An Army reservist with the 85th Division (Training Support), Major Jose Lopez was mobilized and deployed to Iraq in 2004 as part of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom II. Initially, he was a member of the command and control cell in charge of coordinating the onward movement of advisor support teams (ASTs) into country, which were there to train and advise Iraqi Army units. Lopez was also involved in the allocation of equipment for these Iraqi units. Later in his tour, he served as deputy for the 18th Iraqi Army Battalion AST, providing basic training to the battalion's officers and NCO, as well as coordination of collective training and validation of the unit by major subordinate commands. In this interview, Lopez discusses such things as the Iraqi Army's biggest burden - i.e., logistics; the lack at the time of a formal relationship between Iraqi units, ASTs and coalition partner units; the willingness and ability of the Iraqi battalions to fight; cultural, ethnic, religious and historical factors that affected their performance; his work with interpreters; how he felt the Iraqi population viewed the Iraqi Army; the sorts of operations his Iraqi battalion were able to conduct; his work with members of US sister services and the advising he did with the Iraqi battalion operations officer and one of the company commanders; and also what advice he'd give to improve the effectiveness of future US advisory teams.

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