James Mattis was commissioned in the Marine Corps through the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps after graduating from Central Washington University.
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James Mattis was commissioned in the Marine Corps through the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps after graduating from Central Washington University.
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James Mattis was commander of United States Central Command from 2010 to 2013, with Admiral Bob Harward serving as his deputy commander.
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James Mattis occasionally voiced his disagreement with certain Trump administration policies such as the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, withdrawals of troops from Syria and Afghanistan, and budget cuts hampering the ability to monitor the impacts of climate change.
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James Mattis dissuaded Trump from attempting to assassinate Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria.
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James Mattis is the son of Lucille Mattis and John West Mattis, a merchant mariner.
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James Mattis's mother immigrated to the United States from Canada as an infant and had worked in Army Intelligence in South Africa during the Second World War.
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James Mattis's father moved to Richland, Washington, to work at a plant supplying fissile material to the Manhattan Project.
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James Mattis was raised in a bookish household that did not own a television.
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James Mattis says he would hitchhike in his early teenage years until the time he enlisted in the Marine Corps.
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James Mattis earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from Central Washington University in 1971 and a Master of Arts in international security affairs from the National War College of National Defense University in 1994.
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James Mattis required his Marines to be well-read in the culture and history of regions where they were deployed, and had his Marines deploying to Iraq undergo "cultural sensitivity training".
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James Mattis led the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade as its commanding officer upon promotion to brigadier general.
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James Mattis describes being presented with the location of Osama bin Laden in December 2001 and creating a plan to kill him that was never executed.
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James Mattis played key roles in combat operations in Fallujah, including negotiation with the insurgent command inside the city during Operation Vigilant Resolve in April 2004, as well as participation in planning of the subsequent Operation Phantom Fury in November.
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James Mattis said it had taken him 30 seconds to decide whether to bomb the location.
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James Mattis was noted for a willingness to remove senior leaders under his command when the US military seemed unable or unwilling to relieve underperforming or incompetent officers.
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James Mattis remained commander of JFCOM from November 2007 until September 2010.
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James Mattis lobbied the Obama administration for a more aggressive response to Iran, including more covert operations and disruption of Iranian arms shipments to Syria and Yemen.
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James Mattis retired in March 2013, and the Defense Department nominated General Lloyd Austin to succeed him.
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In December 2015, James Mattis joined the advisory board of Spirit of America, a 501 nonprofit organization that provides assistance to support the safety and success of American service personnel and the local people they seek to help.
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From 2013 to January 2017, James Mattis was a board member of Theranos, a health technology company that claimed to have devised revolutionary blood tests using very small amounts of blood, which was later determined to be a fraudulent claim by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
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In 2019, James Mattis's book Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead was published.
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James Mattis warned North Korea that "any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated", and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response from the United States.
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The following day, James Mattis gave his first Pentagon news conference since becoming secretary of defense, saying ISIL's defeat remained "our priority, " and the Syrian government would pay a "very, very stiff price" for further usage of chemical weapons.
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James Mattis voiced support for a Saudi Arabian-led military campaign against Yemen's Shiite rebels.
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James Mattis asked Trump to remove restrictions on US military support for Saudi Arabia.
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James Mattis traveled to Afghanistan days later and met with government officials, explaining that the purpose of the trip was to allow him to state his recommendations for US strategy in the country.
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Wherever James Mattis traveled overseas, he brought the Defense Security Cooperation Agency director, according to Lt.
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James Mattis had recently said that the US would remain in Syria after ISIL's defeat to ensure it did not regroup.
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John F Kelly, Trump's chief of staff when Mattis left his position, denied that Trump fired Mattis or asked for his resignation.
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James Mattis strongly supported Secretary of State John Kerry on the Middle East peace process, praising Kerry for being "wisely focused like a laser beam" on a two-state solution.
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James Mattis believes Iran is the principal threat to the stability of the Middle East, ahead of Al-Qaeda and ISIL.
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James Mattis praises the friendship of regional US allies such as Jordan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates.
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James Mattis criticized Obama's defense strategy as giving "the perception we're pulling back" from US allies.
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James Mattis stresses the need for the US to bolster its ties with allied intelligence agencies, particularly those of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
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In 2012, James Mattis argued for providing weapons to Syrian rebels as a way to fight back against Iranian proxies in Syria.
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James Mattis visited Japan one week after being sworn in as secretary of defense.
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James Mattis berated Trump for deliberately trying to cause division among the American people and advocating military action to "dominate" the country's protests.
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James Mattis called for reunification among the people, regardless of the president, to preserve the welfare of society, and its future.
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James Mattis added that America is "witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership".
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Bachelor for his entire professional career, James Mattis married physicist and business executive Christina Lomasney in June 2022.
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James Mattis previously proposed to a woman, but she called off the wedding three days before it was to occur, after colleagues talked him out of leaving the Marine Corps for her.
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James Mattis was nicknamed "The Warrior Monk" because of his bachelorhood and lifelong devotion to the study of war.
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