In 2003, Allen West was facing a possible court martial hearing that could have put him in prison.

Responsible for over six hundred men as a Lieutenant-Colonel in Iraq, West conducted a harsh interrogation in which he fired gun shots near the head of an Iraqi police officer he suspected of withholding information about a plot to kill him and some of the soldiers under his command. At a hearing over the incident, West defiantly declared that “if it’s about the life of my men, I’d go through hell with a gasoline can.” And though he said he may not have used the right methods, “if he had to err,” he declared, “I would err on the side of not losing my soldiers.”