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Speaker 1: My goodness, Frank, Being Frank fright, where the only way
Speaker 1: to be is Frank. Hello everyone, and welcome to being Frank.
Speaker 1: We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Frank Oborn, and I'd like to thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation Podcast,
Speaker 1: where no conversation is out of bounds and all the
Speaker 1: points of you are welcome. Listeners are familiar to our routine.
Speaker 1: We record live to tape, and I give you the
Speaker 1: dates so you have some context and relevance. It is
Speaker 1: the fifth of October. Like many of you, I listened
Speaker 1: with great interest to the recent addresses by Secretary of
Speaker 1: War Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump to an unprecedented
Speaker 1: gathering of our military's leaders. The Secretary has summoned all
Speaker 1: of them from all over the world. Now going into
Speaker 1: great detail here, let me just say that I was
Speaker 1: shocked at what I heard. As a civilian, I was
Speaker 1: appalled by the tone of the message. Among many disturbing statements,
Speaker 1: the suggestion of using US cities and American citizens as
Speaker 1: training grounds for our combat troops may have been the
Speaker 1: most appalling, But as I mentioned, I'm a civilian, I'm
Speaker 1: not a veteran, and I wondered what not only active
Speaker 1: duty members in the audience thought, but what other veterans
Speaker 1: might be thinking as well. So I turned to one
Speaker 1: that I had enormous respect for. Our guest grew up
Speaker 1: in Pagoda, New Jersey, and listed in the Navy right
Speaker 1: after high school, and also started a family at a
Speaker 1: very young age. He served his time honorably in the Navy,
Speaker 1: but found he missed the service, so he enlisted in
Speaker 1: the National Guard, but that made the longing even worse.
Speaker 1: He went back full time by enlisting in the US Army.
Speaker 1: During that time, he was deployed to Iraq and served
Speaker 1: on a convoy team called the Outcast Express in the
Speaker 1: Sunny Tried Angle during the worst, most violent time of
Speaker 1: the war. He was severely injured in an ied blast
Speaker 1: on Easter two thousand and five. It didn't end his
Speaker 1: tour of duty, but led to back and neck surgery later.
Speaker 1: He currently manages as a community wellness center with emphasis
Speaker 1: on mental health and addiction recovery. He has also worked
Speaker 1: as a supervisor of bills for the New Jersey Senate.
Speaker 1: He had the first of nine heart attacks in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen and was diagnosed with Parkinson's in twenty eighteen. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids and step kids ranging in age
Speaker 1: from twelve to thirty eight, and two grandkids aged two
Speaker 1: and five. Please welcome for some intelligent conversation call vonder Hyde. Carl.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking the time. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here, Carl.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about Pagoda and growing up there.
Speaker 1: I'm from Fort Lee to again. Two Jersey boys. We
Speaker 1: seem to have a lot of them. I have to
Speaker 1: mention Neil Richter, the mailman, our engineer, is another Jersey boy.
Speaker 1: So well Jersey all the time here. But talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about your experiences there and at how that
Speaker 1: kind of colored your future and some of the decisions
Speaker 1: you made, particularly as a young man.
Speaker 2: Sure, Pagoda's a real small town in a real big area.
Speaker 2: It's it's an incredibly densely populated area, and it's basically
Speaker 2: one giant bedroom community for New York City, and it's
Speaker 2: you know, when I was growing up there, Pagoda was
Speaker 2: very much a working class, you know, meat and potatoes
Speaker 2: kind of area. I think everybody was more or less
Speaker 2: living the same. There wasn't a tremendous difference in anybody's
Speaker 2: experience in that area. I don't think the I was troubled,
Speaker 2: to say the least. I was kind of a nightmare
Speaker 2: when I was in school. In high school, I was very,
Speaker 2: very very smart and had absolutely no interest in doing
Speaker 2: any of the work involved. And I was also a
Speaker 2: pretty heavy partier, and so I found that I was
Speaker 2: in trouble more than I was out of it. I
Speaker 2: sort of knew that if I had tried to go
Speaker 2: right into college out of high school, I would probably
Speaker 2: have rocked out pretty quickly, and it was a really
Speaker 2: good chance I would have ended up in a lot
Speaker 2: more trouble, drugs, alcohol, whatever. So I made the decision
Speaker 2: that I needed to get out of there. I needed
Speaker 2: to get away from several things. So I went right
Speaker 2: in the Navy after high school graduation, and almost immediately
Speaker 2: after that I was somebody's dad. So that's that's how
Speaker 2: that went down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's you know that. It's in all honest, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of responsibility to take on as a nineteen
Speaker 1: year old, and maybe that's why nineteen year olds make
Speaker 1: that decision that you know, to be a father, and
Speaker 1: then you had children, and I know that kind of
Speaker 1: affected your decisions going forward because it's difficult to do both.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why I think we we we honor
Speaker 1: our service people because so many sacrifices are made, and
Speaker 1: that includes being away from your family sometimes a prolonged
Speaker 1: periods of time, particularly when you serve in the navy,
Speaker 1: correct and so talk to a little to that and
Speaker 1: how that affected your life.
Speaker 2: Well. Being in the navy was. Being in the Navy
Speaker 2: was incredible because of the amount of experience and travel.
Speaker 2: I mean, I saw we were everywhere. I was on
Speaker 2: a guided missile destroyer Old Adams Class tin Can out
Speaker 2: of Charleston, South Carolina, and I mean we were all
Speaker 2: over all over the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean. During
Speaker 2: the very beginning of the First Golf War, we were
Speaker 2: bouncing around in the Indian Ocean. We were there. You
Speaker 2: may remember from the news when the USS Vincennes shot
Speaker 2: down what the Iraqis claimed was a passenger jet just
Speaker 2: at the very very very beginning of the Gulf War.
Speaker 2: We were there for that. I mean and I worked
Speaker 2: in radar navigation and tracking. I was an operations specialist,
Speaker 2: so I was working when that happened. But I got
Speaker 2: to see just so so so much of the world England, Ireland, Germany, France.
Speaker 2: It was incredible to travel the time we spent in Italy.
Speaker 2: I also discovered ways to get myself in trouble on
Speaker 2: a global scale. I've been arrested in some of the
Speaker 2: most beautiful places in the world and this one dopey
Speaker 2: friend of mine. And but the travel part of it,
Speaker 2: which was really one of the things I loved the most,
Speaker 2: also became very problematic for me because I had a
Speaker 2: very young wife and a kid at home, and then
Speaker 2: she became pregnant with my second kid, my oldest daughter,
Speaker 2: And when my enlistment was up, I made the decision
Speaker 2: to get out just because I didn't want to watch
Speaker 2: my kids grow up on videotape. And I also knew
Speaker 2: a lot of the guys older than me that had
Speaker 2: families that were in most of their family at least
Speaker 2: the enlistic guys, most of their families were an absolute
Speaker 2: train wreck. If they were still together, they all hated
Speaker 2: each other, and most of them were already broken families
Speaker 2: by the time they were thirty years old or whatever.
Speaker 2: So I decided to get out, and if one thing
Speaker 2: led to another, I ended up back in Ridgefield Park,
Speaker 2: and then from there to the Godas I went all
Speaker 2: the way around the world and then landed right back
Speaker 2: where I started.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Now, interestingly, though, in your navy career, was
Speaker 1: there any something like an eye opener for you that
Speaker 1: that really kind of changed that something that kind of
Speaker 1: a revelation of where you were, what you were, what
Speaker 1: you were doing. I don't know if you're following my
Speaker 1: train of questioning if you could.
Speaker 2: In the navy. Mostly I was just discovering how amazingly
Speaker 2: inexperienced and immature I actually was. That was that was
Speaker 2: the real eye opener for me. That, you know, you
Speaker 2: grow up in a town like Pagoda, which is so
Speaker 2: small and so insular, and everybody knows everybody, and you
Speaker 2: at least know everybody's names, and you know some of
Speaker 2: who's in their family and what they're about. I get
Speaker 2: out into the big world and you discover really shattering truth.
Speaker 2: I am not special, I am not unique. I am
Speaker 2: not in any way different from anybody else. I have
Speaker 2: signed up for a life in which it's all on me.
Speaker 2: Mom and dad can't bail me out of this. That
Speaker 2: relevation hit me in boot camp, like, wow, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: doing this. This is not I I'm not going home
Speaker 2: at the end of the day. This, this isn't how
Speaker 2: this works. So that was that was kind of a jolt.
Speaker 2: And the amount of of responsibility, of course, that you
Speaker 2: assume as a parent is a really big thing, and
Speaker 2: being that young was a very eye opening experience. You know,
Speaker 2: all of those people that were telling me things for
Speaker 2: years like you'll understand when you're a father, Well, now
Speaker 2: I understood. And I also had a very clear idea
Speaker 2: that I had no clue what the hell I was doing,
Speaker 2: and I was very much a wash and absolutely absolutely
Speaker 2: lost when it came to that. And then on top
Speaker 2: of that, I'm an eighteen nineteen twenty year old kid,
Speaker 2: and really we're talking about kids, and I've got a
Speaker 2: NATO's Secret clearance at that age, and I'm handling documents
Speaker 2: that you know, we had a bag on my ship
Speaker 2: where it was lined with lead, and God forbid anything
Speaker 2: happened to the ship, all those documents go in that
Speaker 2: bag and it goes to the ottom of the ocean,
Speaker 2: and I'm handling this stuff. I'm on radio nets with
Speaker 2: other ships in a fleet. You know, like I mentioned
Speaker 2: the data Vincennes shot down that plane. You know, I
Speaker 2: was involved in that. And when I think now, you know,
Speaker 2: I've got kids that are twelve, thirteen, fourteen, twenty. I
Speaker 2: don't even let them pick what's going to be for dinner.
Speaker 2: And yet we'll give a kid at that age this
Speaker 2: incredible amount of responsibility. And I would love to sit
Speaker 2: here and say and I met the challenge, But the
Speaker 2: reality is I've floundered, and I flailed around. I had
Speaker 2: no idea what I was doing, and realized exactly how
Speaker 2: big a bite I had taken out of life at
Speaker 2: a very early age. The other thing that happened while
Speaker 2: I was in I don't know if you're aware of this,
Speaker 2: but nineteen eighty nine, September of eighty nine, Hurricane Hugo
Speaker 2: hit Charleston, and my whole neighborhood was because I didn't
Speaker 2: live on base, because I had a wife and a kid,
Speaker 2: my whole neighborhood, including my house, were just gone, like
Speaker 2: like they had never been there. It was completely wiped out.
Speaker 2: And so again at this incredibly young age. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: we're living in a tense city and I'm figuring out,
Speaker 2: you know, how am I going to feed this kid?
Speaker 2: And how much ramen and peanut butter is he going
Speaker 2: to eat before he openly rebells? And you know, we're
Speaker 2: walking around the neighborhoods doing honestly got alligator patrols, and
Speaker 2: you know, there there's it was really really crazy. So
Speaker 2: you know it, I came home with a very clear
Speaker 2: sense of exactly how much I did not know about
Speaker 2: life in the world. That was the big eye opener there.
Speaker 1: But obviously, and we read in the introduction there was
Speaker 1: something there for you. He went back first and the
Speaker 1: Nation Guard and then if you will full t on
Speaker 1: by enlisting in the army, what isn't what?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What was that that pull? What was that attraction that
Speaker 1: kept bringing me back?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's it's a lot of things. It's it's a lot,
Speaker 2: a lot, a lot of things. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: ask anybody who was prior service that ends up going
Speaker 2: into the National Guard, which is a lot of people,
Speaker 2: a lot of men and women do that. They'll they'll
Speaker 2: get out and then realize how much, they miss it
Speaker 2: and they'll go into the National Guard. It's it's the camaraderie,
Speaker 2: It's the stuff that you're involved in. It's the things
Speaker 2: you know, the things you can do, the the there's
Speaker 2: a tremendous level of structure that a lot of us
Speaker 2: find I don't want to say we become institutionalized, but
Speaker 2: a lot of us find that were extremely comfortable in
Speaker 2: that hyper structured environment. I mean, the whole time in
Speaker 2: the military, whether it was the Navy or the Army,
Speaker 2: I never had to think about what I was going
Speaker 2: to wear today. I didn't have to think about what
Speaker 2: I was going to have for dinner. I knew exactly
Speaker 2: who was going to be ware and when they were
Speaker 2: going to be there, and what we were going to
Speaker 2: be doing. I knew what the mission was, I knew
Speaker 2: what the job was. There wasn't a lot of and
Speaker 2: this is a big deal, not a lot of room
Speaker 2: for opinion in the military. Everybody just has a job
Speaker 2: to do, and that's what you're there to do. We
Speaker 2: all express our opinion. We will bitch and gripe and
Speaker 2: moan and whine and cry and yell and scream. I
Speaker 2: actually posted a meme the other day that is very accurate,
Speaker 2: which said very It was a picture of a guy
Speaker 2: running with an M sixteen, and it said a tremendous amount.
Speaker 2: A tremendous part of being in the military is saying
Speaker 2: f this under your breath and then doing it anyway.
Speaker 2: That's really really accurate. And so what I found that
Speaker 2: I was missing was all of that. And there is
Speaker 2: a level of camaraderie that is far more extreme. It's
Speaker 2: not like your college roommate or your frat brother, or
Speaker 2: you know, fellow members of the Elks lodge or the Moose,
Speaker 2: or it's not like that. It's different because you are
Speaker 2: with each other twenty four hours a day, seven days
Speaker 2: a week, no matter what, in and out, you're all
Speaker 2: each other's got. The people I went to Iraq with,
Speaker 2: I'm still in touch with most of the guys that
Speaker 2: were on the Conboy team that I served on. For
Speaker 2: that reason, you become, in a lot of ways closer
Speaker 2: than a lot of families are. You know each other
Speaker 2: that there were guys there that this day know me
Speaker 2: better than most of my family does, and we haven't
Speaker 2: seen each other in fifteen years, see twenty years. That
Speaker 2: was all the stuff that I missed, and I missed
Speaker 2: it tremendously and it took me a while to catch
Speaker 2: on too. I had been home for a long time
Speaker 2: and I was working, and it should have been obvious,
Speaker 2: but I was working. I was a police dispatcher in
Speaker 2: Ridgefield Park and then in Pagoda. I was on the
Speaker 2: Ambulance Court, the heavy rescue squad, the police auxiliary dispatching
Speaker 2: for the police and nine went one, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: somebody finally pointed out to me, you know, everything you're
Speaker 2: doing is about being in uniform and.
Speaker 1: Kind avoid if I might jump in. It seems like
Speaker 1: those are its little measures to try to fill this
Speaker 1: bigger boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really was, And so I went, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And I went back into the National Guard, thinking weekend
Speaker 2: a month, two weeks out of the year, I put
Speaker 2: on the uniform, I can be part of what's going on,
Speaker 2: and then I go home. And that actually made it
Speaker 2: much worse. I found that I would spend the whole
Speaker 2: month between duty weekends just looking at the uniform, hanging
Speaker 2: up and itching to get back. And so finally, when
Speaker 2: the opportunity presented itself to go back full time I did.
Speaker 2: I went back And it's funny because when I when
Speaker 2: I enlisted in the National Guard, I was a I
Speaker 2: was a tanker Charlie Company who uh second one seconds
Speaker 2: and I was a tanker and I loved it, and
Speaker 2: it was fantastic. When I went back full time, I
Speaker 2: had to go into an aviation unit. What the heck
Speaker 2: do I know about a helicopter, you know, But I
Speaker 2: did it. And you know, over time, I got various qualifications, this, that,
Speaker 2: and the other, ended up running a motor pool. But uh,
Speaker 2: it was that constant itch to be back in that environment.
Speaker 2: And my initial thinking was, Okay, I'll go back, and
Speaker 2: even if I did get stationed somewhere at the time,
Speaker 2: I got very lucky. I was working out of Picatinny Arsenal,
Speaker 2: and I lived in Byron Township. I could fall out
Speaker 2: of bed and be at work. It was fantastic. I
Speaker 2: just always kind of in the back of my head
Speaker 2: if I ever get sent anywhere, of course, I can
Speaker 2: always take the family with, you know. And then, of course,
Speaker 2: after nine to eleven, you know, that all went out
Speaker 2: the window because we were at war with everybody and
Speaker 2: I was never a way more than I was home.
Speaker 2: But so you didn't retrospect me not my best decision,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it was uh, it was all of that
Speaker 2: that drew me back in it, all the positives, and
Speaker 2: any veteran can tell you that even the negative stuff,
Speaker 2: when you start remembering back, it becomes very positive because
Speaker 2: I don't really think about some of the stupider things
Speaker 2: that happened, and lines I waited in for no reason,
Speaker 2: and places I went to do absolutely nothing but I
Speaker 2: had to hurry up and get there. You don't think
Speaker 2: about that as much as you think about the people
Speaker 2: you were there with and everybody that went through that
Speaker 2: experience with you. Same thing. As you know, I very
Speaker 2: rarely talk about any of the wilder stuff that happened
Speaker 2: while we were in a rack and then asked your things,
Speaker 2: and I think all the time about the guys I
Speaker 2: was with and the dumb things we did to entertain
Speaker 2: ourselves and things we did between missions and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and that's the stuff that sticks with you, and that's
Speaker 2: the stuff you end up really missing.
Speaker 1: Cal I want to and I want to talk more
Speaker 1: about your Iraqi experiences. In some of our pre interview,
Speaker 1: you've mentioned some very interesting things and some of the
Speaker 1: issues you faced when you come back, as we said,
Speaker 1: filling and finding ways to fill that void. And some
Speaker 1: of them are the most healthy as well, as we
Speaker 1: well know. But we'll talk about that. But I think
Speaker 1: it's important now that we fast forward a little bit
Speaker 1: to the speech, if you will. The so called secretary
Speaker 1: of War was the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, where
Speaker 1: I think his intention was to capitalize on what you
Speaker 1: were saying, the camaraderie, that hohorah kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: the bold, pounds your chests, look at my tattooed tight
Speaker 1: type thing. In my opinion, it seemed to completely backfire
Speaker 1: that people were looking at him from their reactions literally
Speaker 1: which at times with no reaction, was literally begging for applause.
Speaker 1: But I said, I'm a civilian. My jaw dropped in
Speaker 1: terms of not only what he said is about troops
Speaker 1: in cities, and with Trump came too later we'll talk
Speaker 1: about him in a minute as well too, but the
Speaker 1: overall tenor the tone of it, you know, looking down
Speaker 1: and telling these guys stuff they already knew and don't
Speaker 1: and it presented in a way that was not honorable.
Speaker 1: But again that's my thinking. I'd like to know your
Speaker 1: thinking you're a veteran, you've learned the right.
Speaker 2: Oh my, the Secretary of Defense, and he is regardless
Speaker 2: of what these clowns will say, he's still the Secretary
Speaker 2: of Defense. The you can't just change that on your own,
Speaker 2: not even with an executive order. It doesn't work that
Speaker 2: way anymore than you can make an official language or
Speaker 2: declare birthright. Says you can't do that with an executive order.
Speaker 2: It's still he's still the Secretary of Defense. I don't
Speaker 2: care if he calls himself the Grand Pooba. He's the
Speaker 2: Secretary of Defense. My first gut reaction. I watched the
Speaker 2: whole thing, and my initial reaction was, somebody's going to
Speaker 2: get up and slap this idiot. I was amazed that
Speaker 2: that didn't happen. To be honest with really, these guys
Speaker 2: are tremendously men and women in that room are unbelievably professional,
Speaker 2: and that's the only reason it didn't happen. I'm thoroughly convinced.
Speaker 2: For a guy who is an absolute failure of a veteran,
Speaker 2: clearly dealing with his own demons, dealing with his own
Speaker 2: substance abuse issues, dealing with the fact that he crashed
Speaker 2: and burned whole veteran nonprofits with this nonsensical attitude of his.
Speaker 2: For him and a five time draft dodger to get
Speaker 2: up on a stage in a room full of people
Speaker 2: who have given their lives and professional careers and in
Speaker 2: many cases families to the service of this country was unconscionable.
Speaker 2: It was disgusting. It was for these two guys to
Speaker 2: be telling that group of people what the warrior ethos
Speaker 2: is is so beyond absurd. It would be laughable if
Speaker 2: you could close your dropped jaw long enough to breathe.
Speaker 2: It was obscene for him to be saying some of
Speaker 2: the things he did. He's calling career military officers fat,
Speaker 2: and he's suggesting that women and people of color in
Speaker 2: that room were there as dei hires. And he's suggesting
Speaker 2: that people who don't agree with his chest beating, knuckle
Speaker 2: dragging neanderthal version of what a man is aren't fit
Speaker 2: to serve. And that is one of the most idiotic
Speaker 2: and absurd things I've ever heard. The fact that he
Speaker 2: and the President are alienating people based on ethnicity, sexuality, gender,
Speaker 2: and race at a time when we have nothing but
Speaker 2: a voluntary standing military and the fact that he is
Speaker 2: ending people's careers based on those things at a time
Speaker 2: when we have nothing but a volunteer military. It's mind
Speaker 2: boggling to me. It staggers the imagination. I think the
Speaker 2: most eloquent comment on this exercise and stupidity last week
Speaker 2: was the silence, the the fact that these people did.
Speaker 1: I saw what would they be allowed to call it procedurally,
Speaker 1: you know, because they kind of played on that. Would
Speaker 1: they be allowed to applaud if they wanted to? Is
Speaker 1: that considered in.
Speaker 2: This particular event. Yes, absolutely, it would be.
Speaker 1: It would be considered absolutely appropriate.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you could you could clearly see that they
Speaker 2: both expected that that's what was going on. I think
Speaker 2: they thought that they were going to be so beloved
Speaker 2: that these men would break protocol and burst into spontaneous applause.
Speaker 2: This is not what happened. You know. They sat there
Speaker 2: and if anything, you could say they observed absolute rigid protocol.
Speaker 2: They sat there.
Speaker 1: Like this, motion and emotionless. Yes, and that was all
Speaker 1: they got.
Speaker 2: They got no reaction. I saw one female, she was
Speaker 2: sitting with a group of sergeants. Major. I saw her
Speaker 2: at one point she was kind of on camera, and
Speaker 2: when he said you're allowed to applaud. She kind of
Speaker 2: broke ranks, and she's sitting there and she kind of went,
Speaker 2: which was actually worse. You know, it was the humiliation
Speaker 2: upon humiliation of that event were blatantly obvious to everybody watching,
Speaker 2: except I think the two men that wanted to be
Speaker 2: on that stage. I am quite sure that they are
Speaker 2: both too confidently stupid to recognize how bad that really was,
Speaker 2: how badly it went, and how how bad the look was.
Speaker 2: I mean, when you know, the president loves his strutting
Speaker 2: in pete cockery, if you if that's a word, and
Speaker 2: you know, like the same thing that happened with his
Speaker 2: ridiculous birthday parade, he used the birthday of the United
Speaker 2: States Army to try to throw himself a mountsy tongue
Speaker 2: or Stalin style celebration. And it was a sloppy, pathetic mess.
Speaker 2: I mean, the tanks were squeaking, and the only reason
Speaker 2: you could hear that is nobody was applotting. The equipment
Speaker 2: sounded like it was in disrepair. The people most telling
Speaker 2: to me, and I've actually seen this happen a couple
Speaker 2: of times before. The troops that were marching by were
Speaker 2: raggedy looking. There were no dress uniforms, nobody had decorations
Speaker 2: on parade. Everybody was just in their BDUs. They weren't
Speaker 2: even all in straight lines or in step. They were
Speaker 2: just it was like somebody gave the order all right
Speaker 2: forward and they just lolly gagged up the street. I
Speaker 2: am positive that starting with someone very high up the
Speaker 2: food chain that very casually said you know, nobody's being
Speaker 2: graded on this evolution, and then that got down to
Speaker 2: junior officers who said, nobody's really going to be paying attention.
Speaker 2: By the time that got to the platoon sergeants, it
Speaker 2: was like, screw it, and these people just walked. I
Speaker 2: mean that there was no marching, There was no goose
Speaker 2: stepping like the orange guy was hoping for. They just
Speaker 2: strolled and drove and it was It was absolutely there's
Speaker 2: a message in that. And I'm quite sure that just
Speaker 2: like there was a message to him in the deafening
Speaker 2: silence that he and the Secretary of Defense walked into
Speaker 2: on that stage, that was a very very clear message,
Speaker 2: not only to him but to the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: I believe they have lost the support of the military.
Speaker 2: They may have a couple of people here and there
Speaker 2: that are hard charging MAGA people, but they really I
Speaker 2: don't believe they have the support of the military brass.
Speaker 2: I also kind of think they know it. And there
Speaker 2: was another decision handed down this week saying no, you're
Speaker 2: not sending the National Guard into Portland, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: That's the second time now that's happened to him. That
Speaker 2: happened to him there, and it happened to him in
Speaker 2: LA and I think it's gonna happen to Trump again.
Speaker 2: With regard to all the noise he's making about Chicago
Speaker 2: posse comitatis law, you cannot use the military to police
Speaker 2: the civilians. More humiliating than the fact that he's being
Speaker 2: told no is the fact that he mobilized these guys,
Speaker 2: put them on twenty nine day orders, and they've got
Speaker 2: them out there in DC picking up trash and raking
Speaker 2: leaves because there's literally nothing else they can do. There's
Speaker 2: nothing for him to do. The more of that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff that gets seen not just by the general
Speaker 2: public but but by actual service people, the worst it
Speaker 2: is for him. We talk about the warrior ethos and
Speaker 2: then we're using them as political props, and that's not
Speaker 2: going to pan out well.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to talk a little bit before and
Speaker 1: we spoke a little bit about your experiences in Iraq,
Speaker 1: particularly the base and the and the I'll let you
Speaker 1: say that the funky nickname that the base got, but
Speaker 1: not only that, particularly because as you mentioned, Hegseth in
Speaker 1: this whole new masculine, the ultimate masculine male will be
Speaker 1: the image of the American soldier. And you mentioned a
Speaker 1: group of women gunners. I want you to tell that story.
Speaker 1: Tell a little bit about the base where you are
Speaker 1: so people know you were even in a violent area
Speaker 1: and there were women there, and there were women warriors there,
Speaker 1: and I want you to talk to that because you know,
Speaker 1: we hear all these things. You were there, you saw it.
Speaker 1: Tell us please.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The one of the things you have to remember
Speaker 2: is that with the exception of our infantry guys, the
Speaker 2: Army infantry and the Marine Corps who were out there
Speaker 2: patrolling the streets on foot, kicking in the doors, getting
Speaker 2: into the real mess of this whole war in Iraq,
Speaker 2: and God bless every one of those people, because man,
Speaker 2: they were in it. Especially you know, I got in
Speaker 2: country in two thousand and four. By five, it was
Speaker 2: the wild West in that part of the part of
Speaker 2: Iraq we were in back here they were The news
Speaker 2: called it the Sunni Triangle. We just called it our
Speaker 2: Ao area of operation. Had gotten sent down to work
Speaker 2: with a convoy team in a city called Ballot. We
Speaker 2: had taken one of Saddam's old air bases there. We
Speaker 2: had the United States had renamed it camp An a Conda,
Speaker 2: LSA and a Conda. It was honestly the weirdest place
Speaker 2: I've ever been in my life because it was nicknamed Mortaritaville.
Speaker 2: That was more to Ritaville. We had mortar and rocket
Speaker 2: attacks on just about a daily basis. Fortunately, people that
Speaker 2: were launching these things, which is a whole nother story,
Speaker 2: but they had no idea what they were doing and
Speaker 2: they couldn't shoot worth anything. Very rarely did they actually
Speaker 2: hit stuff, but it could still be very dangerous and
Speaker 2: very disconcerting. You know, you're you're sitting there, You're on
Speaker 2: your way back to where you live after dinner, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you're, oh, I didn't hit anything,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know, you just kind of go
Speaker 2: about your day. As a matter of fact. By the
Speaker 2: end of our tour there, we kept getting extended By
Speaker 2: the time we left, we were so thoroughly and dangerously
Speaker 2: complacent about these things, mortar and rocket attacks, people shooting
Speaker 2: at us through the fence, whatever we did. When we
Speaker 2: first got there, we were all, Oh, my god, we're
Speaker 2: in a war, and something would go boom, and we'd
Speaker 2: all grab our helmets and gear and go running into
Speaker 2: these bunkers. They had built bomb shelter type things. It
Speaker 2: was actually just a big connex con container buried in
Speaker 2: the ground and surrounded with sandbags. After a while, you
Speaker 2: stopped really feeling like that was your safe option. By
Speaker 2: the time we left, we weren't even doing that anymore.
Speaker 2: I'd be in bed and I'd hear the asimuth alarm
Speaker 2: go off. Yeah, screw it, I'm not going If they
Speaker 2: get me, they get me. I need to sleep. It
Speaker 2: was really it was like that. It was that constant.
Speaker 2: And yet at the same time, the air base that
Speaker 2: had become LSA and Aconda was also the base where
Speaker 2: Saddam and his lunatic son Ude trained the Iraqi Olympic team.
Speaker 2: So at the same time we had this magnificent soccer
Speaker 2: soccer field and stadium on the base, we had Saddam's
Speaker 2: Olympic teams swimming pool which the Corps of Engineers actually
Speaker 2: got up and running. So it was a very strange
Speaker 2: way to live. You know. One minute we'd be outside
Speaker 2: the wire on a mission, trying to maintain a meaningful
Speaker 2: relationship with our own behind. Two hours later, we're sitting
Speaker 2: next to a pool, eating ice cream and drinking illegal scotch,
Speaker 2: wondering what the heck happened to my life? What is
Speaker 2: this insanity? We had a full on movie theater on base.
Speaker 2: The war was owned and operated by Haliburton. I think
Speaker 2: that's pretty common knowledge at this point. Dick Cheney was
Speaker 2: the former CEO of Halliburton. Haliburton had a subsidiary company
Speaker 2: called KBR, Kellogg, Brown and Root. KBR did all of
Speaker 2: the services at Campagna Conda And I wait when I
Speaker 2: say all, I mean they ran all the dining facilities
Speaker 2: they KBR ran all. They had civilians working in every
Speaker 2: supply facility, every supply point on the base. KBR. When
Speaker 2: we went over there, we didn't have any armored vehicles
Speaker 2: with us. We called it hillbilly armor. We made whatever
Speaker 2: we could into armor plates of sheet metal, stand bags
Speaker 2: on the floor, police departments back home were sending us
Speaker 2: their old vest and we would cut them up and
Speaker 2: try to line the inside of our trucks and humbies
Speaker 2: for missions as best we could. Later on, when they
Speaker 2: started up armoring vehicles, well it was KBR that did
Speaker 2: the up up armoring of the You would send it.
Speaker 2: There was actually a garage at Campana Conda called Big Bobs,
Speaker 2: and you would send your vehicle over to Big Bobs
Speaker 2: and it would come back as an armored truck or humby.
Speaker 2: The everything would be retrofitted and that was all build
Speaker 2: to the Army. That was all built to the department.
Speaker 1: For enormous profits. Enormous enormous profits.
Speaker 2: We took over. We're in Iraq, for God's sake. You
Speaker 2: would think we would take the oil. The United States
Speaker 2: didn't take the oil. We didn't get the oil KBR did.
Speaker 2: KBR ran all of our fuel points. KBR had third
Speaker 2: country contractors from mostly from India that they brought over
Speaker 2: that were literally pumping our guests. We would take the humbies,
Speaker 2: take the trucks, get in line at the gas station
Speaker 2: and these guys had come out and fuel us up
Speaker 2: and we'd have to sign off on the mileage and
Speaker 2: everything else, and we were being built on our own base.
Speaker 2: For the fuel, KBR ran all of the dining facilities.
Speaker 2: KBR ran all the supply points. KBR also had brought in.
Speaker 2: They had more ways to separate us from our own money.
Speaker 2: As far as the soldiers were concerned too. KBR brought
Speaker 2: over trailers and so. On this particular base, there was
Speaker 2: a Burger King trailer, and there was a what old
Speaker 2: did we have? Burger King, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken,
Speaker 2: Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins. This was all KBR had to
Speaker 2: pay for all of that stuff. You know, you'd come
Speaker 2: off a mission, you know, it sounds really good some
Speaker 2: ice cream. Now, I'm not complaining that this stuff was
Speaker 2: available to us. It's absolutely incredible that it was available
Speaker 2: to us. What I am saying is, I'm in this country,
Speaker 2: I'm serving my country. I'm in a war. Two hours ago,
Speaker 2: i was being shot at by somebody I've never met.
Speaker 2: Now I'm standing in line for pizza hut that I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get charged for, and somebody back home is raking
Speaker 2: in piles of cash. The other thing that the other
Speaker 2: situation that creates is that we had most of the
Speaker 2: convoy units were made up of people they didn't know
Speaker 2: what else to do with. All the convoy teams had nicknames.
Speaker 2: We were the outcast Express. We were the outcast because
Speaker 2: we were all the guys they didn't know what else
Speaker 2: to do with. I'm in an aviation unit, I'm in
Speaker 2: the supply section, I'm a tank driver. What are they
Speaker 2: going to do with me? They sent me the convoys.
Speaker 2: My convoy team was almost entirely supply clerks, fuel handlers,
Speaker 2: and cooks. We didn't even have our own actual medic.
Speaker 2: They sent me and one other guy to Combat Life
Speaker 2: Saver School, and on most of our runs we were it.
Speaker 2: We finally did get a medic assigned to us, but
Speaker 2: we had to do all of that stuff ourselves. So
Speaker 2: we had mechanics, and we had fuel handlers, and we
Speaker 2: had supply clerks, and we had cooks. Those were all
Speaker 2: people that were trained by the United States Military to
Speaker 2: do those jobs. Bath and shower specialists, you name it.
Speaker 2: All of those functions were carried out by KBR contractors.
Speaker 2: The contractors were making about what life times like, what
Speaker 2: we would five times? I know. Another company called L
Speaker 2: three Communications ran a lot of the supply points and
Speaker 2: I heard some of those people were making like sixty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars for a three month hitch. It's nothing like
Speaker 2: what I made in over a year that I was there.
Speaker 2: So at taxpayer expense, we trained somebody to be a cook,
Speaker 2: to be a bad specialist, to be whatever. They're not
Speaker 2: doing that job. They're out there driving trucks on convoys,
Speaker 2: things they were never trained for before we got in country,
Speaker 2: while some civilian does the job they were actually trained
Speaker 2: for for an absolute fortune. And you can believe if
Speaker 2: Hell three Communications was paying that, well, imagine how much
Speaker 2: the company was getting to send those people over there
Speaker 2: at the fraud, waste and abuse of biblical proportions could
Speaker 2: have That's where Doge could have made a difference, but
Speaker 2: there was nothing like that back then.
Speaker 1: Well, well that kind of brings me to a Point'm
Speaker 1: a little older than you are, and I consider myself
Speaker 1: a child of the Vietnam eraroe where I grew up.
Speaker 1: And I had mentioned my oh, my uncle served, my
Speaker 1: father was a Third Army veteran in World War Two.
Speaker 1: It's the stories, et cetera. So I kind of grew
Speaker 1: around up around that. But at the same time I
Speaker 1: grew up with the the skepticism of the Vietnam generation
Speaker 1: that the whole war and so many people had died
Speaker 1: for alive, remember the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And again it seems like we keep repeating the same
Speaker 1: things that ultimately it turns out to be a sham,
Speaker 1: that it's corporate fat cats who send young people out
Speaker 1: to kill and die for their profits. And to me,
Speaker 1: nothing seems to have changed yet this administration and get
Speaker 1: to kind of get back on topic too, seems to that, well,
Speaker 1: that's the what might makes right. We're going to take
Speaker 1: what we want, and where does it leave us? Again,
Speaker 1: as I said, I grew up with that ethos You
Speaker 1: mentioned the word, that way of thinking, and I we
Speaker 1: grew up with a healthy skepticism because of that, And
Speaker 1: yet we seem to be making the same mistakes. I
Speaker 1: need your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'll tell you from a personal perspective. I
Speaker 2: and I think I've told you this before, but I
Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, when I left home, I
Speaker 2: was a hardcore right wing evangelical Republican and in the
Speaker 2: year I was there, by the time I came home,
Speaker 2: the way I always tell by the time I came home,
Speaker 2: I was somewhere to the left of Emigal who is
Speaker 2: now one of my heroes, em M Goldman, mother Jones,
Speaker 2: these incredible strong women that led the labor movement, you know,
Speaker 2: the Big Bill and all of these people, just amazing people.
Speaker 2: The simple fact of the matter is war's big business.
Speaker 2: War is profit and war. The probability of war is
Speaker 2: very much based around the image that it's able to present.
Speaker 2: And that's where these knuckle draggers come in, because when
Speaker 2: you think about war fighters, you're not thinking about the
Speaker 2: payroll clerks and the cooks, and you're picturing Rambo, and
Speaker 2: you're picturing John Wayne from the movies in the fifties
Speaker 2: and sixties, and that's it. None of that's real. You
Speaker 2: know something Pete Hegseth needs to keep in the back
Speaker 2: of his head. John Wayne dies in most of his movies,
Speaker 2: usually for nothing, you know. And in this case, we
Speaker 2: went to Iraq on a series of staggering lies that
Speaker 2: made a lot of people very very wealthy. Most of
Speaker 2: us who came back and really had any kind of
Speaker 2: introspective thinking about it, realize how bad this whole thing
Speaker 2: really was. I have yet to meet anybody who can
Speaker 2: tell me what we got from the Iraq War? What
Speaker 2: made it worth? The five thousand of my brothers and
Speaker 2: sisters that died over there, What made it worth the
Speaker 2: many more of us who came home with physical and
Speaker 2: mental wounds that may never heal. What was worth that?
Speaker 2: What was worth the families that were shattered? What was
Speaker 2: worth any What did we get from Iraq? The answer
Speaker 2: is nothing but a lot of rich people got richer.
Speaker 2: Is the world any safer? No, If anything, it's gotten
Speaker 2: infinitely more dangerous. Is the world a better place? No,
Speaker 2: If any anything, it's gotten far worse. Is our standing
Speaker 2: globally as a country in a better place? No. We
Speaker 2: have gone from being Wow, they led us into a
Speaker 2: war to now we're the punchline of a joke. This
Speaker 2: whole warrior ethos, we already had it. Leadership leading from
Speaker 2: the front. Something Pete Hegseaith is never going to understand
Speaker 2: is a phrase that I learned when I was in
Speaker 2: serving in the military. A real leader never has to
Speaker 2: say follow me, and that bears repeating. A real leader
Speaker 2: never has to say the words follow me, people will
Speaker 2: just naturally follow. We have seen leaders like that over
Speaker 2: the years. We have also seen leaders that demand to
Speaker 2: be followed, and we have a gaggle of them right now.
Speaker 2: If you find yourself standing in front of a room
Speaker 2: full of career military personnel and having to tell them
Speaker 2: you're in charge, you're not. You're not the alpha dog.
Speaker 2: If you have to tell anyone you're the alpha dog.
Speaker 2: I also know that this toxic masculine image that this
Speaker 2: tattooed buffoon and his orange overlord are trying to present
Speaker 2: is absolute utter nonsense. Now you had alluded to this earlier.
Speaker 2: When I was over there. All the convoy teams had nicknames,
Speaker 2: and there was one group called the Amazons. I do
Speaker 2: not remember who they were with. Might have been Third Infantry,
Speaker 2: I really don't remember, might have been Third ID. But
Speaker 2: it was a convoy team in which, for one reason
Speaker 2: or another, they ended up with every single one of
Speaker 2: the turret gunners in their trucks and humpies. Every one
Speaker 2: of them was a female, was a female soldier, and
Speaker 2: they had an absolutely ferocious reputation. Our own markings on
Speaker 2: the doors of all our trucks were marked on the
Speaker 2: outcast trucks. We had a big black demon head with
Speaker 2: kind of a red swoosh around. It was. It was
Speaker 2: really neat easy to stencil. And after we were there
Speaker 2: for a while, they started recognizing our trucks and knowing, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're not going to mess with those guys with the Amazons.
Speaker 2: They would not only not mess with them, after a
Speaker 2: very short amount of time that they were there, they
Speaker 2: would like leave. And it was a combination of the
Speaker 2: fact that these women were not playing They they they
Speaker 2: were going home when their tour was over, and they
Speaker 2: were going to do that by any means necessary. They
Speaker 2: were absolutely ferocious fighters with with a real reputation among
Speaker 2: the locals. The other thing was your average jihattist does
Speaker 2: not want to arrive in Heaven and have to explain
Speaker 2: he was sent there by a woman. So this incredible
Speaker 2: group of soldiers whose missions were being accomplished by this
Speaker 2: the bravery of these women was they had a fantastic
Speaker 2: track record. I think they had one hundred percent delivery rate.
Speaker 2: I don't think they ever didn't make mission, and they
Speaker 2: brought all of their people home. And so that the
Speaker 2: idea that women shouldn't be in a combat role, that's
Speaker 2: an idiotic thing to say, because I've seen it happen
Speaker 2: the opposite also LGBTQ service people. I can state categorically
Speaker 2: that I know for a fact my life was saved
Speaker 2: twice by a screaming queen. He described himself to me
Speaker 2: one time as as queer as Christmas at Bloomingdale's. That
Speaker 2: was his phrase. Wow, very very very flamboyant guy. An
Speaker 2: absolute monster and a gun turret. He was a beast
Speaker 2: when he was doing his job. Same kid, I saw
Speaker 2: openly we we were over there. One of the Mariah
Speaker 2: Carry albums dropped, and I walked up to tell him
Speaker 2: something in his room and I saw him openly weeping
Speaker 2: listening to a Mariah Carry album. Same guy put him
Speaker 2: in the turret of a truck. He's a monster. So
Speaker 2: this whole concept of warriorhood being wrapped around tosic, toxic masculinity,
Speaker 2: it's nonsense. There's no such thing as the you know
Speaker 2: who the alpha dog is. The alpha dog is the
Speaker 2: guy that everybody's saying, please don't put him in my truck,
Speaker 2: please please put him in gun five. Please put put
Speaker 2: him somewhere. I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 2: be with this idiot because he's out there. He's the
Speaker 2: alpha dog. The Tocic, the real man. That's the guy
Speaker 2: that's getting up and you know, looking at his weapon
Speaker 2: in the morning before a mission and going, please let
Speaker 2: today be the day whereas the rest of us are going,
Speaker 2: please just let me get home when it was over.
Speaker 2: I really don't want to, you know, I don't want
Speaker 2: to die here. You know, you know, of course we
Speaker 2: all would if it was required of us. But the
Speaker 2: idea of these chest beating, nut knuckle draggers being the
Speaker 2: ideal that everyone is supposed to aspire to, it's ludicrous,
Speaker 2: it's nonsense, and it's going to lead us into a
Speaker 2: very bad place if anybody is willing to follow it. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: from what I saw both at the parade and at
Speaker 2: this thing last week, people aren't gonna find you ever.
Speaker 2: See band of Brothers and all the sergeants went to
Speaker 2: their colonel and said, I will not follow that man
Speaker 2: into combat. I have a feeling that's where we're getting
Speaker 2: to with Pete heg Sith and his want to be dictator.
Speaker 2: That's my sense, Carl, I want to talk a little bit.
Speaker 1: Beout. You got to take a quick break. We'll come back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about Buddhism and your involvement.
Speaker 1: It's all part of these are absolutely great. Story is
Speaker 1: so important. You got to take a quick break. We'll
Speaker 1: come back. We got about ten minutes to finish up,
Speaker 1: so make a few more points. What's you mentioned? He's
Speaker 1: losing support, but he still does have some support even
Speaker 1: amongst veterans, and I want to talk to how how
Speaker 1: do you deal with people like that? I don't know
Speaker 1: if you have the answer, but we'll try. My very
Speaker 1: special guest is Iraqi war veteran called wander Hyde. This
Speaker 1: is Being Frank. I'm your host, Frank Wibono. Will be
Speaker 1: back with more right after these brief commercial messages. Don't
Speaker 1: go anywhere yet. This has been great.
Speaker 3: Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 3: This is Hudson River Radio dot com. Hudson River Radio
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Being Frank, the Intelligent Conversation Podcast. Thanks
Speaker 1: for sticking with us. I'm your host, Frank Lebono as always,
Speaker 1: our engineer as the mailman, mister Neil Richter, and our
Speaker 1: very special guest is Araqi war veteran to call launder Hyde.
Speaker 1: We're having a wonderful conversation. He's given us so many
Speaker 1: great stories about his experiences as a veteran and where
Speaker 1: we are today. Quite frankly, you know, we bring our
Speaker 1: audience a fresh topic just about every week and stream
Speaker 1: from Hudson River Radio, which is located in beautiful and
Speaker 1: historic Stony Point, New York. But you can catch Being
Speaker 1: Frank anywhere you get your favorite podcasts, that includes Apples, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: and all the others. And because Being Frank is archived,
Speaker 1: you can listen to any of our programs any time
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Speaker 1: on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page or at our
Speaker 1: website Hudson Riverradio dot com. To find the icon, click
Speaker 1: and we're there and listen to great shows like the
Speaker 1: one we're having today. Carl. We mentioned you feel that
Speaker 1: the tide is kind of turning, particularly amongst the military,
Speaker 1: where he's losing more and more support. But yet there
Speaker 1: are veterans who still support him. I know one locally
Speaker 1: they won't mention his name, protect his privacy, a former sailor,
Speaker 1: and he's very adamantly instill in support of Trump, and
Speaker 1: I always kind of ask him, what is it about
Speaker 1: mister Trump that appeals to you, and I really never
Speaker 1: get a straight answer. But when you're dealing with someone
Speaker 1: like that, how do you reach them?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: I also want to talk about your Buddhism, because that
Speaker 1: may slip in here a little at the same time,
Speaker 1: but how do you feel? Again, again, I'm not a veteran,
Speaker 1: so I always respect veterans, want to respect their opinions.
Speaker 1: But when you so strongly disagree with their positions, how
Speaker 1: do you deal with that?
Speaker 2: One thing I've noticed about Trump supporters in general, anywhere
Speaker 2: I go, They're not usually the greatest number of people
Speaker 2: in the room, but they're the loudest, and they, or
Speaker 2: at least the real serious maggot people are usually maybe
Speaker 2: not the biggest numbers, but the loudest people in the room.
Speaker 2: And that seems to be throughout the country, not just
Speaker 2: in my limited experience. I think, of course, I run
Speaker 2: into them. I have to deal with the VA on
Speaker 2: a regular basis. I've got a number of health issues
Speaker 2: going on, and so I'm around these people. And then
Speaker 2: I also, for a couple of years not too long ago,
Speaker 2: I worked well. First I lived in a veteran shelter,
Speaker 2: a homeless veteran shelter, and then when I moved it
Speaker 2: back out on my own. I worked there for a
Speaker 2: long time in admissions. And so you're going to run
Speaker 2: the gamut because our military is made up of all
Speaker 2: different people from all different walks of life. It is,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned before, in all volunteer military. So of
Speaker 2: course there's going to be the conservatives, and there's going
Speaker 2: to be the liberals, and there's going to be the
Speaker 2: MAGA people, and there's going to be the never magat people.
Speaker 2: One thing I will say is that depending on the setting,
Speaker 2: if I'm at the VA or if I'm at an
Speaker 2: event at the VFW, or if I'm working with a
Speaker 2: veteran on his VA claim or anything along those lines,
Speaker 2: we're really just all brothers and sisters at that point.
Speaker 2: It's about us being veterans and not so much our
Speaker 2: political standpoints. I will say that some of us, the
Speaker 2: experience of war made us much more introspective and started
Speaker 2: making us question everything. And there were the flip side
Speaker 2: of that are the folks that it shut them off
Speaker 2: completely from asking anything about anything, whether it's because they
Speaker 2: don't want to think about those things, or they're not
Speaker 2: able to, or they just still really believe all of it.
Speaker 2: Like I know people I was interact with that to
Speaker 2: this day will not acknowledge that we were there over
Speaker 2: a live Now our mission changed while I was there.
Speaker 2: This is no joke. People have heard the expression mission drift.
Speaker 2: You know, we went for one thing, but now it's another.
Speaker 2: We went for weapons of mass destruction. By the time
Speaker 2: we left, it was a completely different thing. It changed
Speaker 2: three times while I was there. I was only there
Speaker 2: a year, a little better than a year, and it
Speaker 2: changed three times. And by the time we left. If
Speaker 2: you asked, there were twenty three guys on the Outcast
Speaker 2: Express when I left. If you asked any of us,
Speaker 2: if you asked the room full of us why we
Speaker 2: were in Iraq, you'd have gotten twenty three answers. We
Speaker 2: have no idea what our mission was by the time
Speaker 2: we went home. So it's easy for me to understand
Speaker 2: why there are still people that believe we should have
Speaker 2: been there, just like it's easy for me to understand
Speaker 2: why it's so hard even in the face of the
Speaker 2: glaringly obvious flaws of this administration. You don't want to
Speaker 2: admit you got taken. You don't want to admit you
Speaker 2: were wrong. You don't want to admit you got conned.
Speaker 2: And in a lot of cases when we're talking about race, ethnicity, religion,
Speaker 2: sexual or the LGBT, there are people that want to
Speaker 2: not like people because or who who are what they are,
Speaker 2: and if you say something that threatens that, they get very,
Speaker 2: very angry. This president has given voice to that and
Speaker 2: made that normal. You know, there's a saying that's been
Speaker 2: going around for a couple of years now, not all
Speaker 2: Trump supporters are Nazis, but all Nazis or Trump supporters.
Speaker 2: That's very, very true, and you're going to see that
Speaker 2: in the veteran community as well. It's funny because we
Speaker 2: all are dealing with the realities of what happened when
Speaker 2: these idiots summarily fired thousands of the A employees without
Speaker 2: bothering to find out what they do first. And yet
Speaker 2: you've still got people going all the way back to
Speaker 2: Gingrich and Bill Clinton making politics into a team sport
Speaker 2: for personal game. And I blame both sides on that one.
Speaker 2: For personal game, they both learned how to play that
Speaker 2: and that it was much easier than having a campaign
Speaker 2: on your own actual ideas. From that, we ended up
Speaker 2: with the Tea Party, and from the Tea party. We
Speaker 2: ended up with Trump and the MAGA movement. And it
Speaker 2: is so much easier to have your hate and fear
Speaker 2: and loathing justified and normalized than it is to have
Speaker 2: to think and really put an effort into well, is
Speaker 2: any of this real? Some people are very comfortable with
Speaker 2: their prejudices, and some people are very comfortable this is
Speaker 2: my team and this is your team, and the hell
Speaker 2: with you. People get very comfortable and very complacent in that.
Speaker 2: And it's true among the veteran community too. How do
Speaker 2: I deal with them? There's a standing rule at VFW
Speaker 2: as an American legion, no politics in the social rooms
Speaker 2: at the VA. We all have a common enemy. We're
Speaker 2: all there just to grape about the VA while we're there,
Speaker 2: so we don't really have to talk about how it
Speaker 2: got that way. I'm not sitting in a waiting room
Speaker 2: at a VA cardiologist's office taking that is the opportunity
Speaker 2: to talk to the guy next to me about what
Speaker 2: he thinks of Miller, you know, or anything like that.
Speaker 2: We can both agree the VA is a disaster. How
Speaker 2: did we get this way? It doesn't matter. I'm still
Speaker 2: waiting on an appointment that was supposed to be two
Speaker 2: hours ago, so we don't we don't really really go
Speaker 2: into all of that. We all know what the problems are.
Speaker 2: We just approach them from different perspectives.
Speaker 1: Of Carly, we only a few minutes left, but I
Speaker 1: really want to talk a little bit about Buddhism and mindfulness.
Speaker 1: I know you've made a commitment to that, so if
Speaker 1: you could in a few minutes, we have left.
Speaker 2: Absolutely my favorite subject. I came home from Iraq after
Speaker 2: my tour and a weird thing happens when you get
Speaker 2: separated from your unit after combat. And I think a
Speaker 2: lot of the non vets and people from the Gulf
Speaker 2: War and this work can attest to this. You are
Speaker 2: with these people twenty four hours a day, seven days
Speaker 2: a week, in some of the worst possible places and
Speaker 2: environments and situations you can be in, and you are
Speaker 2: closer than a family. Twenty years later, we still finish
Speaker 2: each other sentences. You know. It's incredible how the bond
Speaker 2: that develops, and all you're thinking about is getting home,
Speaker 2: and I can't wait to get home, and I can't
Speaker 2: wait till I get home. And then you get home
Speaker 2: and you realize, first of all, everything at home went
Speaker 2: on just fine without you. Second of all, this whole
Speaker 2: support network I've had for all this time is now gone.
Speaker 2: And I love my family, I love my kids, I
Speaker 2: love my mom. But not one of them was there,
Speaker 2: and we are not speaking the same language by any
Speaker 2: stretch of the imagination. As a matter of fact, old
Speaker 2: friends of mine, I actually had to tell them when
Speaker 2: they got upset that I wasn't the same whatever that means.
Speaker 2: I had to say, yeah, that guy died in Iraq.
Speaker 2: I'm not that person anymore. Now, I will say I
Speaker 2: came home pretty screwed up, a combination of the separation
Speaker 2: from that life and the fact that you know, I've
Speaker 2: told you this before. I have this theory that we
Speaker 2: get so used to living in constant, constant fear, and
Speaker 2: no matter what anybody tells you about a war zone,
Speaker 2: yeah you're scared, Yes you are all the time. Until
Speaker 2: you stop noticing that you're scared, it becomes normal. And
Speaker 2: then what happens is you get home and it's not scary.
Speaker 2: And so my theory, I'm not a professional anything, but
Speaker 2: my theory is we start generating our own chaos because
Speaker 2: that's what feels normal. I have the money to pay
Speaker 2: the electric bill, but I'm not going to pay it.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. But now all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: they're knocking on my door saying they're going to shut
Speaker 2: off the electricity. Now it's a crisis, Now it's an emergency.
Speaker 2: I'm in my comfort zone. I know how to function
Speaker 2: like that. I most of it's almost I think I
Speaker 2: can think of one person from my unit, and I
Speaker 2: might be wrong about this, but I can think of
Speaker 2: one guy that's still married to the same person he
Speaker 2: was when he went over there. We all came home
Speaker 2: and tanked, our relationships, tanked, our marriages, wiped out our families.
Speaker 2: I was really screwed up. I was trying very hard
Speaker 2: to drink myself to death. Fortunately I failed at that,
Speaker 2: like I failed at a great many jobs. When I
Speaker 2: came home, bounced from job to job. The running joke
Speaker 2: as I've had every job known demand except working cowboy
Speaker 2: and rabbi, and my Hebrew's not bad. But finally somebody
Speaker 2: pointed out to me that I trust, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: you should learn how to meditate. And I've never been
Speaker 2: a guy who does things halfway. So like when I
Speaker 2: got interested in cooking, I went to work as a cook.
Speaker 2: When I got interested in government through a friend. I
Speaker 2: ended up going to work at the State House, first
Speaker 2: as a sergeant at arms and then as supervisor of
Speaker 2: bills for the State Senate. I don't do things part
Speaker 2: of the way, so when I got interested in meditation,
Speaker 2: I went at it full bore. I was fortunate there
Speaker 2: was a monastery. There was an actual Buddhist monastery not
Speaker 2: too far away. I went, and I got very, very involved,
Speaker 2: and in a very short time, I was the guy
Speaker 2: in charge of their food pantry for the monks. I
Speaker 2: had a mysterious talent as far as they were concerned.
Speaker 2: I can drive, so your average monk from China or
Speaker 2: Thailand not so much. So I went. I would take
Speaker 2: care of the grocery shopping. I would make sure the
Speaker 2: pantry was full. I worked with the cook. And while
Speaker 2: I was there, I learned a tremendous amount about Buddhism.
Speaker 2: And I spent a year basically doing that, and I
Speaker 2: absolutely fell in love with it. So as time went on,
Speaker 2: I studied different types of Buddhism. I went and I
Speaker 2: had the extreme privilege of hearing the Dala Lama speak
Speaker 2: many years ago and actually getting to briefly meet him
Speaker 2: it was a profound moment for me. For him, he commented,
Speaker 2: he said, you have many markings on your own I
Speaker 2: have a lot of tattoos. Yeah, you're holiness. I don't
Speaker 2: have any tattoos, any anything moved on you know. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't imagine you would. Yeah, But it was life changing
Speaker 2: for me, And it was the beginning of me being
Speaker 2: able to get my mind back and start getting some
Speaker 2: sense of myself and who I am as a person
Speaker 2: and what's really important to me. And I reorganized my
Speaker 2: whole way of thinking. From this hard charging warrior, whatever
Speaker 2: you want to call it. I found that love and
Speaker 2: compassion and doing for other people, these things are all
Speaker 2: much more important than pretty pins and ribbons to stick
Speaker 2: on my chest. And what I can do for other
Speaker 2: people on any given day is infinitely more valuable than
Speaker 2: any recognition or thing else that might might come about.
Speaker 2: So I did. I got. I I've been ordained as
Speaker 2: a soda Zen Buddhist priest. I have also extensively studied
Speaker 2: certain parts of Tibetan Buddhism. I've got teachers from all
Speaker 2: over the world. I lead meditation groups. I do a
Speaker 2: lot of that. I also manage I won't say the
Speaker 2: corporate name on the air, but I manage a community
Speaker 2: wellness center in western New Jersey. We deal mostly with
Speaker 2: mental health and substance abuse issues, but we also we
Speaker 2: do a lot of fitness stuff. And you know, they
Speaker 2: call it the Eight Dimensions of Wellness, which is basically
Speaker 2: just physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial wellness in general. And
Speaker 2: it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. And we get a lot
Speaker 2: of people in the door every day, and at the
Speaker 2: end of the day I can actually look and say, Wow,
Speaker 2: we really did something for that guy today, or Wow,
Speaker 2: we really helped her out. You know, she came in
Speaker 2: the door homeless and she's got a place to sleep tonight.
Speaker 2: You know, I wouldn't trade that for the world. I
Speaker 2: got custody of my kids back after a really bad stretch,
Speaker 2: and so my two youngest and the gaggle of others
Speaker 2: now live with me full time. And I get to
Speaker 2: do that every day. I get to be somebody's dad,
Speaker 2: and every day I get to look back over my
Speaker 2: day and say, Wow, that really mattered, that made a difference.
Speaker 2: I may never there will never be a military gym
Speaker 2: with my name on it. Nobody's ever gonna nominate me
Speaker 2: for a major award. Nobody's ever. Most of the world
Speaker 2: is never going to know my name or that I
Speaker 2: was here. But somebody somewhere is going to remember my
Speaker 2: face and that I did something for them and it mattered.
Speaker 2: You can't put a price on that. The current administration
Speaker 2: name a positive thing these people have done for someone.
Speaker 2: I can think of lots of ways they've hurt people.
Speaker 2: I can think lots of ways they have divided us.
Speaker 2: The whole division in this country right now, whether you
Speaker 2: love him or dislike him, the whole division in the
Speaker 2: country is over one man and what you think of him.
Speaker 2: That's his real legacy. He divided this country over himself.
Speaker 2: That is not a legacy I would ever want to
Speaker 2: be part of. And so I will spend the whatever
Speaker 2: time I have left, whether it's the Parkinson's that gets me,
Speaker 2: or my heart or a random bus on the street,
Speaker 2: whatever time I have left, I'm going to devote to
Speaker 2: the idea of compassion and if there is a way
Speaker 2: I can do something for somebody else, that's what I
Speaker 2: intend to do. And the concept of sense selflessness, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't trade it for anything.
Speaker 1: Carl gonna let that be the last word. What a
Speaker 1: wonderful hour we just spent together. Really, what a pleasure
Speaker 1: are very special guest called wonder hide Iraqi war veteran
Speaker 1: and now Buddhist priest. Can we say, Priest? Is that
Speaker 1: is that enough to the right call. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being frank and always intelligent conversation, and of
Speaker 1: course we offer a special thanks to our listeners who
Speaker 1: take time to give us a voice in their lives.
Speaker 1: Remember we offer a fresh topic just about every week.
Speaker 1: Catch us wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1: Check us out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page
Speaker 1: as well. I'm going to leave you with I think
Speaker 1: always something that I think is appropriate to our conversation
Speaker 1: and some great music first, uh a slogan of saying,
Speaker 1: if you will, the measure of a country's greatness is
Speaker 1: its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis. That
Speaker 1: was from Thirdwood Marshall. We got some great closing music
Speaker 1: from my friends the Scoop. They rock, It's always fund
Speaker 1: and it's a very appropriate song called perfect Call for
Speaker 1: our engineer the mailman, mister Neil Rector. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Frank Bono, and we hope to have you join us
Speaker 1: on the next being Frank, We're the only way to
Speaker 1: be is Frank.
Speaker 4: And you can't build a mighty wae.
Speaker 3: And you can make love a big.
Speaker 4: Anever anything have the time.
Speaker 3: Never had from the over ride.
Speaker 2: A silver suit was.
Speaker 3: In your mind. You said you took it out.
Speaker 4: It's hard to see the wall. You're away.
Speaker 3: I can't be believe what you say.
Speaker 4: You create a size, those compromise, that's what you do.
Speaker 3: No simple thief for those that's me or there's so
Speaker 3: three with you. This is tall and ball. The balls don't.
Speaker 4: Bun guess through bay that's around. Every dog has its
Speaker 4: stay at least, that's what I then say. So now
Speaker 4: that just don't great true. The Chinese started out fun
Speaker 4: criticize those game lies.
Speaker 3: That's what you do. You send the thieves and those
Speaker 3: that we all this.
Speaker 2: Three week.
Speaker 3: Ens is talking about the wall.
Speaker 4: No one gay.
Speaker 2: That's I could stand in the middle of sam and
Speaker 2: you can shoot somebody.
Speaker 1: We have won this.
Speaker 3: I get it was perfect.
Speaker 1: It was perfect. I will build a great, great wall
Speaker 1: that it's effective.
Speaker 5: I sa way we can do something like in Jashua
Speaker 5: investigating It's going to disappear one day it's like a miracle.
Speaker 5: It will disappear, it.
Speaker 2: Will go away. You know what.
Speaker 1: Hudson River Radio dot com m