Robert Pape

This was a no kidding.

And their lives were on the line, Patrick.

You think about that honor.

When we talk about the honors that I have had, this is just one of the many.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

But let me go back to this because how you defeat terrorists here is all part of a mix here.

So when I went in, I was asking the – because I was brought into this big meeting –

with the intel officers who were bringing me in.

And I said, well, will you tell me a little bit about your orders that you're going to have when you go into Baghdad?

And they said, well, of course, sir, you understand it's all classified.

But what I can tell you is that we are debating here, and we haven't decided whether we're going to go into the, it's called Sadr City in Baghdad, the Shia area of Baghdad.

And then I took that little bit of knowledge and I was able to reorganize it to explain to them over two hours that if they would do that, they would probably double the amount of suicide terrorism in Iraq at the time and make everything worse.

And that what they needed to do was not go into Sadr City militarily, needed to keep to their main footprint, which was these more Sunni neighborhoods.

There were seven of them.

So we got into the details here.

Um, and, uh, that if they would do that, uh, with some other, uh, uh, ideas too.

So it wasn't just literally that, um, this would have the best chance of putting the capping.

I called it of the volcano.

Well, I can't tell you, uh, I only go into these things for two hours and then I go and I take all the questions and I go home and then they listen to other people.