3/4: Twenty years later, lessons learned in the Baghdad surrender: 3/4: Consequences: An Intelligence Officer's War. by David Grantham (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2023
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
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1932 Baghdad
3/4: Twenty years later, lessons learned in the Baghdad surrender:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/lessons-of-the-iraq-war-blundering-into-baghdad-hal-brands
3/4: 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 Baxter. This is the new John Baxter show. |
| 0:11.1 | CBS Audio Network David Grand Thames book is |
| 0:13.8 | consequence that intelligence officers wore. He not only survived |
| 0:17.4 | magram airbase where i.e.d. and murdered had killed |
| 0:22.3 | his predecessor but he survived Iraq, Sarcawi. |
| 0:26.7 | David, did you know Sarcawi's reputation when you arrived? |
| 0:31.2 | Did you believe it? Did everybody understand? |
| 0:33.7 | He was murdered times 10 and incorporated and he was working |
| 0:37.2 | intimately with the Iraqi people. Did you know that? |
| 0:42.6 | When we got there we knew that. When I first arrived in theater in |
| 0:47.2 | January 2006 I knew of him and the really the turning point. |
| 0:53.0 | I mentioned this in the book was the bombing of the golden |
| 0:57.3 | dome mosque in Iraq. It was a shea holy site very renowned in |
| 1:04.3 | the shea side of Islam and when they bombed that mosque |
| 1:11.5 | when I say they later was known to be Sarcawi who was a |
| 1:15.2 | Sunni al-Qaeda. That was a turning point and I saw that that was in |
| 1:20.8 | February about four weeks later six weeks later I am in |
| 1:26.2 | Iraq at Camp Buka were now very well aware of who he is |
| 1:30.6 | and and his bloodthirsty approach to war. So we knew at that point that |
| 1:40.0 | this was going to be a very very significant fight against him |
| 1:45.2 | not only because he was attacking American forces but but but because he |
| 1:49.3 | was really feeling a burgeoning civil war between the Sunni |
... |
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