um from there you do you go to jay sock um you take over as the deputy commander and i think uh you you you throw out um in nc stories you give an example which i think is a well it’s it’s a pretty important story there’s a mission going on you’re in the uh you’re in the talk the tactical operation center and here we go i’m gonna go to the book this is from sea stories unbeknownst to me lieutenant colonel bill coltrip that’s right the sea squadron commander and colonel jim hickey from 1st brigade 4th infantry division had maneuvered farther up the dirt road from wolverine 1 which was one target to another small house designated wolverine 2 as i watched the isr feed from the west cam and listened to the radios the visual and verbal didn’t match up wolverine 1 appeared reasonably quiet but the radio calls from coltrip sounded like they were moving rapidly on a target it sounds like they’re on target lee i don’t see any movement outside the house i motioned to the jock non-commissioned officer who sat at the end of the long wooden table that made a horseshoe around the isr screen so you’re sitting there watching this thing unfold the isrs what’s what’s the feed that’s coming from the aircraft overhead he was also on the headset seeing what i was seeing which was nothing i raised my hands in the universal sign of wtf and he shrugged and called back isr is on the target i don’t know where the squadron is sir i hated to call the squadron in the middle of an operation and and that’s an important point um you know from a from from my perspective you know i was a platoon commander and assault force commander and a platoon and then a task unit commander and the fact that you weren’t jumping on there hey where are you at what’s going on what’s going on is is i’d say if you’ve got a boss you’ve got at least a 50 chance of a boss that wants to know exactly where you are at all time and it’s not fun and it doesn’t help and so here you are you say i hated to call the squad in the middle of an operation it’s the last thing any tactical guy on the ground wants a call from his boss sitting warm and comfortable in a jock 50 miles away from the action still it was our responsibility to manage the quick reaction force and the medical evacuation if something went wrong on target that was hard to do if you didn’t have good situational awareness of the mission and the truth was i was curious as to whether this new lead was panning out so they were tracking a lead somewh somewhat reluctantly i pushed the talk i pushed the talk button and reached out to coltrip bill are you on target yes sir culture responded somewhat excitedly we don’t see you on isr there was a pause on coltrip’s end sir we are on wolverine2 just down the road from the original target and we have jackpot jackpot jackpot jackpot was the code word meaning they had captured the objective at first i assumed coltrap meant case is that who you were looking for but suddenly it occurred to me that the tone of culture of voice indicated something more significant jackpot do you mean little jackpot or big jackpot big jackpot culture of answered and going um as this goes forward big jackpot was salaam right so these guys had just captured saddam and i was actually i was in iraq at the time and and so we had found out i think we had found out we found out really quickly one of the guys that we were working on the oga guys we were working out with was one of the early um interrogators on him and come down yeah we got him so as much as i know you were trying to keep it secret there was uh it didn’t stay so it didn’t really secretly that one didn’t say stay secret very long i know there’s a there’s uh before we jump in a little bit about saddam so when you when you were running that earlier i mentioned you were running this project of like looking at the future of warfare and what we could do and i was part of that so i was and there was like five of us and you were basically taking us and sending us to all these uh very cool probably some of the best schools i ever went to i went to lock picking and car stealing and just all these really cool stool uh schools to get us prepared to do like you said operations from a totally different perspective and i remember i i sat through your brief a couple times and you would brief you know some senior officers and you’d say hey listen in the seal teams we do direct action but we have tea lambs now and so do we really need to do direction or are we really going to have to do direct action missions when we’ve got telomers and we’ve got another thing we do is special reconnaissance well are we really going to do need to do special reconnaissance when we’ve got satellites and and we’ve got you know uav capabilities that are coming on board and and you know i remember like i said i was a young guy and thinking okay well i need to i need to transfer to this new format we’re not going to do direct action anymore i think the next time i saw you i was in baghdad you came down to camp jenny posey where we were we were i was jocked up literally about to go out of my whatever 50th or whatever direct action mission and and uh i thought it was funny i kind of smiled to myself said well looks like we’re still doing it looks like we’re still doing it sir um but but this this mission got saddam and then man you you do a it’s a very interesting perspective i mean how how how crazy is it to sit here and talk to you you were interacting with saddam when he got captured and you detailed in the book but i mean just some some high level thoughts what was that like detailing with this freaking horrible horrible sadistic person yeah it was very interesting because the um you know when we first captured him i mean he was pompous he was arrogant uh when uh when bill called back when bill culture called back and said hey we got a big jackpot good to your point you had asked about case so case was the guy we were the facilitator so we were trying to get the facilitator who we thought was going to lead us to saddam well they had gotten case and then case had kind of pointed them toward saddam and they opened the spider hole you’ve seen the picture saddam’s in there so they bring saddam back to crit and and i’m i’m down in baghdad and um and so now we had a plan okay what do you do if you get saddam well i had to call general abzade who was the centcom commander called john mcchrystal who was my boss back in tampa and i had to make plans to well we want to we want to verify that saddam so i needed to get dna sent to you know the lab and fbi lab and all that sort of thing but but as all this is happening um uh uh the uh the jtf commander um general rick sanchez i get the word joel sanchez is outside the jock i was like what i mean he was the big guy in iraq time three star at the time and uh so we’ll bring him on in so sanchez comes in sits down beside me and says uh bill i understand you got uh saddam i said hey sir i do not know that yet uh yeah i’m not gonna call jackpot until i can see it till we can verify it you know how this goes you know there are a lot of times uh we had captured guys who we thought had the right name the cunys were different people were different you called jackpot then you’re embarrassed you know 24 hours later when’s not the right guy and he says you know i mean i i heard through uh you know through oga that that you got him i said well sir he’ll be down here in 30 minutes you can see for yourself i think we both just spotted the leak huh well so uh so the uh about 30 minutes later the helo arrives well i mean i’m busy making phone calls so i turn to my uh chief of staff who i call him i think captain lee at his request um and i said hey go over there you got to come back and and i’m trusting you to tell me whether you think it’s saddam or not so he and general sanchez go over there and he comes back a few minutes later he goes started saddam and said okay so now i’m calling abbas and doing my sort of thing well about uh you know half an hour later i i go back over there and i remember talking to sanchez it was kind of one of those funny moments so saddam has this big beard and uh and i realized we got to get him cleaned up because we’re going to have this kind of press release and everything and frankly it looked like saddam even with a big beard i mean he’s got this bulbous nose and everything but i figured well let’s get him cleaned up so no iraqis can say it’s not saddam so i turned to one of the guys that said okay let’s get him shaved and uh and get him cleaned up and then we’ll take a picture and then we’ll be able to compare the yeah so as i’m saying sanchez turns to me says i don’t know bill do we have the authority to shave him i said sir we had the authority to kill him if he was you know if he was trying to get us i think we got the authority to shave him we both kind of laughed i really liked rick sanchez he was a good guy um so we so i go off make some more phone calls i come back assuming that what had happened was some ranger or somebody had had gotten the shears and was kind of clean and said i mean why come back saddam’s got a pair of scissors in his hand and he’s clipping his own beard i’m like no let me have those scissors yeah just yeah pull those away and he’s like well i was told to get cleaned up but but the next the next day was the day when you you recall the press conference uh where the ambassador and joel sanchez say we got him well they hadn’t seen him yet uh uh sanchez had seen him but the ambassador hadn’t seen him yet so they fly out to uh to our place there in baghdad and go to to see saddam and they brought some of the iraqi leaders with them and again saddam i’ve you know i’ve got him now in a jumpsuit and he’s sitting on a cot but when they when the iraqi leaders came into the room small room about this size actually i mean they are yelling at him they’re spitting at him and he’s got this look on his face like boys i’m still in charge here sit down any kind of motions to him you guys just sit down don’t you know who i am and i’m looking thinking wow he is he still thinks he’s in charge he’s about to find out he’s no longer in charge you know so uh i didn’t really want to bring those guys in because i knew this would happen it would just bolster his ego so after uh after they left i talked to sanchez and knocked him back i said sir that’s it i don’t want anybody else buzzing him i am responsible for him now uh i mean and called john labzade he will tell you i’m responsible for him so here’s what i’m telling you nobody else visits him um we will you know i will take good care of him but i don’t want him you know feeling like he’s somebody important over the next 30 days i held on to him and in the room i had a an officer and a security guy and a and a medic and or a doctor at all times with him because he was 67 years old he had all sorts of health problems but it was interesting to watch as as the days and weeks went on and he no longer had his you know palaces and he no longer had his generals he no longer had his handmaidens he really just became a pathetic old man um and uh and every time i’d come in every i’d go check on him every day he’d always stand up to want to talk to me i would say no and i wouldn’t talk to him and it made him mad and he would talk to the rangers and the and the doc and i told him i said i don’t want anybody saying a word to him um and he would always ask about el jefe yeah yeah el jefe and of course i came in i made sure my stars weren’t on and my name tag wasn’t on but he knew who i was yeah i mean just by yeah you command it so 30 days into it it was time to move him and i was really hoping that by this time you know the insurgency had really had kind of blossomed he didn’t know that of course um and i thought well let’s see if i can get him to tell the insurgents to stand down so we had a plan uh brought my translator in and of course i knew what his answers would be but i figured i got nothing to lose here so i sat down with him and i said look you know the kind of the war is over here the americans have come in we’ve and he just kind of nodded and i said but your people are still dying and you know you can do one of two things you can become benito mussolini and be the petty dictator or you can do right by your country now it’s not going to end well for you you got to know that but tell them to lay down their arms so so we’re not killing any more iraqis and i knew he’d ask me the question that i thought he would ask he said if it was you would you do it and and i said look you know if it was for the best part of my country i’d do what it took to save my country and he looks at me goes i don’t think so he in arabic but it was true i knew what he meant and then i said to him i said okay you’re not going to see me again we’re moving you and he was like because we we’ve been taking pretty good care of him and he was like oh this is not a good idea and so then he starts to get a little talked if i said time’s done and uh so that night we undercover darkness we moved him to some military police and they held on to him until the until the trial but watching his again watching him and his behavior and how it changed when he no longer felt he was in a position of power it was i think important to realize you know that that’s what you do you know you’re booked back on bullies you know at the end of the day you stand up to the bullies and if all they had was the trappings around them they’re they’re not the kind of people that are going to be able to stand up to you for very long and you know he was a function of the generals that supported him and all of the trappings and when you took that away he was just a bully
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