In this first of three interviews concerning his Global War on Terrorism deployments, Major Edward Croot, US Army Special Forces, discusses his January to May 2002 tour in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, during which he served in 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group and mainly flew on JSTARS aircraft, based out of Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar. He then talks about his February through May 2003 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, again with 3rd Battalion, 3rd Group, although attached to 10th Special Forces Group, where he commanded ODA 375 and worked and fought with Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq. "We were told to cause as many problems as we could and to keep [Iraqi forces] fixed on the Green Line, and exploit when we could," Croot said. Soon after, Croot and his ODA went in with the Peshmerga to occupy Mosul, at which point, he said, "Things just went from conventional fighting, where you could control things, to just uncontrollable. It changed everything. Every time you drove out of the gate, you just thought, 'Damn, this is going to suck.' … We went from being the insurgent, the unconventional warfare warriors with the Pesh'," Croot added, "to all of a sudden having a counterinsurgency situation. It almost happened overnight. " He also speaks about a highly interesting (and ultimately highly prophetic) conversation he had with some Iraqi university professors in Mosul, how he and his men were given operations to conduct there that seemed to lack a defined purpose, and just how difficult transitioning from combat to post-combat operations can be.

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