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The Protectors® Podcast
Welcome to The Protectors® Podcast, where the valor meets the storyteller. Hosted by Jason Piccolo, a seasoned veteran and retired special agent, this series is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the courage and tales of those who pledge to protect us. Beyond the front-line stories of bravery and dedication, this podcast goes a step further, weaving in the perspectives of those who bolster and narrate the protector's journey—featuring a remarkable lineup including New York Times Best Sellers and acclaimed Hollywood actors.
The Protectors® Podcast offers a diverse array of voices, from those who wear the uniform to the authors and entertainers who amplify their stories. It's a unique blend that highlights not only the raw realities faced by our protectors but also how their sacrifices inspire the narratives we cherish in literature and film. Each episode is a testament to the interconnected worlds of service and support, bringing listeners an unmatched depth of insight.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a retired federal agent, former U.S. Army Infantry Captain (Iraq 2006), and author.
Past Guests Include:- Sean Patrick Flanery - Andrews & Wilson- Mark Greaney- Stephen Hunter- Remi Adeleke - Florent Groberg - Clint Emerson - Travis Mills
The Protectors® Podcast
#483 | Morgan Lerette | Inside the World of Private Military Contracting: Tales of Conflict and Survival
Ever wondered what it's like to navigate the high-stakes world of private military contracting? Our latest guest, Morgan, pulls back the curtain on this adrenaline-filled industry, recounting his time with firms like Blackwater in the tumultuous early 2000s Iraq. Morgan gives us the unvarnished truth about the personal cost of a job where the line between soldier and civilian is blurred, including the financial temptations that pull contractors back into the fray and the struggles they face upon returning home.
ors is often written.
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
I do need a lost. Welcome to the protectors podcast. I have to change my voice whenever we hit the record button. Morgan, what's going on? Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for having me, jason, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:We finally made it happen. I'm like I'm looking at your first first edition of the book. I'm not going to talk about that, but I think I've had this sitting on my shelf for a couple of years now, probably.
Speaker 2:Well, that that both warms and hurts my heart, because I don't know if you read the first one, but don't worry, the second one's better anyway.
Speaker 1:Believe me I if I could read everything, I guess, and to me I would I just, I just wish I had time to. That's what I love about audio books. Audio books are like the best thing ever.
Speaker 2:Well, you are in luck. The audio book is going to be finished recording on Thursday, so are you going to?
Speaker 1:are you going to record your own? Are you doing?
Speaker 2:I had. I mean, you can hear my voice. You know that I like it.
Speaker 1:I think it would be great. I think we'll. Hey, this is Morgan Loretta. I was a black water mercenary. I would do my own books.
Speaker 2:I would be like after an hour I'd be like, okay, I lost my voice. No, jason, or a J more J more the actor. Saturday Night Live Jeremy Glyre.
Speaker 1:Yeah and J more is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's, he's doing it up for me, so pretty stoked about that.
Speaker 1:Okay, now I'm. I'm definitely you know what. I don't typically say this out loud, but I'm definitely getting an audio book. I want to. I want to see how J does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I was telling him, like the way that I use the F word in the book, like if you want to get on a call, I can tell you all the ways to say it, and he's like I think I got this and I'm like you probably do.
Speaker 1:You know the the F word is probably the best vocabulary and for all the civilians out there the F word can be used in any context, anywhere within a military, and obviously the contractor community it has anything to do with the military can use that F word to pretty much describe anything.
Speaker 2:You can say it twice. You can do F and F and be like oh yeah, no, that that's a bad F, I get that one.
Speaker 1:You could literally have a whole conversation just with the F word or about it Exactly. Morgan, you know, contracting world is different. It's. It's incredible because back in the day, because we're talking like the early 2000s here, then G Watt, you know, obviously the military didn't have the resources to do a lot of the, especially the protective security details, all the civilians, the whole military industrial complex didn't have enough people to protect their assets. So all of a sudden, like someone, like Blackwater, these contracting companies, and boom, they needed people and they needed them fast. How did you kind of get scooped up into the contractor world?
Speaker 2:I mean, you pretty much nailed it, except that the military probably could have done it. And when we went into Iraq we were like we don't want to be the infidels that are invaders. So we turned over the state of Iraq to the Iraqi government. And then we said, well, now it's a diplomatic mission. Ignore all those car bombs, it's not a big deal. So when it became a diplomatic mission, they said we don't want the DOD protecting all of our department of state and our CIA and our NSA and they didn't have enough people to actually do the protection stuff themselves. So they sent the call out for knuckle draggers and it was like the smoke blankets Back in 04, it just happened so fast, like if you knew somebody that was over at Blackwater they could give a name. And then I got to call it like 5 am in the morning and this back when I used to sleep in, and they're like hey, do you want to come to Moyaq and train? And if you make it we'll send you to Iraq. And it was really that fast because they had to man a thousand people over the course of two, three months and the election was happening in 04 between Kerry and Bush. So they were like trying to get everybody through, especially for the State Department that could get a clearance as fast as they could.
Speaker 2:23 years old, all American kid, have you ever smoked pot? Of course not. I made a lot in high school, but I'm not going to tell you that. So, yeah, I mean it was just like the fastest. I mean everything about it was fast, even in the book. It's like every day was just like breakneck speed. So it's kind of appropriate. That's how it started.
Speaker 1:And the money. So I was an IRR guy and when I got recalled I was infantry and I was an infantry officer. But a lot of the enlisted guys that were below me were E4 and below and they get recalled but a lot of them got out of the service. They already did a tour in Iraq and a lot of them would become contractors A lot of 75th guys and stuff like that and they were talking about the money and it was just like they were throwing money at people just because they needed bodies. Like you said, you got to build up a thousand person for us and you got to fill those contracts. So I don't think you understand what a contract is.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So I mean I do what, I'm just saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the contractors are people that were sent over to Iraq and usually in a protective detail, sometimes they would do like really, really cool stuff. And then there was the protection stuff and then there's gate guards. So really a PMC can be anybody, from the people that are washing your clothes to the people that were out there in the red zone, like I was. Everybody thinks it was black water and it's all the guys in the red zone, but they didn't have enough people to wash, laundry or cook food or any of that stuff. So what they do is they throw money at the problem.
Speaker 2:Like you were saying, I was like a stripper and somebody was just like raining twenties at me, right, like I felt like I was in a rap video. But in order to entice people to go overseas in Iraq, you had to have a pretty hefty paycheck. So they started me at $550 a day. 23 years old, that's 200,000 bucks a year. If you stay like 11 months out of the year and they would just once a month, they would just get this direct deposit for like $15, $17,500. And I was like the happiest guy on the planet. Now. Granted, I could have went out and had my head blown off and nothing would have ever. You know I wouldn't have got a parade and there's no SGLI or the life insurance that you get when you're in the military or any of those veterans benefits, but I mean the money was definitely enticing for people like me that hadn't always made the best decisions in life. We were just making another bad decision and making money for it.
Speaker 1:Well, we have the pros lots and lots of money. The tax, because you're in a different zip code, ie different part of the world, you don't really have to worry about that aspect of it. But the cons, you're pretty much at the hey, you know what You're basically from what I see, can and fodder.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that's the one thing. When I talked to prior service guys, then I'm prior service and I joined the army actually after I did Blackwater as an officer. When we drove around it was us and it was 13 people max and if something happened we had those two little helicopters. They were really cool to look at, but you don't have a whole lot of gun power on those things. You couldn't call big army this is before a blue force tracker or anything. We didn't coordinate with the military.
Speaker 2:So I remember we were leaving Baghdad to go down to Al-Hila. When you got on the outskirts of Baghdad we just lost all radio comps. There's nothing, couldn't talk to anybody. And then when we got close to Al-Hila which is, you know, a solid hour and a half hour and 45 minutes then we got comps to Al-Hila. So we could theoretically call a QRF at that point. But it was just. It's just you. People don't realize that when it's just you, it is a like there's a lot of. If you put a piece of coal in my butt crack, I could turn it into a diamond over the course of like four hours.
Speaker 1:When you think about contracts and this is this is the thing I was getting at with the contracts too so your contract, or meaning you fall under a contract you're making $550 a day. Whoever the military industrial complex person is out there who's getting this contract assigned to them says hey, you know what? We're going to pitch this company and this either the government or someone else we're going to be like we're going to fill these spots. You're getting 550. The person in charge of Blackwater or wherever is making double that, triple that to fill the contract.
Speaker 2:That was always the question that we had and I think what we came up with was we made 550 a day and they were charging in between $1,500 and $2,000 a day to have us on the ground. And of course they could say, well, we have to have all these training facilities and we have to have those. Things were already built before Blackwater got overseas with contracts. So they were making money hand over fist, and I mean good on them, because why the heck not Somebody was going to do it. Remember, remember Custer's battles.
Speaker 2:Remember that one Like the worst name for a PMC they went in, like you know, for like, like people like that were going to do it. So Blackwater was definitely a lot more professional than, say, custer's battles and those like overnight security firms that got created. But still like you're throwing money at a problem that nobody knows how to solve oh yeah, I was hoping.
Speaker 1:If you look at I don't know where they posted it, but it's at the Federal Register or something. So the government needs something done and they'll pitch it. They'll be like, yeah, we need this, we need to fill these requirements so that they find you Morgan, whose prior service check has a heartbeat check, can shoot a gun check. Questionable marijuana usage in high school. We don't know about that, but no, that's how they do it, so they just fill them and the same thing happens nowadays. There's different types of contracts. I mean you go to any agency now and you see the green badgers. They're contractors, just different types, but you are basically cannon fighters. I can't imagine that feeling. The Pucker factory, like you said, it's like the diamond thing Now. Guns, girls and greed. Where do the girls I know, look? Guns are awesome, but I need girls in Iraq. What's going on?
Speaker 2:Well, there were definitely some Blackwater groupies in Iraq because, between the military girls okay, let's just put this in perspective Most Blackwater guys are not Air Force guys like me. They were like Navy SEALs, recon Marines, just I mean, the most handsome guys on the planet and, like the military, girls absolutely loved us. So there was definitely girls in Iraq, but it was more about the conversations that we would have. I mean, you were in the military law enforcement, you're sitting in the car, you're bored. You're like what are we going to talk about? It's like, hey, you know what, besides saving the world by you know finding, you know the guy that you're going to make love to in order to save the world? The other conversation is always about girls. And then I was going to say guns, girls and how much money I was making, but it didn't sound as cool as greed. So, you know, got that alliteration going.
Speaker 1:GGG, yeah, I like it. You know, the greed part of it really isn't greed because, look at it this way, your life expectancy is shitty. You can die, you know. And how long can you possibly do that, you know? Yeah, I've known people who've contracted for years, here and there. You know, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, but it's not sustainable, it's not.
Speaker 2:It's. I mean, it's not sustainable if you want to have any kind of semblance of a real human life. But to your point, there's people that I know that were there in 04 with me, that are still going back chasing the dragon. But the same problems that you saw with soldiers is the ones that you saw with contractors. Right, like my wife emptied my bank account, my, you know, I got broken up with. My wife wants to divorce me, like all that same stuff. Because you're away from your family for that long.
Speaker 2:And then the money is like the drug that just keeps sucking you back in because when you come home you don't go and you put that in a 401K. I'm not that smart. It's like. You know, what I really need is a Land Rover, I gotta get this Land Rover. And so, like your six months, you blew all the money and then you're going back with 20,000 pocket and you're like okay, after this contract I'm going to be done and it just I can't tell you how many people will come back and be like oh, I bought my wife this $40,000 ring and I got four Harleys and we're like so that explains why you're back in two weeks instead of two months. Welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Now that's the welcome to blackboarder right there. It's like, listen, you know? What else I love to tell people is that the same toxic exposure I got from Iraq, contractors got it too. You know, the same medical issues that everybody else got and not just contractors, civilians and everybody else you get. Possibly imagine you're getting it too, but then you don't have that. I can go to the VA, not that the VA is actually gonna do anything, but for you guys it's like yeah, you're kinda shit out of luck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the VA is helping out a lot of immigrants right now, which you know makes me really happy, but that's the other thing is that there is no support system when you get back so you could text your buddy and they're in Tennessee. It's not like you're gonna sit there around a campfire and kind of commiserate, like when you leave with an army unit, you come back with an army unit, you kind of get downtime with the army unit. So the suicide rate for contractors is exceptionally high. You don't have anything out there. And if you guys contracted, reach out to me on Instagram, on my TikTok. There is something called the Defense Base Act where people are getting paid out for some of their injuries. But that's all new and it's all word of mouth. But there's no VA. There's no like VA disability. There's none of that stuff. You just they say, hey, we gave you your money up front, we're not gonna pay you on the back end. So they probably did save money over the course of like 20 years, but like at what expense?
Speaker 1:Well, you brought up. A great point too is mental health. How are you gonna go relate to you know, a PFC snuffie over here, a private snuffie, who got paid 60 grand to go to war and lose a limb, when you got paid 200 or something grand and you don't? It's hard to find someone that's gonna relate with you.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'll, I'll one up you on that one. So I went back to college after Blackwater at 27 years old and it was right after the Virginia Tech shooting, oh yeah. And the teacher like was hey, who wants to talk about this? And nobody was saying anything. And I raised my hand and I said that guy is such a coward. Like, if you're gonna go out there and shoot 22 people, at least give somebody the satisfaction of being able to kill you. Don't kill yourself, you coward. And I didn't say it nearly as nice as that.
Speaker 2:But these 20, 21, 22 year old kids were looking at me like I was an absolute psycho, like how do you relate to kids like that that have had a pretty good upbringing, right? I mean, most of the Blackwater guys are like me, poor, white trash kids that just joined the military to get out of a small town, usa, and then you get into college and you think this is my out and it's like, well, I think that we should have had more social services for that kid. And I was like oh, oh, we're, that's what you guys wanted to talk about. I thought I thought you wanted to hear the real truth.
Speaker 1:No, I believe me, I was active duty. Then I went to college and it was like I remember I was in ROTC not the hell I was thinking, but walking around. Yet back then this is pre-911, so you can walk around with your uniform on. You had to. People are calling me like asshole and maybe killer. I'm like this isn't Vietnam, this is the same to you, bro. It's like they get the shit from their parents or they come up with these like the coddled living where it's like you know that one percent of the society you go live in your corner. We'll call you when we need you. Well, you go to college. Nowadays it's like there's a lot of G1 generation still going to college, but it's the fade out now. You know there's not a lot of people who have that military or that shared combat experience or any more or any military experience that have to be combat.
Speaker 2:No, it's a. I mean even when I got out of. So I went to the ROTC after I got done with Blackwater. You want to talk about having to eat some crow. You got like this 22 year old kid, that's like you're not standing in attention, right, and I'm like dude. I just spent like the last 18 months in Iraq let me be so when I got through the ROTC.
Speaker 2:And then now you have these people that are like I don't know, they're just staunch anti-war, everything, and there was always that in college. But I feel like in an odd way, your conservatives are also turning anti-war. Like the way that paradigm has shifted is really interesting. But anyway, I went to a Tufts University when I got done with my time in the army and Tufts is extremely liberal. You guys can go Google it and it'll be like free Palestine, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:So I was talking to people and they were like do you think that you're conservative? And I was like you think I'm Kyle Rove's bastard child, but I'm pretty in the middle. I'm like do you think that you're in the middle? And they're like, oh yeah. And I was like you don't even, you haven't even seen it all. Like you went to Columbia for your undergrad, joined the Peace Corps. Now you're at Tufts, like, and these are the people that the US government recruits to get into the CIA, nsa, FBI, like all those people. So when you see that there's that juxtaposition and that fight in between, like the military and the agencies, that's why Is it amazing.
Speaker 1:You know what I was in 1811, I was 1801, 1895, 1896, all sorts of different grade series and that's the thing I've noticed. So I went to the law enforcement training center in Georgia and FBI goes to their own academy. That's their own thing. So I always tell people, mike, the FBI, like they're a different animal they are a completely different animal and they're the same thing, that they're recruiting from different sources than me, like a lot of people were 1811's. You know those come from some interesting backgrounds. You know I wasn't, you know I was an illicit artillery dude. You can hardly hear anything.
Speaker 1:What I've made it in the FBI, probably not because my attitude. So you have like different types of things. But that's who's recruiting for these top, quote, unquote, top tier three letter agencies? They're not recruiting war fighters, they're not recruiting, like In my own perception, people who need to go and get the job done. You know, to find evil people in this world, whether a starist's, criminals or whatever, you need people who can see evil people and if you're recruiting these people who are kind of living in these little bubbles, who takes them five years to experience anything that has to do with evil? It's Don't know man. You know, maybe I'm just preaching.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I think you need that, that both sides right, in order to have have Policy that meets the needs of all people. However, what you're seeing is that it's it's one side is right, one side is left right. I mean, you look at the recruiting for the US Army it's all Midwestern, it's small.
Speaker 2:Yeah and then you look at the officer corps for the Navy and it's all like the coastal stuff, right. So so you need that mix and I think the military gets that mix to a certain extent. But the agencies are not getting that mix. They're getting the people. They already think a certain way and there's a few that you know jump in and can make it through that. But I've talked to so many agents that are just like holy cow. You would be absolutely shocked that, like the politics and the policy and it's almost like, instead of Thursday night football, they sit around and they watch C-span, because it's more important to figure out, like what people are saying in the Senate than it is to watch football. Like it's just a different, it's a different breed of human.
Speaker 1:I, you know, I'm like a true crime, like fanatic. I watched like the 48 hours investigating things all the time and I'm like we're trying to figure shit out. But then you're right, it's like everybody, I Just see like a different perspective, a different cultural shift. I, before I retired, you know, somehow I had a really good supervisor for once and I put it for this presidential management rotation. It's like it's like the Fellows in a civilian world. But it's like this big deal, it gets me into it. I think only like a hundred something feds get it and I'm like, just for the hell of it, I'm gonna put it for DHS policy to go work for them for six months. I'm like, obviously nobody ever googled my name, whoever did this hiring process for the the policy.
Speaker 1:So I go over and I work for DHS policy working on certain policy for my orcas and I'm going there. I'm like, okay, you know I have all these friends in here and there that are different agencies. I'm like, how do you guys get your information to write these policies? And first of all, when you go in there, the people writing policy for DHS are in the 20s and 30s. They're not like the people who are in the field. You're not recruiting like the 40 something year old who's been there, done that, knows what the hell DHS needs to know. Now it's it's like a college campus and you're like, holy crap, and talk about Demographics of the the type of. I'm not gonna say, well, yeah, politics, political and other types of demographics different. It's not white. You know People who be national security policy. You think would know something about national security.
Speaker 1:So I go to one of the bosses and I'm like, well, how do you guys develop this policy? Where do you get the information from? Are you reaching out to the Intel community, the IC? Are you reaching out to the board of patrol field agents, reaching out to special agents and HSI and this and that and everything? They're like we Google it.
Speaker 1:I'm like you Google it and me at the time I'm still teaching in college. I didn't mean to still teach college. I'm like, sorry, you using like Google scholar or something. They're like no, we just Google it. I'm like, oh, you're developing policy by googling things. You're not reaching out to the subject matter experts. You have the government behind you. You can reach out to the top educational retours, as you can imagine, the top policy makers, people who are like think tank types, people who do this for a living and you're not utilizing it, you're googling it and figuring out things, oh man, and just like that's who's running the country. And I kind of think, you know, as a student of history, he's like has it always been this way? Was it like this in Vietnam? Was it like this to the 50s with China and the Korean War? I mean, was it always like this?
Speaker 2:Thomas Jefferson was like hey, scribe, come here, I'm gonna give you four words and you're gonna come up with this thing that we're gonna call the constitution, you ready? No, because I worked on. It's tough, I worked on. They called it like the space, I don't know, like the international law of space right, Because that's the next frontier. You can't just have everybody sitting in satellites up Same thing with, like the law, the sea and all the other stuff. But yeah, it was a bunch of us college students in our graduate degree that were coming up with something that was gonna be presented to some random senator. And I'm not gonna lie to you, when I had to find something about space, I hit the old Google like that's crazy, what happened before Google? Like holy cow.
Speaker 1:I thought about that the other day. I think I actually had an interview and we were talking about that. So encyclopedias, and then you remember, like back in the day, if you had AOL the disc, sometimes it would send you the like the encartee, but in encyclopedia. Britannica, but there was no like reach and I you'd have to like get the phone book out. I don't even know, man, go to the library, the bibli, what's that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Dewey Decimal.
Speaker 1:System, the Dewey Decimal System. That's what it is. Yeah, it's crazy man. And now there's nothing wrong with Google or something, as long as you could find reliable sources and as long as you know what you're looking for, as long as you know how to track the information on. But when you have the whole government where you could go into a skiff and pull up an email and even look on the repositories of stuff that's already out there, you're creating policy. You know policy that's going to affect generations. You know if it, if it gets signed, because when you look, when you go into these policies, you look at them like 1975, like holy shit, that's the last time this policy has been updated. You're talking generation. So, like, when you're doing things, you really have to find the subject matter. Experts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it, I mean it's. It's harder and harder to find those people because most of those subject matter experts are also using Google. But, but to your point, history repeats itself. There's nothing that's happening now.
Speaker 2:That hasn't happened in the past, right, I mean so Israel and the Palestinians are fighting like first time ever. Who knew that these guys hated each other? Like that's great. You could, you could go back into the history books and kind of see what happened there. Or the Sunnis and the Shias right, which is the Houthi rebels versus Saudi Arabia versus, you know, us over in the, in the, the Strait of Hormuz, all that stuff. But it's way easier to Google. I'm not gonna lie to you, that's how I got through college. Oh yeah, so there's no, I'm not gonna complain about the Google, but yeah, if you're, if it starts with Wikipedia, you probably don't want to cite. That would be my well, you know.
Speaker 1:You said history repeats itself, and that's what I like about the book guns, girls and greed is that there is gonna be another conflict, something else is gonna happen, there's gonna have to be contractors out there, there's gonna be people doing it. So I'd like to actually read the book and or listen to the book by James Warren, get a good idea what's going out there. So what do we expect from the book? I know what it's about, but what does the audience want to know?
Speaker 2:Oh man, it just, it just bonds eyes in, right, it starts with you know, a day in the life of Iraq, I call this the combat mullet, right, it's like business in the front, party in the rear. So it's business in the front, like where you're out there in the red zone and then party in the rear, literally sit on, who say in palace and we're drinking beer and, you know, bussing each other's balls, and then it goes straight into like Flying into Baghdad International Airport and and the insanity of getting into armored vehicles that that we're told, oh, don't worry, we're gonna have all kinds of armor. They gave us one round or one magazine. They gave us a Like a M4, an old sweaty body armor that smelled like somebody just pulled it out of the gym bag to get to the green zone.
Speaker 2:And it starts fast and it just keeps getting faster and faster. And look, there's dysentery in there. Don't let your kids read this. I've lent the book to a friend and one of their kids got ahold of it and started doing a book report. So you need to go talk to the principal. But if you scratch below the surface, it really does get into.
Speaker 2:Contractors have PTSD. We get the same. You know, we breathe the same air as you. One of the stories is we're flying over that trash pile in Baghdad and I don't know if you were ever in a black Hawk, but when you flew over that trash pile, the black Hawk sensors would say, oh crap, we're being shot down and they shoot flares and I thought, dude, I'm dead. I, holy crap, I'm dead. But we breathe the same air, we go through the same stuff, and then there's no support system. And then the other part is when should contractors be in the future? Right, we have contractors that are moving unaccompanied miners from the border Mm-hmm. We have contractors that are protecting federal buildings. If we're going to continue to get into war, contractors aren't going anywhere.
Speaker 2:And I think the frustrating thing is that Politicians don't want to address it because it allows them to say, oh, a contractor died. If a soldier died, man, it's gonna be on the news for two weeks. Yep, if a contractor dies, they say, oh, a contractor died or something messes up. Right, oh, that was the contractor, mm-hmm, you know, it was a bad apple, it wasn't. It wasn't us who contracted with them, who contracted with the third Right.
Speaker 2:So it gives that separation of powers, which is really kind of scary because you never know what laws govern you at any given time. Right, I'm outside the green, outside the green zone in Iraq, and do the loss of Iraq cover me? Is it the laws of the US? Is the UCMJ, is it? Nobody really knew. So the ambiguity is good for politicians, but it's really bad for contractors. So the reader can go through it, have a couple laughs, see the good, the bad, and then decide like, is this how we really want to wage war? And it's 23, making $550 a year? Hell yeah, that's how we wanted to make. Or a 550 a day, that's why how we wanted to wage war. But a little bit older people say how do I get into contracting? I'm like, dude, don't do it. Unless you have a three million dollar policy for, like general liability. Don't go into contracting because they are gonna throw you under the bus. Oh yeah happens.
Speaker 1:And this would be a good, good tale for those people who are thinking about it. You know, the young Joe who's getting out. It's like I'm anded three or four years or I really want to get into. What am I getting myself into? That's the thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of those contracting jobs now are like you've got, you get to go be a gate guard in Kuwait, which is that sounds terrible to me. I just lucked out right, I just got to skip to the front of the line, but it is not the robust Pay that it used to be, unless you're you're in with, like in VM or one of those like Super secret squirrel gigs and those man, those are so hard to get now because guys like me have been doing it for 20 years. I mean not me, but who are they gonna?
Speaker 2:call the you know, joe Snuffy that just got out of the army being a 03 11, or are they gonna call the guy? It's been contracting for 10 years.
Speaker 1:Who knows a deal? Yeah Well, brother, I appreciate it. Everybody, make sure you pick up guns, girls and greed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for having me, and If it's a wild ride, I sent it. My wife read it and she's like, oh my god, this is hilarious. And then she looked at me at the end and goes, oh my god, who did I marry? So that's how. That's how you know it's good I.
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