In this second of two interviews reference his Operation Iraqi Freedom experiences - the first one covering his March to September 2005 deployment - Major John Polidoro, US Marine Corps, discusses his August 2006 through March 2007 tour as, again, the executive officer of 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) Battalion, 2nd Marine Division. Again, too, the battalion returned to Camp Korean Village in Anbar Province, except this time they were ordered to conduct split-base operations - a situation that found Polidoro with one-third of 2nd LAR at Korean Village and the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Sparky Renforth, with the remaining two-thirds in the city of Rawah. Myriad challenges ensued. Polidoro had charge of the camp itself, plus the city of Rutbah and two ports of entry, and with him on this economy of force mission were one LAR company, the bulk of an MP company and also a good-sized chunk of Headquarters and Service Company. Additionally, he talks about his great working relationship with US Army units, his rejoining of the battalion at Rawah in December 2006, the importance of fully integrating with Iraqi units and doing truly combined operations, the crucial development of company-level intelligence cells, and also how completely a unit's success (or failure) depends on its commander. Polidoro also talks in depth about what the Army can learn from the Marine Corps and vice versa, the keys, based on his experience, to defeating the insurgency in Iraq, and closes his interview by comparing and contrasting his two OIF deployments. "The first deployment was an exercise in maintaining the status quo and our second one was how you make a difference," he said. "On our first deployment, the Marine Corps didn't really understand what we were doing there yet, but by the second deployment we had kind of figured it out. On the second deployment, we were riding high on the right way to do business and it's making a difference. I'm much more positive about our second deployment because there was a distinct result," he added. "I could touch it, feel it and I could see that we made a difference. The first time, I'm not so sure."

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