2/4: Twenty years later, lessons learned in the Baghdad surrender:2/4: Consequences: An Intelligence Officer's War. by David Grantham (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
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1932 Baghdad
2/4: Twenty years later, lessons learned in the Baghdad surrender:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/lessons-of-the-iraq-war-blundering-into-baghdad-hal-brands
2/4: Consequences: An Intelligence Officer's War. by David Grantham (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Consequences-Intelligence-Officers-David-Grantham/dp/098440631X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
We are still living in the long shadow of the Iraq War.
In 2006, David Grantham was fresh out of college and serving as a counterintelligence officer with the elite and secretive Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Iraq was veering toward civil war. The U.S. military desperately needed better on-the-ground intelligence to turn the tide. Grantham found himself in Kuwait and Afghanistan, then at Iraq’s infamous American prison, Camp Bucca. Not only was Bucca the breeding ground for the Islamic State, it was in southern Iraq, where America’s deadly fight with Iran was an open secret.
Consequences is both a riveting behind-the-scenes look at intelligence operations at the height of the Iraq war, and a charming and sobering story of one man’s journey through the pleasures and consequences that come with wartime intelligence.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelors. |
| 0:10.9 | This is the new John Bachelors show, CBS Audio Network. |
| 0:14.1 | It's a pleasure to speak to David Grantham, author, his new book is Consequences, an intelligence |
| 0:19.7 | officer's war. |
| 0:21.4 | This draws upon David's experiences in the Air Force when he was an armed federal |
| 0:26.6 | officer in civilian clothes and Afghanistan at Bugram Air Base and outside his predecessor |
| 0:33.9 | lost his life because of an IED. |
| 0:36.8 | But he's now back to assignment and the assignment takes him into, well, at the edge of Kuwait |
| 0:44.1 | and Iraq, a place called Boca, which is on the road about six hours drive from Baghdad. |
| 0:50.6 | He deploys there in conditions that are organized. |
| 0:55.6 | There's a prison at Camp Boca, but at the same time, this is the height of the murder |
| 1:01.2 | squad known as Zarkawi. |
| 1:03.8 | The height of it. |
| 1:04.8 | Zarkawi was recruiting, we know now, everywhere in the prisons, in the camps, in the terps, |
| 1:11.5 | the interpreters, on the roads. |
| 1:14.0 | Everybody driving out there was a potential recruit for Zarkawi. |
| 1:17.1 | David, you go to Camp Boca and your job is there as to work with a fellow officer, and |
| 1:22.6 | the two of you have an assignment that is not obvious to me at first. |
| 1:26.8 | And apparently it wasn't obvious to the U.S. Army when you arrived and you spent some |
| 1:32.2 | time to make it clear to us that the U.S. Army is not in sympathy with Air Force federal |
| 1:38.3 | armed officers. |
| 1:39.8 | Is that something that was because of the tension of the time, David, or is this a general |
... |
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