The Sheriff of Ramadi: Navy SEALs and the Winning of al-Anbar

The author argues that the lessons of Ramadi should provide a template for future joint combined cooperation in the war against al-Qaeda and their allies. Once an advocate of special-forces control of battle space, Couch is now convinced of the need for increased interoperability as well as increased language and cross-cultural training, and a more streamlined command and communication infrastructure issues he addresses in the book s epilogue. Couch admits that when he began researching the book in the summer of 2006, he thought he would be writing about the SEALs courage in a losing cause, but what emerged is a startling success story of a joint combined forces/special forces operation that has gone underreported.