Jocko Willink

Or they could have fired anyone in that long chain of command.

I would have, uh,

I would have protested with my own job if they would have tried to fire someone else besides me.

But, you know, I had a good relationship with them.

They understood how complicated it was.

They saw all these little things.

There's a million other little elements I can tell you about.

Like the fact that Matt Hasby

who was getting shot at with a .50 caliber machine gun, which you'd think, hey, dude, you're getting shot at with a .50 caliber.

That's an American weapon.

Like, that's not common.

Well, 12 hours prior to this, he was in a sniper tower, and he got engaged with a Dishka 12.7.

machine gun by the enemy.

And he was, he told me he was literally up there thinking, I can't believe these guys at the Diska found me again.

Because otherwise, if you think you're getting shot at with a .50 cal, you call ceasefire, you throw a red smoke, you do something to stop it.

He had no idea.

And so that's, you know, to the credit of my command master chief and my commanding officer, they listened to me, I listened to them, and we carried on.

And that was a very...

rough uh way to begin the deployment do you have any idea how much credibility was boosted within you with your team that day i don't know um but i can tell you that you and i have both sat in rooms where some officer blamed someone else other than themselves and you and i both know that that is disgusting and

I, that's what disgusted me.