Thanks for the great details of how SERE works. Yes, our depraved occupant doesn't care an iota for our service members. His quote, " They are suckers and losers. " What a shame our military is being sacrificed for this. I pray this airman/woman is safe.
This is my third try at commenting because I just don’t know what to say anymore. I’m a retired PT. Early in my career I had worked at two different VA hospitals. I worked on vets who had been POWs, some who survived the Bataan death march, various physical and mental injuries. War is no joke. It affects people for life. To have such a despicable excuse for a commander in chief and secretary of defense is just plain awful and dangerous.
Linn...please don't apologize for needing three tries. Some things...deserve that kind of weight before you put them into words.
What you carried out of those VA hospitals..the hands-on knowledge of what war actually costs...not in headlines... but...in a human body on a table...gives you a credential almost nobody in this conversation has. You know what this creates. Up close. Personally.
That makes watching a man who has never sat with that damage...make decisions that will produce MORE of it...hurt in a way that goes well beyond politics.
It should hurt. It means you understand what's actually at stake.
Keep showing up. Even when...ESPECIALLY when...you don't know what to say!
Agreed. I was stalled, as were you. I finally decided the simplest answer was best. I’m a retired bodyworker of 35 years. I worked outside the veterans’ government system.
And Linn, much respect for your work. It wasn’t unusual for me to feel the need to walk barefoot in the cool grass and/or find a big tree, preferably oak, whose roots would make a nest for me to settle into until I felt less empty. I see you.
Jack - Thanks for this. I knew we had this kind of training and hope to hell our pilot is alive and able to use it. So afraid for our pilot and so angry he has forced this war of stupidity, vanity and greed on us.
Thanks, Jack. I don't think we'll get a picture of actual casualties in this war for some years, if ever. Trump has taken a page that extends from Putin all the way to Mejii Japan where the issen gorin conscripts (named for the postage required to send the letter) disappeared into the yawning mouth of the Pacific war against the Americans or the Manchurian war against Chinese and Soviets, never to be seen again. Decades of research have done little to reveal the fates of these loyal Japanese men.
Post‑9/11, the United States made a catastrophic category error: it treated SERE—training built to resist torture—as a blueprint for interrogation, and in doing so degraded its own intelligence picture. SERE grew out of Cold War efforts to inoculate U.S. troops against Chinese and North Korean coercion techniques that were already understood to produce scripted false confessions, not reliable information. Those methods—stress positions, sleep deprivation, exposure, humiliation, mock executions—were catalogued precisely so Americans could survive them and hold the line at name, rank, service number, date of birth.
SERE has a troubled history in the modern military. After 9/11, CIA contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both steeped in the SERE world, reverse‑engineered that resistance syllabus into “enhanced interrogation techniques,” selling them to the government as scientifically grounded tools to break high‑value detainees.
The Justice Department’s torture memos then laundered these SERE‑derived tactics—waterboarding above all—into a legally sanctioned repertoire that migrated from black sites to Guantánamo and some military facilities.
The underlying logic never changed. These were methods historically used to force prisoners to say what interrogators wanted to hear, often for show trials and propaganda, and the U.S. had decades of its own scholarship documenting their unreliability.
The result was predictable: detainees brutalized under SERE‑style abuse flooded analysts with fabrications, recycled information, and dead‑end threat streams, while internal and Senate reviews found no persuasive evidence that torture produced unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence. In the name of getting “tough,”
Washington imported the worst lessons of its adversaries and mistook the ability to make someone talk for the ability to make them tell the truth. But they still train the military in these methods the same way SEALs get tear-gassed and dropped into an icy sea. At least it won't be a surprise. Francis Gary Powers was supposed to scratch himself with the shellfish toxin needle embedded in a coin rather than being taken alive, but he failed to do so (you can watch Spielberg for some details on that fuckup).
Movies and TV show torture always working, whether it's Narcos or Zero Dark Thirty. This notion is utter bullshit. A person being tortured will reach the point where they will say absolutely anything to stop the pain. It's worse than useless, and it degrades everyone who participates in it.
I hope, when all is said and done, that EVERY ONE OF THOSE IN COMMAND, from the pilots to the weapons officers to the intel officers to the commanders at every level talks about what they did, why they did it, and why they followed orders instead of saying, "NOT ON MY WATCH".
Jack, thank you for sharing your knowledge of SERE training. Thank you to your friend Craig and all those involved in this vital training. I can only hope that our Airman is alive and using this training now and that he/she will be rescued rather than captured. My thoughts are with the Airman and their family who I assume have been notified of their status.
This didn’t have to happen… none of the casualties had to happen.. and it makes me furious that it did. Trump is a useless excuse for a human being. Hiding out now that he has no clue how to explain this.
Holding fast to hope for this lone U.S. Airman and all our military.
Jack is correct that the institution held when the commander did not. This is worth examining carefully, because it is not an accident. The SERE program exists because the United States has been here before — Korea, Vietnam, every conflict where American service members ended up alone in hostile territory with nothing but their training. The men and women who built and sustained that program drew on those hard lessons deliberately. They constructed a pipeline of preparation precisely because they understood that command would not always be reliable, that political leadership would not always be present, and that the warrior on the ground would ultimately have only what was put inside them before the worst day arrived. File the date: April 4, 2026. An American crew member is missing in Iran. The president posts about oil. The Code of Conduct does not waver. Note which one was built to last.
Jack is correct that we should remember who actually prepared that pilot to survive. What we are watching is a structural truth about institutions and individuals — the institution trained for exactly this; the individual at the top performed for the camera. Historians will note that this is not unusual. What is unusual is the nakedness of it. No address. No visible weight. Four words about oil. The contrast does not require interpretation. It requires only attention, and the refusal to look away when the next news cycle arrives. The Craig Cavinders of this military spent careers building something that does not require a president’s approval to function. That is not an accident either. It is, perhaps, the most important thing they built.
Jack, I so appreciate knowing about SERE, and I hope it saves the lost American! Thank you for giving credit to the people who deserve it! How anybody could credit anybody else is unfathomable, and the person who most likely will want to announce blatantly that we won again and take credit for anything possible, must be seen for what he is and understood for what heo is not.
The madness must stop, lives must be saved, and money being wasted and the putting of people in harms way must stop. We need to help people and spend our money wisely to save them here in this country rather than waste livelihoods and our tax money, seemingly got one person’s claim to glory through a diversion.
Thanks for the great details of how SERE works. Yes, our depraved occupant doesn't care an iota for our service members. His quote, " They are suckers and losers. " What a shame our military is being sacrificed for this. I pray this airman/woman is safe.
#HoldFast
Jo Burns...that quote never gets easier to read.
"Suckers and losers." Said about the people now risking their lives in a war HE started.
The distance between those words...and what that crew member is enduring right now in Iran....is the FULL measure of the man.
The prayers matter. Keep them coming.
And...Jo, keep holding fast. That's all we can do tonight.
-Jack
Trump is a miserable excuse for a human being.
Indeed, he is, Susan Pethick.
-Jack
This is my third try at commenting because I just don’t know what to say anymore. I’m a retired PT. Early in my career I had worked at two different VA hospitals. I worked on vets who had been POWs, some who survived the Bataan death march, various physical and mental injuries. War is no joke. It affects people for life. To have such a despicable excuse for a commander in chief and secretary of defense is just plain awful and dangerous.
Linn...please don't apologize for needing three tries. Some things...deserve that kind of weight before you put them into words.
What you carried out of those VA hospitals..the hands-on knowledge of what war actually costs...not in headlines... but...in a human body on a table...gives you a credential almost nobody in this conversation has. You know what this creates. Up close. Personally.
That makes watching a man who has never sat with that damage...make decisions that will produce MORE of it...hurt in a way that goes well beyond politics.
It should hurt. It means you understand what's actually at stake.
Keep showing up. Even when...ESPECIALLY when...you don't know what to say!
-Jack
Agreed. I was stalled, as were you. I finally decided the simplest answer was best. I’m a retired bodyworker of 35 years. I worked outside the veterans’ government system.
War is hell.
Forever.
Rae...you get it!
-Jack
And Linn, much respect for your work. It wasn’t unusual for me to feel the need to walk barefoot in the cool grass and/or find a big tree, preferably oak, whose roots would make a nest for me to settle into until I felt less empty. I see you.
Namaste’
🙏🏽
Jack - Thanks for this. I knew we had this kind of training and hope to hell our pilot is alive and able to use it. So afraid for our pilot and so angry he has forced this war of stupidity, vanity and greed on us.
#HoldingFast -
Toni...the fear and the anger are BOTH appropriate. Hold both.
And...yes...if that pilot went through SERE, they are more prepared for this moment than almost ANY human being on earth could be. I mean that.
That training is real. It works. It was built by people who refused to cut corners so that moments exactly like this one...could be SURVIVED.
Keep HoldingFast, Toni. We'll get through this together!
-Jack
Thank you for this post Jack. I know my friends have training.. and I’m counting on that training to keep them alive. Just thank you.
Morgan...you are welcome. Truly.
-Jack
Thanks for being the guy who tells the real story—all of it! Very grateful…
Melinda...that comment hit me hard. Thank you. I will.
Thank you for being here!
-Jack
Thank you, Jack…
Thank you, Craig,…
Thank you, Prevailance…
and …
Thank you to the one exercising SERE. 🙏🏻
CJ...you're welcome. And, speaking on behalf of Craig...I know I can say the same for him.
-Jack
Thanks for highlighting your friend’s important work.
Pamela H...my pleasure. Thank YOU.
-Jack
Thanks for offering this background. It gives me hope for that service member. Praying for them!
Jennifer...I'm glad this piece achieved that for you. I really am.
-Jack
Thank you. I did not serve, but glad this training exists
You're welcome. Likewise...it saves lives.
-Jack
I will remember.
Rae... I know you will. I absolutely know that.
-Jack
Thanks, Jack. I don't think we'll get a picture of actual casualties in this war for some years, if ever. Trump has taken a page that extends from Putin all the way to Mejii Japan where the issen gorin conscripts (named for the postage required to send the letter) disappeared into the yawning mouth of the Pacific war against the Americans or the Manchurian war against Chinese and Soviets, never to be seen again. Decades of research have done little to reveal the fates of these loyal Japanese men.
Post‑9/11, the United States made a catastrophic category error: it treated SERE—training built to resist torture—as a blueprint for interrogation, and in doing so degraded its own intelligence picture. SERE grew out of Cold War efforts to inoculate U.S. troops against Chinese and North Korean coercion techniques that were already understood to produce scripted false confessions, not reliable information. Those methods—stress positions, sleep deprivation, exposure, humiliation, mock executions—were catalogued precisely so Americans could survive them and hold the line at name, rank, service number, date of birth.
SERE has a troubled history in the modern military. After 9/11, CIA contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both steeped in the SERE world, reverse‑engineered that resistance syllabus into “enhanced interrogation techniques,” selling them to the government as scientifically grounded tools to break high‑value detainees.
The Justice Department’s torture memos then laundered these SERE‑derived tactics—waterboarding above all—into a legally sanctioned repertoire that migrated from black sites to Guantánamo and some military facilities.
The underlying logic never changed. These were methods historically used to force prisoners to say what interrogators wanted to hear, often for show trials and propaganda, and the U.S. had decades of its own scholarship documenting their unreliability.
The result was predictable: detainees brutalized under SERE‑style abuse flooded analysts with fabrications, recycled information, and dead‑end threat streams, while internal and Senate reviews found no persuasive evidence that torture produced unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence. In the name of getting “tough,”
Washington imported the worst lessons of its adversaries and mistook the ability to make someone talk for the ability to make them tell the truth. But they still train the military in these methods the same way SEALs get tear-gassed and dropped into an icy sea. At least it won't be a surprise. Francis Gary Powers was supposed to scratch himself with the shellfish toxin needle embedded in a coin rather than being taken alive, but he failed to do so (you can watch Spielberg for some details on that fuckup).
Movies and TV show torture always working, whether it's Narcos or Zero Dark Thirty. This notion is utter bullshit. A person being tortured will reach the point where they will say absolutely anything to stop the pain. It's worse than useless, and it degrades everyone who participates in it.
I hope, when all is said and done, that EVERY ONE OF THOSE IN COMMAND, from the pilots to the weapons officers to the intel officers to the commanders at every level talks about what they did, why they did it, and why they followed orders instead of saying, "NOT ON MY WATCH".
Jack, thank you for sharing your knowledge of SERE training. Thank you to your friend Craig and all those involved in this vital training. I can only hope that our Airman is alive and using this training now and that he/she will be rescued rather than captured. My thoughts are with the Airman and their family who I assume have been notified of their status.
This didn’t have to happen… none of the casualties had to happen.. and it makes me furious that it did. Trump is a useless excuse for a human being. Hiding out now that he has no clue how to explain this.
Holding fast to hope for this lone U.S. Airman and all our military.
~Susan
Jack is correct that the institution held when the commander did not. This is worth examining carefully, because it is not an accident. The SERE program exists because the United States has been here before — Korea, Vietnam, every conflict where American service members ended up alone in hostile territory with nothing but their training. The men and women who built and sustained that program drew on those hard lessons deliberately. They constructed a pipeline of preparation precisely because they understood that command would not always be reliable, that political leadership would not always be present, and that the warrior on the ground would ultimately have only what was put inside them before the worst day arrived. File the date: April 4, 2026. An American crew member is missing in Iran. The president posts about oil. The Code of Conduct does not waver. Note which one was built to last.
Jack is correct that we should remember who actually prepared that pilot to survive. What we are watching is a structural truth about institutions and individuals — the institution trained for exactly this; the individual at the top performed for the camera. Historians will note that this is not unusual. What is unusual is the nakedness of it. No address. No visible weight. Four words about oil. The contrast does not require interpretation. It requires only attention, and the refusal to look away when the next news cycle arrives. The Craig Cavinders of this military spent careers building something that does not require a president’s approval to function. That is not an accident either. It is, perhaps, the most important thing they built.
#HOLDFAST
Jack, I so appreciate knowing about SERE, and I hope it saves the lost American! Thank you for giving credit to the people who deserve it! How anybody could credit anybody else is unfathomable, and the person who most likely will want to announce blatantly that we won again and take credit for anything possible, must be seen for what he is and understood for what heo is not.
The madness must stop, lives must be saved, and money being wasted and the putting of people in harms way must stop. We need to help people and spend our money wisely to save them here in this country rather than waste livelihoods and our tax money, seemingly got one person’s claim to glory through a diversion.
# HOLDFAST!!!!!