Deployed as an individual augmentee in August 2002, Major Peter Dargle served in the J5 for plans and policies for 12 months under U.S. Central Command and was primarily based at Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Prior to the start of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, though, he was sent to Qatar and participated in a command and control simulation exercise called Internal Look. As a coalition operations officer during OIF, he worked primarily with air and ground components to synchronize coalition force efforts as well as humanitarian assistance. Among the coalition partners he requested assets of (and coordinated assets from) were Great Britain, Australia, the Czech Republic and Denmark. As Dargle noted, "Every nation that I had interaction with, it was a very positive working relationship." Eventually sent to Baghdad itself as a liaison officer to both the Coalition Provisional Authority and to V Corps, Dargle's other duties included helping get the Iraqi financial system back in operation and organizing DNA collections to assist in the identification of victims exhumed from Iraqi mass grave sites.

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