But Gallagher’s repeated actions and comments proved to us that his actions were not accidents. We know that mistakes and accidents happen on deployment and innocent people always die in war. Not a single one of us could have imagined that we would have to report a friend and mentor for war crimes. As far as we knew, the ball was in their court and our officers would do the right thing.

Rob Breisch, while we were still in Iraq.

He told us there was a process to report these crimes and he had already notified our troop commander, Lt. Portier would make excuses for Gallagher, and sometimes he assured us that he had taken action against him. We took our officers at their word when we repeatedly alerted them to these crimes. Would we do something different if we could go back in time? Absolutely. We focused on trying to stop our chief from killing civilians, and getting us killed, while still affecting the battlespace and playing within the bounds of our own military and cultural rules. We were Navy SEALs fighting ISIS in a battle that has been called the most intense urban conflict since World War II. We didn’t focus on keeping evidence that would hold up in court.

Navy seal war crime