one baghdad born interpreter told me patriquin was in love with iraq.he was addicted to the culture and he was obsessed by it. he loved the food in the and the people and everything about iraq and another of baghdad born interpreter told me, iraqis can like you but they love him for a lot of reasons. he had a magical personality and a trustful face. his presence was noted immediately. iraqis love to talk to men with a mustache and he had a mustache, suntan and a muscular body and it looked like an era. his heart was connecting to these people but the average american soldier iraqis -- but they could tell he enjoyed being with his hands as they did and he didn't take it. they thought he was telling them i will do whatever i can to tell you he was genuine. he gave iraqis the most honorable and honest picture of the american people in the middle at -- american military in particular. they thought he was the true american heart. and the iraqi born interpreter concluded, my god there is no one in the world who could have formed a close a connection with the

his closest american contact in this war was travis patriquin and patriquin told anybody who would listen, he is the key to ramadi. nothing will work without him. he is the center of gravity for us and maybe he can change everything. this might be the way out of iraq for us. turns out largely what patriquin wanted it to because he proved to be very effective in fighting al qaeda and try to begin to flip from pro-al qaeda to the coalition side. in my book there are few scenes of patriquin in action. one of them was patriquin first met him. he shows up with a mustache and he speaks arabic slang, iraqi arabic and his first meeting face-to-face at what part of iraq are you from, the north or the south? patriquin as he often did would say something like no i'm from chicago. i am an american and many iraqis were befuddled by that because he thought he might've been an iraqi left as a child and done over and came back with a funny western accident. they met and quickly became very close allies through this struggle. >> you can watch this and other programs on line of booktv.org. >> you dinesh d'