 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(December 2022) |
Wesley R. Gray is an American author, veteran and a former assistant professor of finance. He is best known for his book, EMBEDDED: A Marine Corps Adviser Inside the Iraqi Army, an account of his eight-month military assignment in Iraq.
Raised on a cattle ranch in Colorado and having spent part of his youth in Northern California, [1] [2] Gray graduated magna cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics in 2002. [3] [4] After graduating, he enrolled at the University of Chicago. [5]
In 2004, Gray took a four-year sabbatical from his studies to serve as an intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps. [5] He spent his first two years as an intelligence officer in Asia. [6] In 2006, Marine lieutenant Gray served on a Military Transition Team in Haditha, Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. There he served as an embedded officer providing advice, mentoring and support to the Iraqi in place of U.S. Special Forces who were spread too thin to perform the task. [5] Following his service, he became a captain in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. [7]
Gray wrote EMBEDDED: A Marine Corps Adviser Inside the Iraqi Army, which was released in April 2009 and published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press. [7] [8] [9] The 240-page book came from 1000 pages of personal notes that he logged during his eight-month military assignment in Iraq to share with his wife and daughter. [6] [7] Graeme Sligo, reviewing the book for the Australian Army Journal , concluded that it "is a well-written description of what it was like to be an adviser to an Iraqi Army file unit in Anbar Province." [10] After his service he obtained both a M.B.A. and a Ph.D. in finance from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business in 2010. [3] [4]
In 2010, Gray founded an investment startup with Carl Kanner and initially managed money for a billionaire family. [11] In December 2012, Gray and co-author Tobias Carlisle had QUANTITATIVE VALUE: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors published by John Wiley & Sons. [12] Gray is the founder and Executive Managing Member of both Empiritrage, LLC and Turnkey Analyst, LLC. He is also an Assistant Professor of Finance at Drexel University's LeBow College of Business. [4] He has stated that as of November 2014 [update] , his Alpha Architect financial services company managed $200 million in assets and employed 10 full-time employees. [13] By December 2014, the company launched a second exchange-traded fund (ETF)—following its October initial offering. [14]
Gray's wife is named Katie. [6] They have two daughters [15] and a son. [6] During his time in the Marine Corps, Gray learned to speak Arabic. [7]
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James Logan Jones Jr. is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general and consultant who served as the 21st United States National Security Advisor from 2009 to 2010. During his military career, he served as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1999 to January 2003, and Commander, United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2003 to 2006. Jones retired from the Marine Corps on February 1, 2007, after 40 years of service.
John Patrick Murtha Jr. was an American politician from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Murtha, a Democrat, represented Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1974 until his death in 2010. He is the longest-serving member ever of the United States House of Representatives from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Haditha is a city in the western Iraqi Al Anbar Governorate, about 240 km (150 mi) northwest of Baghdad. It is a farming town situated on the Euphrates River at 34°08′23″N42°22′41″E. Its population of around 46,500 people, predominantly Sunni Muslim Arabs. The city lies near the Buhayrat al Qadisiyyah, an artificial lake which was created by the building of the Haditha Dam, the largest hydroelectric facility in Iraq.
3rd Battalion 1st Marines (3/1) is an infantry battalion in the United States Marine Corps based out of Camp Horno on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California. Nicknamed the "Thundering Third", the battalion consists of approximately 1,220 Marines and Sailors and falls under the command of the 1st Marine Regiment and the 1st Marine Division.
Ayn al Asad is an Iraqi Armed Forces base located in Al Anbar Governorate of western Iraq. It was originally known as Qadisiyah Airbase.
The 1st Battalion, 7th Marines (1/7) is an infantry battalion of the 7th Marine Regiment of the United States Marine Corps. It is currently based at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms. Consisting of approximately 1,000 Marines, it is part of the 1st Marine Division.
1st Battalion, 23rd Marines (1/23) is one of 32 infantry battalions in the United States Marine Corps, and one of only eight battalions found in the reserve. It is located throughout Texas and Louisiana consisting of approximately 1000 Marines and Sailors. They fall under the command of the 23rd Marine Regiment and the 4th Marine Division.
The Haditha massacre was a series of killings on November 19, 2005, in which a group of United States Marines killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The killings occurred in Haditha, a city in Iraq's western province of Al Anbar. Among the dead were men, women, elderly people and children as young as 1, who were shot multiple times at close range while unarmed. The ensuing massacre took place after an improvised explosive device exploded near a convoy, killing a lance corporal and severely injuring two other marines. The immediate reaction was to seize 5 men in a nearby taxi and execute them on the street.
Jeffrey R. Chessani is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps, and was the commanding officer 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines during the November 2005 urban combat in Haditha, Iraq. In that event, known as the Haditha killings, marines in his battalion were accused of having killed 20 civilians while pursuing insurgents.
Lucas Michael McConnell is a Major in the United States Marine Corps. In accordance with standard administrative procedure, he was removed from command of the Camp Pendleton-based Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines following an alleged November 2005 war crime in Haditha, Iraq, where Marines under his command were accused of having murdered 24 civilians after one of them had been killed in an insurgent attack. According to a report in The Times on 29 May 2006, commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey R. Chessani and 10-years-veteran Captain James Kimber were also removed from command. McConnell was not physically present during the incident but was being investigated for related events that occurred afterwards. Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich was the Marine leading the patrol.
The history of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) begins with the founding of the Continental Marines on 10 November 1775 to conduct ship-to-ship fighting, provide shipboard security and discipline enforcement, and assist in landing forces. Its mission evolved with changing military doctrine and foreign policy of the United States. Owing to the availability of Marine forces at sea, the United States Marine Corps has served in nearly every conflict in United States history. It attained prominence when its theories and practice of amphibious warfare proved prescient, and ultimately formed a cornerstone of U.S. strategy in the Pacific Theater of World War II. By the early 20th century, the Marine Corps would become one of the dominant theorists and practitioners of amphibious warfare. Its ability to rapidly respond on short notice to expeditionary crises has made and continues to make it an important tool for U.S. foreign policy.
The Battle of Haditha was a battle fought between U.S. forces and Ansar al-Sunna in early August 2005 on the outskirts of the town of Haditha, Iraq, which was one of the many towns that were under insurgent control in the Euphrates River valley during 2005.
Multi-National Forces West (MNF-W) or United States Forces West (USF-W) was one of the coalition headquarters under Multi-National Force-Iraq. It was headquartered by either I or II U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force that rotated on a 12-month basis. Their area of operations was primarily the Al Anbar province which includes the cities of Ar Ramadi, Fallujah, Al-Qa'im, and Haditha. The force was the most important U.S. unit to take part in the Iraq War in Al Anbar Governorate.
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combined arms, implementing its own infantry, artillery, aerial, and special operations forces. The U.S. Marine Corps is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States.
The Anbar campaign consisted of fighting between the United States military, together with Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents in the western Iraqi governorate of Al Anbar. The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, but the majority of the fighting and counterinsurgency campaign in Anbar took place between April 2004 and September 2007. Although the fighting initially featured heavy urban warfare primarily between insurgents and U.S. Marines, insurgents in later years focused on ambushing the American and Iraqi security forces with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), large scale attacks on combat outposts, and car bombings. Almost 9,000 Iraqis and 1,335 Americans were killed in the campaign, many in the Euphrates River Valley and the Sunni Triangle around the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
John Rutherford Allen is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general, and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A). On September 13, 2014, President Barack Obama appointed Allen as special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. He was succeeded in that role by Brett McGurk on October 23, 2015. He is the co-author of Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence with Darrell M. West and Future War and the Defence of Europe alongside Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ben Hodges and Professor Julian Lindley French. Allen was president of the Brookings Institution from October 2017 until his resignation on June 12, 2022.
The Baku "N" Military Unit", also known informally as the Azerbaijani Peacekeeping Battalion is the primary peacekeeping unit of the Azerbaijani Land Forces.
Operation Sayeed also known as Operation Hunter in English, was a series of operations conducted in western Al Anbar Governorate by the United States Marine Corps in 2005. It was an umbrella operation, consisting of at least 11 named operations between July 2005 to December 2005. The purpose was to drive Al-Qaeda in Iraq forces from the Western Euphrates River Valley. Some parts of Operation Sayeed were Operation Steel Curtain and Operation Iron Fist.
Miftah Ismail is a Pakistani political economist who served as the Federal Minister of Finance from April 2022 to September 2022. He had previously served in the same office, from April 2018 to May 2018 in Khaqan Abbasi's cabinet. Prior to that, he served as the Advisor on Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs, chairman of the Pakistan Board of Investment and an economist with the International Monetary Fund.
Norman Lee "Norm" Cooling is a retired Brigadier General in the United States Marine Corps, who most recently served as the Assistant Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies & Operations, Headquarters, United States Marine Corps and who previously served a number of roles during deployments in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom, notably as the battalion commander of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.
