In The East Wing

Abdullah Najjar 0:00
All right, so this is my conversation with Jason riddle. Jason is a US military veteran who spent approximately 20 years in the US Air Force. Our conversation revolved around a variety of topics with it with a heavy emphasis on his deployments post 911 and pre 911 as well. Before we transition to the full conversation, I want the audience to be fully aware that some of the things we discussed and some of the terminology that we used might be a little bit explicit, so please keep that in mind. In addition, we mentioned a couple of things that might sound unfamiliar, so I figured I'd highlight them here before we start. First thing is the a 10, which is an aircraft that Jason worked on for most of his career. We also touch on the G wat, which is essentially the global war on terror that ensued after 911 and finally, we mentioned the Delta Force, which is a Special Operations Unit of the US military tier one special operations unit. And with that in mind, please enjoy this conversation with Jason riddle, and if you get a chance, perhaps you can revisit some of the earlier conversations I've had on the show. Thank you. So I am joined today by Jason riddle in the east wing, and it is certainly an honor to have Jason on the show with me. Jason. Welcome.

Jason Riddle 1:36
Thank you. Thank you. I

Abdullah Najjar 1:37
appreciate it absolutely. Yeah, so a lot to cover, to talk about today, and I mean, we've already started our conversation prior to recording. Absolutely, we've had, yeah, we've talked a lot, we've had a lot of different conversations, but I'm sure there's so much more to cover and highlight. But just to kind of give my audience a little bit of context, I wanted to ask you about I want, I want to first explore a little bit about your background, and you know, you're, you're, you're an Air Force veteran. You've had an extensive experience with US military, and I'm sure this is, you know, our conversation will revolve, will include a lot of some of the operations that you're part of and some of your service abroad, absolutely. Yeah. So how about you tell me in the audience about perhaps the or highlight to us the early days of your take us back to the early days when you decided to join the Air Force and why you made that decision. So

Jason Riddle 2:43
like most decisions, big decisions I made in my life is because of something happened, right? So I joined, I joined what's called the delayed enlistment program, or the DEP, in 1998 so, and I told you before I enlisted in 99 right? So, here I was. I did the delayed enlistment program, like, as long as I could, because I had this weird attachment to not leave, which later on, I felt like that was pretty stupid, that I stayed there as long as I did, right? Because I'm from Sacramento, California, and I don't know what it is about Sacramento, where we have like this, like, fear of leaving the island. You know, the great unknown is out there, right? And it's really not that bad once you leave California. And so I had this thing, I like, this desire to stay home longer after I said that I was going to join the big catalyst why I wanted to join was I was working full time, okay, at a company where I didn't feel like I had a future. I was the youngest technician. So I worked at a car dealership, a dodgy relationship, okay, which has since gone out of business. So it's not like it's still around. I was the youngest technician. There was a lot of ageism that happened there. So I was like, kind of like, shit on because I was the youngest guy. So I got called Junior and sport and squirt, you know, the kid. I got called the kid a lot. Give that job to the kid, it'll be good for him. Like stuff like that happened a lot, and so I kind of got tired of it, and I fought. I'd fought for a raise to get seven bucks an hour. Oh, way back in the day. That was big time to get seven bucks an hour back in the day. And I was going to school full time. So I was in the consumerist River Community College System in Sacramento, and I didn't know it then, but I had, like, zero desire to go to school. Like I was like, I just did it because high school was over. You're supposed to go to college of some sort, right? No. No idea really what I wanted to do with my life. I used to think I wanted to be an automotive engineer that was kind of in play for a little bit there, and that, obviously, that ship sank long time ago. And so I ended up joining because, like all this shit in my life was just garbage. I felt like I was going nowhere. And then, in that winter of 1998 my father had been convicted of a crime. Oh, so my father was a career criminal. I lived with my dad through high school. He was a drug smuggler and gun runner, an associate with a organized crime element, good Lord and he had gone down for murdering his his third wife, a crime he's still serving for, even though he's he's like in hospice. Now, we don't talk. We are not connected, like, in any way, shape or form. When I, when I cut off my dad, I cut him off all the way, and I felt the need to just not be there anymore. That was the big drive. I don't want to be here anymore, and it feel like my future was good there. And so I went to a strip mall that's near where my grandma, my grandma used to live, that had all of the services in it. And I talked to everybody that day, yeah, when I went, except for the Navy, I knew I didn't want to join the Navy very early on. And so, yes, I am going to shit on the Navy, if

Abdullah Najjar 6:44
you can do it because you were in the military, if

Jason Riddle 6:46
you're in the Navy rots in Unit, do not take that personally. And if you feel conflicted about what I have to say, then just do better in your career. But you know, I knew for sure anyone joined the Navy, so I spoke to the army, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force, the Air Force dead last, and I spoke to the army before I talked to him. And the thing that education was still important to me. And so the Air Force has a college built into it. It's the only service it does, right? Air Force Academy, the the Community College of the Air Force. Ooh, so all the training that we get is vetted and validated by the college that is built into the Air Force. Yeah. Granted, for 22 years of service, I got like, 12 credits. So it's, I didn't get a lot, just 12 credits, okay, but, you know, it helped a little bit at Wake when I was at Wake Tech, and we'll catch up to Wake Tech here in a minute. But so that's, that's how that kind of happened. So why I landed on the Air Force was, was that they were the only ones that had that. And like, my recruiter, like, use me like, for to the day I left for basic training, he was like, I thought I lost Jason. There's no way. There's no way he was gonna come back. There's no way. And then when he called me, like, I turned like, seven shades of white. There's no like, I had no idea he was gonna come back. He's like, I thought I lost you. You were not gonna be my recruiter. Well, what did he do? Like to think that way. So because I just talked to the army, and they're like, ready to sell you the planet. Like, if you've ever sat in front of an army recruiter, like, like, I met their their station commander that day. I met the captain. I met like, because, because I was in marine rots in high school, so like, they wanted me, and they're like, Oh yeah, you'd be a great asset to the United States Army. And I took the they have a pre ASVAB you take that you can take in their office. Wait, what's that? So the ASVAB is, the was Armed Services Vocational battery test, okay, right? So that that's the test that you take, where they figure out what job you're qualified for. And I like blown that out of the water in their office. And they're like, Dude, we want you bad and so. And they're like, throwing, they were throwing, like, contracts at me, and numbers and dollars and bonuses and timelines were being thrown at me. And I was like, Well, let me come back, because I was, I knew for sure I was just going to talk to these people. So I, I worked at a dealership. You're not going to sell me a car on the first day. Like, know your audience a little bit here, right? You're not going to get me today. We're just here to talk. And so I made my way down the row, and the last guy I spoke to was the Air Force recruiter. And, like, I don't remember his name. Like, I know his first name was Joe, and he was a cop, in the military, in the Air Force, say,

Abdullah Najjar 9:44
your average Joe, right?

Jason Riddle 9:45
There's my average Joe, right? And so he was like, There's he like, I thought, like, because he's you kept like, comparing to next door, next door being the army, right? And he was like, He's, like, I didn't, there's no way. I thought you're gonna come back. And so. I came in and I enlisted in open electronics. So I even kind of rolled the dice on what career field I was going to land on, and didn't know until I graduated basic training where I was going to land. So I was kind of like not sure what was going to happen. And a lot of recruits now, like you talk to like, you probably even talk to some kids here when they're getting ready to graduate and they're getting ready to commission, they know what career they're going into. Like their contract is written in the bat in the past tense. But mine was not. That was like very kind of liquid when I so I made it all the way through basic training without really a job, right? And then I got four to choose from, and I picked one, and I ended up getting one of the four that I chose. So I picked it was like, I want to say it was like electronic warfare was one, which I'm so glad I after I found out what that job was after I had been in aircraft maintenance for a while like so glad I didn't get that job. The other one was aircraft guidance and control communications and navigation, and I forgot what the fourth one was, but I knew I didn't want to work on radios, even though I ended up being a radio guy later on.

Abdullah Najjar 11:19
That's another thing that we can,

Jason Riddle 11:21
yeah, we can, we can, we can touch on that later, yeah, and then I, I ended up as an aircraft guidance and control, which is autopilot, systems, instrumentation, weapons delivery. And then later on, it became electronic countermeasures sensors, and then became, it became, like a generalized avionics career field, within my career, within my time in the in aircraft maintenance,

Abdullah Najjar 11:48
what, what did you know before you entered into the military, about the military? What sort of exposure did you have? What like were there any stories that you're exposed to, like, oh, Vietnam?

Jason Riddle 12:00
Oh, absolutely. So. My father was in Vietnam. He was a draftee, okay? My stepfather was in Vietnam. He was Naval Special Warfare before it was really cool, because he remembers, like, not having enough money in people to do things correctly. And I'm sure a lot of his PTSD is related to baked in MIS usage of special operations in the 60s. Oh, my grandfather was in the Air Force. He's the only other airman in the family. My uncle, like my grandmother's brother, he was in the Army in World War Two. My other grandpa was in the Army in World War Two or in the in the Navy in World War Two. Wow. So yeah, he him and his three brothers joined the Navy, but their dad was in the army, and they all served in World War Two at the same time, which was crazy. Yeah, their dad being at the end of his career, and then them starting their career. That's insane. So yeah, the military does run deep in the family. Granted in my immediate family, it may stop with me, because neither really one of my kids are interested, except for my youngest, thinks he's going to join the Navy,

Abdullah Najjar 13:13
but after shooting on a navy right now, well, I

Jason Riddle 13:17
have told him, and those who again speaking to the kids in the ROTC program here at NC State, you guys will be proud of me when I said this. So I told him, I was like, yes, you can join the Navy. And granted, like he's an adult. I really don't have much influence in this situation, okay, but I will not allow you to enlist in the Navy. And he's like, why? And I was like, I will not permit a Navy chief to exist in my family period. Dot. And he's like, What? What's so bad about Navy chiefs? And I was like, wait till you get to the fleet, you'll learn all about it.

Abdullah Najjar 13:52
That's another thing we're gonna have to unpack after.

Jason Riddle 13:57
And so, and also, he wants to be a marine biologist. The Navy the only real out like source for that. For a scientist at that level, the Navy the only one that has a hold for

Abdullah Najjar 14:08
him. Yeah. So you were talking about joining in 1989 1999 1999

Jason Riddle 14:14
Yes. So I guaranteed that I was going to enlist in 98 I enlisted in 1999

Abdullah Najjar 14:21
that's like two years before 911 and maybe, what, five years after the Kenya like the embassy bombing. I think the

Jason Riddle 14:32
embassy bombings were in 9798 oh, my, the summer before I joined

Abdullah Najjar 14:37
so at the time, I mean, the atmosphere was pretty heated, right, right?

Jason Riddle 14:41
Was it wasn't cold? Yeah? No,

Abdullah Najjar 14:44
yeah. Did that factor into the decision? Not at all. No,

Jason Riddle 14:50
I was like, I wanted to get the hell out of Sacramento, warm or anything, right? And I knew that I wanted to just end that phase in my life. And I knew if I didn't rip the band aid off, it was gonna be where I was gonna be forever. Gosh, you know, I probably would have worked at that dealership to the minute they closed it. Good Lord, you know,

Abdullah Najjar 15:10
so 90, God, 99 at the time you had, well, two years after you got 911 so that must have, like, shifted everything, everything, right, right. But prior to that, what was your what were the highlights of your experience, like, two years before, something like, so, yeah,

Jason Riddle 15:34
we So fast forward through the training pipeline. I go to basic training. I just flew under the radar and basic training. I'll openly admit that there's a lot of people who were like, well, I was I volunteered for everything, which I did volunteer for everything. I did learn that before I left, an old gi told me before I left, he's like, volunteer for everything in the training pipeline. Okay? And I did do that. And and I will say that to those are considering mid military service here as well. Do volunteer for everything? Okay? Because you're gonna end up in like, something awesome, and it'll force you to step outside your comfort zone, and in that, you may end up in something really awesome and like and there is more than one thing that I volunteered for that got me out of stuff I didn't want to do when I was in the training pipeline. So, and because I volunteered for something else, I got a less, like a less shitty job, if you will. Yeah, when, when, when? Because there's a lot of do nothing time in the military, right? The hurry up and wait is true, right? So not always is the training schedule Perfect, yeah, and not always are the additional components that that the training pipeline needs ready to go when they need them to be. So like, if you're going to go the field, those who work out in the field may not be ready for you to show up. So like, things gotta shift and tweak a little bit, and then you end up with, like, some white space in the schedule. And then they basically, like, use the trainees as, like a labor pool, right? So you get farmed out to whoever needs help with something, right? One of the jobs I got farmed out to was to work at The Chapel for a day the chapel, and all they did was shove us full of snacks, teach us how to call home, okay, through through the government system, yeah, because you can use the the defense switch network to call any base, and if that base had, this is the date myself back when we all didn't have phones in our pocket, right? You know, and long distance calling was a thing, right? If you called the base nearest you that shared the same area code as your parents, which I had two bases near me that share the same area code as my parents, I could call them and they could, and you can just ask for an off base line, and they would dial the number for you. So I got to do I got to push out two extra phone calls at home to home, which, to me, at that time, was a big deal, and it was pretty awesome. Wow, all because I had volunteered because, and lot of times when you when something like this happens, they go, I need two volunteers. They don't tell you what the hell you're getting into. So I was, I volunteered with this other kid that I knew, who seemed okay, right? Because I didn't want to go with somebody I didn't like, and so this other kid seemed okay. And I was like, Yeah, I'll go with him, and we go over there. And we basically just like, fuck off all day.

Abdullah Najjar 18:29
And where were you stationed at? This

Jason Riddle 18:30
is in Texas, at in basic training. Still, I hadn't even graduated basic training. And I was like, This is awesome. Good Lord. And so, but yeah, and so that that's, that's why I say, like, do volunteer for everything. It'll, it'll definitely help you

Abdullah Najjar 18:43
out in your career. And when we, when you refer to basic training, for clarification sake, what does it consist of? Typically, like, are we talking about, like, oh, 10 push ups, through setups or whatever?

Jason Riddle 18:55
There's a lot of that, right? There's a lot of the physical training piece. There's a lot of schools of thought about what basic training should be and shouldn't be. Um, most of the basic training experiences is or boot camps. It is. It's an indoctrination into the into the system, right? You get all your medical stuff squared away. They begin your big medical chart that follows you for the rest of your career. You get any shots you're missing. You get in basic training. And I have a story about that in a minute. Okay, you get, so, yeah, all the medical stuff. You get uniforms and shitty you get that first haircut. They cut everybody's hair off. If you're a guy, the ladies, they cut their hair really short, and then there's a lot of isms that still kind of exist from the World War Two era, right? So they teach you how to march. They teach you how to stand in formation. In in Air Force basic training, there's a lot of focus on Air Force history, so we get a lot of. Books about Air Force history that were showed in our face, and like when we had any downtime, we were expected to be studying. Expected is the keyword, expected is the keyword. And then there's some hazing. Okay? Like every military organization has some sort of hazing that's adopted and accepted. Ours was we had to simulate working in a chemical environment. Granted, it's not as cool as it sounds. So our instructors came in and they basically destroyed the barracks like they flipped every bed over. They pulled every drawer out, they threw all the stuff out, like they did in front of us too. They made us stand there and watch them destroy watch them destroy the room. And they're like, Okay, now go put it all back together. And so we go back to put it all back together. We didn't put it all back together fast enough. And then they're like, Okay, now we're simulating chemical exposure, so the mop levels, right? The mission oriented, protected posture. Okay? So we had to put, like, our long, like, cold weather pants on, and our in our M 65 field jacket. We had to put that on, and then we had to go do it again. So we had to put on so we put on more clothes in the winter in Texas. And, like, no windows open and the heat was on, right? So we're getting smoked pretty quick, right? So then the second time we didn't put the root, put put everything back together the right way or fast enough, then put the gloves on, put the gloves on. And the gloves and basic training are horrible, and they, they don't fit anybody's hand, right? I had like, like, another, like, like, inch and a half of extra material past my fingers. So, like, I'm like, like, a bad TRX trying to slap things together. And then after that, was to put the winter hat on. And the back in the day, the winter hat had, like, a fleece lining on the inside that would go down over your ears. And we had to put that thing over our ears. So we're just these sweaty messes trying to put the room together we and we never passed. The point was not that we were going to pass. The point was that they could control our lives. You have to do what we say. And this is, this is why, right? And so was it important? No could it be removed from training completely, of course, but it was just like, one of those things, right? Like, I think every gi has some sort of, like, weird event that happens at some point in their career that's kind of hazy the Navy more so than anyone else. I'll just say that openly, go watch a chiefs induction event and see exactly what hazing looks like, and it's all of its glory, but yeah, it is what it is, right? It was 1999 we weren't at war. So priorities amongst the services were not the same. You know, just attitudes were different. And after 911 yes, they changed overnight, and everybody was like, set to full throttle for the next, you know, until I retired was like, you know, another 18 years. Good Lord, yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 23:14
So you do things here to pick up on. One is that story of the shots, you say sorry to share about the shots. You know the shots, but we can talk about

Jason Riddle 23:27
that. Let's hit it real quick. It's quick. Let's do it so the shots is hilarious. So when you put that many people together in the middle of winter, so like, I went in in January, okay, I graduated late February, because back then, if our Air Force basic training was only six weeks, that's another reason why I joined the Air Force, because their training was shorter, that they hate the jackpot that far that part was was shorter, but I went to to my technical school, which was like almost 11 months. So I was like, I got it. I lucked out in one area and got screwed in another so the shots are so we all got sick, like, stupid sick influenza, like runs through our barracks and our in our two flights, right? Okay? Is that the Army has platoons and companies the Air Force has flights. Um, and so we're we had, we had a brother flight. Some people have a sister flight. We had a brother flight. So both groups of us get sick as shit. Graduation is like, days away, yeah. And so they're like, well, because everybody's getting sick, you're all getting a penicillin shot. And they told us, like at lunch one day, so immediately after lunch, we go get this, this penicillin shot. And I will never forget one of the instructors yelling at the medical technicians who are giving us the shots. They're like, hit them all in the same. Cheek. I don't want the ass limp to be off at graduation. So we all got hit in our left cheek.

Abdullah Najjar 25:14
You guys limp and wonder. So we

Jason Riddle 25:15
all look the same when we graduated, when we marched to graduation, oh,

Abdullah Najjar 25:23
that's a legendary story, right? And

Jason Riddle 25:25
of course, we're all joking about our coordinated ass limp that we had from graduation. And you and like, I think my mom sent me the tape recently. I don't have anything I can play VHS on anymore because I am that old. I did my basic training was filmed on the VHS. And I'm pretty sure the one time I did watch it, you can kind of see the limp as we're making it past, because, because we were flight 174 and flight 173 and fucking our brother, flight goes before us. And you can kind of see them limp past, and you can see us limp past, and then, and then there's all the people who weren't sick after us.

I gotta see that video.

I have to find it. Yes, okay, yeah, I'm sure there's a VHS around here somewhere. Yeah, somewhere around here. Someone is resourceful enough to find out. We

Abdullah Najjar 26:11
might find one in the station here, yeah.

Jason Riddle 26:14
And so good. That was, yeah, the coordinated ass limp we joked about that like to the minute we left basic training,

Abdullah Najjar 26:21
that's insane. Well, so that would have been, they said early, so February of 99 Yeah. And then you go into technical school and you spend 11 months, yes, yeah. So when did you start that?

Jason Riddle 26:34
So, um, oh, no, it wasn't 11 because I graduated in October of 99 okay, because I was at my first assignment in October. So maybe it wasn't. It was eight months ish, I know it was long as shit, if it's in Mississippi through the summer. You know, this is also 22 years ago, and everything feels longer in Mississippi in the summer. That was my introduction to southern humidity. I had never been exposed to southern humidity before, and I was like, Oh, this is horrible. Um, and because it's, I mean, it's Biloxi is right off the coast, and that base is actually, like, on a little peninsula, so it's got water on both sides, so it gets it gets swampy quick. Lord, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 27:21
spending eight months that it must be,

Jason Riddle 27:22
and it was, it was rough. Yeah, I had my first heat injury there, where I actually got, like, dehydrated enough to pass out. I had that happen there, and I didn't know that that that could happen to me until it happened, until it happened, which is why I'm like, so psychotic about water, right, you know? And that's why I'm like, constantly ensuring I'm hydrating, because I didn't know that I have that, I have that in me, that I can pass out from dehydration

Abdullah Najjar 27:52
you were in. I mean, I'm sure I'm jumping ahead, but Qatar, and you said, Bahrain, Bahrain, yes.

Jason Riddle 27:57
But see, I mean, like I feel like in when you live there, like it just happens faster, and unlike and like you feel a lot more acclimatized quicker, I would say, in the Middle East and you, than I'd had in the States. Interesting. But I mean, granted, this is the first I had been away from California my entire life, right? Right, right, right. I had been to Mexico like, three times before that, and that was it. So that and that, that was oh, and I had been to Hawaii, and I'd been to Southern California a whole bunch. And if you're from Northern California, you go to Southern California. It is almost like a different country. Wow, driving there, it feels like you're going to a different country, especially when you're a little kid, yeah, and so, yeah, like, this is the furthest I had been from home. And, you know, I had no idea what survival in this place looks like, or feels like, you know. And so, yeah, of course, I fucked up well enough to pass out. Of course, I didn't understand what hydration looks like in the south, right. You know, I, all I remember was that as fast as I could get water in me, it came out from all pores, you know, like a uniform lasts like a day. Whole thing's gotta go,

Abdullah Najjar 29:16
oh my goodness, yeah, so let me, let me try to hear paint a clear picture. We've got October of 1999 graduation, and then you've got two years after that, in September, you get 911 it shifts, I'm sure everything, yeah, everything gets crazy, yeah, but you said you did have an assignment before 911

Jason Riddle 29:43
I did so my, my, my first real world assignment, right? My first after the training world. They call it entering into the operational Air Force. All that was at what used to be pope Air Force Base, which. Is now absorbed into what was later absorbed into Fort Bragg and then now renamed fort liberty, right? Forgive me if I say Fort Bragg over and over again, but I you're used to it. I'm used to it. And to be honest, you know, outside of the news, if you say fort liberty, a lot of people still don't know what you're talking about. And I mean, like I saw like they talked about something on the news today about Fort liberty and like and it felt foreign to my ear, and not because I have any attachment to who Braxton Bragg was, or I care about name renaming bases after Confederate generals or Confederate officers. I'm so glad that we don't have bases named after losers anymore, but I, I was frustrated with the naming that they went through when they renamed Bragg. So, long story short, they did put out a big pool to all the soldiers that were there and airmen, and they all got to vote on what they thought the name of the base should be, because it's the only base that renamed that didn't name the base after a hero that comes from there. Oh, that's right, that's the only one, yeah, that renamed. And I they had picked somebody. I had heard they picked Charlie Beck with. And those out there in the world can look up who Charlie Beck with his he's a founder of one of the founders of Delta Force. I'd heard they had picked that. Granted, I was in Nevada when this went down, so I didn't hear exactly how it all played out, right? Um, and then the results of the pool and the election make it to the garrison commander who's not the the end all be all of command structures at Fort. Bragg says, No, I like Liberty instead. So when I hear that name, I still kind of hear a punch in the face of the soldiers who live there, yeah, and I still kind of hear like a shitting on of the heroes from there, right? You know what I mean? Like, I know people from there who have done so many heroic things, and I heard the argument was that we have too many and, you know, and that's a crazy problem to have in the first place. But at the same time, it's like, you know, you could have picked one exactly. You could have, yeah, you know, you could have picked an era. You could have picked or you could have picked even the modern era, because a lot of complaints of other global war on terror veterans is that there's really no celebrations of our heroes from our war. And I think that it would have been a good move to pick someone from the global war on terror, you know, like, like Tex Sergeant Chapman, who is a Medal of Honor winner or awardee, is from was at the 24th SDS at Pope, aka Fort Bragg, yeah, that would have been a perfect name to name the base after the two delta snipers from Stuttgart, or sheward and Stuttgart, or whatever Their names were. I forgot who were from the Somali incident. Oh, the Black Hawk Down guys, yeah, one of them would have been a perfect name, right? Colonel Beckwith, an outstanding name, also fort Beck with sounds like a name of a bass. Yeah, right. So there was a lot of things they could have done differently. So, and like, don't get me wrong, Braxton Bragg was a son of a bitch, and I'm so glad that there's not even a traffic co named after him, yep, but, you know, I, I they could have done better in that,

Abdullah Najjar 33:35
yeah, but a lot of people from the outside wouldn't even like they wouldn't even see it the same way that people from the inside do, which is

Jason Riddle 33:43
a lot, I mean, that's that might as well be the title of my career, right? Like, you guys just didn't see what we saw. Like, you know, I have a different attitude about the Iraqi invasion than a lot of people do, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 33:57
which something I hope that we can get into, because we had a brief Convo about that before, but at the same time you well, that kind

Jason Riddle 34:05
of comes up to my first deployment, which is pre 911 Oh,

Abdullah Najjar 34:08
so it has some ties to that. Yes, were you? Okay, let's let's some. So let's slide

Jason Riddle 34:15
up to that first deployment. Yeah, so I was at Pope for not quite a year when I had my first deployment, or maybe I'd rolled over a year, I just put on e4 which was early. I made E for early, and E for which was senior airman. So I got promoted early. Wow,

Abdullah Najjar 34:32
yeah, I

Jason Riddle 34:34
was so for the first four or first five ranks, I was a fast burner. Okay, when it became, there's like, there's like, a generation between e5 and e6 Wow. I was an e5 for a really long time. So I, which is senior mentor Staff Sergeant, right? So I was a staff sergeant for a really long time. And so. Yeah, I get, we get over it. So, so my pre 911 deployment is to algebra Kuwait. Okay, right, right outside of Kuwait City. Okay, this is in 2000 into 2001 so across the holidays, yeah, so December, January, February, and I think we came home the front end of March. So now I know that I'm using these timelines out there, and people are like, well, that's like three months. So this is before the war started. Yeah, and big DoD did not see value in spending a lot of money on deployments. Even though most of our deployment needs were paid for by the Kuwaitis, they still didn't really put a lot of time into deployments the Kuwaitis, yeah? So they, the Kuwaitis did pay, yes, we were, like, mercenaries, kind of paid for by the Kuwaitis through our alliance with the Kuwaitis, right? I didn't know

Abdullah Najjar 35:56
that was such, like, a thing that you could do, yeah, right? Because you're still, like, you're still a property of the US government at the time. You're not like a free agent, right? No, yeah, that's, well, the

Jason Riddle 36:07
mission was to patrol the southern no fly zone over Iraq. So that's, that's a US initiative, okay, right? But the Kuwaitis were really stoked to have us there to ensure that nothing from the north came down again, exactly, right? So we're at a Kuwaiti air base. We were there, you know, being hosted by the Kuwaitis, but at the same time, yes, it was a US mission with US interests, right, right? Okay, although those interests also align with kuties, it's still the same, right? So, and again, like we mentioned before we came on, Mike, you know, like a lot of those Arabian nations, their go to when it comes to defense is just throw money at the problem, exactly, right? That is, that is exactly what Kuwait did. They threw money at the problem. They're like, well, America, we really like your a 10 airplanes. They're really good at making sure Saddam's tanks don't come down here. So if you guys want to be here at this particular place, at this particular time, we'll be happy to feed you and hunting and house you. Yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 37:10
So you get the five star treatment. No. Okay,

Jason Riddle 37:15
not that trip, the next trip. Yes, okay, not 90, not not, not a double odd to oh one, but oh 1202 after the war had started, oh yeah, they rolled it out. Okay, so, so the the thought process was that this is going to be a permanent operation, a permanent base, right? So the first set of brick buildings were starting to get installed when I was there, across 2000 2001 Okay, so there was a lot of sense of permanency getting ready to happen, or permanent things getting ready to happen there. And so, like, we didn't live in tents. We lived in like a trailer dorm that had, it was like a big, long, skinny building that had a bathroom in the middle and like a in, like a lounge in the middle that had it, like, we call it a day room, okay, and the computer was there. So again, to date, to date, where we are one computer for 130 GIs that had really shitty internet in Kuwait. Wow, at work. So each shop, not each person, had a computer. So the crew chiefs had had a computer, the weapons guys had a computer, the supply guys had a computer, a specialist had a computer. So that's it, yeah, like the whole shop shared it, and there's some shenanigans ensued, because this is back in the day of username and password. Everybody shares one terminal. So a lot of times computers got stayed logged into unintentionally.

Abdullah Najjar 38:58
And we know what happens when

Jason Riddle 39:01
you guys tell the emails get sent to people you may not be ready if you receive them nice. So, yeah, um,

Abdullah Najjar 39:13
perks of having a shared portal. Perks of perks. Yeah, perks

Jason Riddle 39:16
having a shared portal. Like a few people got emails sent out on their in their account that they weren't happy about. Yeah, unsolicited, unsolicited, yeah again. Like, you know it wasn't as it things were not as egregiously devious. Then, like, I want to say that, like, not that fun was more wholehearted. But like, I don't think we just had the same level of deviousness that exists within Gen Z. Like, we just weren't at the same tier. What I mean, we weren't like, you know, ready to destroy each other's lives, but we we definitely thought we had a dark sense of humor, and things were definitely like, you know, a little sketch, like a. One of the guys I worked with, he left his account open, and somebody emailed his sister from his email account about how he's like, you know, and he was, again, this is the odds, right? So when people talk about homosexuality, it was a little different, right? And he's like, I'm surrounded by all these dudes all the time. It's all I can think about. I don't know what's wrong with me. Could it? Could? Am I Normal? Am I okay? And he was, like, a big bible thumper Christian too. So it was even more kind of fun. So she so she plays along though. She emails Mac and she's like, Yeah, in that all like, same sex environment, I can kind of see how that happened. Wow, she fell for for it. She she realized that he had done this and like, and so that's what happened. But there was a few times where sad emails were sent. Yeah, you know, but when I just a wire, no, I ran over it, so I gotta get up. I got it, it's all good. But, yeah, funny.

Abdullah Najjar 41:01
Those are interesting times, but yeah. So back

Jason Riddle 41:04
to the mission, though there. So we show up with 12 a 10s. That was the standard package for that deployment cycle. And as I told you, before we we I was in the 74th fighter squadron. We had a sister fighter squadron called the 75th when you take a deployment package over there. So they had 22 airplanes. We had 22 airplanes. You try to take the best of all 22 airplanes over to the desert right? Granted our definition in the 74th of what a good airplane was. And the definition of what a good airplane was in the 75th didn't really drive up all the time. And most of the broken jets that I worked on while I was there were all 75th jobs. So, you know, and I joke that, like every, every unit in the Air Force, or every unit in the military, has their their 75th right? Yeah, they have another unit that is with them. It's like a partner or sister unit, and they just don't work at the same tier that's expected of you, you know what I mean? And everybody has a 75th you know? Like they're always somebody out there who's just like, oh God, you know. And they, they make it look like they have things so easy, and they don't always easy, but they just it, just from the outside. There's always that kind of like, you know, we have to be better than 35th work harder than 75th you know. There's all that kind of shit that kind of goes with it. But yeah, and that was the that was the mission there. So we had the 12 airplanes. We flew combat search and rescue alert. Okay, so we had, I want to say, three jets on CSR alert at all times, and we had the rest of the package was there for any direct action missions that were to come up while we were there. G dub gets inaugurated. So this isn't would be in um, January of oh, one that's right, right. Days after the inauguration, we went and bombed

Abdullah Najjar 43:11
Iraq. Days after the inauguration, days

Jason Riddle 43:15
Whoa. So we were the first big unit to go do a direct kinetic mission against the Iraqi military since the Gulf War. Wow. And I, I'm sure that's posturing. I'm sure that was a message to the Iraqis. And also a, probably a a change in in posturing for the US as well, right? Oh, so, up to that point, they had been moving into the southern no fly zone anti aircraft systems, which they weren't supposed to do. They were hiding anti aircraft assets in buildings and all sorts of different areas. So they were shooting at us every day, and they had been shooting at us every day since the Gulf War ended. Yeah, and the attitude was, don't go get them unless you get hit. So nothing preemptive, nothing preemptive, okay, other than then the aircraft are there, okay, right? And I like to think that we were smart enough to have like routes and paths that made it difficult for them to try to track where we were and what we were up to and when we were doing it, right? So nothing really looked routine from their perspective, but all those targeted targets that had been shooting at us for all those years went and got talked to right after George W Bush was was inaugurated.

Abdullah Najjar 44:57
So all of them were bomb.

Jason Riddle 45:00
It. I don't want to say all Yeah, but enough to where a message was sent,

Abdullah Najjar 45:04
nice, yeah, so did that was to the news, no, well, that's Yeah, so you're telling me something that wasn't even made public in a way, or that

Jason Riddle 45:15
anybody cared to make public, right? Right, right, right. So it wasn't again. Nobody gave two shits really about the military until 911 right? You know what? I mean, yeah, like, yes. We're kind of always in a state of some sort of conflict in one way or another. Rather be high intensity, low intensity. And the American public is just like, yeah, yeah, that's how it is, right, right? But the fact that that happened in, you know, pre 911 that that was just kind of the attitude, you know, like there were cruise missiles fired at Osama bin Laden in in 98 or seven, Zen Sudan. Think so one of the times where they barely missed him. Oh, yeah, okay, okay. Like, there were times like, where we had close calls where we could have got bin Laden. Oh, 911 I've had, I've had

Abdullah Najjar 46:14
a guy on the show, right? Exactly, Prado was in Sudan, and they had eyes on him, right?

Jason Riddle 46:21
So there was a few times where it could have happened, right? And he had not really done anything except for the embassy bombings,

Abdullah Najjar 46:29
yep, and the COVID, Nicole, yeah, I was gonna mention that, but

Jason Riddle 46:33
not ne, not necessarily anything in the homeland, per se. Oh, yeah, but he definitely communicated that he wanted to, and he was still pissed at us, because in the first Gulf War, Saudi Arabia called us and not him and his Mujahideen. Ah, yes, that's what he wanted to have happen, right? So you train these guys in Afghanistan, they built a decent paramilitary force that we helped equip and train more. So equipped and train. Go watch Charlie Wilson's War if you haven't seen it. I got, I got a channel. So he felt that that was that force should have been the one that came to keep Saddam from coming into Saudi Arabia. But, I mean, let's just be honest, it was not a what we would recognize as a for real, modern military force in I don't think the Saudis had enough faith to keep them safe, and they leaned on us, right? I don't necessarily support the decision. I'm not the biggest fan of Saudi Arabia. I've been there, so I can say it with my own eyes that I've seen things I was not a big fan of, but it's and I've also seen them in Manama, and when they go crazy in Bahrain, yeah, and so cross the border. Cross the border. You know, a lot cannot see over the water, so game on as soon as you cross that bridge. And I've seen Saudis do wild stuff in Ba so granted, I don't hold their entire nation responsible for this, but I've seen people, yeah, do things that I'm not really okay with. I wouldn't like associate with these people or hang out with these people. Yeah, so,

Abdullah Najjar 48:24
so you had few days after his inauguration, fucking bombing, go, go

Jason Riddle 48:29
get him. Yeah, right, so, but, yeah. But we had, like, another month and a half there. Nothing else came down the pipe, really. So it was still a normal patrolling no fly zone, sissy SAR alert. Fast forward to after 911 right? So pretty much throughout all of oh one and the front end, yeah, pretty much all oh one, we had a lot of training going on. We went to Vegas a bunch of times to drop bombs.

Abdullah Najjar 48:58
Do you can you disclose where those bombs are being dropped, or is that something that remains classified?

Jason Riddle 49:03
No, it's at the Nellis test and the NC TR, so the Nellis test and training range, okay, right? So that that whole range compound, where that classified location is also at, it's all kind of encompassed in this big space, right? So everybody in the world like, because we had, like, German F fours there to come play with us. We've had that my first trip to Vegas, British tornados were there. Really, everybody in the world comes to Nellis to play air games in that space. Because you can go live really, yeah, you can't grant you can't fire missiles at other airplanes, but you can drop bombs and shoot and shoot your guns as much as you want.

Abdullah Najjar 49:45
And I think even nuclear testings were, there

Jason Riddle 49:48
was nuclear testing there before, yeah, yeah, there's actually in Vegas, there's a bar called the the atomic cafe. That was that the roof you were you could go up there and watch. Them do nuclear testing. And they would, they would, they would sit there and drink and watch the nuclear testing happen. They have pictures inside it. Have you been Yeah, we've been there. My wife and I went there. Yeah, it was really cool. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 50:12
wow, yeah. So you have nine, 911 happens that changes the course of history, you know, and you get a shifting sort of triggers to war on terror. Perhaps we should probably call it the G war on terror, global war on terror. And that I'm sure even when that happened, were you here in the US earlier? Oh, so you were like, Yep, I gotta go back and get after those people. Yeah. So

Jason Riddle 50:45
we were at, we're at Pope, um, we were right in the middle of an exercise. So we were training to deploy, yeah. And we had, um, actually broke our first record since I had been in the unit. So we were the first, it was the first time a unit of our size had generated that amount of aircraft that fast in order to be prepared to go to war. Wow. So across the entire a 10 community, we were the first to shatter that record. Wow. Um, granted. Now I am a lucky dude who got to serve with some pretty amazing people, particularly at that time in my life. And maybe that's just the the right mixture of all of us who are there together at the same time, okay? And because I don't know what, what their records look like these days, I don't know what, what happens in that that world right now, I've been away from, you know, a 10 maintenance since 2009 or 2005 so it's been a while since I have any idea what that maintenance complex looks like, gotcha, or what that operational tempo looks like. So I don't want to speak to how good or how not good they are now, but at that time, it was, it had been the first time we had done something that that fast and that large, um. I had a friend of mine who was at Barksdale, where GW landed on 911 in Louisiana, and I had on actionable Intel, high confidence that their beef, it's two fleet was as ready to go as ready to go. Can be um and be fit to use. Are long range strategic Nuclear Bombers. And you add, you can add, you can make the two and two, make four for yourself on that one. Um, but I thought it was also interesting that our Commander in Chief felt the need to, like, wrap himself in a highly lethal blanket on the day. You know what I mean, right? So that was kind of interesting. But yeah, 911 was it to me. It was just a regular day. We were working six,

Abdullah Najjar 53:08
six to 612, hour shifts, everybody. I

Jason Riddle 53:12
got home at a little bit after six in the morning, and I remember I just got to sleep, like good sleep, like drooling sleep. And my my hard line phone rang again, where we're dating, the situation, right? Yeah, yeah, I had a hard line 2.4 gigahertz cordless phone right next to my bet, right? And I answered my phone, and was my mom, and my mom goes, Hey, we're under attack. Someone just crashed an airplane into the World Trade Center and so, and I was like, What are you talking about? That happens all the time. Now, the reason why I said that happens all the time, okay, like the week before, I had just watched, I was a Big History Channel nerd back then, and I just watched a documentary about the World Trade Center, and the World Trade Center was clipped regularly by helicopters and small airplanes a lot. So when I said that happens all the time. That's what I thought, right? She's like, somebody crashed an airplane in the world trade center. I was like, well, it gets bumped and nicked all the time by things that fly around it. It's only a matter of time before somebody just nose dives right into somebody's office. Yep. So when she's like, No, I'm serious, like, they're a full on jetliner crashed into the World Trade Center. You have to, like, go turn on a TV. And I hit the button on the TV. It cuts on WRAL NC, right and I watched the second aircraft crash into the tower. Lush right there. So this is like. Eight something in the morning, I told my mom I had to go, and I hang out the phone. I call the office, and what I get from my leadership at the office is just hang on. We're gonna do a recall. So back then, back then, readiness was a big deal, right? So, you know, I'll mention how ridiculous readiness is later. But we always were, kind of like show off how ready for war we were. Yeah, get everybody here, get everybody packed. Get everybody ready to go. Go, go, go. Always on Fifth gear. Man, ready? Ready to get there, right? That was readiness. And so you would do what was called a recall, and they run down every chain of every section, and it starts at the top, and that phone tree gets initiated. Everybody gets a phone call, and based on the instructions on the recall, you have so much time to get to work, right? And that recall was informational only, and our first sergeant did it, which was the first time that he did it ever and at we had pro words on the back of the recall roster. All he said was like recall option. And I forgot what option it was. I think he said Charlie, right? So would have an option C on the back of the recall roster. And I never heard we never did that before, so shit THE FUCK IS option C, I go and I look on the back of the thing, and it was just like, accountability slash informational, right? And so later on, I get a call I was on. I was on night shift, so, and the exercise was still going on, as far as I know. Um, and so I got like, no sleep, and I call in, like, at midday, like, what's the plan? And they're like, we'll come in at your normal schedule time, and we'll figure out from there. So between midday and when we came in, at some point, the FAA had grounded all flights for the entire country, right? So, um, we didn't fly. We didn't do anything. So a flying unit that can't fly, what is there to do, right? Um, everything had been generated. So everything that needed to be fixed is fixed. Wow. So, you know, what else is there to do at this point? So we pretty much got sent home that night with instructions that everyone was going to come in on day shift, and day shift was going to start like around eight ish, right? So no, so the the exercise had had ended, okay, um, but we found out on 912 like, how good we had been right. We had no idea that we had shattered those records for the H N community. So we get in on 912 we did a FOD walk. So a FOD walk is where you walk the parking ramp, where the airplanes are okay, and you clean up any foreign object damage FOD. So if there's any, like, loose shit on the ground, you have to pick it up and clean it up, right? I had a restricted area badge, which it's called your line badge, right? I had it tucked in my shirt because I was used to working at night, so I was a bit of a rebel, right? I wore my reflective belt during the day to kind of, even though I didn't have to, okay, but like to show off, like, Listen, I am not a view. I work at night. I'm a swing shifter, you know. And we all wore it kind of like, like loose and like to the side, so it looked like a gun belt. So we looked like gun fighters from the Old West gun sling. And so, like, I had my gunslinger freaking reflected belt on, and like, out of nowhere, we're in or in our little line, walking down the fucking white line, and a red blazer rolls up, or No, a red Bronco, the oj, oj car, right, okay. Like a truck I had not seen on the on the ramp before, rolls up and it's full of cops and really, and this cop rolls up on me, and he's like, he's like, Where the fuck is your line badge? And I like, pull it out of my shirt and flop it out on my chest. And he's like, booking not today, bro. Booking not today.

I'm like, obviously I have to be here like you. Obviously don't know maintainers very well if you think I'm trying to break in to fucking do this. I remember so I had made sure I left my line badge out that day Jesus Christ. I. Yeah, but yeah, so 911 happens. We we keep hearing that we weren't going to get a piece of 911 of the life after 911 we were on deck to go back to El jabber in that winter again, back to Kuwait. Yeah, and we knew we're going to go back to Kuwait, but all these things were starting to happen in Afghanistan, you know, the horse soldiers and all these things are starting to happen in that, that October, November, December, time frame, right? Yeah, we leave to go there in February of two. Right to Afghanistan. No, to Kuwait. To Kuwait. Oh, this, this is the beginning of where all jobs start in Kuwait. Okay, because both Afghanistan and Iraq started in Kuwait. For us, we get over to Kuwait and we're running the same missions that we had been running, the patrol a no fly zone, combat, search and rescue, ready for whatever is going to happen in the no fly zone. And also, there was a lot of concern that with the destabilization that Saddam was going to get Froggy, because he would threaten and his his rhetoric would get a lot more aggressive in this time frame, right? And so there was a lot of worry that Sadam was going to do something, and he didn't. But the the tasking work comes down for what later became Operation Anaconda, and that's our first fray as a 10 community, into OEF, into Operation Enduring Freedom. So we go to another place, and we ran the missions for Operation Anaconda

Abdullah Najjar 1:01:52
out of there. Okay, another place. You cannot disclose. It seems I don't

Jason Riddle 1:01:55
want, I don't think I want to worry about it, because of all the shit I already told you,

you know, just keep it under we'll just keep it under wraps. So we're in this other place. We're running this operation, right? And it's like 72 hours straight, right? The jets come back, they get gas, ammo, sometimes the pilot comes out, and then they just go right back. And if you follow the Battle of Roberts Ridge, you know how important it was to have close air support on station the entire time. Yeah, right. And it was a big mess. Operation Anaconda was, was a big fight. It was probably the first big fight, if I remember correctly, of the the RG watt, right? So we then leave the other place and come back to Kuwait. Right? For our perspective, it's over, right? Our piece of the G wat has ended. Yeah. Then, out of nowhere, pack your shit. You're going to Afghanistan. Whoa, and everyone's like, okay, so we pack our shit, we go to Bagram, which was very much a used to be Russian base. Then, like, you know, people talk about, you know, like deployments to Bagram now or before the Taliban took back over again in 2020 or 2021 you know, it was like a regular military base, like, like you see in the CONUS, like, it was the same kind of thing. By that point, it was like, like a Ramstein of the Middle East, if you will, right? Very well established. Lots of big airplanes, lots of lots of big infrastructure, yeah, you know, they carried weapons, kind of as a whatever, right? And there was lots of talk like, there was definitely a shift in the g1 where talk of being outside the wire became a thing like, like, being outside the perimeter, out in the world, doing things. And when I tell people what, like Afghanistan was like when I got there was, there was no wire to be on the other side of it's all bad guy territory. We just happen to be here, holy shit, right? And we received sniper fire regularly, particularly when they figured out what a 10s were. Oh, yeah, you know, they'd never seen anything that big, that that lethal.

Abdullah Najjar 1:04:38
I've never seen until you showed me a picture of an a 10. I mean, it's a big plane, yeah, and it sends a message, it really does. It really does. Sticking out that's a big gun in the nose sends

Jason Riddle 1:04:48
a big message, we're not here to we're not Care Bears. We're here to fight right, right? And it's the last gun fighting aircraft in the in the mill, in the entire DOD, right, where it has a gun that's meant to destroy. Boy, anything that's in front of it, right, right? Scary,

Abdullah Najjar 1:05:02
fucking scary. Fucking cut, right. And

Jason Riddle 1:05:06
it's even like, when you know the science of it, it's even more scary because, like, it doesn't make a sound when it fires, because the rounds are super sonic, holy shit. So first round from a gun burst from an A 10 is on target. Before you hear it,

you fly that. I

Jason Riddle 1:05:23
mean, I mean, it's a one seater, obviously, no. But you know, the the fact that that kind of that our country has that in its arsenal, dude is like, nobody has that. Wait, nobody has that. Nobody has that in, not in that form. No, wow. The likelihood of you actually hearing the aircraft engines is higher than it is. Are you actually hearing the gunfire before you've been hit? Good Lord, yeah. So yeah, and you can see it if you go, if you look up some videos online, yeah, you'll see the smoke come out of the front of the airplane. And then you hear the hear the Yeah. Okay. Anyways, so, yeah, they had never seen anything like that. You know, the Taliban guys and the al Qaeda guys that are in in Afghanistan, they're very, you know, the worst thing they'd seen was probably, like a Russian Hind, you know, probably make 20 ones like noisy things that don't have a lot of lethality. You bring hogs into the mix, it sends a different message, right? And so they definitely did not like us being there. Oh, yeah, not one bit. No. And we had artillery pieces in the grass between the runway and the parking apron, where they where we parked our jets. And they would regularly respond to any small arms fire in the bowl, because bargains like down in a little bowl, right? And they would respond to any fucking small arms fire with artillery fire, wow. So you would hear bop, bop in the middle of night, and then you'd hear ka boom, Ka boom, Ka boom, Ka boom, boom. That response, right? So it was, it was such a crazy time. Our commander, who later became our unit commander, like he was the detachment commander of this event. He's like, welcome to the scariest place on Earth. Holy shit. There was unexploded ordnance everywhere. We found out we drove over a high explosive 23 millimeter round that was like in the road. We drove over it for like two weeks straight. We had a bad rainstorm out of nowhere, because they always say after it rains, all the explosives show up, like they rise to the surface where they get washed off. In this case, it was this live 23 millimeter round that we had been driving over for a week. Would you notice it? Well, it was buried. It was buried. Just enough. Oh, and sure enough, the guys who came and took care of it, they're like, yeah, if you'd hit the tip, it had blown up. Holy shit.

Abdullah Najjar 1:07:56
He's avoided that in like, Yep,

Jason Riddle 1:08:00
the first they were there, so the tail of an a 10, kind of looks like an h, right? We were hanging the tails over the over the concrete, so you'd have the tricycle wheel, right, yeah, the back end of the aircraft would be over the grass. Oh, yeah, right, sure enough. Like the out of nowhere, these two EOD guys show up, like, on our second day of running operations. And they're like, hey, what time are you guys launching? And I'm like, Who the fuck are you? I'm not gonna fucking tell you shit. And they're like, because there's a grenade over there that we have to blow up as soon as you guys take off. And we're like, oh, okay, cool. Like we're leaving in like 15 minutes, we launch all the jets out as scheduled, right? And they come over there, and they blow up this fucking grenade. And they had a mindflayer, which is like a, like a bulldozer that has an armor bulldozer that has like a chain on, like a wheel in the front, and it's meant to disrupt mines in a in a mine field and to set them off, yeah, right, or to bring them to the surface so they can be dealt with by disposal technicians. Oh, my. Well, the mine flavor would hit shit all the time, and so you'd see it out there. Boom.

Abdullah Najjar 1:09:25
How many mines were in that fucking place?

Jason Riddle 1:09:27
I don't even know if they got them all. Like, I don't know if they got them all by the time, like, the, like, the Taliban came back,

Abdullah Najjar 1:09:34
was this like, when what the Soviets retreated, they planned, yeah, shit. They did all

Jason Riddle 1:09:37
sorts of shit. Whoa. Okay, and the Afghan is like the the Afghani government, yeah, couldn't figure out how to get an Air Force to work, huh? They, they, they had make 22 or make 20 ones, but they were all fucked up. They were they're fucked up long before we got there. I have pieces of one of the make 20 ones in my at my house.

Abdullah Najjar 1:09:59
I. I see this.

Jason Riddle 1:10:02
We took a trip out to the MiGs and and got to freaking like, go play around in the MiGs, I believe still at the unit, in the bar, because most fighter squadrons have a bar. They're one of the tails is in in the bar. Okay? So we had a guy go cut the tail off, and we took it home with us. Wow. Um, but in the in that area where the MIGs were, there were underground, like hardened shelters. And when we got there, there's, like, shotgun shells all over the ground. And, like, I don't know who it was. But whoever cleared that area, like, obviously had a fight with shotguns, so they were close enough to where a shotgun wasn't. Shotguns were employed to clear out whoever was there, because they said that when they did go clear Bagram, which I would love to, like, talk to somebody, or know somebody who was there before we got there, because, like, there's so many mysteries that were, like, so strange right in the the compound that became the Air Force compound, there was, like, this big pit in the middle of it that had, like, I think it had an oven in it, an oven, like, like, just trash like, but like, the biggest thing that I could recognize was this oven that somebody and I don't know if they were like, in the process of, like, building a burn pit or what they were doing, yeah, but it was obviously a place where they were dumping trash. Well, fucking dudes from the base, like medical people, start seeing, like, bones, bones. And it was determined that they were human bones. So they were like, human remains in there somewhere such a mysterious place. It was, it was like, it was kind of like, like, being, like, in a, like, a different planet a little bit, yeah, because it was so abandoned, and it had that very abandoned feel, right, um, and it was so like, like, there, there was a building, like, across the way that had had a fire. And I don't know if that fire was like, when they were clearing the base or when, but like, it's like, this burned out fucking building across the way from where we built our tents. And, like, there was just so many like, mysterious things, right? And it was so it was really cool to be there at that time, to open it, what later became, like such a massive installation, yeah, and

Abdullah Najjar 1:12:25
at the time you were you had also, I think we mentioned, even before we started recording, you had everybody. You got Delta Force. You got the CIA, Delta Force,

Jason Riddle 1:12:35
CIA dudes, press, lots of cool guys with beards.

You know, there's a story that. So there were these two guys. They were in uniform with no, no markings. That's kind of, you know, somebody's a spook, right? Yeah. And when carmid Karzai came to visit Bagram, okay, which, which we were there for this, right? And there are pictures of Karzai looking at one of our airplanes, and they like, cut off the base. So I was on the wrong side, and I got stuck on the other side of the base because I'd gone to the base exchange with with a buddy of mine. Okay, so me and this dude were waiting for them to lift the gates so we can walk back to where we lived, which was right next to where airplanes were. These two dudes are hanging out next to us, and they're like, kind of talking. And we get to talking to them, and we're like, oh, well, where's your home base? That's a normal question that people ask when they're deployed, right? And we have, we did deploy with our unit patches on, which was a rarity for the time. And they're like, Oh, we operate off the east coast. What

does that mean?

Jason Riddle 1:13:56
And I'm like, Roger that. And my buddy's like, what does that mean? I was like, Shut the up. Stop asking questions. That's the deal. These These dudes are cooler than us. And what was funny is that that as soon as I said all that, like they they like keyed up that we're okay to talk to, and they can only talk to us so much. And they started laughing. And the guy goes, I recognize your patches and I know your airplanes. Oh, wow. And so I was like, Okay, so he's probably a Delta kid from Bragg.

Abdullah Najjar 1:14:31
But yeah, they were like, were they pretty shit? Holy shit.

Jason Riddle 1:14:35
They look like human T bones. We're glad

they're on our side.

Like they never, like, never skipped leg day, you know. Like they were, there were large people, you know. And I was like, Holy shit,

Abdullah Najjar 1:14:49
were they also one of those bearded folks, the

Jason Riddle 1:14:52
one, the one guy had a beard, the other guy did not. Or, no, no, neither one had a beard. I think that's why we thought they were approachable. Uh. Oh yeah, because the dudes with beards, they look like Afghanis. Oh yeah, yes, I saw one in the chow hall one day. So our chow hall did not have benches to sit down at, okay? And this is also kind of like that, that that soft type of dining place, or dining facility, or expeditious dining facility, at these tall, high top tables that everybody stood up and ate at. Okay, you didn't sit down and eat the jaw. And is a very expeditious place. It looked like, like, you know, you could hitch horses out front, you know, like, it did not look like a place where, like, the overhang was just like this, like slapped together Corrugated Roof or overhanging thing, and out of nowhere, I'm like, eating. And then I, like, in my peripheral, I see a dude that looks like he's in like, Afghan gear, and like, kind of like, twitched a little bit. And it is a ginger American who has like, a very bright red beard, wow. And like, he is in Afghan gear, and he has an AK,

Abdullah Najjar 1:16:03
that dude is. And I'm

Jason Riddle 1:16:05
like, Okay, this is where we are. We're doing the thing in, in the place with, with the people, God. And we were the first big unit to deploy to Afghanistan as well. Wow. So we were the first, like regular forces kind of there.

Abdullah Najjar 1:16:22
So when these guys, when these guys operate the I'm sure they receive codes of like, what to say, what not to say, who to talk to, absolutely, talk to, right? Absolutely, yeah. But they are also sometimes indistinguishable, like you see this guy walking around. He said it might look like AF. And guy, I mean, that might be one of the purposes of some of their missions, right? Absolutely, to blend in, particularly in that time frame, yeah. And to dye your beer. Because I know that some of those tribal chiefs, yes, they dyed their beer, especially the

Jason Riddle 1:16:55
corangle, right? They love to have the bright red. Oh yeah, right. Oh yeah. And also we had, we had guards that were from the Northern Alliance, really, yeah. So we had Afghani guards that were, like, our security forces guys.

Abdullah Najjar 1:17:09
You trust those guys.

Jason Riddle 1:17:10
I mean, who else you gonna trust, right? You know, you get there, and some so and so says this guy's cool. That's kind of how it was back then, even

Abdullah Najjar 1:17:18
in Benghazi, when they had the whole thing with, like, the annex, yeah, you had these security

Jason Riddle 1:17:23
guys, 12 September dudes that were supposed to come help them. And they said, Yeah, February 17, or something like that. It was a date. Yeah, they used as their, their normal they also had the

Abdullah Najjar 1:17:33
guards that were not, you know, you had these guards for a while, but then they decided to turn your back on you when the shit, you know, shit hits right now,

Jason Riddle 1:17:40
we had, now, I don't know if they were Afghani or they weren't okay, that were like laborers that were on base, right? And back then we called them tcns Or third country nationals. Now they call them oceans or other country nationals, right? And I understand the third, third world connotation there is kind of shitty, but I didn't make the name up. I just was told that's what they were called, okay? And they would assign, like, that was a roving detail, right, to watch these dudes. And they would assign like a random person to, like, watch these people to perform what they called force protection duty, right? And in true Air Force form, we can fuck up a cup of air. They they gave this lady who was, I think, an air traffic controller, a rifle who probably had only fired in basic training. And because, again, it was a different time. Like the concept of what ready is, what ready to fight looks like, had not really been as defined as we know it these days. Okay? And she gets assigned to watch these guys that were there to to burn the shit. Okay, right? So that was one of their jobs. They're they're running the the shit burning operation, and she's there guarding them to make sure they a stay on task or don't go where they're not supposed to go. Right? Not the smartest move to put a small person regardless of gender. Yeah, right. I wouldn't put a little dude there either, right, right. Um, to watch over these. You know, there are these large people from, who knows where, right? Because some were Afghani, somewhere, like, from from Northern Africa, somewhere from regular, like, deep Africa, seriously, yeah, there were, there were people there that were laborers from all over the world. Wow, yeah, and like, the and the construction companies had come in to try to help build the place they had brought their people to. And so there's this mixture of of workers who were on the on the the base, even though that's a loosely used term, yeah, um, that were kind of from everywhere, right? And so this lady's heard this is right after I left, too. I. Her job was to watch them. Well, they jumped her shit and took her rifle, and they were getting ready to do something. But back then, so this is right in front of the old air control tower. That's, that's still, I think it's still at bottom, okay, all the missions got launched from right there. So like all those Delta kids and Special Forces kids and 10th mountain dudes, they would kid up and get ready to go from there, right? So one of these missions is getting ready to jump off when this happens. So the SF kids go over and they square these people away and disarm them. And however they did that, right? I heard they beat the shit out of them, and that's, and that's how that situation was solved, yeah, back then, you know. And this is, like, you know, this is in, like, well, into 2002 was probably summer of, oh, two, and this went down. And, yeah, it was just a crazy time and a crazy place. Good Lord. And honestly, though, for us, it was really it was quiet, because after Robert's rich and after Afghanistan, we didn't really have a lot of shit jump off, um, like we would go and fly and, you know, I think the the the al Qaeda kids and the Taliban guys figured out what a 10 sounded like, and they would probably run and hide. That happened a lot. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 1:21:28
was there when you were there? Before I even asked this question, I wanted to ask, how long was your deployment to Afghanistan?

Jason Riddle 1:21:36
So my trip to Afghanistan was really short. Okay, so back to Big Blue. Big Air Force was still pretty cheap when it came to deployments, even after the war had started and we kind of had, like, more money we could count. They didn't want us there for too long, because the mission in Kuwait was still valuable, right, right? So we get augmented by a reserve unit from Kansas City and New Orleans. Back then, New Orleans had an A 10 unit. There was a reserve unit, and Kansas City had one too. I think Casey still there, not sure. So a mixture of aircraft come from New Orleans and from KC, their job is to come relieve us in Bagram. Yeah, even though it didn't really happen that way, it still became like for the rest of that year, for the rest of oh two, it was like this mixture of active duty and reservists and and active duty and reserve aircraft at Bagram.

Abdullah Najjar 1:22:37
Okay,

Jason Riddle 1:22:38
so we get back to Bagram or back to Kuwait after this, and we're working with all these dudes who have, like, generations of a 10 experience. Wow. It was a so, it was like, so we go from this, like, foreign planet of Afghanistan, right, yeah, to, like, this major military culture shock.

Abdullah Najjar 1:23:03
And I'm sure none of you guys had experience worked with those guys,

Jason Riddle 1:23:05
no, and they like, they looked at us like we were children, good Lord, and sometimes treated us like we were children. But it was, it was also kind of like awesome, because when their jets would break, like they knew like right away what to do. Like, no problem. There was no it could be this. It could be that. It was, it was, oh, it's probably that part I put in, like six months ago. It was probably bad, wow, because they knew their aircraft to that level. Oh, right. They They also didn't strap their pilots in, which was an interesting cultural change for our pilots, interesting. So we strapped our pilots in, yeah. So the pilot gets in the seat, and he kind of like hits these two little buckles that are right here by the tops of his shoulders, right? So he sits there until the crew chief comes and puts those first two buckles in, and then the pilots usually put the bottom two in themselves. Their crew chiefs didn't do any of that. So and like, and by like, when I say they're much older than us too. Like they were like, way senior in rank, right? So take everybody in my unit and promote them by two. And that's like, who works out there, right? So you have like, e sevens and E sixes out there, like very senior people, yeah, out there doing jobs that we do with E fours and E fives. Wow. Okay, and there's usually one e7 who's in charge of all of us while we're out there working. And in their case, there was, like, one e8 that was in charge of all of them while they were working. Even got the eights, but they brought two. We brought one. And while we were there, they promoted another one, good. So they had three eights in their unit. So like, when it came to like saying yes and no, like, they were like, No, I.

Abdullah Najjar 1:25:00
Yeah. So you were working with the big dogs, right?

Jason Riddle 1:25:02
And so it was crazy. So, you know, like, our pilots would fly their jets, and like, one of their crew chiefs would be crewing the jet, and like, he'd be up there freaking holding things open, and like, they're on microphones so they could talk to each other. And he'd be like, so you're coming up or what? And he'd be like, you don't know how to put your seat belt on. And like, and one of the one crew chief who told me about it, he came in, he was like, he said, I said, I said, Son, you don't know how a seat belt works. And I was like, You just told a freaking Lieutenant Colonel you don't know how a seat belt works. And you called him son when you did it serious like this is my first shot into into the fray of rank. Doesn't matter. But, yeah, it was, it was such a wild time. That was a crazy trip. I definitely saw way too far past the the curtain that I should have. And then, you know, a year later, we went to Iraq, and kind of did the same thing. Started out in Kuwait. Some of us drove up to Iraq, some of us flew up to Iraq, and we opened to Lille Air Base, okay, in Iraq, which later became camp adder. In when I went back in, oh, nine, it was camp atter. Let

Abdullah Najjar 1:26:21
me. I'm gonna now pull up a map, and I'd love to, let's see

Jason Riddle 1:26:25
here. There's me near on us area.

Abdullah Najjar 1:26:28
Okay, let's let me go into, let's go to Middle East. Here. Middle East. Want to see the root the, let's say the land navigation into a rack. Let me see if I could zoom in. Yeah, okay, try to zoom in. Okay, so this is that

Jason Riddle 1:26:59
little dot. That's

Abdullah Najjar 1:27:00
good. Very, very small, yep. And some of you guys, I mean, you were at the border, well, no, we

Jason Riddle 1:27:07
were actually near Kuwait City. Oh, so we weren't really that far from we were, we was a distance to the border.

Abdullah Najjar 1:27:14
Yeah, Koi city is right here. Yep. Some of you guys, like you use your vehicles to enter into the border to Iraq, yep. But where were you like stationed? Because Baghdad is right in the middle of Iraq,

Jason Riddle 1:27:26
so way further south, right on the it right along the Euphrates, is where nasaria is in the

Abdullah Najjar 1:27:35
South. Okay, like you're around here? Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

Jason Riddle 1:27:42
Yeah, kind of in the, like, not quite in the Shia area, oh, because, you know how people think of the the Shia areas that kind of, like, close to the Iranian border side of the river, right? And that's true, but like, we're, you could see it, yeah? So

Abdullah Najjar 1:27:59
let me, let me, let's think. Let me take us back to the first, so, first deployment to Iraq. So the invasion, I forgot when the invasion started, like it's 2003 but like a beginning? Was it late? Late 2000 no more beginning. March, march, march. Yeah. So you guys were called up at what time of the year during that time,

Jason Riddle 1:28:22
so we knew so this, this trip to Kuwait was a rotational thing, yeah, right. So it was a commitment that was pushed down to our fighter group that we had accepted, right? So it just happened to be that other things were happening during our Southern Watch deployment, right? And so we go back for Southern Watch, at least as far as we know with Southern Watch, right? Um, the we did hear that there was something supposed to happen about Iraq, right? And it was going to take 10 months. Wow. So the plan was our sister Squadron, even though it wasn't their turn, was supposed to go first, which was bullshit. So the 75th goes first. They got to tole before we did. Yeah, and they kind of had, they pulled some shady shit, some shady 75th shit, as they always did. They they sent some like so a lot of parts on on airplanes are redeemable, okay, right where they go back to the depot, and they get repaired and sent back out to the fleet. And then there's a financial component that's associated to that, yeah. So like, like, kind of imagine, like an engine core charge, right? So, like, if you buy an engine from someone, and they give you what's called a core charge, and so you bring back the old engine, and. Then they get the opportunity to recycle it, right? Then they give you back the core charge that exists in the military logistical system. Okay, right, yeah, so your unit is charged financially against your maintenance budget for this item until the old one is returned. Gotcha. We get there, and there are two, like, extremely outstanding bills. And also that Bill racks a little bit every day. Seriously, yeah, it's called doing for maintenance or different, um, and you it's, and it's a it's a clock. It means different time, right? And so an engine fan disc, which is the fan which is the encasing around the fan blades around the engine is missing, and a fuel and engine relay box is missing, really. And so we tear the place apart looking for these parts. We can't find them. Turns out they're in the burn pit. Been in the burn pit for months. They're gone. And we had to figure out how to get that situation remedy. And that was a gift left upon us by the 75th

and like, they did a bunch of shitty shit. There's so much shady shit. Oh, my God, they did what's called a combat phase when they didn't fucking have to. So the aircraft, every 400 hours, it has to go into what's called a phase inspection, right? So there's a clock that's in the aircraft that tracks those hours. Yeah, that's also basically how you manage the war, right? So your your available aircraft are based on who needs to go in a phase and when, right? Yeah. So these motherfuckers this word, yes, they do a combat phase, which is, which you don't, you can do okay in combat, right? But they weren't fucking in sustained combat. They didn't have to do this. They had, they had a full complement of people that could have done this, no problem. And they could have done a real phase, right? And so in phase, you change a lot of fasteners, you change a lot of filters. You do, like, a lot of like, schedule maintenance to keep the airflame afloat. Okay? A combat phase means they just open all the panels, make sure all the parts are still there, and then close all the panels and send it back out. Panels and send it back out. They did this bullshit. So the same aircraft. So this is the only time we deployed where we didn't bring our own planes. Yeah, the aircraft stayed in station. People moved. Airplanes stayed bad fucking idea, because that this is when we start to uncover all this shit that had gone down during the real war, and so these bastards do all this shit. And I'm sure, you know, I don't blame the individual technician. It was somebody in senior leadership who who thought this was a great idea, right? And that's who, that's who's responsible for this, not not my brothers and sisters that I I'm still friends with, I'm still tight with. I don't hold you guys responsible. You just followed orders. You did your job. But whoever thought this is a great idea and whoever sold it as a great idea needs to be at least punched really hard. And so they do this. So we get this, we get We catched hell for this aircraft being fucking severely out of, out of phase. So we had to do a full on face on this jet, and clearing the combat phases, I guess, requires a bunch of other jobs. It didn't affect my job, but it affected, you know, all of us from a certain point of view, right? And the jet was down, you know? And when, when you have to, when you have 12, you have to make fly, and one's not flying. We steal a lot of parts from the Jets. Now, you steal a lot of parts from the jet that's down, wow. And so it had already gone through this combat phase. We wrote much shit out of it to keep the other jets flying. And so it was just such a major pain in the ass to get this jet back in the air. And I was, I remember being like, physically scarred from this whole event. I was like, You guys suck,

Abdullah Najjar 1:34:16
man, that's okay. Well, here, this is, let me just say we did approximately an hour and a half. I can keep going, for sure, because there's more, yeah, yeah. I want to, like, there are two parts that I really want to explore. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And I would say that I might just grab, grab some water real quick, yeah. But also, we've got two things I'd love to talk to you some more about one is, is obviously 2011 Libya. Yes, that's a big major, yeah. And then prior to that, I'm sure you've had other experiences abroad before Libya,

Jason Riddle 1:34:56
yeah? Well, um, not as many as you think. Yeah. So. From so, oh three, we come back, oh four. Lots of training. They were on deck. So for some reason, because we had gone, like so many years in a row, the rotational cycle about sending the a 10 units out was like fractured in a way, right? And so the way the Air Force repaired it was, they basically gave our fighter group, like, a whole year and a half off, right? And in that year and a half I retrained, I got the out of avionics, and I became a satellite communicator, really. So that process started in oh four and finished in oh five, because I remember telling, like, you know, my leadership in my unit, I'm not going to be here anymore summer of, oh, five, so you can just start making plans and training people and doing things differently. Because they were like, well, you're going to be here. Like, no, I'm not, because, and because I was a first term airman, they can't take away your opportunity to retrain. Yeah, they have to give you one more shot at the Air Force in a different job before you re enlist, right or before you decide to re enlist. And that's what I had done, because I knew that even though I enjoyed the job satisfaction of aircraft maintenance, it took its toll on my body, physically a lot, and in my brain and on my, you know, cardiovascular shit runs in my family and like so living ramped up like that all the time, like, I could see it damaging me, I could feel it damaging me, and I knew I needed a equally important and impactful job. But not such a high pace,

Abdullah Najjar 1:36:39
was it? Also, you talk about, like, even carrying a lot of weights,

Jason Riddle 1:36:42
yeah, carrying a lot of weight.

Abdullah Najjar 1:36:44
Oh, how much? I mean, it depends, like,

Jason Riddle 1:36:45
it depends on what piece of test equipment you need at what time. Okay, right? We had a an Air Data tester that weighed like 80 pounds, and you'd have to hump that thing from where you check tools out to out to the fucking ramp, and how long the distance would that be? It depends. It varies. Oh, you know, at home it was really far in. It was, it was wild, like, that piece of working in austere environments was always easier, like we always had, like, our our supply, our supply dudes and our tool crib, like, right by where we work, right, okay. But yet, at home, it was like, damn near half a mile away from the first airplane. So, like, at home, it sucked, but, yeah, like, you know, even at Nellis, like, at Nellis, you just walk right out of the building, and there's your fucking jets and so,

Abdullah Najjar 1:37:35
but carry a lot of that

Jason Riddle 1:37:37
stuff. So you had, we had to hump all that shit back and forth. And, like, it was just a lot of work. And I was, I want to say it was almost 2728 maybe, maybe 26 ish, yeah, when I decided to retrain, because I had, I had already had, not quite six years in the military. So you can, you can apply to retrain in your 59th month of your six year enlistment. Yeah, and so that's when I applied to retrain. But that's

Abdullah Najjar 1:38:07
one thing that I when you talk we talk about, like, carrying weights and stuff. I think that even with those people, that the train and Special Forces community, right? I mean, if you're in there for the long haul, your body at some point just can't take it,

Jason Riddle 1:38:25
right? It's usually when the adrenaline leaves, right? Yeah, when you get something that has a slower pace. For some dudes, that's when they separate, when they get out of the military. For me, it was when I got a slower paced job everything broke. Oh, that's when my back went to shit. My knee went to shit for the first time. Yeah, here I am. I'm not quite 30. Have eight years in service and freaking I my knee feels like it belongs to an 80 year old. Holy, fuck.

Abdullah Najjar 1:38:53
But in that case, when you start to realize that, and when that stuff becomes apparent, is there something that do you get, any sort of at this during your service, any additional perks? Because, like, you've put your not just your life on a line, but your physical self, oh,

Jason Riddle 1:39:12
yeah, from a certain point of view, right? Like, in my case, because I had retrained, I got an office job for like, two years. Oh, but that's only because of, like, the luck of the draw, right? I went to a place that didn't have an at at home in Garrison mission, so we didn't really do anything at home, except for sit at our desk all day, right? And, you know, and that. And, like I said, that's when everything appeared. And I'm assuming, if I now knowing what I know now about my body, that's when the adrenaline had turned off. So for that almost seven years of aircraft maintenance, the adrenaline had been high enough to where it would mask my injuries.

Abdullah Najjar 1:39:55
Oh, yeah,

Jason Riddle 1:39:56
okay, right, okay. And so. Uh, coming back down. It's like, it's like coming off of a drug Right, right when you come back down off the adrenaline, like, Oh, shit. That hurts. Oh, I didn't know that that hurt. I never, my knee never popped like that before. What is that, you know? And so, and I go and get checked out, and of course, you know, they're like, Oh, you have this problem with your knee and the problem with your knee, and it might everything started like the first thing that started hurt were my knees, and then later became my back, and then later it became my feet, and later became my shoulders, and later became my hands, which is why we are now where we are now.

Abdullah Najjar 1:40:35
That's rough. No, that's really rough. Let me ask you this about the I know there's also, like the I remember, and I saw it even on your backpack, the airborne, sort of insane, that's

Jason Riddle 1:40:49
a special forces patch. Oh, Special Forces Yes, right? Because I know for that's a special forces group patch, oh, yeah, yes, yeah. I

Abdullah Najjar 1:40:56
know that even because I thought he was airborne, because that even those people that jump out of planes with camera, all that shit that. So it can be very

Jason Riddle 1:41:02
so we would hear about crazy shit that happened at Bragg. So the 82nd airborne is that for Bragg, like everybody kind of knows that, right? Like they almost go a synonymous right? You say the 82nd people think Fayetteville, North Carolina? Yeah, they had on their headquarters building, a sign that was a was a counter that said, if they went 82 days, they got a day off without a fatality. In my time, from 99 to oh five, they never got a day off.

Abdullah Najjar 1:41:35
Holy shit.

Jason Riddle 1:41:38
And that's it. That's an at home in Garrison fatality. That's not a combat fatality, because the 82nd relief 10th mountain in Afghanistan. So they took over the big mission after 10th mountain came home. So, yeah, it's, it's wild, wow. So and like I, I heard that when I got so. Long story short, I was stationed there twice, yeah, neither time on purpose. I never asked to go there at all. Yeah. And the second time I got there in 13 I had heard that there was an incident where someone had survived their parachute not opening, and they just found like this, like, pile of goo on the ground, and this dude like died right there on the ground. But you know, it's just crazy. Yeah, you know, it is a dangerous business, you know, like I told you before, before it came on. Mike, you know, I was told from the minute I entered into the aircraft maintenance complex that the jet can kill me if I'm not respectful and smart, right, right? You know, I told you about there was a year, million years ago, there was a guy who worked over an ejection seat on f4 the seat went off while he was working in the cockpit. Yeah, I see, I saw a lot of people hit their head in the airplane. Lot of people hit their I hit my head on the airplane. I saw a lot of people. That's pretty much it. We were, we were, we called a hog bite. You got bit by the by the airplane. Airplane. We did have a, we had a so the guy the guy the e7 in charge of us is called the production superintendent, or the Pro Super Okay, he wasn't. He was a an instructor for a really long time in the in the training pipeline, yeah, but in his last airplane he had worked on were F fours. So f4 sits super low, right? A 10 sit high, yeah, right, because so you can load all the bombs on it and all that shit, right? And so he was not used to working on on an airframe that was so high up. Well, he was out there doing what's called the ER, it's the exceptional release, okay, the airframe so that you basically, like, bless the aircraft as it's good for the pilots to come fly it, right? It's a very holy experience. And if they usually do it by themselves, they didn't need anybody out there, or if they had any questions about maintenance that had been performed, or whatever, they would look through the documents and be like, Hey, can you come talk to me about this or that? How did you fix this? And why is it good, right? Those kind of conversations. Well, this dude was pretty cool about that kind of stuff. Of stuff. He didn't really ask those kind of questions. Well, he fucking hits his head on the aircraft while he's out there by himself, right? He's like, the only dude out on the ramp. This is, this is in this is on the oh two trip, okay, right. And we hear over the radio, because somebody come help. And that's not normal radio. We all haul ass out there. And he's like, fucking, like on his back with the radio, like, kind of, like on his chest, like, trying to call for help and, like, just blood is just, like, out of his Oh, my. Not, not like, not like, arterial, but definitely, like, ooh. Losing out because, yeah, a head wound just goes, Man, it just fucking, you just bleed bad, yep, and fucking, we get him out of there and, and he's fine. He's at work the next day, okay, but somebody fucking drew a chalk outline on the ground where he was hilarious, and wrote, I forgot his last name. They wrote Sergeant so and so zero. They put the aircraft tail number on the ground one. Those guys are hilarious. So, yeah, it's a dangerous industry, right? And I there's no mistake made about it, you know? I i sat on a live ejection seat for an hour and a half one time, you know? I told you that because I was pissed off at the pilot. I tried to talk the pilot out of what he claimed was wrong, which it still wasn't wrong, and I'll stick to that today. Instead, he wrote it up, right? So he gets out of the seat I get in, the crew chief had not had a chance to save the seat or safe the rest of the cockpit because the cockpit because the cockpit wasn't safe at all. So that means the there's no anti ejection pins in the seat. There's no anti ejection for the canopy, okay? Like, none of the shit, right? Like it's all live, right? So I sat on this shit for an hour and a half doing a calibration, and I look at the caution panel is like, over here to my right, and you're supposed to look for seat not armed, yeah, and I noticed that site and that light's not on, and I'm like, shit. And so I get up and I do what we used to call the QA, look around so we would look for quality assurance. Okay, you could always spot the QA guys, because they had brand new trucks and we had old, crappy trucks. So because they had fighter group money, we were just support fighter squadron. So I'd pop up and I looked around the aircraft, and I didn't see their trucks. And I just reached over so the pins are kept on the left side of the aircraft in a container. Yeah, right. And I reach in there. I pull the pins out, I slap them in under my ass so nobody's looking. I throw the other two pins in, and I throw the canopy ejection pin in. Nobody's any otherwise, but my ass is all sorts of puckered up after the fact. It's like, Man, I just sat on top of an explosive for a really long time. Holy shit. You know what? I mean, yeah, like that, like, kind of like, coming down off of the adrenaline, right? It's like, oh my god, I could have just blown myself to visits because I was mad at this pilot and, and that was a big lesson for me to not, not be so fiery, yeah, you know? And, I mean, you kind of know me. I'm a little bit of a fiery dude. I was much worse in my 20s.

Abdullah Najjar 1:47:43
Imagine now, back then energy,

Jason Riddle 1:47:45
yeah, a lot of energy, very rarely sober.

Abdullah Najjar 1:47:51
Oh, my God. Well, well, let's, let me take it to, let's, let's fast forward to, oh, let's fast forward to 2011 that's when you've got the Arab Spring. Yeah, I'm sure that sent a lot of, obviously, shock waves across the region. Even the ones that are operating in a region at the time, right? Might have thought that they might be going to battle at some point, right? And one, you know, one place or the other. And obviously, Syria is one of the, the main, the touch points, yeah, yep, that's a big

Jason Riddle 1:48:22
Well, in your hometown, near what your in your home, home country of Libya, is a big touch point in this aspect, too. Oh, absolutely.

Abdullah Najjar 1:48:30
And I remember even talking to one of my I mentioned him before, yeah, my ex's brother, he did. He was deployed to Syria. I think they had, because I know that they had a pretty substantial number of special forces guys over there during the fight against ISIS, I think, yeah, but I think he's a

Jason Riddle 1:48:51
little little pre ISIS, but yeah, ISIS, yeah, or, like, young ISIS, if you will. Okay, yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 1:48:58
But his, I think his deployment, I think was in 2019 oh,

Jason Riddle 1:49:03
then definitely that was for real ISIS, then in 19, okay, absolutely, yeah, what's left of ISIS? Exactly, yeah. That's probably more accurate assessment, yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 1:49:11
And I remember even at some point here, they brought in the former ambassador, retired ambassador, who was in Syria in 2019 and he mentioned that he was one of two civilians, American civilians, in Syria at the time. And his boss was, I'm not, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the name, but his boss was James Jeffrey. He was like a special envoy to fight against ISIS ring about, no, well, I had him. That was his boss, and I actually had him on the podcast before, like, a few years back. But anyways, what I'm trying to get at is, you know, 2011 that's a big deal. Huge, huge shift in the entire Middle Eastern slash, right, North Africa landscape, absolutely. And you were part of that, one of. The, I guess you were operating in one of the coordination perhaps right with NATO forces, right in Libya.

Jason Riddle 1:50:06
So how, how Libya touched me was so at the time, I was assigned to Admiral Stavridis communications team at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers Europe, or shape in Mons Belgium. Admiral Chavis is still kind of around. He's on MSNBC pretty regularly. If you watch Morning Joe, he's on there. He's the guy who talks about international politics a lot. He was the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, or the SAC Europe, right? A position that goes back to World War Two. The first sac year was Eisenhower, seriously? Yes, the building was named after him, or we had a conference room named after him, but, like, his bust was everywhere, and all that kind of stuff. And the first shape, the first Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, wasn't was in Paris, but Paris dipped out of NATO in like, the 50s, and they booted everybody out. So then Belgium's like, Okay, we'll come here. And so that's what built that place that I worked at, right, right? And so on the communications team, we were responsible for funneling classified information to the SAC here at the time. So everything above secret came through us, right? And I'm not going to touch into anything that's bad, yeah, but we had to route all this info to him, and a lot of his decision making stuff, right? You know, so and so needs a decision about x. So and So needs a decision about x. Um, same thing with phone calls. We routed all of his phone calls to him, all that kind of stuff, right? So when Libya jumps off, or was it Operation New Dawn on D, I think it was called, tell

Abdullah Najjar 1:51:52
you for sure,

Jason Riddle 1:51:53
I have to look it up, yeah. Or Odyssey Dawn, operation and Odyssey. Don OD, okay, yeah. Um, when that happened? So we had company, assets, CIA, people that were inside, in a skiff, inside of our skiff, okay, right? Um, they come out and they're like, when you talk to the Emerald, like, right now. And we didn't answer any questions, probably. It turns out that they knew probably that shit was gonna jump off in Libya before shit jumped off in Libya, and so they get him on the horn. Libya began with an air campaign. Yeah, right, we all kind of are aware that most of that was an air campaign, a NATO driven and coordinated air campaign. Yep, right. So we basically start to run the war with four people at a desk, not too unsimilar at the one that you're at, and a big ass phone. Wow. So we had, you know, imagine that your your desktop that you're sitting next to, okay, with six other monitors. One, Top Secret, one NATO secret one us. Secret one us on class.

Abdullah Najjar 1:53:15
Holy shit,

Jason Riddle 1:53:18
that's how we ran the first like 14 hours of the war,

Abdullah Najjar 1:53:24
only four of you guys, because

Jason Riddle 1:53:26
it was a no foreign event at first. It was not fully NATO at first. Was us. Our NATO brothers couldn't be pulled into this. What was wild Abdullah is, there's, there's a beautiful, fully functional operation center, like above us. It was amazing, right? But here we are, like funneling, like a fire hose worth of info to the boss about Libya with just the four of us, and they have like, like, 50 dudes that work upstairs, but they're NATO, they're foreign. They can't see what we're seeing, right? And so it's, it was super shitty. And so, like, we're just, like, sending him report after report after report after report. We're like, you know, nobody's sleeping, nobody's it's just fucking, just go, go, go, go, go. Right at phone call after phone call, you know, phone calls from DC, phone calls from Europe, phone calls from Africa, phone calls from everywhere, right? And we're pushing all this info to him every time we get him on the phone. He's like, we've got to get this in someone else's hands. He

Jason Riddle 1:54:40
himself is tired. He's like,

Jason Riddle 1:54:42
God, we've got to get this in somebody else's hands. Oh, my God. And after that, 12 hours ish, or 14 hours ish, right? Then it goes into the the NATO commander, they ended up picking, I think it was a guy from the UK they ended up picking, or an Italian guy. I have to go back and look. Uh, because NATO is very convoluted. It's very like, um, slow moving, I guess is the right word. No, yeah. Um, I'm in international studies here. I'm in International Studies three here. And I told the kids there about a story about, like, kind of how to picture the NATO alliance when we first got there in 10, a volcano in Italy, I believe, had gone off and spread ash all across Europe and grounded flights all across Europe. You may have, you might have been a little

Abdullah Najjar 1:55:33
kid. Yeah, I was four. No, wait, not 410 so,

Jason Riddle 1:55:37
yeah, it wasn't really on your radar. Yeah, right, but it grounded so many flights, and they were people who needed, need help, who were directly affected by the volcano. So I'm new. Um, a bunch of us are new, right? A bunch of us are new, okay, um, even the deputy, uh, Commander underneath, are sakier, right? So our so it's him and a one star, and then Navy, oh, six, they're like the big the big three of the command, right? The one star is Air Force guy, right? Super nice dude. Wicked Smart. Um, he starts to spin up to try to figure out how to get airlift to the affected area with supplies, right? A typical kind of a I think he was a c1 30 pilot, so a typical bed Jack kind of dude, move right? We're gonna try to get shit to these people and try to help them as fast as we can. But we can't just do that because we're NATO. Oh so. And this is a NATO country. So we ask the NATO situation Center, which is in Brussels, yeah, hey, so this is what's going to happen. So what do we need to do to make this happen? And they're like, well, the number one phrase you hear in Belgium when you first get there is, it's not possible, right? Or normally. So this happens to my one star over the phone from the NATO situation. Normally, you're correct. It is easy to get the airplane there with this stuff, right? But in this case, we cannot fly like and he starts giving him, like, a kind of a report of what the lay of the land. And he was like, any and the guy who he talked to was like a, like a sergeant from the fucking Belgian military. And he's like, and he's like, he's like, Are you new to NATO, sir? And he was like, Yeah, I just got here. And he's like, he's like, you will see this moves at the speed of the Alliance. The speed of the Alliance was like the phrase I paid the rest of my time I was there. So taking weeks to get humanitarian aid to these people, weeks. And that's an ally for guys, an ally a neighboring ally in the same continent, exactly like, like, hundreds of miles away, not 1000s, okay, oh, my god, so we end up getting aid to these people to help. Fast forward about a year on base. So the the NATO alliance, the national military representatives on base, kind of dictate all the legal policy on the base, right? Um, they all kind of have a vote. So crazy. The school that's on base is an international school, right? So it has people from everybody, all the families who work at the headquarters, right? And Americans. So there's like, a French school, a German school and an American school, yada yada yada, right? So they're all kind of together in this big international school thing. They don't really mix fully. They do mix like at lunch. They mix it like certain events. But the American school does American school things, and the other different schools do, they do their things, right? So right next to the school is the bowling alley. Bowling Alley serves alcohol. Nice. See where this is going. The American kids could drink on basis 16. Why, though, because it's Europe. Oh,

Abdullah Najjar 1:59:12
that's right. That's right. So

Jason Riddle 1:59:17
American kids are going and getting shit wrecked at the bowling alley at lunch, and, like, basically coming back and, like, fighting their teachers, throwing up in the hallways, like all the bad frat party things that can happen from somebody who is inexperienced with drinking, right, right? It's hilarious. I thought it was awesome. God. And again, I've always been kind of a rebel, so, like, I think that's just a little bit of chaos to all these assholes. Is great, yeah, and so this goes down, no shit, I swear to God, like 48 hours later, drinking age on basis 21

Abdullah Najjar 1:59:52
holy shit. That switch just happens, like in so,

Jason Riddle 1:59:58
so the speed of the. Plants right when it's right here in your backyard, you move really fast, but when it's in Italy or Greece,

Abdullah Najjar 2:00:09
it's not possible. Oh,

Jason Riddle 2:00:13
dude. So I thought that was hilarious. I was like, oh, when it came to blankets and food for people who had been displaced by this volcano, no, but damn it, you had better not be drinking at the bowling alley.

Jason Riddle 2:00:28
Oh, my goodness, yeah.

Jason Riddle 2:00:30
Oh and of course, there's all sorts of like you Americans ruin this. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 2:00:36
Oh my Well, that's just insane to me, because, like, you would think that an ally would be, it's like, that's like, your family member, right? You wouldn't want to delay that help in any way, shape or form, right? You're like, we're coming. We're

Jason Riddle 2:00:53
coming now, yeah, we'll be there in an hour. Yeah, yeah. That's what like

Abdullah Najjar 2:00:56
when we when we talk about, you know, a very close example since, you know, we brought up livid in 2012 when you know the, you know the al Qaeda attacks the annex and kills the ambassador, there's, there's been calls all over, you know Italy, France, you know, we've got all these, you know different, or Germany, you know us base. And I think it took maybe less than 24 hours to get there, right,

Jason Riddle 2:01:22
right? And we were in the decision making tree on that too. Oh, really,

Abdullah Najjar 2:01:26
right. Let's talk about that. What was it mean?

Jason Riddle 2:01:29
It really wasn't that big of like, from our perspective. We didn't know what was really happening. We didn't know how bad the situation was. We knew that UConn was spinning up, though, okay? And that you come was pushing back to the States to try to get assets in, in into men Ghazi ASAP. I do know. I mean, without giving away things that are, that are dirty, right? You know, there was, there was things ready to happen that were postponed by DC, okay, where they drug their feet just long enough. But like you and I know, because we've seen 13 hours right there were Delta dudes there. They got delta dudes there right post or during they got, yeah, there were at least two delta dudes there, at least, according to the books have been written about it. But

Abdullah Najjar 2:02:23
they got them in during this, during the fight, seriously? Yeah, well, that stuff didn't pop up in the movie.

Jason Riddle 2:02:31
Well, maybe it was at the end, yeah, maybe they got there at the end, because I remember it was, there's usually some, not to give away, trade craft, right? There's usually somebody at the Embassy who can help. Well, they did have, or at a neighboring embassy that can help,

Jason Riddle 2:02:48
yeah, I'm

Jason Riddle 2:02:50
like the incident in Mali. I don't remember what year it is. That guy was on Sean, Ryan, the guy

Abdullah Najjar 2:02:57
who talks about the incident, Delta Force guy. Delta Force guy, yeah, he was the,

Jason Riddle 2:03:01
he was at the embassy to train embassy folks to do like, you know, counterterrorism type events. Yeah, right. And he just happened to be there at the right time, right, right place. Yep,

Abdullah Najjar 2:03:14
I think he's the guy with the looks like Uncle Fester, you know when he talked about Saddam,

Jason Riddle 2:03:19
yes, no, it's the other dude the other day. He's much younger,

Abdullah Najjar 2:03:23
much younger. Yeah, good lord, okay, because I remember it was, there's that blonde guy with shoulder length hair.

Jason Riddle 2:03:32
Yes, I forgot the guy's name. We'd have to look it up. Yeah, I mean, I guess I could search Delta Molly. But yeah, so there's usually in place, and I know that the plan in Benghazi was to create a new embassy, right? Yep. And when things are in their fledgling stages, like who's going to do what and where is not always fully worked out, and that definitely reads to that situation, because those folks at the CIA annex. They weren't there for the embassy, right? They had their own

Abdullah Najjar 2:04:04
mission, yeah, right, weapons to proliferation, right? Like

Jason Riddle 2:04:07
they were trying to keep things chill after Gaddafi, yeah, as best they could. Yeah, right. But, um,

Jason Riddle 2:04:15
I think that, uh, let me see Molly Delta Force, yeah, Molly Delta Force, dude, oh yeah. See, he got the, he got silver cross for that, for that mission.

Abdullah Najjar 2:04:30
Wait, can I see the image in that guy? Yeah,

Jason Riddle 2:04:32
let me see if it will show his image. Um, because I got they don't have to go back. They don't say his name in this for in this one, because

Abdullah Najjar 2:04:44
then I'd have to go back to the episode and really watch it and see.

Jason Riddle 2:04:47
But the point that we're making with this, though, is that forces that are capable to help in said situation are not really, normally far away. Yeah, right. They have. Had, you know, they they show in the movie, they did get reinforced by their own guys that there were GRS dudes that came and helped them, Yep, yeah. And so there were people there that, or that could get there, that, um, could have come help. Uh, this is not unclassified, or this, is unclassified, but the 82nd maintains what's called the Global reform Response Force, the GRF, okay, at 1.1 of their Brigade Combat Teams is always in the GRF, right? So they rotate in and out of it, right? It's a like an alert cycle, and the GRF is meant to go anywhere in the world in 72 hours,

Abdullah Najjar 2:05:45
72 hours.

Jason Riddle 2:05:48
So that's why there's still big airplanes at brag to move those dudes in 72 hours. And they have some sort of agreement that keeps those airframes there. So there were things that could have been done differently. Okay, you know what I mean, like, when we push back against former Secretary Clinton and the Obama administration, there were things that could have been done differently, granted. I mean, it's not gonna bring these people back. It's not gonna change what happened? Um, what happened to Chris Stevens? Was a horribly sad event, and it's, it's sad to see anybody die like that, let alone a US ambassador who, who was, who really did have love for the Libyan people, yep, and really did want to see them step out on their own in a glorious independence that they were on deck to receive.

Abdullah Najjar 2:06:48
So, yeah, no, you're,

Jason Riddle 2:06:49
it always seems like it's that, that person who's like, that shining light that the evil comes and extinguishes. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 2:06:59
when we're we're gonna wrap it up real soon, but I did want to give a little bit of, maybe, get a little bit attention to maybe post military service, just two quick things, and then we can wrap it up. So you, when did you retire? What year was that and how did it happen in 2020 I retired 2020 Yeah, what was that like for you? It was wild.

Jason Riddle 2:07:25
So I, I you have to forecast your retirement a year out. So I clicked the button in 19 and when I decided to retire in June of 2020 The plan was because so I did make it to e6 I was in e5 for like, 12 years, but I made a t6 and I and I had one more shot at e7 right? Okay, now, knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn't have stayed anyway, if I made it right, but results dropped in June. My retirement date was one July, so I was gonna give it that one more shot to make master, to make master. And then I didn't okay. But however, because it's COVID and the world got turned on its head, yeah, COVID During the Trump administration as well, right? So there was a lot of bullshit with releasing these e7 results. So I found out, like, after I'd already collected my first retirement check, that I made it seriously. Yeah, I get, I get a Rando call from a friend of mine who worked at Air Force personnel command. He's like, bro, you made it. Oh my god. And I was like, that's great. I just collected my first retirement check. Oh my god. And he's like, you're retired. I was like, yeah. He's like, Well, I'm looking at your shit. I'm like, Dude, I'm fucking retired. And I was like, welcome to COVID military, right? Everything's messed up. And I actually leaned on him because my pay had gotten all sorts of messed up when I left. So they they normally hold your last paycheck to just make sure you don't owe the government anything. Not a lot of not a lot of people know this. They held my last paycheck to make sure I didn't owe the government anything, I didn't know the government anything. Thank God, however, but my last paycheck got withheld because at Nellis, because I, I retired from Vegas. That was my last assignment was, was in the Vegas area, if you will. But the the personnel shop that was in charge of us was at Nellis. Okay, they sat on it and they never turned on my terminal leave, because I went on leave before I left. So you go on what's called terminal leave, you burn off the rest of your vacation time. And I had, like, four weeks and some change of it that I burned off, yeah, and they never turned it on. So there's this. System is showing that they have to pay me for my leave, even though I took it. So basically the financial system short circuited over this money and no one. The only people who could answer these questions were a nose, right? And so they basically sat on it long enough to where it became a problem. I was unaware of this, so I get paid for my retirement so that that got processed. I get paid for my retirement, and I get my first disability check before I got my my final paycheck from the military.

Abdullah Najjar 2:10:31
Seriously, I was pissed. I was so mad. That's so messed

Jason Riddle 2:10:35
up. Yeah, yeah. And of course, at the end of the day, and nobody owed anybody anything except sat on it. They just sat on it. Yeah, that's rough. That's stupid. But yeah, everything that could go wrong out, like, retiring and out processing during COVID, did go wrong?

Abdullah Najjar 2:10:51
Oh, my god, yeah, when that was 2020, then when you left, did you have, like, a I'm sure there's a lot of nostalgia right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's also like, you're like, I'm going to start maybe a new chapter or something new. What was on your radar at the time? Well,

Jason Riddle 2:11:08
when I got my disability rating and when I got my retirement, I was like, Well, fuck do I need to work? What do I need to do? Because I got a slight raise to be retired, okay? Like, not a lot, but a little bit, right? Like, like, 30 bucks ish plus or minus, right? Yeah, um, and I was like, Well, shit, I'm making more retired than I did on active duty. Like, do I really need to fucking work anymore? And then so I was, like, a house husband for a little while. Um, I got custody of my oldest he came to live with me, okay? My oldest son, Jacob, yeah, and he was still a minor. I mean, I have custody. I had custody, so obviously, right? He came to live with me. And, you know, the Schools are shut down. He's doing zoom school every day, and he hated it. It was like killing his soul, yeah? And I'm sure a bunch of kids out there know exactly how that felt, yeah. And, of course, I'm, you know, I try to be Mr. You know, good dad, like you better participate. Turn your camera on, you know. And little did I know, it didn't matter at all. But honestly, it really did not. Would have been nice to know, yeah, and he was like, nobody has their camera on. I was like, All right, fine, fuck it. And so, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 2:12:33
sometimes I wake up, like a minute before class and to tune in. Oh yeah, I'm here.

Jason Riddle 2:12:38
He would be there. He would be there with his blanket over his head, like asleep against the monitor, listening to his first period, oh my God. And I was like, oh my god, poor kid.

Jason Riddle 2:12:52
It's really sad. It's

Jason Riddle 2:12:53
but in his for them, though, they only did it that one semester. So he went back, like the early part of 21 so he went back to school pretty, pretty fast, yeah. And so when he went back to school, I was like, Well, shit, what am I gonna do? And, you know, I had this, like, sense of duty to try to help build the economy in APEX, right back for the pandemic, you know. And I used to go to the yoga studio that's over by the theater in APEX, okay, right? The the Regal Theater, yeah. And I drove past it every time I would leave, leave yoga. And the reason why I did yoga and was still do is because so much in my body's broken, right? Lifting weights is not really in the cards. So I swim a lot. I do a lot of yoga, nice, um. And so I was on my way back, and I saw like, activity at the theater. I was like, What the is that? So I go over there, and I'm I go and talk to one of the guys who ended up working for me later, is that is there? And I was like, Hey, are you guys reopening? Like, what's happening? When is this happening? And and he's like, Yeah, we're reopening pretty soon. I was like, are you guys looking for positions? What do you got going on? And he's like, yeah, they are hiring. And he, like, showed me the website on my phone. So I applied, like, almost right away, because I wanted a fun job. Yeah, right. Like, I'm not here for money, per se. Yeah, you know, a little extra money is nice. I'm not gonna say no to extra money, but I wanted something that would be fun, like and I always loved going to movies. I was a big movie kid. Still am, yeah, and so I get hired on as the senior team lead. So I get, I already get, like, a way more higher position than I wanted nice, because I didn't want to be in charge of anybody anymore, like a lot of GIS will will tell you, you know, you get tired of being in your ass, shoot for something somebody else did, and you just kind of like want to be in charge of yourself for a little while, right? Right? Obviously, that didn't happen for me. So I have, um. Like, 3030 new subordinates, 32 and a bunch of so I trade the 19 year olds who used to work for me in the military for 17 and 18 year olds. I'm like, Oh, well, here we go. And so it was fine, like that part wasn't that bad. They called me the Regal dad, you know, and I and I was, and I was really good to those kids. I think we had a really good relationship. We had a really good crew, um, the I had a boss who was younger than me. Everybody was younger than me, and I was kind of used to that, like my last, my last unit in the military, the only person who was older than me was my commander. Oh, so, so I would already come to, like, like, to terms with that. I'm probably going to be the old guy in the room, right? I'm okay with that. And so I, I'd gotten past that. And it was, it was a good experience until, until, oh, you have technology experience.

Abdullah Najjar 2:15:58
Technology.

Jason Riddle 2:15:59
Can you fix our 40x theater, sure? Oh, can you fix our computers, sure? Can you fix our registers?

Abdullah Najjar 2:16:09
I see where it is, sure.

Jason Riddle 2:16:11
Can you run this cable from here to here? Can you go work on that camera? Can you go and there's no consideration of additional compensation here, and I was working really, really hard and again, hurting my body again. That was the other part, because I could feel the pain, yeah, and I could feel things hurting again and again, like, because I have no off switch, per se, right? Like, I either have, I have a throttle, it either goes all the way up or all the way down, right? And so I felt that throttle going all the way up again, yeah, right, to where the adrenaline is taking the pain away, and I can just fucking knock out shit. And it was nice to do that. And I do feel like, you know, as a good citizen, I did my part to help rebuild Apex economy, but at the same time, and, you know, full disclosure, I live in APEX now, yeah, you know, it just, it just became kind of a shitty job. You know, I used to tell people working there, it's like going back to work for the Department of Defense. We have more problems than money. We all have uniforms we hate. And every time when somebody from the outside comes to talk to us, they tell us we suck. It was just and that's how it was. Whenever we got inspected by corporate, they always first thing I love, God, you suck so bad. You know what I mean? Like in like flashlight inspections to search for dust. Oh, yeah, fucking crazy, yeah. And I was like, You know what? Enough's enough. And so in 23 because the economy sucked, yeah, we're talking about post COVID rebuild, right? The economy sucked. There is baked into Department of Defense raises that when the economy dips to a certain point, we all automatically get a bump to help deal with the new cost of living. Yeah? Because you really like it goes back to the 60s where they didn't want, you know, like homeless active duty people, yep, right. That makes us look really shitty, yeah. And so I get this massive cost of living raise. I mean, not massive, but enough to where I it negated the Regal money, right? And so I was like, well, the Regal money's gone, so do I really need to be here anymore? And the company declared bankruptcy in October of 23 or 22 really,

Abdullah Najjar 2:18:36
but they're still open now, not anymore, not anymore. They got sold. Yeah, I didn't get, like, went to this, to the Regal Cinema, like, a few weeks back. Maybe this a different

Jason Riddle 2:18:46
it might be a different one. Yeah, there's one in carry too. Probably that's the one that one surviving.

Abdullah Najjar 2:18:51
I watched Joker too. Nice. Sucked.

Jason Riddle 2:19:01
I watched,

Abdullah Najjar 2:19:05
paid money to watch. Can't believe

Jason Riddle 2:19:06
that paid real American dollars for this trash,

Abdullah Najjar 2:19:10
like torn to do that, right? Either,

Jason Riddle 2:19:13
either way. Yeah. I mean, fuck it streaming like five minutes after it was in the theater. Yeah. So I didn't need to be there anymore. I felt like I did what I needed to do there. And I was like, well, maybe I'll go back to school, yeah. And I started looking to see because I at the same time I retired a bunch of the soft people I retired with the special operations folks were retiring at the same time, I kind of was, like, watching to, like, what their like career path were post military. And I was like, okay, and then I started asking, you know, okay, well, what's your degree in? What's this? What's that, right? Or, what degree do you recommend one pursues? Right? I was not a seal. I was not a long tab or SF guy. The the concept of walking into one of those jobs post retirement, wasn't I have to supplement that with it with with education, right, right? And, like a lot of education like to the point where a doctor needs to be in front of my name to be taken seriously in those in those spaces. And so I was like, well, I could go back to school, and I could probably get my doctorate if I really want, really, really wanted to, yeah. And so that's what started this whole international studies pathway. And I I applied at state first before I decided to go anywhere. State was like, you can't go fuck yourself. You have no school. Like, I don't even think my little wolf paw account made it very far. That's hard. And so I was like, oh, okay, Wake Tech. I tried to apply at Wake Tech. Wake Texas, well, you don't have enough time in North Carolina. Seriously, for in state tuition, GI Bill, no, no, no, not at outside No, no, they will not pay, not outside of state or out of state tuition, yeah. So I was like, Well, shit, so I have to wait. And I did do that, but like before I started working at theater. This happened before I started working at theater. Okay, and so I burned enough time at the theater to meet the time in in state requirements, right? Mind you, I had 14 non consecutive years in this state before I even asked to go to touch their education system. They're like, we don't care. How long have you owned property in this state? Oh, okay, so, so I met the requirement. I got my in state tuition at at Wake Tech. I went to Wake Tech for for a year and a half ish, and I graduated. And there's agreements between Wake Tech and state. They're extremely helpful towards transfer students. So if anybody is out there and has benefited from this, or I know someone who could benefit from this, you know your your acceptance rate from Wake Tech to here is like 90% nice, yeah, it's pretty much like that for all the in state schools, nice. They have, like, all these agreements where their graduates get first look and yada yada, right? So I get picked up to come here, um, because I'm a psycho and I took classes during the summer, like, like, I told you, like, on the way here, I've been in school physically for at the end of this semester, 24 calendar months. Yep, I am finishing my second semester of my junior year right now, so I'm way ahead, yeah, not necessarily by design. It just happened that way, yeah. But I wanted to keep the GI Bill money rolling through the summer. So you have to meet certain requirements to keep the GI Bill more money rolling through the summer, and that's what I did. So I took five classes this summer here. I'm in five classes now, which sucks, yeah, and I know. And I make no mistake, I know I am in class with people who are in six classes and seven classes. Yeah, I know people who are taking a lot of classes at the same time, yeah, and, and, but I'm 47 you're not

Jason Riddle 2:23:19
that makes it big.

Jason Riddle 2:23:20
I have two children. I have a house. I had two dogs. I don't have dogs anymore. But, you know, a lot has happened since we moved here.

Abdullah Najjar 2:23:28
So makes a huge difference. And,

Jason Riddle 2:23:30
you know, and I'm highly politically active, you know, I worked my ass off during this last election. I worked my ass off in the all the elections I've been back in North Carolina for, yeah, so it's like, you know, I have a lot going on to be stupid enough to take on five classes this semester was done. But with that, though, I have the opportunity to slow down a little bit, and I'm definitely going to slow down. I have a job. I work for democracy North Carolina. I'm the regional organizer triangle. Shout out to democracy North Carolina. Shout out to democracy North Carolina. And thank you so much to suhailma for hiring me. You're the best. Love you. And so I have part time job. I work here or and I go to school here, so I'm excited to slow down a little bit. I'm only taking four classes next semester. That's good. Probably gonna continue that out for the rest of my time here. Probably graduate. Well, now that I have to, I for sure, have to go overseas for study abroad for my is degree. Oh, yeah. Or they really, really want me, or I haven't won that fight yet. So we'll, we'll see what happens there. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed. But that will probably be the last thing I do here. Yeah, will be the Study Abroad piece. So I'm gonna milk it till the very end, and then I'll graduate with summer of 26 Yeah, yeah. Well,

Abdullah Najjar 2:25:00
I just want to say, Jason, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you, brother. We've been talking for I mean, we've been talking even before we started recording. I

Jason Riddle 2:25:08
know, I know. I love it, dude, I love it. You are an outstanding conversationalist. I

Jason Riddle 2:25:12
appreciate that.

Jason Riddle 2:25:13
I knew the minute I met you, when you came and spoke to our class, you know, again, full disclosure, Abdullah came and talked to us about Libya in my air pop culture class with Dr Saylor as well. Shout out to Elizabeth Saylor, you're amazing and a keystone to my success here at NC State. But I met and I'm like, oh, Libby is in the house. That's how I started our conversation. I was like, I know a little couple things about Libya. And you're like, Oh, really, I told you. Like, you know how, how life Libya touched me and Operation Odyssey Dawn touched me and, and you're like, Oh, my God, that's, I was just a little kid again, not the first or last time I'm ever going to hear that. Like we talked about, like, 911 came around this year, and we talked about, where were you, what were you doing at 911 you know, another kids in the room have anything to say, I'll be like, well, let me tell you, my mom told me that.

Abdullah Najjar 2:26:19
Yeah, no, some might not even been born. Yeah, absolutely. Three years after that happened, they were born. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. But no, it's, it's, it's on, honestly, an honor to have you here and to have this conversation. We talked about a lot, but I reckon there's a lot more to talk about, so there's

Jason Riddle 2:26:35
always room for around two, yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't even touch on any of the cool guy stuff, and we can talk about that

Abdullah Najjar 2:26:43
later, for sure. No, for sure. But yeah, thank you everybody for tuning in. This is, I think, arguably, the longest I've recorded on the podcast, though. Yeah, so thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai