Jocko Podcast - The Unravelling 6: Trying to Win

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

With many political and military leaders pronouncing the Iraq War a failure, Jocko prepares to lead his SEAL Task Unit into a battle that will change the course of the conflict.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Unravelling Podcast, episode six, with Daryl Cooper and me, Jocko Willink. So I'm coming home, leaving this place of turmoil and chaos that has escalated throughout my deployment in 2003, 2004. And on my way home, actually, it was before I left, my commanding officer, who I've referenced, to Bitt, who I was friends with. You know, he told me that his last mission as the commander of SEAL Team 7 was going to be to make me the Admiral's aide. And the reason that he wanted to do was a good reason, primarily because I was a platoon commander that was coming off the battlefield in Iraq.

There was for a six-month deployment. And so I was sort of the most combat experienced lieutenant in the Navy that was available for that type of bill. So it was a good move. You know, let's get the boss. Let's get the admiral. Some guys that are a guy that's fresh off the battlefield that's done a bunch of missions that can talk to him and explain to him what's happening and give him the support that he needs. And it was, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a move that he wanted to take care of me too. Because

when you're the admiral's aid, you know, you develop a relationship with the admiral and you meet every single other seal admiral and every single seal captain and every single seal commander. And so, you know, you build a bunch of really good relationships. You get to know people in the community and you get to see what the community's like. So, so, so, um, you know, you build a bunch of, I imagine there was an element of, yeah, he wants to help you out in your career, but also next time you go back to Iraq, he wants you in charge more than a platoon. Yeah, I'd say maybe, but I don't think that was really what it was. I think he really just, number one, primarily he wanted to get me. You know, I'm a guy, and, you know, I've sent you some things that we're not going to share the kind of, I'm a direct, I will not hold back, right?

I mean, if there's something that's happening that needs to change, I will state my opinion. I'll do it tactfully. And if you listen to me, that's great. And if you don't listen to me, I might not be so tactful. You know, I'm going to, I think, you know, you ever heard that cheesy expression speaks truth to power? Sure. It's a cheesy expression, right? Yeah, I have the receipts.

You do do that. No, he wrote that in my evaluation, like speaks truth to power, right? Because I would tell him with something if I didn't like something that he was doing. And, you know, we had a good relation that wasn't ever disrespectful about it. You know, we'd have good conversations. And sometimes he'd tell me to shut up. And I'd say, Roger, that's her. And that's the way it is.

But I would, I would explain to him my viewpoint. Treating him with enough respect to assume he wants the truth. Yeah. And so he knew I would do that with the admiral. And so he gets me that job. So I get home and take over as the Admiral's aide. and let's see so I get home in April

it's like probably mid to late April when I get home I take over the job and almost immediately after I take over the job a guy by the name of Brian Alette who was a seal was killed on May 29th 2004 in Afghanistan

and so one of my first jobs as the admiral's aid was to get the admiral out to Brian Alet's funeral and so I knew I knew Brian Alet and actually at this point there had been Brian was I think the fifth seal killed so Neil Roberts Fifi was the first seal killed in in March of 02 and I knew Neil was at seal team two with Neil and then Matt Boucho was the second seal killed also in Afghanistan and that was also in March of 02 and it was I was a team one with him so I was like two for two or O for two depending on how you want to look at it and then Tom Retzer and and Dave Tapper were were also were also killed they were killed in 03 so and I knew those guys, but I didn't know them as well as I knew Neil Robertson and Matt Bouguroy,

only because I had been at a team with those guys. And I hadn't been at a team with Retser or Tapper, but I knew them just from being around. And I remember my parents asking me, you know, every time a seal would get killed, they'd say, did you know him? And I'd say, yes. And it was very strange that, well, Then I knew Brian Alet as well. And I had gone, he was a couple Bud's classes ahead of me.

And so I knew him from that. And then we went through a comms, like a two-month comm school together. And we hung out a bunch during that. And he was just a straight up, you know, stereotypical New Englander from Needham, Massachusetts. And, you know, he had great accent and a great attitude. and he was, you know, boisterous and funny and all those things. And when he got killed, so I knew him. And when he got killed, you know, I'm the Admiral's aide, and we're going.

You know, we're going to the funeral. And he had his mom, his dad, he had six brothers. I think he was six brothers and a sister. And they were lined up, like to shake hands with people. And, you know, it was like you were looking at just clones, like his dad looked like Brian, or Brian looked like his dad,

and then all the brothers looked the same. You see him lined up and... Almost got their own platoon. Yeah, he almost got his own platoon, and you just could feel the just absolute, you know, heartbreak. And I hadn't been to any other, you know, any other funerals like that. So that was kind of my welcome aboard to working with the Admiral was

Helping him supporting him as he was seen off you know the the The first seal that he was gonna lose under his command you know as as the Admiral So there was a couple things too that that as we went forward there was another Prisoner abuse scandal that happened yeah and it was with seals actually and what happened was seals had taken pictures and uh these some one of the guys in the platoon posted them on some kind of photo sharing site and the photo sharing site wasn't protected or what got hacked or whatever whatever happened happened but all of a sudden these pictures became public and this is what this

is when I thought about it was a good job for my commanding officer to have put me as the admiral's aid because when this unfolded there was a lot of these pictures that they actually, if you interpreted them correctly, then they actually made sense. And so there were several, multiple times where, you know, I would be looking at these pictures that the public was seeing and they looked awful. And my boss, the admiral, had to answer to, you know, the secretary of the Navy, the chief of naval operations.

And I was able to explain to them exactly what's going on in these pictures. So a couple examples are, One of them is, you know, a seal holding a guy, holding, you know, an Iraqi guy by the jaw. And, you know, kind of around the throat, around the jaw. And he's got his pistol pointed at the guy's head. And, you know, my boss says, what's going on here? Well, you know, this is horrible. And I said, here's what's going on, sir.

These insurgents do not want to have their pictures taken by us. So they won't look at the camera. They'll look away. So a lot of times you've got to hold their head in position so that someone can take a picture. And in order to take a picture, you've got to have lighting. And the quickest available light that we all use is our pistol. The lights on a pistol, you pull it out, you illuminate the guy. That's what's going on in this picture.

Okay, got it. Next picture. Guy with a sandbag on his head, blood dripping out of the sandbag. And, you know, okay, what's going on in this picture? Sir, in this picture, you've got a insurgent that was probably capital. four minutes or 10 minutes before this picture was taken he resisted that's what these insurgents do they resist according to the rules of engagement you can kill them when they resist and what we try not to do is kill people if we don't have to so

this guy was probably hit with a couple muzzle strikes gotten control you know they got him under control they put a bag over his head and he's bleeding from his nose or from his whatever his forehead from getting hit with a muzzle That's what the blood is. This is actually, this picture actually demonstrates the restraint that SEALs show on target because they didn't shoot and kill this guy. So those are the kind of questions that I was, you know, able to answer. But nonetheless, you know, those pictures without context, they just look bad. And those added to, you know, they added to the Abu Ghraib photos.

They weren't as bad, but they weren't good either. What was your impression of how Admiral McGuire responded to it? I mean, he responded to it like a guy who was a seal or not, you know, politician. No, he was great. He was great. He was, you know, listened to what I had to say. He, you know, we had discussions about it. I heard him explain up the chain of command.

You know, he was a very, you know, he's a great guy. And he understood, you know, when I explained it to him, he's like, okay, you know, he's a seal. He understood what I was talking about it. And he was able to articulate it even better than me to his boss. I watched one of his congressional hearings when he was briefly the acting DNI, and he just seemed like a straight shooting guy, just a direct. And he's a guy that, Bill, he's a great relationship builder because he's a nice guy. You know, he's a guy that always cared about the seal platoons.

You know, he always cared about the sales. Always the, one of the biggest lessons I learned from him is he's going to, his mission was to take care of the seal platoons. And there's plenty of people in the military and civilian sector where they lose sight of what it is that they're actually supposed to be doing as a leader. And what he was trying to do was take care of seal platoons, which is exactly what he should have been doing and what we needed him to do. What did that mean? It means instead of... In the two years you were there. It means that instead of trying to look out for, you know, some...

In trying to look out, instead of trying to look out for the... officer community and how it's going to compete against the fleet. It's like, no, how does this help a seal platoon? Instead of looking at what about the acquisitions that are going to take place in the next four years, can we get more money here or there? Hey, does it help a seal platoon? You know, he was constant. And if it helped the seal platoon to get that acquisition in four years or to build this officer structure a certain way, he would do it. If it wasn't going to help the seal platoons, then he wasn't going to expend our resources on it. Because there's all kinds of things you can expend resources on, you know, like, and he would look at it and say, how can this help a seal platoon?

And by doing that, that's what we do. That's what the SEAL teams is. Seal teams boils down to a seal platoon. And the better supported they are, the better they can accomplish their mission. I think a lot of people have a misapprehension. They think of like a naval officer and it's like a guy with a cigar on the bridge of a ship. You're talking about an admiral. That's just like a CEO.

Yeah. I mean, you're running a gigantic organization. Yep. Huge amounts of money and personnel. I mean. Yeah. And if you think that because you're a Navy SEAL Admiral that you're out in the field with a machine gun, that's also not a good impression because that's not what's happening. And much of what the Admiral was focused on was what's going to happen in eight years.

You know, where are we going to be in 12 years? Where is our community going to be in three years? You know, he obviously is dealing with stuff that's happening ongoing as well. But in that position, you actually, you train equip and then send on deployment, the troops, right? You man, train and equip, and then they go on deployment. They're not working for the admiral when they're overseas. You're working for some, you know, special operations task force that's overseas, or you're getting chopped over to some conventional units.

So he's not doing that. He's manned, trained, and equipped. That was his mission, and he did it great. And, you know, I was very lucky to have that job and then to work for a guy. that was you know very willing to try and teach me as much as he could let me sit in every meeting you know I mean I sat in meetings that you know the characters that that we're talking about you know sitting in meetings with Rumsfeld sitting sitting sitting in me like I've been sitting in sitting in those meetings you know as the not

even close I was the most junior guy by you know by five ranks and and just sit there you know sit there in the back and and listen and Those were, that was an awesome learning experience. And those are things that gave me a much better understanding when I went to Ramadi, had a much better understanding of how these civilians interacted with our military. So, we're very lucky to learn a lot from that. I want to hear about that. I mean, expand on that a little bit.

What do you mean? Well, you know, when you're at the building, as they call it, which is what the military folks call the Pentagon, they call it the building. When you're in there, you start to understand the interoperability and the chain of command and the politics that go on. Just broadens your scope. Yeah, you just broadens your scope. You know, when you're out there, you know, when I was a platoon commander, you know, my chain of command, you know, kind of stopped at my boss, maybe the siege of soda commander. So my boss's boss is like, okay. I can kind of grasp what's going on there.

Then once you see the other end, the most senior, you know, when you're sitting in a room with the, we know, the Secretary of Defense, you're starting to see the top down. And you start to see where, what kind of things are being thought about at that level. And the other thing was, and this was purposeful, you know, when I came back,

I was a guy fresh off the battlefield. So I was a kind of a little bit of a zoo animal, right, for the admiral. And not just for the admiral. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but he had the opportunity to take a guy because, you know, going to brief, you know, the, the, whatever level of senior leadership you want to talk about, I've briefed him. Other than the president, I never briefed the president. But everyone else, like I sat in the room and briefed those people and explained to them what was going on in Baghdad and what it seemed like to me and what we did and what our mission was.

And there were some of those meetings that, you know, I'd walk away from those meetings feeling not too excited about some of the attitudes and some of the questions that I'd be asked. There were some, so it was good. It was good for me to see that. It was good for me to have the opportunity to do that. And I ended up doing it again, you know, years later when I got back from Ramadi. But I was very, I got a great education from that job. And he had an attitude of, you know, not only getting me educated, but using me to educate other people in the chain of command, you know,

about what we were doing and what was going on over there. So, you know, the job is a, I think I was there for 13 months. I was, like, getting ready to transfer and go be a task unit commander at SEAL Team 3. And, you know, the new guy shows up. And, you know, he's another, you know, junior or another lieutenant. And he, I forget where he was coming from. Same thing.

You know, he had combat experience coming back off the battlefield. And he was taken over from me and a really great guy. And, you know, he says to me, he says to me, how does the Admiral Morat, how does the Admiral react if you make a mistake? And I looked at him, I said, I don't know. Because I really hadn't dropped the ball, luckily. And he just laughed and said, oh, man.

So as we're completing the turnover, I think it's like literally the day that I say, you know, you got it. I'm out of here. As this is unfolding, there's an operation that was taking place in Afghanistan. And right as we're wrapping up this turnover, you know, we have Operation Red Wings happened.

And, you know, we got guys on the ground. The QRF comes in on the helicopter. The helicopter, you know, gets hit, goes down we lose we lose 11 seals eight night stalkers on the aircraft as well and yeah like just just just absolutely horrible and you know I was I was there right as this was happening like right as I was leaving we were getting reports that they were getting radio they were getting radio transmission it was Marcus was Marcus was Marcus LaTrell like I was

Hearing you know I'm sitting in the room where they're telling the admiral Hey we've got we've got radio traffic We think we we think one of the guys might be alive And um And I To be honest with you I was thinking to myself You know he'd been like a day or two

And I'm thinking yeah well Obviously some enemy is captured his radio And they're doing whatever to To make us think a guy still alive and by the grace of God I mean Marcus, you know, survived that and made it out and that was like right

that was right as I turned over and I remember the poor guy that took over for me as the aid, you know, it's kind of like the first major thing I did was one funeral. Well, his first major thing was just a complete the biggest disaster. It's a nightmare. And

and then you couple that with the fact that at that So now I'm checking into SEAL Team 3 to take over as a task unit commander and one of the first things that we did as a task unit was go to the memorial service for these guys over in Coronado and you know it was just a total It was crazy to it was crazy to go to that it was a you know I Obviously, we are all now completely focused. That was in Afghanistan. We weren't really sure we were going, but we still,

the writing on the wall, it looked like we were going to Iraq, you know, that most likely, well, either Iraq or some, like some non-com deployment to Paycom or something like that, but it looked like we would be going to Iraq, but definitely the way to, that was a way to start a training cycle with task unit bruiser that, was very we were focused

you know we were focused and like you know you talk about not watching videos well like our we watched videos like our training cadre would show us videos of you know Mujahideen fighters going through our brother seals gear

and you know it's it was sickenic and it's one of those things that I think mentally really got us you know focused on what we had to do not that We weren't focused anyways, but trust me, that ups the game. When did you find out what your mission would be? So we formed up, we started our workup.

And once we started our work up, there was actually some debate over who, what task unit was going to go to Iraq. And the debate was some guys hadn't been to Iraq yet. And some guys had been to Iraq. There was one task unit that had not been to Iraq. And they said, okay, those guys are, they needed two task units in Iraq. They took one of them and said, you guys didn't go last time. You guys are going this time.

So now there was two task units left that we needed to decide which one of these two task units would go to Iraq. We, my commanding officer actually called us back and said, okay, called me. I had to go back for a meeting and said, listen, here's the courses of action. We're thinking about one of them is we kind of split up the task unit. We take guys that haven't been to Iraq before we build a new task unit and those guys go to Iraq. And then the other guys that have been to Iraq already can just go to, you know, one of these non-combat deployments to Paycom to the Pacific. And or we just go and see who performs better and whoever performs better goes to Iraq. And, you know, obviously my immediate thought was, yeah, whoever performs better, we go.

And if my task unit doesn't perform better than the other task unit, we don't deserve to Iraq and we don't deserve to Iraq. and let them go. You know, that's may the best man win. The other task unit commander was more like, hey, maybe it's the fairest thing to mix up the task units. I went back and went back out to the desert because we were in the middle of training.

And I told my guys what the options were. And I told them what I thought. And they were like, we're sticking together, of course. So we pushed back to just stick together. And the commanding officer said, Roger that, best, whichever task unit is, you know, performs best. we'll send him to Iraq.

And so we did, we performed really well. And the other option was a non-combat. It was a non-combat to deployments. So I imagine both those task units are competing hard. Yeah, it's definitely a hardcore competition. Every seal wants to go to war. Well, a solid 90% of seals want to go to war. By 06, every seal wants to go to war.

Yeah, and that's the interesting thing. So we're forming this up as this is 05, and you still have, just by the nature of that very decision, you have some seals that hadn't been to Iraq yet. In fact, a lot of seals hadn't been to Iraq yet, you know? So I told you when I was deploying with the Navy, I was doing independent deployments, supporting SWIC and SEAL operations,

fighting Islamic insurgents down in the Philippines. A lot of people don't know this. There's a lot of stuff going on all over the world. And those deployments, those, you know, nothing against those deployments. Those are necessary deployments. They're doing good work, as you just said. But, you know, doing what those guys were doing there, which again, outstanding, you know, thank you.

Necessary and important missions for freedom and democracy. But we all wanted to go to Iraq. We wanted to do more and as much as we possibly could. So we wanted to go to Iraq. So, yep, we get to Iraq. I actually did a pre-deployment. So we do our workup. We get selected to go to Iraq.

we go on a pre-deployment site survey PDSS and when I go over we go to Baghdad I meet the task unit commander that's over there in Baghdad they're doing almost the exact same thing that I did on my first deployment which was direct action missions

they were the big difference was they were working with partner force you know I didn't do any partner force with Iraqi soldiers in 03 These guys are doing everything with these highly trained Iraqi soldiers called the ICTF. So they're running operations. They're doing direct action. They're capturing bad guys. I went over there, went on a couple missions with them.

You know, it's straightforward. I'm like, yeah, we got this. This is good to go. They had good assets. They had, you know, it was nice. They had a ton of Iraqi soldiers. So you had a pretty good footprint to get out there. Look solid. So that was probably, you know, whatever a month before deployment. So I come back kind of give everyone the gouge

So what we're doing you know what we've been training for We're going to Baghdad. We're going to work with this part and the force we're doing direct action missions so cool High five everyone's pumped everyone's psyched and everyone goes on leave pre-deployment leave and I didn't go on leave but I'm going to work and one day my boss comes in and says hey There might be a change and I say This is interesting. Ramadi had backpedal a little bit. Ramadi had been, it was now the new hotbed.

Like I, it had been the new hotbed since Fallujah ended. When the Fallujah, um, take down was over the big Marine Corps. November 04. When, when that was over,

it took about another month, wherever everyone said, oof, okay, I guess it's Ramadi now. So Ramadi started heating up and the intel reports and the after actions reports and the incident reports. reports were in the SIGAN reports. They were all now looking at Ramadi.

So the capital of Anbar province. The capital of Anbar province. So now at some point, I put on the task unit bruiser door for three or four days, there was a little sign that said, you know, mayor of Ramadi or something like that. Like I was going to go be the mayor of Ramadi. I wanted to go to Ramadi.

But that was early. It was early on. And then it was a joke that lasted five minutes and then it didn't talk about it. matter of fact it was Laif who reminded me of that later like do you remember saying that you were going to be the mayor of Vermont and I was like oh yeah yeah we had a little sign up or whatever so so now what it happened was there was a they wanted to align there was so now there's two seal teams in Iraq and they wanted to align geographically more geographically aligned the two seal teams that are in Iraq and that meant the west of Iraq

So Fallujah, Habanilla, Ramadi would be West Coast seals and then like Baghdad and wherever else the eastern Iraq was going to be a different seal team. So the only switch that it took to make that happen was Ramadi. That was the only one. That was for some reason, however it got sorted out before you had Ramadi. And that was that was an East Coast seal team. and the other Fallujah and Havaniya were West Coast, I think. But anyways, I don't remember it 100%, but I know that there was, Ramadi was the key component

that needed to switch. And so my boss said, hey, what would you think about instead of going to Baghdad, you went to Ramadi? And I was like, you know, I'm like, yeah, so absolutely it was my immediate thought. And was it clear at this point that this is a whole different type of mission? No. So I'm,

But I just know that there's more bad guys and there's a lot of bad shit going on there and what I want in my life is bad shit to be going on and Ramadi already had a new mayor at that point. I mean, this is the capital, not only of Anbar province. This was the capital of the caliphate. Yeah, it's supposed to be the capital of the caliphate. That's what it was what that's what was hoping to be. So I remember I utilized this request to make some deals with my boss. to get you know I said I need this this this and this I said I'll go to Ramadi I need this this and this it was like random things like I needed some like you well you may or may not know so there was some right there was some satellite internet system that we didn't have allotted to us and I was like I need that I need this other thing I need more people I need this and my boss kind of laid it out and used that as bargaining chips with the the other commander and

sorted it out and I got basically everything that I wanted and I got to go to Ramadi so so you're why the fifth fleet uh Navy lost all its in Marsat connections it might be it might be yeah like that kind of thing it was beautiful and so I I I when I said I was super excited I didn't show my cards I just was like well you know we could do it let me look at you know well let me look at what I've got let me look at what's on the ground over there let me see what I need like jaco you have a boner yeah yep yeah so I so that's what happened so I actually I don't remember if I called the guys and let them know I mean I know I know I know I called the key leaders and said hey guys we're not going to Baghdad anymore we're going to Ramadi but I don't think I even called the the e-dogs you know they were on leave man they don't care and they don't care they didn't discriminate they're kind of like me you know you asked me if I knew what the mission was going to be totally different I didn't think the mission was going to be totally different I just thought it would be more action I didn't know that we would do something completely different and you didn't know what you didn't know what what would be riding on it. Like, did you have an idea of that?

No, no. I just knew there was more bad guys there, and that's where I wanted to be. And that's where I wanted, that's where I know everyone in my task unit wanted to be. So that's where it kicks off. We, we... Were there about 30, 35 of you guys?

Yeah, there's, so there's, technically there's 36 guys in the task unit, you know, two 16 man seal platoons and headquarters element. But then, so that's the seals. And then there's another, I think my count normally in camp was around 100. So the support personnel. So radium, CB's, armory guys, supply guys.

We ended up having a couple Marines that ran radio. So we end up with about 100 guys. You know, 40 or so support, or no, sorry, 60 or so support, 40 or so seals. Something like that is generally what it looked like. Did you understand at least that this was a city that it's not quite right to say we had no presence in? But, I mean, we were, as I've heard it from some journalists and from people who were over there, you were going into a city that there were parts of it where the civilians may not have seen an American uniform in 8, 10, 12 months. Absolutely, I knew that.

And our people were basically sitting in static defense positions, occasionally running out on patrols and getting shot at the entire. entire time. I mean, this is a city where that the insurgents largely controlled. The insurgents controlled a lot of it. And when we got there, it was the 2-28. It was the Pennsylvania National Guard that was on the ground. And to say that they were sitting behind, no, they were out getting after it. And they were pushing hard. They were pushing really

hard. And they were very experienced. You know, they'd been on the ground. I think the number is 14 months. I always say 14 months. I heard it from one of them at some point. But they'd been on the ground for a long time fighting hard. Yeah. So all of us seals that have been through Navy SEAL training or whatever, these guys had way more combat experience than we had. Okay. And, you know, we knew that as soon as we got on the ground, that it was really obvious as soon as you get on the ground that this was not.

I mean, even in comparison to Baghdad, I mean, you go out of the, like, we ended up in this little, um, little Saddam vacation house, I guess is what it be. It's like a small mansion on the Afraidy's river. And you'd go out at night onto the deck and look at the city. And the city you're going to see, you're seeing explosions and you're seeing, you know, trace or fire like, you know, like a war movie. That's what it looked like. I mean, in fact, Dad, you're getting a target and you're going after them. In Ramadi, they're coming for you.

I mean, this is a city that they expect, the insurgents expect to control, and they are mounting attacks on our fortified positions. Yes, absolutely. They are mounting attacks on our fortified positions. They have maneuver elements. They have QRF. They are using combined arms. They are using communications. They are on the attack, no doubt. So you get you guys ready? Well, we show up there, and the first thing we're doing is we're turning over with the guys that are there, and they're giving us a good, solid turnover of what they've been doing, how they've been doing it. They had been continuing to focus on Doing trying to do direct action missions working with some of the Iraqi soldiers That's what they had kind of been focused on They had been trying to still do unilateral operations

Meaning operations where it's just seals and they were getting shut down on that Took me three minutes to decide okay. Well, we're not going to try and do any unilateral operations because This was a time of by with and through right so the the the the The attitude head shifted that what we're trying to do is get the Iraqis able to handle security in their own country. So if you go on a mission, you're taking Iraqis with you. So that's... Where were these Iraqis coming from at the beginning? In the beginning, they were, they were Army soldiers?

But I mean, were they... Iraqi army soldiers from the area? No, almost all Shia. Okay. Yeah. Vast majority Shia. Occasional Sunni. Some Kurds.

But vast majority... I mean, the Sunnis were in a position by this point in large parts of the country where if they showed up to a recruiting station, their family's dead. If they show up to a polling station to vote in one of these elections in 2005, they're dead. If you run for office, you're dead. I mean, AQI had consolidated control over the, in the O5 election, I think there was 2% Sunni turnout. I mean, people just couldn't do it. You couldn't show up to work for the police. You couldn't be seen speaking to an American.

Right. And there were a lot of people on the political side by this point who were like, this is over. You know, Ramadi is lost, Anbar is lost, and there is nothing we can do short of turn in that place into a parking lot to get it back. I remember there was, I remember because it was on September 11th, and it was the fifth anniversary of September 11th, 2006, a report that had been going around generated by the head of intelligence for the Marine Corps. I'm sure you remember it. Colonel Peter Devlin. And this is the fifth anniversary of September 11th. And, you know, the 10th anniversary, 15th anniversary.

We always have, like, this is going to be kind of the articles that come out in the Washington Post and places like that, which is where this is kind of setting the conditions. Where are we, right? And Tom Ricks put out, he didn't have, he couldn't publish a report. It was classified, but he put up part of it. It said, the chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report, concluding that the prospects for securing that country's Western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there,

said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents. One army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, we haven't been defeated militarily, but we have been defeated politically, and that's where wars are won and lost. Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer who has read the report.

Another person familiar with the report said that it describes Anbar as beyond repair. A third said that it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar. These people said he reported that military operations are at a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases. That's where you guys are going. And you aren't being given a mission to go get us through the next six months. We've had a strategic shift where some of the people who are arguing for a more aggressive policy to actually try to turn things around are being given an opportunity to show that they can do it.

Yeah, and that was some of the meetings that I was in in the building when I was an Admiral's aide. That's where I started hearing talk. and and I started seeing, I started seeing two sides of the story and two opposing viewpoints of what was happening. There was a side that was trying to figure out how to win and there was a side that was trying to figure out how not to lose. And, you know, by saying trying to figure out how not to lose,

it's like how to get out of there, how to shut this thing down, how do we walk how do we get out of this without just you know without egg on our face and the other side of saying how are we going to win and and there was surprisingly there was military and civilian people on both sides of that of those two divergent opinions of how we should move forward the obvious one is president bush president bush wanted to win he wanted to win and And you could sense that, you knew that. You actually knew that he wanted to win. You also could sense that there were people on civilian and military side that believed that report right there, which was we cannot win this thing. It's a quagmire. Not just Ramadi, we're talking Iraq. Ramadi was the exclamation point, was the example of why we cannot, this is impossible.

This isn't going to work. That's that's the way it is. So you definitely, I definitely heard both sides of that, of, of, of those opinions sitting in the Pentagon in meetings as a junior guy sit in the back of a room hearing discussions between high level people. And yeah, so when we got out there, you know, we definitely knew that it was. who's going to be bad. And for the most part, you know, what SEALs are looking at is like, you know, okay,

how are we going to win? You know, our opinion is how are we going to win? And it's even tighter than that. It's how are we going to win tonight? How are we going to win? What are we going to do today to make an impact to make a difference? And unfortunately, what that can lead to. And it's not just SEALs that you talk about any, you know, any company and below

size element, you know, whether it's a task, you know, any small unit led by an 03 or or below a platoon. They're looking at like, okay, what do I do today? How can I improve today and tomorrow? What can I do to fix this immediate problem? That's what you're looking at. So when we show up there, there's, you can, you immediately know, I mean, there's, there's memorial services almost every day.

And we're going, you know, we almost immediately, we're going to memorial services for soldiers and Marines that are being killed. The, you know, there's, like I said, there's more, there's more, there's more, You know, we're getting mortared on base and That's a pretty regular occurrence. There's fire fights out in the city all the time and you know when you were in Baghdad Like in Baghdad first of all Baghdad's huge I mean it's huge geographically. It's more like LA right Ramadi's a little tiny city It's not a big place so when there's a firefight going on you and you're in an elevated position if there's a firefight going on in Ramada you can see it like you can see any tracer you can you're gonna be able to see it from an elevated position so

So that means anytime you get on a rooftop at nighttime, you can see gunfire going on. Especially when we first got there, there was a lot. It seemed like the enemy was fighting during the night a little bit more. They started to adjust their tactics, I think, could fight more during the day, and then we adjusted our tactics to fight during the day as well. But we get there. You started your deployment in March, right? When did you get to Ramadi?

Well, I got We started in April and went right to Right to Ramadi and I never left And started prepping for I believe the operation began in earnest in June You know My goal was to start doing operations As soon as we got there and we did

Yeah, it was like As soon as Laif showed up and Stoner It was like Strapping on boys And you know I had I had told both those guys The two platoon commanders that worked for me I will get, my goal is to, you know, make you quit, get you so much combat that you come to me and say,

Jocko, I can't take anymore. And they said bring it. And they said bring it. Were you personally, like, are you working for Colonel McFarland? I'm working for, so when I get there, it's Colonel Gronsky, who was the 228 commander. And he was, so I'm working for the special operations chain of command, which means, you know, there's my boss, who's an 05 commander of SEAL team. three and he's working for the Sieges-Sona of commander who's a colonel in charge of all the special operations in the AO. So that's my actual chain of command. My relationship chain

of command, which I have a relationship obviously my boss, but I made a relationship with the conventional commanders because it's their battle space and I want to help them win. That's my goal. I mean, Ramadi's kind of spoken of as a pretty, as an important battle in showing, I mean, very innovative in how special operations forces and conventional forces work together in a way that hadn't really been achieved with that level of success before. Relationships and humility because, you know, when you roll in and you're going to, going and you're seeing these kids getting killed, you are going to think, okay, what can I do to help? And the last thing you're thinking of is, hey, you know, you guys should.

should listen to me you're like what can I do to help you guys in any way what what can we do and that was the attitude that I had um to to try and move forward and try and help the situation on the ground now a few episodes ago we talked about this um this beautiful mind wall that I had built with all these targets on it these link diagrams so when I got to Ramadi I there was a another seal element in Ramadi and they were they they were set up there but they they had a like a small command center there and they had guys working out of other areas and I knew the I knew the commander he was a friend of mine and so he had been in Ramadi for a while and I went down and you know like you know linked up with him and was just you know you know we were

friends you know he was telling me what they've been doing And I was, you know, he was giving me like a brief of what was happening, what to watch out for all standard kind of turnover stuff. And his Intel officer was actually the same Intel officer that I had had at Seal Team 7. You know, it was like, awesome. So, and she was a female. And so, you know, I saw her and we started talking and she started kind of going through, you know, what they'd been doing. And then she says, well, why don't you come and, you know, come to the Intel shop and I'll show you what we're doing. And so I walk into the Intel shop and.

On the wall is this big giant link diagram and it was basically the same thing that I had left you know two years earlier in 04 Same big giant group of people some little red lines through them some little green lines through them Meaning they've been capture killed and I thought to myself this is not a good sign Because it's been two years and even though there's some red lines and green lines and green lines here this this thing hasn't gotten any smaller and that was my wake-up call that we were gonna lose like what we were doing is like a hackworth situation for me where you know I'm looking at this going this is what hackworth was thinking when he's coming to Vietnam and he sees the same battles being fought over and over again with nothing

changing. So I was looking at this going, wait a second, it's been two years, and I'm just looking at a big link diagram that has the same number of people on it as it was, as it was when I left. This is not a good sign. I went back to my, to my tactile operation center. I pulled up the internet, and I downloaded the new, brand new, I didn't even think it was out yet. It was a draft version of the counterinsurgency manual that had just been written by Petraeus and all his crew. He's got a whole crew of really, the whole crew, McMaster, this whole crew of guys that had written this, this FM3 Tech 24. I downloaded it and read it, sat there and read it.

And I just thought, okay, how can we change what we're doing? because this is not, this is what we're doing is not working. This is a different situation than it was when I left. This is an insurgency. So you realize it's going to take more than kicking people's asses to win this thing. This is when I realized that we were in a counterinsurgency, that we needed to fight a counterinsurgency.

And that's what I started doing. Colonel McFarland knew that. So Colonel McFarland had come from Talafar. So shortly after we got there, It was time for the 228 to go home, Colonel Gronsky and all those brave souls from the National Guard and their adjacent units. Awesome guys. And they gave us an incredible turnover. You know, they, they did great.

They were just amazing. They were amazing soldiers. I think most people can't even wrap their head around now. When they think National Guard, they think like weekend stints and a little bit of college money. The idea that they're a National Guard, people holding the line in Ramadi for however long. 13, 14 months is out of control. Yep. And total professionals.

And saved our lives. Like they saved our lives with the information they gave us, with the lessons that they taught us, you know, our guys were like listening. Incredible. Yeah. It's like, and props to my guys, you know,

like all my guys. We're not just saying, ah, we're seals. You know what we're doing. No, there was none of that. It was, hey, what do you guys think of this? You know, what do you think of that? How do you, how would you do this?

What do you think? think of this route like we're ready to listen but it was time for them to go home they've been there for 14 months so now the 1-1-A-D comes in right the 1-1-A-d armored division comes in colonel shan McFarland at the time now he's a general retired but he really first so he'd come from tallifar and up in Talafar he had relieved McMaster so McMaster had run the the the counterinsurgency model. The C's Clearhold and build, the go out into the neighborhoods form relationships.

He'd run that model in Talfour and it worked. It worked so well that by the time McFarland got there, they didn't need a brigade up there anymore. All they needed was a battalion. And so again, I might be a little bit off on these, but, you know, so they said, okay, you're going to leave a battalion up there

to handle TalaFar because it's all but good. Which was a nasty place. Which was a nasty place. And now it's all but tame. It's all but peaceful. And McFarlane comes down and is, like, he understands the plan that needs to be executed. He's going to mimic what happened up in Talfar because he got the good turnover. And McFarland is just a smart, open-minded, humble guy that would look at problems and come up with an idea.

And if someone gave him a better idea, he'd say that's a better idea. And let's do that instead. And so he had that attitude coming down. And that's why, you know, in the earlier episodes, when you're talking about, you know, Bremer and there's nothing that makes me sicker than ego's driving decisions. And people that don't listen. It's just, it's the worst possible thing. You know, well, that's why I always say when we'd fire a SEAL leader later on in my career,

when I was running seal training for advanced. You know for seal platoons and seal task units when we would fire a seal leader the thing that we would fire the seal leader for is because you would have a big ego and was arrogant and wouldn't listen to people because that right there is what gets people killed when you don't listen And so McFarland was smart and looked at what McMaster done and said that looked like it worked to me and now you won't we'll go do it down in Ramadi and this is where we get to the point with what you were were talking about where people were saying this isn't going to work. Hey, it might have worked in Talafar, but this is different. This is Ramadi. They've had years to consolidate this place. This is going to be, it's not going to work. There were high level people who thought that not only was, were we going to fail, but we were going to go in there and get a bunch of our guys killed

for nothing. No doubt. No doubt. And Colonel McFarland had a different attitude, which is like, Okay, well, we're going to try and win. And he, I don't, you know, I wouldn't say that he looked at it. Here's our exact plan that we're going to execute. And I can, I wish I could think of all the times. I saw that guy pivot and change his mind and make an adjustment and, and, and take input from his battalion commanders or take input from a company commander out there in the field and talk to him and say, what do you need? And the guy'd say, I'd say, I'd say, that sounds like a good idea. And he'd execute on it.

I mean, he had that kind of mind, but the mind was. I mean the interrupt. The mind was we're going to try and we're going to try and stabilize Romani. When is it ready first take over? When did this happen? You got there in April. I'd have to.

It was about three weeks to a month then. So you got there. Was there a shift that came down all the way to the troop level that people realized like, okay, we're not, we're going to start, we're going to take this city? Well, so there were some units that stayed. So the first of the 506 was, there and they had been scrapping it out.

The 3-8 Marines were there in downtown. They'd been scrapping out. The first of 5-0-06 was over on Easter-O-Madi. They'd been scrapping out. Those guys had been just in a dog fight. But yeah, it took a little bit of time to come up with it. Like, okay, hey, we understand what we're going to do? What is this actually going to look like?

And so it wasn't a shock to anybody. No one was like, wait, what's happening right now? No, it was like, hey, this is what we're going to do. We're going to start putting some combat. that outposts in and throughout Ramadi. I think a lot of people have, you know, from the outside have this. It's really easy to get this idea that the U.S. military is just so advanced and everything is in place that once we decide we're going to take a city, it's like, all right, reach into

the, reach into the file, pull out, plan two alpha, and now execute. We had to, you know, think about a city with half a million people in it that's been in control of the enemy for maybe up to two years. And now you've got to go figure out how to take that city. I mean, that is a vast undertaking and a complicated. It's not just military in nature. Okay, so let me, let me go into a little bit more detail on this. So we did know, and as soon as I got there, you know, I knew that Ramadi was important,

but when I got there, I realized that it was a strategic, it was a strategic, decisive element of this war. And we needed to win. So what did that look like? When we showed up there, this was going to be. a this was going to be a Fallujah style kinetic push through the city of Vermont.

That's what was going to happen. And we were going to do it during the, kind of during the turnover between the 228 and the 11 AD. So we have double the forces that we need. We're going to, and for me, I'm like, awesome. Hey, awesome. We're going to. We're going to, we're to go they guys get ready we're getting ready to we're getting ready to smash this city we're getting ready to do a philuja you know it's going to be a nasty two months get ready you know that's what that's what everyone was thinking okay well in this time frame we'd have to check the notes on this one

but maliki takes over yes as prime minister do you have the dates on that do you know when that was april 22nd is right when you chopped in so he takes over we're planning this big kinetic smash and he comes out and says no we're not doing it that way and this was a very politically savvy move politically savvy move because what it would have looked like had we done it that way it would have been the Shia government going out and destroying a Sunni city and killing a bunch of Sunnis and he didn't want to do that he was smart And so he said, listen, you need to secure Ramadi. You need to do it with more, with a scalpel, not with a hammer.

That's what needs to happen. And, okay. So we, one of the first missions that we did was, and this is just kind of tell you where things do get political sometimes. So we, we chopped over to, and this was when it was still Colonel Gronsky in the two, 28 we chopped over to or we went over to the east side of Ramadi and we're going to do a big push like a three day push through this area called the malab district and we were you know going to go in take a bunch of air take a bunch of city blocks hold up for the night move you know stay there the next night take a bunch of more city blocks stay there until we got this whole area secure

and almost like a fallusion style type thing right so the battalion commander gets like basically shut down and gets told hey listen we're not doing any this was sort of the limitations that got put on we're not doing any we're not going to do any battalion sized operations no battalion sized operations that was the instructions and he was like okay roger that so like he put whatever it was for companies plus something like we had all the combat power we needed but we didn't you know we weren't under battalion commander or whatever So those are the kind of adjustments that got made and and but that was sort of one of the initial operations that we did But it wasn't the concerted strategy to hold it was going to be a clear and then and that was actually you know that's the The blue on blue from extreme ownership is that first big giant clearance operation So once we did that And then that's kind of when the one one ad showed up and that's when this idea said it was hey you're not doing that this we're going to do it a different way and McFarland had McFarland had the plan.

You start setting up cops around the city. Yeah, that's the plan. If only it were that easy. Yeah. I said we just let this one run. I want to hear about this. I mean, what are we at? An hour.

Are you guys going to have to wait? Check. Yeah, like I said, if only it was that easy. Stand by. You can also check. out our other podcasts. I got a podcast called Jocko podcast. I got a podcast called The Warrior Kid Podcast, and I got a podcast called Grounded.

And Daryl has a podcast, which is called Murder Made. Then you can support all these podcasts by getting some gear from either the Jocko store, jocco store.com, or from Origin, Mane.com. until next time this is jocco and darrell out