This article was originally a general bio about a badass: John Shrek McPhee, HMFIC at SOB Tactical. McPhee, a former SMU operator, is the Sheriff of Baghdad and founder of Gunfighter University. The article was originally written circa early 2017, and then the bulk of it was moved to our blog on Patreon. Bad idea, that, as you’ll see below. We need to reconstitute the vast majority of the Shrek McPhee Delta story – you have our apologies for that. Mad Duo
⚠️ Update 8/24/25: We’re aware McPhee has recently been excoriated online by a number of professionals, including many from the SMU/SOF community. While we cannot independently verify these extremly troubling stories of misconduct, we continue to get a lot of web traffic to this article. We’re updating it to address and preempt some of the questions we’ll inevitably (and rightfully) get from our readership. The information contained in this article was written prior to any hint of impropriety. In fact, several of our crew have in the past had excellent interactions with the self-proclaimed “Sheriff of Baghdad” (q.v.). We’ll update this further when we can, including information that calls some of his career into question, and allow you to make your own decisions.
What you see below will seem a bit jumbled, because it is. This was originally supposed to be an intro that led to the full article over on Patreon. Sorry about that, too.
John Shrek McPhee
Sheriff of Baghdad is the moniker used by John Shrek McPhee personally and for his company, SOB Tactical. Shrek was the nickname he went by when he served in the Army’s Special Mission Unit (SMU). He now runs SOB (Sheriff of Baghdad) Tactical and its instruction component, Gunfighter University. A former Ranger turned SMU member, he is an eccentric and storied institution in the contemporary training world.
Originally a member of the 1st Ranger Battalion, he went through SFAS and thence to the 7th Special Forces Group. From 7th SFG, he passed Selection and was assigned to “The Unit.” After 9/11, he deployed to Afghanistan, where he was involved in the Battle of Tora Bora and participated in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.
His online bio says: “John Shrek McPhee has spent his adult life in Special Operations and Special Mission Units. He has trained countless U.S. Special Operations forces, thousands of International Tier 1 Operators and Special Forces around the world. He is one of the handful of operators with over a decade of combat experience, having served in multiple theaters from Bosnia and South America to recent war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Tom Greer, AKA “Dalton Fury“, described McPhee thusly in his book Kill Bin Laden:
The first order of business was to locate Ahmed’s bedroom, and one of the best reconnaissance operators in the business volunteered for the job. He was known in Delta as Shrek, affectionately named after the movie cartoon character with whom he shared a similar large and muscular build.
He sported a deep bronze tan from the sun’s glare off the snowy peaks in northern Afghanistan, and much of his face was covered by a thick brown beard that he had grown over many months. Shrek might draw notice on a street corner in Iowa, but would fit in well among the Afghan locals. He had proven his skills time and again, and as much as any Delta operator, Shrek had developed a good feel for the people of the area and understood the very different culture in which honor, hospitality, and revenge are valued like Americans cherish baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.
He had been decorated for valor while chasing bin Laden through the mountains almost a year earlier, and in my opinion there was no better man for this job.
[Fury, Dalton. Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man (p. 5). St. Martin’s Press. Kindle Edition.]
Shrek McPhee Delta
After a storied career in various SOF billets (some of which are recounted by Thomas Greer, aka “Dalton Fury”, in his book), McPhee left 1st SFOD-D for the civilian world.
He explains,
“One of the things that I’ve always been good at is knowing when to say when. What am I just going to kill people for another 30 years and absorb all that? I pretty much lost any existing memories prior to me being in the army because of all the fucked up war shit I’m trying not to talk about. So it’s like, how much more can you take? And everyone has their limits. Some guys do 30 years…There was guys that I worked with after that first deployment that were like, I’m done. You can’t judge a guy for that. Everyone is different.” via Combat Ready interview on YouTube.
ALCON: As a reminder, this article originally linked to an article on our Patreon account. Except Patreon shut our account down without warning or recourse because [GASP] we do a lot with guns. If it seems disjointed, that’s why. We lost the remainder when Patreon shut us down. We will get this article updated (or rewritten) as soon as possible, and apologies for what probably seems like some kind of bait-and-switch bullshit. Except we don’t really have the switch part figured out.
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