Speaker 1: Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
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Speaker 1: It wasn't too long ago that USA decided back in
Speaker 1: the first Obama administration, that we were going to leave Iraq.
Speaker 1: But the history had different plans for us, and we
Speaker 1: shortly found out when the Islamic State and Syria and
Speaker 1: Iraq made their parents and just seared the international community
Speaker 1: with a brutality that not unprecedented in the modern era,
Speaker 1: but at least its public visibility was. And we returned
Speaker 1: to Iraq and partnered with the Iraqi military and others.
Speaker 1: We began the pushback and a struggle against ISIS that
Speaker 1: is still going on to this day. And there is
Speaker 1: an undertold part of that story that we've brought on
Speaker 1: returning guests today to talk about, and that is going
Speaker 1: to be seth fulsome Colonel United States Marine Corps retired
Speaker 1: in his latest book, Nothing Here Worth Dying For, Seth
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Midrats.
Speaker 2: Thanks sal guys. I appreciate you having me back. It's
Speaker 2: great to be here as always.
Speaker 1: And it's just a great opportunity to get your book
Speaker 1: and it's coming out this month and everybody you can
Speaker 1: find links to it over on the show page and
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll give a flavor for this story. This is
Speaker 1: not you Seth. For those that may not be familiar
Speaker 1: with his work, we have links to that on the
Speaker 1: show page as well. He tells a very unique story
Speaker 1: about what we now call the Long War, the Global
Speaker 1: War on Terrorism, and the pre show we were talking
Speaker 1: that a lot of what he and his marines and
Speaker 1: sailors and others he served with have experienced, you can
Speaker 1: trace a very bright line back to ninety ninety one
Speaker 1: and this very long ongoing conflict. And for this particular
Speaker 1: vignette of he and his compatriots experience, you know, Seth
Speaker 1: for the listener, give him an outline of the time
Speaker 1: and the place that your book takes place in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks sal So. Yeah, the story it really begins
Speaker 2: back in twenty fourteen, and that you know, the I
Speaker 2: think from a foreign policy perspective, back then, President Obama's
Speaker 2: focus was getting out of Afghanistan. You know, we had
Speaker 2: already essentially shuttered operations in I Rock in twenty eleven
Speaker 2: and twenty twelve, and we were really focused from my
Speaker 2: piece of the world, on the Joint Staff, we were
Speaker 2: focused on the post twenty four plan for Afghanistan. And
Speaker 2: so that same year in twenty fourteen was when the
Speaker 2: Islamic State just really cut through the center of a
Speaker 2: Rock like a hot knife through butter. And there was
Speaker 2: an immediate request for support from the Iraqi government because
Speaker 2: of the speed at which the ISIS forces were advancing,
Speaker 2: particularly in the north up around Mosul and in western Lam,
Speaker 2: coming in from the border station at Al Kaim, pushing
Speaker 2: all the way to Paditha and elsewhere. And so in
Speaker 2: this initial push from the DoD to try to support
Speaker 2: the government of a Rock and the embassy in Baghdad,
Speaker 2: there was an initial request for forces for a couple
Speaker 2: of division level advisor teams in addition to the other
Speaker 2: capabilities that they were ordering up for this effort. And
Speaker 2: those two advisor teams, the Marine Corps put their hand
Speaker 2: in the air and said we'll take those. One was
Speaker 2: going to be a positioned at the Altacatum Air Base
Speaker 2: and the other is going to be positioned at Alasade
Speaker 2: Air Base in western al Ambar. And those two advised
Speaker 2: and assist teams were they were basically modeled on the
Speaker 2: old division level transition teams that we had in a
Speaker 2: Rock when I was there in an eighth Each one
Speaker 2: of those teams was about twenty six people, and each
Speaker 2: person on that team was essentially an army of one.
Speaker 2: You know, you had one operations advisor, one fire support advisor,
Speaker 2: one administration advisor, et cetera. And so very quickly into
Speaker 2: the deployment of these two task forces, task Forced Alacade
Speaker 2: and Task Force ALT the Cottum, the commanders of those
Speaker 2: two advisor and assist task forces realized that just being
Speaker 2: just you know, blanket like vanilla advisors what wasn't going
Speaker 2: to cut it, because the Rackies needed immediate and in
Speaker 2: most cases enduring access to a whole series of enabling
Speaker 2: capabilities to be able to get out after the problem
Speaker 2: with ISIS. They needed real time intelligence all all the
Speaker 2: different types of IT, GEO, IT, sege EMMIT, human, et cetera.
Speaker 2: They needed a significant amount of support in the in
Speaker 2: the fires range, indirect fire aviation, delivered ordits, et cetera.
Speaker 2: They also they needed enabling capabilities with with their logistics, planning,
Speaker 2: and execution. They needed a lot more. Otherwise they were
Speaker 2: going to fail. They were going to fail, you know,
Speaker 2: on top of the failure that they had already had
Speaker 2: to stop the ISIS invasion, the Marine Corps and the
Speaker 2: c j T F O I R, the Combined Joint
Speaker 2: Task Force Operation Inherent Resolved, began bolstering up these two
Speaker 2: advisor task forces into Advise, Assist and Enable task forces.
Speaker 2: So they beaked up these these core teams into task
Speaker 2: force headquarters and then began bolting on all the different
Speaker 2: capabilities needed for the Defeat ISIS campaign. So that's where
Speaker 2: where we were in about twenty seventeen when I came
Speaker 2: into the picture with First Task Force al Sade that
Speaker 2: was later in the operation renamed Task Force A Lion.
Speaker 3: You are not the first team in country and kind
Speaker 3: of talk about the teams that preceded you and then
Speaker 3: how you assembled your own team to go over there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we were was with the fifth rotation. We
Speaker 2: call ourselves Rodeo five, and the first couple of rotations
Speaker 2: were really really ad hoc efforts. They were so again
Speaker 2: the two task force headquarters sourced out of the Marine Corps,
Speaker 2: and they were largely sourced out of in fact entirely
Speaker 2: sourced out of individual augments pulled from across the force.
Speaker 2: So eventually the Marine Corps settled into one task force
Speaker 2: headquarters would come from First Marine Expeditionary Force here in Campounton, California.
Speaker 2: The other would come from meth In Camp And it
Speaker 2: would be a process that anybody who's been involved in
Speaker 2: the joint world understands the process of building a joint
Speaker 2: manning document and then sourcing it from across the force,
Speaker 2: and it's a huge pain in the ass. And in
Speaker 2: the case of these two task forces, the people that
Speaker 2: were needed for these positions were not buy and large
Speaker 2: were not from the gem Pop force. It was the
Speaker 2: demanning document was filled out with a lot of critical,
Speaker 2: high demand, low density moss or specialties that the Marines
Speaker 2: had in things like the intelligence community, the fires community,
Speaker 2: the aviation community. And on top of all of it,
Speaker 2: each one of these task force rotations required a colonel
Speaker 2: at six as the task force leader or the commander,
Speaker 2: and so like I said, the first couple of iterations
Speaker 2: of my task force, in at least one of those situations,
Speaker 2: the commander was actually pulled out of command to go
Speaker 2: lead his task force rotation. By the time I was
Speaker 2: brought into this in twenty seventeen, the Marine Corps had
Speaker 2: taken a more deliberate approach in what the manning document
Speaker 2: for the task force headquarters looked like and how they
Speaker 2: were filling these positions, but they still hadn't solved the
Speaker 2: problem of all of these billets are our critical billets
Speaker 2: with the heigh demand loads. And they also hadn't really
Speaker 2: solved the problem of how are we going to continue
Speaker 2: to source an six to lead this effort? And so
Speaker 2: really from the get go it was a manpower pain
Speaker 2: in the ass for the service and for the two
Speaker 2: meths that were sourcing it because there just were not
Speaker 2: enough people to go around.
Speaker 1: That's part of the story early on that I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you go through and you talk about, especially in
Speaker 1: the beginning, because when you look back at what we've
Speaker 1: seen the last quarter century, I felt included. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of us who have experienced as being IA's
Speaker 1: and if those outside of the military are those that
Speaker 1: you know had never done an IA where they were
Speaker 1: they were part of a part of a command, they
Speaker 1: did their interdeployment work up, they worked hand in love
Speaker 1: with people, they deployed, and they came back. They're still
Speaker 1: part of the unit. And that's what people have their mind.
Speaker 1: But IA's and entities like what became Task Force Lion
Speaker 1: for you, it's it's I guess one way to look
Speaker 1: at it, if you're trying to describe it to people
Speaker 1: who haven't been through it, it is somewhere between the
Speaker 1: Star Wars CANTEENA and the getting a baseball game up
Speaker 1: together in the blacklock field with people from your neighborhood
Speaker 1: you've never met before. As somebody who was tasked to
Speaker 1: to lead this, you would think you also would be
Speaker 1: able to pick your team, But it doesn't work that
Speaker 1: way outside of Hollywood. Talk for a little bit about
Speaker 1: and you got some unique characters that you wouldn't expect
Speaker 1: an infantry colonel would have working directly for them in
Speaker 1: certain jobs. But as as we've all experienced, you know,
Speaker 1: regardless where people come from, but the balance of the time,
Speaker 1: people rise to the occasion. So talk about your core
Speaker 1: group where they came from that you had to eventually
Speaker 1: go take into Ambar.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, like you said, not all
Speaker 2: ias are created equal. And and on the low end,
Speaker 2: if someone gets you know, assigned to being an individual augment,
Speaker 2: a lot of times it's just them reporting to another
Speaker 2: headquarters to fill a role, and so it's that person's
Speaker 2: responsibility to integrate into a pre existing unit in the
Speaker 2: case of Task Force A Lion, my entire the core
Speaker 2: of my headquarters, the entire team was all individual augments.
Speaker 2: And so what I you know, the the tagline is
Speaker 2: that it was eighty five different marines and sailors from
Speaker 2: thirty five different units, spread across southern California, and and
Speaker 2: and so what what I realized really quickly was that
Speaker 2: this was this was all of these these marines and
Speaker 2: sailors coming from all these disparate commands and locations, that
Speaker 2: they were not coming into a pre existing command that
Speaker 2: had its own culture and its own climate. And I
Speaker 2: realized that for this thing to work, ultimately, we had
Speaker 2: to create our own our own command, We had to
Speaker 2: create our own climate, our own culture, and we had
Speaker 2: to do it quickly because the team formed in February
Speaker 2: of twenty seventeen, and we were set to deploy at
Speaker 2: the end of July. So we only had a handful
Speaker 2: of months to form this team, get to know each other,
Speaker 2: and get ourselves trained to the degree that we needed
Speaker 2: to be to text keep the mission. And so these
Speaker 2: as these billets began to fill in the first few
Speaker 2: months of twenty seventeen. Yeah, like you said, I had
Speaker 2: some interesting characters show up. You know. One of the
Speaker 2: first was my senior listed advisor, Sergeant Major Leibfried, who
Speaker 2: he came from First Anglico, an air enabled gunfire leadison
Speaker 2: company at the meth and he was he was extremely excited.
Speaker 2: You know, he knew about this mission. He wanted to
Speaker 2: be a part of it. He knew what the opportunity
Speaker 2: it presented, not only with our core team, but also
Speaker 2: with the multinational team that we would integrate with at
Speaker 2: Ala Sade. You know, I had my deputy commander. I had.
Speaker 2: I'd always grown up with the idea of, hey, your
Speaker 2: deputy commander for a combat mission needs to be combat arms.
Speaker 2: And so I was thinking, maybe it'll be another grunt
Speaker 2: like me, or maybe it'll be you know, an aviator,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't. It was a staff joge advocate who'd
Speaker 2: come over from the Greene Logistics Group. And I was thinking,
Speaker 2: oh my god. You know, I can't believe my deputy
Speaker 2: is going to be a lawyer, right, But the perspective
Speaker 2: that he brought, and the background that he brought, and
Speaker 2: even his just his his cultural understanding of other cultures,
Speaker 2: he became force multiplier. You know, other people that popped
Speaker 2: into the team like operations officer, a major named Aaron Autry,
Speaker 2: this guy which when you first met him, you would
Speaker 2: think that he never had anything to say about anything
Speaker 2: because he just didn't talk. He was a very tight
Speaker 2: lipped guy. And he had some significant experience as a
Speaker 2: company commander and a platoon commander in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: And a Rock.
Speaker 2: But he was also he was a magtaft planner, and
Speaker 2: so he had both the operational, the tactical and operational outlook,
Speaker 2: but he also had a strategic outlook to everything that
Speaker 2: he did. And I had people like Lindsey Mathwick who
Speaker 2: was my task Force logistics officer, and she had been
Speaker 2: in she'd done multiple tours in A Rock in the
Speaker 2: early years, and one of those tours she had been
Speaker 2: in the Lion, this program where they matched up female
Speaker 2: Marines with infantry units as kind of a predecessor to
Speaker 2: the old the FET program, the female Engagement Team program
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan, and so she had real on the ground
Speaker 2: experience in I ROCK. So this this team was this
Speaker 2: really you know, diverse, multi talented team. But again, what
Speaker 2: we lack was some kind of unifying culture or some
Speaker 2: kind of unifying element to our team, and so I
Speaker 2: put an enormous amount of energy into that in the
Speaker 2: few months that we had together before we deployed, because
Speaker 2: I knew if we get over there and we don't
Speaker 2: know who each other, you know, is, and we don't
Speaker 2: know we don't know what our mission is and why
Speaker 2: we're doing this, then you know we were going to
Speaker 2: be sunk from the beginning.
Speaker 3: Well, talk about a little bit now about the mission
Speaker 3: you were given and the situation you wandered into when
Speaker 3: you when you finally arrived in Iraq.
Speaker 2: So you know, I remember, I remember when the task
Speaker 2: forces were formed in twenty fourteen, and I didn't pay
Speaker 2: a whole lot of attention to it. Didn't really start
Speaker 2: paying a lot of attention to it until I started
Speaker 2: getting brought into the conversation that I might go lead
Speaker 2: one of these teams. And so as soon as the
Speaker 2: word came down from on high that I was going
Speaker 2: to go lead the task force a lion, I reached
Speaker 2: out to the guy who was commanding the Rotation four,
Speaker 2: who was already in theater. He was an old friend
Speaker 2: of mine named Fred Frederickson, and we had grown up
Speaker 2: as lieutenants together. He was one of my closest friends,
Speaker 2: and so I dialed him up on a VTC one
Speaker 2: day and said, what the hell is going on? I
Speaker 2: need you to talk me through this. And what he
Speaker 2: went on to say was how quickly the campaign was progressing,
Speaker 2: particularly in Amboor. Up until that early spring of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: the real focus on the Defeat Isis campaign had been
Speaker 2: in the north. It had been up around Mosul, commanded
Speaker 2: out of the base and Erbil and everybody was a
Speaker 2: laser focused on the battle form Mozuul and what was
Speaker 2: happening there and how it was going to be another
Speaker 2: campaign altogether, just to do the post conflict actions in Mozoul.
Speaker 2: And so what Fred told me was, Hey, this things
Speaker 2: are continuing in Mosul, but c J TFOI R is
Speaker 2: now turning to al Ambar as the deep fight and
Speaker 2: they're ramping up operations here. And we are, we being
Speaker 2: Fred's team before me, we are in the process of
Speaker 2: putting the finishing products on the plan to enable the
Speaker 2: Rocky Security Forces to retake western Ambar. And what he
Speaker 2: said really stuck with me, and he said, that's going
Speaker 2: to happen on your watch. That's what you need to
Speaker 2: prepare for your team needs to show up from day
Speaker 2: one ready to prosecute this plan that my team and
Speaker 2: the team you know Rotation three before him, had developed
Speaker 2: in concert with the Rockies and the coalition. So when
Speaker 2: we showed up in early August of twenty seventeen, right
Speaker 2: from the get go, the Army two star General General
Speaker 2: Pat White, who was the Commander for the Combined Joint
Speaker 2: Forces of Land Component Command C. J. Flick in I
Speaker 2: rock He pulled me aside immediately and said, this is happening.
Speaker 2: It's happening soon, and your task force is going to
Speaker 2: be the main effort. You're going to be the ones
Speaker 2: that helped the Rockies get to the finish line at
Speaker 2: the Assyrian border in al Came. And so that we
Speaker 2: had no timeline apart from be ready to do this
Speaker 2: at any time. The Iraqi government or the Prime Minister,
Speaker 2: they will all decide immediately when they're ready for this
Speaker 2: to go, and we have to be ready to go
Speaker 2: on their call. And the one of the guiding you
Speaker 2: know sayings that that they had over there was never
Speaker 2: may never have the Rockies wa wait on us, Never
Speaker 2: make the Rockies wait on us. So we had to
Speaker 2: build multiple plans with branches and sequel and apply the
Speaker 2: time space considerations so that we were ready to go
Speaker 2: since the Iraqis work.
Speaker 1: And that starts the journey, because it's interesting how you
Speaker 1: outline the fact that you have different structures and groups
Speaker 1: you have to learn to negotiate with. You not only
Speaker 1: have US Marine Corps people, personalities, procedures, admin, chain of
Speaker 1: commands back home, you also have the US Sentcom and
Speaker 1: you have coalition forces and you also have the Iraqis
Speaker 1: as well. And you come into Ala Sade that like
Speaker 1: a lot of the infrastructure in Iraq when you were there,
Speaker 1: and wait, by the time you had returned eight years later,
Speaker 1: it's a very very different place just from an infrastructure,
Speaker 1: logistics and support routine as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. You know the Ala Sade that I remember
Speaker 2: and that a lot of people remembered, which everybody had
Speaker 2: called Camp Cupcake from the two thousand and eight nine
Speaker 2: time frame. It was a It was a massive air
Speaker 2: base in western endbar at everything.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It had movie theaters, swimming pools, fast food restaurants, salted
Speaker 2: dancing lessons, you know, you name it. And the Alisade
Speaker 2: that we landed in in twenty seventeen was nothing like
Speaker 2: that when when the Coalition pulled out of Alisade around
Speaker 2: the two thousand and nine or ten time frame, they
Speaker 2: left it all for the Iraqis as hey, here's our
Speaker 2: parting gift. You know, here are all these thousands of
Speaker 2: tea walls and filled HESCO barriers and all these these
Speaker 2: you know, Southwest Asia SWA huts that they had built.
Speaker 2: And it was something that the Rockies, it was a
Speaker 2: it was a gift that they couldn't afford to maintain.
Speaker 2: So the majority of the base was completely run down,
Speaker 2: beaten down by time and weather. And the Iraqis on
Speaker 2: the base was an Iraqi Air Force unit and the
Speaker 2: Iraqi seventh Division, and they had pulled back into their
Speaker 2: own contonements on the northern edge of the base, and
Speaker 2: it basically left the rest of the base to rot.
Speaker 2: And so had we had a better time when I
Speaker 2: landed there in twenty seventeen, completely because the previous rotations
Speaker 2: had been executing a simultaneous effort. On one hand, they
Speaker 2: were working with the ISF and the Coalition to get
Speaker 2: after the ISIS problem, but they were also rebuilding the
Speaker 2: infrastructure at Alocade, and along with that what made operations
Speaker 2: with the Iraqis. So challenging was when the decision was
Speaker 2: made that the coalition members like my Task Force were
Speaker 2: going to be able to go outside the wire with
Speaker 2: the Iraqis. The lines of communication were incredibly extended throughout
Speaker 2: western land Bar and so it required a security component.
Speaker 2: It was a long resupply line, and so we had
Speaker 2: to do a lot of coordination not just with the
Speaker 2: coalition units who would provide a lot of the logistics
Speaker 2: and sustainment component, but also coordination with the Iraqi government
Speaker 2: because all of our logistics convoys had to fall under
Speaker 2: the Prime Minister's basically its contracting program called pm not
Speaker 2: They wanted the Iraqi industry to be involved in the effort,
Speaker 2: So almost all of our logistics sustainment convoys across the
Speaker 2: battle space were with the Rocky contractors.
Speaker 3: Let's uh, let's talk about the force that was opposing you,
Speaker 3: because I think people may not remember how fast the
Speaker 3: ISIS went through Iraq and what what what allowed them
Speaker 3: to do that? And what was your perception of what
Speaker 3: you had to do to help the Iraqi security forces?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: Retake big Chuckler country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know when I was when I was
Speaker 2: working with the Iraqis in seventh Division as an advisor
Speaker 2: back in two thousand and eight, the enemy situation in
Speaker 2: Ala amber Bar Province was incredibly minimal at hout where
Speaker 2: I was around our com there was nothing really going
Speaker 2: on there. There was more turf wars between the Iraqi
Speaker 2: Army and the Rocky Police than anything. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: I talked about the enabling capabilities that we brought the
Speaker 2: Iraqis in twenty seventeen. We didn't have anything like that
Speaker 2: with them at my level, or really at the brigade
Speaker 2: or division level in two thousand and eight because they
Speaker 2: didn't need it. And what I can only assume is
Speaker 2: that between you know, the two thousand and nine ten
Speaker 2: eleven time frame in twenty fourteen where Isis blew through
Speaker 2: the country, the military just they weren't.
Speaker 4: Prepared for it.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was a matter of complacency
Speaker 2: or disorganization or infighting within the commands, or maybe a
Speaker 2: combination of all of them. But ultimately, the Iraqi military,
Speaker 2: which was you know, in parts, it was modeled not
Speaker 2: from their old system, some of it was modeled on
Speaker 2: our system. Through all of our advising efforts in the
Speaker 2: early days of the war, and you know they were
Speaker 2: they one way that they I think were modeled after
Speaker 2: US was they had they had a reliance on a
Speaker 2: lot of heavy equipment. They had started getting things like
Speaker 2: in one tanks and they were rolling around the battle
Speaker 2: space in home v's and they were just a larger,
Speaker 2: slower military formation than the ISIS formations who were cutting
Speaker 2: through the country. You know, a couple months ago when
Speaker 2: we talked about how quickly the Assad regime had fallen
Speaker 2: in Syria, and I think we talked about, you know,
Speaker 2: the ability of these militias and forces like to operate.
Speaker 2: You know, they were light, they are fast, they are flexible, UH,
Speaker 2: and they can they could fill the void a lot
Speaker 2: quicker than large military formations. And so just that I
Speaker 2: think in general, the unpreparedness on the part of the
Speaker 2: Iraqis UH perhaps caused them to take their eye off
Speaker 2: the ball and it opened up a seam for ISIS
Speaker 2: to exploit. And then and I think also you can't
Speaker 2: discount you know, really the sheer terror factor because a
Speaker 2: lot of I think a lot of what was going
Speaker 2: on in the Rock in the early days, you know,
Speaker 2: there was a terror factor, and there was an al
Speaker 2: Qaeda factor, but Isis hit. I think Isis took it
Speaker 2: to another level. And they were so brutal and so
Speaker 2: public about what they were doing, and you know, posting
Speaker 2: videos and high definition of beheading people. I think it.
Speaker 2: I think it really set the rock's back on their
Speaker 2: ass and they're like, what what in the world are
Speaker 2: we going to do? And I think that there may
Speaker 2: have been some degree of paralysis on their part or
Speaker 2: or if not flat out in denial that their country
Speaker 2: was being overrun.
Speaker 1: It's it's easy, it may be convenient to just to
Speaker 1: forget how incredibly fast and how incredibly brutal in the
Speaker 1: modern age they were. And you could see how a
Speaker 1: country that even on its best best years was fractious
Speaker 1: that it would it would, it would buckle until it
Speaker 1: got reinforced, and by the time you got there as
Speaker 1: a byproduct of that, that chaos is it wasn't just
Speaker 1: our usual red blue green situation, red blue green, fusia,
Speaker 1: white black. There was all sorts of organizations in there,
Speaker 1: some that were obstensively part of the anti anti isive effort,
Speaker 1: but we're not our friends. You had the shadow of
Speaker 1: the Iranian influence, a lot of the she organizations, but
Speaker 1: she also had tribal forces as well. Talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about about the the Iraqi forces that y'all were
Speaker 1: directly supporting, but also how these other I guess we
Speaker 1: could call them irregular forces as well, that we're part
Speaker 1: of the anti Isis effort. Creating a little extra twist
Speaker 1: and a little challenge for your team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as always, it's complicated, Yeah, but I can try
Speaker 2: to break it down, you know, as nuts and bolts
Speaker 2: as I can. So what what my mandate with Task
Speaker 2: Force Allign was partner with the uniformed Iraqi security forces.
Speaker 2: And and what that specifically meant was my task force
Speaker 2: was partnered with the Jazira Operations Command what we called
Speaker 2: the jay OK and that was a that was a
Speaker 2: core level Iraqi Army headquarters that was commanded by the
Speaker 2: man who would become my partner, a guy named Major
Speaker 2: General Costum. And within his unit he had the seventh
Speaker 2: Iraqi Army Division and several other specialty units like his
Speaker 2: commando battalions and commando brigades. But that was my mission
Speaker 2: was directly partner with the uniformed Iraqi military. A supporting
Speaker 2: effort to that was the partnership with the Iraqi tribal
Speaker 2: militia forces who were buying large these Sunni militia units
Speaker 2: in alan Bar who were anti ISIS. I don't know
Speaker 2: that I would go so far as to say that
Speaker 2: they were pro us. We never had any issues with them,
Speaker 2: but they worked directly with and in most cases directly
Speaker 2: for General cost So they became to a large degree,
Speaker 2: they became one of his maneuver arms within the Zero
Speaker 2: Operations Command. And part of it was, you know, the
Speaker 2: desire on the part of the TMF to back into
Speaker 2: the cities that essentially belonged to them and where they
Speaker 2: were from and where Isis had driven them out of,
Speaker 2: and working with Costum would enable them to do that.
Speaker 2: Now they were always strings attached, but that was kind
Speaker 2: of their ultimate goal. The other part for Kossum and
Speaker 2: the uniformed Army was they just didn't have enough units
Speaker 2: to work across a battle space as big as al
Speaker 2: ambor Is, and so they relied on the TMF to
Speaker 2: be mobile action arms to operate in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways that very close to the way that ISIS was
Speaker 2: operating and definitely similar to the way the PMF the
Speaker 2: Popular Mobilization Forces operated and so the PMF. That was
Speaker 2: the third part of it. They were a series of
Speaker 2: militias who worked directly for the Prime Minister's office. Most many,
Speaker 2: or if not most, of them were directly controlled, supported,
Speaker 2: and or influenced by Iran. So one of the things
Speaker 2: that was reinforced to me very quickly when we got
Speaker 2: on the ground was that within the PMF all of
Speaker 2: these proxy units what we called Shia militia groups or SMDs,
Speaker 2: All SMGs were part of the PMF, but not all
Speaker 2: PMF units were SMDs. And we learned quickly that you
Speaker 2: conflated the two at your peril. Because the positive thing
Speaker 2: to say about the PMF, written large, was in those
Speaker 2: early days of the ISIS blow through in a rock
Speaker 2: when the Iraqi uniformed army crumbled or vanished or just
Speaker 2: flat out retreated, the PMF held their ground, and the
Speaker 2: PMF were the ones who were responsible for really holding
Speaker 2: back the ISIS forces that were advancing on Baghdad or
Speaker 2: Bille and Alasade. And so what that meant was, no
Speaker 2: matter what happened with the the is F, the Rocky
Speaker 2: security forces in their campaign to retake al Ambar, no
Speaker 2: matter what happened, the PMF were going to be a
Speaker 2: part of it, and no matter what happened once ISIS
Speaker 2: was defeated, the PMF were going to be an enduring
Speaker 2: part of the security fabric within a rock and that
Speaker 2: that was kind of that was a tough pill to
Speaker 2: swallow for us because we knew that a lot of
Speaker 2: these mgs, a lot of these Iranian proxies included a
Speaker 2: lot of the same guys who were shooting app and
Speaker 2: blowing up Americans in Iraq in the early years of
Speaker 2: the war. You know, they they did not like us,
Speaker 2: and in some cases there were you know, armed standoffs
Speaker 2: between Coalition members and some of these units. It's something
Speaker 2: that happened several times. At the Alta Katam Air Base,
Speaker 2: where our sister Task Force was located. They had members
Speaker 2: of Teb hezbolah H, which is a sa militia group,
Speaker 2: a Runnian proxy based on the Condom Air Base just
Speaker 2: you know, yards from where the Americans and the Coalition
Speaker 2: were with Task Force out Cottum. And so there was
Speaker 2: a lot of these two groups giving each other the
Speaker 2: stink eye, and uh, you know, a lot of handwringing
Speaker 2: about what's going to happen if somebody turns their guns
Speaker 2: on us, or there's some kind of miscalculation on the
Speaker 2: ground that leads to a shootout with these guys.
Speaker 3: One of the other challenges you've faced, as far as
Speaker 3: I could tell from the book, was an extremely convoluted
Speaker 3: chain of command. And uh, you you seem to have
Speaker 3: a lot of responsibility, but not a whole heck of
Speaker 3: a lot of authority run through. There were a number
Speaker 3: of people looking over your shoulder all the time. One
Speaker 3: of your friends was try to it was offering help,
Speaker 3: but you're suspicious of the kind of help he was offering.
Speaker 3: And and then you had to deal with the h
Speaker 3: the Iraqi government and uh, the contentious generals fighting for
Speaker 3: position there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the our chain of command and you know, more
Speaker 2: more to the point, our command relationships that were established
Speaker 2: for us. But when we got over there was if
Speaker 2: you looked at it on the PowerPoint slide, it looked
Speaker 2: like a maze.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: We Task Force Alion was under tactical control takon of
Speaker 2: the of C. J. Flick, the Combined Joint Landforces Component
Speaker 2: Command in a Rock, the two star Army general who
Speaker 2: who was leading the ground effort campaign in the Rock.
Speaker 2: So we were taken to C. J. Flick. We were
Speaker 2: under operational control of Task Force fifty one to five
Speaker 2: with in Bahrain, which is a partnered Blue Green naval
Speaker 2: task force that's responsible for the area that the area
Speaker 2: that Fifth Fleet is in charge of, so TACON. We
Speaker 2: were also under administrative control of our parent command at
Speaker 2: one meth back in Camp Pendleton, so they were responsible
Speaker 2: for all the administrative components of looking after us and
Speaker 2: our requirements of reporting back to them. And then on
Speaker 2: top of all of that, for all Marine Corps matters
Speaker 2: in the Sentcom ARIAV operation, we all reported to Marine
Speaker 2: Force ES Central Command Marcent, So that was just on
Speaker 2: the Green side, on the Marine side. Then, like you said,
Speaker 2: adding on top of that that, we had a partnered
Speaker 2: relationship with the Zero Operations Command and so it's very
Speaker 2: difficult for us to make a move without incorporating them
Speaker 2: into it, otherwise the partnership, you know, doesn't exist. And
Speaker 2: then there were also the uh the command relationships that
Speaker 2: we had with the various Special Operations Forces units that
Speaker 2: we worked with, and alongside there in Western Endbar there
Speaker 2: was the overall All Special Operations Joint Task Force or ROCK.
Speaker 2: Within them was the Siege of SODIF. Within them was
Speaker 2: the Special Operations Task Force West, which was based around
Speaker 2: the Seal Team at Al Saud with US, and it
Speaker 2: was it was made very clear to us immediately that
Speaker 2: at no time would any SOFT unit report to Task
Speaker 2: Force Alliance. They would never be taken to US. At best,
Speaker 2: there would be a supporting, supported effort for the operations
Speaker 2: we did, but they they were They had a visceral
Speaker 2: reaction to any suggestion that we might attach a SOFT
Speaker 2: element to the Task Force to work for us. So
Speaker 2: what that meant practically on the ground during the operations
Speaker 2: we did with the iraqies was we would work with
Speaker 2: SOFT to attach teams primarily to the tribal militia forces
Speaker 2: the TMF, because they had the authority to work with
Speaker 2: the TMF. My team and I did not. We worked
Speaker 2: with them indirectly, but we couldn't work with them directly
Speaker 2: the same way that SOFT did. And so it was
Speaker 2: this this patchwork to quilt of putting all these pieces
Speaker 2: together and just trying to make it work. And it
Speaker 2: was to say it was challenging is like the understatement
Speaker 2: of the year. No.
Speaker 1: I kind of was getting an eye twitch during that
Speaker 1: portion because of one of one of my things I
Speaker 1: have to claim full responsibility and guilt for is back
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. I was one of those goobers that had
Speaker 1: to build that whole matrix about Op Cohn versus opcom
Speaker 1: who was Takon who is Takm? And we also had
Speaker 1: the national caveats matrix. It added to that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you also had to deal with that. I think for
Speaker 1: the for the listener who perhaps they've watched Catch twenty
Speaker 1: two or the original mash movie, I think that's the exaggeration.
Speaker 1: It's really not an exaggeration. You could really make a
Speaker 1: dark comedy talking about a couple things. I just give
Speaker 1: a listener some flesh for is you have this combined
Speaker 1: situation where you have the Danes and the Norwegians and
Speaker 1: eventually the French come out to help you. But you
Speaker 1: almost had a fanboy capture of the Danes by the
Speaker 1: US Navy seals, and you also internally, if I got
Speaker 1: it right, you pretty much kidnapped a young contractor who
Speaker 1: was the only person in Iraq that could keep your
Speaker 1: communications gear up and running. So again, kind of like
Speaker 1: like Mark identified you, you had a lot of responsibility,
Speaker 1: but you didn't have much of authority, so you had
Speaker 1: to work around these these structures that were obsensively there
Speaker 1: to help you, but it seemed like they were putting
Speaker 1: rakes in front of you and your team and themselves.
Speaker 2: Often. Yeah, it's the truth. And I wouldn't say kidnap.
Speaker 2: I would say held onto for a little while until
Speaker 2: we were certain the mission was going to be accomplished.
Speaker 2: But no, to your point one hundred percent, and that
Speaker 2: is that, you know I talked about. I talked about
Speaker 2: the challenges of the command relationships and how our team
Speaker 2: was put together, but the authorities piece that you're talking about,
Speaker 2: it was a significant obstacle to getting things done in
Speaker 2: country and what that stemmed from was my position as
Speaker 2: the task force commander. The task force, again, as we
Speaker 2: talked about, was a cobbled together unit that was not
Speaker 2: based under an existing unit flag. So for example, the C. J.
Speaker 2: Flick Headquarters in Baghdad was built around the first Armored
Speaker 2: Division headquarters, so the first Armored Division Headquarters flag was
Speaker 2: in Baghdad, and the commander carried the same command authorities
Speaker 2: in Baghdad as a CJ. Flick commander as he did
Speaker 2: back in the States as the first Armored Division commander.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a flag because I was an IA.
Speaker 2: I also was I was initially designated as just an OIC,
Speaker 2: an officer in charge of the team, until I got
Speaker 2: to a rock and a couple of people made it
Speaker 2: clear to me, you are the commander of the task force,
Speaker 2: and I realized was in that situation a commander is
Speaker 2: not equivalent to a commanding officer because I had no
Speaker 2: command authority, no administrative command authority when I was with
Speaker 2: Task Force a Lion. And when I say none, what
Speaker 2: I mean is I didn't have I didn't have NJP authority,
Speaker 2: I didn't have awarding authority. There were were funding authorities
Speaker 2: that I didn't have. I had really none of the
Speaker 2: command authorities that are traditionally associated with someone who is
Speaker 2: formally selected as a commanding officer. And yet I had
Speaker 2: all the responsibilities of a commander in theater. I was
Speaker 2: a battle space owner with the task Force. I was
Speaker 2: responsible for any civilian casualties that might occur in the
Speaker 2: course of prosecuting the air strikes and the ground strikes
Speaker 2: that we were doing. There was a whole line of
Speaker 2: things that I was responsible for there, but I had
Speaker 2: nothing on paper really to back it up. And so
Speaker 2: what it ultimately what it led to was a not
Speaker 2: small amount of of Mother may I and a lot
Speaker 2: of asking permission to do things because otherwise I had
Speaker 2: no authority to do them. And that was it was
Speaker 2: it was. It was an obstacle that I don't know
Speaker 2: that I ever really overcame when I was there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's interesting that that I was thinking of logistics.
Speaker 3: Your your your logistics people must have been crazy. Where's
Speaker 3: the money coming too? For the contracting stuff? I mean,
Speaker 3: I know you had a really good logistics supply officer person,
Speaker 3: you know where we're I think she was she right?
Speaker 3: Where where was she getting the funds to pay for
Speaker 3: all this stuff?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: The the upside there is that that was money that
Speaker 2: was set aside in the they called it the T
Speaker 2: and E program, the Iraqi Training equip Program, and so
Speaker 2: there was a there was a pool of funds that
Speaker 2: did everything from providing M sixteen's to the new Iraqi
Speaker 2: recruits all the way to funding some of the some
Speaker 2: of the convoy and the movement operations that we did.
Speaker 2: But the you know, the caveat was it required her
Speaker 2: and her team to work with the Prime Minister's office,
Speaker 2: you know, via the coalition, to say okay, we want
Speaker 2: to we are planning on moving this many short tons
Speaker 2: of equipment and ammunition fuel from here to here, and
Speaker 2: this is what the requirement is. So now we need
Speaker 2: you to approve it, and we need you to source
Speaker 2: the contractors. And so the people that were doing the
Speaker 2: kind of the the lion's share no pun intended of
Speaker 2: the initial coordination work was our logistics section and the
Speaker 2: next level that work was done up in Baghdad.
Speaker 1: And the geography of this I've being as somebody that's
Speaker 1: based out of California looking at from from Assad up
Speaker 1: to up to come, I'll come, however we pronounce it.
Speaker 1: It's a distance of about as the hi Mars rocket flies.
Speaker 1: It's about eighty nautical miles, which is about the same
Speaker 1: distance from San Diego to Long Beach. And y'all were
Speaker 1: not stuck, and one of the challenges for your team
Speaker 1: stuck not the right word, but you didn't stay just
Speaker 1: in Ala sad Is as staff Major General Cossam and
Speaker 1: in his forces were moving up the Euphrates Valley up
Speaker 1: towards the Syrian border. H y'all were moving with them,
Speaker 1: and that I thought was a tremendous story and a
Speaker 1: great tribute to your logistics team in themselves being able
Speaker 1: to work up like y'all did the valley so y'all
Speaker 1: could continue to support and assist the Iraqis is moved up.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that you know that that whole process and what
Speaker 6: our team accomplished, it's something that I'm incredibly proud of
Speaker 6: and I you know, I will talk to people about
Speaker 6: that and the opportunity I get because it was it
Speaker 6: was a logistical feat to get it done.
Speaker 2: And it was like by the end of the major
Speaker 2: operation that we did with the Rockies called the Desert
Speaker 2: Lion that occurred between September and November of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: By the end of that operation, our marines and sailors
Speaker 2: and soldiers and everybody else in the task force, they
Speaker 2: had moved about eleven thousand miles in sustainment convoys going
Speaker 2: back and forth between Alasade, the different outposts that we
Speaker 2: established and ultimately to the final outpost at the train
Speaker 2: station in al Come. And you know, it's the credit.
Speaker 2: You know, the credit goes to a lot of people
Speaker 2: for execution. It was clearly by my ops and logistics
Speaker 2: teams who were able to plan it and then make
Speaker 2: it happen. But the credit also has to go to
Speaker 2: the two previous teams who were there before us, Rotation
Speaker 2: four with Fred Frederickson and Rotation three with Paul NuGen.
Speaker 2: Those two teams were the ones who they built the
Speaker 2: guts of the plan to get the task force and
Speaker 2: more importantly, the Iraqis out to the border and that
Speaker 2: was with that was a lot of late night sessions
Speaker 2: between them, the Coalition and the Iraqis of mapping out. Hey,
Speaker 2: this is how far the high Morris window is. This
Speaker 2: is how far the Canon artillery window is. These are
Speaker 2: this is what the Golden Hour ring looks like for
Speaker 2: METAVAC support throughout this. And so, you know, when we
Speaker 2: were doing high fives after the operation was over and
Speaker 2: you know, breaking our arms, patting ourselves on the back,
Speaker 2: we definitely had to take a pause and realized that
Speaker 2: none of this could have happened as quickly and as
Speaker 2: well as it had if we hadn't had the previous
Speaker 2: teams setting the groundwork and planning this thing for us.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people could relate to and I know it
Speaker 1: wasn't funny at the time, but reading it, I couldn't
Speaker 1: help but laugh because I think we all similar stories.
Speaker 1: I also think that you and everybody else from now
Speaker 1: on knows that a Paladin, she's a wide lady. She
Speaker 1: needs a little more, she needs a little more than
Speaker 1: everybody thinks she does to move it. Just to give
Speaker 1: people idea that the resource limitations you have, you know,
Speaker 1: explain what I was just talking about, Lady Paladin a
Speaker 1: little bit of wife, but also talk about the fact
Speaker 1: that you you couldn't take all your assets with you
Speaker 1: simply from an ownership point of view of the Paladins
Speaker 1: versus your high mars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So, uh, you know what you're referencing was
Speaker 2: in this logistical effort. As we began to frame out
Speaker 2: and build these outposts that we were going to occupy
Speaker 2: with the Rockies, we also had to figure out how
Speaker 2: we were going to jump some of our heavy critical
Speaker 2: enabling capabilities forward with us. One of those capabilities was
Speaker 2: we had a Army artillery unit based aboard Al Saude
Speaker 2: with us that was under our take on our tactical control,
Speaker 2: and that unit was Army Paladin howitzers and self propelled howitzers.
Speaker 2: It's a self propelled howitzer, but you can't self drive it,
Speaker 2: you know, fifty sixty seventy miles to an outpost. It
Speaker 2: has to be put on a tractor trailer. And so
Speaker 2: as we were prepping to head north for our first
Speaker 2: operation in our first outpost, my logistics officer came to
Speaker 2: me in the office one night and said, I got
Speaker 2: some bad news. And I said, what's up? And she said,
Speaker 2: the paladins are too wide for the Rocky trucks that
Speaker 2: got contracted to us. And I was like, what you know?
Speaker 2: I said, well, how wide's a paladin? And she said
Speaker 2: it's like ten point six feet And I said, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: how how wide are the rocky trucks?
Speaker 4: And she said not that wide?
Speaker 2: And so you know, and it was a great learning
Speaker 2: experience because, you know, she did know and I didn't
Speaker 2: know either. I mean I had I had no I
Speaker 2: had no idea. And one of the things that that
Speaker 2: keyed for me was the importance of joint operations. That
Speaker 2: you've got to get out of your comfort zone and
Speaker 2: realize that if you're a marine, the joint world is
Speaker 2: not the Marine Corps world. We don't have paladins in
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps, but the Army does. The Army was
Speaker 2: part of the joint force. So it was uh and
Speaker 2: and you know, in the end it all worked out
Speaker 2: and she she made it happen by accelerating the contracting
Speaker 2: process to get the right trucks we needed. But it
Speaker 2: was one of those moments where you know, our heart
Speaker 2: almost stopped and uh, we're able to to uh to
Speaker 2: make it happen. Yeah, well, I'm sorry, what was the
Speaker 2: second what was the second part of that?
Speaker 4: You know what?
Speaker 3: It fell out of my brain too. You can't you
Speaker 3: can't remember. Listen your your story about the palains and
Speaker 3: reminded me of a very desert storm. When they were
Speaker 3: moving the abram abrams around. They brought all these low
Speaker 3: boy trucks from the US. So you know, Joe's trucking
Speaker 3: company in Baton Rouge shows up with this, with this
Speaker 3: that they could get the abramsons and they could move
Speaker 3: them through the country. It was it was really impressive.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just you know, you don't realize, especially me
Speaker 3: as a Navy guy, to realize that all that stuff
Speaker 3: had to be moved, even though it was self propelled,
Speaker 3: as you just said, it's not good to move them
Speaker 3: that way. You have to pervoctently plan ahead for this stuff.
Speaker 3: So I was kind of laughing at that part of
Speaker 3: the story too. The other the other thing that I
Speaker 3: thought was funny too, is you you were given the
Speaker 3: you had a rival group with rifles with you that
Speaker 3: but they they were stuck with We were talking about
Speaker 3: national caveats earlier, and they got stuck and I got
Speaker 3: to give him a pretty hard time about coming out
Speaker 3: outside the wire with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I really felt for them. Uh. The
Speaker 2: the the British commander, he was a fantastic guy. He
Speaker 2: had a bunch of great soldiers working for him, and
Speaker 2: their mission was to provide It was to be a
Speaker 2: sec for security force for Alasade, and they took their
Speaker 2: job extremely seriously. I mean, they had a base Defense
Speaker 2: Operations Center set up, they had some Marines from the
Speaker 2: Special Purpose MAGTAFF there to augment them, and they took
Speaker 2: based security extremely seriously. Because of what had happened in
Speaker 2: Afghanistan with the airfield attack, that was just one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why they took it seriously. They were also
Speaker 2: just a bunch of professionals and their national caveats prevented
Speaker 2: them from going outside the wire, and that was a
Speaker 2: restriction that just absolutely absolutely drove him out of his mind,
Speaker 2: especially as we were beginning to gear up and we
Speaker 2: had been given the authority to go outside the wire
Speaker 2: with the Rockies and escort them in their operation all
Speaker 2: the way to the border, and you know, with tender
Speaker 2: Colonel Bellamy and his Brits, they were going to be
Speaker 2: left behind. And it was to the point where, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think for him it was a professional embarrassment and
Speaker 2: I would ribb him about it, you know, and say, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going all the way and you know where you're
Speaker 2: going to be. You're going to be like hanging out
Speaker 2: in the coof and drinking coffee, and until I ribbed him,
Speaker 2: until I realized that this is doing more harm than good.
Speaker 2: And to his credit, he was so passionate about it
Speaker 2: that he elevated the issue all the way with his
Speaker 2: chain of command and it ultimately got briefed by the
Speaker 2: mod to Parliament, and I think the case that they
Speaker 2: made was the Coalition is going outside the wire and
Speaker 2: we look like jackasses not being able to do so.
Speaker 2: And Parliament relented a little bit. They gave them a
Speaker 2: certain radius of several kilometers that they could operate outside
Speaker 2: the wire, which it didn't completely solve the problem, because
Speaker 2: the idea of security forces was one of those enablers
Speaker 2: that we needed at every outpost that we set up
Speaker 2: and manned, and we also needed it along the way
Speaker 2: for route security. But what that restriction on the policy
Speaker 2: for the Brits did was it it enabled them to
Speaker 2: serve as the quick response unit or a quick response
Speaker 2: for UCE, the QRF for Al Sade, operating several kilometers
Speaker 2: outside the wire, so that if something went down outside
Speaker 2: the wire during these movements, they could quickly respond to it.
Speaker 2: And I know it helped them, you know, from from
Speaker 2: an emotional perspective, to be able to contribute. But it
Speaker 2: also freed up more marines, more trigar pollers for us
Speaker 2: to take forward with us to work the security operations
Speaker 2: along the different lines of supplying communications and at the outposts.
Speaker 2: I think well.
Speaker 1: And also an interesting side story that kind of weaves
Speaker 1: this way through a lot of this is just the
Speaker 1: in spite of all the years that we've worked with
Speaker 1: the iraqis that there's a huge cultural difference between the
Speaker 1: two where you talk about we've all worked for them,
Speaker 1: is you'll work for an American you know, general officer
Speaker 1: or flag officer who's perfectly comfortable calling an email a
Speaker 1: midnight thirty and expecting an answer by zero two hundred.
Speaker 1: It just it just never ends with these people, Whereas
Speaker 1: even though they're in their own country, fighting their own
Speaker 1: you know, San Diego to Long Beach Battle that uh
Speaker 1: Major General Cassam and his troops, it was almost a
Speaker 1: nine to five military bankers hours war.
Speaker 2: How was that?
Speaker 1: A lot of your team had experience in Iraq before,
Speaker 1: but you know, bridging those two cultural differences that had
Speaker 1: to have been a challenge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a challenge. And you know the the
Speaker 2: midnight calls thing. I mean, you know one of the
Speaker 2: things that I talk about in the story is that
Speaker 2: Costum loved to call in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think, I think in general, the guy
Speaker 2: was just an insomniac and he wanted a lot of reassuring.
Speaker 2: And after a couple of weeks of this, I finally
Speaker 2: told my interpreter, look, I can't I already work long
Speaker 2: hours here, I can't talk to him at midnight every night,
Speaker 2: or we're not going to get anything done. This the
Speaker 2: call is still came, they just weren't quite as as
Speaker 2: frequent as the head been. But the nine to five aspect,
Speaker 2: I mean it was a real thing. Not not so
Speaker 2: much like right at nine, but whenever we were doing
Speaker 2: the operations from from the outposts during the final clear
Speaker 2: the Iraqis started moving every day at six. You know,
Speaker 2: they didn't they didn't start before sunrise came up. They
Speaker 2: came when they started moving when sunrise came up. And
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, as the sun was
Speaker 2: going down, they went to ground. And so they were
Speaker 2: basically they were day fighters and no matter where they
Speaker 2: were in the fight, they would pause what they were doing.
Speaker 2: And that was you know, we we we knew that,
Speaker 2: but when we saw an action and experienced it, it
Speaker 2: was it was difficult for some of us to accept.
Speaker 2: You know, for example, during the first major operation that
Speaker 2: we did during you know, Phase one, and we were
Speaker 2: at our firebase in Sagra when the Iraqis finally punched
Speaker 2: into the city of Honor and split the city in half,
Speaker 2: and we're literally routing the Isis fighters that were embedded
Speaker 2: in the city. When the sun went down. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was it was like at the culminating moment of
Speaker 2: the battle, and we were all in our command post
Speaker 2: and cheering, and I'm like talking to cost him on
Speaker 2: the phone, you know, being his cheerleader. And this was
Speaker 2: the it was the beginning of the exploitation phase, and
Speaker 2: they went to ground and like, okay, we're done for
Speaker 2: the night. And my apso Aaron Autry and I looked
Speaker 2: at each other and we were like, what the hell,
Speaker 2: you know, because we knew if we had been out there,
Speaker 2: if it had been a Marine Corps or an army
Speaker 2: unit at that culminating moment, we would have begun the
Speaker 2: exploitation because that was the weakest point that the ISIS
Speaker 2: fighters faced. But the Rockies were comfortable with saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're gonna pause here, get some rest, and we'll start
Speaker 2: all back up again in the morning. So yeah, it involved,
Speaker 2: you know, taking a step back and saying, I understand
Speaker 2: that this is not how we would do it, but
Speaker 2: it's not our fight. It's the Rockies fight, and we're
Speaker 2: here to backstop them and help them get to the
Speaker 2: goal line the way that they need to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's important to keep the vision concept there,
Speaker 3: you know, the old the old when you're up to
Speaker 3: your rear end an alligator's concept. One of the things
Speaker 3: that throughout the book, I mean, I set your frustration
Speaker 3: a lot of the time with what was going on.
Speaker 3: And then towards the end, as you're beginning to get
Speaker 3: ready to withdraw and you get visits from various high
Speaker 3: ranking officials, talk about how you got the title for
Speaker 3: your book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was what's the line from pulp fiction. I
Speaker 2: had what alcoholics call a moment of clarity, you know,
Speaker 2: I was in a this was it was in December
Speaker 2: of twenty seventeen, and the big operation that we had
Speaker 2: done with Desert Lion had really culminated in November, and
Speaker 2: we're we are now in kind of closing actions, but
Speaker 2: the campaign wasn't over, and there was still a lot
Speaker 2: of work we'll have to do, and things were bubbling
Speaker 2: up with the PMF. We were having problems with them
Speaker 2: around our base at Alt Come, and like I said,
Speaker 2: we just we still had a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2: Operation Desert Line was just the beginning, and I was
Speaker 2: on a I had hopped on a helicopter with the C. J. Flick,
Speaker 2: Commander General White, and as we were talking and you know,
Speaker 2: White and I had a tremendous relationship. I mean, he
Speaker 2: had nothing but support for me, and I always really appreciated,
Speaker 2: you know, the the support that he and his staff
Speaker 2: gave us out there. And as we were talking about
Speaker 2: the ongoing security situation, he said, you know, what you
Speaker 2: need to understand is that force protection is my number
Speaker 2: one priority out here, and just remember that there's nothing
Speaker 2: here worth dying for. And when he said that to me,
Speaker 2: the first thing that I thought was, well, then, what
Speaker 2: the hell are we doing here? Why have we left
Speaker 2: our families, Why have we put ourselves at risk? Why
Speaker 2: are we expending blood and treasure to come over here
Speaker 2: if there's nothing here worth dying for. So that stuck
Speaker 2: with me, and you know, I went back to Ali
Speaker 2: Sade and not long after that, we got a Christmas
Speaker 2: visit from the Commandant of the Marine Corps and we were,
Speaker 2: my team and I were briefing him on what we've
Speaker 2: been doing for the previous several months, and you know,
Speaker 2: we were we were explaining, Hey, these are successes, these
Speaker 2: are we pushed the ball forward, The Iraqis are getting better,
Speaker 2: Asis is militarily defeated out here, and all the comment
Speaker 2: Dant had to say was nothing we do out here
Speaker 2: is ever going to make any difference, and he just
Speaker 2: can't get blown up out here. And my staff and
Speaker 2: I looked at each other and there was this, you know,
Speaker 2: almost telepathic feeling amongst us of again, what the hell
Speaker 2: are we doing out here for if if it's not
Speaker 2: going to make any difference. So I struggled with that
Speaker 2: for the rest of the deployment, because again, that big
Speaker 2: operation with iraqis by the time it concluded in November
Speaker 2: of twenty seventeen, our deployment was barely half over. And
Speaker 2: I struggled with what those senior leaders had said to me,
Speaker 2: because I've worked around general officers long enough to know
Speaker 2: that their words mean things. And as senior leaders in
Speaker 2: the Army and the Marine Corps and the Department of Defense,
Speaker 2: you know, they're responsible for what they say, and people
Speaker 2: listen to the words of their leaders and what those
Speaker 2: words mean and what it means for you and your people,
Speaker 2: and so, like I said, I really struggled with that
Speaker 2: for the rest of the deployment, wondering, like, is what
Speaker 2: we're doing here is is it worth dying for? And ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know what I realized is I had issues with
Speaker 2: the mission in I ROCK. I had issues with what
Speaker 2: we did in Afghanistan. You know, with the benefit of hindsight,
Speaker 2: I can look back on all the things that I did,
Speaker 2: and I'm proud of my service. I'm proud of the
Speaker 2: teams that I was with in ROCK in Afghanistan, but
Speaker 2: that doesn't negate the fact that I spent the majority
Speaker 2: of my time in uniform fighting to losing wars that
Speaker 2: were strategically misguided almost from the outset. But you know,
Speaker 2: keeping all that in mind, as frustrated as I was
Speaker 2: with the direction of the campaigns went and some decisions
Speaker 2: that were made at the highest level, what I always
Speaker 2: came back to was the thing that I was the
Speaker 2: most proud of was the work that I did with
Speaker 2: the teams that were assigned to me. You know, the
Speaker 2: organizations that we built together, the things that we accomplished,
Speaker 2: the sacrifices that they and their brothers and sisters had made,
Speaker 2: you know, since the beginning of the Long War. And
Speaker 2: you know, I realized something that I've revisited over the
Speaker 2: years is you know, it's not the it's not the
Speaker 2: flag waving that's important. It's not Ay we're all for
Speaker 2: core and country. It's it's about the person that's to
Speaker 2: your left and right and the things that they're willing
Speaker 2: to sacrifice to protect their comrades. And that's why that
Speaker 2: there are some things that are work dying for.
Speaker 1: Yes, Seth, that was a very powerful ending to the book,
Speaker 1: because it's not only I think, part of the story
Speaker 1: of you and your team and the people that you
Speaker 1: served with, but I think it's a deeper question you've
Speaker 1: touched on about what an entire generation of us were
Speaker 1: involved in and people are still involved in. I think
Speaker 1: that's a question that more people are going to have
Speaker 1: to bring out out take into the light, and we
Speaker 1: need to talk about it some more. And again, everybody,
Speaker 1: I can't recommend enough Seth's book. You can go over
Speaker 1: to Amazon and pre order it. It'll be out here
Speaker 1: any moment this month. Nothing here worth dying for. And Seth,
Speaker 1: if people wanted to trat see what you're up to,
Speaker 1: and I know this was a lot of work to
Speaker 1: get here, but I don't know if you're you're working
Speaker 1: on something else that you're looking at down the road.
Speaker 1: But where can people keep an eye on you and
Speaker 1: what can they look forward to.
Speaker 2: Thanks for that. You know, I used to have a
Speaker 2: website until Russian porn bots took it over, so I
Speaker 2: don't have a website anymore, but I do I have
Speaker 2: a I think I have a pretty significant presence on
Speaker 2: Twitter and on Blue Sky, sometimes on Instagram, but on
Speaker 2: Twitter and Blue Sky I'm at s WB folsome and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, that's that's a place where I like to
Speaker 2: make my color commentary. I try not to be over
Speaker 2: the top, but I also like to try to call
Speaker 2: things as they are. But that's that's where everybody can
Speaker 2: find me. Is at s w B fulsome, primarily on Twitter,
Speaker 2: X and blue Scott.
Speaker 3: Well, let me say too, it's a it's a really
Speaker 3: good book. We've brought it back a lot of the
Speaker 3: frustrations many of us who are of the Vietnam generation
Speaker 3: of service have about the frustration with and asking that
Speaker 3: question why did we do the things the way we did,
Speaker 3: which was good? And I'm glad to see that you've you've,
Speaker 3: you know, had kind of dealt with that. I should
Speaker 3: the way the rest have had too too. So anyway,
Speaker 3: I recommend the book to anybody who would like to
Speaker 3: read it. It's from the Naval Institute Press and you
Speaker 3: can get on Amazon. I think eighteen February, is that right?
Speaker 2: That is correct, eighteen February. It hits the shelf.
Speaker 1: Perfect. Thanks again, Seth really enjoyed the conversation. Look forward
Speaker 1: to next time, and thank you everybody for joining us
Speaker 1: for another edition of mid Rat And until next time,
Speaker 1: hope you have a great navy and marine corde.
Speaker 4: Cheers trus guys.
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Speaker 5: said Faulding, your tame.
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Speaker 5: God b becdi farewell lestwell.
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