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This is the Combat Story of Jordan Becker, US Army Lieutenant Colonel serving as a Foreign Area Officer (FAO) in Paris, France, as a liaison officer to the French Joint Staff.
Jordan began his career in the 173rd Airborne Brigade where he led an infantry platoon in a parachute assault that opened the Northern Front in the Iraq war in March of 2003, followed by an 11-month deployment in and around Kirkuk. While in the 173rd, Jordan led a rifle platoon, a support platoon, and served as an executive officer.
Jordan completed the Special Forces Assessment and Selection and the Special Forces Qualification Course, after which he was assigned to 10th Special Forces Group. He served in and around Baghdad as the targeting and current operations officer for Special Operations Task Force - Center, and then commanded a detachment assigned to advise Iraq’s national-level Special Operations Force’s Reconnaissance Troop. In 2008, Jordan’s team operated in Mali in support of Operation Enduring Freedom Trans-Sahel.
As a FAO, Jordan served as a military assistant and speechwriter to NATO’s Chairman of the Military Committee, General Petr Pavel, and a Defense Policy Advisor to the US Permanent Representative to NATO, Ambassador Douglas Lute. Jordan has written extensively on NATO and transatlantic cooperation and his works can be found on Google Scholar.
Jordan's next assignment will take him back to West Point to teach the next generation of Army officers.
0:00 Intro
3:45 - Static line jump into Iraq.
5:28 - Where were you on 9/11?
5:38 - Bitten by a brown recluse spider in a ‘sensitive’.
9:20 - "First time I’d ever bucked the system”
15:50 - First combat experience at 173rd
19:45 - Jordan’s work on Team Repo in Kirkuk.
22:00 - Best moment of his career.
32:20 - SF Group assignments.
49:15 - Deployed to Mali.
53:45 - Closest call or most dangerous experience.