full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Stanley McChrystal: The military case for sharing knowledge

Unscramble the Blue Letters

In the summer of 2003, I was assigned to command a special operations task froce, and that task force was spread across the Mideast to fihgt al Qaeda. Our main effort was inside Iraq, and our specified mission was to dafeet al Qaeda in Iraq. For almost five years I stayed there, and we focused on fighting a war that was unconventional and it was difficult and it was bloody and it often claimed its highest price among innocent people. We did everything we could to stop al Qaeda and the foreign fhgtries that came in as suicide breombs and as accelerants to the violence. We honed our combat skills, we dvlepoeed new eiupqnemt, we parachuted, we helicoptered, we took small boats, we dorve, and we walked to objectives night after night to stop the kiillng that this network was putting forward. We bled, we died, and we kelild to stop that organization from the violence that they were putting largely against the Iraqi pploee.

Open Cloze

In the summer of 2003, I was assigned to command a special operations task _____, and that task force was spread across the Mideast to _____ al Qaeda. Our main effort was inside Iraq, and our specified mission was to ______ al Qaeda in Iraq. For almost five years I stayed there, and we focused on fighting a war that was unconventional and it was difficult and it was bloody and it often claimed its highest price among innocent people. We did everything we could to stop al Qaeda and the foreign ________ that came in as suicide _______ and as accelerants to the violence. We honed our combat skills, we _________ new _________, we parachuted, we helicoptered, we took small boats, we _____, and we walked to objectives night after night to stop the _______ that this network was putting forward. We bled, we died, and we ______ to stop that organization from the violence that they were putting largely against the Iraqi ______.

Solution

  1. drove
  2. killing
  3. developed
  4. fighters
  5. defeat
  6. killed
  7. people
  8. equipment
  9. bombers
  10. force
  11. fight

Original Text

In the summer of 2003, I was assigned to command a special operations task force, and that task force was spread across the Mideast to fight al Qaeda. Our main effort was inside Iraq, and our specified mission was to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq. For almost five years I stayed there, and we focused on fighting a war that was unconventional and it was difficult and it was bloody and it often claimed its highest price among innocent people. We did everything we could to stop al Qaeda and the foreign fighters that came in as suicide bombers and as accelerants to the violence. We honed our combat skills, we developed new equipment, we parachuted, we helicoptered, we took small boats, we drove, and we walked to objectives night after night to stop the killing that this network was putting forward. We bled, we died, and we killed to stop that organization from the violence that they were putting largely against the Iraqi people.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
al qaeda 3
edward snowden 3
foreign fighters 2

Important Words

  1. accelerants
  2. al
  3. assigned
  4. bled
  5. bloody
  6. boats
  7. bombers
  8. claimed
  9. combat
  10. command
  11. defeat
  12. developed
  13. died
  14. difficult
  15. drove
  16. effort
  17. equipment
  18. fight
  19. fighters
  20. fighting
  21. focused
  22. force
  23. foreign
  24. helicoptered
  25. highest
  26. honed
  27. innocent
  28. iraq
  29. iraqi
  30. killed
  31. killing
  32. largely
  33. main
  34. mideast
  35. mission
  36. network
  37. night
  38. objectives
  39. operations
  40. organization
  41. parachuted
  42. people
  43. price
  44. putting
  45. qaeda
  46. skills
  47. small
  48. special
  49. spread
  50. stayed
  51. stop
  52. suicide
  53. summer
  54. task
  55. unconventional
  56. violence
  57. walked
  58. war
  59. years