Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Mm-hmm

... you know, going into Fallujah, every Marine understood, hey, this is, you know, this is, uh, Zarqawi's, um, stronghold.

If we...

You know what I mean? They, th- there were heightened expectations of what taking Fallujah would mean.

I left Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi and worked for probably 10, 12 days in Fallujah, just getting to know, kind of getting that feel for everything going on, understanding that we had a date with Destiny coming up.

We didn't know when, but we knew sooner or later that we were going to have to go in and chase Zarqawi and his team out of there.

So Zarqawi was obviously the Al-Qaeda leader inspired and Al-Qaeda-associated leader of much of the resistance in Al-Anbar province, which was, you know, a pretty tough neighborhood having both Ramadi and Fallujah and a number of other really, really tough little smaller cities that are involved.

Anyway, long story short, my first day, myself and Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Shea, who was my communications officer and really so much more than that.

He was one of the one of the inspirational leaders and just a mountain of a man, a football player from the U.S. Air Force Academy that came into the Marine Corps, which is rare.

But our ability to mobilize the tribal support to squash down all the separate elements that were working.

And Ramadi had all the elements.

Fallujah was more of an Al-Qaeda base with Zarqawi.

And, you know, it was, it was wi- it was definitely a Wild West and, but one of the craziest things at night, you know, the, the, the skies would light up with the red of the, uh, oil fires, which being a Hawaii kid reminded me of the volcanoes [chuckles] back home.

But, uh, yeah, it was, it was, in that case, so I moved from working hostage rescue to doing the CT hunt for, uh, Zarqawi, uh, who we killed that summer of, of '06, and, and I was working on the second.

The se-- where, you know how there's always, like, a second in command of-

Yep

Um, again, a lot of, you know, uh, it was a horrible war.

A lot of pe- people were dying but, you know, um, some of these memories, you know, I, I, I think I turned 24 sitting around the fire pit with a guitar, uh, [chuckles] you know, watch- watching the outgoing illumination rounds, uh, you know, thinking it, it really doesn't get any better than this, does it? [chuckles] Uh, but I mean, guess I was just a kid, you know?

And that, the hunt for Zarqawi was, you know, obviously this huge thing going on.

That, that was the thing going on at that time.

Wow.

So Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, al-Zarqawi, they are the next evolution of terror that Carlos was essentially the poster child for in the 70s and 80s.

So things morph as we get into the late 90s and obviously 2001 and then onward.

What are the terrorists of today taking from the last 25 years? Yeah.

Also burning people alive in cages in Syria.

So in Iraq, Zarqawi is the leader of a sort of a militia terrorist group.

He pledges fealty to Al Qaeda in 2004.

Right.

The United States is going to kill Zarqawi, I forget, 2005 or 2006.

But al-Qaeda is really beat by the surge and the fact that Sunnis sided with the Americans during the surge.

The Sunni groups that were fighting, they were connected to al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden certainly did.

Zarqawi, the guy who becomes the godfather of ISIS, Baghdadi, they all saw themselves as somehow appointed by God or by history to kind of have this important role.

Carlos having this, what I sort of categorize or classify as a criminal narcissist brain, which just was really more about promoting himself.

And he did it in a way that made him a bit unique.

So this is not the case of Yemen so far.

This is why the Saudis cannot find a proper ground, a fertile ground, like they have done in Iraq with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and with all the others who came after him in al-Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS, where it turned between Sunni and Shia.

So this is why, inshallah, have the upper hand, because they have the large number of the population living under their control.

And the majority of the country, most 53% of the country, is desert.

Yeah, another good story, and the title of that chapter is Sarah Al-Jamali and the Last Guard Lufti.

And that connection is where when a bad terrorist leader named Zarqawi, for you older listeners that may ring a bell, especially if they're in the military, But for younger people, he was kind of the ringleader of the worst cast of characters, and he basically was based out of Fallujah.

So one of the strategies our military had, which I understand, was how do you try and find where Zarkali is while not unnecessarily creating more friction or problems with the local population.

So at one point, our Joint Special Operations Command, which is a SEAL and Delta Force, very high speed, what movies are still made about.

He's taken his side in Libya.

Well, what do we mean by that? We mean the Libyan veterans of Iraq War II, the guys who were part of the Sunni insurgency fighting under Zarqawi as part of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

They came home from Iraq War II, and America takes their side against Colonel Qaddafi, the first guy who ever put out an Interpol warrant for Osama bin Laden back in 1996.

And then this was Hillary Clinton's bank shot.

Yep.

And they carved out a state the size of Great Britain that ruled for years there.

And then Baghdadi was not just like Zarqawi, but he declared himself the Caliph Ibrahim, divinely appointed ruler of the Bin Ladenite state.

So that was then why Obama then had to launch a Rock War III because this was too much.