452: Ramadi Declassified with Col. Tony Deane

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 452 with Kerry Helton and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening Kerry.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  As a rule of thumb, when the battalion commander is firing his personal weapon, things are going badly. Things were generally bad all across Iraq, especially in Iraq's Anbar province, particularly in the city of Ramadi, and specifically at entry control point three, where at this moment, all hell had broken loose. Intense, if inaccurate, machine gun and AK-47 fire spattered the ground around us. From open turrets atop each vehicle, our gunners searched for the enemy across the canal. Looking out my passenger side window, I saw half a dozen small fires burning in the field outside the Iraqi position with smoke billowing above the concrete walls.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  The blast burned a 10-foot scorch mark into the concrete near the entrance, marking the site of the explosion. The only evidence of the suicide bomber's truck was the rear axle and a couple of smoking pieces of blackened, twisted steel now resting 10 yards out in the desert. The gunner on my truck yelled down, "There are guys with guns across the canal shooting at us. What should I do?" I grimaced, trying to remind myself that this, after all, was our first firefight. It seemed that all the training in Germany and in Kuwait on the rules of engagement just confused the soldiers. "Shoot back," I told him. "Okay," he replied. He was a good kid, but I decided right then and there that I was getting a new gunner as soon as we got back to camp.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  I turned to Sergeant First Class Roberts, wedged helplessly in the backseat, unable to influence the battle. For a moment, I was afraid he was going to have an aneurysm. "I got it," Roberts assured me without me saying a word. "I got it." Moments later, the M240 machine gun atop the Humvee erupted in a soothing hum. In the next moment, the gunners on all three vehicles blazed away, laying a furious barrage of suppressive fire on the terrorists across the canal. I keyed the handset of the FM radio to report the situation to the Tok located on Camp Ramadi and to direct the relief effort. "Conquer Maine, conquer six," I called. No answer. "Conquer Maine, conquer six, over." I barked into the handset. Nothing.

• 2:20Jocko Willink?

  I could hear the Tok transmitting across the radio net, but they could not hear me. Keying the handset on my radio, on my second radio, turned to our internal patrol frequency. I called no more than thirty feet to Captain Lang Con, instructing him to take charge here and get in contact with the Tok while I assess the damage inside the ECP. I yelled back to Roberts. "You got this?" Roberts nodded in agreement. Relieved he could finally get into the fight, I jumped out of the Humvee and sprinted twenty yards into the Iraqi position, passing the charred corpses of two Iraqi sentries. I needed to assess the extent of the damage while ignoring the thick, stinging smoke.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  Chief Warmer Officer Jason Forgash, the Advisor's Team Intelligence Officer, met me at the entry. Forgash had spent the past frantic minutes trying to rally the Iraqis to defend the position, literally pulling them by the collar and pushing them into fighting positions before the terrorists overran the checkpoint. Judging from the look on his face, I'm certain that Forgash was both glad to see me and surprised that the first help to arrive turned out to be the task force commander. "Chief, what do you got?" I asked. Despite mortar rounds knocking him to the ground minutes before in the initial attack, he replied with a concise, detailed report of a professional intelligence officer. "Sir, it was a complex attack.

• 3:44Jocko Willink?

  They hit us with mortars and small arms fired from the north and from across the canal. When they got everyone's heads down, they drove a big-ass dump truck into the gate. It was probably AQ. The T-walls held, but the blast was next to the Iraqi officers' hooch. They're both dead, along with the two burned-up guys you passed on the way in. The fireball jumped the wall and caught the camo nets on fire, and the Iraqi soldiers went to pieces. The command post and all my vehicles are burning inside, so I got no comms. We need to get the hell out of the checkpoint and establish a perimeter until we can get more help and put out the fire." Your two guys, Reinhardt and Garza, are hit, but they're gonna be alright. A couple of Iraqis are wounded as well, but they'll be alright too.

• 4:27Jocko Willink?

  In Ramadi, alright meant the wounded had all of their limbs and were not going to die right then. For the moment, my assessment was that we were outgunned, caught in the crossfire of a complex attack next to a burning Iraqi checkpoint and in need of evacuation for the US and Iraqi wounded. Frankly, if I had encountered a scenario like this during our train up in Germany, I would have complained that it was simply unrealistic. It was a worst-case scenario that had a certain Kobayashi Maru feel to it.

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Ramadi Declassified: A Roadmap to Peace in the Most Dangerous City in Iraq, written by Colonel Anthony E. Dean, who was the commander of the 1st Battalion, 35th Armored, called Task Force Conqueror in the Battle of Ramadi. And the battalion, along with the entire Ready 1st Brigade, had been thrown into a situation that to many appeared to be a Kobayashi Maru scenario. And if you aren't familiar with that term, it comes from the show Star Trek. And it's a fictional training scenario that the cadets are put into.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  And it's a situation that they cannot win, but they're trying to figure out and trying to see how these cadets react, so they put them into a no-win scenario. And that's what that references to. And many people actually saw Ramadi at this time as a lose-lose scenario, that there was no way to win. But the Ready 1st did not see it that way. But it was going to take...

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  A heroic effort and heroic actions to accomplish this mission. And Colonel Dean and his troops played an instrumental role in achieving victory in the city of Ramadi. And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. Colonel Dean, Tony, thank you for joining us.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Hey Jocko, thanks for having me on. It's great seeing you.

• 6:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the Star Trek reference, the no win situation.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, when we got there, it's funny because you know, I was, I was in Desert Storm. So it's like, oh, I've been to combat. I know what's going on. And then we got there. It's like, holy crap. And then, uh, um, things just, I mean, that was, that was, we hadn't even taken over. That was, that was, that was still, we were still during RIP. And it just, every day it was like, wow.

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you guys had a, you guys had a really hard, uh, opening, opening stanza going into Ramadi. It was rough to watch. I'd been there for like a, maybe a month at that point. So, um, before we get into Ramadi, let's, let's get a little bit of your background. So people understand who you are. So you're born, what, 1963?

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Hey, I was born 63, uh, you know, born Omaha, Nebraska. Um, youngest of five. My, uh, my dad was a chief in the Navy.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  World War II, right?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  World War II vet. Yeah. He was actually, uh, uh, he was on the Missouri when the Japanese surrendered. So, uh, yeah, so, uh, he, uh, moved to Omaha because I had a aunt that lived there that helped raise him. And, uh, he, um, he couldn't get out of Nebraska fast enough. But you know, five kids, uh, you know, he wanted to be by the sea. He was a sailor at heart and, uh,

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  You were born after he retired, right?

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, after he retired. He, uh, he hurt his back and then he, uh, ended up getting put out of the Navy, uh, retired, medically retired. And then he, uh, uh, he was working, I think it was a mailman when, you know, ended up working for the state the rest of his life. But, uh, we lived downtown for a while and then, uh, We moved out to the suburbs, a town called La Vista, went to Pavilion La Vista High, and it was, you know, kind of a deal of childhood, you know, that we, you know, played sports all day.

• 8:37Jocko Willink?

  What sports were you playing?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  You know, just pickup games as a kid, you know, back when kids used to play pickup games. And, you know, we'd play, we lived in an apartment complex, right? So, pickup football in the morning, and then the afternoon when it got hot, you'd play baseball, and then when it got too hot, there was a pool at the apartment, and then they had a lighted basketball court. So, you know, it was...

• 9:01Jocko Willink?

  So you were all day?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  You were all day, you know, the kind of, you know, Gen X childhood of, don't come back. So, went to school, you know, played, I played baseball, and I, and I loved baseball, but I was terrible. You know, I just, I couldn't, couldn't hit. And then, you know, I could catch, I could field, I could run, but arm was never there, and neither was the bat. And then, I ran track in high school, and I was pretty fast, went to Northwest Missouri State, I was gonna run there, and then it was just, just too hard, so I ended up transferring to Nebraska after my...

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  So you went from the, you were a big fish in a little pond, and then you became a little fish in a big pond?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I wasn't even, I was a medium-sized fish in a little pond. I, you know, self-confidence has never been my shortcoming. So it's like, oh, I'm, I'm plenty fast, like, well, that's not what the stuff watch is. So, yeah, so I did that, and, you know, really, I deal with childhood, you know, couldn't, you know, the words didn't apply himself, got used quite a bit, especially in academics, but, you know, I kind of, kind of slid through with Bs and, you know, did alright, and, you know, life was good.

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  So you end up at University of Nebraska, that's where you eventually graduate from? But when you're in there, that's when you join the Army for the first time, right?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  You enlist in the Army.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, I'm gonna pay for my own college, you know, I kind of had it with my mom, and...

• 10:34Speaker 02

  And that worked real good because, you know, my dad passed away when I was, when I was in junior high. And so, you know, you got social security checks, but then those kind of stopped when you were 18, Reagan Reagan put an end to that. And so it's like, that kind of shot my plan. So I was broke and I had to, you know, I wanted to get through college. And so I enlisted in the reserves, which, you know, my dad always wanted us to, you know, he'd always tell me and my brother, I was like, you're going to, you know, you're both going to go to the Naval Academy, which, you know, at 18, that thought never entered my brain. You know what I mean? So it's like, I'm not going to

• 11:15Speaker 02

  join the military. But I got there and I kind of ran out of money. So I ended up in listening. And, you know, all these people have these great stories, like wanting to join something bigger and whatever. It's like, no, I was broke.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  I was broke. They paid half your tuition and, you know, I got a couple hundred bucks. So do you go to boot camp like that summer? Oh, yeah. So I, I went down the recruiter and I didn't want to miss any school. So I said,

• 11:39Speaker 02

  what is the MOS that I'm not going to miss any school? And they said, Cavalry Scout. I said, so I, I finished, I finished classes on Friday, shipped out for basic training and A I T on Tuesday, you know, got back on a Thursday, started classes on Monday. Cavalry Scouts are pretty cool because you, you know, you're outside all the time, you're firing machine guns, you know, you get a, you get to shoot. It's a pretty cool job. So I did that. I, you know, again, didn't apply himself. So, you know, I wasn't an undergrad, but you know, I was near the top. So, you know, flying back, there was this guy on my dorm floor, this guy named Terry Jones and who I didn't really know that well. But he, we didn't even know that we were in the same basic training class until we

• 12:23Speaker 02

  got there. We're flying back and we're drinking these, you know, little airplane bottles. We're like, I can be an officer. Yeah, me too. So, so end up, you know, I got there and I end up joining ROTC.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  And I mean, it was again, didn't apply myself. So I was kind of a mediocre cadet. And

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  And that's through the ROTC program. You're a mediocre cadet, strong mediocre cadet.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Well, you know, actually, and I was just gonna stay in the reserves, you know, you know, he got paid a little bit more. And so as officer, so I remember going to like almost my I was ready to graduate and I went to one of the majors and I was like, you know, think about going on active duty. And he gets up and he shuts the door and he's like, yeah, you know, I'm glad you want to serve your country, but there's really no place in the army for you. I'm like, oh, thank you. So, so I

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  At least he closed the door. At least he wanted to keep it, you know, keep it just between you two.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, so my senior year, I was still like cadet second lieutenant. He didn't see much professional, you know, most people are like, you know, battalion commander. So I'm like cadet second lieutenant, you know, and we're having this family day and the guy who was in charge of it, you know, the squared way cadet, he ended up got appendicitis or something. So it kind of fell on me. And so it worked out pretty good. I knew the, you know, the kids who were in the simultaneous membership program that are in the reserves and in ROTC. I'm like, one guy was in a helicopter company. One guy was in a transportation company. One guy was in tank company. So, hey, get your vehicles. And so we put them out there.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  We figured out some cookies and stuff. So the battalion commander calls me in afterwards. It was a big success. And he calls me in and a guy had like nine Purple Hearts from Vietnam. This guy Bob Snyder, he's like, you know, Dean, you're not half the dumbass I thought you were. I was like, validation.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  We're tracking in the right direction.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I'm trending up now. So, yeah, so I went to

• 14:35Speaker 02

  You know, so it's like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna graduate, I'm gonna go to the basic course. I go look to graduate and uh, and I'm like, I'm graduating in May, right? And they're like, no, no, no, you're not even close. So, so I ended up like taking 22 hours of summer school. Cause you know, I mean, back then you could get commissioned without a college degree. And it's like, no, no, you can't get this done. So, uh, graduated, uh, graduated college in August and then shipped off for, uh, uh, the basic course. And then at the basic course, I was up near the top of the class and I got accepted to go on to active duty.

• 15:08Jocko Willink?

  And what year was that? So what year did you get commissioned?

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I got commissioned in 1985.

• 15:12Jocko Willink?

  And then you, then from there you went to the basic course and performing well in that, you got active duty?

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  And in the eighties, it's harder to get active duty because

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  downsizing and all that stuff.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, the eighties wasn't downsizing.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  No, the, the, the Cold War was still on.

• 15:26Jocko Willink?

  So they needed you.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Uh, they didn't think so at the time when I commissioned, but, uh, uh, later on, they kind of, they, they had a hole, so they had to fill it with somebody. So, uh, they, they like the, the top reservist and the top National Guard guy could, could, uh, go on active duty if they applied. So, uh,

• 15:45Jocko Willink?

  So where'd you get stationed first?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Uh, so, um, first station was in Burbank, Germany. And, uh, this is the Cold War. So this is, you know, I got there, I got there, uh, the first of April 1986. And so it was just after, uh, we bombed Libya.

• 16:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  So, you know, everything was on edge. We were patrolling the, uh, patrolling the housing area, you know, with armed guards. Cause, uh, you know, the bombing of Libya actually came from the nightclub bombing. So, uh, things were pretty tense. And if you, you know, think back to that time, I mean, uh, oh, we're gonna get, you know, Reagan's gonna get us into war. Uh, so, I mean, we were uploaded, you know, you had tanks, uh, the tanks had the rounds in them, uh, the main gun rounds and, uh, uh, you know, two hours to roll out. Uh, you know, they call them a alert once or twice a month and you had to roll out the gate in two hours. There's four cell phones or anything else. So, you know, it was a very, uh, very kind

• 16:45Speaker 02

  of tense time. I mean, I think people were kind of on edge. I mean, the, you know, the nuclear threat was pretty real back then.

• 16:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it definitely was. That was in Berbigan?

• 16:54Speaker 02

  In Berbigan, yeah, just outside of Stuttgart.

• 16:56Jocko Willink?

  Like, uh, Panzer Casern?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, was it Panzer Casern?

• 16:58Jocko Willink?

  I was at Panzer Casern for a while, too. They ended up putting a naval special warfare unit there. And so I was at Panzer Casern for a little deployment, pretty awesome place.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, it was, yeah. And, uh, it was great. I mean, uh, uh, you know, we, we were keeping an eye on the French more than the, uh, inter-German border, but, uh, you know, we had a plan. We were gonna roll out. We'd be there and, you know, like, you know, D plus one, we were supposed to be there and, you know, backstop the, the, you know, the guys that were actually up on the Fulda Gap. And, uh, you know, it was a really cool assignment because you could, uh, you know, back then you could drive on the economy. So we'd take our tanks out, uh, like, one week during a month. That was kind of the, uh, rule. And you'd go out and train on the countryside. So, you know, you'd pull into some farmer's field at night and set up a, you know, set up a defensive position and, you know, get up in the morning and, you

• 17:51Speaker 02

  know, go in the little grocery store and get, you know, brochons and ham and stuff. So it was a pretty cool assignment, actually.

• 17:57Jocko Willink?

  Tank camping.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you could drive down the Autobahn. I mean, it was, it was funny because then, you know, you flash forward to when I was a battalion commander and, uh, um, you know, in 2005, and it's like, oh, you need a noise abatement. You can't fire after eight o'clock at night. And it's like, hey, they're singing a different tune when the wall was up now.

• 18:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, during that time, you also, I guess you made a trip, and this is in the book, you, you made a trip to Spain, little USO trip. And when you're in Spain, you meet an Italian.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:31Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, you're, you're, that ends up being your wife, Deborah.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, that was a pretty, it sounds like you, you- Made a pretty aggressive actions there to make that happen because you got married within what a year?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, just over a year and I think we probably only seen each other face to face like 30 days and that, you know, 15 months and so, you know, and back then, I don't know, when you were in Germany, but the, the German phones used to have like a meter on them and long distance phone calls used to be crazy. I mean, for, for the younger audience, you don't know how much a lot, especially in Europe and like you sit there and the thing's turning like a, like a fan.

• 19:15Jocko Willink?

  I used to, my wife was also, we were, we were a long distance relationship and I'd be calling her and it was, it was crazy. You could spend like $400, $500 if you weren't careful. And when you're, well, for me, I was a young, you know, E4 in the SEAL teams, that was a lot of money to be blowing. I'd be like, listen darling, I, I do care about you, but I'm hanging up right now. So I can pay my rent.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So, so we were there and, you know, just like I said, self-confidence in my, my, my weak suit. So, and back then you had to have the battalion commander sign off if you're marrying a foreign national. And so I went to Colonel's like, hey, you know, Colonel Sutherland, who's a great commander. And he's like, you sure about this? It's like, no, no, I'm sure, I'm sure. It's like, no, no, no. 30, 36 years later, it worked out, you know, but yeah. So, yeah, we got, we got married and, you know, and again, I was never going to make it a career. So I was, I was going to get out of my first tour,

• 20:18Speaker 02

  but you know, not married. So I said, okay, let me go, you know, we'll do one more tour because it's just kind of hard to get out. Cause we got married in November and we were PCS and you know, my three years was up in March. So. Uh, in four months, a little hard to make a plan. So we'll, we'll go to four, you know, we'll go the advanced course and we'll do one more tour or, you know, kind of, you know, everyone's dreams, kind of be a company commander when you're a lieutenant, right? You know, some guys are like, I want to be a general. So you don't really trust those dudes, but you know, company commander is pretty cool. You know, I mean, that's a cool job.

• 20:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. In the SEAL teams, people just want to be a platoon commander.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:53Jocko Willink?

  You know, and you're right. And I've always, I used to explain this to the young SEAL officers. I'm like, I know all you guys want to be a SEAL platoon commander. And you haven't thought about anything beyond that. In the army, you do get people that they want to join. They want to be a battalion commander. They want to be a brigade commander. There's, I can, I can venture to guess there's a handful of guys that join the SEAL teams that their goal is to be an admiral. Like very few. Most guys are like, I want to be a platoon commander. And that's it. That's the climax. And we did extend it a little bit to once we, once we kind of reformulated the way we deployed so that the guy up would take two platoons and have two, that's what I was. So when I was, I was a task unit commander.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:30Jocko Willink?

  What we used to call task unit commander. Now we call it a troop commander, but I had two platoons underneath me, which extended that kind of operational and made that a good job as well.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:39Jocko Willink?

  But for a long time, when I joined in the, in the full nineties, after a platoon commander for a, for a SEAL officer, it was just, it wasn't a very happy.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Slum shoulders.

• 21:51Jocko Willink?

  They were, they were bummed out.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, it's, it's interesting that you had that attitude. All right. Well, at least do a company command and then get, then move on.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  So where'd you get stationed next?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Uh, well, then I ended up at Fort Stewart, Georgia and, uh, uh, then Desert Storm broke out. And so, uh,

• 22:09Jocko Willink?

  And you had your first daughter.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, my first daughter. Yeah. So, uh, Allison was born in, uh, April. And, uh, then in August, um, it's when the 24th took off, right? So, uh, uh, it was kind of funny. I, I answered the phone in my battalion and they called an alert and it was, uh,

• 22:29Speaker 02

  It was like at six o'clock at night. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Alerts are always at six o'clock in the morning, you know, so they can be evaluated and stuff. And they're like, Larry advance. I was, I mean, I was still at work. I'm like, what do you mean? You know, and you saw the stuff on TV about Kuwait and, you know, it's half the world. You know, no one cares about Kuwait. And so, uh, and actually, because our, you know, back then, our planning was kind of for Iran. You know what I mean? And, you know, people didn't even, you know, really know where Iraq was. It was a place next to Iran. Right? So, uh, we get called and then they call back like 20 minutes later. It's like, oh, uh, you know, don't, you know, never mind. Little Emily Leto there, right? You know, never mind. Don't, don't worry about it. The next morning we got alerted and, uh, uh, back then the deployment

• 23:14Speaker 02

  procedure and everything, I mean, they were kind of, um, you know, tabletop drill, but no one ever did it. So we ended up, uh, uh, putting our stuff on a boat and we were, you know, the 24th was the first, uh, heavy unit into, into Saudi Arabia. And there was nothing there. I mean, we pulled in the port. Uh, there was nothing there. I mean, we were living under, uh, um, just like desert age, you know, like under 10 buildings and it was just hotter than, hotter than the devil. And, uh, uh, so we got there, we got our stuff off the boat and, uh, I mean, they didn't even have MREs. That was one thing that, uh, uh, so, uh, General McCaffrey, who, who I got all the respect in the world for, General McCaffrey, uh, they were giving us, uh, um, these hot dog buns

• 23:59Speaker 02

  that had, uh, they, they said it what, you know, General McCaffrey, that's not camel potato. It's like, it was camel. And you get that and a mango and a thing of mango juice. And it's like, for like two weeks. It was like, oh, man. Then finally the MREs came, you know, it was like VJ day, you know, guys kissing girls walking down the street.

• 24:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, if you're excited for MREs, you've been in some rough, you've been in some nasty stuff.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  So we got there and, uh, we went out, uh, and we went out the desert, you know, uh, you know, he was absolutely right. It's like, hey, we got out of these cities. We can't be in any place built up because, you know, we were the only heavy unit and we were still trying to get organized. And, uh, you know, they put the 82nd up on the, up on the burn there, but there wasn't a whole lot, you know, had Saddam decided to keep going. So, uh, everyone was on edge. So then, uh, you know, more and more units started coming and then, you know, it kind of got locked into, uh,

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Into what you were doing. And so from August, you know, September, all through the fall up until January, we were just kind of in an assembly area.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Uh, move north finally, but yeah.

• 25:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You talk about in the book and um, you, you go through kind of basically saying you weren't the, you guys weren't training as much as when you looked back on it. And you say this at dawn on, on 17, January, 1991, I was sleeping on a stretcher in the cargo compartment of my Humvee, Humvee when Staff Sergeant Cecil Gaskins woke me up exclaiming, "The war started." I looked up from under the tarp to see a grayish sky filled with the contrails of planes heading back after, after the night's bombing missions in Iraq. The air campaign targeting Saddam's Air Force, air defenses and strategic targets in Iraq and Kuwait had commenced. The punishment from the sky continued for five weeks until 24 February, when the coalition forces launched the ground assault to liberate Kuwait.

• 25:50Jocko Willink?

  During the previous five months, our battalion had wasted away its potential training time. On the second day of the attack, as part of the 24th Infantry's famous left hook, our battalion was ordered to sweep the airfield at Jabalah, Iraq from the south, while our sister, two sister battalions laid a base of fire to the west. I was in charge of 60 assorted vehicles, including cargo trucks, recovery vehicles, Humvees and battalion aid station. We were still heading east when I stopped my formation behind the last terrain feature before the airfield. I had all the vehicles point outward, forming a 360 degree perimeter around the aid station, which I ordered to set up and prepare to receive casualties.

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  Ahead of us, the battalion's combat vehicles crested the hill in a column formation and attempted to come online and turn to the north at the same time. The line of 44 Abrams tanks skewed too far to the west. Instead of engaging the enemy on the airfield, they inadvertently fired into the flank company of our sister battalion, killing two soldiers and wounding nine.

• 27:00Jocko Willink?

  Combat journalist David Turnley captured the iconic, an iconic photograph of Sergeant Ken Kozakewitz crying after learning that his friend Andy Alanas lay dead in a body bag next to him onboard a Blackhawk helicopter. For the next 14 years, I kept a copy of that photo in my office desk drawer as a visible reminder of what happens to untrained units. For years, I would ask myself daily what I could have done to prevent that fratricide. At the time, I had zero input into the conduct of tactical operations, but I was still a

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  leader in the unit, and I always had a nagging feeling that I should have been able to do something to prevent it from happening. Upon returning from Desert Storm, I swore to myself that if I ever had the opportunity to command a battalion, my unit would train every minute possible before entering combat. Yeah, and you've got that picture in the book, and look, obviously, I'm not reading the entire book. Get the book. This book is so detailed, and we'll get into some of the detail, but you have that picture in there, and it's definitely an iconic photograph, and you can see the heartbreak on the soldier's face, knowing that, knowing what had happened. And that's a lesson learned for you, and a very valuable lesson that you carried with you.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  You know, prior to that, all my battalion commanders had been Vietnam vets. And there was a real difference between the guys who were in Vietnam and the guys who grew up in the Zero Defect Army. And, you know, the Vietnam vets were all about training people, all about training people. And, you know, I'm not talking bad about the guy, but the environment he grew up, he was more worried about the OR rate, and what if our tanks break, and are we going to look good on numbers? And so, we didn't, we didn't train. We just kind of sat there. I mean, the company commanders were trying to do what they could. They were doing individual training, you know.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  They used to have this book, the Common Task Book. And it was so boring out there, guys would like race each other, how fast they could put on their mop suits. You know, I mean, if there was an enlisted soldier that deployed early in Desert Storm, you know, he can assemble, disassemble his weapon, put on his mop suit. Whatever's in the Common Task Book, he could do that just because they were so bored. I mean, that was the only thing to read, you know? I mean, we were out in the desert, there was no media. AT&amp;T set up these phone banks, but there was just nothing to do. But they really didn't do any training. And the commanders were, you know, calling for it. And he's like, well, no, we're going to break our tanks, whatever. But, you know, if you don't train, it's going to have terrible effects. You know what I mean?

• 29:51Speaker 02

  And so, you know, even when we were in Iraq, you know, the untrained guys were the ones that would get on the trigger because they get scared and they just start shooting. And so, we never really trained. I mean, they did a couple. You know, the brigade did a tactical exercise out of troops and the brigade commander was great. But, you know, the battalion commander, he just really didn't understand what it took to train guys, you know? And we kind of, we kind of just kind of pissed that time away. And so, and that's how you end up, you know, with a fratricide.

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  And I don't know, if you 35, 40 years on from Desert Storm now, right? Yeah, 35, 34. You know, still think about that fratricide, you know? And the devastating effects it has on a unit, you know, guys carry it with you. And so, one, I didn't want to put that on my guys. And two, you just, you know, don't want to, you know, you're going to lose guys in combat. But if it's a fratricide or an accident, you know, that's kind of on you. You know what I mean? That's on me. So, so that's why I made it a point, you know? Talk about it later. But when we got to Kuwait, it's like, okay, it's time to train and train really, really hard.

• 31:18Jocko Willink?

  War takes a hundred hours. Built a ground war, nineteen ninety-one. You come back from Desert Storm. And, and then, do you, do you pick up company command after that?

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I took command of a company, three-six-nine armor after that.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  And, and do you deploy with them?

• 31:37Speaker 02

  No, no, no, then, then.

• 31:39Jocko Willink?

  The war is over.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Peace had broken out, you know, the drawdown is on, the peace dividend is coming. And so, you know, I took command of my tank company. Problem was the battalion commander was still in command.

• 31:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, the same guy?

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Same guy, yeah, yeah, they didn't take him out of command. So, he, he decided that, you know, if I just work a little harder, I will overcome, you know, a fratricide, you know? And so, it was a miserable experience coming to command. I mean, I, my soldiers, it was, it was great, but I mean, this guy was just constantly, you know, kind of zero defect kind of guy. And, and again, I thought about getting out, you know, actually, one time, I, I actually had my reserve, my resignation typed up.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  And, you know, a guy called me in the office and he's like, something, something seemed like his bother. You know, first he was calling me a liar that I lied to him. And, and he said, well, you know, something seems wrong. I was like, well, you know, big sergeant's back there typing up my reservation, my resignation. So, and he was, oh, just go home, take the day off and get back home. And, you know, my wife, so I'm home like at, you know, three o'clock in the afternoon. I was like, what happened? Because, you know, we were all, you know, all the company commanders were like working till like nine o'clock, trying to make this guy happy. And she's like, what happened? She's like, I'm getting out. And she, you know, my wife, you know, God bless her, she's like, don't let them beat you. You like this, you like being in the army.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  You know, don't let them beat you. I was like, yeah, screw. So, went back the next day and, you know, just got after it. And had a really good company, really good NCOs and officers. And, you know, we went out to the NTC, you know, did really well.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  You know, the, uh, the last battle, um, you know, the NTC's made to lose, right? So we're down to like five or six tanks and, uh, from, you know, all three platoons and, uh, and I see the NCOs like making hand signals and bounding and moving each other's smoke and stuff. And it's like, you know, hey, we got this, you know, whatever happens, we're ready to go. Got a good company. And, uh, you know, then my, uh, actually, uh, when I came back from Desert Storm, uh, where I think they called it Operation Stork, uh, where, you know, that's where the youngest came from. And, uh, so actually I was at NTC when she was born.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  So after the, after the training was done, uh, before the AR, you know, I flew back home and that's on my second kid. So, uh, um, yeah, but, uh, it was, it was a good experience. And then, uh, um, after that, I actually got selected for a second command of HOC Brigade, uh, had a, had a great brigade commander, uh, who ended up being a three-star guy named John Lemoine, who, you know, again, old Vietnam vet. And, uh, you know, it was just, it was, that was, that was a good experience, you know, worked for that guy.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  So where, and then where'd you go next? Didn't you go, didn't you end up in New Jersey?

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, uh, uh, so after Desert Storm, they, uh, the, you know, the, another National Guard units deployed. So the, the army recommitted to the National Guard. They were, uh, we're going to take the best in brightest. We're going to call it Project 2000. And, uh, we're going to send our 2,000 best officers and NCOs, train the National Guard to make sure they're ready.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  It was a trap. So, I mean, they did send good people. There was a lot of good people there, but it's like, you know, they're telling, oh, you know, this is going to put you on the fast track, you know, you're going to, and, uh, so, uh, so we end up in New Jersey as a National Guard advisor. Um, and, uh,

• 35:45Speaker 02

  You know, I got a lot of respect for the National Guard guys there. I mean, they really, you know, as much as people, you know, back then especially bad mouth them. These are guys that like, you know, if you get two weeks off of work, I'm gonna go to AT, or I'm gonna take my kids to Disneyland. And these guys are, you know, foregoing their, their family stuff, you know, they're, they're usually working like one or two day, nice, you know, after their regular jobs. And, uh, uh, these guys are out there, you know, they, there were things that they needed to, to do and they probably could have used, but you know, I mean, dedication, I mean, they were getting after it every, you know, all the time, even, you know, just in peacetime in New Jersey. And, uh,

• 36:27Speaker 02

  uh, so we were there for two years and then, uh, two years up and they said, uh, hey, we're gonna move you out to Fort Leavenworth, you're gonna get prepositioned for the Command General Staff College. Uh, you know, they said, you know, you're at the, you're at the bottom, she said, you're at the bottom half of the top third. It's kind of fifty fifty whether you're gonna be below the zone. So I was like, okay, you know, I'm, I'm right there, you know, I'm in the hunt. And, um, I go to, uh, go to Leavenworth and I was supposed to be on, uh, uh, what was then BCTP, the, the, uh, Battalion Command, or no.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  If this is an Army acronym that you don't know, there's no way in hell I can help you out.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  No, no, which is funny because I was there twice, that Battle Command Training Program. So it was, uh, these computer simulations for, uh, Brigade, Division and Corps Headquarters, right? Because you can't put the whole field, but it's battle simulation. I was supposed to go there, um, about ready to get there and, you know, like literally they're packing out the house and like, hey, you're going to, uh, the Command General Staff College to be the, the Deputy Operations Officer. So the school. So I'm like, okay, you know, hell, I know the teachers, everything's gonna be good. And, um, wasn't happy about it, but you know, I went there and CGC's list comes out, not on it. I'm like, okay, well, you know, next year I'm on it. So end up, and actually ended up going

• 37:57Speaker 02

  over to BCTP. It was a great assignment, uh, because you, you, you learned, I mean, the, the, working at the Combat Training Centers, if you're an Army guy, I mean, you can't. You can't overestimate how much you just learn being around army stuff all the time, right? Just seeing these, you know, seeing other people's successes, seeing other people's mistakes.

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  It's awesome. That's what I, when I was a E5 in the SEAL teams, I spent like a couple of years at SEAL Team One. The SEAL teams themselves used to train themselves. And so there was something called training cell inside the SEAL teams. And that was where, where I got, once I did three deployments, then I got put into this training cell. And yeah, that's where I really started to put things together. Cause you, you're pretty experienced after three platoons. But once you're in training cell, and now you're, like you said, I get to watch a platoon, see what mistakes they made, see another platoon, do the same iterations, but do them right, do them better. And you have this really increased and profound perspective that you gain on how to do things. And so it was

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  very helpful. And I can imagine, yeah, being at NTC, that's just a kind of epic instruction.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And, and same thing, BCTP, right? And then ultimately I ended up going to NTC, but I was there. So then they, you know, list comes out second time.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  And this is for what? For major?

• 39:20Speaker 02

  No, this is, this is for the, the school, Command General Staff College. So the top half goes and your career goes on and the bottom half, you know, actually.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  And you already made major at this point?

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Uh, I was on the list.

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  Got it. But you don't have to go to that school to make major. But if you don't go to that school, your major's going to be it.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, you might make lieutenant colonel, but you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna command battalion, you're not gonna, you know, go on. So, so I did have a little ritual, right? When I didn't make a list, because I was good at getting promoted, wasn't good at getting selected for schools, right? So, you know, get there, get the scotch out, you know, okay, next year, you know, another fight. And.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  So, you know, BCTP was a great assignment, you know, traveling. I was actually on the team that trained brigades. So, you know, we'd go out, I think we went out like probably 20 times a year. We'd go out for like four days, you know, the, it was for guard units. So we'd go out for like Wednesday through Sunday and you'd do these computer simulations. And again, you know, you saw it, you know, 20 times a year. And so, you know, third time comes around and I'm not on the list. I'm like, hey, you said I was, yeah, we kind of lied to you. Actually, actually, I think the branch guy told me I was an organ donor. I said, what do you mean organ

• 40:49Speaker 02

  donor? He goes, yeah, your OERs now are just to like prop up other people. So luckily, I worked for this guy who But you don't decide to get out after they tell you you're a freaking organ donor? Trust me, I thought about it real hard, you know, and again, my wife, she's like, hey, you know, you like what you're doing, you know, it's pretty good. And, you know, arms is a pretty good life. And a little bit, you know, naive on my part too. It's like, okay, well, we'll go out, we'll go out to Fort Irwin and we'll see what happens. I worked for this guy named Norm

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Gretchen who knew this guy who was buddies with the guy that was chief staff at Fort Irwin. And I ended up getting out to Fort Irwin because the, you know, branch is like, okay, send me to Fort Hood to do anything. And, you know, I, again, self-confidence, you know, I'll do a good job and sooner or later I'll work my way down over the tie-in and I'll, you know, I'll do fine. And they're like, no, we're not sending non-CGSE graduates to, to divisional units. So I ended up at Fort Irwin, which, which, you know, the training unit out there,

• 42:11Speaker 02

  the, it was not, you know, it was not deployed back then. So I went there and I worked I worked on the division staff for about eighteen months, but while I was there, worked for, just because the staff back then was so small, there was only like two active duty majors and the G3 and, and you know, had all these crazy additional duties just because there wasn't anything. So, but and I worked quite a bit with the general, right? With General Webster back then and just learned a lot from, you know, you know, when you work with really senior people, you learn a lot of things, you know, just, just seeing

• 42:55Speaker 02

  how they operate. And so I did that. And then I went down to the, I was in the OT4, which was a great assignment.

• 43:04Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, you know, the kind of secret of the OT4 is there was two squadrons and a guy, best friend of my life, you know, even today, Scott Hickonbottom was the S3 of one and I was the S3 of 211. I worked with this guy, Mark Ritter, who, who was a Ranger, ended up, you know, Ranger Company Commander. And so we'd go out and so for, you know, the 10 rotations I was there, for five of them, I actually got to be the regimental three and you're having all this, you know, regimental stuff and you're, you're planning the attack. But then for the other five, you're a tank commander. So you're just driving

• 43:46Speaker 02

  around, you're BMP like shooting stuff. It was like, it was like adventure camp, right? And so, so that was a great assignment and, you know, kind of you build on your experience, right? So, you know, Colonel Ritter was, he said, you know, we're real good at this mile stuff, but we're generating, you know, battalion or, you know, a generation's worth of officers that have never fired a real bullet. Because, you know, we're all about being an OT4 and, you know, being good at miles and that's our job, you know? I mean, you want to give the units coming out there the toughest fight you can. So he said, hey, we need to start sending up these live hires.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  It's like, well, okay, you know, the big live fire out there, but the, and the officer guys, they said, well, no, you know, maintenance, contract, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we ended up setting up our own, you know, like squad and platoon live fires. And, you know, out there with the, you know, lifting kits and out there with the, you know, with the compass, figuring out the SDZs. And so, you know, my master gunners were great, you know, we figured it out and we started doing these live fires, which, you know, paid dividends later on when, when we got to Kuwait, but it was a great experience. And then, you know, I was 12 months as the S3 and then I ended up going back. I was Secretary General Staff at Fort Irwin.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  And so I was working, you know, very closely with General, General Thurmond, J D Thurmond. And again, just, you know, this wealth of knowledge just by being around the guy. And, you know, you, you kind of saw the, you know, how the rotations work, you know, and I kind of learned a heck of a lot just by being around these guys.

• 45:30Jocko Willink?

  You get done there and you end up going to NATO, right?

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:34Jocko Willink?

  So 2001, June of 2001, you head over to NATO. What's your job over there?

• 45:39Speaker 02

  I was a, I was in the J5. And so I was just, you know, I mean, there's no war on, there was no war on the horizon. And actually, if you, you know, it's kind of funny. If you think to September 10th, 2001, and you asked anyone in the military, how's the op tempo? And they're like, oh, we can't sustain this. Oh, man, we, we are burning the candle at both ends. Guys are going back and forth to, you know, the Balkans and Kosovo and, and it's like, oh, we, we can't keep this tempo up. You know, and now those are the salad days, you know what I mean?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  You know, and so, you know, we go over there, you know, my wife's actually from Florence, but we were down in Naples and a great assignment. So I get to, I'm the J, I'm the, you know, just some flunky in the J5 and a major and...

• 46:39Speaker 02

  I guess one of the things was the this thing called the Mediterranean Dialogue Program, which these Levant and North African countries where they're outreach to NATO. And that was one of my things. And then just the NATO Command Structure, which is this Byzantine Jobs Program kind of thing where it's like, oh, this is a headquarters for this, but this isn't a tactical headquarters. And it's like, so, so, you know, I did that, you know, you'd write policy papers and, you know, worked for some really good guys. They, I actually

• 47:19Speaker 02

  worked for this German who got named Fritz Gavins, who had been a the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth. He had been a fellow there, the first international fellow and just a brilliant military mind. And, you know, worked for him. And so you kind of understood, he had a very good understanding of the American Army that you don't see in people who, you know, from from our partners. And he also, I mean, just understood war and just a really good guy. And, you know, worked for him. And, you know, it's one of those things where you had to write your own evaluation. And he'd always, you know, which is very hard to do. I don't know if you ever do that. So you had to write your

• 48:01Speaker 02

  own evaluation. And then he'd sign it and he'd go, I will sign this because this as you move up your military career, that'll make your military weaker and mine stronger. Funny guy, you know, smoking cigarettes in his office. But so I worked really good guys. And then, you know, the kind of the straight line to the to the American general that was there. And so, you know, I kept, you know, when I first got there.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Went to Kosovo a couple of times, uh, went there initially like right after nine eleven. And things were, things were, you know, it calmed down by then, right? So the bombings were like, I think in what two thousand, two thousand one? I think it's two thousands when they really kinda, Kosovo where the bombing campaign was. So, you know, by end of two thousand one, things had calmed down. But then I also went back in like, uh, two thousand four, right before I left when the riots started. Which, uh, you know, um, so it was a good experience and got to travel to North African countries and stuff.

• 49:08Jocko Willink?

  Did you think when September eleventh happened, did you think we were looking at two decades of war?

• 49:13Speaker 02

  No, actually, uh, um.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  So my peers, like the guys that I was like company commanders with and, uh, they were all commanding battalions during the invasion. Right? And so, you know, by, by, uh, two thousand three, it's like, oh, the war's over. You know, once we, once, you know, once we got in there, I, I didn't think the war was gonna last, you know? Uh, and actually, if, you know, we, we only had a brigade in Afghanistan until like two thousand six or two thousand eight, right? So it's like, okay, they got that camp down, uh, you know, we're, we'll get into, uh, we'll get into Iraq. It's gonna be over in a couple of months.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you'd been, and it's from the book, you, you, uh, you've been in two thousand one, your alternate list for battalion command. Two thousand two, your alternate list for battalion command. Two thousand three, your alternate list for battalion command. And then finally in two thousand three, you're told you're gonna get a battalion.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh,

• 50:11Jocko Willink?

  But you figure the war's gonna be over pretty quick.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  The war's gonna be over pretty quick, you know? And actually, uh, you know, actually, one of the things I, I did was I, uh, volunteered to be a, uh, I put my name in the hat to be a ROTC professor, uh, cause it's like, yeah, there's no, there's no war going on, you know? And be back and, you know, be like after Desert Storm, there'll be another drawdown or some crap. And so, uh, uh, you know, again, with the, uh, you know, the bad news. So, you know, with the Scotch, it was like, you know, first year, it's like, you know, and then a list, I'm like, you know? And this is back, you know, I'm in Naples too. So it's like, duh, duh, duh, duh, you know, dial up, takes forever, you know, or the crap. So I'm like, you know, six hours ahead. So I'm, uh, you know, get the email and write the guy back, you know? Hey, thanks, right? But the, uh, the story always was if you, um,

• 51:01Speaker 02

  If you ask him if you buy a house, that was kind of the, I don't know if it's true or not, say, hey, buy a house. And if you're, you know, you think you're going to get command, they'll, they'll tell you, hey, don't buy the house quite yet.

• 51:12Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  So the second year.

• 51:14Jocko Willink?

  You're going to, you're going to get stationed at what, Seton Hall?

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Seton Hall, yeah. So, so the second year, I'm like, hey, thinking about buying a house. And the guy's like, you know, buy low, sell high. Dang it. So then the third year, I mean, I'm like half in the bag. I was like, three, three in a row, you know, that's, that's some sort of record, right? So, so I read him back and he's like, yeah, call me in the morning. So I'm like, oh geez. So, uh, so, uh, I couldn't get out of being the R C professor, which, which actually turned out to be a great assignment, but it was, you know, 11 months, moved from Naples, moved to Seton Hall, 11 months, and then back to Germany.

• 51:49Jocko Willink?

  And you get back to Germany and now you got your battalion command and you're immediately training for deployment?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, the, I took command in, I think June 7th of, uh, 2005 and we were deploying in November. So, you know, a, and, you know, it's like, well, why don't you move us in early? And they're like, oh, the other guys need to get there two years. Cause if you don't have two years in command, it's, you know, it's like, dude, the rules have changed and, you know, no one, no one besides me kind of got that one. Uh, so we were, uh, everything was planned out. There was nothing you could do, right? Uh, actually I took command and then, then we went on leave for two weeks. And so when I got there and the unit had just come, I think they got back like a memorial day. They got back at the end of May from

• 52:40Speaker 02

  doing, uh, you know, shooting gunnery, uh, you know, hoe and fells, uh, and then, uh, at Graff. So, you know, everybody's fully trained, you know, 44 qualified crews, uh, did this maneuver training. And then everyone left. Like, so when we get back off of leave,

• 53:01Speaker 02

  I think I had like six crews out of the forty-four that that were qualified. It's like, we just went to gunnery two weeks ago. So, you know, new people coming in over the summer and it was, you know, we did this gunnery, which I, which never did really make any sense to me. Where we're like, we went to graph and we were like, shooting out of the back of trucks, kind of like this OIF one training, you know, training for the last war. And then we went to our maneuver training. And then we went to gunnery, which is kind of backwards because you know, you want guys sharpening gunnery. So, and being a tanker, you know, gunnery is, you know, the big deal. But.

• 53:43Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is kind of where I want to pick up in the book here. And one of the things that's awesome about the book and, and just if you're listening, just get this book. It's so much detail. And by the way, you give like historical context. There's so much information in this book. You did, we'll talk about how long it took you to write this thing, which must have been quite some time. But, you know, not only do you give historical context, you also give really awesome detail of the people that you talk about in the book. It's almost like a mini, a mini bio of everyone that you start talking about. And you talk about the soldiers and the Marines that you serve with. And so I want to go into the, get some of that and we'll start going through this book here. You say, "My operations officer, Major Chuck Bergman,

• 54:28Jocko Willink?

  had arrived in the battalion the day I took command in June 2005. Chuck had grown up a Marine brat with a family tradition of military service dating back to the Spanish-American War and called Seattle home despite having attended high school in California, Okinawa, and Virginia before heading to West Point. An infantryman by trade, his knowledge was invaluable in training tankers how to fight without their tanks. Bergman knew how to train soldiers, having been a Bradley Platoon commander in Boomholder as a lieutenant, a light infantry company commander in Hawaii, and an observer controller at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany in prior assignments. Chuck had a wry sense of humor and called everyone but me Ranger."

• 55:13Jocko Willink?

  He called me Dino behind my back. Chuck and his team in the operations section, combined with the resourcefulness of the company commanders and first sergeants to get the time on the ranges the soldiers needed. And then you start talking about Team Dealer. Team Dealer Commander Captain Lou Lacan had his men on the firing range every day. When they were not pulling triggers, Captain Lacan led his soldiers through what-if drills so they would clearly understand his intent during the battle they were about to enter. Lou knew what it meant to be a soldier, an NCO and an officer. After graduating from Franklin High School in Genereet, Louisiana, in May of 1989, he enlisted in the Army to become an airborne Ranger.

• 55:57Jocko Willink?

  His family had a tradition of military service and Lou felt it was his duty to join, to join. After basic training, he attended Ranger School and spent the next eight years in Ranger Regiment. On 5 October 1993, Sergeant Lacan was a team leader at Fort Benning, Georgia, standing in at, in a 1,600-hours battalion formation when the names of the dead and wounded from Mogadishu, from Mogadishu, many of them known to his fellow Rangers, were solemnly read. After a moment of prayer, the orders came, wheels up in four hours, we're going to Somalia. Although Sergeant Lacan was leading some of the best-trained soldiers in history,

• 56:38Jocko Willink?

  thoughts of whether he had done enough to prepare his men for combat filled his head as he boarded the plane. Lou was a staff sergeant when he went to Officer Candidate School, OCS, in June of 1997. After he completed his first tour as an infantry lieutenant, the Army sent him to finish his degree at St. Martin's College near Olympia, Washington. He was fresh off the previous 15-month deployment when he assumed command of Team Dealer, vowing that he would be able to answer the question, "Have you done enough to train your men for combat?" With an unequivocal "Yes." He kept the men of Team Dealer engaged in preparing for a fight that may or may not come. And, and like I said, you give those kind of outstanding backgrounds on just about every

• 57:23Jocko Willink?

  person that you mentioned in this book. You give the historical context. There's a bunch of the cultural context that you weave in here, the history of the land, the history of the people, the war. So if you're listening to this right now, get this book. It will give you an incredible amount of information about these soldiers and, and more important about the battle and the entire context of the battle. So, fast forward a little bit. Um, we're going to take you onto the ground into, take you onto the ground into Ramadi. Um, here we go. And, and, and again, you cover like what you guys were doing to prepare.

• 58:03Jocko Willink?

  You cover a, a, a whole, the entire cycle is covered, but I'm going to fast forward right now. During my first days in country, I went to bed physically and mentally exhausted. On the evening of two June, I decided to turn in early, knowing that the next day was going to be another grind. Just after 2,300 hours, I left the operation center and went to my room slash office next door to go to sleep. 30 minutes later, a runner from the operation center was pounding frantically on the black metal door to my office. The terrorists had attacked a team dealer patrol with an IED and small arms fire into MIM. The blast overturned the vehicle instantly, killing Specialist Brett Tribble and very

• 58:43Jocko Willink?

  seriously wounding Sergeant Thomas Davis, Private First Class Adam Haley, and Private First Class Gabriel Moreno. Sergeant First Class Michael Harris raced to the scene, loaded the, loading the wounded in the back of his Bradley and tearing through the night to get the injured soldiers to the expert medical team at Charlie Med. Once stabilized, Davis, Haley, and Moreno were medevac to the field hospital in Balad. Although evacuating multiple casualties was a daily occurrence for units in Ramadi, this, for us, this was the first of many. Tribble's loss was shocking to me personally. I was never under any illusions that I was going to bring everyone back,

• 59:28Jocko Willink?

  but I certainly did not expect to start losing soldiers before assuming official control. During the task force's previous 15-month deployment to Baghdad in 2004, it lost three soldiers. I had expected that I could similarly keep casualties to a minimum through intense training back in Germany and Kuwait. Specialist Brett Tribble was a quiet kid in one of the platoons of Team Dealer. By all accounts, he was a good soldier who had found a home in the Army after some troubled teenage years. He liked being in uniform, had a plan to re-enlist in the coming days. Tribble was normally one of the dismounts, infantrymen who rode in the back of the Humvee or Bradley and only got out of the vehicle when there's trouble.

• 1:00:13Jocko Willink?

  Tonight, he had volunteered to man the M240 machine gun atop the Humvee, exposing himself to direct enemy fire, so he could be closer to the action if needed. He was that kind of man.

• 1:00:33Jocko Willink?

  And what's interesting is,

• 1:00:36Jocko Willink?

  and it's the way it is. You lose guys and the war keeps going on and you have to keep working. And you get into that here, like after nightfall. I went with Mark Lovejoy and some of his staff officers to Sheikh Ahmad Bazia Abu Risha's house. Sheikh Ahmad was, would be in my sphere of influence, SOI, along with two other sheikhs in Zangora, military leaders partnered with local leaders willing to cooperate with the coalition. A sphere of influence could be an elected official, an Iraqi security force leader, a sheikh, imam, or local businessman. By assigning these citizens to individual military leaders, US forces were able to

• 1:01:18Jocko Willink?

  stay on message and keep the locals from gaining too much wasta, Arabic for street cred, by having the ear of a two senior, a US commander versus his station in Iraqi security. And, you know, I have to bring this into the, this is a huge part of the picture is your interactions with the Bazia Abu Risha family, a huge part of it.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  It's in we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get into that as well. You, um, fast forward a little bit. We're gonna you, you meet with Colonel McFarland and you met with him a little bit. He's been on the podcast, General McFarland. You say McFarland was tall and lanky and looked like he could be one of my cousins back in Ireland. Introverted with a dry wit that was lost on some. He looked five years younger than I did, even though he was five years older. As we settled into a gray metal folding, you're at a meeting here. As we settled into the gray metal folding chairs surrounding the conference table, Colonel McFarland began the briefing by telling us that the MEF commander had given him the mission to quote, fix Ramadi, but don't make it like Fallujah. Someone said aloud in a tone of disbelief, that's it? That's the guidance?

• 1:02:28Jocko Willink?

  In my mind, the MEF commander might as well have slapped Colonel McFarland on the ass and said, go get him, Tiger. Colonel McFarland looked up, shot a glance of displeasure, shrugged his shoulders and continued outlining his plan to take back Ramadi. Minutes into the briefing, six mortar rounds exploded in rapid succession, rattling the conference room. I always felt that leaders should not be the first to run for cover when fired upon, but neither should they be the last. To my surprise, the briefing continued with Colonel McFarland not missing a beat.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if you were there for that. It might've just been the army guys, but, uh, so, you know, McFarland, because it was a pickup team, you know, I mean, that they say what you want, but it was a pickup team. I mean, you know, Ron Clark was on the first. I mean, I met him once. I, I'd met, you know, you think, oh, they're in the same unit, but, uh, I didn't know McFarland from Adam. I mean, I met him in the, uh, pre-command course, you know, but he was Colonel, I was Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel's doing Colonel things Lieutenant Colonel's did. And, uh, you know, the Marines, I mean, and if you think pre-war, I mean, for a Marine and an Army unit to be working together, it was like at a three or four star headquarters, not, you know, at the squad level like we were end up doing. So, so nobody knew anyone. So no one, you know, knew each other.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  And I don't know, were you in that meeting?

• 1:03:50Jocko Willink?

  I don't remember.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  So we're sitting there and they had that conference room, which was, I think it was a courtyard that they just put like two by fours over and a roof. So we're sitting there and these, I mean, those mortars, they, they killed the two guys who were, you know, a hundred meters away. And so I'm there and it's like.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  And there was, there was that overhang before the woods. I'm like trying to get under the overhang. I'm like, you know, Chuck Bergman said, I'm like Chuck scoot back. Try to scoop up that. And everyone just kept going. I was like, you know, that's the way it was. And that was, you know, that was day zero, you know, and, uh, uh, you know, it was just, and it just kept getting worse.

• 1:04:28Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, I went to sleep at about zero 200 that night. Within an hour, the runner from the talk was pounding at my door again. The terrorists had launched another catastrophic attack on team dealers, on team dealers in Teme. 15 artillery rounds detonated directly below a Humvee instantly killing First Lieutenant Scott Love and Private First Class Nick Crombie. The men of Team Dealer reacted immediately to the blast evacuating the soul, the casualties and securing the site. Sergeant Jason Welsh and Specialist Gilberto Coraz Ruiz were evacuated to Charlie Med and then on to Bilad. The fifth passenger inside the vehicle, a locally contracted Iraqi translator or TURP, walked away unscathed and upon returning

• 1:05:09Jocko Willink?

  to Camp Ramadi immediately quit along with his brother. First Lieutenant Scott Love was a graduate of Florida State University with a degree in film production and listening in the Army in 1999 as an Arabic linguist before attending Officer Candidate School. Everyone who met Scott instantly took a liking to him. In my mind, he was the best platoon leader in the task force. Private First Class Nick Crombie was a 19-year-old medic who had joined us in Kuwait and immediately gained the respect of the non-commissioned officers in the medic platoon as well as the task force conqueror surgeon Lieutenant Colonel John Farr. 10 minutes after meeting Crombie, Dr. John Farr was in my office telling me that Crombie needed to go to medical school on the Army's dime. Once we got back. Mark Lovejoy and then Mark Lovejoy,

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  again, you cover this in the book, but he was the person that you were taking over for.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  Great guy. Mark Lovejoy once told me that you never lose your slackers. At the time, I thought he was just overly sentimental for the losses his unit suffered. With the loss of Tribble, Love and Crombie, once again, Mark's words proved prophetic.

• 1:06:13Jocko Willink?

  As we formed up for the transfer of authority ceremony at zero seven hundred hours on the morning of June 7th, I was not nearly as optimistic as I had been forty eight hours later. We had three soldiers dead, six very seriously injured, and two more wounded in action before our even taking over.

• 1:06:39Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of when I remember meeting you for the first time. I mean, I think I met you in a meeting or something like that, but I think that day we came and I brought a couple of guys with me to come and see how we could help out.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, we, um, we kind of went into it, you know, we kind of bought into kind of certain stuff. It's like, you know, turn down the violence, you know, can't, can't be, you know, you know, it's not like we're going to take our helmets off, you know, like Brits try to do, but you know, it's like, we're going to turn down the violence, we're not going to, you know, be fighting indiscriminately.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Luckily, we had the six months in Kuwait, where we actually built this big training range, you know, Lou had his boys in the infantry company, Lou Lanzon, he had the boys out there shooting every day. And more importantly, they were talking about scenarios and, you know, like I said before, the, when somebody's very well trained, their first instinct isn't to shoot. Actually, I think Lou said to me one time, he goes, you know, the difference between like special forces dudes and regular dudes is special forces guys think before they shoot. It's like, huh, makes sense. So, uh, but we got in there and actually when me and Lovejoy went to see Sitar or Ahmed,

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  the brother, the Iraqi TV was on. And so our movement out of Kuwait was supposed to be this secret and, you know, don't tell the families, whatever. And we go over to the bizet house, Ahmed's house, and the Iraqi news is on and there's this, you know, like a arrow going from Kuwait to Ramadi with this big star on it.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  And, uh, you know, first words of Ahmed, we were like, oh, you're from the unit for Kuwait that's gonna come here and, you know, destroy Ramadi. And like, oh, no, that's not us. It's like, okay, the cat's out of the bag. But what we didn't realize was that, uh, when we went in there, they were, they were, they were expecting Fallujah. And, you know, we weren't gonna give it to them. So, uh, when we went in there, we just got, uh, I mean, we caught hell. And, uh, you know, even during BRIP, we'd kick in somebody's door, you know, we, we, we were, we said, hey, we gotta be aggressive. So we started kicking in doors. And you'd find, you know, seventy-five, one-five-five rounds in somebody's living room, right?

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  And so, uh, um, you know, when we lost triple, that's like, okay. And then, you know, two days later, you know, um, Scott Love and Crombie. Um, and Scott Love, I mean, uh, just, just the nice guy you ever met, you know, full energy. Everybody liked him. He was, uh, when he was enlisted, he was an Arab, Arabic translator. And he probably bought off on the mission more than I did. You know, he's like, oh, we're gonna help these Iraqis. Uh, you know, it's like, you know, just, just the nicest guy you'll ever met, you know? And then, you know, those two guys are dead. And it's like, um, and then, you know, the

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  next day we take over. And so, so you're, you know, it's like, okay, how are we gonna do this? And then, you know, not that, you know, the past is the future, but, okay, we're, we're, we're four days into this thing. We're not, I mean, we're, we're minus four days into it. And now we got all these casualties. It's like, I'm supposed to be here for six months. I mean, it's just gonna be left. And, uh, you know, not that you worry about your personal, you know, you're more worried about failing than your personal safety. But it's like, hey, you know, how are we gonna, we gotta do something. We just can't take these kind of casualties. And, uh, you know, and how are we going to, you know, safeguard these dudes? Um, and also accomplish their mission too. So it was, it was a, that first

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  couple, uh, obviously, you know, the guys were wounded, guys, whatever. But for me, it was like, geez, you know, what are we gonna do?

• 1:10:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you you fast forward a little bit. Chuck Bergman developed a plan to conduct familiarization patrols on the major routes through throughout the AO Conqueror and we sent them out. Every patrol hit an IED, every single one. And again, I it is it is hard to explain to people how different Ramadi was than a lot of other areas in Iraq. And reading this book, you know, those are the kind of things like I had one of my elements went out 24 times in a row and had enemy contact 24 times in a row. And and then they had one op where they didn't get enemy contact and then they went right, it picked up again. But those are the kind of things when you know, I that's kind of an anecdotal thing

• 1:11:24Jocko Willink?

  that I would that I tell people to try and explain to them how bad it was. And this is another one of those things. You you send out familiarization patrols into your AO, which by the way, your AO is this area primarily called Tameem, which was sort of like a little bit of a suburb, I guess, of Ramadi, which had pretty, pretty like one and two story buildings and looked like, you know, looked like a suburb, kind of. A couple apartment areas, but it wasn't huge. It's probably, I mean, how was it two miles, ten miles long by one mile or something like that?

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a little closer to three. And then the ECP was about a half mile below that. So it was tiny.

• 1:12:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  But there was like 40,000 people jammed in there. And, you know, it just, it was that. And then we, I mean, we had everything west of the water. So we had that and we had five kilo, but the the Iraqis were there and then the tribal area. And so, you know, our area, you know, it's funny that the area we focused in was probably, you know, probably five miles by two miles with the camp Ramadi in the middle of that. But, you know, my AO.

• 1:12:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, your AO is huge.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  In theory, went all the way up to Lake, was it Lake Dar Dar?

• 1:12:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, which at one point they're like, hey, you need to go up there and clean that thing out. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry, the phone's broke.

• 1:12:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Luckily, that one passed.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It was interesting, too, because Tameem had like a grid, basically a grid system. It looked, it looked like a normal kind of grid map.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  Which was, which was interesting for there.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Um, we we started off reading about two.

• 1:13:04Jocko Willink?

  One of the places that got hit, here's another one, another OP. Fast forward a little bit, when I arrived at OP 293, it was in terrible shape. There was trash piled everywhere and only a rudimentary concrete patch over the 10-foot hole dump the dump truck created a month earlier. Iraqi soldiers were half naked, sleeping on broken cots in 110-degree heat under a 25-foot high desert shade. Months of mortar attacks allowed rays of light to stream through the baseball-sized holes in the roof. The American advisors had converted a 20-foot shipping container into a TAC, complete with maps and FM radios, and another into a sleeping area. Both were hardwired with electricity, provided by a 40-kilowatt generator, air-conditioned,

• 1:13:48Jocko Willink?

  and protected from indirect fire by 18 inches of sandbags. It was not palatial living, but it was certainly nicer than anything I had lived in during Desert Shield or Desert Storm, and a hell of a lot better than how the Iraqis lived 50 feet away. What struck me were the human feces that were everywhere. I mean everywhere. I grabbed one of the NCOs from the advisor team, asking Sarge, "Why is there shit all over the place?" "Sir, they just shit everywhere. I keep getting on their NCOs and officers to tell them to knock it off, but they don't do anything about it. They got no standards," he replied. So it is important to remember that we're here and we're working alongside Iraqi troops. That's the goal, is to get the Iraqi troops up to speed.

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  But a lot of the Iraqi troops, especially at this time, they were, they were, you know, almost conscripts. You know, they were almost conscripts. They weren't quite conscripts, because it wasn't like they went and got pulled out of their, you know, home somewhere and forced to serve. But a lot of them, just financially, they had no other choice. There was no other opportunities, and so they didn't have any... We had guys that didn't know left from right. We, we had to change some of our, when we would be teaching them, like, how to move through a building or how to label things, they didn't know, they didn't know how to count. So this is what you're dealing with.

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, that's one of the things, in, in, you know, there was, there's a few epiphanic moments for me, and one of them was the poop thing. It's like, so, you know, so, so I asked Big Sarge, like, "Well, where are they supposed to poop?" And he's like, "I don't know." It's like, hmm. And so, so we went there, and then, then he showed me where it was. And it was like, you know, actually... Kind of kind of feeling in my chest right now, because it was the most disgusting thing I ever seen. So they had no place. And so it's like, you know, like, like any, you know, if you if you show if you show soldiers a little bit of love, they'll do great things for you, right? So we said, you know, hey, we got to get these guys, you know, this, this is just substandard living.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  And oh, by the way, they were going AWOL all the time. It's like, you know, it's a mystery why they're going AWOL. Well, you know, I mean, I'm living this If you can't, for two weeks. The the Maslow hierarchy of needs, I mean, a decent place to poop isn't even on that, you know, that's in the stubs, right? So, uh, so we, uh, we got him out there and, um, uh, the the company I went north with, uh, when we went north out of Kuwait, John Hiltz was the engineer commander and he ended up building one of the FOBs, but, uh,

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  John was with me in Kuwait and, uh, and I was like, John, we got to do something about this thing. And so he got these Conexes, uh, and he put,

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  basically just, uh, you know, some two by fours. And he made these three monks. And I mean, it it literally looked like, I mean, when I saw it's like, John, this is the best you can do. It looked like bougainville, like the camps where they had them. But the and we put air conditioners on them and we put sandbags on top of them. And the Iraqis were just ecstatic. They were like, oh, this is the greatest thing. I'm like, John, what the hell is this? You know, but but that's what that's all was needed. And our, you know, the AWOL problem started going away. Because we just showed them a little bit of love. Yeah. But you're right, they, uh, I I would probably go with conscripts and there were stories of like even like press gangs that were just kind of driving around people and throwing them in the back of trucks.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  And, uh, you know, but that's what you had. And so, you know, you got to make the best of what you got.

• 1:17:25Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. You're still out there and you get word Colonel McFarland and his five-vehicle security detail entry into the compound. It's never a good thing when your boss shows up five minutes after you realize you're in a terrible situation, especially in combat. Colonel McFarland offered his condolences again for the loss of Scott Love and Nick Crombie. I almost, I am almost certain that he never met either Scott Love or Nick Crombie, but it was evident that he deeply felt the loss of the two soldiers under his command. My experiences in Kuwait conditioned me to justify the smallest actions to my brigade commander. I began by giving Colonel McFarland a detailed briefing of my task force tactical laydown. He quickly figured out what I was doing, stopping me after thirty

• 1:18:06Jocko Willink?

  seconds. Tony, I don't know you, but the army has made you a battalion commander, so you have my unwavering trust. Do what you need to do, tell me when you need help, but other than that, command your task force. I do not have to tell, you do not have to tell me your every move. I've already commanded a battalion and I don't want to command yours. I have my own set of problems.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  His comments caught me flat-footed. In five sentences, Colonel McFarland had displayed more combat leadership than I had experienced from my battalion commander in Desert Storm or my brigade commander during the previous six months in Kuwait combined. He was a senior army officer who trusted his subordinates at face value. It was a refreshing change. So that's a great description of Colonel McFarland.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Jocko Willink?

  He's the real deal.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, you know,

• 1:19:03Speaker 02

  physical courage just kind of comes with the job. I mean, you know, you're not gonna not, you know, there's some guys that'll, that'll freeze, whatever. But that whole moral courage thing throughout the military, that, you know, we got the army values and moral, that's one that doesn't get talked enough about, you know, raise your hand and say, hey, this isn't right. But, you know, McFarland, uh, I'll tell you what, he, uh, absolutely, you know, he, and the fact, uh, that he came out and he looked me in the eyes, you know, he found me and said, hey, come up to my office, I want to tell you, you know, I feel bad for Scott. It's like he found me out in the battlefield. And, uh, you know, he looked me in the eye and, uh, You know, whenever I had a problem, I'd go to him. Um, but by and large, you know, he, I think he only caught me like once or twice.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Uh, if something that, that we were screwing up, but, uh, you know, but then it was never, you know, angry. It's like, hey, what are you doing?

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What are you doing? Why are you doing it?

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. What, what, what is wrong with you? I think I got a what is wrong with you one time, but, uh, uh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:03Jocko Willink?

  He had come out there also to tell you that, um, you were going to become the economy of Force Mission. Meaning he was, he was telling you, you're going to have to hold what you got, do what you can. And it was, you know, as you put in the book, not going to be a good deal for the task force. And you say here, we had gone from nearly 1,200 soldiers in the task force to just over 500 one day. So basically he, he had changed the plan or, or I guess solidified the plan of who is going to be the main effort. The main effort was going to be for, to start things off the 137 and, and securing downtown Ramadi. And as we mentioned, you were in the suburbs of, of downtown.

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  Meaning, oh, by the way, that just means there's like, you're right up against them. You're on the other side of the canal. It's not like this huge vast, uh, uh, terrain feature that's in between. No, there's a canal and, and you're right up against the, uh, against where the main effort was going to be. But that changed because he was going to have to pull forces from you and, and augment some of the other battalions.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so we were, you know, and that happened. I mean, we were still a week from, uh, we were still under the 228 back then. I mean, Mefarlane was going through his own rep that Ray first was. And so, uh, you know, I'll be honest with you. Uh, I had 1,500 guys. I had, um, I think I had like, that was the main effort. So I had like three infantry companies, an engineer company, uh, my HHC, you know, a tank company. And so, I mean, I had this, you know, I had this legion of guys. So it's like, okay, well, I got one day before we're going to start in. Let me go check the block on looking at the Iraqis and, you know, well, well, us Americans will get down to business.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  And we were supposed to hold the outside of the city and then, you know, uh, VJ was supposed to push in the city. And, uh, you know, when he came out there, it's like, yeah, that's not what's happening. So. You know, I got left with a, I talked him into leaving one engineer platoon with us. And I had one tank company that had two tank platoons because the other platoon, we had to give the Marines for their heavy QRF and then I had dealer company and, and those guys were, I mean, those guys were just rock solid and can't say enough good things about them. But that was it. And so, you know, you want to stay in the off, you know, because I mean, in the end, the 228 guys, I think they even lost more than we did.

• 1:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  You know, so.

• 1:22:38Jocko Willink?

  It was about the same.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:39Jocko Willink?

  It was, it was around 100. Yeah.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you got to go on the offense. I mean, you just can't stand around and take it. Right? So it's like, okay, we got to get in the offense. How are we going to do this thing? And, you know, and that really kind of forced my hand over the next couple of weeks of both the police and the Iraqi army is trying to figure out what to do with these guys. Excuse me. Trying to figure out how to get these guys in the fight because they, by the same token, they weren't doing much. The, you know, Chris Stellings and the MIT team had the Iraqi army doing some stuff, but the police weren't doing jack. And, and so it's like, how are we going to get into this fight? You know, how, how are we going to, you know, because if you go to, if you, especially in a place like Ramadi, it's like, if I'm going to go deploy for a year and I'm going to lose some guys and guys are going to get maimed for life. I mean, they got to walk out there saying, hey, I accomplished

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  nothing. I did the best of my 12 months. You know, we, we've got to get something done here because it was, it was untenable. And, you know, and actually, a little bit later on, it's when the MEF came out and said the Anbar was lost. It's like, well, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, fellas.

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward, fast forward a little bit. Al Qaeda continued its murder and intimidation campaign against the locals on a scope that we did not comprehend. Patrol patrols routinely found mutilated bodies in the street. But even then, we only knew a sliver of the problem. I never fully understood the depth of the terror campaign inflicted on the Iraqi population until years after I returned from Ramadi and served with Staff Sergeant Brian Netherly, a cavalry scout from the unit that replaced us. He told me that once they secured Temeem in the summer of 2007, the population began speaking openly with coalition forces. The locals believed that coalition forces had been ignoring them and allowing Al Qaeda to conduct its operations unopposed.

• 1:24:25Jocko Willink?

  Couldn't you see the number of funerals that were going on every day? They asked our replacements. Not to make excuses, but honestly, how was I supposed to know the cyclical death rate of a third world city in a war zone? We saw funeral processions daily and thought nothing of it. We thought it, we thought it, we thought it offensive to the locals to stop the funeral procession and start questioning the mourners. To them, our ignoring the funerals was a further sign of coalition indifference. And that's another thing that I try and explain to people, the level of violence that the, that Al Qaeda was conducting, you know, beheaded people, uh, skinning people alive. It was, they, they were absolutely horrible. And, and

• 1:25:11Jocko Willink?

  if they weren't that horrible, they probably would have done a better job at maintaining some level of control. Because they made the locals so furious that eventually, you know, that, that enabled you to do what you did with the, with the sheiks.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, uh, you know,

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  they, they were actually, you know, they, they were very good at what they did. And, you know, people wanted to like poo poo them, but I mean, they were, they were actually pretty good. You know, as far as being terrorists, you know, two thumbs up, you know, and, uh,

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  and they, and they were, they were actually kind of judicious. Now the murder intimidation, it's like, you know, you don't need to murder that many people, especially if there's no cops. I mean, if you, if you look at what they did with the cops, right? They blew up the cell phone towers. Right? So the, they cut the police off from the, uh, uh, from the population. So you couldn't, you know, you can't just call the cops and, uh, They also, you know, the cops, they'd follow them home and they did, you know, they intimidate them. You know, you guy goes to work, shows up, sticks a gun in the wife's face, says, hey, if your husband goes to work tomorrow, we're gonna kill you. Well, you know, he stops coming to work. So, you know, when I got there, I couldn't figure out like the mask on the face. It's like, God, this guy's a bunch of chickens. Like, no, they've got to do that.

• 1:26:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. So the Iraqi police would wear masks?

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, they'd wear masks all the time. And it's like, well, what's wrong with them? Well, they, you know, they were intimidating them. And, you know, I mean,

• 1:26:34Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, this, the Iraqi police at early in the deployment was like, was like 50 of them or something.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was like 200 when we got there.

• 1:26:41Jocko Willink?

  200 and most of them were on leave and like they wouldn't show up. You know, you get like 30, 40 of them showing up sometimes. So it wasn't a huge, it's important to know that number because later on it becomes a powerful force.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, the one thing it's like, so if there's no police, I mean, if you think, you know, why do, I mean,

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  you know, I sleep safe in my bed because of the Melbourne Police Department, not because of, you know, the army or the CIA or whatever, you know what I mean? So, you know, if there's no police force and a guy shows up at your house with a gun, well, he's gonna get shot. Well, you know, two guys show up at my house with a gun, well, they're gonna get shot. But, you know, like six guys show up, you're like, let me, let me hear what you got to say. So, you know, how many people does it take to intimidate a town? The answer might be six, you know, if there's nobody to call. And so they were very good about stripping out guys. And, you know, it's like, oh, I'm gonna stand up, I'm gonna stand up to Al Qaeda. Well, no, you're not, because we'll kill you. Well, then somebody else like, oh, well, you need to stand up.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  Well, you start getting three or four guys down that line and people stop standing up and they understood that.

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. All right. Going back to the book here. On June 14th, 2006, the Ready First assumed responsibility for Ramadi from the 228 infantry and immediately prepared for an offensive to take the city back from AIF. There's a term I haven't heard, anti-Iraki forces.

• 1:28:05Jocko Willink?

  With Colonel McFarland assembling a forces, a force of over 5,500 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for the pivotal battle in the war. Under the cover of darkness on the night of 17 June, SEAL snipers and Task Force Bandit mortar platoon infiltrated down the Euphrates Canal and set up positions to overwatch the largest operation into southern Ramadi in years. The Bandits launched out of the shell of ECP III, now rebuilt and renamed Copper Megan. Charlie Rock and the 54th Engineers cleared the abandoned railroad bridge while Team Warrior Bravo Company 136 Infantry, commanded by Captain Mike McCusker, and an Iraqi tank company following close behind.

• 1:28:50Jocko Willink?

  The Bandits attacked aggressively with tanks and Bradleys racing over the bridge before the terrorists could react to this trespass into their territory. Quickly, the Warriors seized a foothold less than a mile into the southwest corner of the city and began establishing cop iron. Simultaneously, Team Bulldog Bravo Company 137 Armor, commanded by Captain Mike Byma, attacked out of Camp Corregidor swiftly advancing to a blocking position on the southeastern corner of town and began establishing cop spear. So these were really aggressive attacks and one, one of the things I always like to talk

• 1:29:30Jocko Willink?

  about is there was a road that went into south central Ramadi from, from northern Ramadi. It was called Route Sunset and before we showed up, the Marines went down that road and hit like 13 IEDs in 500 meters. Like these areas were just completely controlled by the enemy. The Rangers tried to hit a target down there one time. This is again before we showed up and yeah, don't go and got shot off target. Rangers tried to go down that road another time while we were there. They, they lost a vehicle.

• 1:30:05Jocko Willink?

  So these were areas the insurgents did not want us to go at all.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the, and if you, you know, and that goes back, I mean, even us getting held in Kuwait for six months, right? So we got there in 2011 in November, or I'm sorry, 2005, November 2005. Well, we're winning the war. So we're going to hold this brigade in Kuwait. Well, we weren't winning the war. And, you know, and so then in Kuwait, we were kind of separated from what was going on. And so, you know, but if you watch the news, it's like, oh, we're pulling out the cities. We're part of the problem. And so, you know, we were pulling back into the fob. So that, you know, that's also why, you know, all the respect in the world for Colonel McFarlane, it's like, no, no, no, no.

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  We got, we got to push in there. And even, you know, some of the guys in the 228, you know, they, they pull me aside. You know, their field guards are like, you guys are all going to die if you go in there. What? You know, but, you know,

• 1:31:01Jocko Willink?

  The seals that we turned over told us the same thing, like, don't go in these areas. Don't go in this area. Don't go in that area.

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, they pushed in, you know, and, and, you know, God bless Vijay. I mean, very, very good Colonel McFarlane, personally better him than me because I'm terrified of bridges. So it's like, you know, it's like, man, I, there's a number of times I'd look, it's like, you know, we got a terrible fight in our hands. But at least I don't go across a bridge. We're good. But, you know, those guys, they were out there every day. And, you know, and they were good. I remember, I think it was Mike Bynum's, I was talking to him later and he said that, I think you guys found a house that was overlooking his fob. I can't remember which one he had and it had an exact replica sand table in the house.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  And it's like, you know, I mean, I've been on, you know, 25 years with a military mission. It's hard to find a good sand table and they actually had like a replica of like whatever, Cop Falcon, you know, overlooking it. I mean, these guys were good and they didn't want us in there. And, you know, and it really came down to, you know, hey, the Americans, you know, they, they, you know, the Americans are just letting us run, run roughshod over your guys so they can take our oil. I mean, they come up with these crazy things and, you know, your average, your average Iraqi will kind of buy off a conspiracy. So, you know, and they bought into it.

• 1:32:28Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book here, the initial push into Ramadi came at a cost with Corporal Christopher Leon of the Second Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, killed by enemy sniper on 20 June while pulling security on a rooftop of Cop Iron. That's Dave Burks, one of Dave Burks' guys from Solid Six. In the following two days, Lance Corporal Nicholas White and Corporal Riley E. Baker, both of Weapons Company 38 Marines, were killed in central Ramadi. On 26 June, the Kerrhees, that's the first of the 506, attacked out of Camp Corregidor and established Cop Eagles Nest in the Malab District near the soccer stadium, securing eastern approaches to the city.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  Captain Byman and his Bulldogs, having rearmed and refitted, attacked directly out of Camp Ramadi. Accompanied by an Iraqi tank company, they swiftly moved to secure the northern flank of Cop Iron by constructing Cop Falcon to control the key intersections of the western part of the city. This attack also came at a cost, with Corporal Terry Lisk of Task Force Bandit, killed by mortar fire at Cop Falcon and injuring Private First Class Joshua Ravik. The Bandits, the Kerrhees, and the 38 Marines were now doing heavy lifting in taking back the center of the city, while the regulars and the conquerors fought their way through the northern and western approaches to Ramadi.

• 1:33:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this was, it was, it was interesting when Colonel, when General McFarlane was on, and I didn't realize it at the time, and I guess everything just blurred together, but you know, he said on the podcast, he's like, "I wanted to do a major operation every three or four days, and I kinda had to think about it and think about the dates that these things happened in." Yeah, and like, even for this one, like, my SEALs, the first guys to go into Cop Iron, my SEALs are the first guys to go to Falcon, my SEALs are the first guys to go into Eagles Nest, like, these guys were leading all those operations. And it was a different type of lead, because they'd come in on the cover of darkness, you

• 1:34:34Jocko Willink?

  know, same thing at the hospital, three Marines went in the hospital, we were there a little bit ahead of them, took up Overwatch position. But yeah, when I thought about it, it was just, you know, two, three, four days, guys come back, refit, reload, and back out into the, into the mix. That was an incredible pace to put on, and then the logistics support behind it all.

• 1:34:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Jocko Willink?

  It's almost one of those things where if you asked me how often you'd be able to put together a what Colonel McFarland calls a cop in a box, meaning, hey, we're just gonna go build this thing.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:09Jocko Willink?

  If you asked me realistically from a logistical standpoint, from a combat power standpoint, how often could you do that? I would've said, oh, you probably need three weeks in between. We're doing them every like three, four days.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't like, it wasn't like, you know, 200 Texas barriers coming in every night, you know, and the, you know, the filling the sandbags at the chow hall. But I mean, it was Texas barriers and, and, and the, the, the little ones were the Jersey barriers. And, and there were just hundreds and thousands. And, you know, my S4, you know, I was an S4, so I kinda, you know, it's like, I understand this stuff. But, you know, I'd tell my S4, you know, this guy, Nathan Calatron, it's like, yo, Kelly, come up with this stuff. You know, the staff will figure it out. But it's like, it was just magic. I mean, I don't know, I don't know where it came from. You know, I, I guess those convoys that came in every night. But there was just mountains and mountains of stuff.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  And, you know, I, I listened to the Colonel, or the Colonel McFarland interview, and it's like, no, I wasn't like that. But it was across the brigade. You know, I was doing one every, you know, I was at the back, so I was doing like one a month. But, you know, the, the other battalions, they were doing one, they were doing one every two weeks. And that works out to about every five days for across the brigade, you know?

• 1:36:30Jocko Willink?

  Crazy.

• 1:36:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:32Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, you guys going, fast forward a little bit. Team dealer was going door to door, attempting to keep the enemy off balance. Placing an emphasis on limiting violence during training is one thing, but putting it into effect is another. It's a simple task for a battalion commander to design a training plan or issue orders from the safety of his office, but not so much for the 19-year-old Joe out walking patrol on a narrow street where the enemy may be hiding around the next corner or next rooftop. They were even harder for the 24-year-old squad leaders or the 22-year-old lieutenants to implement and explain to their soldiers with an unseen enemy trying to kill them every minute of the day. Captain Lou Lanson, am I saying that right?

• 1:37:09Speaker 02

  Lanson, yeah.

• 1:37:10Jocko Willink?

  Lanson Lou, I apologize. That guy was a stud. Uh, Captain Lou Lanson and First Sergeant David Shaw did a magnificent job of maintaining order and discipline in a unit that was losing its mid-leadership on almost a daily basis. Starting in Germany, Lanson and Shaw ensured that their soldiers understood the rules of engagement, putting them into practical terms the troops understood, which was no small feat. The American soldier has the, has and will maintain the right of self-defense and can use deadly force when there's an imminent threat to his personal safety. This required some keen, split-second judgment in a place like Tamim. Personally, I felt an imminent threat anytime I entered the place.

• 1:37:52Jocko Willink?

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I had to fight the impulse to slide the selector switch on my M4 off-safe, past semi, on to burst. As First Sergeant Shaw and Captain Lanson asked the soldiers, "Are you threatened? Or are you just scared?" Yeah, that, that section right there, just explaining the efforts that the soldiers and the leadership went to keep the civilian populace safe because, you know, the one thing I always point out to my guys is, I'd say, "Hey, there's a bunch of bad guys out there. There's also doctors, there's teachers, there's moms, there's sheiks. And the minute we, if you kill, if we kill one of these people..."

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:35Jocko Willink?

  "First of all, everyone knows about it. Like, there's no hiding it, the, and you've got some good examples we'll, we'll talk about. There's, you know, there's the relationships with the sheiks, there's the relationships with the Iraqi police, there's the Iraq, relationships with the, with the Ramadi Iraqi government, and then you have relationships with the civilians. And then you have the relationships with the Iraqi army who you're out there with. So it wasn't like, "Oh, we can kill this civilian over here and no one's gonna know about it." No, everyone's gonna know, and there's no covering it up. And so, the amount of discipline that had, that the troops had to have was phenomenal. And, and look, I had, I had SEALs, you know, and so, and also, a lot of times, my SEALs, they're in a, they're in an overwatch position. Enemy doesn't know they're there.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:22Jocko Willink?

  They're making, they're able to make a call, they'll take a little time to make a call in, in some cases. But you're 19 year old Joe, as you put it.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:32Jocko Willink?

  This kid's walking down the street. By the way, he went to a memorial service two days ago for one of his friends that got shot or blown up or whatever. And now he sees someone doing something, he's got to make those decisions. And the, the amount of risk that guys took, but also the outstanding job that they did.

• 1:39:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:49Jocko Willink?

  To, to limit the civilian casualties. And look, there was, there was civilian casualties, but it was miraculous. How small those numbers were.

• 1:40:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, you know, a lot of the, you know, 99% of that credit goes especially to like Lou Lanceone and, uh, First Sergeant Shaw. And I don't know if you ever met Shaw, uh.

• 1:40:13Jocko Willink?

  I, I have to look at a picture.

• 1:40:15Speaker 02

  Big dude, uh, uh, you know, what an infantry first sergeant. It scared me a little bit. I'll, I'll be frank about it. Uh, but you know, he's like, are you, you know, you know, him, you know, are you threatened or you scared? And, and you know, and you walk the streets, you know, I, I, I did it, you know, 100th of the guys in dealer, but every time I was there, it's like, man, it's, it's gonna, it's gonna pop off. It's gonna pop off. And about third time it did, you know, but, uh, um, you know, those guys, they, they trained them really hard in Kuwait. And, um, they also talked, you know, a lot about the, the kind of moral aspects of it, you know, Lou made a big point. Uh, I talked before I came on, you know, about, you know, they talked over, and then what's the second, third order?

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  And so, you know, it's not, you know, the, what was it in Black Hawk Down? It's like, we can't shot, shoot till we get shot at. It's like, no, they, those were not the rules of engagement, but it's, you know, uh, not as eloquent as Shaw was. I was like, you know, kill the people that need killing. And you kind of know who the people that need killing are.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, that's a close to the thing I used to tell my guys, which was you better make sure the guys you're killing are bad.

• 1:41:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:22Jocko Willink?

  And, and you can tell, you, you can't tell.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Especially because, you know, that's another thing, the civilians, civilians weren't out, like when shooting started, civilians aren't out there anymore. Like, guess who's out there? Bad guys.

• 1:41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  And they're carrying AK-47s, they're carrying RPGs and they're getting put down.

• 1:41:40Speaker 02

  Well, and you know, and there's.

• 1:41:43Speaker 02

  If you, you know, when we were in Kuwait, we had a chance to read a lot of those reports. Cause I, you know, we were out training and you know, sitting in my office, I'm reading all these, you know, sick acts and stuff and, uh, you know, shovel holder was probably the most dangerous job in Iraq in the first couple of years. It's like, why did you kill him? Well, he's holding a shovel. Why is he holding a shovel? You know, is he, is he digging or is he digging in an IED? And so, you know, in the guys, you know, they were out there and like you said, can't, can't say enough, you know, you know, they go to a memorial service and then they're, they're out that night or they, they had a guy get killed and we were so strapped for people, they went right back out. Cause we had all the checkpoints and everything else. So you lost a guy in your platoon, you know, they evac the, they evac them in

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  the Bradley and them guys are back out for another, for the last, you know, four or five hours. So, you know, those kids were out there every day and they were kicking indoors and

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  but they, they, they understood what the mission was. So they weren't roughing up the family. Cause you know, um, you know, kind of the lesson from Vietnam, it's like people wouldn't talk to us. And, uh, uh, like when we got there, do you remember there was that big exodus of people?

• 1:42:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:42:52Speaker 02

  And so, you know, I mean, I was in Desert Storm and we didn't see a lot of kids in Desert Storm, but you know, the kids always waved to you and Balkans kids always waved to you. Um, but when we got to Ramadi, one, everyone was hauling ass out of town and then two, you know, the kids, the kids wouldn't even look at it. The parents would walk inside the house and then the kids would just, you know, kind of walk away. And so it's like, yeah, something, something is really, really wrong here. And so, you know, when we got in there, we started talking to people and that's when we found out about the murder intimidation and, uh, you know, what the Al Qaeda guys were doing. Cause they, you know, you don't want a dead population. So they just come in and kind of tune up the, the father until he got in line. And then he's doing whatever, you know, being a lookout or smuggling weapons or digging the hole or being the watch, whatever.

• 1:43:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. One of the ways I described that is when we first started going, especially when I was at like cop Falcon going out and, and going to someone's house. And, you know, you're like knocking on the door, they open the door. If they don't open the door, kicking the door. But, you know, in the beginning they, they, the family wouldn't even look at you. They would like, the father would like take the family and huddle them away in the corner. They wouldn't make eye contact with you.

• 1:43:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward like, I don't know how long it was, cause my, my mind is all blurred, but you fast forward an amount of time. And they're giving you tea and they're having a legit conversation with the Iraqi soldiers. And that was a huge tipping point i- in the battle for sure. Yeah. Um, yeah, so that was, that was a huge piece and if the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines wouldn't have been disciplined in the way they behaved, that never would have been able to take place. Yeah. So that was a huge piece of it. Um, going back to the book here, on June 17th, terrorists attacked a Charlie Rock patrol with

• 1:44:39Jocko Willink?

  an IED in Ramadi, killing specialist Robert L. Jones and Sergeant Reyes Ramirez and seriously injuring Corporal Ryan J. Clark. The enemy had begun adding accelerants to IEDs, causing the vehicles to erupt in flames following the initial explosion. Making time to plan for future success could not come at the cost of lives here and now, or now, here and now. So.

• 1:45:06Jocko Willink?

  It was, you know, kind of unavoidable. And, you know, that's, that's one thing that I've, I had not a fatalistic feeling, but y- you know, you drive out Camp Ramadi and you go by the vehicle graveyard, which was, you know, probably the worst place to put a vehicle graveyard because it was a, maybe it was the best place because it freaking got you on your toes. Yeah. And, but you, you go through, pass that thing every day and you think to yourself, there's, there's a very small chance that we're going to be able to get out of here without taking casualties. Like, that's just, well, it's gonna happen. It's terrible. Yeah. Um, fast forward a little bit, and in addition to our previously assigned Iraqi

• 1:45:48Jocko Willink?

  security forces, we received control of an Iraqi army T-72 tank company from the 9th Iraqi Division. We partnered with the Iraqi tanks, we partnered the Iraqi tanks with Team Comanche, assigning them checkpoint three along Route Mobile. Each of these Soviet-built machines flew enormous Iraqi flags from the turrets easily vis- visible a mile away, making a 40-ton statement to the population that the Iraqi army was here to protect them. The Iraqis loved their tanks. Passersby would give them a smile and a thumbs up every time they saw a T-72. We also took the Iraqi tanks out on every large-scale mission, more for the message to the population than for their capability.

• 1:46:27Jocko Willink?

  Also, I have to admit that for a tanker, it was pretty cool to command a company in the same vehicles I had spent the last 20 years figuring out how to destroy. That, that, that was wild. It was wild seeing those T-72s out there.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, those guys, um, you know, we

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  getting the Iraqi army in the fight, I mean, because it's really hard because, you know, they just, you know, a lot of times weren't very good, you know what I mean? And they, they, they meant well, but they, they couldn't do anything. But, you know, the people wanted the Iraqis and, and, you know, they, one of the things, we figured out two things kind of was, one, uh, we were fighting Al Qaeda guys who all needed, I mean, that, that's the long and the short of it. But then we were fighting the guys who were in the Moog, right? The popular resistance, but, you know, let somebody, let me and you be Iraqis. What would you be doing in 19? You'd be out there killing Americans. You know, I mean, they, they, and so part of that, we had to kind of figure out how to, how to split that off.

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  And then getting the Iraqis in the fight and, uh, uh, you know, it started with the police and we used the, the sheiks to get the police going, uh, and, and use them to, uh, to do the recruiting. And then the Iraqi army, it was like, hey, we just got to push them forward because they, they would be more than happy to let you do the lifting. And it's like, no, no, no, no, you got to get out there. And there was a couple of times where, you know, crazy things happened, like at ECP3, um, you know, I call up Chris Stillings, it's like, hey, you need to get these guys down here. And then, uh, uh, you know, he did, which, you know, he kind of looked at me, it's like, well, they don't have a quick reaction force. It's like, well, what do you mean? It's like, well, it's not really there. And, and Chris, you know, very few people that I will, you know, he, that guy was just a badass. He would be like

• 1:48:13Speaker 02

  teaching MBA, you know, military decision-making classes in the morning and then going out and drills them until like three in the morning. And so,

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  All those Met Team guys were freaking epic.

• 1:48:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, uh, um, like when we, uh, when we cut that shake, uh, or we cut the Imam and we got, we, we had to take over the, the mosque. You know, they got down there, they kicked, you know, they kicked the door into the mosque because we couldn't do it. But, you know, that,

• 1:48:36Jocko Willink?

  Meaning the Iraqi soldiers.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  The Iraqi soldiers did, which, you know, uh, um, that, that wasn't in there, you know, getting them to do something on a dime wasn't in, you know, Americans, it's like, you know, blow the whistle, we'll run the gunfire. Yeah, they, they don't work like that. So, uh, you know, a lot to those guys that are out there.

• 1:48:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had a, uh,

• 1:48:57Jocko Willink?

  Similar to the Iraqi tanks, the first time, I mean, I was like literally on my first patrol out in Ramadi and the Iraqi army came out, this is with the first of the 506 and I'm like sitting on a rooftop, got up there, I'm like holding, like holding security for a minute before somebody bumped me out of my position because that's what my guys would do. And I'm sitting there looking down like a street and all of a sudden out comes a guy with an RPG and he's got the like the RPG rounds on his back and I had my like my whole body wanted to shoot this guy. And I was like, oh, this, you know, like stand by because that's, you know, that's a, that's what they did. That's a friendly Iraqi guy. That's a freaking RPG

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  gunner. And behind him was a guy with a freaking machine gun and AK-47. So it took a little bit of time for me to like, get rid of the, the reaction of, oh, there's a, there's a guy with an RPG. And for my whole adult life, I've been seeing guys with RPGs as enemy. And now all of a sudden, they're our bros. So.

• 1:50:01Speaker 02

  Well, you know, one of the things in, so when Garza and Reinhardt got wounded, right? When the ECP caught them fire. And we get back in Charlie Med and, and I talked to him and I said, you know, because to me, in the grand scheme of things, being, being on a MIT team, you talk about being dealt some bad cards, you know.

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  But so MIT team, just so you know, Kerry, these are the guys, military transition teams. These are the guys that are going to be like a three man, four man team. And you are going to go in bed with an Iraqi company or Iraqi battalion. And by the way, there's a PIT team too, which is the police transition teams. So these guys were, this was a job that you had to be just a hard human being to do, you know, from the living conditions. Look, and you might have an air conditioned Conex box sitting out on ECP three, but you're still out there on ECP three, living in, living in the shit, literally.

• 1:50:59Speaker 02

  Literally. Yeah. And so, you know, the, so Garza and Reinhardt, you know, they, they got some shrapnel. Garza got the worst of it. You know, they both ended up getting like bronchitis, but we're sitting there in the con, right? There in Charlie Med. And I was like, hey, you guys, you know.

• 1:51:18Speaker 02

  I put you on the scene because they were from my battalion. I mean, that's one of the things like Lovejoy did. He said, hey, you need to give these guys. So they got the latitude even because they didn't need, you know, Chris didn't even have enough guys to move his vehicles. You know what I mean? So, you know, one of the things that 228 told us, you know, 172 was, hey, give them some of your medics and NCOs. So we gave them some medics and NCOs and Reiner and Garza, Garza was a medic. And I was like, hey, guys, you're good. You know, send it back to you and I'm sorry about, you know, sorry about screwing you. And they, you know, I mean, from the mouth of babes. I mean, he's six and a, you know, old corporal, but he's like, yeah, we ain't leaving. This is the only way out. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, you can go back. You know, you can go back and eat in the mess hall at Camp Ramadi three times a day. And they're

• 1:51:58Speaker 02

  like, no, no, no, we're staying. We're staying. And I was like, huh. Maybe these guys get it better than I do, you know? And at the time they did.

• 1:52:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's, that's heroic. There's the, the, uh, the attitude that those guys had. That's this heroic attitude across the board. Freaking epic. Um, fast forward a little bit. I had one last card to play. The special operations guys and the other government agencies, OGA, who lived in a cam, a corner of Camp Ramadi called Shark Base. All of them went only by their first names. Since we were conventional, since we were mere conventional forces, we dubbed the residents of Shark Base, the Super Friends. And I took, and I took to calling Shark Base, the Halls of Justice. Uh, the SEALs of SEAL Team Three, led by Navy Lieutenant Commander Jocko Willink, were great teammates and did whatever it took to accomplish the mission.

• 1:52:47Jocko Willink?

  The SEALs had their own intelligence section that was phenomenal. And it did like, my guys that did that job. There was a few SEALs and a few intel guys. But I was telling you before we started, I mean, those guys were, and I just was texting back and forth with one of them. Those guys were working like 18, 20, 22 hour days. Yeah. Every day, the whole time. Interrogations, rounding up intel, working sources. They were just freaking outstanding. Um, I had met with one of the Super Friends a couple of days earlier. As is common, he ended our conversation. Whatever you need, just ask. And, uh, what you asked me for, this was actually me. You asked

• 1:53:31Jocko Willink?

  for 300 bucks and a set, and a set of wheels. What happened on that one?

• 1:53:37Speaker 02

  So it was kinda early on and it was kinda crazy. So we had, one of the things we had to do and to me was we had checkpoints. And so we'd have a Bradley and another Bradley or a tank and a Bradley looking back on each other so they couldn't put in IEDs. And they'd still get in IEDs. They'd drop out the bottom of the car, that had cut out whatever. But, but the only way to keep a big one from coming was have these Bradleys. Well, uh, was it the, the yellow apartments, the ones in five kilo, right?

• 1:54:03Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah.

• 1:54:06Speaker 02

  And so some guys like with the mirror like flashing, flashing with this mirror, like, so the Bradley goes over and sees it, right? And says, go see what's up. And some guy runs out and he's like, this building's full of Al Qaeda. And we're like, okay. Cause I mean, part of the thing was, you know, our train up was-

• 1:54:23Jocko Willink?

  So, so a local was flashing the mirror, trying to get your attention. Guys go over to check it out. And the local says, hey, there's a bunch of Al Qaeda in this building.

• 1:54:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is all Al Qaeda. This is their headquarters. And you know, we kinda, you know, for a train up, it's like, hey, we're looking for like this, you know, we're on a camp, they'll be on it. You know, you kinda, you don't really think through it completely. And so, uh, uh, these guys are in there. So we, you know, so, so Lou gets the guys and he, you know, we tossed the building, or Lou's guys tossed the building and, you know, they found some wires, but they were all engineering students and there was nothing really that we could, you know,

• 1:54:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:55Speaker 02

  ball them up for. So, uh, in, actually I talked, I talked to Lou a couple of days ago and it's like, so how did the guy get in the back of the Bradley with his wife and kids? And Lou's like, he's still mumbling about it. I, I still don't know what happened. So, so somehow, um, uh, the Bradley comes back and it's got the guy and his wife and his three kids.

• 1:55:17Jocko Willink?

  Is it the guy that was signaling?

• 1:55:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, the guy was signaling. And so, you know, over the course of like the next, and so it's like, we gotta get the, cause back then, you know, you can't, you can't bring wives and kids onto, you know, women and children onto the post. Cause then, you know, the Al Qaeda guys will make hay, but so it's like, oh jeez, what do we do? And so it's like, okay, we'll, we'll, uh, we'll turn them over to his tribe, you know? So it was like match, or was it Family Feud, you know, we're, me and the three and the ex, it was like, good answer, good answer. It's like, but he turned out, he was like an Azizi.

• 1:55:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Azizi.

• 1:55:47Speaker 02

  Which they're like-

• 1:55:48Jocko Willink?

  There's no tribe there.

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, there's no tribe in the, uh, in the Sunnis all think they worship the devil. So we can't do that. It's like, okay, we'll do this. Yeah, yeah. Good answer. And so finally it's like, okay, we're gonna get Reba. And so literally it's like, hey sir, Cromwell's on the phone for you, which is one of the times he's like, what are you doing?

• 1:56:05Speaker 02

  And so, okay, so Because you had Cause we had a Woman on base. Woman on base and these kids. So, uh, so, uh, you know, like I said, you know, I met Jago a couple of days prior and it's like, so I call him up and I'm like, hey, uh, you know, Tony Dean, one through five, uh, you remember, oh, hey, sir, how you doing? You know, and you know, you don't need validation, but you know, you are a great teammate from this point on, right? And so, uh, I said, hey, I need 500 bucks in a car. You're like, what? I'm like, hey, look, man, I need 500 bucks. And it kind of sounded like, okay, okay. And then like, magically it shows up, you know, and I, you know, I don't know how magically you did it. I don't know if you did in case there's like some army lawyers listening, but you know, it showed up and, uh,

• 1:56:50Speaker 02

  uh, so, you know, curfew lifts, uh, they come up and, uh, I grabbed Lou. I said, Lou, you make sure these guys get out of there. So, so Lou gets him, uh, Lou comes in, you know, we've been up all night and Lou's like, they're gone. It's like, you know, seven o'clock in the morning. It's like, they're gone. I said, any problems? He goes, yeah, it was a stick and he couldn't drive a stick. Oh, sorry.

• 1:57:12Speaker 02

  Vickers can't be true. And I said, uh, I said, I said, so what happened? He goes, he's headed to Baghdad in first gear and it's not our problem anymore. Good man, Lou, good man. And so, uh, yeah. So, I mean, you know, whatever we asked you, I mean, whatever we asked you guys and, uh, I mean, you guys were, were kind of the, you know, the coin of the realm and there was other people doing other things, but every time we asked you for something, uh, you'd find a way to give it, even if it was, uh, 500 bucks in a car. 500 bucks in a car or, you know, when we took over the university, uh, you had some, you had some guys there, but you actually had some guys that rolled in with us that helped us with the interrogation. Yep. And, uh,

• 1:57:55Speaker 02

  You know, whatever you could do. I mean, there was, you guys were always there and I mean, there wasn't a lot of you.

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:58:01Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? But you, you know, I mean, you know, the, the, you know, we could use a SEAL Brigade, you know, I mean, because I mean, you must have had 24/7, you know, people, hey, can you do this for me? Can you do this, you know, big or little, but, and rolling out on a major operation every three days.

• 1:58:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:18Speaker 02

  Uh, it was incredible work you guys did.

• 1:58:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just to clear up legally, uh, so the, so we'd have SERP funds, right?

• 1:58:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:27Jocko Willink?

  So that's the money just going to come from SERP funds, which is stuff that you use to pay when you, something happens to a family. Well, you took a family out of your home. It's okay to say, hey, here's some money so you can relocate. That's totally normal. And then we'd have vehicles because if we went and captured someone like a bad guy, we'd take their vehicle.

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  And when in some cases we would take their vehicle because we want to come back and see if they'd modified it, see what they were doing with it. And so, you know, we probably had three, four of those vehicles at any one time. And apparently one of them was a stick.

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  So that's what's going down there.

• 1:59:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:05Jocko Willink?

  And you know, that's just, you know, speaking of the whole thing, you know, the, the, the, the whole teamwork that we had there across the board.

• 1:59:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  You know, for me, it was always, e- even to this day, someone will make a joke about the army, someone will make a joke about the Marine Corps, and I, I like will not participate in that. I won't participate in the, in the little rivalries that, that we have because the teamwork that we all had was, was so deep that I won't even betray that teamwork. Like 20 years or 18 years later, someone wants to say something negative about the army or about the infantry or the Marine Corps. I, it's not, it's not happening. I won't, I get it. I get it. We're, we're playing that little game, but that's not happening. And it stems from the fact that, yeah, we, we helped you guys out, but think of all

• 1:59:57Jocko Willink?

  the things that you did to help us out, that the 38 did to help us out, that the 137 and the 506, like everyone, you know, just, just even. Even the route clearance that you guys were doing, you know, just and by route clearance, I mean, you drove the route, you know, your route clearance sometimes was was just you're driving the route and we wouldn't pay attention because we'd go hit a target somewhere and to me, guess when we'd go, we'd go after you guys had driven the route two times that day. So we're, that's what we're doing. So you guys are taking IEDs for us sometimes. So when you guys need something, we're going to do it and we're going to give it, give you what we can. And, and you know, you think about the, the, the 137, those guys, Mike Bymer rolling out,

• 2:00:41Jocko Willink?

  they're rolling down IED packed streets and they're going to rescue one of my guys, going to bring a casavack or fire support, 506, same thing. Like, so everyone was so reliant on each other that coming up with 500 bucks in a car all day will make it happen.

• 2:00:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. One of the, you know, the, the, the MIT team, and I kind of figured it out. I, I, I got a lot out of Chris Stellings, but you know, just leadership stuff and he was, you know, we were both lieutenant colonels, but he was like, hey, you're the boss, which was,

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  you know, I mean, there wasn't an adversary relationship. He's like, well, you know, we're, we're period. I mean, he was like, hey, I work for you. You got to get these Iraqi guys going, which, you know, crazy is like, well, you have Iraqi battalions, like attached op con, how it was, they're like, no, they're just yours. And it's like, okay. But, and you got Chris and, and Chris had his own chain of command, but he, you know, but he had guys, he had 10 of my guys and I think there was only eight of his because they, they'd lost a couple of guys early on. And so, you know, at the, at the squad level, we had Marines and Army guys, you know, working together. And there's a story in there where, you know, Chief Forgash, the guy from ECP3, he ended up getting shot in the stomach. And, uh, while

• 2:01:56Speaker 02

  he was out with the Iraqis in 5Kilo and, uh, the, the, one of my E7s that was there,

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  he hears it on the radio and he like, he was at 293, he goes out there, he grabs some MP who's smoking a cigarette. He's like, you get in the, get in the truck, get on the gun. And he like drives into this Iraqi firefight.

• 2:02:21Speaker 02

  Finds forgash who's about ready to bleed out, throws him in the Humvee, drives back to Camp Ramadi, and saves his life. I mean, these guys have been working together for like a month and a half. You know, and the poor, and the poor MB, you know, he'd just stand there smoking a cigarette, you know, and so, you know, it was, it was amazing that there was absolutely, because you know, like you said, inter-service rivalry and you know, you only work at least, no, man, it was like walking down the street, you know, someone will save you, you know, and you do anything for them and they'll do anything for you. It was fascinating.

• 2:02:53Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Later that evening, we received word that Corporal Ryan J. Clark from Charlie Rock died of the wounds he suffered two weeks earlier. Although Charlie Rock was temporarily detached from the task force, they were still a part of the family. Team Dealer was taking the fight to the enemy and to meme around the clock and during anywhere from five to 10 IED or small arms attacks daily. I'm gonna say that again, five to 10 IED attacks or small arms daily. We had been judicious in our use of violence in response to these attacks and in detaining military aged males, and we're beginning to see slight slivers of hope in reaching the community.

• 2:03:33Jocko Willink?

  Still, most of the encouraging signs continue to come from the tribal areas just outside of town. The term "MAAM," military age male, would become politically incorrect in just a matter of weeks, and banished from all official reports, but it was clear who was attacking us, young Iraqi men between the ages of 16 and 40. Some units in Iraq went on "MAAM" roundups, arresting anyone that looked suspicious, meaning Iraqi males between 16 to 40 years old. We made a conscious decision against that. Throughout the first three weeks of June, we brought in 65 suspected terrorists and had enough evidence to send 36 of them to extended stays in Abu Ghraib prison. The rest, we thanked for their cooperation and sent them on their way.

• 2:04:16Jocko Willink?

  That was interesting how the term mam got disbarred.

• 2:04:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:21Jocko Willink?

  And we had to call them, I forget what we moved to, but.

• 2:04:26Speaker 02

  You knew.

• 2:04:28Jocko Willink?

  On the afternoon of two July, terrorists attacked a team Comanche patrol with double stacked landmine, severely injuring Staff Sergeant Joe Sealski and Sergeant Chad Rozanski and wounding Specialist Henry Brady. Rushing to the aid of the two wounded, the NCOs Platoon Sergeant, Master Sergeant Mike Morton suffered injuries as well. As they carried Rozanski into Charlie Medical, he was yelling at the top of his lungs, conquer or die, which is, you guys were the conquerors and your motto is conquer or die.

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  He yelled at the top of his lungs, conquer or die, and sounding off with his name, rank and social security number, demanding, get me some ice, my ass is burning. Although his injury ultimately cost him both his legs, Rozanski would not be defeated. He was laughing and joking until the medic sedated him and wheeled him into surgery. The mortar platoon had only five of the 10 NCOs it was authorized at the start of deployment and did not have a platoon leader. This single IED attack injured three of the four stalwart NCOs in the platoon, landing them back in Germany within hours. Just like that, I had one platoon without leadership and I could not afford to take them out of the fight, not even for a day.

• 2:05:52Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a crazy thought, right?

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:55Jocko Willink?

  You can't even pull them off the battlefield for a day and they have no leadership left and you're just gonna make it work.

• 2:06:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And so, uh, I'd taken their.

• 2:06:08Speaker 02

  So the guy that was their platoon leader, Van Dormy, he made captain and captains don't belong, you know, O3s do not belong in platoons. It's not good for them, it's not good for the unit, whatever. And so I took him out and I was gonna bring another guy in, but I was waiting for him to come back off of leave. And then all of a sudden, you know, they lost all their NCOs and they were shorthanded to start. And actually, Rozanski wasn't even a mortarman. He was one, he was my first port NCO from the TAC. And they asked for volunteers, Rozanski just makes, you know, Sarge, he's like, hey, I'm ready to go get in the fight. And so, I mean, that war platoon, there was a bunch of mortarmen there, but there was a bunch of cooks and mechanics and-

• 2:06:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you think about that for one second, like here, here's all these casualties are happening on a daily basis. You got vehicles stacked up in the vehicle graveyard and you needed someone to go out in the field. And this guy that's sitting safe, relatively safe in the TAC, he's like, hey, I'm in, let's go.

• 2:07:10Speaker 02

  I'm in, yeah, yeah. And I still keep in contact with Rozanski. He's actually, you know, raising his kids. I mean, he's actually living a pretty good life.

• 2:07:19Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 2:07:19Speaker 02

  I see him on Facebook. He's like, I'm canoeing and stuff. He's living a life harder than I am. But, but they go out there and so I, you know, Van Dormy was in the, you know, he's working in the three shop. It's like, yo, grab a mitt, go back, go back, get in the game. And he went down there and I think we took like a maintenance guy or something. And then the guy Gilmer, he had just made E6. I mean, he was like E5, just like made E6 that day. And it's like, hey, you're in charge now, stud. And, and they did it. And they went back out. And the, the one thing, all my guys, Comanche, they didn't take near the casualties that the dealer did, but the dealer guys, I mean, at one point, I think

• 2:08:04Speaker 02

  they took like 25% casualties between KIs and WIs, which is, which were crazy numbers for that war. And they went out every day. And we didn't, like the combat stress guys, we didn't send our guys there. They couldn't, couldn't afford to.

• 2:08:24Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, talking about the police recruits. If we could screen, you're trying to set up a police recruiting thing. If we could screen and transfer the recruits in the same day, we could solve the intimidation problem because the way, and you would describe it in the book, but basically, a guy would go get recruited into the police and then go back home and they'd be like, "Don't go, don't join the police," and then they would never show up again. So you're saying, "Hey, if we can just get them to join and then take them to get them trained immediately, we can bring more people on board." You said, "I went to Ready First Deputy Commander Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner, who was the officer in charge of developing Iraqi security forces for the Ready First." Lechner grew up in Rochester, New York, although he came from a Kodak family, not a military family, Jim had always wanted to be a soldier.

• 2:09:07Jocko Willink?

  He attended college at the Citadel and chose to become an infantry officer. Jim was wounded while serving with the Ranger Battalion in the Battle of Mogadishu, spent numerous follow-on tours with Special Operations Command, and had already done an advisor tour in Iraq. He was a bulldog, very good way of describing Jim Lechner. He was a bulldog who knew how to get things done. Second only to fighting the enemy, Lechner enjoyed fighting bureaucracy. Yeah, bulldog's a perfect description, a big bulldog, by the way. Despite being the Year of the Police in Ramadi, there had been no more than two dozen recruits a month since February of 2006. You, now you're working with the sheikhs to try and make this happen.

• 2:09:47Jocko Willink?

  You say, "During these meetings," because you're going to these houses, the tribal leaders, the sheikhs' houses. "During these meetings, Arab men constantly arrived and departed from Sheikh Ahmed's house. Their mood was always jovial and the sheikhs seemed genuinely glad to see Americans. Ahmed was, Ahmed continued to complain how the terrorists were taking over, insisting that if we would just arm the tribes, everything would be fine."

• 2:10:10Jocko Willink?

  And I haven't introduced him yet, but you've got a character in here named Dragon. That's your interpreter. Yeah. Outstanding Terp.

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  You get into this, you know, you get in there to meet with the sheiks once again. Uh, and you say, I'm probably the 100th American to sit in Sheikh Basia's living room. You say, I met, when I met with the sheiks, I always took off my helmet and body armor to show that I, show that I put my personal safety in their hands. The Bedouin culture requires hosts to protect his guests. And over time, you say, just figured out like the game that was being played. And fast forward a little bit more, we now had entered a phase of the operation known as steady state. The soldiers knew what to expect when they went on patrol and the staff was working diligently to solve the problems we faced. Although the daily fight was extremely violent, even in the relatively peaceful Zangora exemplified by a patrol led by Lieutenant Tim Connors

• 2:11:02Jocko Willink?

  on the western edge of Five Kilo that was attacked by a 68 millimeter SPAM V rocket remotely fired out of a piece of PVC tubing. We were getting better at interdicting the AIF before they attacked us. On 3 July, F Troop was conducting operations in the village south of Tamim when they discovered a Chevy Suburban with 80 pounds of TNT, 25 blasting caps and 35 pressure plate triggers.

• 2:11:31Jocko Willink?

  Freaking crazy.

• 2:11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:33Jocko Willink?

  Later that day, Team Dealer detained three bomb makers in Tamim while the Iraqi Army Battalion and Team Comanche searched the yellow apartments in Five Kilo and detained four terrorist bomb makers who, on whom we had actionable intelligence. It may seem, it may, it seemed that maybe the mirror man had been correct after all. This is the guy that was signaling. We were starting to make progress across the AO, across AO Conqueror. We were finding bombs and bomb makers before they attacked and the Iraqi Army was joining the fight. The reason that steady state operations is a misnomer is that nothing remained steady. The enemy was constantly developing new tactics. The mood of the community changed based on events. Leaders go on R and R or become casualties or get moved to new assignments.

• 2:12:19Jocko Willink?

  So this is what you're dealing with. And by the way, it's July. This is July 2nd. So you've only been in there for a month.

• 2:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, that Suburban, it actually had a, uh, uh, like the year prior, like a 2005 Texas State, uh,

• 2:12:37Jocko Willink?

  License plate.

• 2:12:38Speaker 02

  The, the sticker, like the inspection sticker. And it's like, and it's like, how the hell is this? And it's like, okay, I got other problems. We'll never figure that one out.

• 2:12:48Speaker 02

  But I mean, it's like, what the hell?

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, just before 0800 on July 4th, Team Comanche formed a 360 degree defensive ring around the Bazia compound. Again, you go into so much detail. Um, this, this relationship that you formed with Sheikh Bazia and that family, and you'd gotten it turned over, by the way. So the, there was a 1172, they'd done a great job of forming that relationship and, and passed it over to you. I know I sent my, uh, my lieutenant junior grade, regular Navy officer, just outstanding guy out there on some of those, on some of those meets with you.

• 2:13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:26Jocko Willink?

  Um, so here you are now, fast forward a little bit. You set this 360 degree defensive ring around the compound and this police recruiting drive is ready to kick off by moving location from the glass factory, which we've talked about on this podcast, when the glass factory got blown up.

• 2:13:43Jocko Willink?

  From moving it from there to the Bazias, our personal requirement had dropped from three companies to just a couple of platoons. And though I had to send the four vehicles for my security detail, just so Comanche could meet the minimal requirements for securing the site. We would provide the outer security ring with the onsite security, the responsibility of a mixture of Iraqi policemen, Iraqi whole highway patrolmen and Bazias people who were more of a posse than an organized unit. Members of the Brigade's Iraqi Security Forcell, led by Jim Lechner and Captain Travis Patrick Quinn, augmented by Conqueror Staff, set up various stations that recruits would rotate through to pass screening. Frankly, the bar was low to

• 2:14:25Jocko Willink?

  get in the Iraqi police. Present a valid identification for proof of age, pass a fingerprint check to verify the aspiring officer was not a known terrorist, complete a basic literacy test and perform a physical fitness test that entailed running 20 yards down and back. Once the recruit met all four of these requirements, it was deemed qualified, he was deemed qualified to attend the police academy in Jordan. So this is what we're doing. We're trying to get the locals. Think of what a profound idea this is to get the locals to police their own areas.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so one of the problems I think was that, you know, at the higher levels, they put a lot of emphasis on the Iraqi army.

• 2:15:09Speaker 02

  But they're, you know, the army doesn't keep you safe. The police keep you safe. And so, um, you know.

• 2:15:15Jocko Willink?

  And they have a vested interest.

• 2:15:16Speaker 02

  It's their neighborhood. It's their neighborhood. And we're never going to figure that out, you know? Uh, I can't tell you why the mayor of Melbourne, Florida is the mayor. I've been living there seven years. You know, I can tell you what's up in Omaha, because I grew up there. But, you know, you, you were never, especially in six months or a year, you're never going to figure out the intricacies of local politics. Which is, you know, Clausewitz, you know, didn't go to CGC, but you know, war is the central of politics, learning that much, right? And so, uh, um, you know, getting the, getting those guys to recruit them into the police, I mean, now, to me, that was just simple. But at the time, uh, the tribes were a vestige of the past, you know,

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  you can't deal with tribes, can't deal with tribes. Well, you know, we weren't making a deal with the tribes. We were, hey, get your guys to join the police. And, you know, there was 200 of them. And, uh,

• 2:16:11Speaker 02

  I told, I told Ahmed, I said, you get 500 guys, I'll build you a police station, which, uh, zero, zero authority to do something like that. But I figure, you know, if I show up, it's like, hey, I, I, you know, double the size of, you know, over double the size of the police force, you know, I'll be, be, you know, carried on, on throne. And it's like, no.

• 2:16:31Jocko Willink?

  You'll be Lawrence of Arabia.

• 2:16:32Speaker 02

  I'll be Lawrence of Arabia. But instead, I got pushed. And even with the, uh, you know, changing the location, it's, our shipping them out on one day. It's like, no, here's our SOP. And, you know, so something, you know, I just turned Jim loose on him. Jim turned himself loose because he, you know, Jim's looking for a fight. If he can't, if he can't be out on patrol, he's gonna, you know, get somebody on the phone, yeah? And so, uh, so Jim hunted those guys down. We got it down to one day. Uh, we got out of the glass factory, which was like the saddest thing I've ever seen. The, the, there was all, and they had a big one like in May, and I know you guys have talked about this, or in January, which then, the, they also had a tribal awakening, and then it just turned into the, uh, the baptism scene of the godfathers. They blew up the thing, they blew up the recruiting,

• 2:17:17Speaker 02

  and then they hunted down all the sheikhs that were there. So there was, you know, had to be present to win. So, you know, the bizetists were like the only ones left. And so we told, we told Ahmed that and we kind of shook on it. And he, I think we brought in 300 that day. I think Dan had one and it kind of worked out to 300. And so, you know, again, they were working us as hard as we were working them. And it's like, you know, so, so Ahmed's like, hey, where's my police station? It's like, yo, where's my other 200 dudes? You know, I mean, so it, it, you know, and we'd go there, go to his house and he had all these like, you know, you know, the army doesn't give cash prizes, you know, they give like trinkets and coins and, you know, plaques and stuff.

• 2:17:57Speaker 02

  And he had these plaques from every unit that ever passed through there. And it's like, well, you know, the guys on the team, actually, Sitar had built his, so him and Star lived next to each other. Sitar had these door columns on his house to look like the White House. And it's like, so these guys are on the team. They're like, oh, they're working you. I was like, nah, I think these guys are on the team.

• 2:18:19Jocko Willink?

  And General McFarlane and I talked about it. He was getting pushed back about working with Sitar. You know, like, oh, this guy's a criminal. This guy's a smuggler. He's like, yeah, well, he's a businessman. That's what, otherwise known as a businessman.

• 2:18:30Speaker 02

  Oh, it got worse. I mean, so, so once the awakening started, we finally got some of the MEF guys to come and they, they, like, pull ad and one of their, like, senior guys came out and he's like, uh,

• 2:18:43Speaker 02

  we were trying to get him to make General Zilmar and the brigade went, or the, the MEF staff wouldn't let us do it. So I love, don't get this wrong. I love the Marine Corps. MEF,

• 2:18:56Speaker 02

  that was a little bit different. We had, we had two different views. And so they'd, uh, you know, he's like, well, you need to arrest Sitar. I'm like, you know, I, I kind of snapped. And if, and if I had been a Marine or he'd been an Army guy, I probably would have got fired on the spot. But I'm like, I'm not arresting him. You, you arrest him. And, uh, and so somehow I managed to keep my career on that. But, but they were convinced that he was a criminal and they didn't want to do business with him at all. And it's like, dude, he, he's this charismatic figure. And, you know, uh, his brother Ahmed had always kind of like downplayed, yeah, he was always kind of dirty. But Sitar, like, he did that on purpose. But Sitar was always like in the starched, you know, uh, Arab clothes and, you know, always looked good and carried this, uh,

• 2:19:42Speaker 02

  Chrome plated Colt forty-five Texas sequocentennial six shooter.

• 2:19:49Speaker 02

  It's like dude, he you know, and but they understood the theater, you know, we're like, oh, we them boys understood the theater and and they they played it well.

• 2:19:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:00Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we'll get into some more of that stuff too. Across the task force, back to the book, across the task force, unless a soldier was bleeding, he went right back on patrol. It was months into the deployment before we even began sending blast victims to the medics for traumatic brain injury screening. We just did not know any better at the time and we still and we are still years behind on the treatment of TBI and post-traumatic stress disorder. Treatment for these types of injuries include drug therapy, but most veterans also return home with some physical injury, either a Purple Heart worthy wound directly related to combat or bad backs and trick knees from carrying equipment. Doctors liberally prescribe pain medications to treat those physical ailments. I believe there have been insufficient studies on the combination of the two drug therapies. Anecdotally, I've seen too many

• 2:20:44Jocko Willink?

  good soldiers given a bag filled with painkillers, antipsychotic drugs and sleeping pills and told them to take them as needed. Add in some hard liquor, self-medication, and the results are predictable, all too often tragic.

• 2:21:02Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, July 6th, again, this is two days later than the last one I just read. On July 6th, 2006, three Marines led a clearing operation at Ramadi General Hospital, the largest hospital in Western Iraq. Ramadi General was a modern seven-story, two-hundred-and-fifty-bed facility that looked exactly like the building on the opening credits of the Soap Opera General Hospital. Good point. Depending on the reports you believed, Ramadi General Hospital was, one, a field hospital for terrorists, two, a headquarters for Al Qaeda operations in Ramadi, three, a torture chamber for Al Qaeda, four, a bomb-making facility, five, a sniper's nest, six, a place of peace where the American oppressors unduly increased the suffering of the people in Ramadi by forcing their

• 2:21:45Jocko Willink?

  way into the facility. And that was obviously just wrong. I believe it was a combination of the first five. The operation went off without a hitch with the Marines finding a dozen or so IED triggering devices in a tiled ceiling in one of the offices. The enemy knew the hospitals. Mosques and schools were off limits to coalition personnel and routinely use them as armories and meeting halls. Al Qaeda used its control of the hospital as a bullet point in the propaganda campaign, claiming it was evidence of proving who was really in charge of Ramadi. The other thing that was good about them for the hospital was it was seven stories tall, or it was tall and so it gave you line of sight communications throughout much of the city. So they used it for that as well. So they were using that as an absolute command and control node.

• 2:22:27Jocko Willink?

  Task Force, fast forward, Task Force Conquer continued census operations, leading to targeted raids based on intelligence usually gained through previous census operations, and attempted to engage with the leadership of Al Ambar University, as well as working with the sheiks on police recruiting. The enemy fought back furiously, placing more IEDs throughout the streets of Tamin, as they attempted to keep us from reaching the population and gaining their trust. The route clearance team, the route clearance patrols, conducted by 54th Engineers Task Force Dagger, were critical to our being able to move through town. Every night, these men moved slowly along the main routes, searching for and disarming IEDs. They actively hunted the source of the biggest killer of Americans in Iraq, in an incredibly dangerous mission.

• 2:23:12Jocko Willink?

  Dagger supported the entire ready first, and we only had use of this valuable asset every few hours, a few hours during the night, a couple times each week. On the night of 8 July, Team Dealer and Task Force Dagger conducted a route clearance patrol into Tamin, almost directly across from Camp Ramadi and very near the site where Scott Love and Nick Crombie died a month prior. A platoon of dismounted infantry moved building to building, clearing the flanks as the tanks and Bradley's inspected task force interspersed with Task Force Dagger's mind-resistant Husky, Buffalo, and Cougar vehicles crept at a snail's pace, with soldiers interrogating every pothole and every piece of debris on the street.

• 2:23:55Jocko Willink?

  We had done everything we could to mitigate the risk in this textbook route clearance patrol. The only asset we lacked was a Predator drone, and we only had a Predator support in troops in contact call. Shortly before midnight...

• 2:24:10Jocko Willink?

  A massive IED exploded underneath the second vehicle in the convoy, a mine resistant cougar. The blast drove a manhole cover through the bottom of the vehicle, cutting it in half, instantly killing Staff Sergeant Omar Flores, Specialist Troy Linden, and Specialist Joseph Mix. A fourth grievously wounded soldier, Sergeant Al Kalai Floyd, would die from his wounds three days later. Also severely injured was Staff Sergeant Noel of Charlie Rock, who was riding along, learning how to conduct a route clearance. It was one of the worst days of deployment. Four men dead and one severely injured in a matter of seconds.

• 2:24:50Jocko Willink?

  The attack on Task Force Dagger occurred in AO Conqueror, and I was ultimately responsible. I met the casualties at Charlie Med when they arrived, while we sent out the Recovery Quick Reaction Force to bring the vehicles back and grieved for the loss, along with the 54th Engineers. In the peacetime, Army officers become convinced that if they do everything right in battle, the result will be minimal casualties. The Army has proven, has a proven methodology for training management, execution of training, and after-action review process following every event. During these reviews, a leader establishes an open dialogue among all the participants to determine the connection between a shortfall, either in the planning of an operation or a failure during the execution of the mission.

• 2:25:35Jocko Willink?

  What I never fully realized is that sometimes the enemy gets lucky, or is just better than we are on that particular day, and we will have soldiers die even when they're doing everything right. The Vietnam veterans used to say that the enemy gets a vote, but as a Desert Storm veteran, I never really understood that until now.

• 2:25:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was, that was horrible. And those guys from Task Force Dagger, that's what they were doing every freaking night throughout the AO. And I, I rode with them before. I also sat there and watched them do their job from overwatch positions and it was, uh, those guys were just incredible.

• 2:26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, and we did everything to protect them, man. I mean, there were Bradleys in there, there was Humvees in there, we had, we had infantry squads running on the flanks, you know, and... You know, we didn't see the trigger man. And, uh, you know, when I think it was one of those leftover from the beginning when they, you know, they, they had seeded to me. And part of the other problem is you guys, you know, is, is the Ray first was getting more and more, uh, success, you know, with Falcon and Grant and, you know, taking over the hospital and stuff. They started moving, you know, they take the path of loose resistance. They started moving back into meme and it took us a while to kind of figure that one out. And so there were all these IEDs that were, I think they were pre-planned, you know, like you were saying on Sunset, I think, you know, those things were just pre-planned, waiting

• 2:27:06Speaker 02

  for someone driving down the road and, uh, and, you know, I just remember, um, you know, going to Charley Madden, that, that was, I mean, we'd lost two guys, but I mean, when you have four guys dead, it's like, geez, you know, I mean, it was, you know, and, uh, Sean McGinley, I called him up and, you know, he's like, you know, and offered my condolences and, uh, you know, so then two days later they were back out, you know what I mean? Back out in our sector.

• 2:27:34Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:27:35Speaker 02

  You know, it's like, hey, there's some idea. We didn't get that road clock, we gotta go back and get it. And it's like, you know, those guys, you know, again, all these kids, they went out every day, you know, and even the kids on the wall, you know, these guys on the wall. It's like, oh, you know, I'm a cook and I pull the wall, the wall every day for eight, 10, 12 hours.

• 2:27:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And there's, there's enemy everywhere out there.

• 2:27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:59Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward July 10th, I scheduled a meeting with the leadership of the Alombar University. Allegedly the campus was an informal headquarters of the Mujahideen in Ramadi and was fast becoming a hotbed for Al Qaeda activity as well. By my count, terrorists had murdered at least three university presidents in the last couple of years. I also found a professor who graduated from the University of Nebraska the same year I had, but I was hesitant to ask for him, fearing that he would be beaten or killed for talking to coalition. So there's this on the outskirts of Temeem, just I guess west of Temeem, there was this big compound, like a college compound. It was, it was the Al Anbar University.

• 2:28:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  And you were, you were gonna get in there. You say this, this is also an interesting, little bit different subject, but I, I spent a lot of time the first month trying to figure out how to capture HVTs on the top 10 list. As it turns out, I had the entire perspective of how to catch terrorists completely wrong. At first, I thought we were looking for the Vietcong, a faceless enemy living in the jungle, desert in this case, wearing black pajamas and attacking Americans. The conventional wisdoms was that if we could just get the leaders and maybe the next couple of knuckleheads on the top 10 lists, then the violence would stop and peace would break out. Every unit across Iraq from the multinational Corps

• 2:29:19Jocko Willink?

  Iraq headquarters to the third platoon had a top 10 list. Killing or capturing the leadership of the insurgency would help a little, but not to the extent that one would think. Every company commander in the army thinks he can do a better job of commanding a battalion or brigade or division than his current commander. Terrorists are the same. Killing or capturing the enemy commanders might lead to a slight decrease in organizational capability, but it certainly does not stop the violence. And there was nothing more obvious than that than when we killed AMZ. Cause we killed AMZ in June. He was the big leader, the charismatic leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

• 2:29:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:56Jocko Willink?

  Killed him. It was like, didn't even make an impact. I mean, at least not on a tactical level out in the streets.

• 2:30:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Although I will say of the, the, the Al Qaeda terrorist mastermind, the dude who came in later, was that Masari? The guy who, the guy who took over?

• 2:30:14Jocko Willink?

  Abub Baker?

• 2:30:15Speaker 02

  No, no, no. He, he was later. The guy who came over next, he actually kinda sucked as leader. He was probably the worst one. But then, then, then we killed him and they actually got some good help back in there, you know? So, but yeah, I mean, we, you know, we think we're gonna kill these, these top 10 terrorists, but it's like, there's somebody else, you know, someone, you know, next man up. And they were, they were same way. And the, the one thing that, you know, we talked about this, we thought we were finding the Vietcong and, and then we kinda figured out that. Uh, we were actually, you know, I'm Irish guy, right? So we were actually fighting the IRA, you know, strip out the police, living in monks, you know, Michael Collins was riding his bike through Dublin every day.

• 2:30:55Speaker 02

  And, you know, even at the time I was thinking about like you're, you know, you're driving through and a car's going by and it's like, could that, could that guy be the brains of the operation? You know, or just some guy that's like waving to you when you're driving down the streets like, is he on the team or is he, is he the ultimate mastermind? And, you know, there's a little bit of both. So, you know,

• 2:31:17Speaker 02

  once we kind of changed that we're just not gonna, you know, and even like, uh, I guess it was the yellow apartments, not the white barn. The yellow apartments, you know, we're not going to find them all like hanging out in the clubhouse, you know, they're not in the Legion of Doom, you know? So, so it took us a while to figure that one out.

• 2:31:34Jocko Willink?

  Team Dealer received two new platoon leaders, second lieutenants, Perfecto Sanchez and Mike Latier. Am I saying that right?

• 2:31:42Speaker 02

  Latieri.

• 2:31:42Jocko Willink?

  Latieri?

• 2:31:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:44Jocko Willink?

  And they were beginning to get a handle on the situation into me. Perfecto was born in Harlem and raised by his grandmother who stressed both, stressed both curiosity and responsibility. Growing up, he showed a lot of potential, but he was just not applying it to his life. His high school track coach, John Damon, pulled Sanchez aside one day and gave him a pamphlet on West Point. He was smart enough to realize that the opportunity presenting itself and that sticking around Harlem would only diminish his chance to make something of himself. After graduating from Newton High School in 2001, Perfecto had gone to West Point. And again, I'm, I like, there's so many details in there about all these soldiers and Marines that you put in, it's just, it's awesome to read.

• 2:32:24Jocko Willink?

  Cause it, it reminds people, if you read this book, like these are not just numbers, these are not just statistics.

• 2:32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:30Jocko Willink?

  These are people.

• 2:32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and the living and the dead, you know what I mean? So, uh, you know, 93, uh, soldiers died in the ready first or 96, uh, in the Battle of Ramadi. Well, you know something?

• 2:32:44Speaker 02

  That's good in the aggregate, but that's somebody's brother, that's somebody, you know, that's a kid who was state wrestling championship, that was a kid who like pulled himself, you know, out of a tough situation and he moved on. And, you know, the admiration, and I know you have it, and I mean, everyone has it, but when you know these guys that were in that fight every day, you know, the guys in dealer, whatever, it's like, wow, double wow, you know, it's just, words can't describe what these guys did. And they all had good lives. And if you know, if you look at the timeline, most of them joined right after nine 11, you know, they're like, hey, our country's under attack, we're gonna go get after it. And, you know, the, and the guys today, I mean, God bless them, there's still

• 2:33:28Speaker 02

  a war, you know, we're still in Iraq, you know, there's still a war going on, not, not as vicious as it was back then, but

• 2:33:38Jocko Willink?

  Still in harms way.

• 2:33:39Speaker 02

  Still in harms way. And these kids are still making life choices that could have, you know, they could have done something else. So, yeah.

• 2:33:49Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit on the night of 17 July, we caught a break when team, when the team dealer patrol captured three men out after curfew. When their justification for breaking curfew raised suspicions, the patrol brought them back to Camp Ramadi for further questioning. In the morning, we realized one of them was an Imam from a mosque in Tameem. Detaining an Imam was a big deal with a clear cut set of rules, including a requirement for prior approval from the commander of the three star multinational corps Iraq in Baghdad. Technically, since we did not know he was an Imam when we detained him, we held him. Although another rule of thumb was that when the commander used words like technically, he is skating on thin ice. Numerous intelligence reports linked this

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  particular Imam to Al Qaeda and but, and but Baghdad disapproved Colonel Lovejoy's request to arrest him months prior to arrival. We were sure he was a bad guy. I called Colonel McFarland telling him that we had detained an Imam, filling him in on the cleric's background. Colonel McFarland's response was, "Good." There was never any hand wringing on McFarland's part. Later that day, a restive crowd of nearly 100 Iraqi men chanting and carrying signs gathered outside the front gate of Camp Ramadi. This was extremely out of the ordinary since we were, for all practical purposes, isolated from the population. The only Iraqis who dared venture near the gates were Iraqi security

• 2:35:11Jocko Willink?

  forces detainees who were zip tied and in US custody, the Terps and the owner of the Hajj mart. At the time, the Iraqis stayed on one side of the wall and US forces stayed on the other. The crowd was demanding the release of the Imam. Half the signs were in English, but without Western reporters around to film their protest, their efforts were in vain. Most of the mobs stayed well back from the gate, but four men came forward demanding to speak to the commander. Colonel McFarland called me on the telephone. "You brought the Imam in here. You go get rid of the crowd," he said. "Sir, I don't want to usurp your authority. They want to see the post commander. I think they want you." I replied jokingly, "Good try, Tony. Get out there," was his reply. You do some negotiations and you end up telling them, "Hey, if the Imam is innocent,

• 2:35:55Jocko Willink?

  he'll be released. If he's a terrorist, he's going to prison. I promise you, I'll look at the evidence and let you know in a week." Then you have a meeting with the super friends. My guys roll in there and you get them all together on July 20th and you start kind of going around the circle and you say this, and they were, some of them were saying, "Release him." Yeah. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit. You got to understand that the Imam is in a tough position. If he comes out too strongly for the coalition, the terrorists will kill him. We'll kill him. That might have been true. Then again, the Imam may have just been playing the handler. This is one of the people you're talking to. The meeting went on for almost an hour. I knew that there was intelligence implicating the

• 2:36:40Jocko Willink?

  Imam, but I also understood what the super friends were saying. Like it or not, they were conducting operations that were not being shared with the task force commanders. While it was possible that the Imam was working for the greater good, I did just not, I just did not see it. Finally, it was a cards on the table time and I went around the room and asked each of the super friends to vote whether to kick him loose or send him to jail. In the military, we defend democracy, not practice it. But I wanted to get each one of them on record regarding whether they, where they stood on releasing him. Starting with the handler, and again, these are other government agencies, people. And these, these are someone that's been like, uh, working with this guy as a source or what have you.

• 2:37:22Jocko Willink?

  Each one in order said to set free the cleric. But the farther away from the handler, the less impassioned each vote seemed to be. I began to feel that the super friends felt the need to stick together and that I was not getting the whole truth from the collective group. They had about broken me, my will and convinced me to release the Imam. When one of the SEAL intelligence guys sitting in the back of the room locked eyes with me. He was a junior petty officer and did not have a speaking part at the meeting. More importantly, since he was sitting in the back row, no one else could see him. Ever so slightly, a frown came across his bearded face and he shook his head from side to side. That was all I needed.

• 2:38:03Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for your input, guys, but I'm gonna have to think about this some more, I declared. As fate would have it, that afternoon, a dealer patrol took an RPG fired from the Imam's mosque.

• 2:38:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Whoever your guy was, I don't know. He, he was sitting in the back and you know, and, and he was pretty junior dude.

• 2:38:23Jocko Willink?

  I know, that's, that's how I know who was.

• 2:38:25Speaker 02

  And he was just like.

• 2:38:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't let this guy go.

• 2:38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't let this guy go. I was like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna out him, but.

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Yeah, that guy, that was one of those guys, dude, he was working and he, he was just so engaged, you know? So engaged in who was connected to who and who was doing what. Those guys were just, they, they mapped things out so well. It was, it was awesome what they did.

• 2:38:48Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's crazy cause they, you know, and, and, you know, we had guys. We actually got some intel guys from our parent brigade down in Kuwait and they were like, they're like, well, they're, they were in the intel company. They're like, they're Slavic translators. You know, and then it's like, because that was mission. It's like, well, you know, the kid's got 139 GT score. We'll figure this thing out. So, so we brought these guys up from Kuwait and they, they weren't, you know, intel analysts, but they were all smart kids. And the same thing, you know, I'd walk into a dealer company. I can't remember the guy's name, you know, the C5 and you'd see him just slumped on the desk at like three in the morning. Cause I, you know, I kind of walk around when they went on patrols, you know, try to see the guy.

• 2:39:32Speaker 02

  Cause you gotta kind of look at your guys in the eye, make sure they're doing it. And these guys are just slumped on the desk. You know, and they, they were out there working and they'd have like, well, Abu whoever, and they'd have pictures and it's like, and that was beyond me, man. I'm like, so is it the dude in the orange jumpsuit or you know, the guy with the big head? Yeah, we're going after this guy. And they'd have all these names worked out and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. This guy. Oh, okay. I remember, remember a picture, but they, all them guys across and they all worked together. It was amazing. I mean,

• 2:40:07Speaker 02

  if you could hook a multi meter up in Ramadi that, that measured like workout per, per man. I mean, that, that thing would just blow. It didn't matter. I mean, even the cooks, you know what I mean? They just, everybody was just working so hard.

• 2:40:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And there was such a direct relation between getting intel, finding out what's going on, conducting patrols and keeping guys alive. Yeah. So like, you know, that's why my guys, and you know, I, I haven't talked about my group of intel guys that were part of task unit bruiser much because what they were doing was, you know, it was, it was intel gathering and it was.

• 2:40:48Jocko Willink?

  Not something that we normally talk about in the SEAL teams, right? So it's that type of work. And so I haven't talked about what they did much, but you would know that when those guys would target, and by the way, oftentimes what they would do is we'd send, they'd put together a target package and we'd tell you or we'd tell 137, because for us to assemble the forces to go out and go into Tamim and roll up a target, when I could just get on the phone with you and say, hey, go hit building Alpha 32 in this sector, you'd be like, cool, we'll be there in 15 minutes. That's how fast your guys or the 137, the 506 or 383, they could just turn and go execute things faster than we could drive there. So like, let's just do that.

• 2:41:29Jocko Willink?

  But, but so my guys, everyone, everyone just had this feeling like every piece of intel that we can get that gets an IED maker captured or killed, we're going to keep some Americans alive. And that's the driving force. And so you had intel guys doing that, but it's also like the cook that's standing watch on the tower, like those guys, we killed people from, from on Camp Ramadi. I had snipers shoot people from our base that were out there putting in IEDs. Like, so this is what was happening. So everyone, like every moment that you could do something positive, that little thing that you did might, might save an American's life.

• 2:42:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And every person that was on that camp was pulling on the rope. It was just amazing. Yeah, it was just amazing.

• 2:42:15Jocko Willink?

  But one thing that you realized, the Americans, we couldn't do it by ourselves. And I'll fast forward a little bit here. I now believe that the local police were the key to victory. And I knew that Sheikh Satar was adept at bringing in other sheiks to encourage their men to join the police. My desire to get the local police themselves reminded me of high school with the locals as the students and the coalition forces as the administration. The students in my high school all knew who was drinking booze, who was smoking dope, but the administration had no idea. Or if they did suspect something, they did not have the evidence to prove it. Likewise, the locals in Ramadi all knew who the bad guys were while we were clueless. If we could get the citizenry to take responsibility and police themselves,

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  then the coalition's responsibility for providing security would drop down to almost nothing. And we

• 2:43:07Jocko Willink?

  They wanted to do that Desert Protector thing. You worked through all that stuff. Here's a great dialogue that you had. Just read these two lines. Sheikh Satar tells you, "My grandfather fought the British in the 1920 uprising." And you reply, "Mine too, back in Ireland."

• 2:43:26Jocko Willink?

  Talk about kinship.

• 2:43:29Jocko Willink?

  More about Sheikh Satar here. "He loved President Bush, both of them in fact, but especially W." "This was true of most Iraqis I met. In their eyes, President Bush was the hero who liberated Iraq from Saddam and gave the Iraqi people the opportunity for a democratic government." "Satar constantly told me his greatest dream was to meet President Bush and thank him for all he had done for Iraq."

• 2:43:51Jocko Willink?

  Another thing you mentioned, "With his father, two brothers, and countless cousins murdered by Al Qaeda, Sheikh Satar saw the terrorist organization as truly evil and wanted to defeat it across the globe." Like you said, these guys were on board.

• 2:44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:07Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward, "The police recruiting was going so well that by late September, that the 500th policeman would be due back from the police academy. So it was time for me to live up to my end of the bargain and build a police station I promised Sheikh Ahmed back in June." So you run that up the chain of command and you get told, "No."

• 2:44:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:44:27Jocko Willink?

  Nope, you can't build a police station. Why? Because they had some PowerPoint that they had to present.

• 2:44:30Speaker 02

  We're building 32 police stations, and this isn't one of them.

• 2:44:33Jocko Willink?

  Luckily, you had your bulldog, Jim Lechner. And what he figured, he's just, you know, not just a bulldog, but a smart bulldog. Because he figures out, "Okay, well, how about we build a police substation? Does that make it okay?" Well, what's the difference between a substation and a police station? Uh, the name. That's it. Same resources. Everything's the same. And as soon as you put "substation" in front of it, they improve it. Which is just the way that, that's the crazy, when you hear about the crazy like military bureaucracy, that's case in point right there.

• 2:45:06Speaker 02

  Well, and the other thing too, so, you know.

• 2:45:10Speaker 02

  We were kitted out, you know, I got, I got a chest carrier. I got my, uh, whatever the ACU, that kind of looks like pajamas, but you know, we had a military uniform. We had boots, you know, we're out there in the fight. And these cops, that was one thing. They're out there. I mean, they're, they're like Paul Blart. I mean, they're mall guards. I mean, they got polyester pants and polyester shirts and yeah, they got a plate carrier and then we gave them those, uh, uh, what were the Silverados and we put some metal on it. It's like, you know, there's a picture in the book where, uh, they got a, like a, I don't know what her, whatever the era of M60 is, right? Uh, they got a machine gun on top of one of those pickup trucks and it's not on a pedal. It's on a tripod. And, and those boys would roll out and it's like,

• 2:45:52Speaker 02

  you know, I, I really, you know, over time, it's like, man, these guys are kind of badass, you know? I mean, for just even doing it, even trying. And, uh, and then once, you know, once we started getting a lot of them, you know, when this police station goes in, uh,

• 2:46:10Speaker 02

  there was a lot of them. I mean, we went from like 200 to, you know, we got the 500. So we got up to 700 and then like within two weeks we're up to like 3,000. Yeah.

• 2:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Um, you also plan to build this university checkpoint. I introduced the, and again, there's so many details in the book. Get the book. Uh, I plan to build the university checkpoint. Colonel McFarland was not afraid to make a hard decision, agreed to it immediately. The first PowerPoint slide announced the name of the mission, Operation Toga. McFarland quietly said, knowledge is good, which is, which is a quote from, from the movie Animal House, which is just like typical McFarland to be able to pull that quote. There's the opening of the movie Animal House. There's, they're showing the statue and it says like whatever the

• 2:46:55Speaker 02

  Favorite college.

• 2:46:55Jocko Willink?

  Favorite college. And it says, the, the quote is, knowledge is good.

• 2:47:01Jocko Willink?

  And McFarlane was able to just rattle that off. Fast forward a little bit across ready first AOs, AO casualties mounted as operations to take back the city continued. Task Force Bandit had secured a foothold in southern Ramadi and was conducting census operations around the new cops to get a feel for the new neighborhoods. The curhees and the 38 Marines were also expanding their presence in the city. It was a daily grind of soldiers protecting the combat outpost and then going on patrol to canvass the population. All the time the enemy watched attacking when and where they could. On 17 July, Staff Sergeant Michael Dickinson, the second assigned to A Company, Ninth Psyops was on a dismounted patrol when a sniper took his life.

• 2:47:45Jocko Willink?

  On 19 July Bulldog Company from Task Force Bandit sent an armored patrol along Route Sunset between Cop Falcon and Cop Iron to ensure it was clear of enemy presence. The Staff Sergeant Mark Vencion was the tank commander of the lead tank in the patrol when his vehicle hit an IED and began to burn. When the crew could not immediately extinguish the fire, Vencion ordered them to evacuate and move safely, evacuate and move to safety while he began to moving, moving the loaders, to the loader's side to pull the release on the external fire extinguishers. While attempting to save the vehicle, Vencion triggered a second IED, the explosion killing him instantly.

• 2:48:27Jocko Willink?

  The tank continued to burn for hours, eventually requiring a brigade level effort to recover the tank. Two days later, the terrorists attacked a 38 Marine dismounted patrol with an IED, killing Corporal Julian Ramon, a Colombian immigrant from Flushing, New York, who was on a second tour in Iraq. The enemy was seemingly everywhere and nowhere.

• 2:48:54Jocko Willink?

  That was a great description, that idea of the enemy seeming like they're everywhere and at the same time seeming like they're nowhere.

• 2:48:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, and you like, you know, you like me, you're probably out of the office a lot, right? So you'd come back in the office and they're like, some guy got killed in 137, some guy first five or six got blown up, you know, and like every day. And, you know, the book's kind of thick, because, you know, I thought all the guys who lost their life there should be kind of memorialized, which was kind of hard to do. But if you put the wounded, you know, it'd be a three-volume set, you know, it was just every day, somebody was getting hurt.

• 2:49:33Jocko Willink?

  It was like 500 wounded for the 118.

• 2:49:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I'm certain of it. And it was every day, and, you know, it kind of, I think it kind of started getting on the guys a little bit, you know, because, but then, you know, kind of you get numb to it, but kind of it's like, well, it's going to happen to me sooner or later, you know, but you, but these guys went out because they didn't want to let their buddies down, didn't want to fail, they bought in the mission, and God bless them.

• 2:50:02Jocko Willink?

  On 22 July, one of the super friends came in with a tip of a high-value target that was a bomb-making factory into me. We diverted a dealer patrol led by Lieutenant Ian Blackstone, conducting census operations to investigate as the patrol began moving toward the suspected enemy hideout. A furious, continuous burst of automatic weapons fire from PK and machine guns and AK-47s erupted. The withering fire pinned them down for several minutes. Clearly, we had walked them into an ambush. Eventually, the men of Team Dealer gained the upper hand, suppressing enemy with overwhelming firepower. By then, however, Staff Sergeant Christopher Swanson lay mortally wounded with a single gunshot wound.

• 2:50:41Jocko Willink?

  On 24 July, Al Qaeda tried to reassert its dominance with a coordinated citywide series of attacks against coalition forces, striking at 15 locations across Ramadi in less than 30 minutes, with eight of the attacks occurring in one deadly 10-minute span. Well over 100 fighters engaged in the offensive, with six of the attacks defined as complex, meaning more than one engagement method. While the attacks briefly rocked us back on our heels within minutes, coalition restored the relative order, killing at least 28 terrorists who had with nothing, who had nothing to show for their effort. That was again, that was just, you know, you talked about how they were good at what they were doing.

• 2:51:23Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that's a difficult operation to, to, and I remember it was crazy. Like for them to be able to pull that off was impressive.

• 2:51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I gotta talk about Sergeant Swanson because he was another guy that was like Scott Love. Just, you know, you talk to him, you meet him, just, just a nice guy, very good at his job. You know, it's like one of them guys like, he's gonna go pretty far. This guy's gonna be sergeant major of the army someday. You know, just, just a really good guy, just a stud and, and very good. Like when we did, we did squad live fires and between live fires when we were in Kuwait and, you know, his, his squad was always, you know, kind of the best. Uh, right up there at the top and, uh, you know, they got caught in this thing and you talk to the guys who were there. I mean, they, there was all these machine guns. I mean, they were, you know, the guys who were there, they're like, that's the worst we had at the whole time. And they're just getting tore up and Swanson, you know, figures out what's what.

• 2:52:18Speaker 02

  He, he kind of figured out before it got lit off. He got the guys inside the building so they didn't get caught in the street, you know, and he runs up to the roof and he's trying to engage and, uh, and he gets killed. And, uh, you know, and that was, and, and that happened every day across everybody, you know, and, and, you know, and Swanson was another, you know, some of them, uh, when you know the guys pretty well, uh, you know, he, that one, that was a bad one too. And, you know, and, and as this is going on, if, you know, the, the names in the book, the dealers are starting to lose NCOs left and right. And so, uh, things were getting bad. Let me say one thing though, before that day in the attack, because that was like two days later, I believe.

• 2:53:03Speaker 02

  So the next day, uh, I think we only had four attacks in, uh, uh, in Team Dealer. We only had four ticks that day.

• 2:53:13Jocko Willink?

  So you felt like, oh.

• 2:53:14Speaker 02

  Me and the three in the, in the XL, me and Dave Rowe and then Bergman were sitting there, we're high five, we've turned the corner, we've turned the corner. And then the next day, just a brigade wide ass weapon came.

• 2:53:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you do, you do mention in the book also about Swanson. You say, a week earlier, I just seen him in Charlie Med getting a small piece of shrapnel pulled out of his butt after the Humvee he was riding and hit an IED. I joked with him that he had the million dollar wound. As if the enemy could only wound a soldier once.

• 2:53:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:42Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Here's a dude that gets wounded.

• 2:53:44Speaker 02

  Gets wounded.

• 2:53:45Jocko Willink?

  Week later, he's back out on patrol.

• 2:53:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a little worse. I, you know, your memory fell. I just remember have like a little cut, but he actually kind of got, he kind of got it. But which is even more so. I mean, he got a bunch of stitches in his crotch, which you're out walking patrol and he's like back on it.

• 2:53:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, it's 120 degrees out there.

• 2:54:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:02Jocko Willink?

  Literally 120 degrees because now we're in July. It's 120 degrees. That's what the temperature is.

• 2:54:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:08Jocko Willink?

  On 26 July, Al Qaeda attacked Cobb Falcon in force, causing Mike Byma and his men to fire every weapon system they had to repel the enemy and requiring ammunition resupply during the four hour gun battle. The next day, three Marines from Weapons Company, three eight Marines, Corporal Timothy D. Ruse, Lance Corporal Adam R. Murray, and Private First Class Enrique C. Sanchez died when an IED destroyed their vehicle.

• 2:54:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like, as I was reading the book, you start getting in this, and I don't know if you did this on purpose. I don't believe you did, but you may have, but you start getting in this pattern where good things happen. And you're like, oh, we're going to get police recruits and people die. You know, there's, there's friendly killed in action and something else good happens. And that's the way it was all the time. Like you just said about turning the corner.

• 2:55:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, you'd be like, oh, this is a good day, you know, and, and then like it's not, it's just not ending.

• 2:55:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:55:11Jocko Willink?

  Sheikh Satar had a scheduled meeting for one August with tribal leaders from across Ramadi who wanted their young men to join the Iraqi police. And this is great. So you're in this meeting and you're, once again, you're, you're interpreters named Dragon. And you say, Dragon, so you're in this meeting, Dragon, tell them they all look the same to me. I said to my interpreter, Dragon is normally very soft spoken. He had a personal investment in the war, having been in Ramadi for over two years at the time and did not want to see me destroy the progress we had made. He looked me in the eye and said, matter of factly, I'm not telling him that. Tell him, Dragon, tell him every fucking word. Dragon shrugged, grimaced and repeated in Arabic what I said. The room fell silent for a moment and then erupted with angry outbursts from all the sheiks at once.

• 2:55:55Jocko Willink?

  It was hard for me to tell exactly what they were saying, but judging from the tone and body language, I calculated their mood to be somewhere between indignation and anger. And then you continue. Back in Nebraska, we all wear cowboy boots, blue jeans, plaid shirts, and cowboy hats. I went on to say, knowing the Iraqis all watched a lot of Hollywood movies on satellite TV. If you came to my town, you couldn't tell us apart. Since I lived in Nebraska all my life, I could tell you who belonged there and who didn't. I can tell you who's a good man and who's a bad man. I can tell you which families are good and which ones are bad. Why? Because I'm from there, and I know the situation in ways you'll never understand.

• 2:56:38Jocko Willink?

  It was almost as if the lights went on in the sheik's head. That's classic, you know? You get their attention with that statement, "You all look the same to me," but it's so accurate. You know, it's so accurate. That's kind of what the, uh, the thing with Travis Patrick Queen, and what he was trying to explain with his stick figure diagram, like, "Hey, we don't know who's good and who's bad." They do.

• 2:56:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:57:03Jocko Willink?

  At 10:30 hours on August 2nd, under the watchful eyes of SEAL Team 3 snipers and the camera lens of a circling Predator drone, the soldiers of Task Force Conqueror embarked on Operation Toga. This is once again putting a checkpoint at the university. Rolling past the checkpoints ringing the outskirts of Tamim, the assault column turned to the campus of Al Anbar University. And, um, you rolled in there. It turned out you were expecting a, like, 50 people or something like that, but it was payday, so there ends up being 400 people on campus. Uh, what we envisioned as a six-hour operation dragged on all day. Luckily, the Naval Special

• 2:57:45Jocko Willink?

  Warfare Intel Team had a couple SEAL shooters along for the ride to help interrogate locals. They had an uncanny knack for picking out terrorists out of the crowd by their body language and demeanor. That one there, six rows up, five over from the right, blue shirt. See him rocking back and forth, he wants to kill us all, haul his ass in. And the dude with the beard three rows behind him in the red shirt, grab his ass too, he's acting too cool. And again, these were, I had these guys that had been trained, they're SEALs, but they've been trained in interrogation, and they were just freaking awesome. And then we sent those guys, and we were also doing something over, um, out of CFPALCON the same day. So we had multiple units in the field, but these guys were helping you.

• 2:58:24Jocko Willink?

  These guys find a bunch of, you know, the, actually the, the ID, the, uh, sorry, the Iraqi company that you brought found a bunch of RPG launchers, PKM machine guns, Dragonoff sniper rifles. And, you know, so it's a successful, very successful operation.

• 2:58:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and, you know, and so for months, uh, the white apartments, which were like on the road that, that went down to Ramadi and the white apartments there, we, we figured getting it, everyone's getting, forget attacked out there. And, uh, and I asked Lou, I said, you know, the, you know, to me, the boogeyman lived in the white apartments, right? And he's like, there's just nothing but a bunch of poor people in there. Well, then we kind of figured out that like, you know, if you're going to start a revolution, where do you want to start at? University campus. And so they were crossing down, they were, they were using the, the university because, you know, we couldn't go in there.

• 2:59:17Jocko Willink?

  We couldn't go in there.

• 2:59:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which, why not? Right? So, so we couldn't go in there. And then, um, they go under the train track. There was, it was like a sewage thing. Uh, and they'd go into there and they go to the white apartments. They shoot at us and they come back and forth. So it's like, uh, and actually what tipped the scale for me was, uh, uh, the Q36, they were, they were shooting mortars, they were teaching people to shoot mortars from the university. And they were shooting them out in the desert. We got the Q36 returned. It's like, you know, they're holding the, you know, impact, the mortar leader clash, you know, they're holding that thing here in the university, you know, and they, and they didn't even have the, felt the need to waste their ammo on us. They were just teaching people how to shoot. So it's okay, we gotta do that.

• 3:00:02Jocko Willink?

  University of Jihad.

• 3:00:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, home of the fighting Sunnis. Uh, but, uh, um, so, you know, we didn't want to blow back there, you know, we just want to take over the place and, and deny them it. And I mean, it went all the way up to Maliki, but you know, they said, go. And, you know, I talked about this in the, uh, In the book, I mean, the, the three things you don't do is take over university, take over a hospital and take over a mosque. And McFarlane was like, yeah, go get it, you know, as long as you made a good case. He's like, go get it, you know, I mean, uh, you know, we talk about moral courage. Most people is like, oh, the hand wringing that would go on for any of these things. But he was like, go get them, Tiger.

• 3:00:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, he, he did not, he did not shy away from bearing the responsibility for these things. And like you said, I mean, hitting a hospital, hitting a mosque, like these are hitting the university, these things, these things are huge potential, you know, news stories and we look terrible.

• 3:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:59Jocko Willink?

  And he just put trust in us.

• 3:01:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Um, to, to execute these operations and, and make these things happen. It's amazing.

• 3:01:11Jocko Willink?

  While Operation Toga had its glitches, in the end, I would, I would call it our first combined task force level US Iraqi operation, establishing a permit, permanent Iraqi led combat outpost and denying Al Anbar University use as a terrorist safe haven without firing a shot, a success.

• 3:01:28Jocko Willink?

  As soon as I got back to Camp Ramadi, I checked the Reuters news website, which was the source I used whenever I wanted to see what Al Qaeda had to say about a topic, in this case, Operation Toga. The terrorist press release was already in circulation with its usual list of atrocities committed by coalition forces. We attacked the university in a hail of gunfire, killing many professors and students. Blatantly not true. We had beaten professors and students alike. Blatantly not true. We systematically raped the women on campus. Blatantly not true. We'd humiliated the professors by making them walk around with signs around their necks, calling them dogs.

• 3:02:07Jocko Willink?

  Which caused us to reevaluate our naming conventions because you had, you had actually named off sectors of the city and so you had to label them where you got them from. And so this part was actually not blatantly untrue.

• 3:02:18Jocko Willink?

  So, um, while our mission went well, it was a terrible day across the ready first with Corporal Joseph Tomsey of three eight Marines dying from wounds received during operations in central Ramadi. Later that evening, SEAL Team Three was conducting operations near Cop Falcon in central Ramadi when a sniper, when an enemy sniper wounded SEAL operator second class, Ryan Jobe, triggering a running gun battle that lasted over an hour and spread throughout the streets of Ramadi. When it was over, aviation ordinance men SEAL second class Mark Lee was killed, becoming the first SEAL to die in Iraq. Ryan Jobe would eventually succumb to his wounds nearly three years later.

• 3:03:06Speaker 02

  I, I think, uh, what you said earlier, you know, hey, when one good thing would happen, you know, three bad things would happen. And, you know, hey, we took over this university, we locked it down. And, you know, you guys have the worst day in, in proper years in the SEAL teams, you know, and, uh, it was just, it was just like that every day.

• 3:03:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, you know, here we have, you know, SEAL snipers over with you, don't even fire a shot, that whole mission. And then here, these guys are in a, you know, and what there's, that's a half a mile away. These things, this city was crazy.

• 3:03:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03:43Jocko Willink?

  By August, by four August, Cop Crab was complete and we were circling back to our routine. All I had on my schedule was attending a memorial service in the morning, then meeting with the lawyers in my office in order to make a final determination on a platoon leader and a platoon sergeant whom I had suspended from duty because I believe they'd shot up the fire station in Tami. Then I was flying out on R and R. I did not have the time to go into, I did not have the time to go to all of the memorial services across the ready first. There were too many seemingly, one every couple of days. Today's ceremony at Blue Diamond was for Specialist Hai Ming Sai, who died in an IED attack on one August. Assigned to Alpha Company, two six infantry, he was a member of Task Force

• 3:04:28Jocko Willink?

  Conqueror through the train up in Germany and Kuwait. I had met Specialist Sai in a couple of times. He was smart. Dependable team leader, an immigrant from Chinatown in New York City, trying to live the American dream. He was older than most of his peers, but a hard worker and well-liked with a bright future in the Army. Halfway through the ceremony, Sergeant First Class Roberts tapped me on the shoulder with a grave look on his face. He whispered in my ear, "Sir, F Troop Humvee hit a landmine. It's really bad." We left immediately. The blast site was adjacent to an abandoned railroad station approximately 500 meters northeast of OP 293. I arrived at a gut-wrenching scene. The blast had instantly killed Staff Sergeant

• 3:05:12Jocko Willink?

  Clinton Story, Sergeant Bradley Best, and an Iraqi translator. A fire engulfed the vehicle before we could evacuate the bodies. I waited there with the cavalrymen until the recovery effort was complete and the remains of these brave men evacuated.

• 3:05:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a, um, that was really a bad day. And, uh, um, you know, F Troop, they, uh, McFarlane would give, would give them to me from time to time, just because I was running so short of people. And, uh, we had them doing some checkpoints, but you know, the, there's nothing you can do, you know, vehicle's on fire. And we'd just come from the memorial service and, uh, um, you know, and then oddly enough, there was, there was a Marine firefighting detachment there, which I guess they came with the airfield or something, but like, you know, two Marines come out with a, with a fire truck. When the

• 3:06:17Speaker 02

  whole fire truck come from? They put the fire out. So, um, it was just, you know, and all that was, I think in a week, everything we just shot on it. Yeah.

• 3:06:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think this is like, it's because, you know, so they'd have a mass casualty drill on base. And one of the things they'd call is they'd call for blood. Like they'd call down to my talk and be like, hey, we need blood. And so we just, anyone that was there would go and give blood and/or help out. And I remember, I'm pretty sure this was the one, but, um, you know, I sent guys up there and it was, we didn't have, most of the guys were working, but had a few guys send them up there and they went up to help out, give blood. And they ended up just helping move bodies. And, um, you know, the guys were just burned. And, and, um, one of my guys, one of my- Young officers came back and I could see it was uh they're gonna leave a mark on them,

• 3:07:08Jocko Willink?

  you know, seeing these guys and just tragic situation.

• 3:07:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And you know, and it was there and it's like, you know, hey, and you know, uh, one of the things Mark Lovejoy said to me was, uh,

• 3:07:22Speaker 02

  you know, you may lose a guy, but you got hundreds of others you got to keep alive. And I just remember standing there and and it was all you could do but to to look at the uh, the vehicle. It's like, no dudes, face out. We gotta pull security, you know, that we, you know, we can't get and roll up here again. And uh, it was just like that every day.

• 3:07:44Jocko Willink?

  There's uh, again, you know, we talk about discipline and the performance of the troops and you had a situation that was unfolding that you had to deal with you. And here's, here we go. The basic facts of the case were clear. Coalition forces had shot up the fire station into meme. There was no doubt about that. Thankfully, there were no injuries in the incident, but some bonehead put an M4 round through the engine of the Tameem fire truck. I believed in my heart that the soldiers of Task Force Conquer would never have done this. Why in the hell would anyone shoot a fire truck? I knew my guys were sharper than that. I'd called the commanders of the units that routinely uh, transited AO Conquer and accused each of their units in turn of being behind the attack. The commander of SEAL Team Three, Task Force, that was me,

• 3:08:26Jocko Willink?

  and also Task Force Rangers and Task Force Bandit all checked in and stated that it was not them. Still, I felt one of them was not telling the whole truth. Simultaneously, a soldier recently assigned to Team Dealer went out on patrol a couple of times and then refused to go out anymore. I suspected he was a coward and was preparing to court martial him. While waiting, while awaiting his punishment, aside from not going on patrol, he did everything the first sergeant asked him to do. After sitting down and talking with him, First Sergeant Shaw realized the problem was with the platoon and not the new soldier. Although the soldier never implicated the platoon, Shaw was perceptive enough to figure out his men were the ones responsible for attacking the fire station and he had the moral courage to call them out.

• 3:09:07Jocko Willink?

  The first sergeant knew that a platoon metting out street justice was a cancer to the unit, requiring immediate removal.

• 3:09:15Jocko Willink?

  I ordered a formal investigation into the incident and reported it Colonel McFarland. As the investigating officer began questioning members of the suspected platoon, the platoon leader and the platoon sergeant invoked their Fifth Amendment rights, preventing a further question of them. All I wanted was to find out the truth of what happened, but I could not tolerate a platoon leader who will not report his actions. No matter how badly he screwed up, short of murder anyways, I could deal with it if they simply told the truth. The platoon leader and platoon sergeant officially reported that they had not entered the fire station. After questioning, after the questioning of the platoon members, it became clear the two men had lied. Army investigations have a way of getting the truth, because no matter how many blood oaths or sacred pacts are made, promising to take the secret to the grave, once the

• 3:09:57Jocko Willink?

  investigating officer starts reading Miranda rights, the truth spills out in a matter of minutes. I never did find out what caused the two soldiers to shoot up the fire station, but I suspect the platoon sergeant had lost his moral compass because of all the fighting, and the new platoon leader was not man enough to stop him. Between the two of them, they had decided to teach the Iraqis a lesson in action that was clearly unacceptable and always ineffective in combat.

• 3:10:24Jocko Willink?

  So many like little things in this. Number one, it shows you how, despite all this chaos and combat going on, these little things are still going to get noticed, they're still going to get investigated. You know, like, the, the idea that you could go around and cause mayhem and not have it we'd know about it, is completely ludicrous. You know, even someone entering the fire station and hurting the fire truck is getting raised to your level by the civilian populace.

• 3:10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and, you know, a lot of it goes to leadership too, and, uh, I think Matt Graham was in command by that time, Lou had moved on to another assignment. But those two, they knew it, you know, Sean knew it, and, and, and, you know, Sean's the one who came to me, uh, and said, hey, I think with my guys. And, uh, because they knew, I mean, they knew that this was going to happen, and, and you probably hear this all the time, I hear that sometimes, like, oh, you were in Ramadi, it was the Wild West. It's like, well, no, we're professionals, and we're going to carry ourselves as professionals, you know, we're just, it's not some crazy gunfight, you know, it's not, uh, you know...

• 3:11:36Speaker 02

  I mean, it was violent, but you know, we're professionals. We're supposed to act like professionals. And, and, uh, uh, the dealer guys, you know, they, they fixed the problem. I mean, they brought the problem up, they fixed them and, uh, uh, you know, if they would've just told the truth, we probably would've figured it out right then and nothing would've happened. Well, I've been counsel and statements and leisure upman, but you know, you take the fifth, take the fifth. Okay. Well, good luck. Good luck in court because you're not going to be in my unit anymore.

• 3:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:06Jocko Willink?

  You say this, "I have always felt platoon leaders have the hardest job in the army. They are full of book knowledge and good intentions, but have little practical experience. In comparison, I felt the battalion command was an easier job than the platoon leaders. I'd spent all my adult life getting ready to command a battalion, holding almost every staff position at some point previously in my career and surrounded by smart and very experienced majors, captains and senior NCOs who are also very willing to do anything you ask of them. Even as a company commander, I had a first sergeant on whom I could count on for expert advice, a first lieutenant executive officer who is experienced and three platoon leaders who wanted to do a good job, but did not know, but did not know enough to ask hard questions. Platoon leaders are at the bottom of the leadership ladder and actually have to live with the men who are out doing the tough mission, looking them in the eye, telling them to move out.

• 3:12:52Jocko Willink?

  Anytime I said something as a task force commander, the answer was yes, sir. Soldiers do not always reply to lieutenants the same way. Sometimes the response is more along the lines of, "The entire plan is just fucking stupid."

• 3:13:06Jocko Willink?

  And you know, that's what you said, you know, you said, "In this case, you had a platoon commander that wasn't man enough to say, "Hey, we're not doing this shit." And that's usually all it takes. And I always say, "Look, maybe it's the platoon commander, maybe it's the, maybe it's the platoon sergeant and a platoon platoon's platoon chief, somebody in there's got to be like, "Hey, we're not doing this shit." Like, "Nope, stop. Someone's got to be able to do that." And if they don't, that's when you have a situation like that happen.

• 3:13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and, and here's part of the problem too. And, and like later on, uh, my last job was teaching the counterinsurgency seminar. But, so you kind of think about it. So, you know, me and you were senior guys. We're telling our guys, "This needs to happen. This needs to happen." And especially, you know, platoon leader, platoon sergeant, well, they're talking to guys who just came back. Right, or they're talking to the guy that they're ripping with, whatever, and they're saying, "Hey, I know what they're telling you up there, but this is what I did to stay alive." And so it's like, okay, the forty-two-year-old dude's telling you one thing, but the dude who looks like you, but a year older, and but a year older and still alive, I'm gonna stick,

• 3:14:12Speaker 02

  I'm gonna roll with what he said. And so, uh, uh, you know, it, you know, they just kind of fell down. And, you know, there needs to be a moral compass. And that, and that's, you know, the platoon leader and platoon sergeant, you know, and hopefully, you know, the platoon leader doesn't have to be it, because everybody's kind of in tune, but, you know, people gotta, you know, it's, because it's counterproductive in the end.

• 3:14:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:37Speaker 02

  In the end.

• 3:14:38Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's going against the entire strategy. If you're out there doing things like that, this will be populist, and it's gonna ruin everything.

• 3:14:45Speaker 02

  And we bought the fire truck. It was an American fire truck. You know, I mean, the stuff, you know, and part of that was, you know, the rebuilding and everything else. We bought the fire truck, held the, uh, the soccer stadium, you know, we built that in, like, two thousand two. We rebuilt it two thousand two, two thousand three, or whatever. Two thousand four, two thousand five, that thing been rebuilt. And, you know, how many Gimblers and Sidewinder missiles did Ronald Clark put into that thing? I mean, that thing was getting blown up every day. And it's like, hey, Ron, how many shooting? Quite a bit, you know? And then, and then it turned out it was a, you know, we found out later, it's a, it was like the ammo supply point for the Moos when they finally took it over.

• 3:15:27Jocko Willink?

  That's for damn sure.

• 3:15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, yeah, uh, you know, but, you know, going, going back to the moral aspect, you know, Lou and Shaw, they, uh, they preach that. And that, that was the six months in Kuwait. And, um, we got held in Kuwait for six months to win the war before they finally moved us up. But, um, you know, between me and, you know, Dan Walrath had the same thing in one-six, but, you know, we probably had the best trained unit in the Army, because we had six months to do what we needed to do, and six months of leader. Because, you know, I tell people this all the time. It's like, if we had gone north in November, I was like, okay, we've done all training, it's ready to go. But when we went, you know, six months of extra training, it's like, thank God we didn't go in November, because it would have

• 3:16:10Speaker 02

  been horrible. And it was horrible. I mean, it's been double horrible.

• 3:16:16Jocko Willink?

  You end up going on R and R, which is, you know, uh, some people don't know that, but the army at this time was letting guys go home because the tournaments are a year long, get two weeks of R and R. Uh, actually, Colonel Clark, now General Clark, you know, I, I went over and we were talking, we had some big operation coming up and I went to talk to him about it. And I was like, well, you know, where are you going to be, sir? You're going to go in the, you know? And he's like, I'm, I'm going on leave. And I was kind of surprised, you know, because I mean, what an incredible leader Ron Clark is. I was kind of like surprised. He must've read my face and he goes, I gotta go on leave. And I said, hey, Roger that, sir.

• 3:16:52Jocko Willink?

  And he goes, hey, Jocko, if, if I don't go on leave, first of all, if I can't go on leave because I'm required to be here and my battalion can't function without me, I failed as a leader. That's number one. Number two, if I don't go on leave, no one else will go on leave. They'll all stay here because I'll be the example and they'll say, oh, the boss didn't go on leave. I'm not going on leave or leave either. So to get these guys the break that they need, I'm going on leave. I'll see you when I get back. It was, it was like such a great aspect of leadership and you know, that's what, that's what you did. So you, that's what happened. You go on leave. How's that? How was that leave period?

• 3:17:31Speaker 02

  You know, um,

• 3:17:35Speaker 02

  when you're leaving to go on deployment, you know, everyone's kind of worried, you know, you're coming back, you know, hey, hey, honey, let's run through the insurance one more time, you know what I mean? And, uh, uh, when you come back, then there's, you know, years worth of like carnage and worked on everything else, but, but like R and R is kind of magical. You know, it's like, it's like free time. And so, uh, go back, you know,

• 3:18:02Speaker 02

  me and the wife are there, the kids are like teenagers by this point, uh, you know, we go down to Garmisch, uh, you know, and, uh, we're kind of out every night, you know, kind of paint the town red. It was, it was really pretty fun, but, uh,

• 3:18:16Speaker 02

  it's this like suspension of time because it's really like, hey, this is a freebie.

• 3:18:20Jocko Willink?

  Are you watching the news every night or did you just say, I'm not watching?

• 3:18:26Speaker 02

  I was trying not to watch the news. I mean, but I checked my email and actually we had a couple of guys shot during that time and I think, I know a couple of other units took some casualties during that time, but it's like, you know, hey, we're getting away, we're going down to Garmisch.

• 3:18:41Speaker 02

  We're gonna have a good time.

• 3:18:44Jocko Willink?

  What is Garmisch?

• 3:18:45Speaker 02

  Oh, Garmisch is a, the Armed Forces Hotel. It's in the ski resort.

• 3:18:52Jocko Willink?

  It's like a ski town.

• 3:18:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, ski town, down in, down in southern Germany.

• 3:18:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, nice.

• 3:18:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's got a nice hotel down there and, you know, bars and quaint little German town. And so, you know, we're like, they're tearing it up. And then, you know, then at one point you just gotta go back.

• 3:19:10Jocko Willink?

  Are you, is it harder to go back because you know what you're getting into? Cause I don't think anybody, well, I guess. I found out two weeks, I was supposed to go to Baghdad with my task unit and we ended up getting assigned to Ramadi and I knew, I'd been tracking Ramadi, I knew how bad it was gonna be when we got there, but even like the guys that were there before us. They didn't, you know, they didn't have any casualties, you know, they, they, you know, so it wasn't like a glaring issue, like the guys that I turned over with, which was when we're, when they check in, I'm telling like, I'm telling the task unit, like you are going to take casualties, there's no avoiding it, like you need to be ready. So when you're, you know what you're getting back into.

• 3:19:51Jocko Willink?

  Was that, was that like something you thought about or was like, yep, I know what I'm getting into and more comfortable with it?

• 3:19:58Speaker 02

  Uh, you know.

• 3:19:59Jocko Willink?

  And what about your wife?

• 3:20:00Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, my, my wife took it all in stride, you know, she wasn't,

• 3:20:09Speaker 02

  you know, she, she knew, she knew how bad things were. She, and she did a great job of, so, so I had some NCOs and officers that I left back to be the family support group and my wife was not in charge of the family support group, you know, she was the senior advisor and, you know, Sergeant Sebeck, Captain Costin, it's like, this is your job, you know, my wife's not here to run the wives and, but she did a very good job of dealing with the other wives and, and, you know, making sure things were running right. So she, you know, she was all right, but she wasn't that worried about me. I don't know why, I guess she thought I was gonna, I guess the insurance was paid up, you know, so,

• 3:20:49Speaker 02

  so, so it was all right, you know, but. To go back was like, you know, it was like kind of playing basketball. It's like, okay, I've had my breather. I'm ready to get back in for the, you know, ready to get back in the third quarter and things just, you know, and things just kept happening. You know, it's like, what, what happened? You know, you know, the, you know, Chuck's telling me, you know, like picks me up from the hell pad, you know, driving back in the pickup truck and, you know, it's like a five minute drive. And it's like, you know, tells me 30 things that had happened. And then it's like, okay, because something terrible is going to happen tomorrow, dude. Yeah.

• 3:21:28Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, I finally returned to Ramadi on 23 August to find that Major Chuck Bergman had magnificently commanded the task force in my absence. If it were up to him, I probably would have stayed on R and R a few days longer. Bergman and Major Dave Rau quickly gave me a rundown of everything that had happened while I was gone. Unfortunately, it had to be a brutal, it had been a brutal three weeks across the Ready First. Terrorists had attacked the brigade with an average of six IEDs a day on top of the ever-present small arms attacks and routine suicide bomber. On 6 August, while patrolling in the Al Jazeera, in the Jazira tribal region, the Humvee carrying Staff Sergeant Tracy Melvin from Alpha Company,

• 3:22:07Jocko Willink?

  two six infanteries struck an IED, killing him instantly. 16 August, Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Loa, Tank Commander from Alpha Company 135, attached to Task Force Regular, was killed by an IED during a dismounted patrol north of Ramadi. Staff Sergeant Loa is a great leader and warrior and well loved by his soldiers. Two days later, Sergeant Marquis Quick from F Troop died in a grenade attack while conducting a tactical overwatch mission for the Ready Force, Ready First in downtown Ramadi. On August 21st, a suicide bomber attacked the Jazira Police Station. The bomber ignited an above-ground 200 gallon gas tank used to fuel the police

• 3:22:49Jocko Willink?

  station vehicles, creating enormous fireball that burned the policemen, advisors and advisors alike. The advisor team at the station was devastated with eight soldiers burned in the explosion. This time, the Iraqis refused to be intimidated. After deciding that the Americans were taking too long to extinguish the flames, they entered the compound, put out the fires themselves and raised a large Iraqi flag in defiance and headed out on patrol that afternoon. So again, a bunch of negatives and you have a positive like that happening.

• 3:23:23Jocko Willink?

  Another meeting with Sheikh Satar. When we arrived that night Sheikh Satar was chain smoking and pacing back and forth in his living room. I'd never seen him this agitated. Satar informed me that the Abu Athiya tribe had brutally murdered Sheikh Khalid of the Ali Jassim tribe. I remembered Khalid well from a conversation we had the night prior to the Al Anbar University operation. He had lived up to his promise to assist in the recruiting policemen and had been reaching out to his neighborhood tribal leaders trying to get them to reject Al Qaeda. For his efforts, Abu Athiya beheaded Sheikh Khalid, keeping his body as an insult to his family and were

• 3:24:04Jocko Willink?

  holding a female member of Khalid's family hostage as well.

• 3:24:12Jocko Willink?

  The Abu Athiya tribe was openly hostile to the coalition with longstanding ties to Al Qaeda. So this is what's happening. Then the body ends up in another AO in Lieutenant Colonel Walrath's AO. Lieutenant Colonel Walrath received word that the tribes had recovered Sheikh Khalid's body. The disrespect that the Abu Athiya tribe displayed in holding the Sheikh's headless corpse helped galvanize the other tribes into rejecting Al Qaeda.

• 3:24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I show up at Satar's house and he's wound up. And so, Satar, what's wrong? And so Khalid, you know, I said, the guy said, y'all look the same. He pulled me aside and he's like, I've got, I've got, you know, four wives and 18 sons and all these people in my tribe and, you know, and, and he was like yelling at me, like, why aren't we doing something? And I'm like, hey, look, man, you either throw him with us or you throw him with AK. Who's gonna work better? And they kind of talk about in the book, but it's like that Far Side cartoon where what the dog's here and it's a Rex, Rex. So he

• 3:25:23Speaker 02

  just starts going on. I mean, he went on for probably 10 minutes and he's like, Bremer, Bremer. And he spit on the ground every time he said Bremer's name. And he's like, you know, the whole, you know, my, what I know about the Iraq war I learned from the tribes, right? Kindergarten. It's like, you know, they all blame Bremer. And so when we get there, he's, you know, he said, okay, I'll do what we can. So we get there and Satar's like, okay.

• 3:25:51Speaker 02

  You know, mash your forces. We're gonna go into Dan Walras area and like, uh, you know, take back the, you know, take back the body. And I was like, yeah, you know, I, I got through about five of the seven pillars of wisdom. I mean, it was kind of a long book, you know? So it's like this Lawrence of Arabia stuff's gotta, gotta, gotta stop. So I said, I said, let me find out, which actually worked out pretty good. Cause then they figured out, you know, the tribes figured out that they, they gotta do it themselves. And so like the next day, there was no policeman on duty. There was like, you know, enough people keep the station running. And they went up there and they, you know, settled amongst themselves. They got the body back. But that really kind of pushed forward, uh, them boys working on the awakening.

• 3:26:37Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, you're going back to the Bazeia compound. And again, this is what you just explained. You got a lot of details in the book. Get the book. As we rolled into Bazeia compound, I noticed an unusually large number of people milling about, though this was not in itself remarkable since we never knew what we would find at Sitar's house. It might be four sheikhs wanting to talk to coalition forces about having their men join the police, or three guys from the town who just want to talk to America about a sheep that accidentally got killed two years ago. As I entered, Sheikh Sitar stood up and came forward from the inordinately large group of men that surrounded him. Ah, Colonel Dean, I'm glad you stopped by. We were hoping you'd come, he said without preamble.

• 3:27:18Jocko Willink?

  We here are all tired of the violence, he said, while raising his hands, palms up and gesturing around the room. And we, we want to swear to allegiance to the coalition and vow to rid Iraq of Al Qaeda. It's about as good as it gets right there. Talk about Lawrence of Arabia activity. I mean, that's, that's incredible.

• 3:27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, uh, you know,

• 3:27:43Speaker 02

  And it's cross board. It's, uh, you know, the guys in Bravo Company, you know, building trust with the people in Temeen, guys in Charlie Company working the tribal areas. Uh, you know, Matt Alden was in command there and, uh, uh, you know, we started to take some of the terrorists out because they were kind of commuting from the tribal area and starting, you know, starting stuff in the city and then just, you know, building on what Lovejoy and the guys did in 172, but also just kind of working to them and talking to them. And so, uh, you know, getting the guys in the police, they saw where it was going and, uh, you know, just kind of huge teamwork thing. And then Satar just being the character he was. I mean, Star, you know, um, you know, along the way, uh, you know,

• 3:28:27Speaker 02

  he kind of capped a couple of people here and there and, you know, we'd go to his house and he'd have like, uh, uh, what was it MKS machine gun, you know, the big ones out there. And it's like, hey, Star, that's big AK-47 you got there. It's like, uh, but you know, kind of cut him a little slack and, you know, he was, I guess in political terms, he's kind of the bundler. Except he gets that money, he got the tribes together and, uh, all the, all the shakes showed up.

• 3:28:53Jocko Willink?

  The tribes pledging allegiance to the coalition was occurring at the same time as the Ready First was making concerted effort to secure central Ramadi. Task Force Bandit pushed further up into the heart of AIF city, constructing Cop Grant and OP Sword, opening baseline and Farouk Road to the coalition while fending off sustained attacks against Cop Falcon. The curheased continued to expend, expand their presence around Camp Corregidor while 38 Marines cleared northern Ramadi and the regulars secured the northern tribal areas. These operations came at a cost. Corporal Christopher Worndorf from Lima Company, 38 Marines died on 29 August when a suicide bomber crashed into the front gate

• 3:29:37Jocko Willink?

  of the position he was defending and Sergeant John Carroll of Bravo Company 16 Infantry died from gunshot wounds on 6 September when terrorists ambushed his dismounted patrol in central Ramadi.

• 3:29:51Jocko Willink?

  At 0930 on 9 September 2006, my four up-armored Humvees and Colonel McFarland's patrol of five Humvees headed out the back gate of Camp Ramadi for the Surt drive to Sheikh Satar's house. The Bazhees knew that Al Qaeda was out to kill them and they took their security seriously. We had a proposal on the table that could fundamentally change the course of events in Ramadi. There was a lot on the line in dealing with the Al-Anbar Awakening Council, both personally and professionally, and on both sides. Since the initial invasion and throughout Ambassador Bremer's reign as chief executive of the Coalition Provisional Authority, many senior State Department and military leaders in Baghdad and Washington saw the Sheiks as a relic of the past who did not have a

• 3:30:35Jocko Willink?

  place in the new Iraq. Colonel McFarland was taking a chance in dealing with them. Again, just incredible, incredible leadership. Along with Colonel McFarland came a few members of the Ready First staff, including Major Megan McClung, the Public Affairs Officer, and Captain Travis Patrickquin, the Tribal Affairs Officer. Both were outstanding officers in their own way. McClung was a Marine, recently assigned to the Brigade and was making an immediate impact. She was a ball of energy who ran marathons for fun. Thanks to her, the meeting was finally coming to Ramadi. Captain Travis Patrickquin was not a marathon runner.

• 3:31:18Jocko Willink?

  While most of the captains in the Ready First wore a high and tight haircut, Travis grew out his hair and mustache to look more like the Iraqis, which seemed to help them accept him. He spoke conversational Arabic and was not afraid to speak his mind. Travis was always thinking two steps ahead and had brilliant insights on how to deal with the tribes. Although he looked more like Ron Jeremy than John Wayne, Travis was a 100% soldier, having earned the Bronze Star for valor while deployed to Afghanistan during the opening days of Operation Enduring Freedom. And we talked briefly about him earlier, and there's a... I guess like an iconic PowerPoint brief that he made with these stick figures and it

• 3:31:58Jocko Willink?

  explained for the freaking dummies in the chain of command from an E1 private all the way up to the three or four star generals to say, hey, this is how we can actually do this. And it was, it had a huge impact and it made all the rounds and up and down and across the chain of command. That was Travis Patrick. But yeah, he's a character.

• 3:32:19Speaker 02

  He was a character and he, you know, you'd be sitting in a meeting and you know, you'd say something, then you hear someone in the back. Cause I mean, he's, you know, he's, he's not even in the second row. He's like, he's like way in the back of the room. He's like, that's bullshit. And it's like, who, you know, why is Ron Jeremy piping up here? You know, but, uh, but you know, the kid was right more than he was wrong. And, uh, and he was out there, you know, him and Jimmy were out there. Jimmy Luckner out there all the time. And, um,

• 3:32:48Speaker 02

  you know, he, he just understood it and he spoke, and he spoke enough Arabic. So I'm sure we'll talk about it later. When I left, they, you know, he kind of turned everything over to him, but he, uh, he was just a good guy and didn't care. You know?

• 3:33:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So much about this is, and I wrote it down when you were, we were talking earlier, you know, we talked about the relationships that we had amongst the army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines there and all the different units, but the relationships then carried over to the Iraqis. And whether it was the Iraqi police that were now going to stand up and start to fight, whether it was the sheikhs, like just building this whole thing is about relationships at its core. And yeah, and Travis was a guy that could just like build relationships. He could build good enough relationships that he could sit in the back row of a brigade meeting where he's a captain. He's like the only captain in the room. And he's sitting in the back row. And when somebody says something he doesn't like, he goes, that's bullshit. Like you've got to have a bunch of good relationships

• 3:33:44Jocko Willink?

  with a bunch of majors, lieutenant colonels, colonels to be able to do that. And that's exactly what he did. And Megan McClung was also just outstanding, came in there, showed up. She's in charge of, you know, this information operations, making that stuff happen. She was just on fire. She got sent down from the meth, you know, she's a marine. She was just awesome. So people just came in and started building relationships and that's what makes all this stuff work. Yeah. So you got that good going on. Um, meanwhile.

• 3:34:15Jocko Willink?

  You write this, "I went back to my room, turned on the TV and there it was. A secret assessment produced by the MEF intelligence officer stating that Anbar was lost was now the lead story on every news channel. The moment was one of the handful of times in the deployment when I was truly angry and I did not know for which reason. Was it the MEF headquarters intelligence assessment report was so wrong? We had been taking, we'd been making progress all summer, taking back Ramadi and developing the Iraqi security forces. Clear signs of progress were right in front of them had they only bothered to look. Yes, casualties in Ramadi remained high, but casualties are always high during an offensive. The ready first had claimed, we had reclaimed large chunks of Ramadi and the number of

• 3:35:00Jocko Willink?

  the police was at the highest levels in months. Now with the sheiks joining in with us, we had hit the tipping point. How my higher headquarters could be so out of tune with what was going on was beyond me. I knew immediately that this story was going to be a kick in the balls for morale." Yeah, so that-

• 3:35:21Speaker 02

  Let me say one thing. That fat bastard Tom Ricks can go to hell. I gotta, I gotta say that because he leaked that and in looking back, they leaked that to make political hay back in the States, not because Anbar was lost. And it was, you know, this indictment of the Bush administration and I'll go to my grave on that one. And-

• 3:35:45Jocko Willink?

  So is that the reporter that leaked it?

• 3:35:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, this guy, Washington Post, Ricks. But the effect that it had on the guys, and I mean, you guys heard it too, but I mean, you guys are, you guys know what's what, but you know, to, to a 19 year old kid that's been kicking indoors now for four months and it's like, why are we doing this? I mean, my, my driver, I talk about the book, you know, my driver and, you know, if you're the colonel's driver, you're on the team, you know, you don't keep him around. He's like, we're losing. And I'm like- Dude, if you think we're losing, and he knows we're going with the shakes, I'm talking to him, you know, he's got my trust. You know, what are them kids down in Bravo Company, are them kids out in Charlie Company that are, you know, sitting on checkpoint all day or kicking in doors?

• 3:36:30Speaker 02

  And so, I mean, it took me, it took me to, you know, a good week to get the genie in the bottle. And by a good week, that means every waking moment I had, I'm walking through the company areas, I'm talking to people, you know, hey, you know, things are turning, things are turning, and things were turning. You know, I mean, this is the point, it's like, hey, we got it. You know, that, that shake meeting, I think the next day is the, when, when the shakes actually met, but, you know, meeting with McFarland, and there was absolutely no guarantee on that one. It's like, man, we've been working now for four and a half months, and, and here we are. You know, it's easy to badmouth the military when you're back home and, you know, people, but, you know, a lot of these pundits, like, you really need to think about what you're saying

• 3:37:12Speaker 02

  and what it's doing. And again, the perseverance of these kids, you know, these young soldiers, that, you know, despite that, guess what? Three patrols went out that day out of Bravo Company, you know, 25 doors got kicked in.

• 3:37:29Jocko Willink?

  He said, "I spent the next couple of days talking to my soldiers, telling them that the news was wrong, that we were on the right track, and that everything would work out. Some bought into it, some did not, but they all kept fighting."

• 3:37:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:37:38Jocko Willink?

  Tragically exemplified by the death of Specialist Harley Andrews of the 54th Engineers, who died in an IED attack that night while on routine clearance patrol in Ramadi.

• 3:37:56Jocko Willink?

  I went to see Colonel McFarland and told him that it was time to put a combat outpost into Tamim. He looked me square in the eye and said that it would be a month before he could get me the assets to emplace the position, and that I would have to hold on until then. We both knew what that meant. More casualties for Task Force Conqueror, especially Team Dealer. Although I had not gotten the answer I had wanted, I walked away with a newfound admiration for Colonel McFarland. We both knew that it was a rough, it was a tough fight all around. Casualties in Task Force Conqueror were high and very personal to me, but casualties across the Ready First were also mounting and very personal to Colonel McFarland as well. The Bandits, the Currahies, and the 38 Marines continued fighting a tough urban battle,

• 3:38:37Jocko Willink?

  and the regulars still fought through a hostile tribal area. McFarland had fully committed all of his forces, and there were just not any more troops to spare. The only way to win was for the Ready First to stay on the offensive in downtown Ramadi, and Colonel McFarland was not afraid to make the hard choices necessary to facilitate victory.

• 3:39:02Jocko Willink?

  Colonel McFarland knew the only way to win was by relentlessly attacking the enemy. We urgently needed to secure central Ramadi even if that meant Task Force Conqueror continue to fight with only the forces we already had. This was probably the single most courageous act of battlefield leadership I ever witnessed, and I could see that the hard choice was tearing him up.

• 3:39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, uh, when you go to commander and you ask for something, you expect to get it. You know what I mean? And, uh, uh, you know.

• 3:39:33Jocko Willink?

  Especially because what you're asking for is in line with what we're doing. You know, like, hey, can I get one of these things too?

• 3:39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and, and we kinda, you know, I talked to the guys in Bravo Company and we, uh, uh, their leadership, I went down there, you know, again, you know, not seek democracy, but just kinda see what they thought. And, you know, they was like, hey, no, we need to keep on the move, keep on the move. But, you know, just from, uh, locking down the position because it was probably a, at least a two company, if not, to me, it was small, but you probably need two or three companies to really lock it down. And, uh, we kinda decided like, hey, we, we probably do need to get a combat outpost, just people project combat power out of there and, and have some stability around it. Um, and he said no, but it's like, you know, that was the right decision because, um...

• 3:40:24Speaker 02

  You know, the Ready First in the town, I mean, there hadn't been an American in there in probably eighteen, twenty months, right? And so, you know, you had, you had them on the run, you gotta keep them on the run. And so, uh,

• 3:40:37Speaker 02

  you know, just because things don't go your way, that doesn't mean that like, hey, that was a tough choice. And, you know, and everyone was making tough choices every day there, but, uh, I mean, squad leaders were making tough choices.

• 3:40:46Jocko Willink?

  They were.

• 3:40:48Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, for him to, for him to do that, I mean, the, the one thing that really struck me in, you know, working for Carl, like for him, was just his, uh, his kind of moral, you know, his moral courage, you know, because I mean, the, the easy answer would have been, yeah, Tony, we'll, we'll, we'll back off, you know, you're taking a lot of casualties. Well, he's like, no, we gotta go, you know, you gotta figure it out. And, and we did. It sucked, but we did.

• 3:41:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and everybody's working, everybody's sacrificing. That, that means, by the way, men and women, um, just make sure I cover this. We also had a lioness team. The lionesses were a tough bunch of female volunteers from across the Ready First who formed and served as female search teams. They all had embroidered lioness tab, shaped like a ranger tab, which they kept hidden under their pocket flap of their left shoulder. At first, I was worried about the lionesses. Despite assurances, to me, the question remained of whether they could pull their weight because I had not seen them in action. Also, having spent my entire career in all male tank battalions or cavalry squadrons, I worried about the male-female interaction. Tankers can be coarse.

• 3:41:58Jocko Willink?

  And initially, I was worried there would be problems having males and then females working together on a checkpoint. In the end, my concerns about the lionesses proved to be unfounded. They could hold their own in any tactical situation, and they could talk smack with any of the males. Actually, after a few days, I began to worry that the lionesses were harassing some of the smaller males. They could be a bit salty at times. In the end, however, these female soldiers proved to be absolutely professional, living under the same harsh conditions that the men did, with no more or no less complaining than their male counterparts. In short, they became an indispensable part of the team.

• 3:42:38Speaker 02

  So when we took over the university, we actually got a Iraqi MP company that worked for the division. And the MIT team came from like the division MIT team. And they were down there and they were like, oh, and they had this, I can't remember what, like basically like a unit readiness report. And they're like, this unit can show up in the morning and this unit then can go on patrol or this one can go on mountain patrol. And so we had this Iraqi unit and they had these Marines that were for the MIT team. And then we had these lionesses because we knew that, you know, at the university, people

• 3:43:21Speaker 02

  were going to come in and out and we had to search them, right? And there was actually a bunch of like professors living on the university. So, you know, we were forever pounding heads with these guys and they didn't, they felt like they didn't need to, they didn't need to answer to me. And we were kind of worried because I mean, they would, they, I guess they'd been working the headquarters. So like you'd see them standing out outside the wall at low ready, like looking out and it's like, dude, you're going to get killed. You're in Ramadi, you know, that, that, that looks good on the news, you know, like, you know, you see these people in Baghdad at, you know, at low ready, looking wistfully on the, you know, like the NBC news, like, no, no, no, no, you, you, you got to get back out of the window.

• 3:44:04Speaker 02

  And so we ended up having to generate our own MIT team for those things, right? And so, who's there, the guy who was my S1, Jason Craw, he, you know, he's one of these guys, he wasn't happy about being the S1. I wouldn't have been either, the, you know, the battalion agent and, you know, can't blame him. And so he wanted to go down, you know, it's like, okay, Jason, you're in charge of these guys. And we had a little pickup team and these lionesses and they went down there and they ran the university checkpoint, you know, and John Hiltz, the engineer, company commander, fourth engineer, Charlie Rock, you know, he built all the combat outposts there and,

• 3:44:48Speaker 02

  you know, we, we built it out as best we could and we turned these guys loose. And it was funny, Craw had those boys like out on patrol within about a week, you know, good kid, Ranger, you know. Harvard grad, you know, and he got those boys to work and it was just amazing how, you know, again, a thrown together team, these, these, you know, some of the girls, or some females in there, you know, worked a brigade, some from the support battalion. But they were like, okay, yeah, we'll go get in the fight. We're down with it. I don't know if you ever ran into them.

• 3:45:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'd see him around.

• 3:45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, those girls, those girls were a little salty.

• 3:45:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. They were badass, lionesses. They suited their name.

• 3:45:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:45:28Jocko Willink?

  Now we end up with the Anbar Awakening Council. They vote for an emergency council. They want to, they want to kind of become the new Anbar Provincial Government. Sheikh Sattar also informed me that some of the known terrorists were leaving Ramadi, which although unconfirmed, was an excellent sign. Over the next few days, some of the things occurred we did not fully understand at the time. First arrived in unconfirmed report of the deaths of a number of Al Qaeda leaders gunned down in the Saddam Mosque in downtown Ramadi. This was the exact opposite of what happened when Latif tried to break the hold of Al Qaeda nine months earlier. Now the hunted became the hunter, the hunted became the hunters. So now you had these, these tribal leaders going out and killing Al Qaeda.

• 3:46:13Speaker 02

  Allegedly.

• 3:46:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Possibly. On the morning of 18 September, I was running late and was still in the latrine when a massive blast wave shook Camp Ramadi. As I went outside, I saw mushroom cloud billingly into the sky over five kilo. One of the soldiers from the talks, talk ran up to me telling me that a suicide bomber had hit the Al Hariai Police Station and initial reports indicated it was devastating. Sergeant First Class Roberts had the security detachment ready as to go as soon as he heard the blast. I grabbed my M4 Kevlar body armor and in minutes, one of our four Humvees were racing down the dusty trails of Camp Ramadi.

• 3:46:56Jocko Willink?

  As we turned off Route Michigan and on to Route Lopez, we passed a blackened cube of a charred metal barely recognizable as the remnant of a bomb shattered automobile. Smoke and flames still swirled around the wreckage as we sped past the burning vehicle, trying to stay on the lookout for IED trigger wires. I hope the first report was wrong, that instead, the civilian car had hit an IED, and it had not been a suicide attack on the police station. But there was too much smoke rising in front of me for that hope to be a reality. Arriving at the Aljara Station, we found two Bradleys and a couple of Humvees from Team Dealer already securing the front entrance as smoke rose from inside the police compound. The Humvees reinforced the perimeter as Roberts, Dragon, and I dismounted and ran through

• 3:47:41Jocko Willink?

  the wide-open gate. In front of us was a scene of almost incomprehensible devastation. The front of the two-story headquarters building housing the chief's office and the American Adviser's Command Post was simply gone, with the remainder of the structure a sagging, blistered expanse of cracked concrete, exposed wires, and almost indecently displayed interior rooms. Across the courtyard, scraps of truck chassis smoldered nearby, looking eerily familiar to the aftermath of the attack on ECP3 months earlier. Of the four buildings inside the police compound, the main headquarters was completely destroyed, while two others had visible structural damage.

• 3:48:23Jocko Willink?

  Exterior walls were torn away, or walls and roofs sagging from the force of the blast. The only two things apparently undamaged were a recently-installed civilian military operations center and the Humvee that should have been blocking the gate defense. Lieutenant Blackstone was standing in the courtyard, directing the rescue effort and calling for support on his Man Pack radio. "Sir, nearly all the MPs were wounded, some of them pretty bad. The worst ones are already in the back of a Brad and route to Charlie Med." He reported while pointing to the destroyed command post, "There are a couple Iraqis trapped in there. We can't get at them." "Keep doing what you're doing and let me know if you need anything," I answered. As I turned to find Lieutenant Colonel Fallah, I realized my interpreter was gone.

• 3:49:08Jocko Willink?

  As I scanned the chaotic scene, I caught a glimpse of Dragon crawling over the shattered concrete and twisted metal in frantic efforts to reach the wounded policeman. Although it incensed me at the time to see my only means of communicating with the Iraqis put his life in danger by rushing into a burning building, it was typical of his character. Caught up in my own reaction, it took me a minute to realize that Dragon was trying to save the life of another person, and that was much more important in the larger perspective. Minutes later, the QRF arrived, accompanied by a pair of firefighting Humvees operated by Marines. One crew assisted in the rescue attempt while the other went to work extinguishing the small fires burning throughout the compound. Fortunately, concrete does not burn.

• 3:49:51Jocko Willink?

  Despite the best efforts of Dragon, the soldiers, the Iraqi, the Iraqis and the firemen, the two policemen were dead by the time we reached them.

• 3:50:03Jocko Willink?

  And what's good is you find this out is that there was another suicide vehicle which was actually stopped by them.

• 3:50:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, it was inside job, right? They, they got someone to pull the Humvee back and, so the MPs that worked there didn't work for me. They worked for, they didn't even work for the brigade, I don't know, they worked for some big MP headquarters and, and there was always a lot of pushback. So, we used to have a 113 there, they talked us out, they said we didn't want it, it was too hard to move, they weren't licensed on it, so we put this Humvee in there. And they, so, you know, some guy pushed back the Humvee, opened the gate, and the suicide bomber comes in, and I mean, it was a direct hit. And actually, I was late, I was supposed to be there that day, and it pretty much went off where it would have been parked.

• 3:50:53Speaker 02

  But, you know, I'd have been there, parked there, with four Humvees, maybe would have happened, maybe wouldn't have, so.

• 3:51:00Speaker 02

  But the thing blows up. Well, Blackstone is like coming out of camp and, you know, you know, Ian Blackstone did a great job. I mean, uh, we moved him around to different platoons when, especially after, uh, uh, the incident in the fire station, you know, I mean, he was a good kid. And, uh, he, he figures out what's going on and, you know, no orders, no nothing, marches down to gunfire, which is all you can ask. And he's got, uh, two Humvees following him.

• 3:51:31Speaker 02

  And I think, I think he might've been the only Bradley, but so they're driving up there and this, uh, like another vehicle comes out and tries to pass the Bradley because they were going to hit it with one and then get the first responders with the other. And, uh, you know, two E4s in the Humvee, just, you know, hey, something's not right here. And they machine gun, they machine gun it and they blow it up. And I mean, it was horrible. Like the body was up on the roof. And so, you know, when, so I come rolling in there five minutes later, um, you know, and, uh, you know, my gunner Brown, he's like, did you see that? Since he was, see the guy halfway up the building? It's like, no, I didn't see it. I was, I'm looking for wires, brother. But, you

• 3:52:12Speaker 02

  know, they, they probably would have killed another 15, 20 Americans. I mean, there was probably, I think there was like eight or 10 that got wounded because they kind of, that was their headquarters. But, uh, uh, I mean, it would've just been, it would've been national news catastrophe. But, you know, two E4s and, you know, Lieutenant kind of figured it out, say the day. God bless him.

• 3:52:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then you end up with a situation where they figure out that's an inside job and they figure out the guy that did it and they're going to like execute him.

• 3:52:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:52:42Jocko Willink?

  And again, this is like the professionalism, right? And, and you say here, a photo of Fala putting a bullet in the head of another uniformed policeman would have a similarity, a goldmine, just like the, the Ted offensive picture that's famous. More importantly, the rule of law applies in good times and bad. And if we started working outside the rule of law, then we were no better than Al Qaeda. I understood Lieutenant Colonel Fala's anger, but could not let him act on it. I also knew getting in his shouting mouth, Matt, Matt with Fala or arresting him in front of his own men before he acted was not a solution either. These are the kind of things you gotta figure out, you know, like it's. It's crazy. And I haven't mentioned this yet, but I haven't mentioned it specifically,

• 3:53:23Jocko Willink?

  but you've heard me say the words Charlie Med forty times so far. And God bless those, those guys in Charlie Med. It was just every single day.

• 3:53:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:53:32Jocko Willink?

  Doing the apps, doing God's work to, to, to save people in coming off the battlefield. And they were just freaking outstanding.

• 3:53:41Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It was funny with Flo. He was an older guy, right? Lieutenant Carl. So he was, he was probably sixty something years old, right? And, um, you know, I was still in my forties then. And so he's like, uh, like so he's sitting on this couch. He's like, Flo, what are you gonna do? It's like, I'm going to kill him. And I'm like, hey, let me bring it in. Let me bring him in. And he's like, oh, Colonel Dean, you know, I'll do the translation. He's like, you are a very, never raised a voice. You are, you are a very busy man. You're a very busy man. Let me take care of it. I'm like, no, no, it would be my honor, you know? And you kind of got this back and forth with them. And he,

• 3:54:21Speaker 02

  uh, he, he finally, you know, um, you know, I convinced him to let me take him out. And I, you know, I always had two guys with me. I had two body men, uh, Tommy Luttrell and, uh, Jameson. And they were these two, they were big guys. Liddell was more like a, you know, like a cut welterweight, but you know, uh, Jameson was a, you know, Darnell Jameson is just a big dude. And, um, and it's funny, cause so, so we got a plan, you know, I talked to Dragon and, uh, and we get these guys, say, okay, we're gonna walk these two guys

• 3:54:59Speaker 02

  out. And, and I told, you know, Jameson Luttrell, and if, uh, if he moves, kill him. And so, you know, we walked back, we get the guy outside, and he just kind of goes to pieces when you figure out the jig's up. But then, you know, years later, I was talking to Jameson. It's like, you know, I'm in the army, but you know, I wasn't really, you know, you tell me to shoot the dude, you know, point blank, it kind of got me. And it's like, you know, so then you kind of forget as a leader. It's like, man, what are you asking these guys to do? I mean, it was all, you know, but, you know, kind of, kind of forget about all that. But these guys were, you know, they did what we asked them. And, you know, we brought them in and, and he talked. And one of the other things we did was, uh,

• 3:55:44Speaker 02

  When we caught somebody, um, and we thought they were kind of just minor dudes, we turned them in the D cell. But, uh, when we caught somebody and they thought there was somebody that needed a good interrogating, we sent them over. Yeah.

• 3:55:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause they, my guys have just had such a good, uh, context of everything to put them in. So they could just trap in lies. Like they'd just be able to figure out how to trap them in lies and just get, yeah, there'd be no escape. Yeah. So, yeah. Um, when it comes to combat leadership, my hat goes off to the company commanders, first sergeants, platoon leaders and platoon sergeants in conventional units. Going out on targeted raids or sniper teams with 10 other highly trained volunteer special forces soldiers is exciting and sexy and makes for good stories. Sitting around the VFW, sitting on checkpoints in sweltering heat for 10 hours a day, every day simply sucks, especially when the stop loss policy kept half the platoon in the unit past

• 3:56:38Jocko Willink?

  the time they were supposed to be on leave and we're having doubts about the war. Motivating the young soldiers to stay alert and aware in such a dangerous environment takes exceptional leadership. Luckily my guys had it. All facts, like, and all my guys knew that, like, that's why we had such a high respect for all the soldiers and Marines. Cause like we'd go out, do our mission, come back, you know, and we weren't sitting on a checkpoint. Like a lot of times I'll talk about the engineers, like, hey, the engineers are out there, they're on this freaking straddling a, a Texas barrier, trying to hook the crane, hook into it, like in downtown Ramadi. That sucks. But you know what else sucks? Sitting on a checkpoint in

• 3:57:22Jocko Willink?

  120 degree weather for freaking 10 hours. Yeah. And doing it the next day and doing it the next day and doing it the next day. And how many suicide bombers are we talking about? How many snipers? And by the way, how did you get there? Driving down these ID roads? So yeah, nothing but respect for, for the infantrymen. Yeah. Um, fast forward. Later that week I was sitting in Colonel McFarland's office when he got the call extending ready first to a 15 month tour of combat. When he told me the news, which I had been expecting, I straightened up in my chair and told him the conquerors were up to the task. It's only the ready first, McFarland replied. You and your brigade are going back in at 12 months.

• 3:58:03Jocko Willink?

  So they're getting extended.

• 3:58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, but and honestly, I walked out of the, you know, I was like, sir, you know, a hundred percent. I walked out of this, I was like, thank God, you know, I mean, I, you know, the ready first doing that actually in in my brigade had done in the before I got there, they they had done fifteen months. They actually had guys back in Germany, but all those guys that got extended. I mean, that dovish is terrible. And plus, you know, and, you know, if we're new, it's like, okay, their peace is not going to break out in January when you're supposed to go home. And it was a tough slog. I mean, they lost a lot of dudes.

• 3:58:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they did. Yeah, it was brutal.

• 3:58:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:58:44Jocko Willink?

  On 21 September, three Marines completed their tour and ripped with one six Marines, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Journey. That night Sergeant Alan Bevington of Alpha Company, 40th Engineers, and his squad were interrogating a pressure plate IED when the enemy exploded. A second command detonated IED, killing him and seriously wounding two others.

• 3:59:08Jocko Willink?

  By now, Sheikh, fast forward by now, Sheikh, by now, I was meeting with Sheikh Satar at least every other day. His entourage had grown quite large with a group of men crowded around a television set, waiting hourly for the news break. Invariably, Satar was the lead story. His comments full of fire. The streets of Al Anbar will run run red with the blood of the terrorists. We, the people of Al Anbar, reject Al Qaeda as the criminals and murderers they are. We will crush them under the soles of our shoes. They are traitors to Islam.

• 3:59:39Jocko Willink?

  A perfect storm was rising in Ramadi. The people were tired of the violence and desperately wanted a voice in their governance and realized their mistake in siding with Al Qaeda in the first place. A charismatic leader emerged in Sheikh Satar. Also, there was now enough Iraqi policemen to begin confronting the terrorists. All this occurred as the US forces changed tactics by constructing combat outposts that secured the neighborhoods around people's homes. Perhaps, most importantly, we developed a solid line of communication between the coalition and the Sunnis. That's the perfect storm wrapped up in one paragraph right there. Yeah, that's a lot of things that have to line up for this to happen.

• 4:00:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:00:18Jocko Willink?

  On 26 September, a massive Command Wire IED struck a Team Dealer Humvee commanded by Staff Sergeant Jose Lenzarin, killing him instantly and injuring Staff Sergeant Akanola Aladipo, Specialist James Yun, Specialist Eric Rielera, and Specialist Shane Zidovic. And I apologize to everyone for my terrible freaking pronunciation. The terrorists followed up the blast with a barrage of small arms fire. Two Team Dealer Bradleys rolled to either side of the wrecked Humvee to protect the wounded. Gunners laying down a stream of suppressive fire with machine guns and 25mm turret-mounted

• 4:01:02Jocko Willink?

  chain guns. The remaining members of the platoon raced to the firefight immediately, pulling the wounded from the destroyed vehicle as soldiers tried to evacuate the casualties amid a rattling onslaught of enemy fire. Specialist Zidovic? Zidovic? Zik... Zidovic?

• 4:01:18Speaker 02

  They just called him Z. I was with them.

• 4:01:20Jocko Willink?

  Z, covered in blood from his own injuries, ran back to the destroyed vehicle, snatched up his M249 saw machine gun, and laid down withering bursts of covering fire as fellow soldiers carried the remaining wounded to safety. As Lieutenant Perfecto Sanchez maneuvered his Bradley through the streets of Tameem to assist his wounded men, a second pressure plate IED exploded under his track. The blast injured him, Specialist Joshua Ingram, and Specialist Taylor, though fortunately their wounds were minor. Bursts of 25mm chain gun rounds from the Bradley's, from the damaged Bradley, supported by the intense fire from his wingman's vehicle dispersed the attackers. The platoon counterattacked aggressively and found a large cache of IED-making

• 4:02:05Jocko Willink?

  materials hidden in a nearby abandoned house as they pursued the fleeing terrorists.

• 4:02:12Jocko Willink?

  Staff Sergeant Lan Zaren's Hero Flight.

• 4:02:18Jocko Willink?

  You're out there for that. The Dealer, the Dealer NCOs carefully placed Lan Zaren's remains into the ambulance for the final hundred yard ride to the helipad. First Sergeant Shaw commanded, "Order arms!" And in unison, the sleuths dropped. Wordlessly, the formation closed ranks behind the ambulance and followed it to the, into the darkness to the edge of the helipad. The chopping sound of two Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters in the distance soon replaced the constant hum of the generators powering Camp Ramadi. As the war of the rotors grew louder, the members of the crowd grew silent and a little straighter. As the helicopters flared to land, a dust cloud of sand and pebbles filled the air, prickling the faces of the assembled soldiers.

• 4:03:02Jocko Willink?

  The back of the ramps of the Sea Knight dropped, and two crew chiefs moved swiftly across the helipad, came to attention saluted, then led the Dealer NCOs to the aircraft for Lan Zaren's trip back home. Colonel McFarland and I stood next to the ambulance in silence. Within minutes, the back ramp rose and the assembled crowd snapped to attention. As the whine of the engines increased, First Sergeant Shaw's voice filled the air again. "Present arms!" With the blades spinning faster, the lifting helicopters prop washed blue sand harder into the faces of the troops gathered in formation, this time, holding their salutes until the

• 4:03:47Jocko Willink?

  birds were out of sight. Again, Shaw commanded the formation, "Order arms!" For Staff Sergeant Lan Zaren, it was the beginning of his journey back to his grieving family. For the rest of us, it was time to continue the mission. Some soldiers left immediately grieving on their own, others milled about in small groups telling stories about their departed friend. "Remember that time, remember when he took the..." Some just stood, quietly sobbing or kicking the dirt and vowing vengeance.

• 4:04:23Jocko Willink?

  As we walked down the hill from the helipad, Colonel McFarland put his arm around me and asked how I was doing. What the hell? Why was Colonel McFarland consoling me now? I was a battalion commander. I could not allow myself to have a bad day. Although I had been running on caffeine and nicotine for the past four months, I doubted that he looked, that I looked any worse than I did the day before. Was something wrong? Had my wife or kids got hurt? There's something that just did not make sense to me. "Sir, I'm doing fine. We're fine," I replied as I slinked out of his embrace. I admired Colonel McFarland and liked him personally, but we both have Irish roots and we are not the most emotionally demonstrative of a race. I had a job to do and for the sake of the unit, I could not go wobbly now. My job was to lead the living. "Tony, you know Dealer has taken 25% casualties," he asked as I was lighting a cigar, getting

• 4:05:08Jocko Willink?

  back into character. "Yes, sir. More, counting the guys from Dagger. Chris Stilling's advisor team has lost almost 50%." I acknowledged. Colonel McFarland had seen a lot of injury and death in the past four months, as we all had. Up to that point, I had never thought of it as a percentage. Scotty, Scotty Love and Crombie were dead. Rosansky had lost his legs and Sergeant McCool was shot. Now Sergeant Lance was gone. If the numbers added up to 25%, so be it. We had a mission to accomplish. My guess is that one of the staff officers at the Brigade Headquarters ran the numbers and the magnitude of what Team Dealer was accomplishing and the costs associated with their success hit Colonel McFarland all at once.

• 4:05:52Jocko Willink?

  "I'll get you some more help," he promised. I was truly grateful. I thanked him and we turned and walked away into the night.

• 4:05:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, you, uh... I, I guess one thing as a leader, you don't think of yourself, right? I mean, if you're good, you know? And, uh, you know, McFarland put his arm around me. I was like, what in the hell? You know, I, I, because it wasn't anything we were doing. Cause it was, you know, it was as bad yesterday as it was the day before, you know? And, uh, um...

• 4:06:29Speaker 02

  And we did need some help. I mean, actually, in a couple, I think a couple of days later, I don't know if you're going to talk about it, but, you know, culmination is when a unit can't conduct offensive operations. I mean, I'm doing the math, looking at my NCOs and looking what's left in Bravo Company. And it's like, we're, we're close to, you know, culminating, not being able to send out patrols, just because there were so few people and so many wounded, not so few people. And it was, I mean, that was, that was really a tough time. And everyone was having a tough time, though. But, you know, again, the guys in Bravo Company, you know, Matt Graham at that time, and First Sergeant Shaw, great

• 4:07:11Speaker 02

  platoon sergeants, you know, Ray Por, and, and they, they just went out and got after it. And they got after it every day. And, you know, it's not, you know, we talked earlier about, after a memorial service, guys would go out. But, you know, if you think about it, there's, there's three parts of that. There's where the guy gets wounded, and they go out when their buddies just got wounded, or they just found out he got killed. There's the, then there's the, you know, that night, when, you know, they're flying out the body, which, you know, that's about an emotional time as you'll ever have. And then there's

• 4:07:50Speaker 02

  the, the memorial service, you know, then let alone back in the, you know, back in the barracks where they're emptying out a shed, and, you know, packing up the stuff to go home. It's like, you know, but these kids, they, they, you know, these soldiers, you know, Marines, airmen, they all bought in the mission. They all just kept going. And you can't, you know, you, you, you can't respect them enough for what they did.

• 4:08:12Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding.

• 4:08:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:08:16Jocko Willink?

  By late September, our replacements, the Steel Tigers of Task Force 177A are our Second Brigade, First Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Mikado Bear Johnson, began flowing into Ramadi. The next afternoon, Lieutenant Greg Bue's tank platoon attached to 16 Marines struck a massive IED in central Ramadi, severely injuring Private First Class Jonathan McCoy, as well as wounding Staff Sergeant Jeremy Ricketts and PFC Michael Pope. This was the first tank within, within the task force destroyed by the blast of an IED.

• 4:08:54Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Lloyd Als- Alsafa.

• 4:08:57Speaker 02

  Alsafa.

• 4:08:58Jocko Willink?

  Alsafa, a replacement fresh from Germany was beginning his rip with Lieutenant Bu. When I met the casualties at Charlie Med, Alsafa was standing in the back watching the doctors work on the wounded soldiers and, and to me appeared to be visibly rattled. Alsafa, you okay, I asked. I'll be fine, just didn't expect this on day one, he replied. No one does, I replied.

• 4:09:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 4:09:30Speaker 02

  Hate to say funny story, but so Alsafa, I mean, day one, the kids rattle.

• 4:09:37Speaker 02

  Bu switches out and Bu was, you know, a great tank platoon leader, Sergeant Butler is platoon sergeant there, I mean, they were a great platoon. Uh, Alsafa gets in there, within like four days,

• 4:09:50Speaker 02

  he machine guns a dude like shooting an RPG at him with the, with the tank machine gun, which is really hard to manipulate, the commander's machine gun hits a dude in the numbers with the, at like 200 yards. It's like, you know, I mean, the, the learning curve was straight up and, uh, you know, and he, you know, the guys just did it, it was, it was amazing to me. And, uh, you know, just, it was funny because, you know, all these guys, you know, I went and talked to these guys and when I was doing the research for the book, all the lieutenants and it's like, yeah, I hit a ID the first day or, you know, yeah, the second day, you know, we got a, we got a RPG and it's like, it didn't, I won't say it didn't register, but it didn't register really a lot unless somebody was like

• 4:10:35Speaker 02

  really hurt, you know? And then actually, in fact, we actually had guys that were really hurt, you know, uh, when we're, when we were talking about the police recruiting in, uh, Star South on the 4th of July, it got mortared and, uh, uh, I wasn't there, my, my driver, you know, Rumpel and, uh, Brown were in the Humvee, they were pulling duty, you know, they were, they were just pulling part of the security.

• 4:11:00Speaker 02

  Um, a mortar landed next to them. And it turns out, you know, three years later, Brown's getting put out of the army because he had a TBI, you know, uh, guys that we didn't even know were hurt, get, were getting hurt, but they just kept going out every day.

• 4:11:18Jocko Willink?

  The following day, September 29th, Navy SEAL Michael Monsour threw himself on a grenade, saving the rest of his team at the cost of his own life. For his actions, Monsour earned the Medal of Honor. On one October, you guys start the construction of the Toy Police Station. Two days after the station opened, we held a recruiting drive. Hundreds of men from 12 to 80 showed up, all claiming they were the requisite 18 to 35 age bracket. You run this thing. Issuing uniforms, patrol belts, 9mm Glocks and badges to the new recruits went well into the night. As I walked out the door of the Toy Station at almost 0200 the next morning, I bumped

• 4:12:03Jocko Willink?

  into Major Saddam, wearing his badge on his black tracksuit with his police patrolman's belt slung over his left shoulder. Naturally, we did not have a uniform or a belt that would fit him. I told Dragon to ask him where he was going. "To catch terrorists," Saddam replied. I remember thinking this was either going to be really good or really bad. With all the fast forward, with all the political infighting between the Anbar Awakening Council, the Governor of Al Anbar, the Mef, he covered this whole, there's a whole political thing that I didn't talk about, but there's a huge, there's a government inside of Ramadi. He was kind of, you know, not the most effective leader, you could say.

• 4:12:47Jocko Willink?

  But he wanted that position, he held that position, and he was connected to people. So it all, you had to sort out so much stuff. The Governor of Al Anbar, the Mef headquarters, the Iraqi government in Baghdad continued and demanded much of my attention. My main job was commanding an armored task force with a mission to secure a city, and we had unfinished business before our time in Ramadi ended. We needed to build a cop in Temeem, and we needed to set our replacements up for success. Bear Johnson and I were headed to the cop crab at Al Anbar University when we witnessed a massive IED strike targeting a Bradley near the White Apartments in Temeem. Instinctively, I told Rumpel to turn. To turn onto the side road so we could assist if there were injured. Unfortunately, Sergeant First Class Roberts in the lead vehicle had already passed the turn,

• 4:13:32Jocko Willink?

  and now my vehicle is leading. As we neared the white apartments, we saw two young Iraqi men turn around and start quickly walking the other way. As we got closer, they ran into a bakery. In retrospect, I was probably getting a little ahead of myself, chasing down triggermen in the middle of town. The Humvees secured the corner of the buildings, and I called on our internal frequency that we were going to clear the structure. The fault in the plan was that the security detail never practiced entering a building as a unit. As I was exiting my vehicle, I somewhat came to my senses, realizing that I should not be the first guy in through the door. I dogged it running to the entrance of the bakery, scanning the rooftops for additional terrorists. As I got to the wall, I looked around to see who else was going to be in the four-man stack, and I realized I was by myself.

• 4:14:16Jocko Willink?

  I pointed at the only other vehicle I could see and motioned for the vehicle commander to get over to my position, as I continued scanning to make sure the enemy was not sneaking up on our position. As I turned back to my left, I realized that it was now Lieutenant Colonel Johnson and me on the wall. If having one task force commander in a four-man stick is a bad thing, having two is exceptionally worse, or is exponentially worse. Fortunately, Sergeant Roberts caught up with us, and we followed him, Liddell, and Jamison into the bakery without incident. We searched the building and found nothing and turned the situation over to the team dealer, patrol into meme. Luckily, the IED had missed the Bradley.

• 4:14:53Speaker 02

  Okay, so, I guess I could write this for the VA. I gave Sergeant Roberts PTSD if he has any. So if he claims that, because I, I mean, I wasn't like looking for trouble, but you know, I kind of like got ahead of myself a couple of times and a couple of cases like that. And poor Roberts, I mean, he was always, you know, he's always there. Those guys, my PTSD guys, I gotta, I gotta give them some mad props, but, you know, poor Rob, he was like, will you just, and I'm like, no, we'll be fine, we'll be fine. And, yeah.

• 4:15:25Jocko Willink?

  Famous last words.

• 4:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'd stand in there and while I look up, and it's like, it's Bear, it's like, okay, Bear. You need to go back because if you get killed, then they're going to keep my guys longer here and they're going to get mad at me. If I get killed, they're just going to send my guys home.

• 4:15:43Speaker 02

  But, you know, he was game. I mean, and actually, we'll probably talk about it when we put in

• 4:15:50Speaker 02

  cop dealer. I mean, they, we asked him to do some crazy stuff and there they were.

• 4:15:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Colonel McFarland made good on his promise of additional forces for Tamim, a platoon of tanks from Alpha Company 135, joined Task Force Conqueror from Task Force Regular after almost a year, and a platoon of combat engineers from the Curhees joined us as well. We put the tank platoon on static defensive positions, controlling the main routes of Tamim. On their third day in sector, a terrorist managed to drop a grenade down the hatch of one of the M1 tanks, killing Private First Class Shane Austin and Wounding Specialist Edward Traveras and Sergeant Anthony Ica.

• 4:16:31Jocko Willink?

  The next day, Task Force Regular conducted a large-scale clearing operation in the Jazira region north of Ramadi to suppress any potential enemy activity. Lieutenant Colonel Dan Walruth had an impromptu meeting with some of the Awakening Council members, and Dan's assessment, quote, "The dam is broken. The tribes were getting on board, both with the Anbar Awakening and the police recruiting." Although the tribal areas were siding with the coalition, the AIF still had controlled, still controlled large pockets within the city of Ramadi. That night, Sergeant Julian M. Arachaga, First Class, or Private First Class Shelby J. Finiello,

• 4:17:11Jocko Willink?

  and Lance Corporal John E. Bowman of Charlie Company 16, Marines died when a terrorist detonated an IED next to their home via as they were moving to support another group of Marines pinned down by enemy fire.

• 4:17:26Jocko Willink?

  Just nonstop.

• 4:17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so, um.

• 4:17:31Speaker 02

  You know, like I said, we're going on an attack. So one of the things that that really helped us was when I had to, you know, the the sheik's got me, hey, we need to build this, um, police station, you know, the substation, uh, as it be. And, um, so I went to McFarland, it's like, yo, you know, this is a big deal. Uh, you know, you need to send me Johnny Hilton, the fourth engineers, when you put this thing in, he's like, you can't do it. Because that that's one that, you know, he's like, we, I can't give you the guys. So, uh, the police station's out there and, um, and basically there was a house. We put like T walls all around and build a ramp into it. But it was, uh, you know, Toby Watson, who was my, I I got to keep one engineer. So, uh, Lieutenant Watson,

• 4:18:17Speaker 02

  he came up with the design, he he manufactured it. His guys up on the top slinging those things. And my support team leader, uh, you know, uh, Pat Webber and this, uh, and Sergeant Gonzalez, um, they slung them all. I mean, we we put them on the back of helmets and and hauled them out there. It wasn't very far. It was kind of right there by Star's house. Uh, and we started ferrying them out there, but you know,

• 4:18:44Speaker 02

  they weren't supposed to do that, you know, and these guys, you know,

• 4:18:47Jocko Willink?

  Stepped up.

• 4:18:48Speaker 02

  Stepped up, you know, one of the things, uh, when I talked to Webber and he's like, he's like, you know, a lot of the stuff I didn't think we could do, but you were just going to yell at me till we did it anyway. So I just said yes, and then we'd figure it out. It's like, you know, they figured it out, you know, it's like, cut out the middleman. Cut out a lot of drama, so.

• 4:19:09Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Finally, on 10 October, we coordinated a meeting between Governor McMoon, who I haven't talked about much, but he's he was the governor and lived in downtown Ramadi at the government center where the Marines had to freaking risk their life with everything related down there. That place was under constant attack. Governor McMoon, Sheikh Satar and the MEF leadership and, uh,

• 4:19:33Jocko Willink?

  They end up having this meeting on Friday, 14 October 2006 Task Force Conqueror began the formal rip process transferring control to the Steel Tigers. Later that afternoon, we held the official ceremony marking the validation of the Iraqi Army Battalion. The ceremony was a bigger deal than I thought, especially for the Iraqis at 1500 hours. Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa and I took our positions behind a podium on Camp Defender. Next to us on an upholstered couch sat the 7th IA Division Commander and Colonel McFarland. Beside them, the 1st Brigade 7th IA Commander sat on an upholstered chair and various Americans and Iraqi minor dignitaries sat on the white Rubbermaid lawn chair furniture neatly aligned

• 4:20:18Jocko Willink?

  in rows. At least 50 crisp new Iraqi flags fluttered in the breeze mounted into HESCO barriers separating Camp Defender from the rest of Camp Ramadi. The Iraqi soldiers were inspection-ready, wearing their best mismatched uniforms, helmets and flak vests and armed with AK-47s. Up armored Humvees and trucks painted in their distinctive chocolate chip camouflage pattern parked behind a formation with gunners at the ready. Mustafa and I both said a few words, trooped the line and saluted for the playing of the Iraqi National Anthem, signaling the validation of the Iraqi Army Battalion.

• 4:20:56Speaker 02

  Which was just craziness. I mean, we had a parade in the middle of it. There's a great picture in the book about that. It's like, what is going on? And they had these, like plush chairs and couches. Like, what in the hell are we doing here?

• 4:21:11Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Our mission now is transitioning the Steel Tigers into combat since they had already secured the static checkpoints in AO Conqueror during Operation Dealer. Getting them familiar with the physical terrain was easy. Getting them to understand the complex political and social situation in the AO was a much more difficult task on our part, especially when the population was undergoing a social upheaval. Part of that mission was transitioning responsibility for the growing Iraqi security forces. Less than six months earlier, we had an Iraqi Army Battalion in danger of just melting away.

• 4:21:43Jocko Willink?

  From AWALS, an Iraqi highway patrol station barely keeping its head above water and a single undermanned police station in Five Kilo with no more than 200 policemen total across all of Ramadi. Now, we had a fully manned, even if battle scarred, police station in Five Kilo, an effective Iraqi army battalion, a company of Iraqi T-72 tanks, and Iraqi military police companies securing Al-Anbar University, and the new Tway Police Substation, and over 3,000 policemen on duty or in training. Lastly, we had to transition the relationship with Sheikh Satar and the Anbar Awakening Council. Sheikh Satar's stature had grown far beyond task force level since he was now, since

• 4:22:27Jocko Willink?

  his impact now reached across the Ready First entire area of operations. He was now Colonel McFarland's responsibility. You have a goodbye party at his house, but that, that really captured the progress that you got made. That paragraph right there is just, is incredible. Yeah. You have a big goodbye party, goodbye party for you. He gives you a gold watch and a diamond ring. Yeah. Yeah. And Sheikh Satar stopped as I was departing and asked me privately why the coalition forces had not, had shot the police chief. This is another good thing to think about. Sheikh Satar stopped as I was departing and asked me privately why coalition forces had shot the police chief of Ramadi.

• 4:23:11Jocko Willink?

  When I returned to Camp Ramadi, you got this gold watch and this diamond ring. Tony the Bling has got to go back, Colonel McFarland said, absolutely deadpan. I know, I know, but I didn't want to offend Satar. Can we keep it and put it in the battalion trophy case back in Germany? I'll put it on the property book, I suggested. Do it privately, but get it back to him. Have a witness as well, McFarland instructed. Roger, sir. By the way, did a police chief get shot? I asked. At the time, there were three Iraqis in town, all claiming to have official papers, naming them chief of police. So to me, it was unclear even which one might have been shot. Unfortunately, the rumor turned out to be true. A coalition patrol and an Iraqi police patrol bumped into each other at night in another

• 4:23:56Jocko Willink?

  task force area of operations.

• 4:23:59Jocko Willink?

  Prior to this, the police had rarely gone out at night, tending to stay around their stations where it was at least marginally safe. Now the police were on the hunt, which was amazing progress, but presented a new set of problems involving knowing when and where they were operating and how to identify them. So we didn't make mistake them for terrorists and kill them. Luckily, there were no fatalities in the incident, but a couple of policemen were wounded before the situation came under control. So again, like, there was lots of deconfliction to be done out there.

• 4:24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and that was the thing, too. It's like, there was this guy, I am police chief, you know, and I remember one time, I'll be honest with you. So there was Sheikh Ahmed and Sheikh Zatar. They were two brothers. It's like, one of them be like king and the other one be like prince, you know? And I asked my father on that, and he's like, "Tony, leave the Arab stuff to the Arabs." It's like,

• 4:24:55Jocko Willink?

  Good call.

• 4:24:56Speaker 02

  Good call there, sir. See, well, you're the brigade commander. So it just, as much as we think, oh, we knew what was going on, we maybe even at this level, I mean, knew like 10%. I mean, there was so much stuff going on in the background that you'll never know. But, you know, hey, they're moving along the way. We're moving along the way. Everything's moving towards a goal. You know, how you get there? How you get there? Yeah.

• 4:25:23Jocko Willink?

  That night, terrorists attacked a dismounted patrol with small arms in Ramadi, killing Specialist Jose Perez from Charlie Company, 16 Infantry. The next morning, 16 Marine-established cop firecracker at a key intersection in central Ramadi, further loosening the AIF's grip on the population. Two days later, a devastating IED killed Lance Corporal Nathan Elrod, Lance Corporal Clifford R. Collinsworth, and Lance Corporal Nicholas Manukian from Weapons Company, 16 Marines. Manukian, sorry, from 16 Marines.

• 4:26:04Jocko Willink?

  Task Force Steel Tiger assumed control of AO Conqueror without any casualties. Stillings and his Marine Advisor team ripped out Lieutenant Colonel Rod Arrington and a new crew of advisors picking up where Chris and his men had left off. We held a ceremony to award the Battle Streamer for the battalion's last deployment and to case the task force colors signifying the end of this deployment. I wondered how many other Conqueror Sixes would have to do the same thing in the future. We handed out medals and certificates to Marines, sailors, and SEALs that we worked with, and then we proceeded to get the hell out of Ramadi. I flew out on the last lift on 26 October.

• 4:26:44Jocko Willink?

  About 100 of us went out that night, mostly staff officers, first sergeants, supply sergeants, and support troops. As we sat on the edge of the helipad waiting for the start of our journey back to Germany, the soldiers were both physically and mentally exhausted flopping on their rucksacks while waiting for the helicopters. I walked around and thanked the soldiers for all they had accomplished, all the time terrified that a final mortar attack would hit the helipad and we would forever be the sad story of the unit that got killed off on its way home. Fast forward a little bit, we boarded the CH-46s for the short flight to TQ, then on to Kuwait. We spent the next couple of days preparing our equipment for shipment back to Germany as a task force.

• 4:27:27Jocko Willink?

  We only had four Bradleys to ship back. IEDs and RPGs destroyed the other 10. The tanks fared a bit better with 13 of the 16 making it back to Germany. You guys end up spending four days in Kuwait and then off to Germany. And the ride to Baumholder where your families are waiting for you, and I'll close out the book with this. As we approached the front gate, we saw that hundreds of handmade welcome home signs adorned with yellow ribbons hung from the chain link fence encircling the post. Stepping off the buses, we turned in our weapons and sensitive items and then mounted other buses for the half-mile ride to the Hall of Heroes Gymnasium.

• 4:28:13Jocko Willink?

  Outside, we formed into four columns and marched on to the basketball court to the sound of Bette Midler music coming and cheering family members. I had made this march before across the parade field of Fort Stewart, Georgia in 1991, but the thrill of coming home never diminishes. I saluted the rear detachment commander, turned around and announced dismissed. By the second S, wives, childrens, parents, husbands, girlfriends, and boyfriends were pouring on to the court, sharing the unmatched moment of intense joy as families reunite with their soldiers. Deborah and the girls ran out and hugged me, and for

• 4:28:54Jocko Willink?

  a few moments, everyone forgot the pain and loss we had suffered during the previous six months. I was just happy to be home.

• 4:29:08Jocko Willink?

  So, um, your deployment's over. Yeah. The battle wasn't over. And, and actually, in the book, isn't over there either. You don't, you don't just end the book with that. You, you continue to explain how the battle unfolds and the casualties that continue, including the IED strike on December 6th that narrowly missed Colonel Jim Lekner's vehicle. He went around this IED, and then it hit the following vehicle, which, which killed Specialist Vincent Pomonte, Major Megan, Megan McClung, and Captain Travis Patricklin. Yeah.

• 4:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Which was just absolutely terrible. And you continue, you explain, you know, the continued casualties. And then you get into how things turned around. And again, the details that you put in the book are incredible. One of, one of the things that stood out was General Petraeus, a few months later, doing a walking tour of the Malab district. And the Malab district, you know, that was Colonel Clark's AO over there. It was just a disaster. I mean, it was a complete disaster, war zone. And here it was, General Petraeus, doing a, a, a walking, and he's going into shops and buying like trinkets and food and stuff. Yeah. Totally different situation. Things that were completely unimaginable a few months earlier.

• 4:30:34Jocko Willink?

  And then you, again, you carry on the, the negotiation, um, the, the politics of the American departure. Uh, you explain the surge, you start talking about, you know, the Arab Spring. I mean, you've got a lot. This is a great book. It's a great book to, to understand. Um, you know, like I said, the, the Arab Spring, the rise of ISIS, the three-way war that ends up, you know, between Iraqi security forces that are backed by Iran, the tribes that are backing ISIS and the tribes that are fighting ISIS. You've got a three-way war going on. ISIS eventually taking Ramadi, killing hundreds of Iraqi troops, executing hundreds of Iraqi

• 4:31:15Jocko Willink?

  civilians. That was May 17th, 2015. That's kind of where, that's kind of where the book ends. Um, where were you, what were you thinking when that happened?

• 4:31:27Speaker 02

  Um, you know, when, when I saw ISIS rise, right? So, um, you know, just because someone types in, that's not true. ISIS is Al Qaeda in Iraq, is Al Qaeda, you know, and, and we tried to parse it out and whatever, but, um, you know, part of the reason when I, when I got out was, uh, um,

• 4:31:55Speaker 02

  the writing was on the wall, we were going to pull out of Iraq and, and, and things were going to go south immediately, which, which they did. Um, and this whole rise of ISIS. And it's like, you know, we, we, we could have had it all. We could have been there. Uh, and if you look, um, in Ramadi, um, me and Star, you know, the, the awakening meeting was on about 11 September, uh, 2006. They ran that 5K a year later in September. And there's a picture in the book of five, I know you and Crumacron are talking about unthinkable to me. And it's like peace broke out. And, you know, one of the things I always say to Star was like, well, why can't this be like Germany and Japan? And I mean, it would have

• 4:32:38Speaker 02

  been like Germany. Well, I mean, you know, chilling, drinking beer, but you know, it'd be like, we'd just been in a regular garrison and, and, uh, and we had it and we did it. And then, um, You know, the pullout led to the, you know, the Maliki going after the Sunnis and then the rise of ISIS and, you know, genocide against the Azizids and genocide against Sunnis. And it's like, you know, this, this didn't have to be, but it happened. Uh, and, you know, it was just, it was infuriating. I mean, that's, um, you know, why'd you write

• 4:33:16Speaker 02

  the book? Um, one of it was when we did the surge of Afghanistan and it's like, you know, we did, you know, we did a surge in Iraq. It went well. Well, there was also an awakening. And if you look at the surge of Afghanistan, what did it really get us? And it's like, no, there's a whole bunch of things that need to happen. And so, you know, part of it's like, uh, you know, uh, you know, this book might not be read for another 20 years till we get ourselves in some sort of, you know, insurgency mess or, but, you know, kind of get the, the record set straight. Uh, cause there's, it, it's just infuriating. And, and my guys, I think have done a good job. It's like, hey, we gave them a chance, you know, and they've

• 4:33:57Speaker 02

  all kind of internalized that and, you know, but we had it. We had victory and, and we just kind of let it slip away, which is crazy. Cause you know, oh, the pullout of Iraq. It's like, we are still in Iraq and Syria, you know, don't let's, let's not make, you know, we are still in Iraq, you know? And it's 2003, 21 years, right? There was a, you know, a little break in service, you know, but it still goes through retirement, right?

• 4:34:28Jocko Willink?

  So you, you retired in 2011?

• 4:34:31Speaker 02

  I, I retired in 2011. So, uh,

• 4:34:33Jocko Willink?

  Did you start writing the book immediately?

• 4:34:35Speaker 02

  No, I didn't. I was a contractor for a couple of years and, um, and I, I just didn't like it. And so, um, uh, my company lost a contract and, and honestly, uh, uh, my wife said to me, she's like, you are more stressed now than when you came back. Because I just, I didn't like what I was doing. I was getting paid a lot of money. I wasn't feel like I wasn't earning it. I feel like we were pissing away a lot of money. So, uh, uh, I said, okay. So I kind of looked for a civilian job, uh, but I also started writing the book because I felt like this is something I had to get off my chest. You know, and, uh, and the, the story needed to get told. And there was, there, you know, Jim Michaels wrote a very good book.

• 4:35:17Speaker 02

  The book about Travis is very good. Um, can't think of the guy who wrote his name. And, you know, there's documentary in, in, but, you know, that they all kind of focused on how bad it sucked, which it sucked. But, you know, part of it was, you know, hey, we actually did some good. The brigade did some good. Everybody did some good. And then we got the tribes on board. And it's like, that's, that's the story that needs to get told. So I had to get it off my chest. And then, uh, you know, afterwards I've done something like leadership training stuff and speaking and stuff, but.

• 4:35:46Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take you to write it?

• 4:35:48Speaker 02

  Dude, there, there are Colonel, there are book writing Colonels out there. Uh, I am not one of them, you know? So, uh, uh, it took me

• 4:36:05Speaker 02

  like

• 4:36:07Speaker 02

  probably 18 months to get like the manuscript and the manuscript was, it was above the Unabomber manifesto, but not by much. It was just like kind of just ramblings of madman. And, um, so I said, okay, I've reached my point on this thing. I mean, I don't know how to write a book. And, um, so I tried to get, I tried to get agent, tried to get a big publisher.

• 4:36:33Speaker 02

  Couldn't get it done. And so actually this, uh, guy named Paul Huckleberry and this, uh, uh, Cleveland, Cleveland Ryan Press, he was trying to start up this new publishing company. Uh, he took me on, you know, he gave, got me some help with the book. And, uh, so it took about two years to get like it submitted. And then it's another year in the. The, you know, the rewrite, because, you know, Paul was really hands on, a small company. And he'd ask me questions like, you know, there's a part in there about the history of Iraq. He's like, well, how did things get so screwed up in the first place? Which I didn't know, you know, I didn't know any of this stuff, you know, had I known some of this stuff, I probably wouldn't have been, you know, that optimistic, you know, I mean,

• 4:37:17Speaker 02

  I'm always kind of like, how hard can it be? Which, if you've seen some of the home repair, like remodeling jobs I've done at the house, it's like, well, it's harder than it looks. So, uh, so it was that, and then, and then about, you know, when the book was starting to come out, it's like, you know, ISIS has risen, it's like, well, how did this happen? So there, there's a lot of like, filling in stuff that I never intended on doing. So it was probably two and a half years from me like, sitting down. And, you know, including like, you know, the first sentence, you type it out and it's like, does the quotation mark, does the punctuation go inside the quotation mark or outside the quotation mark? Then you Google it and then, and then it's like, you know, 21 stars that you didn't know were related, you know?

• 4:38:01Speaker 02

  So I was like, okay, focus, focus, focus. So it took me a good, good long time.

• 4:38:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm surprised you got it done that fast. I, uh, one of my friends wrote a book about the history of the SEAL teams. And it's, it's an outstanding book. It's called By Water Beneath the Walls. And despite that title, it's an unbelievably awesome book. I always make fun of him because of his title. But it took him seven years to write this book. It's so well researched, you know, it starts, it's got so much detail, but it's not just about, it's, it's, you know, because why do the SEAL teams exist? Why, why, why does a commando force in, exist inside the Navy? Shouldn't that just be Marines or shouldn't that just be soldiers? Because we're sailors in the, on ships.

• 4:38:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:38:43Jocko Willink?

  So why does it even exist? And it's actually a very fascinating answer of why it exists. But it goes, so it goes through like the history of the Army Special Operations, the Marine Corps Special Operations, why they failed, why they didn't. Why they didn't take over the job that ended up the SEALs doing and you know, Mike Biama used to give us a hard time because you know, one of the first things he said to Leif Babin was, you know, what the hell are doing SEALs doing up here in the middle desert? Shouldn't you be out on a ship somewhere? And that's actually a legitimate point, right?

• 4:39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:39:11Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, yeah, it took him like seven years. So if you get this done, for you to get this done in two and a half years is pretty awesome.

• 4:39:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:39:18Jocko Willink?

  And it's so well researched. It's just, uh, it's just fantastic.

• 4:39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, one of the things was, um, you know, I didn't want to be just the, you know, the Rangers of the mad man. So, so everything's footnote, right? Probably a little bit too much like conversation I had with the boys that, that, that would have led, but you know, the, the bigger picture stuff, it kind of gets glassed over, you know? And if you talk the common knowledge, it's like, um,

• 4:39:45Speaker 02

  there was no, before we,

• 4:39:49Speaker 02

  before 2002, like when they start ramping up, people start saying anything. But if you look from the end of Desert Storm to, you know, nine 11, there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You know, it's, there, there was no negotiating that. I mean, that is why we kept a brigade on, in Kuwait on the border. That is why we had those no fly zones for nine years, right? And, um, and people kind of forget about that. And you know, I, you know, oh, it was a big lie. Well, uh, you know, I got exposed to, uh, chemical weapons.

• 4:40:29Speaker 02

  I got a letter from the VA, you know, they blew up the, I think it's Roostamaya, um, ammo dump. They, they blew, that's a big Iraqi ammo dump at the end of Desert Storm. They blew it up and then it's like, oh shit, there was chemical weapons in there. Sorry, you know, I get this letter from the VA next year, sorry. And actually me, uh, me and my driver from, uh, Desert Storm, uh, Dave Camber, we're driving. We're, we're driving through and we found all these dead sheep in a circle. And I was like, I wonder why they killed them sheep? And then, you know, I just kept driving and then I got back with them years later and said, you know, one thing that always bothered me was those, those sheeps that got killed. He's like, they died of chemical weapons, dummy. And I'm like, ah, you know, so, you know, people got exposed to it. There were chemical weapons there.

• 4:41:12Speaker 02

  So, you know, was it exaggerated, whatever?

• 4:41:18Speaker 02

  But that was common knowledge. Saddam used them on his own people. Yeah, Saddam used them on his own people. And, uh, you know, it's funny, one of the things, uh,

• 4:41:28Speaker 02

  you know, I was talking to, uh, Star, I mean, Star were actually pretty big pals, you know? I mean, I'm not sure you're gonna be pals with that guy. But, uh, he started talking about the great victory in 1991. What are you talking about? And he's like, I think you people call it Desert Storm, you know, we won. It's like, well, how did we win?

• 4:41:50Speaker 02

  You know, how did you guys win? He goes, well, Saddam's still in power. Saddam's still in power, we win. You know, he won. It's like, well, I guess, you know, if you kind of squint your eyes, it kind of makes sense, you know? And, you know, and, you know, when he come clean with the chemical weapons, he never, you know? We weren't his enemy, the Iranians were. And we just never figured that out. And also the, you know, the other thing too, it's like,

• 4:42:17Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm junior middle management in the army at best. I mean, I don't, I don't think I'd get a vice president title as a battalion commander. You know, maybe Sean, you know, Sean would get some like junior vice president being a brigade commander.

• 4:42:30Speaker 02

  And, you know, we're the guys that figured it out. You know, you figured it out, I figured it out. You know, I mean, it wasn't that hard. And there's this whole, you know, Baghdad infrastructure that was just telling us to do crazy things. It's like, hey, shouldn't you be figuring out the political stuff? You know, shouldn't you be doing the? But, you know, hey, I had good kids, uh, you know, Pat Fagan, Sean Farah King, you know, two captains turned them boys loose. And, uh, they started working with the sheiks and, you know, working with your guys. And it was, you know, these captains all kind of figured it out. And it was, you know, working with Travis and, you know, things worked out for the good. Yeah. This is amazing.

• 4:43:08Jocko Willink?

  So what did so what'd you say you're doing now? You're doing, uh, I know you you got Tony Dean dot com. It's Tony T O N Y then D E A N E.

• 4:43:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:43:18Jocko Willink?

  Dot com and you do leadership training?

• 4:43:20Speaker 02

  Do you do some leadership training? Uh, do some speaking, you know, uh,

• 4:43:26Speaker 02

  mainly that's it. You know, probably do some books out every once in a while. Uh, you know, the thing about a small, small publisher, I actually have, I actually have the books. I mean, it was, it started out, it was not self-published, it was published, but the publisher went out of business and he, he said, hey, you pay shipping. So I got, I got, you know, some copies of the book. So I got to do some book signings, you know?

• 4:43:46Jocko Willink?

  So can people and people can get the books on Tony Dean dot com as well?

• 4:43:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So it's on Amazon and, uh, but if you go to, uh, my website, it'll say Ramadi Classified. You can click on that and, uh, there's space where I can even, I'll send you a, uh,

• 4:44:02Speaker 02

  you know, personalized copy, you know, not just sign, personalize it. So if you want to get it for your, you know, your brother or your cousin, it's like, you know, just who it is.

• 4:44:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I can tell you, if you know anyone that, um, fought in the Battle of Ramadi, in any time, like any time from the beginning of the war till the end of the war, giving them this book is, this was like such an unbelievably awesome read. And, you know, for me, cause I kind of know, you know, I know everything that's happening and it's like, it's getting another person. It's like debriefing a game, you know? And, and, you know, you and I never debriefed, you know, like you left, I, I actually, I was thinking about it. I left October 21st, you left October 26th. Didn't see you. That was it. There was no debrief, you know? And so here we are. I get to get the full sort of reckoning or from your perspective.

• 4:44:54Jocko Willink?

  And again, it's so beautiful that you gave these tributes to all these soldiers, living and dead. And, and that's going to live on. But if, if anybody, if you've got anybody that's interested in military history, that's interested in understanding the world. Because the, you know, a huge part of the world and the politics in the world, it, it, you know, point source is Iraq and Ramadi, this will give you the background on the whole thing. So incredible book to read. Definitely. Thank you so much for writing it. And it's just, it's just awesome. And so if you guys want to get that book, it's Tony Dean dot com. And you, and you can get it there. Uh, Kerry, you got any questions?

• 4:45:35Speaker 01

  No, no, sir.

• 4:45:36Jocko Willink?

  Good to go, because you

• 4:45:38Speaker 01

  Awesome information.

• 4:45:38Jocko Willink?

  This is you hearing a different perspective of the war.

• 4:45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:45:42Jocko Willink?

  You know, so.

• 4:45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I I'm very familiar with, you know, the the Battle of Central Ramadi, you know, just from working with Jocko and Leif and the the Bruiser guys at Echelon Front so much. I've heard a lot about that that battle in Central Ramadi. I've heard very little. I've heard mention of Tameen, you know, but I I didn't know all of the efforts that were going in to, you know, securing Tameen and especially with the police and, gosh, turning that around and all all of the, you know, involvement with the sheiks that was going on that eventually led to that awakening. It's just really incredible now to have all that color on on that side of the map west of the canal.

• 4:46:26Speaker 01

  You know, it's it's a huge piece of the story I I didn't know about until the book. So, thank you.

• 4:46:34Speaker 02

  Well, I appreciate it. And, you know, there's, I mean, there's stuff in the book that that, you know, but there was also like, there was all this stuff. It was just crazy how much stuff is going on. So, you know, oddly enough, we had like this, a highway patrol unit, which to this day, I don't know what they did. But, you know, but they, you know, like my Charlie company, First Sergeant Bomber and all of those guys, they, you know, it's like, arrest him. And they're like, no, no, they're doing a good job. And and they would find these crazy caches of like, you know, I think one time they found like a hundred mortar rounds in a truck.

• 4:47:11Speaker 02

  And then the next day, they stole like, you know, 500 gallons worth of gas from us. We do not know where the gas went. So, you know, but there was all this like crazy stuff going on. And, you know, you just had to let your guys run with it. It worked out.

• 4:47:23Speaker 01

  Well, also, just just the the staggering loss and casualty, you know, count from from that battle too. It it really stands out in the book. And again, to Jocko's point, just the the tribute you give to each of those individual guys. It's it's really incredible. But a lot of perspective from that book.

• 4:47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually, I thought that was very important. So when I was going through in. You know, there's like four or five websites where they give tribute to these guys and some of them, some of them, they've done a really good job, but some of them are kind of thin, you know? So I guess if you know someone who who's killed during the war, anytime during the war, right? Go on there because people will look at those things and they, you know, give some color if there's no color in the guy's lives. You know, some people have like 14 news stories and then some people just like,

• 4:48:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:48:13Speaker 02

  You know, Joe Smith died wounds.

• 4:48:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, but you know, their sacrifice and you know, the guys that got wounded, guys that got killed, you know, their sacrifice cannot be forgotten and sometimes I think we kind of take it for granted. I mean, we don't, but I think in general, I think people kind of forget about what happened.

• 4:48:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, certainly reading this book will give you a deep appreciation because like I said, every two, three pages, there's, there's, there's more casualties happening and there's all this good stuff happening, but the good stuff that's happening is coming at an immense cost. So.

• 4:48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the fact that everyone just kept fighting, you know, I mean, and actually, I don't know if we would have, you know, kind of wadded up and, you know, stayed inside the camp, would things have been better or worse? You know, but you know, everyone just kept on the attack and that's, you know, they always say, a counterinsurg, you know, a counterinsurgency is like a marathon, not like a sprint, you know? You know, okay, thank you nerd, but you know, you need to be up there running with the Kenyans, you know? It's, it's not a, it's not an eight minute mile. It's a, it's a, you better be turning four minutes or otherwise you're just going to get run over. So.

• 4:49:30Jocko Willink?

  It's the way it is. Anything else, Kerry?

• 4:49:32Speaker 02

  Negative.

• 4:49:33Jocko Willink?

  Tony, you got any closing thoughts?

• 4:49:35Speaker 02

  No, thank you for having me. Thanks for what you're doing and you know, you had Crum and Farland on. And it's been a pleasure to see you again, man. It's been way too long. When you're down in Florida, you need to come see me next time.

• 4:49:48Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Outstanding. Appreciate it. And thanks for joining us and thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice and your leadership in the battle of Ramadi. I know it was another thing I was thinking about. Like, you know, we'd sit in these battalion meetings and they're like, we don't go out like from there, just go out. And, you know, like, your AO was one yard outside the front gate. That was it. There was your AO. And I was on the other side, we were a butt up against Tway. So we'd like, Tway, we did operations in Tway, that Tway village that were, you know, 50 meters from the gate. There's bad guys out there. So it was awesome to be able to work with you and the rest of the commanders and of course,

• 4:50:29Jocko Willink?

  thanks to your whole battalion, the 135 Task Force Conquerors. It was an honor to serve alongside your incredible soldiers. And, um, and thank you for writing the book because it not only captures the battle, but like, like we were saying, it just honors the brave men and women who served and sacrificed so much on that battlefield. And especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice. We will not forget them.

• 4:50:56Speaker 02

  Conquer or die.

• 4:50:58Jocko Willink?

  Thank you. And with that, Colonel Anthony Dean has left the building.

• 4:51:06Jocko Willink?

  Honored to have him on. Honored to have served with him and his soldiers and to serve with all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in that battle. And I know I said it a couple of times, but reading that book and just page after page after page of friendly wounded in action, friendly killed in action.

• 4:51:31Jocko Willink?

  It was.

• 4:51:34Jocko Willink?

  It was hard to read and it's it was also just such a reminder of how many were wounded and killed. And when we were there, like you remember when he was saying, you know, you get back to your talk and they're like, oh yeah, this person, you know, hey, 506 lost two guys. Hey, 38 Marines lost a guy. Hey, you know, 16 lot like it was just that's what you were that was the that was the rhythm of what was happening is just rough. And the way that it came across in the book, what I think what made it come across in

• 4:52:14Jocko Willink?

  the book, the way it hit me was that I talk about, I usually talk about the wounded and killed in one statement. Hey, the Battle of Ramadi, this many people were killed from Task Unit Bruce, we had this many people wounded, we had this many people killed. And it's like a one statement. And in the book, it's just like Chinese water torture where that drop is just hitting you every page. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And it bores a little hole into your head. So I think that's what made that's what that's why it hit me in

• 4:52:52Jocko Willink?

  a different way. And it also a great reminder of how lucky we are to be here. You know, I went down the other night is like, as I finished reading the book, and the sun was setting and I grabbed my wife and I was like, let's go watch the sunset. And I told her, I said, I'm reading this book and it's just every day, it's just that's what it was like. And you get so used to it. It's terrible thing to get used to. When you get told that an American soldier or American Marine was killed and you kind of, you know, you nod your head and then you open up the check what emails came in while you're out in the

• 4:53:33Jocko Willink?

  field, that's sort of your reaction. It's horrible. And yet, you know, as, as Tony pointed out, guys went back on the battlefield. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. So let's make sure we're living a good life right now. Honor them.

• 4:54:00Jocko Willink?

  So let's decompress a little bit. What do we got? We got some Jocko fuel. Can we decompress with some Jocko fuel? Let me tell you what, decompress with some jujitsu. Let's do that. And then decompress with the lift. You know, uh, decompress through some physical activity. It's a good way. And when you do that, you're gonna need some fuel. So let's get some Jocko fuel.

• 4:54:24Jocko Willink?

  We doing some jujitsu. We watching some jujitsu with the Craig Jones Invitational.

• 4:54:30Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be good. Jocko fuel, check it out. Going into Walmart. Biggest retailer in the world. We're gonna be available in Walmart. So if you live by a Walmart, which you do. Cause you're an American and there's a Walmart within 10 miles of you. So we're going into Walmart. We're not going into all of them out of the gate, uh, but probably going into one near you. So check that out. If you want Jocko fuel, go to Walmart and get some. You can also go to Wawa. You can go to Vitamin Shoppe. You can go to GNC. We're in the military commissaries, by the way. Afees, you get it at Hanaford. You can get it at Dash Stores in Maryland. You can get it at Wakefern. You can get it at Shopright. HEB, Meyer and Wegmans. Get some.

• 4:55:14Jocko Willink?

  All three of those. If you live by a HEB or you live by a Meyer or you live by a Wegmans, I want to say thank you. Cause you all have been getting after it. So that is awesome. That allows us to reach more people. So thank you. Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, we're in there. Shields, we're in there. If you need to buy weaponry. And you need Jocko fuel while you're at it, go check out a Shields. Cause they got it going on. You ever been to a Shields before?

• 4:55:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:55:40Jocko Willink?

  I want to say like 350,000 square feet of camping, hunting, fishing. Outdoor and sports gear.

• 4:55:51Speaker 01

  I want to go now.

• 4:55:53Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're crazy. They have like a Ferris wheel inside the building. So you can just throw your kid into the Ferris wheel. And then you can go just buy weapons.

• 4:56:05Speaker 01

  These are up in the Northwest, right?

• 4:56:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a Colorado. Yep. It's Colorado, Utah. I forget all the areas, but they're like a Western. Right on. Western scenario. And now they've got Jocko Fuel. Yeah, they've had Jocko Fuel for a while. And by the way, people are going to there and getting it. Which is crazy that someone goes into a 350,000 square foot store and they walk out with some of that Jocko Fuel. It's freaking awesome. I appreciate it. Uh, so that's what we're doing. Also, small gyms. We're in all kinds of jujitsu gyms, all kinds of CrossFit gyms, all kinds of regular gyms. Go to J F Sales. Go to J F Sales at Jocko Fuel dot com. We're also. We're also in some chiropractic places. We went into a damn hair salon the other day. Is that Jackson? Yeah, I think Jackson. It was either. I think it was actually Jared. Oh, was it Jared?

• 4:56:51Jocko Willink?

  But he's, he's like, yeah, we, I can't forget which one of them was, but yeah, they're giving like their sales update. Oh, we're, we're now going live into this hair salon. Yes. Right? Cause hey, you want to get your haircut? Let's get some protein while we're at it. That's right. That's what we're doing. Check out Jocko Fuel dot com. Get some. Also, American made materials. I was just talking to Colonel Dean about this. You know, he said, hey, what you're doing with that is awesome. What people need? Is jobs. People need jobs. So, originusa.com. We're bringing jobs back to America. We're bringing manufacturing back to America. You can get the best.

• 4:57:33Jocko Willink?

  Hunt gear, the best jeans, the best hoodies, the best T-shirts, the best gees. Did I say gees? No. Where you can get the best gees. Whatever you need for life. That's my whole life, by the way. We just wrapped it up. Ashguards, T-shirts, jeans, boots. We got it. Hunt gear. We got it. So, check that out. Originusa.com. American made. Oh, by the way, we got the new Burr.

• 4:58:00Jocko Willink?

  Training gear. It's like silk weight, little activities going on. So comfy. So check it out. Originusa.com. Made in America. Also, we have a, a jujitsu training camp coming up, August 27th through the 31st in Maine. It's not sold out yet. The regular camp sold out. This one's not sold out yet. So if you want to get in there.

• 4:58:18Jocko Willink?

  Get in there, originusa.com. Right on.

• 4:58:21Speaker 01

  We've also got Jocko's Store, Jocko Store, JacoStore.com. Get your Discipline Equals Freedom gear, get your good gear, get your get after it gear. These are the things we're wearing when we represent on the path.

• 4:58:35Jocko Willink?

  Check, go, it's cool.

• 4:58:37Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. We've also got the Shirt Locker. So that's a subscription situation. New shirt every month. Echo Charles coming up with these designs, more creative designs that we represent on the path. So check that out as well. JacoStore.com.

• 4:58:54Jocko Willink?

  Also, you need steak, go to PrimalBeef.com or ColoradoCraftBeef.com and get the tasty, awesome, outstanding steaks from awesome companies, awesome people. PrimalBeef.com, ColoradoCraftBeef.com. Subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to Jocko Underground Podcast, check out our YouTube channels. We got Jocko Podcast YouTube channel, we got Jocko Fuel YouTube channel, we got Origin USA YouTube channel, we got Echelon Front YouTube channel, and we got Jocko Podcast Clips. That's good job, Echo Charles. That's what he's real fired up about. So check those out. Psychological Warfare, FlipsideCanvas.com.

• 4:59:32Jocko Willink?

  Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Books. Ramadi Unclassified by Colonel Anthony Dean. Check it out. It is just an outstanding book. It covers so much. I mean, I read 3% of this thing today. Maybe even 1%. It's 400 something pages long. It covers the history, it covers the culture, it covers everything. Check it out. Ramadi Unclassified by Colonel Anthony Dean. And if you go to TonyDean.com, he'll send you a signed copy, which is awesome. Also, I've written a bunch of books about leadership. I've written a bunch of kids' books. Check those out. We also have a leadership consultancy. Go to EchelonFront.com for details if you need help with leadership, which you do.

• 5:00:15Jocko Willink?

  We can help you. We can help you solve your problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. We also have an online training academy, extremeownership.com. We teach the skills of leadership online. And these are the leadership aspects that will come into play in everything that you do. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mom Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org and Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us, well, as I said, Tony Dean is at TonyDean.com.

• 5:00:59Jocko Willink?

  And as far as Kerry and I, Kerry is at Kerry Helton. I am at Jocko Willink and also Jaco.com. If you want to check out any of that.

• 5:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Thanks once again to Colonel Tony Dean for joining us tonight. Thank you for your service, your sacrifice and your leadership. And thanks to the brave soldiers of the 135 armor, the conquerors. It was an honor to fight alongside all of you in the Battle of Ramadi. And your professionalism, determination, courage and heroism

• 5:01:39Jocko Willink?

  will never be forgotten by me and will never be forgotten by the men of Task Unit Bruiser. So, thanks to all of you and thanks to all our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines around the world right now who are standing the watch and willing to sacrifice to keep freedom safe and to protect our way of life.

• 5:02:02Jocko Willink?

  And also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service and all first responders. Thank you for your sacrifice as you work to protect us here at home. And to everyone else out there, just keep in mind these incredible sacrifices that have been made to give us our freedom. And you heard about some of them tonight.

• 5:02:29Jocko Willink?

  But this is one battle. There's been thousands of battles that have taken place. And in every one of those battles, men and women step up and they go forward with the will.

• 5:02:42Jocko Willink?

  With the will like the heroic soldiers of the 135, the will to conquer or die.

• 5:02:50Jocko Willink?

  And they give us this gift of life and of freedom.

• 5:02:56Jocko Willink?

  Don't take it for granted. Cherish it. And remember them.

• 5:03:03Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Kerry and Jocko. Out.