2795 - Back From On The Ground In Ukraine, And The Corruption Of SEAL Team 6 w/ Matthew Cole & Jack Crosbie

Sam hosts Matthew Cole, investigative reporter at The Intercept, to discuss his recent book Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six. Then, Sam is joined by Jack Crosbie, writer for Rolling Stone and Discourse Blog, to discuss the recent developments in Ukraine.  Matthew Cole begins tracing by SEAL Team Six’s origins to the combat-swimmer units in WW2, known as “Frogmen,” known as the most elite soldiers in the navy, before the failure of the US Military in the 1979 hostage rescue in Tehran inspired President Carter’s creation of a new counter-terrorism special ops unit, JSOC, with control over the Army’s Delta Force and the newly created Navy SEAL Team Six. Next, Cole dives into the origins of the corruption in the unit, reaching back to their creation under Carter, and Commander Marcinko’s lasting imprint on its culture, which he built to resemble a mafia, with himself as the Don at its center, pushing an outrageous lifestyle that included alcohol and drug abuse, fraud, and a code of silence when it came to the outside world – even the rest of the military. They then look to the wake of 9/11, as SEAL Team Six saw their first real extended warfare, beginning a twenty-year period in Afghanistan that saw unprecedented levels of violence for any individual unit. Cole and Sam parse through the little accountability that the unit faces, with their only superiors besides JSOC being the Pentagon and White House, so when things began to spin out of control, with war crimes and bodies piling up at the feel of SEAL Team Six, they were able to escape any incident with the leverage of their supposed “results.” Matthew Cole then explores Admiral Collin Green’s public rebuke of an internal review of the team, calling out the cultural virus running rampant through the community, and bringing forward the clear and obvious need for an investigation into the history and facts of SEAL Team Six, with a genuine (even if non-criminal) system of accountability for the generations of brutality and corruption. Jack Crosbie then joins the show as he covers his return from Ukraine and what he has thought of coverage at home and abroad. They also touch on Jack’s history, covering the conflict beginning in 2014, as he walks through the original violence and the eight years of constant war that followed, before he dives into this year’s Russian invasion and the much higher levels of bloodshed, alongside the absurd horror of Putin’s propaganda and what, if anything, could see us get closer to a ceasefire. Sam also covers the Texas courts’ injunction on their abusive legislation targeting trans and queer children, the Texas Supreme Court’s shutting down a final challenge on the Abortion ban, undermining that fight even further, and Rachel Maddow promoting a brand new Russian conspiracy, this time invoking the Holocaust (as a more positive example).

And in the Fun Half: Sam discusses the role of satire in a society rife with ironic and unironic misinformation, Bill Maher claims his libertarian conservatism is actually the fault of trans people and anti-police activists for suddenly coming into existence five years ago, and Dave Rubin has Nikki Haley walk him through why the US’s fear of leading with violence would lead the world into catastrophe, not something like nuclear war. Jordan Peterson relies on some low-budget misinformation to promote Ivermectin in the year 2022, only to be met with corrections by the first author of the experiment he supposedly cited. Matt Lech makes his return, plus, your IMs!

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Check out Jack's piece at Discourse Blog "How NATO Could Help Millions of Ukrainians Without Firing a Shot" here.

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