Colonel Patrick Murray

About the author

Colonel Patrick Murray (U.S. Army, retired) is a political-military commentator and author. During his twenty-five year military career he served in a multitude of positions; he commanded forward-deployed combat units in Germany during the Cold War, he lived and worked in U.S. embassies in Moscow, Russia, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was part of an inter-government exchange program with the Department of State, serving in the Bureau of Political Military Affairs at the State Department in Washington, DC, and later as part of the Military Staff Committee at the United Nations in New York. In 2007, he deployed to Baghdad as part of the “Surge” where he served in the Multi National Forces Iraq, attached to the staff of General Petraeus. After retiring from the Army, Patrick was the Republican nominee for U.S. Congress in Northern Virginia during the 2010 and 2012 political cycles. He likes to say that during those campaigns he was “scared straight” about politicians and the federal government, which led him to write his popular new book "Government is the Problem." Patrick speaks Russian and holds degrees from both Oklahoma State University and The Ohio State University. He lives and works in Alexandria, Virginia.