My Share of the Task (69 page)

Then–Major General Graeme Lamb welcoming Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, into Basra, southern Iraq, in November 2003. Graeme and I served together in the first Gulf War, and again in Iraq. During 2006–2007, we worked together when he oversaw the Coalition's sometimes controversial reconciliation efforts during a critical juncture in the war. One of my best friends, Graeme would later come out of retirement to serve with me in Afghanistan.

My Task Force 714 command team in front of the flight line at our headquarters in Balad, Iraq. From left are Donny Purdy, Kurt Fuller, Jody Nacy, Bud Cato, me, Mike Flynn, and Vic Kouw.

Here wearing his trademark all-black outfit, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi built a mystique as a battlefield commander. His group, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), deftly employed video and audio messages to recruit and inspire followers. This screen capture was taken from a rare public video appearance during the spring of 2006, at a time when we were trying to provoke his ego in an effort to cause him to make a misstep, and come into our sights.

The ruins of the safe house where Zarqawi was killed, in Hibhib, north of Baghdad. On June 7, 2006, Task Force 16 dropped two five-hundred-pound bombs on the house, which was nestled among a thick grove of palm trees.

The night after Zarqawi was killed, I thanked members of the Task Force in the backyard of our Baghdad compound abutting the Tigris River. It was not a time of celebration: They knew, as did I, the fight was far from over.

A badly disabled Stryker armored fighting vehicle, rendered inoperable by an enemy improvised explosive device, on the streets of Ramadi during the summer of 2006. The Stryker had carried a group of Rangers, assigned by Task Force 16 to run raids into the city. At the time, Ramadi was the most dangerous place in Iraq, and tested our special operators and conventional forces who, under the creative leadership of then–Colonel Sean MacFarland, partnered to subdue it and midwife the first durable movement of Sunni reconciliation.

In what we termed the Situational Awareness Room at our Balad headquarters in July 2006. Though I had an office, I rarely used it. We had designed our office spaces to be open to make our communications quick and robust. This meant I spent nearly all my time an arm's length from my command team—at the time, Kurt Fuller to my left, Mike Flynn to my right, and Jody Nacy to his right. The briefing on the screen is called “Defeat AQI Brief,” and according to its date was delivered six weeks after Task Force 16 killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That fall, we thought we felt Al Qaeda in Iraq breaking, though larger problems still loomed.

With the hardened aircraft hanger that held our Iraq headquarters in the background, I addressed members of Task Force 16 in 2007. On sadder occasions than the one pictured, the motley members of our task force—young, old, male, female, military, civilian—gathered at the foot of this flag for memorial ceremonies.

On June 2, 2009, I testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee as a nominee for the post of commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The position meant more years away from Annie, seated behind me. She understood.

Command Sergeant Major Mike Hall (front right) my senior enlisted adviser in Afghanistan, visiting soldiers at one of our remote combat outposts in Nuristan. This small base was home to some forty or fifty troops, half of them Afghan, and took direct and indirect fires daily. From the time I first met Mike and served with him in the Ranger Regiment a decade before his visit to this outpost, he was the finest soldier I knew.

The Flynn brothers: Charlie (right) here at his promotion to brigadier general, and Mike. A trusted friend, Charlie was my indispensible executive officer both at the Pentagon and then Afghanistan, where he shared with me the highs and lows of command. At the same time, his older brother, Mike, was my chief intelligence officer in Afghanistan, and fulfilled the same role during my command of Task Force 714 before that. He has since been promoted to lieutenant general.