Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis doesn’t recite any of his conversations with President Trump in his upcoming book (much to the consternation of Washington journalists). But he does detail an evening with someone else who might be on the presidential ballot in 2020: Joe Biden, who was “ignoring reality” in Iraq, he says.

In Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, co-written with Bing West and set to be published Tuesday, Mattis expounds on the lessons learned in his more than 40 years in the Marine Corps. His career culminated in three years as the head of U.S. Central Command, overseeing military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia from 2010 to 2013. That meant Mattis was in charge of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as war raged in both countries.