Roughly six months after assuming command of 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel James Rainey led his unit into Operation Phantom Fury, the November 2004 combined-joint assault to retake the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Attached to Marine Regimental Combat Team 1 and working closely (prior to and throughout) with Colonel Michael Shupp, the RCT-1 commander, Rainey's overriding responsibility during this decisive urban fight was to "control the violence" and "manage the chaos" wreaked by his battalion's 14 tanks and 30 Bradleys. "The best analogy I ever heard," he recalled, "came from one of my former company commanders. He said that fighting in an urban environment was like playing tackle football in a hallway. Then you throw tanks and Bradleys in there and it's like a demolition derby in a hallway - and that's the kind of chaos you need to manage." In this interview, Rainey discusses in tremendous detail the important, even essential, role his mechanized task force as a whole played in this operation, but is also quick to highlight the “selflessness and lethality of the American fighting man: Marine and soldier, tanker and infantryman. They are,” he said, “an absolutely unbelievable treasure that our country has.” Talking, as well, about those ranged against his men in Fallujah, Rainey explained that “the enemy we faced was a dedicated, committed enemy; he was well trained by insurgent standards and definitely well equipped; he also had a good amount of time to prep his defense and had decent communications – but he was still nothing compared to U.S. forces. He was a pretty competent enemy, but he was absolutely devastated in every engagement we had with him.”

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