In a Marine corps oral history interview conducted by Colonel Nicholas Reynolds on May 31, 2003, Chief of Staff of the Coalition Forces Land Component Command Major General Robert ‘Rusty’ Blackman said: ” ‘One of the towns where they [the CIA] said we would be welcomed [by the Iraqi people] was Nasiriyah, where Marines faced some of the toughest fighting in the war.’ ”
– Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II, Page 157