Latest / Financial Survival Network / Guns, Girls, and Greed I Was a Blackwater Mercenary in Iraq By Morgan Lerette #6054

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Guns, Girls, and Greed I Was a Blackwater Mercenary in Iraq By Morgan Lerette #6054 · Financial Survival Network

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  I think we should have worked with what we had disbanding the entire Bath Party.
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  What happened was is that the Sunnies had controlled it right. The Sunies
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  are a very small small population in Iraq, but that was Saddam Hussein's population.
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  So as soon as we came in there, we disbanded all those suonees
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  from the government, from the military. The Shias went about and said,
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  hey, I want retribution. For the last thirty years, you were listening
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  to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, where you get valuable information you just can't
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  find anywhere else to thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival
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  Network now more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com and get your
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  free newsletter and gift. Financial Survival Network now more than ever, and welcome.
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  This is Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. But
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  we got a really interesting guest for you today, somebody who gun from army
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  to mercenary to it and not all at once. His name is Morgan Laurette
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  and the book is Guns, Girls and Greed Morgan eight. So out of
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  your resume you have that you were a mercenary for Blackwater. Is that the
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  like prominently featured there? Absolutely not, No, I say, I worked
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  for the US State Department. You know, Blackwater doesn't have the panache when
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  you're trying to get a job outside of defense contracting. C hey. So
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  I would think though with your experience. So you were a contractor for Blackwater,
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  and they paid you pretty well, didn't they? They did twenty three
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  years old Smulti USA kid. They paid me five hundred and fifty dollars a
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  day, and that was so much money when I was twenty three. I
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  mean, it's still so much money, don't get me wrong, but enough
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  money to give me to go over there after they had the four Blackwater guys
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  hanged off the bridge in Fallujah. Yeah, so they had to come at
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  a pretty high salary or else nobody was going to go over there and do
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  that. And that was seven days a week for months at a time,
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  right, Yeah, I technically we worked seven days a week, but it
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  really depended on what the diplomats wanted to do. So we protected diplomats and
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  some days you would go three four times out into the red zone where you
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  know, the Boogeyman was and the car bombs hung out and some days you
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  would just take the day off, two three, four days. And it
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  was interesting because in oh four the beginning, everybody wanted to help Iraq and
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  rebuild Iraq, and then a couple of the diplomats ended up getting killed either
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  by rockets or like IDs, and they decided they didn't want to go out
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  nearly as often after that. So you kind of watched the pace of life
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  go from holy cow to pretty mundane. Did you know Eric Prince, the
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  founder of Blackwater. I did not. He came over to Iraq, and
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  it's a funny story I put in the book, but we had a rocket
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  hit while he was there, and he had his own protective detail and they
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  like surrounded him and ran him off, and that's the last we saw of
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  him and and everybody else. It's just a normal day in Baghdad, right,
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  rack. Rockets hit, mortars hit, So we all just stood there
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  and we're like, oh, I guess that's the end of our meeting.
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  Yeah, So was a rack just a repeat of like Vietnam, Oh,
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  one hundred percent. It was us going in there to do one thing,
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  and then we just kept throwing good money after bad, one thing after the
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  other. It was now we have to build the nation. What we did
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  is we got rid of the Bath Party to hear about how we disbanded the
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  military. But at the same time it disbanded the entire government. So people
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  that know how to pick up trash from the street to land air planes,
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  like all that stuff was gone. And that's what the State Department did is
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  it came in and said, we're going to send in the FAA and the
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  waste management guys to teach these guys how to run a country. But who's
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  going to protect them. They didn't have any protection detail, So they grabbed
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  knuckle draggers like me. They were like, hey, go out there and
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  stand in front of that guy, and if a bullet comes by it,
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  jump in front of it. So that's that's pretty much what the job was.
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  Get a guy from point A to point B alive and get them back.
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  And yeah, that was I knew we'd lost it when I can't remember
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  the guy's name, but the guy who was the military, uh that we
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  had installed to run a rack and he disbanded the army. Oh Bremer,
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  Yeah, yeah, Bremmer, Paul Bremer. That just seemed to be a
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  complete act of insanity. Yeah, looking back on it, I mean I
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  understand the military aspect to a certain extent, But when you're getting rid of
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  anybody that's ever run the country, the people they knew how to pump oil
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  like your entire revenue stream coming in. You get rid of those guys and
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  you say, hey, we're going to put in new people and we'll just
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  teach them. Like those things can't be taught over the course of two,
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  three, four weeks, months, years. It's like Venezuela. You know,
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  nationalize everything, fire all the people that have been there long term that
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  made it work, and then expect things to just work out. Fine,
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  Hey, what do you think the most important thing you learned from being a
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  mercenary was well, one, the money was good, and two I got
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  to see it from different angles. Right from the military, alls you see
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  is what's your mission? What are you going to do today? Working for
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  Blackwater, we got to hang out with all those agency types and you could
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  kind of see the wheels turning of what they wanted to do. Now,
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  granted they didn't get it done, but there was no coordination between the military
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  and all these other agencies over there. And I knew somewhere in like early
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  two thousand and five, it just wasn't going to go well. Like you
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  could just hear the military talk about how great it is and then a car
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  bomb blows up right outside the gate. You could hear like the diplomats going
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  on TV. John Bolden, I met him over there, and he would
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  go over there and say how great it was going. But it didn't match
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  what was happening on the ground. So when you talk about Vietnam, same
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  thing, right. Our body cowt was really high. We killed ten to
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  one, but we weren't winning the war. And without an actual in state,
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  right, any project you have a start date, in an end state
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  and it's done. We just never had that. So as an army officer,
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  as a contractor, you could tell we were just fighting to fight until
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  we finally just had to give up. Yeah, we came the war.
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  Every war of the US fights and comes with an expiration date, right,
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  Yeah, well without a goal. Yeah. So hey, the first goal
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  for the goal was to get Saddam out of Kuwait, right, And once
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  we did that, it was over and destroyed their capabilities basically, but not
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  so much that that they could to contain Iran and then you know, we
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  go back again and it becomes this nation building thing. Hey, so what
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  do you think we could have done that would have made this besides not going
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  to war in Iraq again, what would have made a difference here? I
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  think we should have worked with what we had, disbanding the entire Bath party.
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  What happened was is that the Sunnis had controlled it, right, The
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  Sunnis a very small small population in Iraq, but that was Saddam Hussein's population.
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  So as soon as we came in there, we disbanded all those Sunnis
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  from the government, from the military. The Shias went about and said,
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  hey, I want retribution for the last thirty years. So that's when the
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  kill squad's coming. It came in in two thousand and four. That's when
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  you started seeing the Sunies over in the Sunni triangle Ramadi, Fellujah, and
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  we let them get to a point that they hated each other so much that
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  they were going to fight it out. And as soon as that happened,
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  we lost. There was no way for us to reconcile that. The Treya's
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  went in there though, and he seemed to have contained things. He paid
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  off everybody. I guess he did He did Wahara with a big briefcase full
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  of money, and that always helps. His strategy was correct, but it
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  wasn't able to be sustained long term. Because when you start paying these people
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  off and you say, hey, we're gonna start giving you jobs and we're
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  going to teach you how to grow stuff, that'll that'll placate them for for
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  a bit. But at the end of the day, they're still gonna hate
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  the Sonis versus the Shia's, the West versus the East part of Iraq,
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  the northern part of Iraq with the Kurds. They hate everybody. Yeah,
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  it's just it's a it's a tinder box. And then Petraeus gets to go
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  and do his victory lap. This is why I wrote the book. I'm
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  tired of hearing about how generals won this war, even though we lost it.
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  But anyway, now he's out there talking about, you know, teaching
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  at Columbia, and he's on all these boards and stuff about how great he
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  did. And at the end of the day, the only thing Generals have
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  done for the last twenty years is lose wars, and we just keep padding
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  him on the back. Yeah, I guess I'll never learn and you know,
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  there's certain countries that shouldn't be countries and that are only held together by
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  the force of one personality, like Iraq, like Afghanistan, where it's all
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  these sets that are killing each other and have been you know, tribal warfare
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  for thousands of years. And we saw it like in the Yugoslavia had Marshall
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  Tito. He was the only guy that could keep that country together. Once
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  he was gone, it just split up. And maybe it's better off now.
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  Maybe splitting up these countries was the best approach. Yeah, I mean
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  Goodafi and Lebanon, right, we took him out and that would terribly miss.
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  Syria is the same thing, and sad we have him over kind of
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  in one area and the rest is just absolute, all tribal lands and they're
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  fighting each other. We come in with the paradigm of democracy and the nation
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  being your first priority, right, ye ask anybody they're American first. Over
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  there, you're part of a tribe and then you're part of a sect and
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  that Hey, yeah, I guess I'm kind of in Iraq, so I'm
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  on Iraqi. But their loyalty lies at that tribal level, and we're not
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  going to change that. I don't care how many times we go out there
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  and say, look, just go vote and take your blue finger out and
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  show it in the air. Never go to change because these people are only
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  loyal to their tribe. It's true something that as Americans we don't understand that.
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  But hey, maybe soon, so well, appreciate your coming on here.
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  Just tell me how long did you wind up spending in Iraq. I
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  did eighteen months in Iraq with the Blackwater, and then I did another year
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  with the army, and then before that I was in Iraq or on the
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  ground offensive in two thousand and three. So I got to kind of watch
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  the progression of Iraq. You could tell it was getting safer, but you
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  could also tell that they were just biding their time for us to leave,
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  and they knew we were going to leave at some point. And then,
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  of course the second that we leave Isis goes into Mosul and starts taking that
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  over and we have to kind of jump right back into it. So it
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  was it was an interesting progression to watch. But there's there's a part in
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  the book where I talk about the toilets and the sinks in this police station.
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  So we're trying to set up a police station so that they can move
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  into it, and they keep stealing all the toilets in the sinks, and
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  we can't open it and give it to them because the toilets and the sinks
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  by contract have to be done. So we buy more toilets, We put
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  more toilets in. The next day we go over there, they're all stolen
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  again. And this happened over and over and over again, and it was
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  kind of a microcosm for what Iraq was. People were going to be out
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  for themselves and it didn't matter what we did, how much money we gave
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  them. They were going to get that toilet because poopin in a hole is
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  not that fun. So that toilet was a hot commodity. Oh man,
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  Yeah, you can't make this stuff up. Huh no. No. People
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  ask me how much of the book is real, and it's like it's all
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  real, Like that's how outlandish it was in two thousand and four, two
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  thousand and five, crazy crazy, crazy. Hey, So you know,
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  we should talk about mercenaries, the role they played for the United States.
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  I remember during the Vietnam War we had and I think during Korea too,
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  we had Turkish mercenaries there we had eyes, so we had hired the tai
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  Army to fight in Vietnam. And going back to the founding of this country
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  of the Revolutionary War, you know England, this is a rich heritage of
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  mercenary warfare. England had hired the Hessians, the Germans, they were they
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  were fighting here against the you know, our forefathers. So generally mercenary wars
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  don't work out too well, no, they don't. The problem now is
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  that once you get into a government contract, once you're part of that military
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  industrial complex, the money is so good. So everybody thought that the private
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  military companies were going to die off after Afghanistan and Iraq ended. They haven't.
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  They've just evolved. Now they're stateside down at the US border, they're
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  over in the Ukraine, they're over at Israel, they're in Syria. And
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  what they've been able to do is still get that funding source from the government
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  to be able to show where they can supposedly add value. And it's not
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  going to go away until somebody puts a microscope on it and says who is
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  governing these these these companies and nobody is. And like you said, when
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  a contractor quote unquote contractor gets killed in some place, it's like, oh,
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  that's too bad, Whereas if it's an American soldier who gets killed and
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  it's in the newspaper for weeks. So the political risk by sending mercenaries out
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  there is a lot less than sending American troops. Well, and if something
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  goes bad, they have some way to blame, you know, that's not
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  DHS or DoD or Department of State. That's that bad contractor. And this
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  is what we ran into in Iraq is what laws governed you. You're a
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  civilian over in Iraq, which is a sovereign country. You're not under the
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  u CMJ like the military. We weren't under the Iraqi government criminal code.
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  So what code? Actually, how do we get due processed for something if
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  it went bad? And you can't overseas, especially in a combat zone.
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  So I think it's very convenient for politicians to throw contractors at a problem now
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  than it is to say let's go put boots on the ground, because that
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  shows that they're actually backing it, and they would prefer just to stay in
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  that nice little gray area and say, oh, that wasn't me, that
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  was that bad contractor. Yeah, but who signed their contract, who did
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  the budget? Yeah, Hey, they're as much a part of the US
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  government, And that's the thing that they're They have the deniability, right,
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  they got the ability to deny that they were at war, like the military
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  advisors in Vietnam. That's kind of the way these things start, right.
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  We have advisors in every hot spot in the world, now, don't we,
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  oh, one hundred percent, and if you put boots on the ground.
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  We had those three soldiers killed in Jordan that made the news for a
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  long time, but I guarantee that same base had a bunch of private military
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  contractors. There was a ton of people that were also injured, but nobody
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  heard about the injured. And I'll bet you a dollar that there's a lot
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  of private contractors that are over there supporting the base or protecting somebody in a
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  base of nobody even knew existed. It's it's insane how easy it is to
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  propagate people into conflict zones and not have to pony up and say, yeah,
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  that was my decision. Yeah, I could not agree with you more.
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  Hey, and let's not I don't want to get too deep into the
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  military industrial complex, but many of these wars being fought. It's all about
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  feeding the military industrial complex. In fact, there's theories out there that our
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  last president to help they help escort him out the door because he wouldn't engage
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  in pointless wars. You think there's some truth to that. I mean,
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  there's definitely truth to the military industrial complex is always going to march on.
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  Here's what I think is really interesting is that we have turned durable goods into
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  consumable goods. You used to make bullets and bombs and grenades, and they
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  sit around for a year or even decades, and you'd still use them.
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  Now those defense contractors can't make them fast enough because we're shipping them overseas to
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  be used. They become consumable goods and they you know, the orders just
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  keep coming in. So there's definitely a profit Like a reason why they keep
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  making these and keep shipping them out is because there's a nice profit motive for
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  him, right, Yeah, it's all about the money in the end.
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  Hey Morgan, you got a website you can direct us to tell us how
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  to get your book Good Guns Girls, Ingreed hop on Amazon. It's available
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  for hardcover, It's on Kindle and then jaymore the actor from Jeremyguire did the
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  audio for it spectacular. I listened to it the other day, So any
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  way you want to consume it, no pun intended, consolable goods. Jump
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  on there and grab it today. It's it's a wild right. Don't let
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  your kids read it. It's a round perspective. It is. It is
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  the good and the bad of war. You know you got the good stuff
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  we did. You have like losing friends and it is sad. Yeah,
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  and there's a lot of bad words in that because that's how we talked.
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  I could not agree with you more. He appreciate you coming on. You've
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  got a question for Morgan myself. Email is k l at Carrie LUTs dot
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  com and the link to his book will be found in the show notes to
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  interview on Financial Survival Network dot com. While you're there, please sign up
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  for your free newsletter. Morgant been a pleasure. Hey, good luck with
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  a book, and I'm looking forward to the movie. Thanks for having me
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  on, Carrie. Just you know, tell Michael Bay it's available. Thanks
• 18:40
  for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network your solution to today's trying times.
• 18:45
  For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com Financial Survival Network now more
• 18:52
  than ever,