This is the Jocco Unraveling Podcast episode four with Darrell Cooper and me, Jocco Willink.

And we are about to pick up the thread of Jocco going to war.

I want to read something from Tom Rick's book, Fiasco, in the early part, from the earliest

part of the invasion.

Because I want to give people an idea of the fire you were jumping into in September, October,

2003.

So the war started in March and the conventional forces of the Iraqis and the resistance

in the cities is precisely the match for the US military that you think it is and we

burned through them.

And the third infantry division gets up into Baghdad quick, they take the airport, they

make their thunder runs through the city and the regime collapses very rapidly.

That's in March and early April.

And this passage is referring to a period now April into May.

Quote.

Baghdad was falling apart in front of the eyes of the US military with buildings being

looted and parents afraid to let their children outside.

But no one had orders to do anything about it.

Looking back several years later, Colonel Allen King, the head of civil affairs for 3ID,

spoke of April 2003 with a slow, chilled tone of horror in his voice.

I got to Baghdad and was told you've got 24 hours to come up with a phase 4 plan.

On the night of April 8, Colonel John Sterling, chief of staff of 3ID came to me and said,

I just got off the phone with the court chief of staff and asked him for the reconstruction

...