I'm gonna fucking rush man, right? Because it didn't work out with my ex -wife. Right? So um, I All these these issues these internal dialogues like especially the thing I can't win in that a lot of self -hate What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? How could I have been a more...

What am I doing wrong?

What am I doing wrong? I never looked at the other way. I constantly was looking internally to be like, how did I fuck up? Right? And so it's like about a week and a half, two weeks before Christmas, I think. She gives me, she calls me and she's out shopping somewhere. And not reciprocating text messages, not reciprocating, you know, things like that. Like, you know, my my shoe or my, you know, my little apart, tiny apartment,

your dumpster housing container,

dumpster housing container, the Ritz Carlton, I would say, of deployments. The Ritz Carlton deployments for me. I had pictures of her. It was just her, us, guns, grenades, radios, fucking mags stacked high, shit like that, my kit, everything else. And was my purpose. That was my purpose on that deployment. And I remember she calls me and she says, I don't see where this, where we're going to be. I don't see where this is going. Which is

so insane because you're on a deployment. Your relationship has made zero movement forward or backwards while you're on deployment. But she's in

her head like she's creating this whole thing. I do not even know. I don't I don't even really fully understand it. But the thing that fucking killed me was that I could hear Christmas music in the background. It was like, you could call me from your apartment, whatever, but it was like, done, out, in public, talk to you later. And so I go, Green Berets are never arms distance away from their weapon. Fucking fact. Right? And you know, I had my, you know, my pistol was right there in my nightstand. Yeah. And here I am, all these internal dialogues overwhelming me, overwhelming me at once. Yeah. I can't win. No one will love me. How the fuck am I? No one's going to take me. I just wanted a family. All I wanted to do is be happy. I did everything right in my life. I did right by this. I did right by that. And then there was a whisper. Just fucking ended. Just fucking ended, dude. You're never going win. You're never gonna win, right? And I sat there, I don't know how long I sat there, but I stared at my pistol and I thought, how is it gonna do it? I didn't think about anything else, right? And, you know, this isn't in the book, right? But I don't know what happened. There was a fucking presence in that room, though, whether it was my grandfather, higher power, Jesus, God, whatever. But I could feel it. I could feel that. And it was like... And I remember I said to myself in that moment, I felt that presence, and I was crying. And I said, all I have is the mission. All I have is the fucking mission, dude. That's all I have now. And I remember I pushed my pistol away and I said I have to go to the fucking gym. I have to go to the fucking gym. I have to go to the fucking gym. And I went to the little gym that they had for us there. And I think it was like probably three, four o 'clock in the morning and I proceeded to fucking slay myself till chow opened up at 7 .30 for breakfast, which I never made because I was always sleeping till noon,

you know, because I was up all night. Isn't it interesting too that you're operating at such a high level, you know, professionally, you know, the pinnacle of your military career, really, while your personal life is just a disaster.

Complete and utter fucking disaster.

Yeah. And the

thing about being in the military is that you're always in a location, you're away from things that make you strong. You're away from your family. Yeah, you're away from familiar locations. You're away from you're always forced to learn, make new friends. You're always forced you know, make these new relationships. Every couple years at UPCS, etc. right? I was away from the strength of the ODA. Right. Because I know if I was going through this shit on my ODA back in Oki, fucking icky mo, love you brother, and my buddy Johnny would have made me sleep in their fucking basement, and bang paychecks away to crawl myself out of financial ruin. Yeah And I also would have had a sergeant major that would be like hey man. Listen, I've been through this shit. You're gonna be fine But here's what we're gonna do for you. You know what? I get because every

sergeant major has been through Literally,

you know, yeah, I

mean at least one Honestly, I think it's one of the requirements to becoming a sergeant major. If not, it should be. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. It makes

you makes you way more personable. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it's

a humbling fucking experience. That's the thing is that and because because even though you were around solid dudes who were bros, they weren't they weren't your bros. You know, you they were guys who you got along with and guys who had the same mentality, but they weren't guys that you were comfortable feeling vulnerable with, guys who would be like, maybe teach you about it or give you some shit about it, but also in a very loving way and in a very like... But

yeah, but at that time, it's like, you the mission is priority, right? So, um, this is where we get into the, the sweet, sweet mish, the big mish, the big mish. And so I'm in the depths of my despair, right? I go to breakfast, I am not going back to my room. And I just throw myself into fucking right? Quintessentially running for myself again, right? There is, you're on a deployment, there's nothing you can do, the

mission is all I

have. Go fucking all in, dude.

And that can become very pure in its own way that if you just focus on the mission, everything else can disappear. Like it doesn't get better. It does not. But it can, you can like put it off for a while. And that's

exactly what it is, and we'll kind of get in that later, but like, you know, the mission, I walk in, you know, people wake up around like 10 or 12, right? And people floating into our little tiny office, that is just, you know, this little den of spies, doing the work that we were doing. And they're like, hey Dave, you know, come on in, right? I'm talking to one of the senior leaders and he's like, I need you to drop everything what you're fucking doing. I was like, what? I'm like, you know, I'm working on strategic shit. I'm working on, you know, the shit for, you know, counterterrorism stuff. Yeah. I'm like fucking all over the map, man. I was like following that ISIS target for that fucking, you know, those guys and, you know, doing, you know, Million Irons in the Fire, like I talked about earlier, earlier in the show, right? And, and I was like, well, what the fuck do you want me to do? What am I doing? He's like, trust me, dude, you want to work on this. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. Now at this point, we didn't even talk about this, but I had a tiny piece of Bag Daddy. Very, very, very small piece. All the credit goes to the fucking guys that did the raid, and the people that found him. All I really was like a second set of eyes, you know, OPE, operational preparation environment, you know, type of shit, that was it. But people were like, oh wow, you know people I was working with like he worked on bad daddy and I was like I didn't really you know, I mean like yeah. All right, you know, I wasn't a dude that was like did the fucking raid You know what? I mean? I wasn't the dog that that tried to bite his ass. Yeah, you know, he deserves all fucking credit, you know and but You know, so I was like, you know, I had you know, I was doing some really impactful work intelligence wise Not just on the CT side, but strategic side too. And so I ended up I was kind of a trusted agent, you know And all having a long tab goes along fucking way dude, right? You know what I mean? So it's um we all think the same GB's yeah like right Green Braid's think alike and he's like trust me you want to work on this you know and you know I did my piece with it and you know it was team of three of us and so every day for like two fucking weeks or a week and a half whatever was it was getting worse Like we I would you know, we would get some Intel in right send it out And like 45, you know, never we get like a reply back like that. I'm like half hour 45 minutes later. They're like, hey We want more of this Like when I look at I look at my I can't even say his name. But I was like, bro, what the fuck is this? You know what I mean? What are we doing here?

Right, because you haven't really been told what the op is. Haven't been told what the op is. Just told to accident. Are you starting to get a clue from what the PIRs are that are coming in? No,

not at all. Really? It was very limited. The fucking J2, brilliant mastermind genius, whoever the fuck that guy is. And don't get me wrong, there was probably multiple elements that worked this thing. I have no idea. So anyways, I'm in the depths of my despair and I'm just fucking, alright fuck it. I'm going all in on this. Responding to everything. Responding to every task and it comes back. working with my buddy, you know, working with the two other dudes. Alright, hey, you know, we should consider this, you consider that. You know, human intelligence wise, right? All these things. And, intel comes in, goes up. Get, you right back. Fuck, all right, we gotta re -task, right? It's very rapid pace and it was expensive too. It was a little expensive off. I think it was the night of January 2nd, 2020. I'm fucking exhausted. Not only am I dealing with having just fucking almost killed myself a little while ago, but you know an uncomfortable relationship with my now pistol. All these fucking things. I don't even care, I just want sleep. You know, I'm about three and a half, four months into this deployment at this point. Typically, guys are rotating back on four, but I'm on a full six, right? I'm on a full six, which at that fucking pace of operations, it builds up. There's something in science called allostatic load. You're capped out. These mad scientists have figured that like four months is the magic number, but I'm still on, I'm on a six month pump. Yeah. And so it was hard because you'd have like a change of leadership and they have like this new fire. Right. And I'm like, all right, whatever, dude, I'm going to go collect Intel and we're going to kill this prick. Right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, and, and, and, but so anyways, I'm, I'm bit, and in this little den of spies and I'm like, I'm going to bed, fuck you, I don't care what's going on tonight. But all the ISR birds are at B .A. You know, Baghdad International Airport. And so I've been devin' this target for a fucking week and a half, you know, two other dudes, right? And who knows, slew of others that I don't know about that worked on this. And so I'm like, oh, well something's gonna happen, but I'm like, nothing's fucking happening. No way nothing's happened. Nothing's happened this far. I'm going to bed and and my buddy's like, no, you're fucking staying awake for this. You're staying awake. And he pulls out one of those like shitty metal chairs, he sets it down right in the middle of our, you know, little talk. And we have ISR on the big screens and shit. He's like, sit the fuck down. And so we're sitting there and I'm watching it. And so... It's like a pred feed. It's a pred feed, right? And I'm watching it and plane pulls up and just like we thought on buy app, on buy app, right? Plane pulls up and just like we thought, planned and all this other stuff, dude gets off, black SUVs come up, gets in the SUV, right? Guy takes off, starts going down route Irish, which you know, very familiar with a lot of people. And then the fucking bird walks on and fires an AGM. And then, you know, target wrecked. And my buddy goes, slaps me on the back and goes, congratulations, you just bagged Qasim Soleimani. And we were like, ahh! I'm like, we were like, holy fuck! Right? Like, fucking throwing shit, right? Like screaming, hooting, haring, like total fucking animals. Just a bunch of SF guys

like, holy shit, we just bagged the super bowl targets. Yeah, right. Yeah, and that's probably a more significant target than bin Laden in big daddy put

together Absolutely. I mean you think of fucking anybody that's in this country right now. That's an Iraq vet that's missing a limb. It is because of him Yeah, you think about the sheer amount of fucking suffering that like has been put through by our rack vets early in the war, right? You know, quadruple amputees, stuff like that. That was him in CUD's force and all those assholes.

Bringing all the EFPs into country, you know, defeating our armor. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, they were the madness of the science behind all that. And they were the impetus. He was behind all that. And the, you know, in the build up of that strike, we were, you know, the embassy was under imminent attack. We thought the embassy was going to get big gauze -ed again. And we were producing information, you know, for retaliatory strikes. We were producing information to like all the force pro shit like that. We were talking people down there You know it was like you know jokingly. I was talking about buddy of mine He was working in security down there You know there was like a loose war know that one out was like if you're a ranger or 18 series You got to be on standby. Yeah, holy fuck. Yeah, like we were like oh shit, man Like this stack is not deep as you know with a very special set of qualifications and it was fucking funny because I was talking to my buddy that was down there and You know, we have a whole gun locker shit 320 two four nines and I'm like and I'm like, hey man Like so what do you want me to bring? I'm like, I got a two four nine. He's like, yep, bring that right? I'm like putting the LA 5 on this, you know the optics and everything else but obviously it never happened but the the all the intelligence was indicating that they were gonna do some shit right and in it's

then you got the ballistic missile attack but

killing him killing Soleimani was the thing I believe that stopped all that shit from happening because what here's what I thought was gonna happen.