Air Force PJ vs SEAL on Chapman Medal of Honor, Iran Escalation?

Ones Ready

The episode opens with a detailed, objective breakdown of the controversy surrounding Medal of Honor recipient John Chapman and the competing narratives presented by a new

Key takeaways

• Aaron Love stresses a fact-based approach to the Takur Ghar controversy, explicitly rejecting service branch rivalries or character assassinations regarding John Chapman and Britt Slabinski.
• The documentary Ground Truth claims ISR footage shows Chapman was hit immediately and did not move, directly challenging the official Medal of Honor narrative that also supported Slabinski's award.

Main topics

• Takur Ghar battle controversy
• John Chapman & Britt Slabinski Medal of Honor debate

Notable quotes

No character assassination. No anonymous dirt. No SEAL-vs-PJ nonsense.

Conclusion

The episode delivers a balanced analysis of military history, current geopoliti

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:00) One's ready. Speaker 8 (0:06) All right, everybody. Welcome. It is Thursday. Speaker 2 (0:10) You made it. You're almost there to Friday. It is the War Room Recall, as I'm calling it. And we have an awesome show. We got a really awesome show. I'm going to get a little bit of echo in my ears there. Apologize. But yeah, we got a great show. Aaron's here Speaker 8 (0:27) today. It's going to be great. We got a lot of stuff to talk about. Jake is here. I'm here. Obviously, I'm your host here, Ben Speaker 2 (0:34) Pappas. I served time in Marine Infantry, Marine Force Recon, Commander of the Marine Raider Battalion, retired Marine. Now I coach executives and businesses and help companies to win, help them with leadership development strategy, all that stuff like that. You guys want to introduce yourselves, and then we'll go run a show and tell everybody what's going on for today. Speaker 1 (0:55) Sure. I'll hop in here. Hey, what's up, Aaron? I was a PJ for a long time and I'm in the human performance optimization and cognitive training space. You can follow me over at ones ready.com where we get you absolutely ready for anything you want to try to do inside of the hardest selection course inside of the DOD. And that would be the air force special warfare assessment and selection. If you want to be a PJ combat controller, special reconnaissance, like officer, anything you want to do, you come talk to us. And we'll help you out. We're just about making you better. Come to OperatorTrainingSummit.com and you can come to in-person training events where we focus on you mastering the fundamentals. You can get all of the hell night and all that other stuff later. If you want to base your training and actually make a coherent move to do this thing, you should come to the Operator Training Summit. Follow me over at Aaron Loves America over on Instagram or at the One's Ready YouTube channel. That's it. Hello, go Browns. We're going to win. We're going to beat Steelers tonight. Be three in one. Everybody's going to forget that Deshaun Watson has 25 allegations and like 15 settlements. It's gross. And a documentary out there right now. Told you I Speaker 7 (1:52) was going Speaker 1 (1:52) to wear a costume tonight. Let's go. Love Speaker 4 (1:54) it. Speaker 7 (1:55) So listen, everything Aaron said I do for every other service other than the Air Force, we do have one kid in the PGA Pipeline right now. He's 18 years old. I have no idea how he's made it this far, but he's a savage. So it is awesome for him, but we're doing Green Berets, Rangers, everything else, Navy SEALs. We just had a whole bunch of kids get picked up for Navy SEALs today to go officers, which is a huge accomplishment. And we are making a ton of pilots over on my channel. You can catch me if you email me. You get my Discord. My robot will reply for the Army PDF and the SEAL PDF, which are basically undefeated in pretty much every selection we put them up against. Other than that, I do world-class mentorship across Speaker 5 (2:35) the country. We are making a splash in India right now. So I'm waiting on the keynote speaking engagements to come from India, Speaker 7 (2:44) but I'm just reminiscing that a little bit. Other than that, we're about to light fire to some conversations because the world is starting to get a little bit dark right now. And these politics are starting to Speaker 5 (2:55) come into play and it's gonna get a little squirrely before it gets a lot more nicer in America. Speaker 4 (3:01) And Speaker 8 (3:02) that is the truth. Speaker 4 (3:03) You Speaker 8 (3:03) heard it. That is the truth, Ruth. Right there, baby. We're going to have a lot more truth today. A lot of stuff to talk about. Let me tell you what we got going on. Speaker 2 (3:12) Today, you are very lucky. I'm very lucky. Jake's very lucky. We're all very lucky because we got Aaron here. We're going to talk about something that is a very hot topic. Speaker 8 (3:21) Everyone Speaker 2 (3:21) remembers last time Speaker 8 (3:22) that we got Aaron together on the show here. We had a barn burner. It's going to be a great one. We are talking about the controversy. Speaker 8 (3:31) surrounding Chapman, Air Force PJ. Is he Sergeant Major, Master Sergeant, Chief? He's Master Sergeant John Chapman. Okay, Master Sergeant John Chapman, Medal of Honor winner. Crazy, heroic, insane story. And Speaker 2 (3:44) all this controversy surrounding it. Okay, so you've been following that. Aaron's going to really break it down for us very objectively. I'm going to learn a lot. You're going to learn a lot. I think Jake's got some inside scoop there too, so it's going to be really exciting. And then, can Speaker 8 (3:57) you hear me okay? did they give him a medal of honor they did yeah Speaker 1 (4:02) all Speaker 8 (4:03) right we'll get to it we'll Speaker 5 (4:03) get Speaker 8 (4:03) to it and so then hold on and so then no we're Speaker 5 (4:07) going Speaker 8 (4:07) to talk about good cartels we're going to talk about we talked about this last night we're going to talk about cartel drone use and i want you to imagine the southern border of the united states turning into possibly this is worst case scenario a ukraine type battlefield I'm going to show you some stuff. Speaker 2 (4:27) I found stuff last night. I'm going to show you stuff I found today that blew me away that the cartels are doing with the drone. Like, honestly, I'm shocked. We're going to say it. You're going to see it. We're going to talk about it. Stick around for that. Okay. And then how do we do that? How do we counter it? Then we're going to tour back over the Middle East. We're going to fly our own personal drone, the show drone over the Middle East. And we're going to talk about the Iran war and what the hell is going on. Because the latest state, the latest greatest is that I just saw this President Trump was like, hey, look, we're going to get a good deal or. They're not going to exist anymore. He said it again. He's doubling and tripling down on this. Is he serious? Is he bluffing? We're going to find out. We're going to talk about it. Okay. And then last of all, we're going to tap into the super leadership minds here. And we are going to talk about what does it take? What are the most important things to actually lead a team that's in a super high stress environment? Everyone here has done this. Okay. Super high stress environment. And that's also going through massive change. All right. So hold on tight. Don't forget to like subscribe and share tell your friends share with them right now say get in here we have a friggin superstar lineup going on and Let's go ahead and kick off with this first video and get everyone We're gonna go from big to small in this picture of what happened to master sergeant John Chapman We have the ISR feed here Okay intelligent surveillance reconnaissance from drone feed all the way down to Jameson travels a little bit of a cut up He did video some analysis and then we're gonna get into it. Alright, so Speaker 4 (5:52) Here we go, everybody. I'm going to pull this up right now to get us started off. If I can find the thing. One second. Speaker 1 (6:04) You're doing great. Speaker 7 (6:05) Ben Pappas has been killing it, man. Speaker 4 (6:08) I'm trying to raise my game. It's a Speaker 2 (6:10) good Speaker 4 (6:10) time Speaker 1 (6:10) for my disclaimer here too, Ben. Ben and I were talking about it before we came on. Listen, there's a lot of emotion that's tied up to this. The folks over at One's Ready, so myself, Peaches and Trent, this is one of the few times that I'll speak to them. We decided that we're not going to engage in this emotional stuff. We are going to be the one when we look back on this event, we talk about it all the time inside of our own little group chats about the, you know, the vet bro kind of culture and it can get toxic and we wish people would kind of approach things differently. Well, we've made it a point to say publicly, we are going to approach this differently. We are not going to no character assassinations. I'm not getting, don't send me information about dudes. I don't care about what they've done in their past. We're going to focus on just the facts at hand and we're just going to go on. There's some big claims that are out there and there's some hyperbolic stuff that's been said. Everybody just needs to take a breath and that's what we're going to do. But I'm happy to dive into it to flesh out. I mean, this is probably the biggest battle of GWAT. You know, maybe, maybe Marja sort of Fallujah, you know, those sort of time periods took over, but really the battle of Takargar, which is Roberts Ridge, that event in GWAT was probably. Everybody knows about that event. It happened early and set the tone for what GWAT was going to be. And everybody had some connection to it, whether it was reading the lessons learned or having somebody in their career. We had two Air Force PJs get the Air Force Cross, which is the second highest award behind the Medal of Honor for their actions that day, one that died and one that lived. I mean, it's huge inside of our community. Everybody knows about this. Obviously, there's a lot of emotions tied to it, but I'll tell you what, I got a seal in the room. I'm not bashing any seals. I'm not going to stick up for any Air Force dudes. There's plenty of mistakes on every side of this, and there's new information that comes up all the time, and I'm willing to hear it, but we're Speaker 4 (7:46) going Speaker 1 (7:46) to talk about it. Let's do it. If you're coming here to hear me bash somebody or say, I mean, the jokes are the jokes, right? The seals will leave you behind on a mountain. Okay, funny. Get it out of your system. It was a meme, but it came from this event. The meme is the thing, so let's talk it out, but I'm not. i won't say a bad word about a dude that's not in a room with me man i just can't do it so we're not doing that like but you never know what's Speaker 8 (8:06) going to happen this could turn into wrestlemania tell your friends we don't know we don't know what's going to happen team fight Speaker 1 (8:13) seal versus pjs Speaker 8 (8:14) for whatever Speaker 1 (8:15) reason i don't know like why it's the silliest Speaker 2 (8:17) all right here we go i'm gonna pull this up Speaker 4 (8:19) let's get to this first this first video Speaker 2 (8:22) um i'm not sure if it's graphic or not everybody but Speaker 4 (8:27) i think it's pretty damn intense so Make sure it's pulled up to the main stage. And then here we go. Yes. Oh, man. Speaker 4 (8:38) Okay, no sound on this. Speaker 4 (8:41) And, um, Speaker 4 (8:44) Aaron, if you want to denigrate it. So what Speaker 1 (8:45) you're looking at here is the video that they basically used. So this happened in 2002. This is ISR video that was stitched together. The video that you're looking at is like an eight-minute video. A spy guy named Dan Schilling that put it together. He was given these materials during the push to get John Chapman upgraded because initially he did not have a Medal of Honor. So it took steam back again in 2016 or so. where they started pushing to get John the Medal of Honor. Concurrently, Britt Slabinski was awarded a Medal of Honor after the Navy pushed, I believe it was three times, to get his packet accepted. They're interconnected. John Chapman and Britt Slabinski were together on this QRF. This episode was driven by Neil Roberts falling out of the back of a helicopter on the top of Takagar after a false insert. This has a long trail of a bunch of different things from the strategic level on down to the tactical level. You can call them mistakes or you can call them... you know, the fog of war or some sort of confluence of an event. But the Air Force, through a 17-person multi-service panel, went through a long evaluation process of John Chapman's medal and ended up upgrading it to the Medal of Honor, I believe in 2017, 2018, right? In that entire event, it seemed from the outside looking in that the SEALs were either not helping as much or were in some cases outright resisting the upgrade of chapman these the stories are inexorably linked and there has always been you know the joke about the seals will leave you well you know the story of john chapman is that he got off the helicopter something happened immediately off the helicopter whether it was a fall or some accurate gunfire john chapman was down for a period of time the seals thought that he was mortally wounded and were receiving accurate incoming fire In some order, there was a outpost, a position, it's colloquially called Bunker One. John was charging that bunker and shooting at it. I'm sure we'll talk about the documentary that hasn't dropped yet, but they've come out on Andy Stump's podcast, The Ground Truth Document. That's Brian and Mitch Hall. So Mitch Hall was a Navy SEAL. Brian, I'm blanking on his last name. He is a documentary producer. He's been a voice actor. They put together a documentary where they look at the ISR footage differently and come up with a different conclusion. This has... absolutely blowing the doors off of everybody mitch hall and brian have done years of investigation they went back to takagar and actually saw the ground itself walked the ground and took footage and took drone footage they're working with a company i believe called cst cst is helping them overlay digital down to inch by inch map overlay to have an interactive world of the top of takagar where then they can then plot and have these things all come out right So it's obviously and that narrative is exactly opposite the story that has been vetted through the Medal of Honor process to award John Chapman the Medal of Honor. So that's where it is right now is that there is a narrative out there that directly refutes, in most cases, the biggest pieces or parts of John Chapman being on that mountain. And it came to a head in. the Andy Stump Cleared Hot podcast, he was Brian, I'm sorry, Mitch Hall was asked directly by Andy, do you think that John deserved the Medal of Honor? And he said, no. And he said, I don't, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to give him his full context. He said, it's going to make me a lightning rod. And I understand I don't say it lightly, but he is, at this point, he truly does believe, or at least he says he truly believes that that is not the narrative that we believe that happened on Tackle Garage that day is not what happened. Let me Speaker 4 (12:12) pull up. Let me go big to small. And I apologize to the audience. I'll play that ISR feed again one more time in a second. Speaker 1 (12:17) But Speaker 4 (12:18) let's go big to small so we can all know where this is. I just realized that we're talking about Takagar. And it's easy not to know where this is. We can see it's in a northeast Speaker 8 (12:29) portion of Afghanistan, which is crazy, crazy mountains. You can see the mountain peaks 10,000 to 12,000 feet. Jake and I talked about this last week, if you guys were here in the War Room Recall, where, you know, you're talking about fighting in the snow at high altitude. If you don't know this, but when you're above 6,000 feet, Speaker 2 (12:50) the air gets thin. You've got to be in insane shape, very acclimatized. I don't care if you're at ground level, which is probably the, you know, valley floor is maybe Speaker 8 (13:00) like 6,000, 7,000 feet. When you get above 10,000, things happen to your blood, to your system. You get these, they can have these altitude sicknesses, hape and haste. can happen to you um high altitude sicknesses so you're fighting in snow you're fighting in terrain vicious vicious hardened fighters with only i think jake you said like 25 hlz's Speaker 5 (13:20) in Speaker 8 (13:20) the whole mountain range right yeah Speaker 7 (13:22) there's 20 there's 27 mount there's 27 hlz's in the whole mountain range and they were laid out in a book uh the russian bear trap i read it and they're laid out in that they're laid out in that book and we went and landed on one of them So, of course, they had fucking PKMs and everything else set up, ready to go, because we're fucking stupid and we did something stupid. And we went somewhere when everybody said this is stupid. And that's what happens. Like early in the war, you were allowed to get away with this shit and keep your fucking job and everything else. Speaker 1 (13:55) And one one thing about the acclimatization and the altitude and stuff. as we go up the pressure goes down and our body reacts to it globally a bunch of those things that ben mentioned this actually played a huge role again this is a 20-year story so we're not trying to truncate it for those for the courses podcast because i'm not an expert on this um but the the seals that went that ended up going to the top of those mountains with the least amount of time were the guys that were affected in the hit on takagar so they got there you know really closely the army had positions, but they had been there for weeks, in some cases months, acclimatizing and going up and getting used to the altitude and getting, you know, that rep, if you will. And the SEALs came up sort of late in the game and went out essentially the night afterwards. So this became a big deal. Like they were feeling the effects of that high altitude. Speaker 4 (14:43) Yeah, it wears you out really fast. If you've done any mountain warfare training, just you don't have the same endurance. You can't breathe as well. You get, you know, that's why a lot of fighters will train at altitude. and then come back down to fight at sea level later on. But I wanted to go from big to small here so everyone knows in the audience, and you can get an idea of what we're talking about. But again, northeast part of Afghanistan, very mountainous, on the border, near the border with Pakistan, mountainous, mountainous area. Takhargarh was 11,000-plus feet near a major objective, Remington, a high concentration of enemy forces. And then, Aaron, I think I'm going to jump into this reaction from... From slab or should we go into you think with jameson and his his analysis So Speaker 1 (15:27) jameson does a great analysis. I'll just set the table, right? So for the last 20 years there's been this back and forth brit slabinski has been the lightning rod and basically everybody's whipping boy for everything that's ever been wrong I said i'm not gonna i'm not gonna Give my opinion on brit slabinski. I'm not I have no judgment over him. I talked to him literally one time I was at a leadership course. He talked I talked to him very briefly afterwards. It was a completely innocuous conversation. That is as much interaction that i have with the man he seems like a good guy when i talk whatever so that's i'm gonna leave that there so brit the guy in the video there's a man named eric deming eric deming was a seal eric deming has done a whole lot if you know anything about the seal community you know that eric deming brings a lot of problems with the seal community to light therefore he's not super popular amongst the seals because he brings this stuff up him and matt kubler are probably the number one and number two most hated on the seal communities like hit list like on their team room walls and stuff um So these gentlemen, Matt Kubler wasn't there. Eric Deming was there. Britt Slabinski was talking at the military influencer conference that just happened in Tampa. Britt was on stage or really just up in front of a room holding a microphone with Jason Redman. Jason Redman was up there. And, you know, there's been some past with Jason Redman and Eric Deming as well. Other stuff. Eric Deming asked Slabinski. He said, hey, I want you to name the seven people that died on Takagar. Slabinski got four out. He kind of like struggled through five and six. And from what I understand, he couldn't name the seventh off the top of his head. Now all grace extended. That's sort of Speaker 8 (16:53) a Speaker 1 (16:53) gotcha question from a guy that you know, that you have a history with a dude, put yourself in Slabinski's position. You're in front of people. You have a microphone. You know that it's going, it's live, it's live streamed. This is not like secret video. This went out because people were literally filming it. And the thing, you know, you're being filmed. And somebody that is an adversary, an op, as the kids would say, ask you a loaded question. And you stumble over a couple of the names and, you know, put yourself in that position with 20 years of this history behind you. So, well, you know, I made a bad decision. I think that's the tee up to the video. I'll stop there and then we'll watch and see what happens. Because that's now we're up to where the video is. Speaker 4 (17:29) But yeah, I mean, I can, I feel for him too. I mean, you think about stress, TBI, all these things like that, you know, and I think. one of the you know compartmentalization and avoidance are one of this one of the telltales of ptsd too and so and again we try our best to understand the human brain but the trauma response is to make you forget i don't know about you guys but how many times you're like i don't remember and Speaker 1 (17:51) there's Speaker 4 (17:51) another thing Speaker 1 (17:52) in this video uh the other sort of wrinkle here is in in this same sort of video and i don't know which it is for both the other question that was asked was you know do you think john chapman deserves the medal of honor Now, the underside to this, like the backside of this, is the thing that people are not understanding that Jameson pointed out great, which is it puts him in a really bad position. And I'll let Jameson talk through that on his video, but I wanted to tee that up too as we watch these two. Your boy knows how to organize a show, Ben. Speaker 4 (18:17) Hey, thanks, man. Here we go. Let's do it. Speaker 1 (18:21) John Speaker 6 (18:22) Chapman deserved the Medal of Honor, yes or no? This is the hard truth. So you're in that spot right now. Right? So you're biased. Speaker 3 (18:30) This is the ground truth here. We got Medal of Honor recipient, Britt Slabinski. He was encountered at a military influencers conference speaking about Gold Star families. Simple question. Does he believe that John Chapman deserves the Medal of Honor? Really simple answer. Simple way to diffuse this entire situation. F*** you. Speaker 4 (18:55) John Chapman. Well. Yeah, and that's the response. He just seems like he had had it. I'm going to see if this Speaker 1 (19:02) one's a little bit longer here. It is. So this is the one where Jameson kind of lays out what a bad position that was for Britt and probably why he responded the way that he did. If he didn't, if it's not the right video, I'll clean it up. Okay, Speaker 7 (19:15) I'm going to tell you this. I saw Britt Sablinski in 2003 on stage. Speaker 7 (19:20) Oh, wait. No, I saw the other Medal of Honor. Speaker 1 (19:23) It Speaker 7 (19:23) was the other day. I was about to say, Britt Slavinsky looking a little bit worse for wear. Speaker 1 (19:28) Yeah, so the reason why that put Britt in a really bad position is that Britt was there on, he is involved in the Ground Truth doc. It's not like they just interviewed Slab and he gave his eyewitness testimony. He's been defending and been a part of that project. I don't know to what level. I don't know if it's paid. I'm not making any allegations. I'm just saying he was there on behalf. of ground truth doc so this question is is pretty live like if you're there on behalf of ground truth and you know the ground truth doc are the ones mitch hall said it he doesn't believe that you know that chapman deserved the medal of honor because really the ground truth doc is saying that chapman gets hit right off the helicopter gets up and doesn't move that's pretty much the most salacious claim is that they and they said that they can prove it with the footage that they have that he gets hit he doesn't move he doesn't get up well if that happens then nothing follows right And then it was just a bad day on the mountain. Well, so he asked him that question. Here's why it puts him in a bad position. He's talking to Gold Star families. So Britt now in front of Gold Star families has to decide to say, yes, I do believe that John is owed the Medal of Honor for the families. But that's going to tank his whole ground truth doc because all that position is that no, he didn't because he didn't do those things. So that's a terrible position for him to be in. Or he says yes to the ground truth. He says, no, I don't believe John deserves a Medal of Honor. That's what we found through the documentary. If that's his real answer, then he says that to the families of those people that are there. Speaker 4 (20:52) Well, here's the video. I found the video. We can watch this. And just tell me when you want me to stop it for a minute and we can discuss. And then obviously, Jake, feel free to jump in here anytime. There we go. So we saw this part. John Speaker 6 (21:05) Chapman deserves a Medal of Honor, yes or no? This is the hard truth. So you're in that spot, right? So you're biased. Speaker 3 (21:12) This is the ground truth here. We got Medal of Honor recipient Britt Slabinski. He was encountered at a military influencers conference speaking about Gold Star families. Simple question. Does he believe that John Chapman deserves the Medal of Honor? Really simple answer. Simple way to diffuse this entire situation. Speaker 4 (21:35) You're biased against me. You're biased against the mission. You don't, you can't Speaker 6 (21:39) face the truth because we're already biased. The Gold Star families want the truth. And I know how much of it has been covered up and not been truthful about it. Speaker 6 (21:52) well How did Mitch Hall come to the conclusion that John Chapman doesn't deserve the Medal of Honor? Speaker 1 (22:00) Yeah, so pause it right there. You Speaker 6 (22:01) got Speaker 1 (22:02) it. Speaker 2 (22:02) This seems like a very simple answer. Because that's my question too, you know, Aaron. He's getting the Medal of Honor. What's the issue here? Speaker 1 (22:10) Right, so this is the trap. Because if he says yes, if he says, hey, Mitch has his own opinions, there's a million ways he can answer that question. It's disingenuous either way. If that was a purposely... crafted gotcha question it was perfectly done because there was nowhere for him to go you can't you're gonna have to and that's why you know he immediately tries to poison the well that logical fallacy of like no you're crazy he's gaslighting he's like no you're crazy and you can't see the truth and this is the real these are the real truths here you start raising your eyebrows and you go oh no we're jumping the shark like that's not an answer that's a deflection that's trying to get you some time to figure out what to say and it was a terrible position for bread to bleed to be in and again no shot to the dude but you're the guy with the microphone You can't yell F you at a, at an audience member anywhere. And it was going out live streamed. He knew that he was being recorded. Jason Redman, who has a bad pass with him. He was on stage. He was just off camera where you couldn't see him. Jason Redman was there too. The one who's who's shot up. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He is. Yeah. And by the way, by the way, Jason, I was at MCON with Jason Redman. That guy was the nicest guy to me. He was great. He was accommodating. He was super chill. He was, he was graceful. That guy have. zero bad things to say about. I actually, I have met that guy. That guy was super awesome. And I want to put that out. Like Jake, I, whatever this, I sat next to him. I sat next to him for two days. He's awesome. Yeah. Whatever this situation was great. I don't, I don't care. This has nothing to do with, he just happened to be on that thing. As far as I'm concerned, he's an awesome dude. I got nothing to say about Speaker 4 (23:38) that. Well, Jake, I see, I see you over there. I'm watching your facial expressions and, and, uh, You know, what are you thinking when you see like that, like, do you think he's being baited or do you think, you know, with any inside information, you know, do you think. Speaker 7 (23:52) Here's the deal. We all we've all talked to our boy. Right. And our boy is on a hunt. And so, you know, we and we we all know this. There is something out there that makes this look like Peter Pan. Speaker 3 (24:05) OK, Speaker 7 (24:05) there is something out there that we've all talked about that literally makes this whole situation look like kindergarten. Speaker 5 (24:12) Now, I just want to say this. Why are we worried? Because he got a Medal of Honor. Why all of a sudden is there like I don't care. Like people got medals of honor in World War Two and World War One for charging pillboxes all the time. OK. Like, what's the big deal that he got a Medal of Honor? I don't know how anybody can say, oh, I don't think he should have got the Medal of Honor, right? Like, to me, that's just, like, selfish behavior. Like, what are we doing? Who cares? I don't care if everybody got a Medal of Honor. You know, one of my arguments, and I'm going Speaker 1 (24:45) to Speaker 5 (24:45) relate it to something else that's a little bit different. Everybody on the Coast Guard rescue mission here in San Antonio where they rescued all those people from the water, did all that crazy stuff, the three pilots got. Navy Crosses. The Coast Guard's equivalent to Navy... I'm sorry, the one pilot and the two crew members. The co-pilot didn't get it. She got a comm. I got a problem with that. She was flying a helicopter for 18 hours and she got a comm, right? Speaker 4 (25:13) And so Speaker 5 (25:14) this is the same situation. Like, okay, you got a Medal of Honor. I would argue, right? You could argue easily, like, whose lives did you save in the process of this battle? How did you go above and beyond? Right. You didn't run up there and grab John Chapman and drag him back. Like, what did you do to get the medal of honor? Right. You can make the argument both ways. I don't really care. Speaker 1 (25:36) The problem is, is that John is that Chapman's medal of honor or not chat slabs medal of honor is based off the stuff that John did. So if there's, if John didn't do those things, that's the other really uncomfortable thing that people aren't like pulling the thread on this. Say that again, Speaker 4 (25:52) Aaron, say that again. So, yeah. Speaker 1 (25:54) If this is true, so if Chapman, and again, I'm going to grant all the grace in the world. If this is true, what the ground truth guys are saying, that Chapman unfortunately gets shot. right off the helicopter. And by the way, we can talk about the autopsy because it does not, it does not agree with this narrative. If he gets shot right off the helicopter and doesn't move. and then never gets up again or what like after he charges essentially bunker one like goes to bunker one does his thing and then he gets hit and he doesn't move then everything that follows is simply fog of war and slabs entire medal of honor just disappears there are no actually it's just the seals running away and not running away breaking contact from an overwhelming force and a small unit on top of a mountainside there's really no he didn't do anything remarkably auspicious it was tied to John's Medal of Honor actions and the things that John did so if those are now not true then slab has I mean I see what you're Speaker 8 (26:48) saying I see this is like Speaker 1 (26:49) a wacky thing like nobody's taking away any medals of honor right so let's get that out there right I Speaker 2 (26:53) feel like I'm like an audience member you know I'm like Connecting to the audience because you have real knowledge here. I'm clueless about this. I've always heard about it. Trying Speaker 1 (27:01) to get slab, the medal of honor pushed through for the longest time and they couldn't. And then finally, when the new stuff came out about John and the air force was like, look at all this stuff that John did Chapman's that's when Chapman's got pushed through because suddenly it was stronger because the air force said, look at all this stuff that actually happened. Look at the gallantry. And then everything that slab was connected to that rose the floor for it. And suddenly the Navy was like, poof. And that's how slabs Speaker 4 (27:23) got Speaker 1 (27:23) before. Speaker 2 (27:25) Okay. Right. That makes sense. All right. And I know everybody in the chat, you're probably, hopefully you're tracking along better than I am, but this is, you know, I've read books about, I've heard about these things, but it was always Speaker 4 (27:34) very confusing. That's why it's amazing to hear these details from Aaron and for us to walk through this. Let's watch a little bit more of, let's look at the other video. What do you think, Aaron? Go to the other video that, that Jameson has, where he's talking about the autopsy and all that. Is that a great one? Because there's a couple of things here that are Speaker 1 (27:53) really big questions that really need answered. If you're telling me that he was down, and again, there's a question about timing. Jake brought it up. Why now? So we can ask simple things about anything. Why and why now? I can't answer why, but let's look at why now. Well, the Medal of Honor movie that... is just about ready to get put out about john chapman that is the seals biggest black eye in the last 20 years is about to get a hollywood release in december and then a full release in january like behind Speaker 4 (28:22) closed doors like this one is it is that uh i don't know i mean can we talk around what what we're talking about here is that is already public knowledge no Speaker 1 (28:31) it's already public Ron Howard directed the movie about John Chapman called About John Chapman doing it. So the timing of the release of this, because nothing's ready. Again, this documentary isn't out yet. It's going to be months. They don't have everything finished. So for me, there's a couple of questions that really need answered. The autopsy is a big one. And tee up the Jameson video and we'll watch what Jameson says about Speaker 4 (28:53) it. Speaker 1 (28:53) Let's Speaker 4 (28:53) tee Speaker 1 (28:53) it up. Speaker 4 (28:54) There is so much here. And then the question I ask too, I wonder about is. You know, what's the impact to the veteran community? What's the impact on the special operations community, the SEAL community, you know, the PJ community? Like, what is the impact from all this, you know, net gain, net loss, you know, just overall prestige impacted, you know, all that stuff. Hold on. Speaker 7 (29:19) Ben, while you're setting this up, I'm going to tell you my impact. Yeah, tell me. And it took one helicopter ride. It took one helicopter ride for me to understand that I needed a lanyard on at all times. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Right? 100%. And early, I used to be shocked at guys just riding in the door with their feet out the door with no lanyard on. Speaker 2 (29:37) Yeah. Speaker 7 (29:38) And I'm just like, look, man, like this, you know, I asked the question. I'm Speaker 5 (29:42) a Speaker 7 (29:42) new dude. I'm Speaker 5 (29:43) like, yep. Speaker 7 (29:44) I got back Speaker 5 (29:44) to the team. I sewed me up a lanyard. And I wore it all. Anytime I was on a helicopter, I had to wear it. Can you Speaker 2 (29:50) tell the audience about, fill them in, what happened? So this whole thing during this battle, talk about the seal that fell out of the helicopter, all the connected events. That's all in the same battle, right? So Speaker 5 (30:02) here's the basic bottom line. Speaker 4 (30:05) Yeah. Speaker 5 (30:05) They did not want to land on the target. They did not want to land on the X. They knew that it was a bad place. They knew that... It was more than likely fortified, right? Speaker 7 (30:17) It's one of the 27 landing zones in the Hindu Kush. Hindu Kush is huge. And there's only 27 places you can land. Okay. Speaker 5 (30:25) And so they, everybody was saying it like, and the general was just like, no, you're going to land here. And so this is early in the war, much like Panama. We're going to walk down a runway that's lit up for 6,000 meters or 6,000 feet. And we're just going to do it. Like, it was a good idea, fairies. And so they did it. And so when they got there, I believe the helicopter took an RPG, it shuttered, and Neil Roberts fell out the back of the helicopter. I Speaker 1 (30:54) believe they were going to try and rope. And they were either loaded up for the land or loaded up on the ramp. But he was closer to the ramp than he should have been. So when the helicopter moved, he was the first dude out, and he was the first dude out. Speaker 5 (31:06) Yeah. And he survived the fall. And he went to work, but it was only him. And then they left and nobody else decided to jump out the helicopter with him. And he was down Speaker 1 (31:20) there. Yeah. And then because Speaker 5 (31:21) until he ran out of bullets, correct? Speaker 1 (31:24) Yeah. Yeah. So basically what happened with Neil is that he went out and there was a delay in the relay of the call. Right. So first of all, it was dark. They couldn't figure it out. There was a lot of stuff going on. There was a whiteout because of the snow. and uh basically the helicopter took fire and their protocol was to take off and they were like good well they didn't get i mean this the whole area that you're talking about here is less than the size of a football field so when you start talking about an mh-47 pulling power to get away from an rpg strike they were already over the side of a huge cliff oh they're like they're going down to get away by the time that they got the word that they had left neil roberts and this is messed on john chapman right here yeah that's john that's Speaker 2 (32:01) an Speaker 1 (32:01) old school mc4 too what's up um So, yeah, and that's what drove the QRF. Air Force pararescueman Jason Cunningham jumped on the QRF to go up there with Nate Self's Rangers, which led to kind of like the second part while Mako, the Mako element, was getting ready to infill back to the top of Takagara. Can you tell everybody what Mako is? Mako was our call sign. Okay. And this has been covered a bunch in the stuff too, but usually when a combat controller like John Chapman goes down range, they have areas, they have call signs that are just them. So JAG is the most famous and it's out there. Like everybody uses JAG. So it's not like I'm telling you anything secret anymore. But every time that you went somewhere, if you heard like JAG three, seven, that was an air force combat controller. So they had no kidding JTAC call signs that you can be like, if you ever heard this, you know, you were talking to these dudes. Well, they didn't have it at that at this time. So Chapman's call sign was Mako three, zero Charlie, meaning controller. so he was mako three three zero charlie and the mako was the larger element so inside of there you have your mako zero one that's your officer your mako one that's your chief you know whatever and then um that mako element was headed up the ground force commander in this case was an enlisted guy e8 master chief brit slinsky hey Speaker 4 (33:14) guys this is uh neil roberts who fell at the back of the helicopter i guess correct me if i'm wrong on that but um he's who fell out of the helicopter And again, just some rough stuff, really crazy Speaker 2 (33:24) battles. And Speaker 4 (33:25) you Speaker 2 (33:25) can see there are conventional forces involved, Operation Anaconda, big army formations involved. And the overall strategic picture here, the operational level picture, let's say, was they really, I believe they felt like they had Osama bin Laden and his crew hemmed up in there, didn't they, Aaron? Isn't that the overall? So that Speaker 1 (33:45) time period in Tora Bora, especially when you look at the triple nickel going in. So when the 555 fifth group went in, the triple nickel, they went in with combat controller Will Markham and Alan Yoshida and a bunch of others. They did what the military thought was going to take two years. They did it in like four