YouSaid · the spoken record

William McRaven

lines on the record: 69
first: 2019-09-30
most recent: 2019-09-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I do Well, again, Jim, one of the iconic figures of the last 40 years in the military, a great leader. I served with Jim a number of times. We were next door neighbors for many years, truly one of the great generals in the history of the Marine Corps. But they also understand that when you get to the point where you can no longer, in good conscience, follow the commander-in-chief, then you have an obligation to step aside. And I think Jim did that for what he thought was valid reasons, which I think were valid reasons. And I know he'll continue to do well and serve the country in some other fashion.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If the situation was right, absolutely. I don't particularly care for politics, but I do like policy. And if the right administration was in place and I was offered a position that would be helpful to the country, I would definitely consider it.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. It's a good question. I'm enjoying, I hate to say it's retirement. I seem to be on the road four or five days a week, but at least it's at my own pace to some degree. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as Chancellor. It's 230,000 kids and 100,000 employees. And you've got, again, it is a noble mission to educate the young men and women of Texas. And so when I made the transition from the military to being the chancellor, I would tell you it was kind of a seamless transition. I'm often asked, well, go from the military to higher education and healthcare. It was great. I love the students. I love the faculty. It was a wonderful three and a half years.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very cutsy. And you're right, when the helicopter went down, we had plan B and Plan C and Plan D. And of course, I knew immediately because I'm on the headphones with guys on the ground and watching the action unfold that the boys were all right, banged up a little bit, but they'd been banged up before. These were all guys that had spent a lot of time in combat. They were going to get the job done.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No famous picture in the sitting room. Again, we were thinking it, I'm sure, and my guess is somewhere outside the situation room, somebody had a conversation with the president. But that politics and the future of the president of the United States never came up in any of the discussions in the sit”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Epic proportion and the president still made the decision to go. And again, one of the boldest decisions in modern times.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said, The president's approved the mission. And I remember thinking, wow, that is an incredibly gutsy decision. Because the president knew all the risks. I mean, the risks that we wondered whether or not the compound could be loaded with explosives. We'd seen this before in Iraq where you come into a compound and the walls are booby trapped. Everything's booby trapped. Was bin Laden wearing a suicide vest. The chance that the guys were going to get in there and get out unscathed was highly unlikely. We didn't know whether it was bin Laden. President called me the next day and I remember saying, well, Bill, what do you think? And I said, well, Mr. President, if he's there, we'll get him. If not, we'll come home. The downside of the We'll Come Home scenario, as I had briefed the president, was if the seals arrive on target and somebody comes out and they got a gun, it's not going to go well for that guy. And if they make their way to the first floor and they kill somebody else, they make their way to the second floor and they kill somebody else and they make their way to the third floor and it turns out the guy we thought was bin Laden is nothing but a tall Pakistani, this will be a disaster of”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. All the things you laid out are exactly right. We went every time we had a meeting, the president would turn to Leon Panette and say, well, Leon, what do you think? Now, Panetta was more certain, I think, than most people sitting around the table that it was bin Laden. But he had to admit that the evidence wasn't conclusive by any means. And in fact, late in the game, I think the last meeting I was in, Mike Leider, who was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, had been asked to review the intelligence, and NCTC came back and said, look, we think the chance that it's bin Laden is anywhere between 60% and 40%. And I'm thinking to myself, forty percent, who in the world is going to authorize a mission to fly 162 miles into Pakistan to a target that is a couple of miles from their West Point, a couple of miles from an infantry battalion, a mile from a police station, and oh, by the way, the PACs have nuclear weapons. I flew the next day to Afghanistan, got a call on Friday night from Leon Pennan.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the other piece of this is the president and his national security team. I tell folks irrespective of what side of the aisle you're on, you would have been incredibly impressed with how the president and that team handled this. I was in six or seven meetings with the president from January through April, and we had heated discussions, but there was never any rancor. There was never nothing personal. It was just because...”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you should be. As I should be, because frankly, if you know him, which I know you do, I mean, he is incredibly gregarious. He really has no ego when it comes to getting the job done. This could have been a CIA only mission, but I think Panetta understood that, look, this is what we did for a living, that we, the special operations community, brought us in early, made sure we had everything we needed to be successful. And so I think this will go down, obviously, is one of the great CIA intelligence missions in history, but also credit that to Leon Panetta and Michael Morell, who really had the courage to pull the team together.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And both of them, again, at least in my experience, probably more experience actually with President Obama, but a fair amount of experience with President Bush. They both relied on their staffs and they were both anxious to receive input. Even if it was contrary to their personal position.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is the only way you're going to come to a good decision. So I thought, interestingly enough on their leadership style, they both recognize that there are other people in the room that are probably smarter than they are on issues. You need to listen to those folks. You need to allow the process to work. And then as a president, you need to make the decisions. And in the case of both President Bush and Obama, they were great decision makers. They didn't take too much counsel of their fears when it came to hard decisions. And I give him both credit. Again, whether you agree with their politics or their approaches, they were doing what they thought was right for the country, not right for George Bush, not right for Barack Obama, but right for the country. And it's easy to follow people like that.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interestingly enough, while their individual personalities are different, as you know from kind of sitting in the situation room, when you sit in the situation room, how you deal with the principles in the situation room, I think, tells a lot about the president. And in both cases, while the different personalities, you know, President Obama, as you know, is a little bit more reserved and thoughtful on things. President Bush, I think, had a little bit of the Texas swagger that was good, very gregarious, very outgoing. But in the Situation Room, both men wanted input from their staff. They wanted to have a serious dialogue. They wanted to learn from the people that understood the topics deeply. And they were happy to have different points of view.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clint And my comment back to him was I didn't support any candidate. He also said I was an Obama fan. I said, granted, I said, I am a fan of President Obama and President George Bush, who I worked for both men. And as I've said many times, I had great respect for both of them. So the president was off the mark on that.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, to your point, I've known John Brennan a long time. One, I take my friendships very seriously, and John's a good friend, but more importantly, John has worked for like eight different presidents. He is not political. And as a former director of CIA, the former being the operative word, he absolutely has a right as a private citizen to criticize the president or anyone else. Now, you may or may not agree with his criticisms, but he certainly has the right to do that. And for the president to threaten to take his security clearance away as a little bit of a threat to ensure that he stops talking, one, bad approach to take with John Brennan, but two, that just seemed like he was getting bullied. And so, no, it's absolutely an appropriate.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course They won't believe you. So, again, I think this is incredibly corrosive, and I stand by my words that I do think it is the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'd studied journalism And I made a point a couple of years ago when he first made the statement. I said, look, this is the greatest his statement that the media was the enemy of the American people was the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime. And I was called on that a couple times. People said, well, a greater threat than the Soviet Union? Absolutely. We came together to fight the Soviet Union. A greater threat than terrorism? You bet. We came together to fight terrorism. But by calling out the media and saying that it is a threat to the American people, then the American people begin to doubt the mainstream media. And that is incredibly disruptive and destructive to the story.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Irrespective of what happens in the turmoil in Washington, D.C. So I think the American public can feel very, very confident that our intelligence community, our law enforcement community is out there doing their job. However, having said that, when you undermine the credibility of the intelligence community and you believe Vladimir Putin over the intelligence community, when you talk about the fact that the Justice Department is corrupt and that the FBI has got dirty cops in it, absolutely this affects the morale of these organizations. Why wouldn't it? I've also been very concerned about the president's attack on the free press.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it has a significant impact. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, but the rank and file of these organizations, the intelligence community, the law enforcement community, they do their job. They are going to do their job.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very clear was he is here to make sure that the protection of the whistleblower, he will protect the whistleblower as best he can. Complaint being credible and that we should follow through with the process. So I think he handled it magnificently.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I've known Joe Maguire for over 40 years. And I can tell you without question, one of the finest military officers, one of the finest public servants, a man of really unquestionable integrity, but in a very difficult position. He'd been the DNI for all of six weeks, I think, before he goes before the Congress. He was handed this report, as I understand it, a couple of days after he is sitting in the chair. But frankly, I think he handled the tough questions exceedingly well in light of the fact that obviously he is there to be a foil for the Democrats and probably a bit of a foil for the Republicans as well. And one I thought his opening statement was very clear, was very concise, why he went to the Attorney General, why he had to talk to the White House, because they were the only ones that could determine whether executive privilege was in play. But the other part that he made.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I want to see more of the facts come out, but what I will tell you is absolutely you need to hold him accountable. You need to hold anybody accountable that doesn't meet their responsibility of doing things that are moral, legal and ethical. If you fail to do that as a public servant, you have to be held accountable.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think he should be in trouble. I mean, I think this is again, this is a violation of kind of the fundamentals of the office. Never use a foreign country to affect the political outcome of our nation. And you would have hoped through the process somebody would have told him time and time again, Mr. President, you can't do this. It is against ethics. It is against the law, and it is against our moral position to be able to ask a fellow president head of state to intervene on something that is clearly part of our American electoral process.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your talking points And frankly, the president of Ukraine would have had similar talking points that probably would have been coordinated even before the call. And so it would not have gotten the president in this awkward position of, let me ask for reciprocation for something on Joe Biden. That wouldn't have happened if the process was in place to inform the president. And no president is the smartest man or woman when it comes to the depth of some of these policies. That is why you need a process. And because President Trump seems to have foregone the process, I think he finds himself in these difficult positions. He thinks his other...”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And somebody was asking me the other day, well, isn't dignity in the eye of the beholder? And I said, I don't think so. It is about doing things that are moral, legal, and ethical, ethical. Follow the rules, legal, follow the law, moral, follow what you know to be right. And my concern with President Trump is that I don't see him following any of those on a lot of his major decisions. Part of this comes back to process. And so in the Bush White House and the Obama White House, there is a very rigorous process, as you know, for getting a decision to the president. Even something as simple as a call to the President of the Ukraine, that would have been vetted. It would have started, as we say, the policy coordination committee level. It would have gone to a DC, it would have gone to a PC, it would have gone to the NSC to some degree, maybe, or it would have flowed through a process. And then somebody would have come to President Trump and said, Mr. President, here are your...”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, as you know, the President and I aren't going to be exchanging Christmas cards. But having served in the Bush White House and then having been one of Obama's commanders, what I've told folks consistently is, look, I didn't agree with every decision the President Bush made nor President Obama made. But I respected both of them greatly because they upheld the dignity of the office”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think he made a mistake at the time. I think it was the right thing to do. Now, all the troops, I do think it would have been helpful to leave some troops in there, just as I think it's important that we continue to have a presence in Afghanistan. I realize that it would have cost more lives if we'd left troops in Iraq. But of course, by pulling troops out of Iraq, you saw the rise of ISIS. Could we have prevented that? I don't know. Again, it's easy to sit here in kind of modern times and second guess a lot of these decisions. But at the time, I didn't disagree with President. I thought it was the right move to begin to pull out of Iraq and let the Iraqi stand on their own two feet. The only thing I would have asked was we probably should have kept a little bit more presence in there to bolster the Iraqi army because they were still struggling to be stable at the time.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I also think that it remains to be seen. Fifty years from now, if you don't have Saddam Hussein there and you begin to build a stable Iraq and the Kurds have become a great and functioning society and Iraqis have become strong, then will we look back at it differently? I don't know. We're going to”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did. Again, so I can't deny, and not my intent to, to deny or debate what has happened on the battlefield and what has happened around the world. Again, personally, I wish we hadn't gone to war in Iraq candidly. But when you're sent there to do the job, the warrior culture.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I had thought about the same thing. And the only thing I could tell him at the time was, look, we don't know what our actions, the cascading effect our actions will have. If we go out tonight and stop a vehicle born IED from killing a hundred people in a market in Baghdad, we don't know whether or not one of those people that was saved will not go on to cure cancer. We'll not go on to find us renewable energy. We'll not go on to be the next Iraq president of Iraq. So you got to do your job. The American people have sent us here to do our job. And yes, we can look back on it retrospectively and ask whether or not it was the right thing to do. But in the moment, if you begin to question the decisions too hard, it will be difficult to do your job. Yeah.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think time will tell, and I know that sounds like a little bit of a cop-out, but as I have kind of thought through this, because you do think through it, and the soldiers on the ground think through it. I tell the story every once in a while. Late in 2010, in the summer of 2010, President Obama had made the decision that we were pulling out of Iraq in January of 2011. So we only had about five or six months left. It was down in Baghdad. And my guys were still going out every night chasing Al-Qaeda in Iraq, trying to stop vehicle-borne IEDs, trying to stop these mass murders in the bazaars. And one of the senior chiefs raises his hand and said, sir, what are we doing? Why are we still going out every night risking our lives for what we're pulling out of here in five months?”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Saddam, within a couple weeks, reverts to just the pathetical guy, is because he was evil on the inside. He was nothing but a bully. And those traits came out very quickly. That was what to me was pretty stunning, was how quickly the man that had been the dictator of Iraq. Yeah, just became a shell of himself”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was just stunning, to be honest with you. So I told Ambassador Brimmer after that there were not going to be any visitors. So for the next 30 days, we kept him not in isolation. He had a very nice, as nice a room as any of my soldiers did, but I had a medic and a security guard in there 24 hours a day just to make sure he didn't harm himself. And frankly, he was an old man and he had some medical issues. But an interesting thing happened as time went on. Over the course of the days and the weeks when he no longer had his palaces and he no longer had his generals and he no longer had his handmaidens, he really just became a pathetical man. And I tell folks, if you contrast that with a guy like Nelson Mandela, who almost 30 years incarcerated and he comes out as strong, maybe stronger because Mandela had this great character, this great sense of personal integrity.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. So again, Iraq had fallen. These were going to be the new leaders of the Iraqi government. And they come into the room and they are yelling and they are spitting at Saddam and they are calling him names. And he's sitting on this cot in the orange jumpsuit and he is kind of motioning to them, take a seat, boys. I still got this. And they did. You could tell they were terrified of him. They were yelling at him like the schoolyard bully, but they weren't getting close. And he was, again, he had this sense of arrogance about swagger.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we captured Saddam in December of 2003, and the great Army Special Operations Guys were working for me under Lieutenant Colonel Bill Coltrip kind of led that operation. But I held on to him for 30 days. And of course, we had an obligation under the laws of the rules of engagement, laws of armed conflict. We took good care of Saddam. But on day one, or maybe day two, I guess, when Ambassador Bremer brought some of the Iraqis over to meet with Saddam, it was clear that Saddam was still pompous and arrogant.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That one was not ambiguous. And these wars, of course, have been a little bit ambiguous, but you go in saying, look, I have an obligation. You raise your hand and say, you know, I support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And when the commander-in-chief and the people of the country send you to war, they don't want you to do it half-baked. They want you to get in there defending Yeah, that's tough. It's not for everybody. That's why we counted today have a volunteer military. And it weighs on these guys every single day because they are husbands, they are brothers, they are fathers, they are mothers, we have women that are with us and daughters and sisters. So it's challenging. War changes you no matter who you are.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That were with us, the burden they will bring back when the war is over will be unimaginable. I think when you look at World War II, and again, it's not that the veterans coming back from World War II didn't have issues as well, but they knew they were fighting the Nazis. And this gave them, I think, the internal moral strength to push forward.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I know it is a challenge. You have to take warfare seriously. If the nation has decided to go to war, then we better go to war to win. And unfortunately in warfare, it's going to mean killing the enemy. And of course, you don't always get it right. And I'll be the first to admit, we didn't always get it right. Sometimes in the nature, particularly an insurgency, you're striking a target that you think is only bad guys, and it turns out that there are some innocent civilians in there. And it's a terrible thing. And that weighs on you tremendously. But you hope what you are doing, and I know the warrior culture hopes that what we are doing is in the long run we are protecting what is good and honorable and noble and the values of this country. If we're not doing that, then it makes fighting these wars that much more difficult. If we feel we're not the good guys, then the burden these young soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and civilians.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What occurred to me was that everything had changed. And in fact, I remember calling my boys and telling them, look, life's never going to be the same from here on out. I mean, this is an attack on American soil. And I didn't know which direction it would go, but I knew things were going to get challenging for us as a nation. But it didn't take me long, probably within the next week or so, we began to realize that special operations would be a key component in this. And of course, some of the first forces into Afghanistan were special operations forces, along with our great CIA counterparts. And for the last 18 years, we've been a very, very important part of this conflict.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That recovery. It was an absolute ordeal. But the point I make is, look, I don't care whether you're the biggest, toughest, strongest, smartest seal around. You're going to need a lot of help getting through life. And I think this is true of anybody. Have as many friends as you can, make as many colleagues as you can. Help strangers and they will help you. That to me was the lesson of my parachute jump”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the good news was the parachute open. The bad news is when the parachute opens, it blossoms. And one leg went one way and one leg went the other and it basically snapped me in two, broke my pelvis by about five inches, ripped the muscles out of my stomach, my back, and kind of fractured my back. And I landed a couple miles from the drop zone. Now I'm quick to point out, I think, in the story that my injuries and that parachute drop kind of pale in comparison to what I've seen from these young men and women that were hit in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the lesson of the story about the parachute drop is that it took a whole lot of people to kind of get me back on my feet. My wife became my nurse, Admiral Larry Colson, who was my boss took care of me, kept me in the Navy. My colleagues came by and boosted my morale, kind of helped me through it. And so I don't know.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It doesn't go right at all. So to your point, it was just a routine parachute jump. So we had launched out of North Island Naval Air Station on a C-130, went up to about 13,000 feet. It was one of these kind of beautiful days in San Diego. Not a cloud in the sky. We jumped out, and there were a couple of guys below me. My responsibility as the jumper above is to look out for them. But frankly, I wasn't paying attention. Guy got underneath me. He opened his parachute. So in relative terms, I'm moving at 120 miles an hour and he stopped. I hit his parachute, kind of spent out of control, pulled my ripcord. Again, I probably should have gotten stable first. I pull my ripcord. Pilot shoot wraps around one leg, riser wraps around the other. So I'm entangled in my parachute, you know, falling towards the earth, thinking to myself, yeah, this doesn't look too good. The good news is the parachute open.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I mean, I took the book I had written, I sat down with a ground force commander, and I said, look, we need to figure out where our point of vulnerability is, you know, where do we achieve relative superiority? What is our timeline? I followed the model that I had built 20 years earlier.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the book set out to find out what is different about this? What are the principles of special operation that are fundamentally different than the principles of conventional warfare? And so I did eight case studies, actually did 10 of them. But I remember in particular I was talking to a German officer who had been on the raid on a bench of mail, one of the very early raids. German paratroopers went into this fortress. There were a couple hundred German paratroopers against 1,200 Belgian soldiers in one of the largest forts of its time. And they completed the mission in about 25 minutes. So as I am talking to him in his home in Germany, he says to me, you're trying to develop a theory here, right? And I hadn't thought about it being a theory, but I realized he was right. I was trying to figure out why our special operations successful. That model, the special operations model, I subsequently went on to use almost every single day in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so the theory proved out over time.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the fundamental principle was when you go through the Naval Postgraduate School, you kind of start with basic military strategy 101, and you have to read Klarl von Klauswitz's book on war. And it really is kind of considered the Bible, if you will, for military warfare. And Clausewitz says, look, that the defense is inherently stronger than the offense, because the defense only has to preserve and protect, while the offense has to impose its will upon the enemy. So in order for the offense to be successful against the stronger defense, you have to have mass and maneuver. So you have to have a lot of troops, and you have to be able to maneuver on the enemy. So it raised the question, then if that is the case, why are special operations successful when we are generally a smaller force going against a heavily armed”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I learned that one, you are going to have rough periods in your life. We're all going to have rough periods in our life. And I talk about in a previous book about never ringing the bell. So in SEAL training, the way to quit is you have this brass bell, and all you have to do is ring the bell three times, and that's it. You're out. You quit. It's easy to quit. It is easy to find excuses not to press on, particularly when you're trying to do something you really want to do that is challenging. And so you have to steal yourself for these tough moments. And when those tough moments come, you have to get through them somehow. And generally there's light at the other end of the tunnel. So I tell folks, look, unless you're in an abusive relationship or you have abusive behavior, if you're following your dream, if you're trying to do something you really want to do, then don't ever ring that bell.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought we were improper at the time, and probably, again, not conducive to building the kind of SEAL team that I thought we needed to build. Again, I was a young lieutenant. He was a Navy commander, considerably senior to me, considerably more experienced. He was a Vietnam veteran, and a good guy. I don't necessarily fault him for the decision there. But when you get fired, that's never a good thing. When you get fired in the Navy, it's particularly bad. And when you get fired in the SEAL teams, it's really bad because it's such a small group. The point I tried to make in the book is I got fired, and of course I had been married for a while at that point in time. I thought, well, I've got no career left. And my wife came to me and she said, look, you've never quit at anything in your life. And now's not the time to start. And so I kind of pushed through that rough period in my life and went on and things turned out okay.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What does that mean? Well, I just think the commanding officer had kind of a different view of what his expectations of my leadership would be. And he was commanding officer. So he didn't like my style. I was probably a little too buttoned up for him. I had a little bit stronger belief about good order and discipline and what the guys needed to do to kind of stay on the right track. But at the time, I think he was trying to create a culture, and maybe rightfully so, of folks that were a little bit more bold and cavalier in how they approach things. So, you know, we came to a crossroads and he didn't think I was right to be on the team, and I got fired, basically.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so I got there actually about a year after the command stood up, and in the year that I was there, eventually the commanding officer fired me, relieved me of my position.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we started with 110. I think we actually started with more than that, but the records show 110 and we graduated with 33.”
2019-09-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 349 – Admiral William McRaven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source