  We do.

• 2:48:15Jocko Willink?

  You can get some. JacoFuel.com. You can get hydrate. You can get greens. You can get, you can get whatever you need, man. And let's face it, the mulk.

• 2:48:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:26Jocko Willink?

  It's just a key component of life. That's what it's, that's what it's, that's what it is.

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:31Jocko Willink?

  A key component of life. Where can you get 30 grams of clean, outstanding protein in like moments?

• 2:48:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:39Jocko Willink?

  Like zero to, I'm good.

• 2:48:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that tastes like that too, by the way. And also, you know, on the surface, it seems secondary, but bro, in real life, it's a huge deal.

• 2:48:48Jocko Willink?

  No, it's a huge deal. So check it out. JacoFuel.com. You can get it online at JacoFuel.com. You can also get it at Vitamin Shoppe, Wawa. The mulk, people have been asking about this. So the, the protein drink, ready to drink is in Wawa right now. If you recall a little while ago, they pulled our energy drinks out of there. We got, our slots got bought by some of the big, um... Corporations and but there was a high demand signal for protein drink and so it's in there it's crushing so if you're around a Wawa go get yourself and if it's in the morning time get yourself a sweet cream coffee milk 95 milligrams of caffeine are you drinking that Dave?

• 2:49:27Dave Berke?

  No.

• 2:49:27Jocko Willink?

  You're nodding your head?

• 2:49:28Dave Berke?

  My wife.

• 2:49:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, your wife is in the game.

• 2:49:30Dave Berke?

  It's like out of control now.

• 2:49:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:31Dave Berke?

  It's like she is like the least critical person in the world. If we run out of sweet cream milk, which we have now one time.

• 2:49:38Jocko Willink?

  She's coming at you.

• 2:49:39Dave Berke?

  She's like coming at me hard like it's not like, you know, like, oh, I did you mow the lawn like where's my mole? So it's kind of cool that she's so super stoked about that.

• 2:49:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:47Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:48Jocko Willink?

  The thing that's cool about that is it's literally two birds with one stone. It's like, here's two birds, here's one stone, they're both getting killed.

• 2:49:56Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 2:49:56Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get 30 grams of awesome protein and you're gonna get your 95 milligrams of caffeine. This thing is epic and people are down for it. Also, check that out, you can get that at Wawa, you can get the stuff at Vitamin Shop It, you can get it at GNC Military Commissaries, AFE's, Hannaford Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake, Fern, Shoprite, HEB, Meyer, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere, Jiu Jitsu, CrossFit, if you got a Jiu Jitsu gym, if you got a CrossFit gym, if you got a, a powerlifting gym, if you had a gym, what kind of gym would you have? Echo Charles?

• 2:50:26Speaker 02

  Probably like Victory MMA and Fitness to be honest with you.

• 2:50:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:50:29Speaker 02

  It's perfect.

• 2:50:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's kind of got everything. We got CrossFit, we got bodybuilding.

• 2:50:33Speaker 02

  I would have the bigger weightlifting gym though, like general weightlifting, bodybuilding, fitness type. I would have a bigger one.

• 2:50:39Jocko Willink?

  You'd have a couple. You want to see some cable crossovers in this.

• 2:50:44Speaker 02

  A little something, a little try more tricycle, like if they're, uh, and not to get too, you know, deep into it, but I would, I would expand it into, you know, the old Muay Thai room?

• 2:50:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:54Speaker 02

  Because the Muay Thai kickboxing scenario is already huge over there. So I'd expand into that, that, that room for some more weights. The little one with the glass.

• 2:51:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:51:04Speaker 02

  Okay, that's me though, but either way, you know, borderline.

• 2:51:07Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you have a gym or if you go to a gym where you want them to have Jaco Field, have your gym owner or you, you know, [email protected]. Also, Origin USA, we're making stuff in America. We're making training gear, we're making Jiu Jitsu gear, gis, we're making jeans, we're making t-shirts, joggers, making boots, dude.

• 2:51:34Jocko Willink?

  I'll just bring it up. So the team took a hide from an elk that Joe Rogan shot.

• 2:51:44Speaker 02

  I saw that.

• 2:51:46Jocko Willink?

  And made boots from the hide. And the way they did it, there's an entry and an exit wound. They made it so the entry and the exit wound, they used that part of the leather. So you can see, and then they put red leather behind it on one boot. So the, the entry wound, it's going in on one side. There's like a slit and you can see red leather. And then on the other side where the exit wound is, there's a slit and red leather behind that.

• 2:52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's like the boots have the wound in it. It's the best thing I've ever seen in my life.

• 2:52:20Jocko Willink?

  It might be the most squared away pair of boots that's ever been made.

• 2:52:23Speaker 02

  Ever. Yep.

• 2:52:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you were Joe Rogan, what would you do with those boots?

• 2:52:28Speaker 02

  You know, do you wear them?

• 2:52:29Jocko Willink?

  Do you wear them or do you put them on the wall?

• 2:52:31Speaker 02

  I don't know, bro. It might be a special occasion, kind of a scenario.

• 2:52:34Jocko Willink?

  A special occasion kind of scenario. I got some boards, surfboards. Look, we don't like wall hangers. We're anti-wall hangers. We want to surf those boards. But I do have some boards that are like, hey, there's gotta be some condish. Some epic condish. Other than that, they're looking beautiful.

• 2:52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:52Jocko Willink?

  I got some of Stoner's old boards. Stoner didn't leave me his boards so I could freaking hang them on a wall.

• 2:52:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:59Jocko Willink?

  Got to ride. So I feel that way about those boots. Certain moment in time, got to break out those elk boots. I didn't feel me. Apparently they're super, super soft.

• 2:53:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you're like, you're describing the whole thing, like it sounds pretty sick to see them. It looks slightly more sick in real life. It's, it was very impressive.

• 2:53:21Jocko Willink?

  Did you actually hold them? You've seen them?

• 2:53:23Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, Pete opened them and we looked at them, but I, yeah, I didn't like try them on or nothing.

• 2:53:27Jocko Willink?

  No, but you, was the leather super soft?

• 2:53:30Speaker 02

  Actually, to be honest, I didn't feel the leather. Didn't touch them.

• 2:53:32Jocko Willink?

  Not really in the game.

• 2:53:33Speaker 02

  Looked.

• 2:53:34Jocko Willink?

  Hey, we can't get you those boots, the Joe Rogan boots. But hey, we do got plenty of boots. Hey, check it out, originusa.com. This stuff's all made 100% America. 100% in America. That's what we're doing. Hunt gear. By the way, it's our Cam Haynes.

• 2:53:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:48Jocko Willink?

  You know, he's so fired up. And if, if you, if you're, if your test human is Cam Haynes, bro, you're good. You know what I mean? Cam's a freaking maniac.

• 2:54:04Jocko Willink?

  The dude is just hunt, hunt, hunt. That's what he's thinking about. You know what he's thinking about right now?

• 2:54:08Speaker 02

  Probably hunting.

• 2:54:09Jocko Willink?

  Hunting. Oh, he just thought about his bow for a second. Now he's back to thinking about killing an elk.

• 2:54:16Jocko Willink?

  So, check it out. He, he's in it. Joe Rogan's in it. Actually, Chris Pratt's in it too. We're all in the game. That's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com. Check it out.

• 2:54:27Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:54:27Jocko Willink?

  Get yourself some American-made stuff. That, that's what I want to say. The reason, the reason that Cam is on board, the reason that Joe is on board, the reason that Chris is on board, is because it's American-made. The, these are patriotic people that understand how impactful this is to the country.

• 2:54:47Jocko Willink?

  These are all people from working-class backgrounds, by the way.

• 2:54:51Jocko Willink?

  Like, these are people that understand what it means to make stuff in America. And that's why they're on board. That's why they're partners. So, OriginUSA.com. America, check it out.

• 2:55:03Speaker 02

  Also, Jaco's store called Jaco's Store. Discipline equals freedom. This is where you can get your stuff to represent that idea, which is true, by the way. Um, also, there's a thing called the Shirt Locker. Subscription scenario, new design every month. People seem to like down. Check it out. But yeah, it's all on Jaco's Store.com. If you like something, get something there.

• 2:55:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Also, if you need steak, which you definitely do, and look, this is kind of a bummer.

• 2:55:31Jocko Willink?

  Five years ago, eight years ago, bro, I was fired up to go out for steak. Cause I was gonna get a really good steak that I liked, that was better than anything I could have at home. That, that situation has flipped now.

• 2:55:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's different.

• 2:55:41Jocko Willink?

  Because we got Colorado Craft Beef, and we got primal beef. You will get a steak that tastes better than any steak that you can get in a restaurant. I know that's a bold statement, but I'm going to tell you right now, if you have Colorado craft beef, or you have primal beef, you will have steak that tastes better than whatever steak you're getting in whatever restaurant you're going to. You go to one of them super fancy steak houses, we got you.

• 2:56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:09Jocko Willink?

  So, check out coloradocraftbeef.com, check out primalbeef.com and get some American made beef. Also those beef sticks?

• 2:56:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:19Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're, they're the new Snickers bar. They're the new Snickers bar. Are you down on those things?

• 2:56:26Speaker 02

  Dude, I'm getting screwed on those things. I got, I get the nine pack shift and my, and I'll open up the pantry. And I'll like, I'll have to go hunt, the kids will, like the wrappers will be in their bedrooms. My kids are just straight up stealing, hoarding. So the beef sticks are so good. At least the meat, like it's in my freezer, you can't really, you can't steal the steaks.

• 2:56:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, dude, those things are like immediately, if they catch wind that they've shown up on the auto ship, they're gone. They're gone. Which, deep down, like secretly, that's actually, that's what I want them eating, but there's a part of me like, can I get one? Can you at least carve out some for the old man here?

• 2:57:01Speaker 02

  They're awesome.

• 2:57:02Jocko Willink?

  Uh, check those out. Also subscribe to the podcast, also jockounderground.com, also YouTube. We got a YouTube channel. Jocko Podcast, right?

• 2:57:12Speaker 02

  Official.

• 2:57:13Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Podcast official, then there's also the Jocko Fuel.

• 2:57:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, also we, yeah, origin USA for sure. Um, but Jocko Podcast, we're coming out with a clips channel too. Cause sometimes people just like the clips, you know?

• 2:57:25Jocko Willink?

  Look at you on that one.

• 2:57:27Speaker 02

  Just saying, you know, it's effective. Oh, it's trying to provide. Hey, but how long have we had this podcast for? Anyway, like I was trying to say, sometimes we just want the clips, you know, we're on the go, all this other stuff, you know? We may, we might not be sitting through, you know, three hours necessarily on that day. That's not what we're doing. So, you know, the clips that might be beneficial. Say that. Thank you though for, for inquiring.

• 2:57:49Jocko Willink?

  Right on, right on. Also, psychological warfare, also flip side canvas, Dakota Meyer, he's made awesome stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. Final Spin. The Code, the Evaluation, the Protocols, wrote that with Dave Berke right there. Good deal. Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four, five. Check those out. Please get those for the kids that you know. Just give them to them. Just give them to them. Give the, give the nine-year-old across the street, one of these books right now, or all of them. And that way, in, in seven years, they're not freaking cranking the music up and throwing toilet paper into your trees.

• 2:58:32Jocko Willink?

  Cause they're out there, living a life of discipline, structure. He's over there, you know what he's gonna be doing? Coming over like, hey, can I mow your lawn? I'll do it this time for free. And we can talk about some kind of a contractual agreement. Right? When he's nine or 12. Just do it. Get the kids on the right path. Mike and the Dragons, About Face by Hackworth. Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy Leadership. Aeschelion Front, we have a Leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. And if you want to check it out, go to aeschelionfront.com. We have an event called The Muster. The next one is in Nashville. I think we just rearranged the dang seats. So we can get a few more people in there. It's 02 to 04 May. So that's coming up real quick.

• 2:59:17Jocko Willink?

  Check it out. Next one after that is in Dallas, 16 to 18 October. We just got back from Gettysburg Battlefield. Amazing. We have another event called The Council. All these things are focused on making you a better leader, which is gonna give you a better life. Also, the Women's Assembly, September 11th through the 13th in San Antonio, Texas. For the female leaders out there. Check that out. And if you want to get good at this stuff, you need to practice it. You need to continually study it. And that's why we have the Extreme Ownership Academy. This is gonna help you with business. It's gonna help you with life. It's gonna help you dealing with your kids. It's gonna help you dealing with your wife or your husband. So check that out. ExtremeOwnership.com.

• 3:00:02Jocko Willink?

  Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 3:00:19Jocko Willink?

  Also Micah Fink, he's got heroesandhorses.org for all those individuals that need some help readjusting, getting back in the game. He takes vets up into the mountains of Montana so they can find themselves. And Jimmy May, he's got an organization called beyondthebrotherhood.org helping bring guys into the civilian sector. And if you want to connect with us, Dave is at David R. Burke. I'm at Jaco.com and I'm on social, at Jocko Willink, Echo is at Echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm. And don't get caught up in the, in the, in the mayhem that's going on there. The comments, the response. Gotta be careful. Gotta be careful that one.

• 3:01:05Jocko Willink?

  Getting emotional about things you shouldn't get emotional about. It's a bot.

• 3:01:13Jocko Willink?

  Also, thank you to all of our men and women out there on the front lines, put into very dynamic situations, where decisions have to be made in seconds, where lives are at stake, and they do the right things for the right reasons. Thank you for what you do. And also to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you all for doing the right things for the right reasons here at home and keeping us safe. And to everyone else out there, there's decisions to make. There's the high road and

• 3:01:51Jocko Willink?

  the mud. The right thing to do, and there's everything else. And it's not always easy. But if you do the right things for the right reasons, and you do not surrender the high ground, in the end, you will win. And that's what we've got. Until next time. This is Dave and Echo and Jaco, out.