WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.439 --> 00:00:03.480
<v Speaker 1>Welcome back to everybody. Today, we're going to be looking

2
00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:09.119
<v Speaker 1>at the kill that took Zarkawi. A Delta in the

3
00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:14.039
<v Speaker 1>sas finally got him. It's one of the most important

4
00:00:14.119 --> 00:00:17.280
<v Speaker 1>kills of the entire Iraq War. Not some random mid

5
00:00:17.359 --> 00:00:20.359
<v Speaker 1>level bomb maker, not another faceless facilitator. We're talking about

6
00:00:20.399 --> 00:00:24.320
<v Speaker 1>Abu Musab al Zakari, the Jordanian thug who turned Al

7
00:00:24.399 --> 00:00:28.399
<v Speaker 1>Qaeda in Iraq into a factory of beheadings, mass casualty, bombings,

8
00:00:28.440 --> 00:00:33.759
<v Speaker 1>and a pure sectarian bloodlust. The guy who deliberately ignited

9
00:00:33.759 --> 00:00:36.200
<v Speaker 1>a civil war between Sunni and Shia because he thought

10
00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:40.320
<v Speaker 1>chaos was the path to a caliphate. For years, this

11
00:00:40.439 --> 00:00:42.960
<v Speaker 1>guy ran free near missus close calls. One of them

12
00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:44.960
<v Speaker 1>in two thousand and five was almost comical if it

13
00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:48.679
<v Speaker 1>wasn't so frustrating. So Akari's vehicle blew through a Delta

14
00:00:48.759 --> 00:00:52.079
<v Speaker 1>red roadblock and then a Ranger checkpoint. A Ranger with

15
00:00:52.119 --> 00:00:54.359
<v Speaker 1>an M two forty had him dead to rights requested

16
00:00:54.399 --> 00:00:58.079
<v Speaker 1>permission of fire. Lieutenant wouldn't give it, no positive ideas.

17
00:00:58.079 --> 00:01:00.439
<v Speaker 1>Akari stared out the window holding an America and rifle

18
00:01:00.479 --> 00:01:02.920
<v Speaker 1>and just kept rolling. By the time the chase was

19
00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:05.599
<v Speaker 1>on he jumped out in an under an overpass and

20
00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:09.239
<v Speaker 1>vanished into Ramadi. Let this laptop and a pile of

21
00:01:09.280 --> 00:01:13.000
<v Speaker 1>euros behind classic Zakari. That was the pattern. Every time

22
00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:17.040
<v Speaker 1>the net tightened, he slipped until the machine changed. By

23
00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:20.200
<v Speaker 1>two thousand and six, under Stanley McCrystal, Jaysack had built

24
00:01:20.239 --> 00:01:24.560
<v Speaker 1>something different. Task Force one forty five Delta Seals Rangers

25
00:01:24.560 --> 00:01:29.000
<v Speaker 1>in the British Sas working as one relentless organism. Not

26
00:01:29.159 --> 00:01:32.400
<v Speaker 1>after night, right after ray. They weren't waiting for perfect intelligence.

27
00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:35.560
<v Speaker 1>They were generating it. Then exploit the hell out of

28
00:01:35.599 --> 00:01:37.599
<v Speaker 1>whatever you pulled out of the house, and go again

29
00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:42.400
<v Speaker 1>before the network could recover, find, fix, and finish. One

30
00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:44.760
<v Speaker 1>of the key pieces came in April two thousand and six.

31
00:01:44.920 --> 00:01:50.480
<v Speaker 1>Operational Larchwood four B squadroned twenty two SAS hit a

32
00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:54.359
<v Speaker 1>farmhouse in Usafaia Triangle of Death Country they call it.

33
00:01:54.799 --> 00:01:57.640
<v Speaker 1>They took casualties, but they also took prisoners at computers

34
00:01:57.640 --> 00:02:01.040
<v Speaker 1>inside that material where fresh images of our more importantly

35
00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:05.439
<v Speaker 1>pathways into his inner circle. The intel machine chewed on it.

36
00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:11.000
<v Speaker 1>One name kept rising, Shake Abdal Rahman's Arkawi spiritual advisor,

37
00:02:11.319 --> 00:02:13.639
<v Speaker 1>the guy the butcher trusted enough to meet in person.

38
00:02:14.360 --> 00:02:17.599
<v Speaker 1>They put eyes on the shake, tracked him, watched the

39
00:02:17.599 --> 00:02:19.719
<v Speaker 1>pattern of life. On the evening of June seven, two

40
00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:22.319
<v Speaker 1>thousand and six, the Shake drove north of Baghdad into

41
00:02:22.319 --> 00:02:25.080
<v Speaker 1>a palm grove you know, the village of Habib, just

42
00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:30.240
<v Speaker 1>outside of Bakuba. A small Delta Force reconnaissance and surveillance

43
00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:33.560
<v Speaker 1>team was already in their area, tucked into the vegetation,

44
00:02:33.759 --> 00:02:35.919
<v Speaker 1>watching a center block house set a back among the

45
00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:39.319
<v Speaker 1>date palms. When the Shak arrived in a heavy set

46
00:02:39.400 --> 00:02:41.319
<v Speaker 1>man and Black came out to greet them. The team

47
00:02:41.360 --> 00:02:48.639
<v Speaker 1>knew that was the target. Put the glve for on

48
00:02:48.759 --> 00:02:51.520
<v Speaker 1>site was thin, not enough shooters to guarantee a clean

49
00:02:51.520 --> 00:02:53.680
<v Speaker 1>of salt without giving Zarkari a chance to run into

50
00:02:53.680 --> 00:02:57.280
<v Speaker 1>the dense palm cover of the surrounding villages. They had

51
00:02:57.319 --> 00:03:01.159
<v Speaker 1>already lost them once under almost identical conditions. The call

52
00:03:01.199 --> 00:03:04.919
<v Speaker 1>went up instead Air strike two Air Force F sixteens

53
00:03:04.919 --> 00:03:07.960
<v Speaker 1>were diverted at six twelve pm local time. The first

54
00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:10.800
<v Speaker 1>five hundred pound bomb, laser guided GBU hit the house.

55
00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:15.000
<v Speaker 1>Ninety seconds later, the second bomb, a jade am, finished

56
00:03:15.039 --> 00:03:17.800
<v Speaker 1>the job. The structure simply ceased to exist to crater

57
00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:22.479
<v Speaker 1>forty feet wide, smoking debris cover climbing into the evening sky.

58
00:03:22.919 --> 00:03:25.319
<v Speaker 1>Iraqi police got there first and pulled the man out

59
00:03:25.319 --> 00:03:28.919
<v Speaker 1>of the rubble. He was still alive, barely hanging on.

60
00:03:30.360 --> 00:03:33.520
<v Speaker 1>American forces from the taskport ride moments later took control

61
00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:37.879
<v Speaker 1>of the scene and confirm what they already suspected scars tattoos.

62
00:03:38.199 --> 00:03:40.680
<v Speaker 1>It was Arkawi. He muttered something and tried to turn

63
00:03:40.680 --> 00:03:43.560
<v Speaker 1>away on the stretcher. Then he was gone. Fifty two

64
00:03:43.639 --> 00:03:46.800
<v Speaker 1>minutes after the first bomb, five mothers died in the

65
00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:48.719
<v Speaker 1>house with them, including the sheik who had led them

66
00:03:48.719 --> 00:03:53.120
<v Speaker 1>there that night. Over the following days, the exploitation machine

67
00:03:53.159 --> 00:04:00.240
<v Speaker 1>went into overdrive. Seventeen rays, the dozens more. There are

68
00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:04.080
<v Speaker 1>dozens of additional fighters and facilitators grouped up computers, documents, phones.

69
00:04:04.919 --> 00:04:08.120
<v Speaker 1>The network that protecteds Ourcari for years started coming apart.

70
00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:12.000
<v Speaker 1>This wasn't luck, folks, It was the culmination of a system.

71
00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:15.919
<v Speaker 1>The SAS raided in April the munthcipatient surveillance, the decision

72
00:04:15.960 --> 00:04:17.680
<v Speaker 1>by a small Delta team on the ground and call

73
00:04:17.759 --> 00:04:20.759
<v Speaker 1>for bombs instead of risking another escape. The pilots who

74
00:04:20.759 --> 00:04:22.879
<v Speaker 1>put two precision weapons on a single house in a

75
00:04:22.920 --> 00:04:26.360
<v Speaker 1>palm grove. The intelligence analysts who connected the shape to

76
00:04:26.399 --> 00:04:32.079
<v Speaker 1>the target, so cars death and end the war. AQI mutated,

77
00:04:32.519 --> 00:04:38.360
<v Speaker 1>ISI rose eventually Isis, but that June evening removed the

78
00:04:38.360 --> 00:04:41.360
<v Speaker 1>most effective, most stadistic operation and leader of the enemy

79
00:04:41.399 --> 00:04:43.600
<v Speaker 1>had the man who had turned bed he hadding videos

80
00:04:43.639 --> 00:04:47.160
<v Speaker 1>into a recruiting tool. The operators who made it happen

81
00:04:47.199 --> 00:04:49.519
<v Speaker 1>didn't get parades. Most of them still don't talk about it.

82
00:04:50.639 --> 00:04:52.920
<v Speaker 1>That's how things work. A small team in the trees

83
00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:59.079
<v Speaker 1>or radio called two jets. That's the story. Find, fix, finish,

84
00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:03.079
<v Speaker 1>and do it again the next night. Thanks for listening, everybody,